Did you watch Obama’s press conference today? He said it wasn’t logical to say that private insurers would be driven out of business if there were a cheaper government-provided program. But at the same time he said that health-insurance costs were rising.
Are the premiums and/or co-payments of the government provided plan do not rise, but those of the private programs do, then why will they not be driven out of business?
Let me help you understand Politician (the language)
This means that if you use logic you are wrong, he will bail out these insurance companies as well as they are too important to fail, they employ people and if they close he will have another blemish on his impeccable failure card, what he is saying in all reality is that if you work for a living, he will tax you and your employer for offering insurance that they are now mandated to give you in order to assist in paying for others insurance. It is illogical to think he will let these companies fail, and will probably make it a crime to have no insurance, because then you might be applicable for the government insurance that will not be able to pay for the increased customers it will have…
This would be because he intends on raising the taxes involved with insurance, employment, production, equipment…
The idea of a public plan option is similar to having a horse race with the government horse on steroids.
Obama is selling this to the people on a lie. He knows that the public option is a step towards universal health care; he knows it, but he doesn’t care.
He knows full well that with a public option he will saddle the taxpayers so much that they will have to try to fit the suitable requirements of said public system, this will encourage more the welfare state he thinks is best…
So long as he is not a taxpayer…
he’s inflating the life rafts to deal with the political storm of the century.
Any articles on this on Mises.org?
Not that I know of…
But it does not take a rocket scientist to see what he is doing…
What Obama isn’t talking about is what the plan will actually cover. In other words, private insurers will get run out of business if the government plan covers everything the private plans did but for less. If the government plan doesn’t cover everything the private plans do (which they probably won’t) or if it’s more expensive for the taxpayer to have a government run plan than to just have everyone buy their own private insurance then people will keep buying private insurance and will demand the dissolution of the public plan.
The other thing I haven’t heard enough liberals talk about is the effect this plan will have on the practice of medicine in general. Will people who were formerly going to become doctors now move into other fields? If so, the brain drain effect will destroy the effectiveness of the public plan and also make health care more expensive in general for both private and public plans. Unless they institute price controls (which they effectively are) on medical services of all kinds. At which point, even less people will want to become doctors. Particularly primary care physicians which, as I understand it, there is already a shortage of.
The other thing I’ve noticed is that no one in the liberal camp is really asking “why has medical care become so expensive, what are the causes?”
It seems, to me, that inflation is largely a culprit as well as the overwhelming burdens taxes place on individuals leaving them struggling to pay for their insurance (and everything else). In other words, it’s not that medical care has gotten astronomically better and more scarce, it’s that the consumers have gotten poorer and thus unable to pay.
If the government stopped inflating the currency constantly and cut government spending to be able to lower taxes, I think that people wouldn’t be so hard pressed to pay for their own medical care. The government, with this public plan, is trying to treat the effect of their own actions without acknowledging the cause of the problem, the government.
Corporate greed!
Lol, yes of course you’re right. “It’s those goddamn selfish doctors and pharmaceutical companies who are raping the american people for their hard earned money.” They don’t seem to remember that it was those same “selfish bastards” who came up with all the treatments everyone now thinks they have a right to, do they?
It is not so much inflation but the government’s involvemnt in Medicine…
As for the costs issue, what Obama is not telling people is that he will tax the eyeballs from everyone to pay the shortfall for the artificially low rates Gov’t Ins. will have, and the subscribers will be paying not only their taxes to support a system, but also for the subscription, which at the end of the day will pan out to more than they are paying for employer provided health care…
[8-)]
Uh huh… because the government had nothing to do with raising the costs…
I agree with what you’re saying. I agree, government run medicine will not be as effective or efficient as our system is now. I understand that some people who couldn’t afford care will get care under this plan, but as you point out, it’s at the expense of everyone else. And that sort of parasiticism eventually kills the host. So it’s not worth it.
But how can inflation not be at fault if inflation destroys purchasing power?
What you are ignoring is the government is elbow deep in HC now…
This is what drove the costs up…
Inflation is the fuel on the fire…
Ok, fair enough. So we both recognize that the government is using a problem it caused to take more control of an industry it doesn’t run very well.
The key to the argument against nationalized health care is not that it’s morally wrong, but that it’s functionally wrong. In other words, some people like to imagine that you can change the pay structure in a system without changing the functionality of the system. This is obviously not true. So whether or not socialized medicine is morally right or wrong is irrelevant. What matters is that it doesn’t work because changing the incentives will change the output of the system.
And thus the government is limiting choice. Good example of what is being discussed in the other thread so I thought I’d mention that briefly here.
the cap-n-trade tax?
The final prices are rising FASTER than in other sectors because gov’t is artificially limiting the final supply, increasing artificial demand, and drastically increasing the costs. Inflation and taxes effect the WHOLE economy. In fact, there are more tax breaks for health care I reckon than any other consumer sector.
It is limiting supply through the FDA and medical licensing.
It is increasing the costs by forcefully adding middlemen and increasing regulations.
It is articially increasing demand by paying for health care through inefficient methods, like cost-plus; and pushing people towards 3rd party payment systems.