This story in the WSJ today about health care reform causes me to make the following observations:
- I’m glad Sen. Reid is talking about including a “public option,” because without that, you’re not accomplishing anything.
- I’m really disappointed in my man Joe Lieberman, coming out against the public option.
- Is everybody in Washington nuts? Joe opposes it because he says we shouldn’t have it without asking Americans to pay for it. Well, duh! Of course we have to pay for it! What lunatic would want a program we didn’t pay for?
That last one will tell you that I obviously haven’t been paying much attention to the “debate” in Washington lately. But at least now I can see why a reasonable person might oppose reform, if there are actually people proposing a public option without asking participants to pay for it.
Folks, I want to go on record, here and now, as being more than willing to pay for federal government health care. I am willing to pay up to the almost $600 a month I am personally currently paying for my COBRA. I’m thinking that if you require every household to pay that much (or even $500), you could have a real Cadillac system that would be FAR more efficient than what I’ve got now. And most importantly to me and I would think to most people, I couldn’t lose it. And I could take any job for which I’m qualified and which pays enough to pay mortgage, buy groceries and pay the light bill and such, rather than having to limit my options to something with a great health plan.
Lemme ‘splain to you the problem with the current situation, folks. It’s not the one out of seven who don’t have coverage; it’s the far greater number who currently have coverage through their employer, but live in constant threat of losing it, and who don’t DARE stimulate the economy by going out and starting a business or something because they can’t give up their coverage. That’s the really big problem, far bigger than the problem of the uninsured.
If that’s what they’ve been talking about — a choice between a public plan that we don’t pay for, or no public plan — then I might have to join Doug Ross’ movement to just get rid of all the incumbents.
Doesn’t anybody up there have any sense?
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Lemme ’splain to you the problem with the current situation, folks. It’s not the one out of seven who don’t have coverage; it’s the far greater number who currently have coverage through their employer, but live in constant threat of losing it.
-Brad
I disagree. For all the problems faced by those of us that have health care the real tragedy is for those who don’t.
Brad,
There are steps that could be taken without implementing a public option that would probably get you the coverage you want at $600 a month.
But here’s the problem: there are millions of people who DON’T want to or CAN’T pay $600 a month. What do they do?
Why not just allow citizens to buy into the exact same plans government workers have? Wouldn’t that be the same as the public option without any of the overhead?
Brad, how do you get by on $600 a month? I pay that for a plan that doesn’t pay until the hospital is breathing down my throat, and it never covers pre-existing conditions. Pre-existing conditions is about all I have, because this was the only thing I could get after coming back from Europe. BCBS turned me down. So did almost everybody else.
Every so often, I wished I had stayed in Germany. That system beats this one a 1000 times over, but no one will believe me. If my grandkids weren’t all here, I’d be outta here tomorrow.
The only COBRA that was offered to me was $2100 per month. I could get that, but it’s two-thirds of my salary.
I seem to be commenting after everything but this health care reform gets me on a soapbox. I agree with you 100%. Some of our unemployment would be relieved by entrepreneurs if people didn’t have to continue to look for a job with benefits. An opportunity to buy affordable insurance would encourage really small business to begin operating. Also, it would help American auto makers compete. Mr. Warthen, why can’t people see this?
People in countries with high-cost single-payer systems uniformly poll as very happy with their system and not minding the cost at all.
and bud’s right, Brad–not having insurance in worse that being stuck in a job b/c you do–but neither is a great choice, nor one we should have to make in the world’s richest country.
I’m with Herb–I want a BMW system, not a Cadillac one! Germans do run things so well in my experience.
Doug-I have no sympathy for people who don’t want to pay $600 a month. Can’t is fair enough, and we need to, and undoubtedly will deal with that, but don’t want to? Lots of people would opt out of paying for police and fire protection, too, if we let them. An epidemic knows no borders any more than a fire does, and when someone is injured in a car wreck,do you really think 911 is going to verify that he or she has paid for coverage or are they going to supply services?
“I’m glad Sen. Reid is talking about including a ‘public option,’ because without that, you’re not accomplishing anything.”
I disagree. I think Congress can pass health insurance reform legislation without offering a public option.
“I’m thinking that if you require every household to pay that much (or even $500), you could have a real Cadillac system that would be FAR more efficient than what I’ve got now.”
If everyone had $500/month to spend on health insurance and companies couldn’t deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions, we wouldn’t have a problem.
Those who truly don’t have $500/month to spend would have to be subsidized, and you just can’t exclude pre-existing conditions or that guts coverage. You could solve the problem w/o a public option and w/o single payer, and there have been proposals, and it’s done in Switzerland. It’s very expensive there, but the NPR piece I heard said it was also very popular despite the cost.
Think back to before cable TV. If someone had said we’d pay upwards of $50/month to watch TV, we’d have said they were crazy, but look at how many people do!
Well said, Kathryn. The problem is that, in this country, a lot of people don’t want health insurance until they get sick. In the meantime, we’d like to buy some new toys . . . .
New toys that gather dust when we buy even more new toys…and rent storage sheds to put them in.
Europeans live in smaller homes, often apartments,have less stuff but often of better quality than what we have, and rate higher in polls of happiness–I think the Danes are the happiest in a poll I just read.The have decent public transportation and health care. They have rational educational systems that educate those who can best benefit from the education without mortgaging their futures. They have national service years for their youth, which means that generally their students aren’t partying hearty instead of studying when they finally do get to University.