WatchBy JOHN MERLINE, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 09/24/2012 06:43 PM ET
http://news.investors.com/092412-626848-health-premiums-up-3065-obama-vowed-2500-cut.aspx?p=full
....."During his first run for president, Barack Obama made one very specific promise to voters: He would cut health insurance premiums for families by $2,500, and do so in his first term.
But it turns out that family premiums have increased by more than $3,000 since Obama's vow, according to the latest annual Kaiser Family Foundation employee health benefits survey."
....."At a campaign stop in Columbus, Ohio, in February 2008, Obama promised that "We are going to work with you to lower your premiums by $2,500. We will not wait 20 years from now to do it, or 10 years from now to do it. We will do it by the end of my first term as president."
So much for promises.....
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This is only a natural inflationary correction. As long as average health insurance premium is lower than average rent, your health insurance is dirt cheap. You want expensive housing? Brace yourself for health care as expensive. And also education. And food + energy. And everything else.
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edvard2 says
Pun intended? :)
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curious2 says
I did not use the words "punish freeloaders". I simply explained the purpose of the individual mandate, which you obviously are misinformed about, clearly in my own words. Then YOU said that I recite talking points like "prayers". That was rude, and quite a ridiculous thing to say as well. I very clearly explained to you why the individual mandate is necessary, and gave you a very good example of what would happen if it were not part of the law. You have no counter-argument. You simply blather on about "talking points", which is ironic, because you ARE using right wing talking points.
Um, yeah - I was being somewhat facetious, genius.
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Homeboy says
I provided an expressly partisan source link for your your talking points, if you think my comments are "copy and paste" talking points as you claimed then please provide the link to where they are copied and pasted from?
As for how the individual mandate got into the statute, you can read about it here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamasdeal/etc/script.html
As for why it's a bad idea, you can read what then Senators Obama and Biden said when they were campaigning against it, in 2008.
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curious2 says
I did not use any of the talking points in your link. In fact, I have never seen it before. It is simply common sense that a system where people who suddenly contract an expensive disease can instantly opt in and have their expenses paid by everyone else, is not workable.
So instead of making the banal comment that I "recite it like prayers", why don't you actually try responding to my point? Is it because you HAVE no response? You are stymied, aren't you? It's very easy for you to rail against the evil gubmint forcing us to buy health insurance, but you don't seem to be able to explain how the system would possibly work otherwise. Try actually forming a cogent argument; don't just post links. I'm waiting...
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Homeboy says
It isn't "common sense," it's an AHIP talking point based on adverse selection theory, taken out of context, that got adopted by the Democratic party. What is the penalty in Japan for not buying insurance?
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curious2 says
Where's your argument? You just keep saying my point is a "talking point". That is meaningless. I have made a cogent argument, and you are unable to counter it. If it's just a "talking point", and has no merit, it ought to be child's play for you to explain to me how this system could possibly work if people are allowed to pay nothing, then opt in as soon as they get sick, without putting an undue burden on the rest of the participants. Just explain how that would work.
The Japanese are required by law to have health insurance. If mandates are just an AHIP talking point taken out of context, then why does Japan have such a law?
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Homeboy says
I asked you what is the penalty for not buying it. You failed to answer. Admittedly, it was a trick question: there is no penalty. They have the longest life expectancy in the world and spend half what we do on medical care. They have insurance with guaranteed issue and community rating, and about 10% of the population choose not to buy it. 130 million Japanese people refute your argument, which is an AHIP talking point via the DNC, every day.
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curious2 says
Great. I think we would do well to copy any number of healthcare systems of first-world countries. Most if not all of them are better than ours. But ours is not like Japan's. To suggest that simply dropping the individual mandate is going to make us exactly like Japan is asinine.
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Homeboy says
Now you're flinging fecal matter at straw men. Waste of time.
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Don't know if you're aware, but here is an article on Japan's healthcare system.
http://www.economist.com/node/21528660
"By 2035 health care's share of GDP will roughly double, according to McKinsey, a consultancy. The burden falls on the state, which foots two-thirds of the bills. Politicians are unwilling to raise taxes, so they squeeze suppliers instead: more than three-quarters of public hospitals operate at a loss."
