Post by agito on Feb 15, 2010 21:33:19 GMT -6
newt gingrich posted an op-ed in the WSJ, and like an idiot in a windtunnel, I'm going to assume reason has some effect.
link here.
'If you have a better idea, show it to me." That was President Barack Obama's challenge two weeks ago to House Republicans regarding health-care reform. He has since called for a bipartisan forum, not to start over on health reform but to "move forward" on the "best ideas that are out there."
The best ideas out there are not those that were passed by the House and Senate last year, which consist of more spending, more regulations and more bureaucracy...
-emphasis mine
Hold up a minute, we are getting off to a bad start. Is it possible for congress to do anything that will result in less regulation? (well- in banking... but i digress). Congress is there to put laws on the books, the only people who don't add regulations are the ones not doing anything at all. More on that in a bit. It also follows that if you have more regulations, you are going to need more people to enforce them so there is going to be more bureaucracy. And that spending bit? It seems most of newts ideas involve tax cuts, which have the same effect on the budget as spending. So while democrats are more "spending, regulation, and bureacracy" republicans are more "deficits, and something we are pretending isn't regulation or bureacracy, (but if we do a really good job crafting it, the insurance companies will go back to paying us more money to avoid whatever the hell it was we just passed". Now that we know where everyone stands before we've even started on the policy- lets make haste for the policy.
If the president is serious about building a system that delivers more quality choices at lower cost for every American, here's where he should start:
• Make insurance affordable. The current taxation of health insurance is arbitrary and unfair, giving lavish subsidies to some, like those who get Cadillac coverage from their employers, and almost no relief to people who have to buy their own. More equitable tax treatment would lower costs for individuals and families. Many health economists conclude that tax relief for health insurance should be a fixed-dollar amount, independent of the amount of insurance purchased. A step in the right direction would be to give Americans the choice of a generous tax credit or the ability to deduct the value of their health insurance up to a certain amount.
I have a simple math problem for newt. In the case of anthem, insurance premiums are up to $20,000 per year. If a person makes 40,000 per year 1099 (because they are an individual), paying $10,000 in taxes, what does the government have to do to make things equitable with one of these so called cadillac insurance policy holders?
I'll give you a hint, it involves SPENDING. The only real solution, as many economists have no doubt told newt but he didn't want to mention, is to tax cadillac policies as income for the beneficiaries. That at least would put individuals on equal footing with their corporate counterparts in terms of the tax realm. But it wouldn't do anything for an individuals purchasing power.
• Make health insurance portable. The first step toward genuine portability—and the best way of solving the problems of pre-existing conditions—is to change federal policy. Employers should be encouraged to provide employees with insurance that travels with them from job to job and in and out of the labor market. Also, individuals should have the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines. When insurers compete for consumers, prices will fall and quality will improve.
And how exactly are employers going to be encouraged "to provide employees with insurance that travels with them from job to job"?
I'll give you a hint, it involves REGULATION
and to enforce those regulations? BUREAUCRACY
WoW- the Republican plan is so much different from the democratic plan! but i digress-
"allowing individuals to purchase insurance across state lines" really means "allow insurance providers to pick the state with the few regulations and sell from there" which would effectively federalize the whole system, but instead of having elected officials in charge, you have corporate bureaucrats in charge.
• Meet the needs of the chronically ill. Most individuals with chronic diseases want to be in charge of their own care. The mother of an asthmatic child, for example, should have a device at home that measures the child's peak airflow and should be taught when to change his medication, rather than going to the doctor each time.
Did newt just make a machine up out of thin air? ... Better yet, if the machine actually does exist, can newt make the SPENDING money for the machine up out of thin air?
Having the ability to obtain and manage more health dollars in Health Savings Accounts is a start.
Is a start for what? buying that machine or learning how to use it?
A good model for self-management is the Cash and Counseling program for the homebound disabled under Medicaid. Individuals in this program are able to manage their own budgets and hire and fire the people who provide them with custodial services and medical care. Satisfaction rates approach 100%, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Why do I care what the robert wood johnson foundation thinks? And if this program is so good, tell us more about it. My chief concern though is that newt gives us an anecdote about a mother caring for her young son, but most of the chronically ill are elderly, and won't be taking care of themselves.
