Tag Archives: Health-care

News

CBO: 20 million Americans could lose employer-provided health coverage under Obamacare

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From The Hill:

As many as 20 million Americans could lose their employer-provided coverage because of President Obama’s healthcare reform law, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a new report Thursday.

The figure represents the worst-case scenario, CBO says, and the law could just as well increase the number of people with employer-based coverage by 3 million in 2019.

The best estimate, subject to a “tremendous amount of uncertainty,” is that about 3 million to 5 million fewer people will obtain coverage through their employer each year from 2019 through 2022.

The new report adds more detail to this week’s update of the law’s coverage provisions, which CBO released Tuesday. Compared to a year ago, the law is now anticipated to cover 2 million fewer people but cost $50 billion less over 10 years, after factoring penalties paid by individuals and businesses that don’t get or provide healthcare coverage.

Republicans immediately pounced after the new numbers came out because they appear to violate Obama’s pledge that people who like their health plans will be able to keep them. Last year, CBO’s best estimate was that only 1 million people would lose employer-sponsored coverage.

“President Obama’s string of empty promises is quickly becoming a disappointing trail of broken promises,” House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said in a statement. “He promised Americans that his overhaul of the health care sector would not jeopardize the health coverage of those who liked what they had. As nonpartisan analysts made clear today, millions of Americans will soon learn the hard way that Washington’s overreach into their health care decisions will result in sharp disruptions to their coverage and their care.”

I think this is important because conservatives are constantly being portrayed as “mean” in the media because we don’t embrace big government health care solutions. Everyone agrees on the problems, and everyone wants to help. The difference is that we conservatives think that health care is better when it is run profitably and is responsive to consumers and offers choice, low prices and high quality – like Amazon. We want privatized, market-driven health care with vouchers given to each citizen to purchase what they need, and to encourage them to save the rest for their old age while making healthier choices now.

The alternative is Department of Motor Vehicles health care – long lines, huge budget overruns, one-size-fits-all, lousy service and nowhere else to go for better better service. Why think that government is better at anything than the private sector? The private sector does everything better and cheaper and with better quality. So what if people get rich providing goods and services? As long as the customers are happy, and the children of the customers don’t get stuck paying for huge trillion dollar cost overruns.

Here are a few articles that I have been using lately to inform people about the problems with Obamacare:

News

NHS horror story: neglected patient calls police for water, dies of thirst

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I spotted this UK Daily Mail story on my FB feed from bioethicist Wesley J. Smith.

Excerpt:

A young patient who died of dehydration at a leading teaching hospital phoned police from his bed because he was so thirsty, an inquest heard yesterday.

Officers arrived at Kane Gorny’s bedside, but were told by nurses that he was in a confused state and were sent away.

The keen footballer and runner, 22, died of dehydration a few hours later.

A coroner had such grave concerns about the case that she referred it to police.

Yesterday an inquest was told how Mr Gorny died after blunders and neglect by ‘lazy and careless’ medical staff at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, South London.

His mother Rita Cronin, a civil servant told Westminster Coroner’s Court that staff tutted at her and repeatedly refused to listen to her concerns that her son hadn’t been given vital medication.

At one point he became so desperate and upset that staff sedated and restrained him – and on the night before his death, his mother said, he was not checked on by medical staff, despite being in a room on his own.

[…]When he arrived at hospital for the hip operation, nurses assured the family they would give him his medication and said: ‘Don’t worry, he’s in good hands – we’ll look after him.’

But, despite the repeated reminders and insistence by both Mr Gorny and his family, staff failed to give him the tablets and he became severely dehydrated after being refused water.

In an interview with the Daily Mail in 2010, Miss Cronin said of the nurses who treated him: ‘They were lazy, careless and hadn’t bothered to check his charts and see his medication was essential. He was totally dependent on the nurses to help him and they totally betrayed him.’

Yesterday Miss Cronin told the inquest she received a distressed phone call from her son on May 27, 2009, in which he told her he’d called the police because he was so desperate for a drink.

[…]She then went to the hospital where she found him ‘confused and angry’, shouting at staff and behaving in an uncharacteristically abusive manner.

Despite this, one doctor asked if he was ‘coming off the booze’ and another asked if he was ‘always like this’. Miss Cronin said: ‘He sounded really, really distressed. He said “They won’t give me anything to drink”. ‘He also said “I’ve called the police. You better get here quickly: they’re all standing around the bed getting their stories straight”.’

