Posted on 08/14/2009 8:26:25 AM PDT by St. Louis Conservative
“THIS JUST IN ...
Democrats, realizing the success of the President's “Cash For Clunkers” rebate program, have revamped a major portion of their National Health Care Plan. President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Sen. Reed are expected to make this major announcement at a joint news conference later this week.
I have obtained an advanced copy of the proposal which is named.... “CASH FOR CODGERS” and it works like this...
Couples wishing to access health care funds in order to pay for the delivery of a child will be required to turn in one old person. The amount the government grants them will be fixed according to a sliding scale. Older and more prescription dependent codgers will garner the highest amounts. Special “Bonuses” will be paid for those submitting codgers in targeted groups, such as smokers, alcohol drinkers, persons 10 pounds over their government prescribed weight, and any member of the Republican Party. Smaller bonuses will be given for codgers who consume beef, soda, fried foods, potato chips, lattes, whole milk, dairy products, bacon, Brussel sprouts, or Girl Scout Cookies.
All codgers will be rendered totally useless via toxic injection. This will insure that they are not secretly resold or their body parts harvested to keep other codgers in repair. Remember you heard it here first.”
Tenk ewe veddy much. We love gold stars they fit so nicely in my crown.
Our biggest problem is letting THEM define the debate ground rukes. Don’t let them offer specious premises -— make them stick with the facts
You have some good responses in the thread. Lefties may respond to the truth that insurance companies don’t ration, they perform contracts by arguing that the market “rations” according to the ability to pay. This is deceptive and can involve a lengthy discussion, which for debating purposes is not helpful.
You would probably do best to point out that government rationing is political rationing. The politicians and bureaucrats can potentially determine whether you live as a cripple or not, whether you live with chronic pain or not, and even whether you live or not. The reason they want to control health care is because political rationing vastly increases the power of the political class over the masses. Just knowing that politically controlled bureaucrats have this power over citizens will affect citizens’ behavior and chill dissent.
If you want to be controlled even more by the government Obamacare is for you...
If you can, it will be in federal court.
Hope you live long enough to get a ruling.
This is the Crux of the arguement. The Gov’t, who is broke, wants to be our insurance company.
Why would anybody sane want this?
This New insurance company wants direct deposit access to all your financial accounts and has proposed that It will exempt itself from judicial review.
Tell them this. With an insurance company, you can sue, you and seek redress from the state insurance board.
If you are wronged by the federal govt, what is your redress.(get in the back of the line please.)
Good thread.
I know that. And it’s a sort of. What they do is sell a striped aircraft and the rest is done by outside contractors that do custom remodel work.
What I was getting at is no company can do everything. So in insurance companies you are not going to have one do everything well. The key is to have many competitive companies so that consumers can enjoy price competition and innovation amongst insurance sellers.
This would all, eventually, go away with Gooberment intervention. You wouldn have a few, or one dominate, politically hooked up player. Think GM for insurance.
What is a good, effective rebuttal to that?
In the U.S. today, if you find yourself in a position whereby you have been denied care/treatment/procedure whatever the reason, insurance won't cover it, the terms of insurance allow them to deny, they won't pay for *name brand* meds, your physician (and quite possibly your own experience) determines that generic are not effective, etal, you are still capable of obtaining it by other means, either you get another insurance program or you pay out of your own pocket, you contract privately with a physician, etc.
Your rebuttal is that it is still legal to obtain what you need by other means, when 0bamacare becomes law of the land, this will no longer be the case. Not only will it not be legal, it will be unavailable, as is demonstrated in every country which runs a socialized medicine, single-payer method.
Quite simply, there is absolutely no analogy between super markets and healthcare insurance as middlemen.
Well, if I don’t like insurance plan A, I can go to Insurance plan B. If there’s a single payer gov’t plan. you have no choice because all private options will be illegal and you’ll have to do what Canadians do now: go overseas.
The only problem is if we pass this boondoggle of a health plan, where will the Canadians (and Americans) go to get better care? Korea? Costa Rica? South Africa?!
I think that’s called per-certification and I’ve never had them not ok anything that the physician ordered.
Under private care, “rationing” is worked out between the patient, doctor, and insurance to their mutual satisfaction.
Under public care, “rationing” is imposed unilaterally by the government - other parties involved have no say.
I’ll trust the market over the Marxists every time.
You don’t want the government to ‘ration’ what the free market will ration more effectively. Think of how Soviet Russia would ration food vs. a good ol’, US free market grocery store. Sure, their food may have been ‘free’ but unobtainable at any price.
1) you can fire your insurance Company and go looking for another one with a better plan for a better price.
2) When a better insurance plan is available from a different insurer, you can fire your old one and get the new one.
3) You have choice on whether to have insurance at all or not.
4) you can tailor your insurance for your needs, and pay the greater or lesser price according to your own choice.
5) YOU have the choice as what how much or what areas to insure.
The Government plan has NONE of these options, you just get to pay for it.
You can choose your insurance company a lot easier than you can choose your government.
As a type 1 diabetic I have never been turned down for anything my Dr has ordered done ever. I’ve never met anyone who had an insurace policy that was turned down for treatment, HMO’s are different. One of my sister’s works for a doctors office and say that most who are tunred down for things have been flagged along the way as hypochondriacs or asking for more treatment with no diease to go with the request.
Insurance companies ration nothing. You buy a policy from them fully informed as to the benefits and the items not covered.
Your premium is dictated by your risk pool. If you are a sick, lazy pile of human, then you pay higher rates. If, however, you are very fit and seldom see a doctor, you are placed in a different risk pool, and you pay a lower rate.
If your employer buys your policy on your behalf, then the risk is managed by a sort of average demographic score, and a report on actual medical use by your company.
If you are a big employer, you generally will self-insure.
If you are a unionized employee in a non-right-to-work state, then your union may be providing your health insurance from a trust. Woe betide you, since they suck at managing money, period.
On top of that, your insurance company is MANDATED to provide the basic coverage that your state insurance commissioner says they have to provide. We had a real LuLu of an insurance commissioner in WA state by the name of Deborah Senn.
Autocrat of the first order. Four of the big ones that weren’t Blues threatened to close shop in WA. In less than a year from that little hissy fit, she got bumped out of her position, and I’m not sure where she’s stealing her oxygen from at this point.
You can go ahead and have your Transgender surgery, if you wish. The insurance company isn’t going to stop you. They may, however, not agree to pay for it either. Same with the boob job, Automatic BCG monitor, Lap-Band surgery, and other surgeries that truly are non-essential.
Under DeathCare 2010, I don’t know how all of that would work. Abortion’s definitely covered. As an actuarial, you’d cover it too - it’s the ultimate stop-loss.
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