Health Care Insurance Reform: Here's What it Means to You
The final health insurance reform legislation that will be voted on by the House this weekend, and debated in the Senate soon after, is now available. As the President said in Ohio, “We have debated this issue now for more than a year. Every proposal has been put on the table. Every argument has been made.” This legislation represents the best ideas to emerge from both sides of the aisle to put American families and small business owners—not the insurance companies—in control of their own health care.
- It makes health insurance affordable for middle class and small businesses—including the largest middle class tax cuts for health care in history – reducing premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
- It gives millions of Americans the same types of private insurance choices that members of Congress will have—through a new competitive health insurance market that keeps costs down.
- It holds insurance companies accountable to keep premiums down and prevent denials of care and coverage, including for pre-existing conditions.
- It improves Medicare benefits with lower prescription drug costs for those in the ‘donut hole,’ better chronic care, free preventive care, and nearly a decade more of solvency for Medicare.
- It reduces the deficit by more than $130 billion over next ten years, and by more than one trillion dollars over the following decade; reining waste, fraud and abuse; overpayments to insurance companies and by paying for quality over quantity of care.
The health insurance reform legislation Congress is about to vote on makes important improvements to the bill passed by the Senate last December---a bill that is built upon the principles the President has been outlining all year. The new provisions improve that legislation by:
- Providing the biggest middle class tax cut for health care in history and making health insurance even more affordable for middle class families.
- Strengthening consumer protections and reining in insurance company abuses
- Further reducing the deficit in the first and second decades. With the new changes, this bill will become the largest deficit reduction effort in more than a decade
- Closing the gap in prescription drug coverage for seniors covered by Medicare, known as the donut hole, and extending the solvency of Medicare
- Expanding health insurance coverage to 32 million Americans, guaranteeing that 95% of Americans will be covered.
Closing out his remarks in Ohio, the President sent a message to Congress to finish the job that ring true today:
The American people want to know if it’s still possible for Washington to look out for these interests, for their future. So what they’re looking for is some courage. They’re waiting for us to act. They’re waiting for us to lead. They don’t want us putting our finger out to the wind. They don’t want us reading polls. They want us to look and see what is the best thing for America, and then do what’s right. (Applause.) And as long as I hold this office, I intend to provide that leadership. And I know these members of Congress are going to provide that leadership. I don’t know about the politics, but I know what’s the right thing to do. And so I’m calling on Congress to pass these reforms -- and I’m going to sign them into law. I want some courage. I want us to do the right thing, Ohio. And with your help, we’re going to make it happen.
Dan Pfeiffer is White House Communications Director
Sign up for the OV Daily Newsletter
OV Social
First, this bill does not do anything but raise the cost of healthcare . It artificially lowers the cost of health insurance by making people pay for what they do not want or need. What we need to do is change the variables that actually drive health care costs , such as tort reform, cost of regulatory paperwork, drug developement and implementation costs, facility overhead costs, waste disposal costs, etc. The cost of insurance will follow the cost of care for those who choose to buy it.
Second, insurance is a gamble. You are betting that the amount you pay in premiums will be less than the amount you would have had to pay for care. The insurance company bets that they can take in more from you than they have to pay out, and enough in the aggregate to cover all losses. Your prior history affects the odds. Even in horse racing you have to invest an awful lot more up front to get the same payoff when you bet on the sure thing, why should insurance be any different? Given the odds for the lottery, do you expect to win millions for your dollar, or do you keep the dollar in your pocket since you know you probably won't win anyway? Many of us make the same decision for insurance.
I have a wife and 3 children . I make and have made substantially less than 125k/yr (although I am inching closer). Until the last couple years, I did not have insurance; I was "self pay". I paid for the births of the first two children, the upper GI tests and specialists for my second child , the trips to the emergency room for both boys when they played to hard, the regular shots and check ups, and the visits and prescriptions when they were sick. I won't say it was easy or convenient, and it sometimes took making payment arrangements with the provider and calling the bank to arrange temporarily reduced car or mortgage payments, but it was possible. Mac and cheese isn't all that bad, chicken pot pies are pretty tasteless, but cheap, and you would be surprised how much cheaper books are to borrow from the library than cable tv. Insurance is a want, not a need.
I since went back to school and obtained my engineering degree. (I don't feel my spouse should have to work unless she so chooses, so I paid for school while still working and paying for all the rest.) My new job required I join a union for reasons irrelevant here, and I then had insurance. My last child was paid for by that insurance, and I have done the math. If I paid every bill over the last 2 years inclusive of the birth, I would have paid about 30k; I still paid almost 6k in co-payments. My health and welfare cost through the union is an average of 20k/yr. I'd rather have the money than the insurance.