When Miss Cronin arrived, she recalled: ‘They weren’t doing anything. They seemed out of their depth. It felt like the two locum doctors were nervous about calling anyone more senior than them.’

The inquest heard Mr Gorny was restrained by security guards and sedated with strong medication to calm him down. Later, he was put into a side room and left alone.

Miss Cronin said she sat in his room for three hours the night before he died without a single nurse checking on him or giving him vital medicine.

Dr. Smith also linked to this article where doctors have to prescribe water to patients in order to ensure that they do not die of dehydration in the NHS. This is what you get in a secular socialist system of health care where you pay through your working life and then when you ask for health care, you get in line, because they spent your money buying votes from people with “free” breast implants, sex changes, abortions, contraceptives and IVF.  Is that health care?

The benefit of the free enterprise system with respect to health care is that you keep your money in your pocket and you pay for quality health care at the best price. No one complains about Amazon.com, they only complain about the Department of Motor Vehicles. There is a reason for that. Amazon has to compete for your business, but government monopolies don’t. You have no choice when it comes to government monopolies. They don’t care. They get paid anyway.

Commentary

A simple introduction to Obamacare

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Here’s a helpful article from the UK Daily Mail that Dina sent me that explains the basics for people who are wondering what all the fuss is about. The author Diana Furchtgott-Roth has a B.A. and M.A. in economics, the latter from Oxford University.

Excerpt:

Although the Court has upheld PPACA, the law as currently structured is unworkable. This is because the penalty for not signing up for insurance, which is now termed a tax, $750 a year, is too small relative to the cost of health care coverage, about $5,500 a year.

Since insurance companies are required to take all applicants, healthy people, especially the young, will pay the tax rather than buy the insurance. This makes the pool of insured individuals sicker and more costly, on average, and their premiums will be higher. With higher premiums, more people will choose to pay the tax, and a downward spiral will unfold.

Unless Congress raises the tax to the level of premiums, the system will have to be replaced with a public option.

[…] It is clear that PPACA has severe economic costs, and is at least partially responsible for the slow economic recovery, and needs to be replaced.

PPACA raises employment costs by requiring employers to offer qualifying insurance coverage or pay a penalty—now a tax.  Because this requirement will apply, starting in 2014, to firms with more than 49 full time employees, it will discourage the hiring of full-time workers, especially low-wage hands whose work can more easily be divided among part-timers. Firms with over 49 workers will have to pay $2,000 a year for each employee without qualifying coverage.  Expanding to 50 workers would, in 2014, cost a firm $40,000 a year (the first 30 workers are exempt).

PPACA encourages employers to substitute part-time for full-time workers to avoid the tax. A firm with 60 employees would pay a tax of $60,000 a year if it did not have qualifying health coverage. But if it put 11 workers on part-time, and hired another 11 part-timers, it would not owe a tax, because it would have 49 full-timers. The full-timers who become part-timers and lose salary and benefits would be worse off.

PPACA raises health insurance costs by requiring an overly-generous plan. In order to be counted as a ‘qualified benefit plan’ and be able to sell health insurance in the exchange, an underwriter must cover routine health care—such as check-ups, and contraceptives—without copayment. It must also cover maternity care, mental health and substance abuse.

Unfortunately, plans that encourage shopping around, such as catastrophic plans with large deductibles combined with health savings accounts, where people can save tax-free for medical care, are prohibited by PPACA for Americans ages 30 and above.

A health insurance system needs to be accessible, portable, and inexpensive, just like other forms of insurance.

[…]The same should be true of health insurance. Those who can’t afford it should be offered refundable tax credits, or vouchers, to purchase it themselves, so they can have the same choice of doctors and services as other Americans.

Just as in other forms of insurance, America can lower costs by reducing unnecessary regulation, increasing competition and patient choice. Patients should decide what type of coverage meets their needs, not be told what they must purchase by the federal government.

For example, if some people want their children to be on their insurance plan until age 26, or age 28, or age 30, they should be able to purchase plans that cover their children, at a price. Others who do not have children, or who do not want their children on their plans, should not have to pay the costs.

How would such a system operate?

Congress could give all Americans tax credits for buying health insurance; allow plans to compete over state lines; and set up state risk pools to insure those with uninsurable conditions.

What an excellent article. Her suggestions are also good, and the Republicans have offered a plan to achieve those goals: Paul Ryan’s health care plan.