Healthcare: More regulation or less?

sh76: It's a means to an end of making the people of society more comfortable and making their lives easier and more pleasant. The primary way to do that is through economic growth;

eljefejesus: you fail to acknowledge that growth is a major long-term contributor to human welfare.






Why don't you actually bother to read my posts before criticizing them?

🙄

Originally posted by eljefejesus
Is your argument that if very many countries are neutral, then we should put them on a side to avoid so many countries being labeled neutral?

As I said when Teinosuke started this weak line of argument and you jumped on the bandwagon along with FMF: most of Scandanavia was neutral during World War II. What point are you trying to make about these ...[text shortened]... a little better off, in theory.

The line of attack, and its relevance, are weak and debunked.

They were not as heavily destroyed because the surrendered and thus were in the war for less time. That has nothing to do with being neutral.

I read this interesting letter in the NY Times yesterday and thought the writer raised a valid point that most people don't think about:

To the Editor:

Americans who respond “but I like my insurance” when contemplating the proposed health care reform bill should recognize that their present employer-provided insurance will almost certainly not be there for them in the event of a long-term serious illness.

Most employer policies require that those covered be able to work. If an accident, stroke, cancer treatment or other long-term event keeps the employee from showing up at work, even for such a relatively short period of time as 60 or 90 days (90 days in the case of my employer-provided policy), the coverage is terminated, and the employee placed on long-term disability and left with Cobra. If the employee cannot pay Cobra, or Cobra runs out — that’s it. No insurance for either the employee or his or her family.

I learned this hard truth when one of my co-workers learned she had late-term colon cancer. She has insurance right now, six months later, only because my employer is subsidizing her Cobra payments.

Americans are living in a fantasy world when they think, “I’m working; I have insurance; I’m safe.” You are safe only because you are well. Those medical bankruptcies filed by people “who thought they had insurance” are not being filed by individuals who exceeded policy maximums, or were fired or laid off after becoming ill. They are being filed by people who incurred no hardship other than one — they got sick.

Rita C. Tobin
Chappaqua, N.Y., March 7, 2010

Any thoughts (besides the "let 'em die" crowd?).

Originally posted by no1marauder
I read this interesting letter in the NY Times yesterday and thought the writer raised a valid point that most people don't think about:

To the Editor:

Americans who respond “but I like my insurance” when contemplating the proposed health care reform bill should recognize that their present employer-provided insurance will almost certainly not be ...[text shortened]... appaqua, N.Y., March 7, 2010

Any thoughts (besides the "let 'em die" crowd?).

Why can't this co-worker get Medicaid?

Originally posted by sh76
Why can't this co-worker get Medicaid?

Probably made too much money in the prior year.

Then again: Having a low income is not the sole requirement for receiving Medicaid assistance. There are many
people who are poor, with incomes below the poverty level, who do not meet Medicaid requirements
because they do not fit within the designated eligibility groups.

http://www.themoneyalert.com/medicaideligibility.html

Originally posted by no1marauder
Probably made too much money in the prior year.

medicaid is tough to get, if you own property, or have any money at all.

Originally posted by Hugh Glass
medicaid is tough to get, if you own property, or have any money at all.

Owning a house in which you live is not considered an available resource for MEdicaid purposes.

There is a resource limitation, yes. But it's not that low. Right now, in NY, it's about $13,000.

If you have a lot of money sitting in the bank, why should the government pay for your healthcare?

Originally posted by no1marauder
Probably made too much money in the prior year.

Then again: Having a low income is not the sole requirement for receiving Medicaid assistance. There are many
people who are poor, with incomes below the poverty level, who do not meet Medicaid requirements
because they do not fit within the designated eligibility groups.

http://www.themoneyalert.com/medicaideligibility.html

That article is, at best, half baked. Yes, certain eligibility groups get preferential rules in terms of resource and income allowances, but EVERYBODY is eligible for Medicaid (as long as you're here legally, of course) if they meet the income and resource limitation requirements.

Last year's income is irrelevant. Yes, they ask for previous tax returns (for certain types of assistance) and will ask you to prove that you no longer have an income that you reported on last year's tax returns.

If this co-worker has little or no income and has less than $13,000 in assets (they don't include your home, your first car and other basic living necessities), then the co-worker is eligible for Medicaid. S/he probably just doesn't know about it or the writer of the article had a political agenda and didn't want to let pesky little facts get in the way.

My cousin, who is 34 years old and single, is on Medicaid. He doesn't fit into any special category except that he doesn't work and doesn't have any money.

