Thursday, October 21, 2010

Health Insurance Reform Who Does Not Want It?

Tags: Why Rich Don't Want Health Insurance Reform, Great Depression, Why Financial Crisis, 1980-2008 Sacrificing Americans for Profit, Henry Paulson: On the Brink on how close we came to the Great Depression


Investors need to know the truth. If you want to get the really important news affecting your life, go to the business section of the New York Times or go to www.bloomberg.com or watch it on cable television or read Bloomberg Business Week. On Bloomberg TV this week they discussed what would happen if the Republicans take over the House to Healthcare?

On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System Secretary of the Treasury Henry M. Paulson Best book for truth on what happened Malcolm Gladwell of Outliers.


The House Appropriation Committee can stop funding Healthcare to sabotage it! They can stop primary care doctors from getting a raise to make it profitable to have Medicare Patients. Many doctors no longer take Medicare patients anymore.


What do the Republicans mean when they say Freedom? Of course it is not our freedom, but allowing Big Business including Wall Street and Corporations to continue their rape and pillage of the American people. They are taking advantage of the emotional and real hurt of the Financial Crisis which led to our feelings of helplessness and fear. Even with Franklin D. Roosevelt going all out to save the country's economy to help Americans, it took over ten years and World War II to fix the economy.


The same financial crisis starting with the 1929 Stock Market Crash which kept on going just like the EverReady Battery Bunny and President Hoover (Republican) allowing the banks to fail and cutting back help for the economy as the current Republicans propose was not over until World War II which provided lots of jobs and huge spending by our government. Not stimulating the economy more is the wrong thing to do because a depressed economy does not provide tax revenues so we go into further debt by borrowing more money from China!


I am now re-reading The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941, 1993, 2nd edition, by Robert S. McElvaine, which explains the Great Depression from the view of the elites and from the people. Most history books are written by the elites so often does not explain what happens to the people and just the mechanics of why it occurred. McElvaine does! All financial crashes occur when we spend more than we have. We borrow and borrow and hope someone buys our bonds.


He explains that we put too much of a burden of smaller business and lower paid workers with the Social Security payroll tax. This heavy burden on small business limits them from hiring more workers. When Greenspan in the mid-1980s doubled the deduction, it really hit workers badly. He cleverly did not consider not income limit for paying social security or even consider the effects of inflation.


McElvaine predicted a financial crisis will occur in the future, but he did not foresee that Bush would borrow money by not paying for both the Iraq War and Afghan War, went to war without adequate armor for the soldiers, had two tax cuts and Medicare Part D which he said was for everyone, but only the rich really benefited because he removed federal help to the states so state and local taxes increased. Over ten years the top 2 percent got $790 Billions in tax cuts. In 1980 the top one percent made 8 percent of all the nation’s income. In 2007, they confiscated 23 percent of all income.


A UK study showed that when the authors studied what makes countries stronger of the people in various countries, the one factor that proved determinative is difference between the top paid verses the pay of workers. The USA was the least satisfied of all countries.


The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, 2009, Foreword by Robert B. Reich.


The first paragraph of chapter one, The End of an Era:


“It is a remarkable paradox that, at the pinnacle of human material and technical achievement, we find ourselves anxiety-ridden, prone to depression, worried about how others see us, unsure of our friendships, driven to consume and with little or no community life.


Lacking the relaxed social contact and emotional satisfaction we all need, we seek comfort in over-eating, obsessive shopping and spending or become prey to excessive alcohol, psychoactive medicines and illegal drugs” … Cartoon: Words from the back seat of a limousine, the winner speaks out: “I just got a $200,000 tax cut. … I love this country! … But why is it such a Dump?!”


Both Reagan and the 2000-2008 Bush loved huge tax cuts for the rich and deficit spending because it would leave less and less for spending on making lives more comfortable from many Americans, or bottom 90 percent. Why do you think our roads, bridges, schools, sewers, electrical transmission and plants, etc. Are falling apart?


Jim Kawakami, Oct 21, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com


Health Insurance Who Does Not Want It? Jonathan Cohn New Republic, Oct 20, 2010, http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/78522/individual-mandate-penalty-why-oppose (Comment from Sane conservative publication. Jim)


The individual mandate continues to be health care reform's most controversial element, both in the courts and on the campaign trail. And many of the mandate's critics see this as a matter of principle. Requiring people to carry health insurance, they say, compromises individual freedom. I don't agree with that argument, but I understand it.

What I don't understand is why the requirement scares people without such strong libertarian instincts.

The vast majority of Americans have health insurance right now. What they want is a promise that the insurance will always be there, even if they lose their jobs, see their incomes fall, or develop serious medical conditions. And the same goes for many, quite probably most, people who don't have insurance. They, too, would like to have the financial protection against illness. They would like to know they can get medical care and not just the urgent kind. But they can't get health benefits right now because they don't have enough money or because they have pre-existing conditions.

There are obviously some people who don't have health insurance and, furthermore, don't want to have health insurance. They'd rather take their chances and pay out of pocket. But I think that's an awfully small group of people and, quite honestly, I don't think they have the right to make that choice--unless they feel like relinquishing their right, under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), to stabilizing or life-saving care in case of an emergency. This is the essence of the constitutional case for the mandate.

It's true that the Affordable Care Act does more than require people to get insurance. It sets minimum standards for what that insurance covers and requires community rating, under which insurers can't vary premiums based on an individual's propensity to get sick. This means that some people--mostly young, healthy men with cheap, bare-bones policies--may have to pay more to keep their benefits than they would otherwise pay. But plenty of these people are older and/or sicker, which means they should benefit from the new regulations. And that's not to mention the fact that, between subsidies and reforms designed to reduce the cost of care, many of these people will end up paying less for their insurance anyway.

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