Oct
31
The Public Option Will Bring Competitiveness To The Health Insurance Industry
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Not so much.
Ezra Klein, a liberal policy wonk and strong advocate for health reform legislation points out that the CBO scoring of Pelosi’s new public option will result in more expensive insurance for members than those who get insurance privately:
I’ve been saying that a public option with negotiated rates probably won’t post much of a price advantage against private insurers. But according to the Congressional Budget Office (pdf), that’s an overoptimistic take. The public option’s premiums, they say, will actually be more expensive than private insurance:
He quotes the CBO:
Roughly one-fifth of the people purchasing coverage through the exchanges would enroll in the public plan, meaning that total enrollment in that plan would be about 6 million.
That estimate of enrollment reflects CBO’s assessment that a public plan paying negotiated rates would attract a broad network of providers but would typically have premiums that are somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private plans in the exchanges. The rates the public plan pays to providers would, on average, probably be comparable to the rates paid by private insurers participating in the exchanges. The public plan would have lower administrative costs than those private plans but would probably engage in less management of utilization by its enrollees and attract a less healthy pool of enrollees.
In other words, because the Public Plan will insure those that other private insurers are cautious of (ie no pre-existing conditions), it’s insurance roll will be made up of more of the expensive sickly clientele than private insurers. Of itself it’s not necessarily a bad thing that those who struggled to get insurance privately are able to be covered by the public plan, but that’s not the bill of goods that the Democrats have been selling as Obama himself said:
To my progressive friends, I would remind you that for decades, the driving idea behind reform has been to end insurance company abuses and make coverage affordable for those without it. The public option is only a means to that end – and we should remain open to other ideas that accomplish our ultimate goal.
But the Public option no longer offers a price competitive offering and although it picks up the slack of the sick and unhealthy from private insurers (albeit only those in the exchange), it no longer offers anything to help on the price of insurance.
And on another health related issue, the new Pelosi bill deals with medical malpractice. But not in a good way:
buried in the 1,990 pages of the House health-care bill that was released on Thursday by Pelosi is a provision in Section 2531 that provides incentive payments to states that provide “an alternative medical liability law” that prevents or prompts “fair resolution” of disputes. However, no such incentive will be paid to any state that limits “attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages.”
Got to keep those trial lawyers sweet.
Oct
31
The GOP Civil War
Filed Under Uncategorized | 9 Comments
With recent events in upstate New York and the contest between the conservative Doug Hoffman and the republican candidate Dede Scozzafava, there has been sensationalist headlines and reporting (from both sides of the blogosphere) about a “civil war” within the Republican Party. I think it’s important to put that in context.
Certainly, there is potential the mother of all battles, although considering how the relative endorsements have panned out, that’s unlikely. After all, almost anyone who is anyone within the Republican and Conservative tradition have endorsed Hoffman whilst only Gingrich and the the NRCC have endorsed Scozzafava. But recent history also tells us that a political party can comfortably survive a traumatic and divisive electoral campaign and come out the other side smiling. I’m talking about the recent Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Obama.
Let’s take a moment to remember just how potentially nasty that very tight campaign became. Obama surrogates called Bill Clinton a racist (there’s a stuck record), Clinton partisans coalesced as P.U.M.A.’s (Party Unity My Ass), there was a lot of speculation that Hillary would contest the Democratic convention, and let us not forget that the controversy over Obama’s supposed Kenyan birth started with a Hillary supporter. And at the end of the day, despite over 36 million votes cast in the Democratic primary, Obama only won by just over 50,000 votes. Things don’t get more divided than that.
Bt here we are just over a year later, and there is no sign of that divisiveness. Clinton is serving in the administration, the Democratic party are almost universally united behind Obama and although there are some tensions between moderate and liberal Democrats, there are no competing parties trying to grab hold of power within the party.
So the point is, that temporary differing points of view does not necessarily translate into irreversible rifts, and particularly so for the GOP, a party that has many different ‘ideologies’ competing within, because the GOP has shown a remarkable ability over the last twenty or thirty years to show a united front despite the seemingly divergent opinions within.
Oct
31
Clever And Topical Facebook Spoof
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
By Slate com.
Well I liked it anyway.
Oct
31
OK, I’m Sold
Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Selling the city of Cleveland.
Oct
29
Open Post
Filed Under Videos | 92 Comments
John Fogerty and a classic Creedence song: Have You Ever Seen The Rain?
Unique voice, great song.
Oct
29
Obama’s Cash for Clunkers program cost about as much for the taxpayer as it would have done if the government had just given the cars away for free.
A total of 690,000 new vehicles were sold under the Cash for Clunkers program last summer, but only 125,000 of those were vehicles that would not have been sold anyway, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the automotive Web site Edmunds.com….The average rebate was $4,000. But the overwhelming majority of sales would have taken place anyway at some time in the last half of 2009, according to Edmunds.com. That means the government ended up spending about $24,000 each for those 125,000 additional vehicle sales.
Think of it as the Oprah Winfrey approach to government.
Oct
29
Gore Vidal on the Polanski rape story via Big Hollywood:
ATLANTIC: In September, director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland for leaving the U.S. in 1978 before being sentenced to prison for raping a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson’s house in Hollywood. During the time of the original incident, you were working in the industry, and you and Polanski had a common friend in theater critic and producer Kenneth Tynan. So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?
VIDAL: I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?
Vidal then goes on to blame Polanski’s legal problems on…
“an anti-Semitic and anti-fag thing … The idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little angel all in white, being raped by this awful Jew, Polacko…”
No Mr Vidal, the idea is that this girl was only thirteen years old and was forcibly sodomised. Hey, but maybe you’re just to intellectual to grasp such a simple concept.
Can anyone explain to me the point of these so-called intellectuals?
Oct
29
In Their Own Words
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A damning expose by Verum Serum about the real intentions behind the words of the Democratic Party. The Public option is a trojan horse to a single-payer health system.
Oct
28
The Money Pit
Filed Under American Politics | 2 Comments
GMAC, the financial wing of General Motors is seeking a third bailout from the Federal government:
GMAC Financial Services is seeking a third round of bailout funds from the U.S. Treasury Department, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
Talks over a fresh lifeline are at an advanced stage and the U.S. government could provide an additional $2.8 billion to $5.6 billion to the lender, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.
The U.S. has already injected $13.4 billion in the lender since December 2008 and owns a 35.4% stake in the firm, which is the primary lender to customers of General Motors and Chrysler.
If GMAC receives the additional taxpayer money, it would likely be in the form of preferred stock, the Journal said.
Isn’t there an economic law about the futility of throwing bad money after bad money? Of course, propping up General Motors is not an economic decision but a political one. When companies, trade unions Democratic Party donors are too big to fail.
Oct
28
The UN Continues To Demonstrate It’s Ga-Ga Land Alternate Reality
Filed Under American Politics, Foreign Policy | 14 Comments
Using drone strikes against terrorist enemies of the United States now apparently breaks international law because it carries out “summary executions”:
US drone strikes against suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan could be breaking international laws against summary executions, the UN’s top investigator of such crimes said.
“The problem with the United States is that it is making an increased use of drones/Predators (which are) particularly prominently used now in relation to Pakistan and Afghanistan,” UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions Philip Alston told a press conference.
“My concern is that drones/Predators are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law,” he said.
The United Nations is a laughable excuse as an organisation. Still, as an international war criminal, it’s probably time for Obama to hand back that peace prize.