The fact that this person lives in NY (seemingly, from the close of the article) makes her claim even more ludicrous. NY has an exceedingly generous health insurance program for the moderately "poor" called Family Health Plus, which doesn't even have a resource limitation.

http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/fhplus/

This co-worker will be fine if s/he's not too incompetent to contact the appropriate government agency.

Originally posted by sh76
Owning a house in which you live is not considered an available resource for MEdicaid purposes.

There is a resource limitation, yes. But it's not that low. Right now, in NY, it's about $13,000.

If you have a lot of money sitting in the bank, why should the government pay for your healthcare.

How long will $13,000 worth of assets last for medical treatments related to colon cancer? Why should someone who's worked and saved their entire life be impoverished because they got sick?

If you have a lot of money sitting in the bank, why should your insurance company pay for your healthcare?

Originally posted by no1marauder
How long will $13,000 worth of assets last for medical treatments related to colon cancer? Why should someone who's worked and saved their entire life be impoverished because they got sick?

The $13,000 is what they can have without spending it down. It's only what's above the resource limitation that the government makes you spend towards your own care.

Second, for most types of Medicaid coverage, you can simply give your assets away to be eligible. This co-worker could give $500,000 to her children and be eligible for Medicaid tomorrow.

There is a 5 year lookback period for certain types of services, such as long term nursing home services. So, as people get older, they should engage in a bit of Medicaid planning or buy a long term care insurance policy.

If they don't have the foresight to do so, they may have to pay for their own nursing home instead of leaving it to be inherited by their children. At this point, this is no longer a moral issue, but a question of whether it's smarter to have people who failed to plan pay their own healthcare costs or have taxpayers pay them so that they can bequeath a few hundred grand to their children. As a liberal, I would think that you'd be somewhat less anxious to protect people's "rights" to give large sums to their children.

Originally posted by sh76
The $13,000 is what they can have without spending it down. It's only what's above the resource limitation that the government makes you spend towards your own care.

Second, for most types of Medicaid coverage, you can simply give your assets away to be eligible. This co-worker could give $500,000 to her children and be eligible for Medicaid tomorrow.

The ...[text shortened]... somewhat less anxious to protect people's "rights" to give large sums to their children.

I did some work for a lady who had a husband in a retirement/care center. She ended up giving their two farms to her children.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
What a poorly written piece. First of all, in the "extreme cases" we already know the tax rate is not optimal and has to be somewhere in between, so the extreme cases in fact do not tell us anything useful (both give very poor results and are unsustainable).

"If such a society were possible, we can see that people would be quite productive as any inc ...[text shortened]... robably not true, but the Laffer curve cannot be used to disprove that statement).

You should finish reading the rest of it, the purpose was to show economic fats related to the issue of taxes & growth. The first page does not concentrate on that so you would not be getting the most relevant parts yet.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Actually, he acknowledged that in the very post you quoted.

Yeah but my response to him is no more distortive of his views than his response to me was. I have never said growth was the end itself or that welfare was subservient, that was an idea pushed by FMF in the past which he managed to put push onto some of the posters more likely to put up with his nonsense.

Originally posted by Palynka
Most (all?) estimates I've seen put current US income tax rates quite left of the peak of the estimated Laffer curve.

Taxes do introduces distortions and are generally a cost, but it's absurd to forget the benefits of spending those funds.

Kazet responded to the wrong issues on that article, only the first page is so far off from the topic being discussed relating growth and taxation. The Laffer curve, as you know, deals with government revenue, not economic growth.

Originally posted by Melanerpes
But you tend to make exactly that argument - that economic growth is essentially the only thing that matters.

sh76 is pointing out that while economic growth is indeed a major long-term contributor to human welfare, it can't be the only thing we look at. One thing that almost all societies care about is ensuring that everyone "who plays by the rules" i ...[text shortened]... st members of society reasons to choose to "play by the rules" of a capitalist system.

I do not make that argument at all, only FMF tries to push that argument and has been able to get sh76 to take that argument up. FMF does not like the economics arguments made and so attack economics in multiple posts. sh76 may have been easily influenced, but let's not lose focus. Growth is an extremely important issue in human welfare. From my various posts, have you never seen my concern for human welfare? Growth to reduce poverty has been one of my many topics I've emphasized in the past.

A safety net is in place as well it should be, that is not the debate. It would be putting words in my mouth to argue for a safety net as if I argued against it. What I argue against are some gigantic government growth proposals that would slow growth and hurt people. Europe is growing slower than the US. By taxing at huge rates, the US growth rates would also slow, and right now the US is already under mountains of debt. The debate has been on healthcare regulations, not about basic safety nets.

Marxism is clearly crap, as any country or individual that has put up with it has found out. Capitalism is purer in the US than in Europe, and yet the US is more anti-communist than Europe.