Boehner says "FUBO"Follow

But the aspect of health care being discussed as holding back that feedback/recovery process was the passage of Obamacare. The question of passage of some other alternative health care reform is outside the scope of the discussion.

I'm *only* comparing the effects on employment from passing Obamacare versus not passing Obamacare. Period. Asking me what kind of health care system I'd prefer serves only to avoid the issue. Right now the answer is: "not passing Obamacare".

When we have a healthier economy, we can discuss alternative forms of health care reform. But in the context of the current lack of jobs creation, all that really matters is the impact the choice to pass Obamacare has had on that job creation. My assertion is that it has had a negative effect and thus is one of the problems affecting our economy.


Do you agree or disagree with that assertion?

To me, this is the issue at hand, as I haven't been a part of the discussion at all. Why are you working so hard to answer the question at hand?

I'm trying to get an answer to the question I asked. I don't think that's too much to ask really. And I fully believe that the counter-questions are simply a means of avoiding answering that question.


If you asked me if I agreed that hitting someone over the head with a hammer would make them mad, you would be right to think I was avoiding the question if I responded by asking you what you would prefer to hit that person over the head with.

Edited, Sep 6th 2011 6:22pm by gbaji

Don't you think that's kinda important though? Does this mean you have no position on job creation in the US? You'll have no opinion on Obama's speech this Thursday? That just seems a bit apathetic, especially considering you usually do have strong opinions on such things.




Unwittingly or not, you were helping him avoid my question. My opinion regarding alternative methods of health care really does have zero bearing on the discussion we're having. He asked it as a means of avoiding answering my question. You jumping in and "helping" him change the subject isn't really helping at all IMO.




Since you asked nicely!

The first part was more or less correct. The second part (where you expressed an opinion about the result) I clearly don't agree with. I believe that a health care system which does not depend on a middleman (or multiple middlemen) as the method of payment will result in higher availability of the most important basic medical services at a price that most everyone can afford. I believe that both insurance mechanisms *and* government provided health care create those artificial middleman conditions which drive costs up. And in the US we have *both*.

If you could just walk into a doctors office, get care, and then pay for the care directly it would be vastly less expensive. Insurance results in pricing health care out of reach for some people. To cover that gap, government steps into help pay for it for those people. But that results in even more costs. Which drives the price up. Which prices it out of reach of more people. Which necessitates the government stepping in to help more people. Repeat that cycle long enough and you have the ridiculous situation we find ourselves in right now.

And Obamacare didn't address a single part of that problem. All it did really was mandate higher coverage levels. Which means that it'll cost *more* to buy any health care at all. IMO, that's a step in the exact wrong direction. We should be removing mandates. We should let people buy only the health care they want or need instead of forcing them into an insurance model that covers everything. Do that, and costs will come down.


If we were talking about health care, that's what I would say. But we're not, are we? We're talking about factors affecting unemployment.

Thanks.

Well it takes two to tango. I blame the divided system in general more than any one party.



I thought long term costs in medicare and medicaid were gloomy. Linky



I never really supported Obamacare. I think the issue of whether or not you can make an citizen purchase goods from a private company is a sticky thorn that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.



I usually ask questions more from curiosity then to back a political standpoint. I have better access to liberal ideas these days then conservative ones, so you get more questions then the liberal folks here. Lucky you.

Edited, Sep 6th 2011 7:17pm by someproteinguy

The cash-and-carry model is already available in the "Quick Clinics" at some major drugstore chains and department stores. It costs about a hundred bucks for a nurse practitioner (not a doctor) to look at a minor cough or scrape. Anything worse than that and you'll be referred elsewhere. This is a service that doesn't accept insurance so they are doing exactly what Gbaji claims will be "vastly less expensive".

By "vastly less expensive", he means "the same cost as a typical uninsured office visit with a real doctor". Well, not counting the cost of the prescription without insurance. Some pharmacies practically give away general antibiotics as a goodwill gesture but God forbid you need a prescription painkiller or thyroid medication or heart medication or something.