Did you get that? The state pays 2/3 of the bills. It's really slightly modified socialized medicine. We can't do that here, because the right-wingers would scream bloody murder. The system has to be self-supporting, because the republicans would block any attempt to institute any kind of system that is anywhere even close to socialized medicine. And a self-supporting system WILL NOT WORK if people are allowed to pay nothing until they get sick. Who would pay for those people's care?
Oh, but I'm just "flinging fecal matter". Great argument there. You are a winner.
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Also, look up "strawman", because you clearly do not know what it means.
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Homeboy says
Thanks. And a strawman argument is fabricating a fake argument that you can refute, instead of addressing the actual argument presented, for example when you wrote "dropping the individual mandate is going to make us exactly like Japan."
Regarding the Japanese government paying 2/3 of healthcare costs, it may surprise you to learn that the American government already pays more than half of healthcare costs in this country, and that share is projected to increase.
You ask a lot of questions but you seem uninterested in any answers. What is the penalty for not buying insurance in Mexico? I could go on naming more countries, hoping that eventually you might get the idea, but I started with the country that has the longest life expectancy in the world and it didn't persuade you of anything.
BTW, Homeboy, back in 2008, when Senator Obama was campaigning against the individual mandate (which was part of Hillary's Plan), were you busily calling him "asinine", "stupid", "ridiculous", and "right wing" too?
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curious2 says
The point is that Japan's system is different than ours, and simply dropping the individual mandate will not make our system work as theirs does. But obviously winning imaginary "debating" points is more important to you than the point.
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curious2 says
How is that supposed to be an argument for dropping the individual mandate? Are you really naive enough to think that will decrease the costs to the government? The system will not work without the mandate, and you have yet to give a valid reason otherwise.
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curious2 says
16% of the US population is currently uninsured, and that is in a system where if you get an illness and are uninsured, you may not be able to GET insurance. So it's already higher than Japan. What do you think will happen to that number when uninsured people are guaranteed the right to get insurance if they get sick? It sure as hell isn't going to go down. MORE people would be uninsured, because they would know they could get insurance at any time.
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Homeboy says
CRFB: dropping individual mandate would save $330 billion by 2021
Homeboy, please answer my question: did you harangue Barack Obama like this when he was campaigning against the individual mandate in 2008? Did you read his arguments then? Please "debate" him and the CRFB with your talking points, not me.
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Who cares what he said in 2008? The law won't work without the mandate. I don't blindly follow whatever Obama says because I'm not rabidly partisan like you. I just want to be able to get health insurance that I can afford to pay for. This is about fixing our broken healthcare system, not scoring "gotcha" points.
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curious2 says
That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen posted. It's not possible to have negative credibility, but keep trying you may be the first.
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And your link goes to a budget simulator. The page contains nothing about the individual mandate. So I'm not sure what that's all about.
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bob2356 says
Please address your dispute to the Institute of Medicine:
The Cost of Health Care: How much is waste?
They found $765 billion/year, including $75 billion of outright fraud. Their report was well documented and widely reported in this country.
I'm genuinely surprised by your "negative credibility" comment. Evidently, finding well sourced facts for you has been a waste of time, so I'll stop wasting time on that.
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Homeboy says
That's because you fail to do your own homework. Try the CRFB simulator, when you get to the page about the individual mandate, you'll see the numbers.
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"Do your own homework". Yet another copout by a person unable to form his own arguments. You don't save money by having people drop out of the insurance system and pay no premium.
*sigh* RIP common sense.
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Homeboy says
Your endlessly repeated talking point is simply false. As CRFB reported, the federal government would save $330 billion over the first seven years. You don't save money by spending money, nor by making other people spend money.
As for the importance of doing your own homework: the best predictor of longevity is education, not health insurance. You seem to fetishize insurance policies as if they were health care or health, when in fact they are neither. Education is a much better use of time and resources than haranguing people so you can get subsidized insurance. Besides, you don't persuade people by haranguing them anyway, calling them "asinine" and "stupid" and "ridiculous" is just a waste of time.
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curious2 says
Huh? Of course you do. Let me explain this to you a second time, since it doesn't seem to have stuck the first time. Somebody has to pay for health care. In Japan, the government pays most of it. In the U.S., the republicans won't allow the government to foot most of the bill for healthcare, so they had to come up with a plan for having people pay for their own insurance. Personally, I'd rather just have socialized medicine, but what are you going to do, shoot all the republicans?
