DescentBB

Robert Moffit wrote:At the very least, the creation of a national health insurance exchange as a platform for a public plan to compete against private health insurance would cut short state innovation in health insurance market reform and accelerate the already rapidly growing federal domination of the financing and delivery of health care. Even more likely, it would ensure the eventual triumph of a single-payer system of national health insurance run by Washington. The national health insurance exchange combined with a public plan, falsely advertised as a mechanism to advance consumer choice and market competition, would be the institutional vehicle to guarantee the exact opposite.

Conclusion

President Obama and the congressional leadership are intent on creating a national health insurance exchange. In its various legislative forms, their version of the health insurance exchange is a powerful regulatory agency; it is not merely an administrative agency to facilitate enrollment and to promote choice and anything remotely approaching free-market competition.

In many respects, the national health insurance exchange resembles a solution in search of a problem. If the President or Congress wanted to create a national health insurance market, they would not need to create a national health insurance exchange--they would merely have to repeal existing federal barriers to insurers competing across state lines. If the President and Congress wanted to fix the inequities of the federal tax law, a key rationale for creating a health insurance exchange at the state level, all they would have to do is to reform the federal tax laws governing health insurance and end the practice of discriminating against those who cannot or do not get health insurance through their place of work.

If the objective of the President and Congress is to expand the role of the federal government in providing health insurance and determining the kind of health insurance that Americans will get, the national health insurance exchange is a convenient tool for that federal expansion and control. It would be tantamount to a national arena for the public plan to undercut private health plans and erode existing private health coverage.

There is little doubt that a national health insurance exchange, combined with a public plan, can achieve that policy objective. But there is also little doubt that such an objective is not what most Americans had in mind when they embraced the cause of comprehensive health reform.

dissent wrote:some information then -
http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/bg2304.cfm

Robert Moffit wrote:At the very least, the creation of a national health insurance exchange as a platform for a public plan to compete against private health insurance would cut short state innovation in health insurance market reform and accelerate the already rapidly growing federal domination of the financing and delivery of health care. Even more likely, it would ensure the eventual triumph of a single-payer system of national health insurance run by Washington. The national health insurance exchange combined with a public plan, falsely advertised as a mechanism to advance consumer choice and market competition, would be the institutional vehicle to guarantee the exact opposite.

Conclusion

President Obama and the congressional leadership are intent on creating a national health insurance exchange. In its various legislative forms, their version of the health insurance exchange is a powerful regulatory agency; it is not merely an administrative agency to facilitate enrollment and to promote choice and anything remotely approaching free-market competition.

In many respects, the national health insurance exchange resembles a solution in search of a problem. If the President or Congress wanted to create a national health insurance market, they would not need to create a national health insurance exchange--they would merely have to repeal existing federal barriers to insurers competing across state lines. If the President and Congress wanted to fix the inequities of the federal tax law, a key rationale for creating a health insurance exchange at the state level, all they would have to do is to reform the federal tax laws governing health insurance and end the practice of discriminating against those who cannot or do not get health insurance through their place of work.

If the objective of the President and Congress is to expand the role of the federal government in providing health insurance and determining the kind of health insurance that Americans will get, the national health insurance exchange is a convenient tool for that federal expansion and control. It would be tantamount to a national arena for the public plan to undercut private health plans and erode existing private health coverage.

There is little doubt that a national health insurance exchange, combined with a public plan, can achieve that policy objective. But there is also little doubt that such an objective is not what most Americans had in mind when they embraced the cause of comprehensive health reform.

At its heart, I simply do not trust Obama when he says he is doing this to level the playing field and make the private insurers honest. He is on the record as a single-payer advocate. Barney Frank has admitted (watch the video) that the Public Plan is effectively a prerequisite to single payer. And yet we keep getting all this BS song-and-dance about how "if you like your health care you can keep it" etc etc blah blah.

So where is this land of health care milk and honey anyways? Europe??
France Fights Universal Care's High Cost
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124958049241511735.html



I'm just not convinced.

Birdseye wrote:Dude. You posted a link from heritage.org, a site totally biased against anything a democrat does. Did you think you'd be reading or posting unbiased information at any point? Honestly I didn't even bother reading the content because it doesn't matter. Such polarized sources are terrible sources for personal belief.

Charles Krauthammer wrote:Prevention, they assure us, will not just make us healthier, it also "will save money."

Obama followed suit in his Tuesday New Hampshire town hall, touting prevention as amazingly dual-purpose: "It saves lives. It also saves money."

