I’ve been sending this to friends, many of whom voted for Obama.
If you do a bit of research on what the health legislation actually contains, I think you may decide you don’t want it. This is a good time to pay attention. We are being fooled.
1) We will not be able to keep plans of our own choice;
2) We will pay more;
3) Quality will decrease.
This legislation will end the potential to fix problems through entrepreneur and customer driven market process.
A starting point: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10367
I’ve signed this and I hope you will too:
http://www.freeourhealthcarenow.com/
It’s clear that Obama and his crowd have decided that the “problem”
with the American health system is that people are living too long and
spending their money on treatments to do so; money that could be spent
more wisely by them on other things. The “problem” that this
legislation is intended to fix is exactly that, and it will do a great
job of it. That will also prevent them from having to change Social
Security.
Little noted in the healthcare debate is the fact that Americans traveling or residing overseas will not have access to healthcare benefits that they will be forced into paying for under Obamacare.
This is already the case for Medicare benefits for the hundreds of thousands of American retirees in places like Europe, Costa Rica, and Guadalajara. It is fundamentally un-American to tax people for “benefits” they have no way of participating in.
It’s clear that Obama and the Democrats have decided Americans are living too free.
I signed the petition last week. However, I think the demands in the petition are too vague. The Dems will simply reply “our plan does give you choice, liberty, etc.” Socialists make up their own definitions for words like “liberty”.
Yes. first of all the petition is inaccurate. The proposed system is not “like” Britain’s, it is worse — in Britain you have the right to buy fairly unrestricted private medical insurance, free of government “effectiveness” standards, and use it to access private providers. You won’t under Obamacare.
I also agree that it is too vague. SIgn it, by all means, but then send a letter to your Congressman and both Senators. Make the following points:
1. You are a single-issue voter, and health care is the issue.
2. If he votes for any such bill you will vote against him in the next primary, donate money and time to his primary opponent, and if he is nominated, you will donate money and time to his general-election opponent and vote against him, and you will tell all your friends and relatives to do so, too.
It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.
Jim Bennett – that is a great idea. Probably a waste of paper and pen in my part of the country, but it will be short, sweet, and will make me feel great.
OT:
What’s with the “1.” next to each comment?
There is no provision in the plans currently circulating to force private plans to do anything other than provide a set of minimum standard for cost of coverage, consumer protections, and available benefits. This is a “floor” provision, similar to what exists in Massachusetts.
There is also not currently a provision for cost-benefit studies to inform access to treatment, although there are provisions dealing with conducting comparative-effectiveness studies.
The big lie here, though, is that private plans *already* restrict access to all sorts of treatments (if you don’t know what its like to fight with private providers over what kind of care you’re getting, you’ve never had a serious illness with multiple available treatment options); if the legislation hews to its current trajectory, the only result of the plan will be *better* access than under minimum-standard plans now, but without any cap on what private plans can offer.
In other words, this is mostly b.s.; and CATO is not in any way a credible source on health-care matters.
This is a “floor” provision, similar to what exists in Massachusetts.
That’s right…because the plan in Massachusetts is working so well.
As for floor provisions, they come with a floor price. This, of course, means that anyone who is happy to pay out of pocket for most care and only wants catastrophic coverage won’t be able to get it. Nor will you be able to escape the healthcare surcharge to pay for the crap program you’re trying to avoid. So, the nominally “private” option won’t really be an option at all. You’ll have to churn through the government machine.
The big lie here, though, is that private plans *already* restrict access to all sorts of treatments
Not nearly as many as public plans do. But, public plans suffer from major overuse issues, creating very long wait lists for the GP. The GP is, of course, the gateway in socialized medicine. So, on public plans not only is treatment severely restricted, but diagnosis is also delayed, reducing your chances of surviving. If you don’t believe me, you clearly haven’t had a serious illness in a country with socialized medicine as I have. I survived because I got pushed to the front of the line and had access to the best doctors because my family was very well connected.
the only result of the plan will be *better* access than under minimum-standard plans
On what planet? We don’t have nearly enough GPs as it is. We don’t have enough people to teach new GPs and their pay will be cut under the plan, so good luck encouraging people to become GPs. If you subsidize them, then you raise the costs of healthcare, not lower them. So, how exactly are you going to get better access when no other country has ever been able to achieve better access through socialized medicine. Where will the magic pixie dust come from?
