Minnesota had nothing to do with Obamacare. If someone can argue otherwise comment below. I got this doorknocking - a sort of pride in Obamacare. Minnesota has a unique and worthy healthcare system but it is not like the federally proposed healthcare system which we must repeal. For starters there isn't a built-in, unaddressed, growing deficit in the Minnesota healthcare system that there is in the federal system. And Minnesota works closer with large companies to reduce cost for employees than the federal proposal. So when I read about democrat New Jersey US Rep Frank Pallone taking credit for Obamacare, I had to post it.
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/09/19/in-the-reality-tv-show-called-politics-there-should-be-a-show-called-the-next-best-political-upset/
"If Pallone wants to take credit for a massive overreach of government, lets help him get that message out to the voters so they make make a real and informed choice to reject candidates like Pallone who are trying to put big government in the drivers seat of our lives."
http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/bills/111/hr3590
H.R.3590: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
The bill neither protects the patient nor makes healthcare inexpensive. We've seen before government efforts to control cost and reimburse doctors and hospitals fractionally for the care the doctors give to Medicare patients and Medicaid just induces doctors to charge more to those not in a federal or state program. Very few legislators read it and those who may have read it, could not have known it's final form.Pelosi admitted we would not know what's in it until it is implemented. Yet some Minnesotans, like Carlos Mariani, endorsed it before it became law (http://representativedelton.blogspot.com/2010/03/mariani-signs-internet-pledge-stating.html), and now act like Minnesota's healthcare was the inspiration in some way. I doubt this very much.
http://deltondigest.blogspot.com/2009/08/healthcare.html
I wrote this last April:
There are four (4) forces in healthcare – insurers, hospitals, doctors and government.
The patient is not being looked out for.
Non-profit healthcare providers and insurers may be thought of as private sector for-profit organizations.
People say this person I know in healthcare insurance makes over 100k, or the doctor I know built an expensive addition. The price of my healthcare is rising like inflation or the cost of education. Why?
The rise in healthcare cost is not like the increased cost to taxpayers of education or an economic
inflation.
Increased healthcare cost is caused by many things though. Increased healthcare cost is partly caused by Medicare low-ball reimbursements and doctors, hospitals or insurers increasing bills of non-Medicare patients in response.
Increased healthcare cost is partly caused by doctors' increasing insurance cost due to needed tort reform that is blocked by the trial lawyer lobby and their political allies. The cost increase is passed along to patients and insurers.
Increased healthcare cost is partly caused by accountability that is lost in the process between doctors and hospitals and insurers that can be fixed with real transparency (not phony sunshine provisions http://www.prescriptionproject.org/tools/sunshine_docs/files/Sunshine_Leg_Language.pdf) and the patient knowing all costs. Patient-centric transparency is not in HR3590. See the 10th paragraph here:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/repeal
In the politics of envy, everyone in healthcare might look bad and it's not the case really - most have good intentions. Doctors, insurers, and hospitals are in a complicated free market which is driven by a $37 trillion Medicare deficit and a system that perpetuates the deficit.
In particular the healthcare insurance industry is not lucrative or high-margin - the healthcare industry is ranked 86th in profitability.
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/08/health-insurance-industry-ranks-86-by.html
The government take-over of healthcare initiated by HR3950 on March 21 2010 and the reconciliation legislation is a new and important phenomena. We must identify and vote out this pernicious, destructive policy making.
Never before has the government assumed an interest in "revenue streams" like student loans or the auto industry. Never before has a sector of the economy been targeted by government for bankruptcy like private insurance.
Never before has massive debt and needless subsidies been accumulated by government on this scale with the promise of confiscatory tax of citizens and business or brutal national default.
Never before has private competition been so completely locked out of healthcare industry because of regulation or government favoritism.
Never before have the principles of free enterprise been so lost on a president and the will of the people and constitution ignored so callously.
Medicare is being destroyed by Obama and the Democrats in congress. Medicare is raided for $500 billion to pay for additional entitlements for households making $88K. Meanwhile everyone who needs healthcare is not insured.
The states are being burdened with increased federal Medicaid mandates that are federally unfunded.
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/04/03/the-principle-of-repeal/
http://deltondigest.blogspot.com/2009/08/healthcare.html
1 Preserve existing Healthcare
2 Reduce the $37T Medicare deficit without distracting budget triggers and in so doing making Medicare sustainable and free from hidden dependence on future generations.
3 Allow private specialty and doctor owned hospitals.
4 Tort reform
5 Removal of mandates to make coverage affordable.
6 Nationwide cafeteria choice in insurance and HMO's to make coverage affordable.
7 Transform the employer's healthcare tax-break into an individual consumer tax-break
http://www.heritage.org/research/healthcare/bg1895.cfm
8 Market-based health care including Minute-Clinics
9 Reject Democrats' socialist policy and their idea of public insurance, public option, co-ops, HR676 single payer, etc. Possibly compromise on a heavily regulated insurance industry.
10 Reject and repeal all reform involving distracting government take-overs, reductions in Medicare, and cost-shifting to Medicaid until sustainability is addressed.
#1 is important. HR3590 begins to destroy Medicare in at least two ways - by taking away $500 billion and giving it to a new redundant entitlement, and by tying the hands of those doctors who might want to serve Medicare patients by setting the fee-for-service rates those doctors will be reimbursed by the federal Medicare program too low. In the same way, private insurance is crowded out of the industry by a promised government option. Private insurance faces regulation designed to bankrupt it by setting requirements and price caps under which profitability cannot be maintained. Democrats had planned to set up a government "public option" insurance entity with the confiscatory tax power of the federal government to handle the expected failed insurers' clients. The public option was removed by Democrats. What we are left with is a hobbled private insurance industry absorbing millions of people at federal Medicare or state-funded Medicaid rates, which, under a constitutional system, would inevitably file for bankruptcy, but which will
instead, probably solicit congress for endless taxpayer subsidies.
#2 should be the focus. Once it is accomplished modestly expand Medicare to include the 12 million or so (not 30 million) that cannot afford insurance and need it.
#4 Tort reform -caps on lawsuits - will reduce doctors' insurance costs.
#5 Mandates are items such as port wine stains, mental health service, or HIV, that the state requires (or mandates) insurance companies in MN cover include in their insurance plans. These mandates should not exist. The insurance companies should create the plans for the market.
#6 This will lower premium costs and not burden current federal or state regulators.
#7 Employer-based insurance is a remnant of the WWII era when labor was scarce and companies wanted to attract the best employees. Employer-based insurance tends to lock out smart competitors unsavvy in collective healthcare plans.
#8 Many innovations are market based.
#9 Remember Jason Lewis' ideal capitalist system - subsidies of any kind are unfair government interference and tend to lock out the recipient's competitors. Regulations also tend to discourage competitors.
#10 Repeal!!
Jamie Delton
St. Paul MN April 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
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