So yes, if people pay for their own health insurance, it saves the GOVERNMENT money.
You seem to think that by letting people drop their insurance and then sign up for it as soon as they get an expensive disease, that this will somehow cost the rest of us LESS. Would this be taking place in Bizarro World? Maybe you should start an auto insurance company, and let people enroll AFTER they total their car. By your logic, you would "save" so much money that you would become rich. Hmmm...wonder why no insurance company has ever done that? Guess they just aren't as smart as you, huh?
Maybe you shouldn't read so many crackpot Libertarian blogs.
Congratulations! Obviously you figured out what a strawman is, because you just used one. Please quote my post where I said I "fetishize" insurance policies. You won't find it, because you made that up.
Like I said, socialized medicine would probably be a better choice, but we can't have that. So you have two choices: go back to the system we had, where millions of people don't even GET healthcare, or go broke trying to get treated, or keep this law, which at least tries to address the problem. Either way, we are stuck with a health insurance system, so it's not a matter of liking health insurance, it's a matter of realizing it's what we have, and at least trying to make it suck less than it does.
This is irrelevant nonsense. Did you just have a stroke while you were typing?
You seem to like using those words "talking points". *YAWN* What else ya got?
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Homeboy says
YET! We would all be filthy rich if were to get a nickle for every time "Fact Check" was thrown around on this board. I just love how the fact check debunking involves nothing more than writing a sentence or a paragraph.
But if all else fails, just blame Bush with numbers pulled out of your ass.
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CaptainShuddup says
You saved me writing the same.
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CaptainShuddup says
Right, anything that's not uber right-wing, no matter how clearly and patiently explained to you, is one a them lib'ral pinko talkin' points.
God, you right wingers are so fucking transparent.
By the way, aren't you one of the millions who don't have any health insurance? But you're so mired in partisanship you're just happy as a clam you're getting screwed. Fox News doesn't want healthcare reform, so things must be good the way they are, right? And I'm sure you'd be the first one to game the insurance system if you could find a way to do it.
That is exactly 100% backwards. The OPs ARTICLE blamed Obama for increases in healthcare premiums. I simply took the article's own exact data, plugged it into a spreadsheet, and figured out that premiums actually increased LESS than they did before he was president. If you object to the numbers, then blame the article, because that's where I got them. Feel free to check the math yourself.
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bob2356 says
I provided the link to the Institute of Medicine, and checked the math, it works out to 30%. That is slightly less than a third. So, I corrected the original post, where from memory I had said "more than a third." The difference is less than 5%, hardly "ridiculous," but I corrected it. Do you ever acknowledge any of your mistakes?
Homeboy says
Enjoy your mandatory subsidized insurance. I doubt that it will be the benefit you imagine it to be, but I have nothing more for you. If you look at the number of people in Massachusetts who went bankrupt with medical bills they could not afford to pay, it increased after RomneyCare took effect, even though mandatory insurance was promised to "end medical bankruptcy." To update Marie Antoinette for today's economy, "Let them eat insurance."
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curious2 says
First off it's the IOM not NIH. IOM is a washington think tank, not an official source of anything. Their number is widely quoted. But it is also widely discredited as being academic fantasy. For example It includes almost everything that is normal insurance billing as "waste". Ok fine, if we went to public health care and eliminated medical insurance altogether then yes that waste would be eliminated. Yes there are a lot of "unnecessary" procedures and tests. Unless you are writing 100k checks every year for malpractice insurance. Then what is necessary medically vs what is necessary for cover your ass becomes a different picture. So if we went to public health care, eliminated medical malpractice and the need for defensive medicine then yes we could eliminate these costs. A big "waste" is hospital infections and errors. If we went to a public health care system with strict standards set and enforced by the government then this is possible to address. As long as hospitals are independent they are free to use whatever standard they see fit.
So if you are a big fan of the IOM report then you are advocating a total government public health care system, am I correct? I am for it at this point, the current system is totally broken. I've lived in 3 countries with public health care and found their systems to be just fine.
