Monday, August 7, 2017

A Centrist Health Plan

Apparently Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (moderate Democrat) and Ohio Gov. John Kasich (moderate Republican) made an interesting pitch on "Face the Nation" Sunday.  Eric at MP discusses it here.




Unfortunately with so many citizens living in their Far Left or Far Right bubbles...  I really do not know how this would happen...

13 comments:

Laurie said...

Minnpost link that works

John said...

Thanks for the heads up. I fixed the link.

Sean said...

Get back to me when they have a plan. Otherwise, this is just burnishing their respective brands.

John said...

""However the vast majority of American citizens are covered by companies like mine or the public entities like Medicare / Medicaid." That's very true, but the choice or negotiating power belongs to my employer, not me. When I did not have employer-provided coverage, I still had options, but for my situation (married, 3 children), the practical economics limited my choices dramatically." RB

"As I noted somewhere here, most of my self unemployed friends had more cost effective choices before ACA than they do now.

The unfortunate reality is that healthcare is expensive for many reasons. For my spouse, 3 kids and myself the cost is about $25,000 / year, and we are all relatively healthy. I pick up about $6,000 in premiums and $3,000 in out of pocket expenses... Which means my company covers about $16,000...

So who should pay for our choice to have 3 children and incur all the expenses?

Other citizens or ourselves?

ACA and Medicaid clearly says that other citizens are responsible for paying the bills incurred through other people's choices, which makes no sense to me.
" G2A

"Taxpayers subsidize a lot of other people's choices:

Choose to live in automobile-dependent suburbs? I'm paying for your roads.

Choose to be a farmer, even when market forces would dictate otherwise? Some $25 billion in tax money goes to farmers every year.

Choose to have a tax-exempt church? Someone else is paying for the fire and police protection. " RB


"Now I agree that the government does many things for the public good. Provide roads for shipping product and personnel. Provide incentives to promote certain behaviors by farmers. Provide benefits for charitable institutions.

But subsidizing the healthcare bills for an individual is like providing them with food and a place to live...Our society has typically insisted that people strive to be self sufficient and a key part of this is ensuring an individual experiences the natural consequences of their choices.

1. If you are a high school drop out, single with 3 kids your life is going to be pretty rough...
2. If you work hard, get good grades, get married, continue learning and have a couple of kids you will likely do pretty well in the USA. (many of my in-laws are in this boat)

Please remember that this is not a bad thing... We as a society prosper when individuals and families pursue path number 2...

What you are recommending is that people in Path 2 continue to pay more and carry more of the burden for people on Path 1. I often compare it to if I charged Child 2 a wealth tax because she was making good choices so I could give Child 1 some extra money each month... " G2A

Laurie said...

The MP link in this post had very little in the way of actual ideas about what to do about healthcare. This Vox article offers more specific proposals:

Top Democratic, Republican health experts agree on this plan to fix Obamacare

jerrye92002 said...

Sorry, but all of these "moderate" or "mend it don't end it" plans suffer from the same basic flaw, which is that all decisions about who gets health care, of what kind, at what cost to whom, should NEVER get made in Washington, DC. Almost all of it should be made by individuals, with the states setting up high-risk pools or public health clinics or subsidized insurance programs for the poor, among which individuals still get to make the decisions.

Anonymous said...

Where should health care decisions be made?

Legislators and congress people work for me. I am on a first name basis with a couple of them. They return my calls. I don't think I have ever met a health care CEO. I don't know that a health care CEO is in anyway personally accountable to me. The people he is accountable to, have adverse interests to mine. Why should he be the one to make health care choices for me?

--Hiram

jerrye92002 said...

Congresscritters work for you? Do they lose their jobs or salary if you, individually, are unhappy with them? CEOs, on the other hand, cannot afford to alienate customers. He is accountable to the customer base.

Look at it another way: polls, valid or otherwise, found Obamacare unpopular with more than 1/2 the public when it was passed. Does that sound like they are "representing" the public's interest?

John said...

Change resistance is a normal human condition...

Of course, people feared ACA until they got used to it.

Now they fear losing it...

jerrye92002 said...

"Fear losing it," or just "change resistance" in the other direction? I consider it the result of a massive propaganda effort by Democrats, whose "change resistance" is based on never admitting a mistake no matter how massive. It threatens their intellectual and moral superiority, as well as their electoral chances, if Big Government cannot solve Big Problems.

John said...

I think all those new folks receiving Medicaid, ACA subsidies, actually having full range coverage, having reasonable cost coverage even though they have pre-existing conditions, etc disagree with you.

jerrye92002 said...

I think all those who cannot afford to buy or to use their "insurance," subsidized or not, those who lost plans they liked, those paying a penalty rather than being insured, those left uninsured despite the promises, and those paying for those subsidies, probably constitute a larger group. Neither of these groups come anywhere close to a majority. A question like "do you want ACA repealed" gets you a different answer than "do you want Obamacare repealed." What does that tell you? When even Democrats now admit Obamacare could be "improved," what does that tell you?

Polls mostly reflect what we've been told, not what we KNOW. Policy should be based on what we know.

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