Obama Budget Would Create $634 Billion Health-Care Fund
President Obama intends to release a budget tomorrow that creates a 10-year, $634 billion “reserve fund” to partially pay for a vast expansion of the U.S. health care system, an overhaul that many experts project will cost as much as $1 trillion over the next decade.
Obama would pay for the expansion by trimming tax breaks for the wealthy and tightening payments to insurers, hospitals and physicians, according to a senior administration official.
By first identifying a large pot of money to underwrite health care reform — before laying out a proposal on who would be covered or how — Obama hopes to signal his willingness to negotiate with Congress over the details of an eventual plan.
But not to negotiate over whether to institute socialized medicine or not. That, as far as he is concerned, is a done deal.
We’ll see. It does make it all the more important that the GOP remain united in opposition to his socialist power grabs, and that we work doubly hard to take control of congress away from his party as soon as possible.
One way to do that is make it clear to all Americans the unAmerican, socialist nature of his agenda.
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If you had any doubt that this is a giant leap towards national socialized medicine, this is the key sentence. Government now decides how much a doctor gets paid for performing certain procedures. In practice this means, as a friend once told me, two months for keeping someone in the ICU unit is worth about $2000, or at least that’s what the hospital gets reimbursed.
This is compared to a big law firm that can get paid as much as $300,000 for putting together motion papers over the period of 4 weeks. And people wonder why there are a lot more lawyers than there are doctors. (And please, no remarks that maybe we should have “universal socialized legal services”. I have to pay the rent too).
That’s not even close to the worst part of this, Daniel. In case you haven’t been paying attention, the companies that underwrite health insurance already control what providers will be paid for medical services and supplies, through a process of “negotiation” that largely consists of the insurance company stating what they will pay, then arm-wrestling with anyone - doctors, hospitals, etc. - wanting to be paid more. In addition, the insurers simply refuse payment on anything that is not on their “negotiated” list of goods and/or services. The guiding phrase is always “reasonable and customary” - and, almost entirely, the insurer decides how that is defined.
Although the establishment of this process has been gradually tightened, this has been the norm for a long time - to a lesser extent, it has been around ever since health-care insurance has been available.
With widespan Gubmint control/oversight, it will only get worse. The list of “reasonable and customary” goods and services will become shorter - and the amount allowable for payment will become smaller, in relation to what providers would otherwise state as the costs - as Gubmint gradually begins to “ration” health care, in a futile attempt to stretch a certain amount of funds to cover everybody, whether they can pay or not.
“Universal” health care = rationed health care.
Ask the folks in the U.K. and Canada - some of them can tell you all about it…
This is a bit nitpicky, but in my view, health care from insurance benefits is rationed now. As it should be, in the sense that no private insurance company would offer you infinite, expensive, unproven care for any finite premium.
I’m not saying that I want socialized health care. However, it already exists in the U.S. in large (large!) part, and that seems likely to grow regardless of what I think. So, I should point out that you want socialized health care to be rationed. As much as possible! Since it’s transferring taxpayer blood arbitrarily to health care consumers, you want as little of that as possible. Indeed, the growing failure of Medicare is, in large part, that it does not ration nearly enough, which is why we’re bankrupting our children to fund it, at a rate growing far faster than GDP every year.
As a broader level, of course, the fact that it doesn’t ration enough is not just a foible of our public health care system. It’s an illustration of the reasons why socializing industries brings on the hurt in the first place.
I know the GOP uses “fear the rationing” as a political tool to argue against socializing medicine, and that may be a good thing in the balance. However, the rationing is not the problem per se. The problem is that socializing things leads to inefficiency and corruption — so, even more rationing than a private system — and then, that is papered over with unsustainable debt that eventually crushes the system. So Medicare recipients don’t feel rationed now, but in thirty years, nobody but the filthy rich will get the expensive care they get now.
It always gets me when people say, “socialism works fine in Europe.” Yeah, for a few decades. Let’s see what people are saying in 5-10 years when Europe is even more of a wreck than it is now, and more than the USA too. What are they going to do, blame Bush?
(Don’t answer that.)
All goods and services are “rationed” in the sense that a finite amount is provided for a finite payment. The problem with government rationing is they will be the only player and will not respond to the consumer. Free markets ration goods and services, but respond to the consumer.