We should also encourage health plans to specialize in managing chronic diseases instead of demanding that every plan must be all things to all people. For example, special-needs plans in Medicare Advantage actively compete to enroll and cover the sickest Medicare beneficiaries, and stay in business by meeting their needs. This is the alternative to forcing insurers to take high-cost patients for cut-rate premiums, which guarantees that these patients will be unwanted.
Or maybe the simplest solution is to let the chronically ill join medicare regardless of age.
• Allow doctors and patients to control costs. Doctors and patients are currently trapped by government-imposed payment rates.
And cut the insurance company out of the loop? what ends up happening is doctors will charge more on the insured patients, and the insurance companies lobby against this, enforcing standardized rates.
Under Medicare, doctors are not paid if they communicate with their patients by phone or e-mail. They do this to prevent collusion, i.e. FRAUD Medicare pays by task—there is a list of about 7,500—but doctors do not get paid to advise patients on how to lower their drug costs or how to comparison shop on the Web. In short, they get paid when people are sick, not to keep them healthy. I'll let UnLC handle that one.
So long as total cost to the government does not rise and quality of care does not suffer, doctors should have the freedom to repackage and reprice their services.
Newt's awesome, fighting for the right for doctors to work longer and harder for less...
And payment should take into account the quality of the care that is delivered. Once physicians are liberated under Medicare, private insurers will follow.
"Once physicians are liberated under Medicare, they will charge the rates enforced by private insurers."
-fixed!
• Don't cut Medicare. The reform bills passed by the House and Senate cut Medicare by approximately $500 billion. This is wrong. There is no question that Medicare is on an unsustainable course; the government has promised far more than it can deliver. But this problem will not be solved by cutting Medicare in order to create new unfunded liabilities for young people.
so.... raise taxes? we could always cut military spending.....
actually! lets just cover everyone in medicare through the VA system. Everyone is covered and military spending goes up!
I
am
a
fucking
genius
• Protect early retirees.By allowing anyone over 55 to voluntarily join medicare? More than 80% of the 78 million baby boomers will likely retire before they become eligible for Medicare. This is often the most difficult time for individuals and families to find affordable insurance. A viable bridge to Medicare can be built by allowing employers to obtain individually owned insurance for their retirees at group rates; allowing them to deposit some or all of the premium amount for post-retirement insurance into a retiree's Health Savings Account; and giving employers and younger employees the ability to save tax-free for post-retirement health.
oh- deficit spending and a giveaway to insurance companies.
• Inform consumers. by spying on them Patients need to have clear, reliable data about cost and quality before they make decisions about their care. But finding such information is virtually impossible. Sources like Medicare claims data (stripped of patient information) can help consumers answer important questions about their care. Government data—paid for by the taxpayers—can answer these questions and should be made public. - emphasis mine
will that be a tax or more deficit spending to go along with the invasive bureaucracy? Don't get me wrong, I think the information tracking like this is necessary and warranted, but this isn't exactly a republican idea.
• Eliminate junk lawsuits. Last year the president pledged to consider civil justice reform. We do not need to study or test medical malpractice any longer: The current system is broken. States across the country—Texas in particular—have already implemented key reforms that would go out the window if we allowed cross state competition in the manner you suggested earlier including liability protection for using health information technology or following clinical standards of care; caps on non-economic damages; loser pays laws; and new alternative dispute resolution where patients get compensated for unexpected, adverse medical outcomes without lawyers, courtrooms, judges and juries.
and how much lower is the cost burden in TX versus other states because of it? Seriously, lawsuit liabilities amount to only 55 million a year out of a $200 billion a year industry? congratulations, we just saved 5 cents on your insurance premium.
• Stop health-care fraud. Every year up to $120 billion is stolen by criminals who defraud public programs like Medicare and Medicaid, according to the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association. We can help prevent this by using responsible approaches such as enhanced coordination of benefits, you mean like single payer? third-party liability verification, but remember- it will be third-party liability verification stripped of personal data and electronic payment. at 2.9% fee per transaction to either visa or mastercard, because privatizing keeps expenses low!
• Make medical breakthroughs accessible to patients. Breakthrough drugs, innovative devices and new therapies to treat rare, complex diseases as well as chronic conditions should be sped to the market. We can do this by cutting red tape before and during review by the Food and Drug Administration and by deploying information technology to monitorthe quality of drugs and devices once they reach the marketplace. who no longer has the ability to sue because their rights of due process have been negotiated away with that whole lawsuit reform thing. Oh wait- no, they won't need a lawyer to sue because they will have REGULATIONS and BUREAUCRACY protecting them?
