Krugman's latest article is titled "Health Care Realities." So you know it's going to be a side splitter since Krugman's idea of reality is government=good. And this article doesn't disappoint in the least. Krugman starts off...
At a recent town hall meeting, a man stood up and told Representative Bob Inglis to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.” The congressman, a Republican from South Carolina, tried to explain that Medicare is already a government program — but the voter, Mr. Inglis said, “wasn’t having any of it.” It’s a funny story — but it illustrates the extent to which health reform must climb a wall of misinformation.
That story isn't funny as much as it is sad. The man has no idea what he's talking about really. Government run schools will do that to people. Krugman is dead on with his last sentence, though. Health care reform has a long, tough road ahead, and one that only gets longer and tougher the more people listen to Krugman himself spew nonsense on the topic and treat it as gospel truth.
It’s not just that many Americans don’t understand what President Obama is proposing; many people don’t understand the way American health care works right now. They don’t understand, in particular, that getting the government involved in health care wouldn’t be a radical step: the government is already deeply involved, even in private insurance.
The reason most people don't understand what Obama is proposing is because there are about 534205920359 different versions of the same bill floating around the hill so nothing is finalized yet. There are still special interests looking to be taken care of. And another reason no one understands anything is because they get most of their news from rags such as the New York Times. Here's where the article gets good.
And that government involvement is the only reason our system works at all.
Ummmm, what? Doesn't Krugman realize he's undermining his own argument here? Only in Paul Krugman's world does government get 100% of the credit for things that go well, and 0% of the blame. Only this time he's saying we need reform but the system works, it just needs tweaked a bit. Without government's watchful eye, we would all have AIDS and a toothache at the same time and no way out.
The key thing you need to know about health care is that it depends crucially on insurance. You don’t know when or whether you’ll need treatment — but if you do, treatment can be extremely expensive, well beyond what most people can pay out of pocket. Triple coronary bypasses, not routine doctor’s visits, are where the real money is, so insurance is essential.
This part sort of makes sense, but then again you can replace "car care" with health care and the same reasoning applies. For some reason my car insurance isn't going through the roof. Here comes a doozy...
Yet private markets for health insurance, left to their own devices, work very badly:
Here's where I almost lost it and gave up. Someone answer me one question. When have private markets for health insurance EVER BEEN LEFT TO THEIR OWN *%*%#*%* DEVICES??????? How about NEVER!!!! Taxes, regulations, restrictions, licenses, rules, red tape, etc etc have been around for as long as anyone on this Earth has been alive. So how can we possibly know for sure that private markets don't work? This is a prime example of why Paul Krugman Is A Joke. No one should take him seriously.
insurers deny as many claims as possible, and they also try to avoid covering people who are likely to need care.
Why would any company insure someone who is sick or likely to become sick for the same price as someone who is healthy? Don't people like Krugman realize it's MORE EXPENSIVE to test for cancer, to have special doctors in to diagnose it, to house them, to care for them, to give them medicines, and to put effort into new ways of fighting it? That's reality, Paul. It's more expensive to treat someone who is sick than someone who is healthy. Like it or not, that's the way it is. You can't shift costs onto healthy people and claim you "saved" money. Someone WILL end up paying the higher cost. Unfortunately, that's the world we live in. If you are sick you will be more expensive to care for. Shifting costs around does not change this fact, nor can Krugman (or anyone else) alter the laws of supply and demand.
Horror stories are legion: the insurance company that refused to pay for urgently needed cancer surgery because of questions about the patient’s acne treatment; the healthy young woman denied coverage because she briefly saw a psychologist after breaking up with her boyfriend.
The companies have to cover all bases and cut costs where possible. After taxes and all necessary federal compliance costs are paid, there isn't much to go around for the employees.
And in their efforts to avoid “medical losses,” the industry term for paying medical bills, insurers spend much of the money taken in through premiums not on medical treatment, but on “underwriting” — screening out people likely to make insurance claims. In the individual insurance market, where people buy insurance directly rather than getting it through their employers, so much money goes into underwriting and other expenses that only around 70 cents of each premium dollar
actually goes to care.
That's funny, I just got paid today. And lo and behold I only got around 70 cents of each dollar for the hours I worked! Where did the rest go? Hmmm...
Still, most Americans do have health insurance, and are reasonably satisfied with it. How is that possible, when insurance markets work so badly? The answer is government intervention. Most obviously, the government directly provides insurance via Medicare and other programs.
Governments cannot directly provide anything. They must first steal it from a group of people and then "spread the wealth around" to others. If governments could directly provide something there would be no need for taxes.
Before Medicare was established, more than 40 percent of elderly Americans lacked any kind of health insurance. Today, Medicare — which is, by the way, one of those “single payer” systems conservatives love to demonize — covers everyone 65 and older. And surveys show that Medicare recipients are much more satisfied with their coverage than Americans with private insurance.
Surveys also show that Medicare is going broke, fast. Which is why...
Still, most Americans under 65 do have some form of private insurance.
Smart move by those folks. Don't rely on Uncle Sam for anything but a nice pleasant visit to get his money.
The vast majority, however, don’t buy it directly: they get it through their employers. There’s a big tax advantage to doing it that way, since employer contributions to health care aren’t considered taxable income. But to get that tax advantage employers have to follow a number of rules; roughly speaking, they can’t discriminate based on pre-existing medical conditions or restrict benefits to highly paid employees.
No surprise here. People demand more of something the less it costs. Less taxes means more money for health care.
And it’s thanks to these rules that employment-based insurance more or less works, at least in the sense that horror stories are a lot less common than they are in the individual insurance market. So here’s the bottom line: if you currently have decent health insurance, thank the government.
Yes, because without government we can't have decent car insurance, decent food, clothing, homes, electronics, haircuts, cars, salt shakers, or jobs.
It’s true that if you’re young and healthy, with nothing in your medical history that could possibly have raised red flags with corporate accountants, you might have been able to get insurance without government intervention. But time and chance happen to us all, and the only reason you have a reasonable prospect of still having insurance coverage when you need it is the large role the government already plays.
Again, where would we be without government? They are our provider and our main source of happiness. They know what's best. So what if they bankrupt us, their hearts are always in the right place, right?
Which brings us to the current debate over reform. Right-wing opponents of reform would have you believe that President Obama is a wild-eyed socialist, attacking the free market. But unregulated markets don’t work for health care — never have, never will.
Obama isn't just a wild-eyed socialist, he's the ring leader of a criminal orginization. Obama certainly is not, however, attacking the free market, because there is no free market currently. You can't attack what doesn't exist, Mr. Krugman. Again, making the claim that unregulated markets don't work is foolish, ignorant, and irrelevant in the context of American politics circa 2009.
To the extent we have a working health care system at all right now it’s only because the government covers the elderly, while a combination of regulation and tax subsidies makes it possible for many, but not all, nonelderly Americans to get decent private coverage. Now Mr. Obama basically proposes using additional regulation and subsidies to make decent insurance available to all of us. That’s not radical; it’s as American as, well, Medicare
The government does not cover the elderly. They steal money from people and then shift it to companies who provide this care.
Join us next week as Krugman looks to hit yet another all time low in rational thought!
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