About those Obamacare Cancellation Letters

It is indeed understandable that people would be upset to learn that an existing insurance plan is being cancelled, especially if it raises costs.  But it isn’t quite what it seems and part of that is poor planning on the promotional side of the Affordable Care Act.

The plans being cancelled are not up to new standards, standards that protect the insured from practices that in the past could deny care based on a range of criteria including employment, occupation, and health.

Moreover, you hear a lot of complaints from people saying Obamacare takes from young, healthy people and gives it to older and less healthy people, but that isn’t all that different from how healthcare had worked in the United States.

Health insurance companies are happy to sell insurance to people not likely to draw on it and they do.  As you get older you get more limits and higher costs, especially if you get sick.

In the old system, insured people routinely were denied payment for services based on medical conditions, pre-existing or otherwise.  If you have tens of thousands of dollars of medical expenses in the old system and find your insurance not covering it…well, that’s a cancellation letter that really packs a painful punch.

But that’s the way it was and it was a profitable system that under-served the overall health of our nation while driving up costs, the highest in the developed world.  For the self-insured in particular, it was a system that collected from the young and healthy and denied to the sick.   Remember, our health care system is a for profit system.

Obamacare is an attempt to take some of the pain out of health care insurance.  Moreover, for as long as health care is not considered a right in this country, it is an attempt to make quality health care more available in a profit-driven system.

I would venture to say it is a moral issue, too, but we won’t go there in this Christian country.

Anyway, these cancellations are part of the hurt of getting out of one system and transitioning into a better one.  Perhaps the plan should be more generous with subsidies — not a bad idea — but that isn’t going anywhere in a society that sees less and less value in committing resources to the common good.  While it does’t diminish the problems raised for the people affected, the number of people being transitioned from non-complying insurance programs to better programs is small.  And the number that are not getting assistance in the form of credits smaller still.

Nonetheless, increases like this are ridiculous.  We should be covering more of the costs — like our peers in other advanced countries — and serve all with comprehensive programs.  We don’t do that now and it sucks.  How does making that broken system a bit better suck more than what we have now?

Want a simple solution?  Single payer.

Related articles

• ronin: Obamacare hysteria: Don’t believe the canceled insurance hype – latimes.com (latimes.com)
• Obamacare Lies and the Media (politicalirony.com)
• Obama’s Foolish Promise About Obamacare – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)

“Freedom” is the Reason Healthcare Sucks in America

The concept of freedom has been co-opted by those who care least about freedom and that is why health care in the United States is expensive and sucks.

Too many people, in the name of some faux freedom, are all too willing  to bend over and take it up the ass by corporations and their health care-rationing death panels than those who understand that whether the bureaucracy is private or public, you have a choice.

The idea that private enterprise is inherently better — morally and economically — than the public sector enterprise is naive and simple-minded.  Medicare runs much more efficiently than private insurance conglomerates, for example, but that somehow is a threat to freedom.  Freedom my ass.  You pay or you pay.  Get your facts straight.  We have, for example, a ridiculous system of private care when people are more likely to be healthier (younger) and subsidized public care for older Americans.  What is Medicare if it isn’t a giant subsidy to an already profitable private enterprise??  This unbalanced approach will cost more and more.  Left unchecked, Medicare can reach 10% of GDP in a few decades, health care cost overall exceed 25% of GPD.  Why?  We are protecting profits, increasingly monopolistic profits, at the expense of affordable and available quality health care.    That’s why.

The hegemonic ideological state apparatus has been usurped!  The hegemonic ideological corporate apparatus…and profits, of course… rule instead.  And it does so under the kowtowing bent of our collective ignorance.  A disgrace.

(Althusser would agree, I think. It isn’t the ISA that threatens freedom, it is the ICA.)

Let me suggest this.  The people behind private health care, those who deny you care in the interest of profits, are the ones getting rich and not you. (It is one of those “if you have to ask you can’t afford it” kind of things.)  You are indeed free “to choose” an inefficient private health care program, but it is inevitably one that puts profits before your life and it takes everyone else down with you.

So I say screw the people who want private health care.  If you’re that stupid, don’t expect me to care when you die.  In fact die fast so you don’t suck up resources and drive up my costs.  Still more importantly, someone’s stock investment depends on your quick and ignorant death.  Stop wasting their money, patriot!  Ah, but wait…before you go, send a thank you card to the stock holders.  Thank them for protecting your freedom, your freedom to die in ignorance so that they can pay out of pocket for what you cannot afford.

We are what we are and we get what we deserve.  Hijacked freedom, however, is inexcusable and that’s the problem.

(P.S. and FYI.  I really mean to replace “screw” with “fuck” but I want to maintain my PG rating.  I wonder if “take it up the ass” jeopardizes my PG rating…)

Related articles

• Social Security, Healthcare Spending To Double Over The Next Decade: CBO (huffingtonpost.com)
• Controlling Healthcare Costs (motherjones.com)

Judging the United States Supreme Court

The United States Supreme Court, the highest court in the United States, in 2010. Top row (left to right): Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer, Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. Bottom row (left to right): Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, and Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Does it feel like the United States Supreme Court is becoming less and less relevant?  If you hold the quaint view that the court possesses the power of “judicial review” and that it exists to ensure an objective application of the United States Constitution as the supreme “law of the land”, well perhaps irrelevancy isn’t the right word.  The idea the justices are objective defenders of the law seems less than quaint, seems less than relevant.

