Did have a chance today to look over the 1000+ page HR 3200 Health Care Hogwash bill. And it certainly is hogwash.
I double-checked that thing where if you lose your current insurance coverage, you'll have to go with a government plan. Not quite so simple. What that particular clause defines is "grandfathered" coverage, and these are any policies that are currently existing. Any existing private health care plan will not be able to add anyone new after the Health Care Hogwash bill goes into effect, except dependents of existing policyholders. The insurance coverage of a grandfathered policy cannot change; premiums cannot change.
They will definitely die pretty quickly, especially when all of this administration's inflation hits later this year.
However, you can still buy insurance from a private insurance carrier.... So long as the policy has been vetted by the federal government and is approved by them. This will be done through a proposed Health Care Exchange.
As far as I can tell, the Health Care Exchange reviews all the policies available from all insurance carriers, categorizes them as Basic, Premium, and Family (or something like that) and then determines if the premiums are fair or not. The policies have to provide certain levels of care, including mental health services and addiction counseling. Apparently based upon the richness of their own life experiences, congress believes that treatment for lunacy and alcoholism are services everyone needs. Or perhaps they're simply trying to create demand.
You could buy other "non-approved" policies, but these won't really count to the feds as bona fide health insurance.
So suppose you or I want to buy insurance -- and we will have to. The Health Care Exchange will be the only place you can buy it. And based on how much they think you should pay, and how much coverage they think you need, they will assign you a policy. In fact, an individual without any insurance at all will be fined .02% of their annual income if they don't buy a policy. And, of course, the Health Care Hogwash bill does set up a "public option." Gee, I wonder how often the Health Care Exchange will recommend that? Or assign it.
You won't even have to think for yourself or make your own choices! Isn't that wonderful? Almost magical.... All you have to do is pay for it. And you will have to pay for it, write them a check, as well as pay more in payroll withholding. Both. Not one or the other, but both. Estimates indicate that in about 25 states, income taxes will go over 50% when the Health Care Hogwash bill goes into effect. Any private coverage you buy will be on top of that.
The Health Care Exchange is kinda like a government-run brokerage. You can get exactly the same services -- except for the standard-setting and compulsion to buy -- at the Internet sites of about a dozen insurance companies today. They list their competitors and display comparative rates. What they don't do is try to control the coverage that's offered and force you to buy -- that's what the Health Care Hogwash bill will bring to this particular table.
Reviewing other provisions of the bill, Health Care Hogwash doesn't actually provide any useful services whatsoever, except maybe to the illiterate, who can't read insurance policies themselves and/or lack the initiative to locate a broker. All the Health Care Hogwash bill does is regulate.
Under the Health Care Hogwash bill, the federal government will hire thousands of people -- many highly-qualified professionals -- to do nothing but stand around and watch how insurance companies, doctors, nurses, and hospitals operate and tell them how to do their jobs and how much they can charge for their services. That's all these highly-trained professionals will do.
This is one huge boondoggle. That's all it is. Congress has been looking for money to fund the Health Care Hogwash bill, but they aren't funding the cost of health care -- private insurance will still cover that. What they're looking to pay for is the huge and unwieldy bureaucracy the Health Care Hogwash bill sets up.
Basically the Health Care Hogwash bill will establish a monumental bureaucracy that will employ a huge number employees armed with a nearly unlimited capacity to intrude upon the private lives of citizens and even determine who will live and who will die.
On the upside, it will represent lots of jobs.... paid for by taxpayers.
All the Health Care Hogwash bill does is add another layer of bureaucracy on top of health care services. Like, you have doctors and hospitals and patients. That's all you really need to conduct a health care transaction. You can add insurance companies. They take 10% or so of costs, but supposedly "they're there when you need them," and so far, they've been optional.
With the Health Care Hogwash bill, you'll have doctors and hospitals and patients. And insurance companies. And the Health Insurance Exchange. And all the regulators. And all the people in Washington who oversee the regulators. And if you don't pay them, you'll be fined and/or go to jail.
