There are two fundamental deceptions in the Senate health care bill. They are so elementary that they are often ignored in favor of more technical problems. They are:
1. The various provisions do not take full effect until 2015 or so. Thus the ten year cost totals as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office are misleading, but deliberately so, on the part of the bill’s authors. Only one-percent of the costs are incurred in the first four years. Thus, a $849 billion bill becomes a $1.8 trillion bill when the trick is adjusted for.
2. The elimination of an insurance company’s ability to deny coverage on the basis of existing conditions is an effort to provide a benefit to individuals while hiding the “tax” on the rest. Clearly, insurance rates must rise for most individuals if insurers cannot price according to evident risk. If this were an honest bill there would be an explicit tax to subsidize the premiums of high risk individuals. Costless beneficence is a mockery of the idea of “helping people.” (I do not address the issues of legislative or private alternatives.)
Why should any honest and intelligent person be happy with this? Democracy becomes a delusion when government lies. Of course, this is the usual modus operandi.
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I guess we are all to stupid to understand how you add millions to the rolls, reduce what you are willing to pay for service (MEDICARE SAVINGS)and end up with a bill that reduces spending and saves MEDICARE. I think the first thing that doctors should do in the new year is to notify their patients that they are canceling ALL business with both MEDICARE AND MEDICAID. I wonder what the reaction of congress would be when they have no doctors???
Waah! I’ve had to put up with (pay for) the socially-condoned preexisting condition (Greed) so blatantly underscored in this author’s shallow perspective my entire life. Now he sees that he can’t take without giving? Well, boo hoo! Its his turn to “deal with it”. Greed, the sickliest preexisting condition we have in this country has a very affordable cure: ethics.