Have we learned nothing from medicaid? Access sucks. Access to good doctors is non-existence and the system’s costs are out of control – a major contributor to the rising cost of healthcare in the U.S. If government is so good at running a better healthcare system which allows more access at a lower cost, then tell me why medicare isn’t cutting its budget and why medicare participants aren’t running around singing its praises? Why is that?
CATO is not in any way a credible source on health-care matters.
I should believe that because you – a person who has established zero credibility on any subject – says so? I suppose the CBO also has no credibility? Forget credibility. if you think CATO is wrong, then present an opposing argument. You have no credibility because you want to influence peoples decision based on who is doing the talking, not what they’re saying.
DN,
The big lie here, though, is that private plans *already* restrict access to all sorts of treatments (if you don’t know what its like to fight with private providers over what kind of care you’re getting, you’ve never had a serious illness with multiple available treatment options);
There is a difference between a private voluntary contract and a law. Depending on how much money you wish to spend, you can get insurance that will provide any hail mary treatment you want. You can also simply pay for it yourself. Private insurers have every incentive to keep you happy with your medical care because you have options. With government, they could not care less. Government has all of the same negative incentives of private companies without any of the positive incentives. Government health care is just a giant impersonal HMO with absolutely no competition.
People like you are tremendously naive about the unpredictable emergent effects of complex legislation that attempts to control huge swaths of our very large and very complex economy. No proponents of Medicare back in the 60’s would have believed that Medicare would eventually prevent doctors and hospitals from providing free or sliding scale care on a case by case basis but today Medicare does just that.
Given the track record of government programs over promising, under delivering and mutating wildly, why shouldn’t we assume that government restrictions on treatments it pays for will eventually propagate to the surviving system as well?
There is also not currently a provision for cost-benefit studies to inform access to treatment, although there are provisions dealing with conducting comparative-effectiveness studies.
You need to read Dick Gephart’s book on health care. He was Obama’s choice to ramrod this down our throats before his corruption knocked him out of public life. Gephart envisioned exactly the kind of system in which the government decided which treatments everyone public and private could get. Why shouldn’t we believe that is where the system will go when it proponents say that’s were it should go.
There is no provision in the plans currently circulating to force private plans to do anything other than provide a set of minimum standard for cost of coverage, consumer protections, and available benefits. This is a “floor” provision, similar to what exists in Massachusetts.
Which is the perfect tool for making private insurance to expensive. You just keep raising the floor and pricing more and more people out of coverage until you have a critical mass of people dependent on the government for their lives. Then you can do whatever you like. The current system already has this in most states which make health insurance 25% to 50% more expensive for many people.
DN —
Shannon has it nailed here. Almost all honest literature on nationalizing health insurance or health care for the last fifty years (i.e., not counting short-term campaign propaganda) has admitted that what they will do is politically ration health care. The honest ones then present their arguments as to why this is just and proper. Obamacare looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, but has a bunch of people going around insisting it’s not a duck. Talk about credibility problems.
As to CATO — there’s a real-world metric as to how credible think-tank predictions are, and that’s the past track record of successful predictions. CATO probably has one of the best track records on economic questions, including a long history of accurately predicting the problems that were going to arise from Fannie May and Freddie Mac. And did.
Sorry…I have a strict no petitions and no protesting policy nowadays. I am only interested in armed action. Petitions and protests are petty and ineffective in my opinion, and down right juvenile when carried out by most of the left. Of course, mostly it’s because I’m lazy because no one else will ever take me up on my violence first reform policies, hence I get to not do much….
Shannon, you mean Tom Daschle, not Dick Gephardt.