My understanding of the law and my recollection of American history isn’t as sharp as it should be so I consulted the Constitution — specifically Article III — for some guidance.  Not much there.

I do recall history lessons describing the court’s trend toward favoring broader government powers, especially judicial powers, during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency so I looked there for some background.  Got confused.

And don’t even think of looking for historical “facts” regarding the court’s proper purpose today.  Facts, you see, no longer exist in political discourse.  Hard to find in school, too.

So I will trust my gut, open today’s newspapers, and tell you what I think.

First off, it is indeed the case that about half of the court rulings are decided unanimously and less than 1-in-5 cases fall to a 5-4 decision.  But that alone does not excuse the politicization of the court, and if the court mirrors our nation’s political divide is it a relevant tool of judicial review?

Unfortunately the court does seem overly political.  Beginning with the process of nominating and confirming judicial appointments the politics of judicial review comes into full view.  Less in full view is the hiring of clerks and aids, frequently assigned as political favors, that work behind the scenes with the court’s justices.

Opposing Affordable Health Care Act. Relevant?

Perhaps most plainly visible and so common it occurs without much comment is how the court politicians, the media, and anyone else paying attention discusses the court.

It is taken for granted that the Court has its liberal and conservative wings.  The politics of Senate and Presidential elections often include discussion of court appointments.  If we have an objective law — the Constitution — and people appointed to defend it objectively, then should politics be an overt issue in a matter before the Supreme Court?

It’s a bunch of humbug.

Is there a more political issue in this country today that the Affordable Health Care for America Act?   Not at the moment.  Conservatives question the constitutionality of the Act and have taken the issue to the Supreme Court.  Let’s look at how the court handles this.

If we were looking for an objective interpretation of law we would expect objective constitutional debate, would we not?

Chief Justice John Roberts challenged the government solicitor by asking if we mandate purchasing insurance today, what will be next?  I don’t see how this is a question of Constitutional power.  Whether or not government might or might not mandate the purchase of some other good or service hardly answers the question of whether it is Constitutional to do so.

Antonin Scalia mocked the idea that health care insurance should be mandated because health care is a universal need.  He pointed out that eating is a universal need, so shouldn’t the government mandate the consumption of broccoli if it can mandate the purchase of health insurance?

Relevant?

Maybe Scalia is attempting some form of modal logic I don’t understand, but seems irrelevant on the face of it.  The point doesn’t deserve serious argument, but if we were to take Scalia seriously — and it is a disgrace that we ever should — we can point out that the government, under pressure from conservatives and the insurance industry, has not written a law mandating what kind of insurance a person should by or from whom, but that they maintain insurance coverage that meets different needs.  There is no mandatory “broccoli” in the Affordable Health Care Act.

Moreover, we don’t have a problem with people eating to stay alive, but we do have a problem with people not paying for insurance — whether by choice or otherwise — that creates a hardship on the health and economy of America overall.

We already do have laws that require compliance with good economic and health practices, although those are being chipped away.  We have clean air and water laws, for example.  Regardless of whether I choose to drink clean water, I pay for it through my taxes as a citizen…don’t I?

I also pay for Wall Street bailouts.  And sports franchises for billionaires.

Relevant?

And then back to Chief Justice Roberts again.  He asked why people should be required to insure services they would never need like pediatric and maternity care.

I’m just going to talk common sense here and not pretend to have a legal argument.  (Broccoli anyone?)   I might not ever need the police to arrest an intruder or the fire department to save my house, but I pay for it.  Gladly, by the way, because a society without law and fire protection would be pretty horrible.  (cf. Mogadishu) We are all better off with a community force to police our laws and keep our cities from burning down.  Correct?

Likewise, we would all be better off with a healthy, more cost-effective form of health insurance, unless your someone like UnitedHealth Group CEO William McGuire.

Relevant?

Plus…we’re paying for maternity care and pediatrics anyway.  The high cost of health care is driven in part by the uninsured.  This affects everyone.

The rising cost of health care is a vicious and stupid cycle.  People cannot afford health care and they go without it.  They have no choice.  They cannot afford it.  It is a tautology in this country.  You cannot afford private health care, you don’t get private health care.

So the uninsured take advantage of more costly options, primarily emergency rooms or inadequate clinics which ultimately end up in emergency rooms.  The other option is to die, and judging by the response to questions at recent GOP debates, there are some sick Americans who literally applaud this solution.

Aren’t we better than that?  Seriously.  Does anyone think it should be a point of national pride that we cannot find the political will to provide universal health care to our citizens?  The Affordable Health Care for America Act doesn’t even go that far.

We are not world leaders in many issues so let’s not pretend to be.  As long as we fight to be less than average we should back up and ask ourselves how well our political system really does work for us.  That should include a review of the political United States Supreme Court.

Relevant?

Related articles

• Partisan Supreme Court Decides America’s Access to Health Care (fidlerten.com)
• Judicial Activists in the Supreme Court (washingtonpost.com)
• Supreme Court Tackles Individual Mandate (247wallst.com)
• Chants, Marching, Debate, Even Jazz, Outside Court (slate.com)
• Is Obamacare heading for a ‘train wreck’ at U.S. Supreme Court? (theglobeandmail.com)