Y'know how the classic British or American tourist is depicted visiting foreign lands, shouting at the locals who don't speak Englsh ('cos they really do, everyone does, right? So they must be ignorin' him), utterly certain the furriners can make a decent cup of coffee or tea, a real hamburger and/or bangers and mash, they just refuse to do so out of some nasty spite?
Turns out our President is one of those guys. In evidence, let us turn to his plans to have a nice sit-down with
those unruly wogs Congressional Republicans, looking for areas of common ground where nationalsocializing health care can move forward, by asking questions like, "...
How do you guys intend to reform the insurance market so that people with pre-existing conditions for example can get health care? How do you want to make sure that the 30 million people without insurance can get it?"
Ummm,
riiiight. Or, as Tam and Ron Paul are wondering, where's any of that authorized by the Constitution? But, you know, maybe if you keep yellin' louder, Mr. Obama, those folks with the temerity to pretend they don't believe exactly what you believe will drop the act and jump on board your cattle-car. But you should not be bettin' on it.
The only business the federal government has in the insurance industry is in making sure that nobody is messing with interstate commerce.
ReplyDeleteAnd if there was one industry that needed that intervention, boy howdy is it the insurance industry.
Goddamn it, I am so tired of folks on the other side of this debate referring to treating people with pre-existing conditions as "insurance".
ReplyDeleteYou buy insurance as a bet against things that haven't happened yet. If you're already sick, then you're just looking to have someone else pay for it, and there's no "insurance" aspect involved. Words mean things. $SWEAR_WORD!
(Obviously, not yelling at you. Just a case of sudden onset Rantyitis, curable only through violent expurgation of the concepts causing the inflammation.)
Also, what Tam said.
@perlhaqr
ReplyDeleteThere are two versions of the "pre-existing conditions" argument: Your example is one. The other is the situation of people who already have insurance.
Say I work for BigCorp, which has one of those "cadillac" medical plans the Won wants to tax. I've been working for them for a few years, and along the way have picked up some of those "pre-existing conditions": say adult-onset diabetes, or an untreated hernia (doc says: "Leave it alone unless it gets worse. Not worth surgery now."), or even something like prostate cancer (most cases recommended treatment is "watchful waiting").
Well, this morning I got a call from a new startup. They want to hire me (for much more than I'm making now), but because there are only five people in the company they don't have a medical plan yet.
If I jump to the startup, I can COBRA with my existing insurer, but that's only for a limited time. Eventually I will have to find my own policy, but all the potential insurers say they won't cover the diabetes, or the hernia, or the cancer (at least not for an inital period).
So I tell the guys at the startup "thanks but no thanks," and stick to BigCorp.
(Of course as Tam would say- and as I would agree- if we were each buying our own insurance already, this wouldn't be a problem.)