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Excellent post that really grasps the reality for younger voters. Before there was Medicare and Social Security, many seniors were living well below the poverty level and had no health insurance because no insurer would cover them at rates they could afford. The lucky ones lived with their children, who helped to bear a lot of the burden for their care and medical expenses. That will be you, all of you under 35 year-olds, whose parents are now in their 50s and in danger of being cut off from Medicare as we know it. You will either have to step up and contribute to the care of your parents, or see them go without.
Please don't think that because you are years away from retirement, this has no bearing on your long term financial health. It absolutely does.
Exactly! The 30somethings may find themselves spending their 40s and 50s taking care of their parents, in their (the 30somethings') homes! There are tradeoffs.
I completely agree with your point that health care is not a standard product operating over easily understood economic principles that can be easily taught to the average-educated consumer or even a "product" at all in the usual sense of the word.
For consumers other than the Amazing Kreshkin for the Johnny Carson Show to rationally "purchase" medical insurance is nearly impossible. Nobody knows what ailments they will acquire 20 years later. Nobody knows which advanced cancer treatment they should make sure they get included in their insurance policy because they don't know if they will get cancer, for instance. Say you could know ahead of time that you will be basically healthy until you die and paid for the little scrapes and colds out of your pocket, you'd never buy insurance at all. It's fundamentally unfair in a society as rich as ours that a guy with good genes through no good turn of his own could have 0 insurance costs over a lifetime if he wants to and a person born into a family with a deadly hereditary but treatable illness through no fault of his own has to pay huge costs if he can get covered at all and can't get the treatment that would cure him. I'm a bit scared Ryan's response would be that "Hey, it's a cruel world" (out of his favorite Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead") or maybe just have some sort of "Euthanasia Board" to put down the sick and injured with expensive health care problems and limited money assets.
If you knew you'd get some awful disease like AIDS you'd load up on a cadillac policy with infinite lifetime coverage. Most people are optimists and either have "free" company insurance or minimal, usually inadequate self-purchased policies. Private insurance companies are totally loathe to insure the elderly at reasonable prices because of the risk of serious illness and the huge expenses in the last few months of one's life. I'm just amazed that Ryan has no plan at all for a sickly 54 year old (who no longer get's guaranteed affordable medicare) to be "stop-lossed" at all when he retires and loses corporate-paid insurance. From what I've read the vouchers wouldn't pay a third of the premium cost he'd need unless he had major savings to pay his now much larger out-of-pocket costs. Unfortunately the sickly are seldom rolling in the dough by the time they reach retirement age.
The Ryan Plan , I guess due to his love of Ayn Rand, seems to totally jetissons the notion that the right to a healthy life as free as possible from easily prevented illnesses and easily treatable injuries just might be a part of good government. I know it's not in the Constitution but ALL the Top 20 or 30 world economies except the US do have made it a part of the social compact that their "socialized medicine" (oooooh, I said it!), or "national health care scheme", or whatever the term provides a reasonable chance of treatment for their injuries or illnesses even if they don't have money for supplimental insurance or can pay for the procedures cash. The US "come to the emergency room" plan, that conservatives often answer to this just doesn't cut it. It makes it a Russian Roulette choice to the sick on whether the hospital can or will treat them to the same level as a paying costumer (repeated studies show that they don't - and I don't blame them as they'd likely go bankrupt if they gave the same level of attention).
I will say to PR and the Congress that may some day vote on the plan: the only way you can vote for it is to rip up the nearly no-deductible, tiny premium vs their salary medical plan they receive currently as members of Congress and take on for themselves, their children, and their elderly parents the Ryan Plan and promise not to use a penny of their high incomes to buy supplimental policies or top off the premiums with their own cash. That's only fair because their constituents certainly don't all make their salaries. I guarantee he PR Plan wouldn't receive one vote!
I actually feel kind of sad for Romney because his Mass. health care plan showed his heart is in the right place, following the lead of his fellow Mormons who are very aware of the social need and Godly "rightness" for helping the less fortunate have basic rights and health. He made the mistake of thinking the Republican Party was the same party of his father George (who was quite liberal, probably more than most Dems these days!). He felt the election slipping away because the "knuckle-draggers and mouth-breathers" (John Boener's words not mine) at the large lunatic right-end of the T-Party weren't enthused about his moderate views and he needed to solidify the base. I"m sure that he did accomplish that with the Paul Ryan selection but it will come at the expense of all but the most un-informed and ill-read of the independents and also increasing turnout of liberals who somewhat find that Obama has let them down but now can't stomach the "horror" of imagining Paul Ryan with his finger on the Red Button or sending a yearly budget to Congress if Romney goes down.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MTAtech
One of the most influential economic papers of the postwar era was Kenneth Arrow’s Uncertainty and the welfare economics of health care, which demonstrated — decisively, I and many others believe — that health care can’t be marketed like bread or TVs. Let me offer my own version of Arrow’s argument.
The thing about health care is that it’s complicated, and you can’t rely on experience or comparison shopping. (“I hear they’ve got a real deal on stents over at St. Mary’s!”) That’s why doctors are supposed to follow an ethical code, why we expect more from them than from bakers or grocery store owners.