I worked harder and longer than others I worked with to raise myself from 19k/yr to almost 100k/yr, and I do substantially less physical work now than when I was young, dumb, and full of ... energy . I don't intend to stop moving up, and you can't tell me that the effort required to raise yourself should go unrewarded. If it did, no one would do it and everyone would stagnate at the bottom. "Sharing/spreading the wealth" is just an active drive to the bottom for all but the government elite that remain immune to the sharing, and this health insurance bill is a step too far down that path.
In fact, the general confusion in this country about what is a want rather than an actual need stands in testiment to how good we have it here and the overall success of the system we live under. I am proud to be an American where you can get what you want if you push hard enough and long enough, and getting what you need takes little effort. It is unfair that some get all they want with little or no effort, but the alternative (good intentions or no) provides all with only what they need (barely) with no amount of effort yeilding what they want. No thank you.
Very well put Massa. For those to whom you are referring, let me make it clear.
A want is something that would be cool to have. It would make your life easier or more enjoyable. My motorcycle was a want. I wanted it. I had the money , so I bought it. I neither needed it, nor had a right to it. I could live without it, but if I did, you were under no obligation to provide it to me.
A need is something that you require. Food, clothing, and shelter are needs for all of us. For some their needs go beyond that due to disabilities or other extenuating circumstances. Notice though, that none of them are rights either. All of them require some effort in order to procure them. You must either buy or grow food ; buy or make clothing; and buy or build shelter.
A right - and this is where some people get hazy - is something to which you are entitled merely by the virtue of being human. You have a right to free speech . The Constitution does not provide it to you, it merely recognizes the fact. You have a right to bear arms. Same thing here. The government does not provide the right, it recognizes it.
The main thing that differentiates rights from wants and needs is that nobody provides you with rights. Rights are there even when they are being trampled upon by our government. Wants and needs must both be provided to you in some way. And since health care must be provided to you, guess what? It's a want or need, not a right. So you are not entitled to take from me to provide it to you. Period.
If you think you are entitled to my money, then you owe me some money to offset the cost of my motorcycle. And my drums. And my TV . And my sound system. And...
Wouldn't Democrats want to vote for it? I only ask because N. Pelosi is devising a scheme wherein it can pass the house without anyone actually voting in favor of it. If it was such a good bill , why doesn't anyone want their fingerprints on it?
The above is far more telling than all of the turd-polishing that Mr. Pfeiffer can muster.
If this thing passes, I hope I'll be able to pay for a government -approved insurance policy, because I don't need any problems with the IRS. Not only is the IRS completely devoid of a sense of humor , they just bought a bunch of guns to arm their men.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.
But how exactly does a bill that costs $940 billion both decrease the deficit and reduce taxes for the middle class? Unless they're just going play Robin Hood with the money of those making over $250,000. Because everybody knows that we are all entitled to the fruits of others' labor .
Not only that, how does anyone expect the American public to believe that while creating a huge bureaucratic machine, that the government is going to magically find the time, or motivation, to reduce Medicare waste that they have been ignoring for years? I for one am not buying it.
I really pray that this bill dies this weekend. It has already been a massive waste of money and time. And its passage will only make it worse.
An individual's labor is not very high on the list of things one does to have $250k annual income . The idea that taxes should not be used to mitigate the harm done by metamoney capitalism is alarmingly myopic. The top 50 wealthiest people in this country could pay for this program for the next 10 years, as well as the entire national debt, and still have millions of dollars to live out their lives in a quality that 95% of the population could never experience. I suppose you think every millionaire works 20 times as hard as the vast majority that get by on less than $50k per annum.
As a government employee I can assure you that the lion's share of us take pride in our efforts, even when having to work two or three jobs for the compensation of one. A good number of those people do it in part because of their commitment to their countrymen and reverence for the principles that drive this country to begin with.
But I can tell you for sure that insurance companies, pharmaceuticals , biotech, and most clinics and hospitals are for-profit entities and the primary motivation for them is money . If you would trust them to reform themselves out of charity instead of those whose job it is to reform them, you do so in the face of decades of behavior to the contrary of reform.
Such behavior is why heroes like Robin Hood were ever imagined.
"As a government employee I can assure you that the lion's share of us take pride in our efforts" Yes we've all seen it at the post office , the DMV, the health department ect. Don't leave to the fact that you have the best benefits anywhere and are nearly impossible to fire or lay off. "even when having to work two or three jobs for the compensation of one." Everyone in my company does that. We call it "part of the job ".
If you really think that people get paid big bucks to sit on their ass and do nothing, then you are living in a fantasy world. I have worked very hard to get where I am, and I make nowhere near $250K, but the people I know that do, earned every penny. But you know what, that's not even important. It matters not one iota.