The solutions presented here can be the foundation for a patient-centered system. Let's hope the president has the courage to embrace them.
and after the patient is centered, the legs will be spread and the rest of us will be forced to watch what happens if/when we get sick
Mr. Gingrich is former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and founder of the Center for Health Transformation. Mr. Goodman is president and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis.
and thank you gentlemen for your time, but you have wasted mine
link here.
'If you have a better idea, show it to me." That was President Barack Obama's challenge two weeks ago to House Republicans regarding health-care reform. He has since called for a bipartisan forum, not to start over on health reform but to "move forward" on the "best ideas that are out there."
The best ideas out there are not those that were passed by the House and Senate last year, which consist of more spending, more regulations and more bureaucracy...
-emphasis mine
Hold up a minute, we are getting off to a bad start. Is it possible for congress to do anything that will result in less regulation? (well- in banking... but i digress). Congress is there to put laws on the books, the only people who don't add regulations are the ones not doing anything at all. More on that in a bit. It also follows that if you have more regulations, you are going to need more people to enforce them so there is going to be more bureaucracy. And that spending bit? It seems most of newts ideas involve tax cuts, which have the same effect on the budget as spending. So while democrats are more "spending, regulation, and bureacracy" republicans are more "deficits, and something we are pretending isn't regulation or bureacracy, (but if we do a really good job crafting it, the insurance companies will go back to paying us more money to avoid whatever the hell it was we just passed". Now that we know where everyone stands before we've even started on the policy- lets make haste for the policy.
If the president is serious about building a system that delivers more quality choices at lower cost for every American, here's where he should start:
• Make insurance affordable. The current taxation of health insurance is arbitrary and unfair, giving lavish subsidies to some, like those who get Cadillac coverage from their employers, and almost no relief to people who have to buy their own. More equitable tax treatment would lower costs for individuals and families. Many health economists conclude that tax relief for health insurance should be a fixed-dollar amount, independent of the amount of insurance purchased. A step in the right direction would be to give Americans the choice of a generous tax credit or the ability to deduct the value of their health insurance up to a certain amount.
I have a simple math problem for newt. In the case of anthem, insurance premiums are up to $20,000 per year. If a person makes 40,000 per year 1099 (because they are an individual), paying $10,000 in taxes, what does the government have to do to make things equitable with one of these so called cadillac insurance policy holders?
I'll give you a hint, it involves SPENDING. The only real solution, as many economists have no doubt told newt but he didn't want to mention, is to tax cadillac policies as income for the beneficiaries. That at least would put individuals on equal footing with their corporate counterparts in terms of the tax realm. But it wouldn't do anything for an individuals purchasing power.
• Make health insurance portable. The first step toward genuine portability—and the best way of solving the problems of pre-existing conditions—is to change federal policy. Employers should be encouraged to provide employees with insurance that travels with them from job to job and in and out of the labor market. Also, individuals should have the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines. When insurers compete for consumers, prices will fall and quality will improve.
And how exactly are employers going to be encouraged "to provide employees with insurance that travels with them from job to job"?
I'll give you a hint, it involves REGULATION
and to enforce those regulations? BUREAUCRACY
WoW- the Republican plan is so much different from the democratic plan! but i digress-
"allowing individuals to purchase insurance across state lines" really means "allow insurance providers to pick the state with the few regulations and sell from there" which would effectively federalize the whole system, but instead of having elected officials in charge, you have corporate bureaucrats in charge.
• Meet the needs of the chronically ill. Most individuals with chronic diseases want to be in charge of their own care. The mother of an asthmatic child, for example, should have a device at home that measures the child's peak airflow and should be taught when to change his medication, rather than going to the doctor each time.
Did newt just make a machine up out of thin air? ... Better yet, if the machine actually does exist, can newt make the SPENDING money for the machine up out of thin air?
Having the ability to obtain and manage more health dollars in Health Savings Accounts is a start.
Is a start for what? buying that machine or learning how to use it?
A good model for self-management is the Cash and Counseling program for the homebound disabled under Medicaid. Individuals in this program are able to manage their own budgets and hire and fire the people who provide them with custodial services and medical care. Satisfaction rates approach 100%, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Why do I care what the robert wood johnson foundation thinks? And if this program is so good, tell us more about it. My chief concern though is that newt gives us an anecdote about a mother caring for her young son, but most of the chronically ill are elderly, and won't be taking care of themselves.