Reform proponents repeat this like a mantra. Because it seems so intuitive, it has become conventional wisdom. But like most conventional wisdom, it is wrong. Overall, preventive care increases medical costs.

This inconvenient truth comes, once again, from the CBO. In an Aug. 7 letter to Rep. Nathan Deal, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf writes: "Researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness. ...

... This doesn't mean we shouldn't be preventing illness. Of course we should. But in medicine, as in life, there is no free lunch. The idea that prevention is somehow intrinsically economically different from treatment -- that treatment increases costs and prevention lowers them -- is simply nonsense. Prevention is a wondrous good, but in the aggregate it costs society money. ...

... However, prevention is not, as so widely advertised, healing on the cheap. It is not the magic bullet for health-care costs. ...

Dedman wrote:I find it sad that both sides of this issue feel they have to resort to misinformation in order to "win".

snoopy wrote:

Dedman wrote:I find it sad that both sides of this issue feel they have to resort to misinformation in order to "win".

Whoever wins, we lose

ThunderBunny wrote:Speaking of polarizing, who is Noam Chomsky?

dissent wrote:

Birdseye wrote:Dude. You posted a link from heritage.org, a site totally biased against anything a democrat does. Did you think you'd be reading or posting unbiased information at any point? Honestly I didn't even bother reading the content because it doesn't matter. Such polarized sources are terrible sources for personal belief.

"... against anything a big government liberal does ....." (fixed it for ya)
[NB - not "liberal" in the classical political sense, but in the current fashion of we-know-better-than-youism that dominates the American Left]

LOL. So please point me to your mythical land of detailed unbiased analysis. Of course you didn't read it, because you're not biased.

You could, of course, just dispute any set of contentions in the article, instead of knee-jerk rejecting it based on the source. But then, you'd have to read it.

Let's see if we can have a reasoned discussion about end-of-life counseling.

We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I've got nothing against her. She's a remarkable political talent. But there are no \"death panels\" in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate.

We also have to tell the defenders of the notorious Section 1233 of H.R. 3200 that it is not quite as benign as they pretend. To offer government reimbursement to any doctor who gives end-of-life counseling -- whether or not the patient asked for it -- is to create an incentive for such a chat. ...

...Except for the demented orphan, the living will is quite beside the point. The one time it really is essential is if you think your fractious family will be only too happy to hasten your demise to get your money. That's what the law is good at -- protecting you from murder and theft. But that is a far cry from assuring a peaceful and willed death, which is what most people imagine living wills are about.

So why get Medicare to pay the doctor to do the counseling? Because we know that if this white-coated authority whose chosen vocation is curing and healing is the one opening your mind to hospice and palliative care, we've nudged you ever so slightly toward letting go.

It's not an outrage. It's surely not a death panel. But it is subtle pressure applied by society through your doctor. And when you include it in a health-care reform whose major objective is to bend the cost curve downward, you have to be a fool or a knave to deny that it's intended to gently point the patient in a certain direction, toward the corner of the sickroom where stands a ghostly figure, scythe in hand, offering release.

Wikipedia wrote: The Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the United States House of Representatives prepares and publishes the United States Code, which is a consolidation and codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States.

The counsel is appointed by the Speaker of the House and must

prepare, and submit to the Committee on the Judiciary one title at a time, a complete compilation, restatement, and revision of the general and permanent laws of the United States which conforms to the understood policy, intent, and purpose of the Congress in the original enactments, with such amendments and corrections as will remove ambiguities, contradictions, and other imperfections both of substance and of form, separately stated, with a view to the enactment of each title as positive law."[1]

In other words, the counsel takes the Act of Congress that generally cover more than one subject, and makes the revisions indicated to each title of the United States Code.

AlphaDoG wrote:Want to know the SCARIEST thing concerning this and any other unread bill that is passed?

The "Office of the Law Revision Counsel"

Wikipedia wrote: The Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the United States House of Representatives prepares and publishes the United States Code, which is a consolidation and codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States.

The counsel is appointed by the Speaker of the House and must

prepare, and submit to the Committee on the Judiciary one title at a time, a complete compilation, restatement, and revision of the general and permanent laws of the United States which conforms to the understood policy, intent, and purpose of the Congress in the original enactments, with such amendments and corrections as will remove ambiguities, contradictions, and other imperfections both of substance and of form, separately stated, with a view to the enactment of each title as positive law."[1]

In other words, the counsel takes the Act of Congress that generally cover more than one subject, and makes the revisions indicated to each title of the United States Code.