The Health Care Hogwash bill establishes a pimple on the butt of the health care industry. In order to pay to sustain it, you either have to increase the price of health care or reduce the services available. Reducing the services available means: long, long waits to see a doctor; fewer hospital beds at fewer hospitals; fewer diagnostics; rationing.
There is no other way to put this crap into practice. There is simply no other way. Do the math yourself.
So.... thinking about all of this led me to thinking about the US Postal Service. I'm not going to knock the level of service the USPS provides. It's really pretty good. But let's look at the way this organization developed.
The USPS employs a lot of people, more than 1 million, though I don't have the exact number at hand. They are all unionized, covered by two or possibly three large unions. They make pretty good salaries, but the real plum is the pension benefits, that and the fact that, as one USPS manager told me once, "You'd just about have to set your boss on fire to be terminated." There are only a few valid reasons for firing a postal worker, like on-the-job violence and things like that. Really pretty severe things.
So about 15 years ago or so, with the rise of the digital age, a lot of the things the USPS has always done by hand, like sorting mail, became automated. The USPS didn't really need all the people it had on staff because more and more was being done by machine. But the USPS couldn't fire these people, either. And the pensions for retirees were really beginning to pile up.
The federal government loosened its ties to the USPS and made them into a sort of half-private organization. That is, the USPS is supposed to show a profit, but it never has. And the federal government is bound to bail them out. The USPS also has to get permission from the federal government to raise rates and things like that.
One reason the feds cut the USPS loose is because it didn't want the debt of postal worker pensions to show up on the federal deficit. That is, these pensions become the responsibility of the USPS, not the federal government -- at least on paper. The feds still cut the checks.
And funny thing... about 15 years ago, when all these changes were really being felt, something like three or four postal workers in separate and unrelated incidents just went nuts and started shooting people. It was weird. It happened so often, a comedian coined the phrase "going postal" to mean just going beserk and attacking people right and left.
My theory is this: The USPS couldn't fire anyone, but they needed to reduce the number of their employees. So they began harrassing postal workers. Nothing official that they could be sued for, just busting their chops for little things, making certain employees uncomfortable, nudging them toward quitting -- because under union rules, it's very hard to fire anyone. And those employees who were perhaps the oddest ducks among the crew went off. At one point or another, they went home and loaded up that .38 and came back shooting.
But you see, this is how federal employment works. The USPS may be a bit different now because it is under considerable pressure to pay its own costs. But every other federal agency doesn't much give a damn how much it spends on anything. In fact, the way a federal agency chief "grows" his or her little organization is to somehow finagle a bigger budget every year so s/he can go out and hire more people and expand operations.
OK.... So put this together with the pimple-on-the-butt nature of the proposed Health Care Hogwash Establishment. That agency is going to grow by leaps and bounds.... charged with safeguarding the nation's health and safety and all that other rot. And all employees will be unionized, I guarantee.
So do you really, really believe that the cost of health care is going to go down with the Health Care Hogwash bill (HR 3200)? And if people can't or won't pay any more in taxes to fund it, where do you think the feds are going to squeeze out the costs (to use Pazzo Pelosi's phrase)? They're going to reduce the level and quality of service, cut the pay of doctors, nurses, and other professionals, cut hospital staffing and services, and ration health care. The Health Care Hogwash bill itself is supposed to be redistributing $500 billion from Medicare already. Yeah... who needs the old geezers? Put 'em on an ice floe and push 'em out to sea. It just costs too damn much to keep 'em alive.
Comrade Osama is fond of telling the heart-rending story of how his mom (or grandma?) was denied insurance coverage because she was chonically ill. When the Health Care Hogwash bill goes into effect, no one who's chronically ill will be able to get any care whatsoever. A large part of the bill's provisions are devoted to deciding who gets what kind of care, and the chronically ill.... Well, let's just say they aren't worth the investment.
So, Comrade Osama, how is this working for you? Is this what you voted for?
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