We should also encourage health plans to specialize in managing chronic diseases instead of demanding that every plan must be all things to all people. For example, special-needs plans in Medicare Advantage actively compete to enroll and cover the sickest Medicare beneficiaries, and stay in business by meeting their needs. This is the alternative to forcing insurers to take high-cost patients for cut-rate premiums, which guarantees that these patients will be unwanted.
Or maybe the simplest solution is to let the chronically ill join medicare regardless of age.
• Allow doctors and patients to control costs. Doctors and patients are currently trapped by government-imposed payment rates.
And cut the insurance company out of the loop? what ends up happening is doctors will charge more on the insured patients, and the insurance companies lobby against this, enforcing standardized rates.
Under Medicare, doctors are not paid if they communicate with their patients by phone or e-mail. They do this to prevent collusion, i.e. FRAUD Medicare pays by task—there is a list of about 7,500—but doctors do not get paid to advise patients on how to lower their drug costs or how to comparison shop on the Web. In short, they get paid when people are sick, not to keep them healthy. I'll let UnLC handle that one.
So long as total cost to the government does not rise and quality of care does not suffer, doctors should have the freedom to repackage and reprice their services.
Newt's awesome, fighting for the right for doctors to work longer and harder for less...
And payment should take into account the quality of the care that is delivered. Once physicians are liberated under Medicare, private insurers will follow.
"Once physicians are liberated under Medicare, they will charge the rates enforced by private insurers."
-fixed!
• Don't cut Medicare. The reform bills passed by the House and Senate cut Medicare by approximately $500 billion. This is wrong. There is no question that Medicare is on an unsustainable course; the government has promised far more than it can deliver. But this problem will not be solved by cutting Medicare in order to create new unfunded liabilities for young people.
so.... raise taxes? we could always cut military spending.....
actually! lets just cover everyone in medicare through the VA system. Everyone is covered and military spending goes up!
I
am
a
fucking
genius
• Protect early retirees.
oh- deficit spending and a giveaway to insurance companies.
• Inform consumers. by spying on them Patients need to have clear, reliable data about cost and quality before they make decisions about their care. But finding such information is virtually impossible. Sources like Medicare claims data (stripped of patient information) can help consumers answer important questions about their care. Government data—paid for by the taxpayers—can answer these questions and should be made public. - emphasis mine
will that be a tax or more deficit spending to go along with the invasive bureaucracy? Don't get me wrong, I think the information tracking like this is necessary and warranted, but this isn't exactly a republican idea.
• Eliminate junk lawsuits. Last year the president pledged to consider civil justice reform. We do not need to study or test medical malpractice any longer: The current system is broken. States across the country—Texas in particular—have already implemented key reforms that would go out the window if we allowed cross state competition in the manner you suggested earlier including liability protection for using health information technology or following clinical standards of care; caps on non-economic damages; loser pays laws; and new alternative dispute resolution where patients get compensated for unexpected, adverse medical outcomes without lawyers, courtrooms, judges and juries.
and how much lower is the cost burden in TX versus other states because of it? Seriously, lawsuit liabilities amount to only 55 million a year out of a $200 billion a year industry? congratulations, we just saved 5 cents on your insurance premium.
• Stop health-care fraud. Every year up to $120 billion is stolen by criminals who defraud public programs like Medicare and Medicaid, according to the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association. We can help prevent this by using responsible approaches such as enhanced coordination of benefits, you mean like single payer? third-party liability verification, but remember- it will be third-party liability verification stripped of personal data and electronic payment. at 2.9% fee per transaction to either visa or mastercard, because privatizing keeps expenses low!
• Make medical breakthroughs accessible to patients. Breakthrough drugs, innovative devices and new therapies to treat rare, complex diseases as well as chronic conditions should be sped to the market. We can do this by cutting red tape before and during review by the Food and Drug Administration and by deploying information technology to monitor
The solutions presented here can be the foundation for a patient-centered system. Let's hope the president has the courage to embrace them.
and after the patient is centered, the legs will be spread and the rest of us will be forced to watch what happens if/when we get sick
Mr. Gingrich is former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and founder of the Center for Health Transformation. Mr. Goodman is president and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis.
and thank you gentlemen for your time, but you have wasted mine