Earlier in the year, circumstances put us between insurance and, naturally, the baby got sick. The cash bill was something like $65, though I think we got a fairly substantial discount because we were long term patients of the doctor. The desk did make clear though that cash patients got charged less than the total bill for insurance since there's less administrative work.

Of course, with insurance, I'm paying $25 regardless of whatever squabbles the doctor and Blue Cross want to get into.

I don't have an issue with a nurse practitioner in that I don't think they're incapable of prescribing amoxicillin for strep. But it's not a bona fide doctor so to pay essentially the same cash bill to see either is paying a premium to see a less overall qualified professional at the clinic.

Edited, Sep 7th 2011 8:51am by Jophiel

Except for the cost of the insurance itself, right? You, I, and everyone else paying into the health care system pays for that extra cost. The fact that your copay is lower than it would cost to just walk in directly and pay cash is irrelevant when discussing the total cost of the care. And that total cost is necessarily higher because of the use of an insurance mechanism.


Um... And the cash and carry costs are higher as well, even if you don't see it directly. When the costs of a good or service go up, everything related to the good or service increases in price. So if the proliferation of pay by insurance results in ballooning costs, some of those costs will affect people who are not paying via insurance. The costs of the materials, medicine, and salaries are all based on an inflated industry cost for the end product.


The problem, as I've explained dozens of times in the past, is that once you create sufficient layers of middlemen between the buyer of a product and the seller of a product, the cost of that product will increase. The layers themselves will cause that to happen, but also inefficiency and pure human greed will as well. If it costs you $25 for a doctor visit regardless of what the doctor does, why not have him use the most expensive materials and perform the most expensive tests? And if the doctor gets paid the same amount from his employer, why not do those more expensive things as well? And if you're the company selling the testing equipment and the medicine to the hospital, why not charge more money for it? And if the hospital can pass that cost on to the insurer, why not pay those higher costs? And if the insurer can pass that cost on to the employer, why not pay it as well? And the employer? Well, he kinda takes it in the shorts, but he can treat is as a benefit and count it as part of his employees compensation.

The end result is that even though the buyer thinks he's getting a good deal, he's really getting screwed. But because in many cases the true cost of the insurance he's buying is hidden from him, he doesn't realize it. And this process most definitely inflates the cost of all the goods and services in the entire health care industry. And that absolutely affects the amount of money it will cost even a cash and carry health care consumer.


Insurance only makes sense if the thing you are insuring is rare and prohibitively expensive. Most of the health care the average person receives over the course of their life is neither of those things. By paying for them via insurance though, we grossly inflate the costs not just to ourselves, but to everyone else as well. That's why health care has gradually become priced out of reach of so many people when it didn't use to be. Obamacare basically doubles down on the same failed model. It mandates additional costs that insurers must bear and instead of giving people more freedom to not have to use insurance for their health care does exactly the opposite by requiring that *everyone* pay into the system.


The cost effects of this should be very predictable.

Edited, Sep 7th 2011 5:40pm by gbaji

So if you could go to the doctor and pay in cash, it'd be way less expensive... Except for when you go to the doctor and pay in cash and it's not less expensive, except those times don't count. Gotcha.

And, yes, I'm aware that I'm paying for the insurance (duh?). I was shorthanding the experience. The insurance covers a wider range of things than that doctor's visit, for instance it meant that our bill for the recent childbirth and three days hospital stay was something like $250 or $500 (don't recall now) rather than the $13,000+ itemized on the hospital's bill.

Of course, what you dream about is a pipe dream anyway with no realistic means of implementing it (unless you're into some strict controls and regulations)

The sooner the old are in the ground, the sooner they can be converted to fossil fuels.

And how often is that? And why not just get insurance for those things that are more expensive? Wouldn't that make the total cost less?

The answer is: Yes, it would.



Removing strict controls and regulations really. You do understand that when the government mandates minimum coverage requirements for health insurance, and then mandates that employers with a certain number of full time employees must buy it, that this kinda does force people to buy that insurance, right?

It's amazing how often the correct solution is to simply *not* do things we're currently doing. Never occurs to you guys on the left though.