This in turn means that someone other than the patient ends up making decisions about what to buy. Consumer choice is nonsense when it comes to health care. And you can’t just trust insurance companies either — they’re not in business for their health, or yours.
The other thing is that this "choice" undermines traditional Medicare and when that is gone, there is no reason private insurance will try to compete. They don't want the business of old people — they're a poor bet, when most health care costs are in the later part of life.
Last edited by bamba_boy; 08-26-2012 at 05:40 AM..
As with any snake oil salesman, the boy wonder tries to confuse the customer in order to sell his product, which isn't as good as the product that already is available.
"It gives you options." "You have a choice." "It saves money."
It's all lies to reach the underhanded goal -- a goal the GOP has had for decades -- undermining Medicare. They didn't want it in 1965 and they have been trying to kill it ever since.
This is so true. Many years ago, a wise older person told me that the Republicans hated Medicare and Social Security since the day it started. Their goal all along was to get rid of it. I really didn't understand what this wise person meant years ago, because their was no political talk to turn Social Security or Medicaire into private plans (e.g. get rid of it).
Now the polital tone has switched again and the Republicans have gone wild about Social Security and now Medicare. Dubya tried hard to get Social Security privatized (self managed accts), and this failed badly.
The Republicans always said "the sky is going to fall" about Medicare and Social Security. They scare people into thinking it is going bankrupt. They have been doing this forever and will do this as long as the plans exist, even when the plans are successful.
It's their way of fooling people into thinking Social Security and Medicare is doomed unless they do something. It's smoke and mirrors . If enough of them repeate it over and over, some folks will believe them.
They'll do the same thing with ObamaCare over the years. Even when it is wildly successful.
I honestly don't remember my age when the age for SS/Medicare was upped, but it didn't upset me or anybody I knew, including older people (I worked for a very large corporation), nor did the world come to an end.
The sooner you youngsters come to grips with the fact that changes must be made or you're screwed, the sooner we can move on. You can either let people like Paul Ryan fix it or you can sit and watch it dwindle away. Your choice. Vote wisely.
the Republicans hated Medicare and Social Security since the day it started. Their goal all along was to get rid of it.
The Republican Party, since its takeover by the Buckleyite Libertarian tendency in the late 1950s and 60s, has found itself unable to embrace major social reform, for fear that each will lead to another, and finally to levelling social egalitarianism, which they habitually and rather inaccurately call "socialism". In other words, the modern Republican Party is too preoccupied by defense of class privilege to embrace reform.
In this respect, the Party could learn from Benjamin Disraeli, whose great 1867 Reform Bill vastly extended the vote in the United Kingdom and effectively created modern parliamentary democracy. At the time, the main objection from within the Conservative Party was that the bill would shatter the propertied class which governed the U.K. When Lord Derby famously referred to it as a "leap in the dark", this is what he meant - the danger that the Bill would destroy his class and their control of British political life.
Of course, it hasn't. For a large part of the last seventy years, Britain's governments have been headed by the grandson of a duke, the son of a baronet and future earl, a publishing magnate and future earl, a former earl, and the grandson of a baronet who is a direct descendant of King William IV.
The Republican Party might, eventually, learn to imitate Disraeli's leap, as other Conservative parties in the English-speaking world have done. The great social reforms of the mid-20th century in the English-speaking world, chiefly public retirement pensions (Social Security) and health insurance (Medicare), were opposed by Conservative parties in the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand when they were first introduced in the years after the Second World War, but in each of these countries no serious Conservative politician would now advocate their abolition. Like Disraeli's Reform Bill, which helped secure Conservative majorities for most of the next century in the UK, modern Conservative Parties in the English-speaking world have come to appreciate the value of these 20th-century social reforms. Only the Republican Party still fights tooth and nail against them.
Actually, everyone should fear Ryan, as he's a fiscal snake oil salesman that unfairly gained the reputation as a budget wonk.
But Ryan's “Roadmap for America’s Future,” doesn't offer anything new; he’s serving up tired trickle-down from the 1980s. But pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, the GOP says.
but if you do pay attention, you will know that the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center evaluated the Ryan plan and concluded it would reduce revenue by almost $4 trillion over the next decade and the plan would cut taxes on the richest 1% of the population in half, giving them 117 percent of the plan’s total tax cuts. That’s not a misprint. Even as it slashed taxes at the top, the plan would raise taxes for 95% of Americans -- all while slashing federal programs -- but not enough to offset the $4 trillion. So, it also raised the debt -- and not just raises it, it raises more than current policy.
Moreover, Mr. Ryan doesn’t say what programs would be specifically cut nor what specific tax-breaks would be eliminated. As I said, he's a snake oil salesman and snake oil salesmen don't tell you the details.
Or even worse what about our children? My family has taken care of elderly relatives and without Medicare and Medicaid its current form the bills would be unmanageable. I would hate to break the bank of whoever takes care of me in old age cause a $6,000 voucher will not be enough for an insurance company to make a profit when you have patients costing $1,000 or more a month.
I spent about 30 days in a nursing and rehabilitaiton center learning how to walk again after some orthopaedic surgery (fixing a shattered right ankle) which was billing $100 a day for a double occupancy room , meal service and housekeeping. Nursing, medical supervion and rehab was billed separately. The bill came to $ 24,000.
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