The most ridiculous thing I've ever seen was your taking the IOM 30% pie in the sky number and somehow making it over half in your opinion. That's the credibility part. You have none.
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bob2356 says
The IOM is the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences. So, thanks for your first sentence, where you pointed out it isn't part of the NIH. You seem to go too far with your second sentence though.
bob2356 says
It's odd that you stand by your hyperbole. I have several reasons for believing that more than half of all medical spending in this country is waste, fraud, and abuse. The IOM estimate of 30% was not my starting point, I cited it as a widely reported and widely accepted number. You dismiss it but most people don't. I look at a variety of other factors. For example, the British spend less than half what we do, and live longer. The Mexicans spend 90% less, and live nearly as long, possibly longer if you adjust for education (still the best predictor of longevity). Go to San Diego and look at how many people walk back and forth to Tijuana where they can treat the same problem for a fraction of the American price. Look at how many Americans were hospitalized with H1N1, while more than 70 million doses of vaccine expired unused because doctors and clinics charged more than the market would bear even though the federal government was giving them the vaccine at taxypayers' expense. Look at the amount that Americans spend in the last month of life, i.e. on things that made little or no difference, and talk with people who work in emergency rooms. Visit American hospitals, where ICUs seem designed to spread infection. Read this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-american-health-care-killed-my-father/307617/?single_page=true
And you keep returning to your old chestnut about tort reform, even though Atul Gawande's article (which you claim to have read) refuted that specifically:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all
Your comments epitomize Upton Sinclair's observation, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." You reject everything from official reports to newspaper reports to practitioners' blogs, so finally I said I would stop finding sources for you. But, I did check again and saw the 5% discrepancy, and you're right that IOM isn't part of NIH, so I am learning. It reminds me of a riddle based on Marcus Aurelius: In a conversation between a wise man and a fool, who learns more?
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curious2 says
Still harping on that strawman, I see. You are framing this argument incorrectly. You seem to have forgotten what we were arguing about. Let me remind you.
YOU believe that simply dropping the individual mandate, and making no other changes to Obamacare - that this change alone - would "save money".
I believe that a system where people could pay nothing for years and years, and then sign up AFTER they get an expensive disease, is not workable. It would unfairly shift the cost burden to those who keep an insurance policy. Rates would rise, more people would drop out because of the higher rates, rates would rise even more, even more people would drop out, and costs would spiral out of control.
Oh, but I guess that's just them there li'bral talkin' points. LOL.
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curious2 says
I don't dismiss it at all, read what I said. It's a theoretical number that can only be reached by totally changing the system by setting rigid rules in place, and eliminating private insurance. So no, under the system that exists now the number has no relevance. So the answer to my question is yes you are advocating public health care? It's ok you can admit it.
curious2 says
I read it, probably long before you. It doesn't refute defensive medicine or anything close. There is only one paragraph in the entire article about malpractice and all it says it that one doctor said lawsuits dropped in the two years since Texas tort reform. Any doctor that says they aren't practicing a lot defensive medicine is just lying. If you actually read it then you know the conclusion is that where there are large numbers of doctors and more importantly doctor owned facilities the costs are very high. Are you still claiming costs would go down if there were more doctors?
Tort reform is only one factor out of many. Even with tort reform it takes many years for any meaningful change to take place in defensive medicine practices
curious2 says
That's nice, why does it apply to me? I live in NZ. My wife is a salaried employee of the DHB. No matter what happens in the US medical system it doesn't affect our income at all.
By the way, I keep asking where you got all your experience in physician practice management that you can tell me how practice accounting works day to day. The answer is?
curious2 says
It's ok, I don't consider you a fool. I don''t reject everything. I reject grandiose hyperbole based on the most slender tenuous linkage possible. For example I totally accept and agree with gawanda's article. I've quoted from it many times myself. I refuse to accept or agree with your far fetched assertion that the article refutes the cost of defensive medicine. It's just not there no matter how hard you try to read it in. Many of your other "sources" are equally weak.
So what is your considered opinion as to how to improve the system other than running around saying "the sky is falling".
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bob2356 says
From the actual 2009 article, as opposed to the selectively remembered version in your mind:
That explanation puzzled me. Several years ago, Texas passed a tough malpractice law that capped pain-and-suffering awards at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Didn’t lawsuits go down?