Just because somebody gets paid a lot of money to do something you may not consider difficult, doesn't mean you're entitled to their earnings. That's an incredibly selfish entitlement mentality.
And the 50 wealthiest people in this country not only couldn't pay for this program for the next ten years, they couldn't make a dent in the national debt any bigger than a BB gun could make dent in an M1 tank. If all 50 of them wear as wealthy as the #1, Bill Gates, they would have 400 billion dollars, which is less than half of what this program would cost , and less than 3 percent of the national debt. But that sure does sound good when you say it, even if it's not true.
As a former government employee, a friend of many former and current government employee, and a current consultant to the government, let me say that I am sure that you take pride in your work and do the best for the tax dollars that pay your salary. But the lion's share? Not on this planet. One thing I have learned dealing with the government in one fashion or another for the better part of my life is that there are basically three types of people that work for the government: those that treat is another job ; those that feel some sense of patriotic duty in serving their country in whatever capacity they can; and those that can't get or keep a job in the civilian sector. And there are plenty of the third type, which is why I am no longer employed by any level of government.
Why is it that everyone treats it as some kind of grand revelation when they state that for profit companies are in it...gasp...for profit!?! Oh my God, really? I can't f'ing believe it. Next thing you'll tell me that preachers preach, teachers teach, and ditch diggers dig! Say it ain't so!
I hate to break it to you, but for profit companies aren't in it for charity, though most give more to charity than you or I will ever dream of. They're in it for the money. Just like me. I don't work because I feel some sense of duty to bust my ass so some welfare crackhead can reap the benefits of my labor . I work so my family can reap the benefits of my labor. I give to charities that I feel serve an important function, and ignore those that I feel don't. That's part of a little thing I like to call FREEDOM. Taking my money and giving it to those that didn't work for is part of a little thing I like to call THEFT. Or REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. Take your pick. They're the same thing.
While I agree with most of your points on general principal, in actual practice it isn't always quite that simple.
Several years ago I went to a back specialist. I took my own x-rays with me to the appointment. The doctor looked at the pictures, talked to me for five minutes, told me he was unable to do anything about the problem, and sent me on my way.
The bill came to over $400. The service I received was utterly worthless to me.
Now, while I agree in principal that the bread and circuses, entitlement mentality pervading our society leaves a LOT to be desired, it cuts both ways.
What's the difference between "some welfare crackhead reaping the benefits of your labor " and the doctor in the above example?
Both of them want your money . Both of them are certain they are entitled to it. And, neither of them have done anything to earn it.
Less than 5% of American workers make over $125K per year. Last year I saw a story about several New York bus drivers who were pulling down salaries in that area by working 80 hours per week. IMO, someone working 80 hours a week deserves every penny they get. But, what about the executives that drove GM into the dirt? Or how about Bernie Madoff and Kenneth Lay? And, what about predatory physicians who believe no person should leave their care before that unsightly lump in their hip pocket has been removed?
I think you more or less have the right of it, but don't forget that not all "welfare crackheads" are on welfare or crack.
...between a crackhead receiving the benefits of my labor and the doctor is, you can ask the doctor how much you will be charged if you get that answer, and go somewhere else. The crackhead gets your money without your consent or input. You have no choice whatsoever.
"IMO, someone working 80 hours a week deserves every penny they get."
In my opinion, you are absolutely correct. But in the opinion of others, YOU are entitled to their money for the 80 hours they worked because they're so evil for doing what it takes to earn the money they want.
"But, what about the executives that drove GM into the dirt? Or how about Bernie Madoff and Kenneth Lay?"
You can't blame me for that. The people to blame for those debacles are the boards of the companies, and the shareholders, and the investors that didn't do the necessary research and follow their money. I wasn't involved in any of them, so how exactly am I on the hook for propping them up?
"I think you more or less have the right of it, but don't forget that not all " welfare crackheads" are on welfare or crack."
Incorrect. 100% of "welfare crackheads" are both on crack, and on welfare. Some crackheads aren't on welfare, and most on welfare aren't on crack. Those aren't the people to whom I am referring. I have no problem helping the truly needy, but there is plenty of corruption in the system that allows people to benefit from my work unjustly.
RE: "there is plenty of corruption in the system that allows people to benefit from my work unjustly"
No disagreement there. The point I was trying to make is that many of the bums with their hands in your hip pocket don't look like bums. They don't contribute the GDP any more than a bum does, but are nevertheless as certain as any bum that they are entitled to the fruits of your labor .
I wasn't suggesting you are responsible for the Bernie Madoffs of the world. I was trying to point out the mental state they share with " welfare crackheads".
The average working American now pays over two thirds of their real wages in federal, state and local taxes . Very little of that goes to the garden variety welfare crackhead.