Healthcare Hypocricy?

[Maggie]

Now “they” tell us, from the New York Times:

Critics Question Study Cited in Health Debate

[SubGod22]

Judge Permits Virginial Health Care Law Challenge to Continue

[Smooth007]

I heard that a local McD's restaurant owner has calculated that ObamaCare will cost him an additional $150K so he is simply going to stop adding employees.

Congrats, Mr. President.

As the law stands now, businesses with a large proportion of low income employees will ultimately make the business decision to discontinue health insurance for employees. The penalty for not providing health insurance for full time employees (over 30 hr's/week) of $2,000 is less than the penalty for not providing affordable insurance ($3,000). Unfortanetly, insurance will continue to not be affordable even at the bronze 60% packages.

Systematically, businesses similar to ours (restaurants) will have to drop insurane coverage and increase salaries to remain competitive in the market for quality managers. This will increase income and payroll taxes for the employee while decreasing after tax dollars.

In the long run, food prices will also have to increase. Just my take on the current situation.

PS - The law only requires insuring full time employees (over 30 hr's). Part time employees will become a premium candidate. Minimum wage employees should fully expect to have multiple 20 hr/week jobs if the legislation stays as currently written.

[ISASO]

Seems to me that the Progressive nanny statists would prefer that large numbers of people are under-employed. This helps them feel better about themselves as they find new and creative ways to take money away from rich people who don't deserve the nice things they have worked for.

The health-reform legislation is supposed to drive businesses away from providing benefits for their employees. That's now the government's job. You just pay them and they, in all their benevolence and expertise in the healthcare and insurance fields, will take care of everything. You just worry about making money, not how much they're taking and what they're doing with it. The fewer questions you ask, the better off we'll be.

So what if the price of food goes up, the government is here to help.
So what if the price of gas goes up, the government is here to help.
So what if the price of electricity goes up, the government is here to help.
Just don't worry, the government is here to help.

[SubGod22]

And the nine most terrifying words in the english language are what again?...

[ISASO]

And the nine most terrifying words in the english language are what again?...

"I'm Obama and richfolk will pay for everything now"?

Definition: richfolk = anyone who has a fulltime job

[SubGod22]

Approximately 70% of Missouri voters reject gov't mandated healthcare.

I know from a legal point this may not mean much, but I think it says quite a bit. I believe Arizona and Oklahoma voters will have a similar vote in November.

[Maggie]

I meant to post this the other day but Ezra Klein actually had a pretty good post, it is not perfect but good, on the philosophical differences between conservatives and progressives when it comes to entitlement reform.

Kevin Drum took aim at Rep. Paul Ryan's admirers last night, arguing that Ryan's vaunted honesty about spending cuts simply obscures a different sort of vagueness. "His plan merely caps various kinds of spending: there's a cap on Medicare, a cap on Social Security, and a cap on domestic spending," Drum writes. "Reduced to its policy essence, that's it."

But that's how single-payer works, too: It puts health-care spending into a single budget and caps its increase. That's how the Clinton plan worked, what with its global budgets and premium caps. That's how Jacob Hacker's plan for the Economic Policy Institute worked: Inside the exchanges, spending could only grow by GDP plus one percentage point. That's how the strong public option would've worked, as payment could only grow using Medicare's formula, which doesn't permit the cost increases of the private market.

At the end of the day, that's why Ryan's plan is a more honest entry into the debate. For a long time, liberals were talking about the sort of things you would actually have to do to get health-care spending under control while conservatives simply criticized the downsides of those intimidating reforms. And the main thing you have to do is get health-care spending into a single budget and then stick to it. You can do that by having the government set payment rates for providers or by having it set subsidies for individuals. Democrats were admitting this and thus taking on the burden of its problems, while Republicans were simply denying it.

Ryan's proposal is an admission of the reality. And so now we get to have a conversation. How would you prefer to see growth slowed? Medicare becomes a private program and you have to buy your own private insurance with checks that pay for less and less? Or Medicare puts you and 40 million of your closest demographic friends into a big pool and goes to the medical industry and says that if they want access to these millions and millions of customers, this is how much they can charge?

If we're going to ration -- and as even Ryan admits, we are -- how should we do it? Would you prefer us to say that if you can't afford something you need, then tough? Or would you prefer we put a lot of money into research so your doctor has a better idea of what'll actually help you, and thus we can start by cutting our unnecessary spending?

Eventually, we're going to have to make these decisions. And the sooner the debate is about these decisions, rather than one side confining their involvement to discrediting the other side's solutions, the sooner we will.

Link

[Maggie]

Approximately 70% of Missouri voters reject gov't mandated healthcare.

I know from a legal point this may not mean much, but I think it says quite a bit. I believe Arizona and Oklahoma voters will have a similar vote in November.

Three-quarters? It is astounding, really, in a country divided bitterly over so many things that the most popular and unifying issue may be repeal of ObamaCare’s central feature.

[Maggie]

I think this story is sort of “interesting”:

Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and deficit, and instead stressing a promise to "improve it."

Dems retreat on health care cost pitch

Well okay then; you don’t say. But someone help me out here, I am very confused. It was my understanding that this bill was supposed to save the Democrats from electoral ruin. They said it was “historic” and it was going to be the final opportunity to address the issue. It was ObamaCare and now the Democrats, on the brink of an electoral wipe-out, are begging the electorate not to throw them out because they rammed it through. Their pitch? We’ll change ObamaCare. Seriously, it has come to this? How stupid do they think people are?

So I guess now the contest is between the one party, which jammed ObamaCare through despite the public’s wishes, but now is now apparently experiencing some sort of election-eve conversion, and the other, which opposed it all along and is promising to repeal it. Okey-dokey.

But wait: If the bill is as bad as everyone now concedes it is and it won’t do what was promised (what the Democrats promised – to be more accurate), what exactly is the rationale for re-electing the Democrats, who can no longer make a credible argument that it is a good bill, let alone an historic one?

[RoyalShock]

And guess what's beginning to occur around corporate workplaces? That's right, next year's health plan estimates in preparation for ObamaCare. I've already heard anecdotal evidence that premiums and co-pays are jumping big time.

[SubGod22]

And guess what's beginning to occur around corporate workplaces? That's right, next year's health plan estimates in preparation for ObamaCare. I've already heard anecdotal evidence that premiums and co-pays are jumping big time.

Does that surprise anybody?

[Maggie]

And guess what's beginning to occur around corporate workplaces? That's right, next year's health plan estimates in preparation for ObamaCare. I've already heard anecdotal evidence that premiums and co-pays are jumping big time.

All true and just in time for the 2010 elections. On a political level this is really delicious.

Didn’t the President famously say something along the lines of if Republicans want to fight about the legislation he has passed that it would be a fight he would welcome?

[Smooth007]

The major changes in the law will be implemented in 2014. The premise behind lowering premiums is due to increased competition and the SHOP exchanges. Why would you expect the current rates to drop (or remain steady) when exchanges have not been developed?

No need for anecdotal evidence, factually premiums are rising steadily due to our current crappy system. Nothing to do with the Health Care reform act.

[SubGod22]

The major changes in the law will be implemented in 2014. The premise behind lowering premiums is due to increased competition and the SHOP exchanges. Why would you expect the current rates to drop (or remain steady) when exchanges have not been developed?

No need for anecdotal evidence, factually premiums are rising steadily due to our current crappy system. Nothing to do with the Health Care reform act.

Isn't this modled after what they did in MA? Costs continue to rise there, why am I to believe that if done on an even larger scale it'll change?