Is the senate version of the HCR bill a "good start" for healthcare reform?

[coti]

It seems like this is the point of contention between supporters and non-supporters of the bill.

Choose 1, 2 or 3

#1- Yes, it's a good start. It will insure millions of people and if we don't do it now the issue may not come up again for many years. Plus, we can always build on the bill later.

#2- No, it's NOT a good start, dammit- it makes things worse! That's WHY I'm against it. It further entrenches the private insurance industry in our healthcare system and Washington, while only imposing weak regulations, and will only make it more difficult down the line to make the reforms we truly need to make. Any lives saved in the short term will be lost over the long-term, as costs keep inflating, trying to undue the damage caused when we gave the private insurance industry so much power over our country's health.

#3- I still don't know.

[sandnsea]

1. If it saves one life...

For years that was the liberal argument to Republicans for passing social legislation. Some people need to remember those words and how many times they used to say them.

[coti]

2. Will it save one life? Or will it cost more lives?

Isn't this just doubling down on the system we already have, but with some weak regulations thrown in?

After strengthening the private insurance industry to the tune of trillions of dollars, won't it be only more difficult in the future to pass legislation beginning some form of government insurance plan to bring costs down to a level that will make insurance accessible to most Americans?

And won't that, in the long run, cost more lives?

[quiller4]

3. The limitation on profit contained is hardly "weak". The only hurdle in

strengthening regulation in future years is convincing legislators that voters will support them in those votes. The seeds for public option are planted in the legislation with the provision that permits states to set up public options. It is worth noting that is how the Canadian system began with national legislation that permitted provinces to set up public systems. Saskatchewan set up such a system than became the model for the nation.

[coti]

4. I'm guessing you're talking about the 80/85 MLR, and it's actually both weak and counterproductive.

To begin with, the MLR is weak in that while, in theory, 80% or 85% of insurance companies' revenue going to health costs is better than the 70-73% they had before, that increase is not enough to put a significant dent in the billions of premium dollars being wasted to corporate profits and other inefficiences, especially considering the millions of new, mandated policyholders they are gaining.

But that's not the weakest aspect of the MLR. The weakest aspect is that, as a tool, the method of regulation that the MLR uses is open to an incredible amount of manipulation. As noted in Cenk's interview with RJ Eskow, corporations have very clever accountants who, depending on who they're talking to, can make it look as if they're losing money or just as well like they're stacking up millions of dollars by the hour. It's all in how their costs are compiled and they will make sure everything even conceivably describable as a "health" cost goes into that 80/85% column- at least when talking to the Feds.

That leads me to the most dangerous part of the MLR, the part of it that makes it counterproductive: That ratio is a cost-plus mechanism, meaning that the more the insurance companies spend on health costs, the higher their profits can be. When you consider that corporations are for-profit, money-hungry machines, that sounds like a recipe for increasing healthcare costs even faster than they were increasing before.

This form of regulation isn't effective. It's actually pretty dangerous.



As for your other points-

Polls show that voters are already on the side of the public option- about 60% of them support it. Yet we still can't get the votes. Why? Because of the industry money corrupting our legislators through lobbying. The flow of that money into our politician's pockets will actually increase if this bill passes.

As for the opt-in provision, it's not clear to me whether that is in the bill yet. I heard it come up as a possibility to be added in conference. But that only brings up another concern- if they have to put in an opt-in clause, does that mean that without appropriate opt-in clauses states will be pre-empted by the legislation from beginning their own single-payer programs?

[TheKentuckian]

5. Psst...hen you leave an industry with an anti-trust exemption

that means you don't intend to do much regulating.

We got rolled.

[coti]

6. That's a pretty good way of putting it. nt