“Practically to zero,” the cardiologist admitted.
“Come on,” the general surgeon finally said. “We all know these arguments are bullshit. There is overutilization here, pure and simple.” Doctors, he said, were racking up charges with extra tests, services, and procedures.
The surgeon came to McAllen in the mid-nineties, and since then, he said, “the way to practice medicine has changed completely. Before, it was about how to do a good job. Now it is about ‘How much will you benefit?’ ”
In other words, instead of reducing costs, shielding doctors from the consequences of their excess actually increased costs. Dr. Gawande amplified the point in a subsequent piece reflecting on the original article:
"The cause that I found locally was a system of care that was highly fragmented for patients and often driven to maximize revenues over patient needs
***
El Paso and McAllen function under the same Texas malpractice laws that capped malpractice awards in 2003. As doctors there noted to me, premiums have gone down substantially, reflecting the major drop in lawsuits. And even if McAllen doctors were especially fearful of lawsuits, it is hard to imagine that “defensive medicine” would lead to McAllen’s vastly greater number of pacemaker insertions, knee replacements, carotid operations, coronary artery stents, or home-nursing visits. Certainly the doctors I spoke to there did not think lawsuit fears affect their decisions for surgical therapies and other such interventions."
If you compare the actual text to the way you remember it, you might learn something about how your mind works. I did.
In both Britain and Mexico, injured patients can sue for malpractice. Mexico has mostly private insurance (which isn't mandatory) and they spend 90% less than we do. Britain has mostly the NHS but also some private insurance (which isn't mandatory) and they spend less than half what we do. In America, most healthcare is already paid by government. Also much of the cost is driven by government and mandatory insurance (including flat rate malpractice insurance that charges the same premium to the careful surgeon as to the butcher on the next block, and the same premium to the careful prescriber as to the poisoner who hands out whatever toxic prescriptions PhRMA is promoting this week). Mandatory insurance and "tort reform" are parts of the problem, not a solution.
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Homeboy says
The CRFB concluded it would save $330 billion in seven years, but you refused to read that. You also dismiss what Barack Obama said while campaigning against the individual mandate in 2008, replying with "Who cares what he said in 2008?" You seem to care intensely what I say though, because you harangue me endlessly, so I have to ask why the double standard? Do you call him "asinine" "ridiculous" "stupid" and "right wing"? Are you working for the Romney campaign?
Anyway perhaps you might read this:
http://www.yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal/essay/adverse-selection-in-insurance-markets:-an-exaggerated-threat/
Or perhaps you won't read it, as you refused to read CRFB's conclusion.
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curious2 says
What is their reasoning as to how this will happen? Where does this alleged savings come from?
I don't understand what the point is you are trying to make. Are you trying to use something that Obama said in order to try to get the nomination away from Hilllary Clinton, as supposed proof of your ridiculous claim that dropping the mandate would somehow magically net us $330 billion?
He's not saying that anymore, so why would you insist it's right just because he said it in 2008, but claim he's NOT right in 2012?
Seems like I'm trying to make a valid point here, and you're just trying to play "gotcha" games.
I don't understand why you are so obsessed with some fleeting comment made 4 years ago. Just explain where this $330 billion dollars comes from that we supposedly net just by dropping the mandate.
I didn't refuse to read it, I simply told you that your link didn't go to what you seemed to think it did. Your response was "do your own homework", which is a common cop-out for lazy internet debaters who know they are stuck without any way to back up their claims.
I did see where the website made that claim. You do realize that just because you see ONE source that makes a ridiculous claim, that doesn't make it true. I haven't heard ANYONE else say that dropping the mandate, in and of itself, would save money, EVER. You will need to do better than that. Please explain how this feat would be accomplished, as I asked you to. Where does this money magically come from?
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curious2 says
Dude, it's 59 pages long. Hey, before I do that, why don't you read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and get back to me on that?
Jerk.
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1. Drop the individual mandate.
2. ????
3. Profit!
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I put curious2 on ignore awhile ago. Debating curious2 is like debating with pop-up ads.
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freak80 says
I am not wasting my time on such people I did the same to iwog and Politicofact. I gave the a gift, the gift of goodbye.