You can talk the talk, but can you wonk the wonk?: Review and Analysis of The Health Summit and What you, with eyeballs, must now do
THE SEA – A cry for a brief moment of political awareness from the uncharacteristically landlocked Andrewvius tonight.
Today was a big day for American politics whether I wanted to be aware of it or not. A bipartisan summit about Health Bill 2: Electric Boogaloo. The networks and the stations on my XM radio were hyping the event with choice sound clips of Obama (“Show me what you got!”) trying to make it out like a DMX song:
“BARACK GONNA GIVE IT TO YA (what) GONNA GIVE IT TO YA (word) UHN! [dog barks]“
Health Bill 2: Electric Boogaloo may be the one instance during my lifetime that I can recall the government actually trying to help The Citizens of America rather than help itself, so, naturally I am skeptical. I have a tendency to view it askance, aloof, and from afar – that’s Triple A Apathy, son. Trust no crooks. Follow the money. Exterminate the brutes. All that.
But.
Andrewvius tells me I no longer have the luxury of pessimism and has yet to release his vice grip on my lapels.
“But I don’t wanna,” I tell him.
“You have no choice now,” he tells me, his eyes wild. “It is this or the void.”
“Well, you know my dislike for the void,” I say. “All that howling and such.”
“Oh, it’s a bitch,” he says, quickly adding, “But it can be avoided, Cash. All it will take is just a little attention. Just so little attention for such a short, short period of time, Cash. We must be wonks. Just this once and just for now, be wonks. Then we can all go back to our American Idols and our Pokemon and whatever the hell it is that you claim to do, Cash-”
And I start to defend how I spend my days but he snags me by the ears and pulls us nose to nose and I can smell that he is serious when he continues, “-and I can go back to The Sea – WITH AT LEAST SOME FUCKING CATASTROPHIC HEALTH INSURANCE!”
And so, without further bullshitting, our man on the scene, Andrewvius the floor is yours.
“Well, the summit was really a remarkable event.
There was, a tremendous amount of agreement on issues between the parties. In fact, though the Republicans repeatedly referenced polls showing 55% of Americans opposing the Senate version of the bill, those same polls show support from the majority of Americans on each separate policy. This disparity is a result of an effective campaign of talking points by the GOP and conservative media characterizing the overhaul as “a government takeover.”
So, when you ask someone if they want the bill, they say, “no,” even though they like all the ideas. So, if the people like the policies, and the two parties agree on the majority of the policies, what are the differences discussed today?
Republicans want to reform the system through cost-control measures. They see frivolous malpractice lawsuits as the biggest driver of health care costs and they want to cap settlements to reduce the cost of malpractice insurance. Besides this idea, they have a ton of good ideas on reducing the costs in the system by fighting fraud and trimming administrative costs.
They want to accomplish all this through a series of small bills passed over time, rather than through a big ol’ bill. They project their reforms would allow around %10 of the uninsured to get insurance.
Democrats want the big ol’ bill. This is because their vision of reform is as a sweeping overhaul. They have a big cause-and-effect circle in their plan that can’t be accomplished in little pieces. It must hang together. This circle is designed to get everyone in the country into the health insurance system. The circle goes like this:
1. Everyone in the country buys health insurance
2. The whole insurance industry is regulated to protect customers
3. Due to the huge pool of customers and the profit restrictions on insurance companies, the price of policies go down
4. The law says you must buy health insurance
5. Everyone in the country buys health insurance
6. Rinse and repeat.
There’s much more to it than that, but this chestnut is the reason that piecemeal reform isn’t at all acceptable to the Democrats. This is what makes it an overhaul. It’s big and scary. It’s nationwide. They will include all the Republican ideas for cost-cutting and interstate exchanges, but Dems won’t give up the heart of reform. That is the belief that we must provide affordable health insurance for all Americans with no exceptions.
I support the Democrats here.
I can’t cover the 6 hour summit I just watched, nor can I cover our President’s proposal. I encourage each and every person to pursue this information on their own.
Read the policies on the White House website.
Read the Republican policies (.pdf).
Watch the summit:
What I want each person to do is to check this stuff out and find out what their lives will be like if the overhaul goes through. Don’t let Fox News, NPR, CNBC, CNN, Rush, Newt, or Free Speech Radio News tell you what is good for you. The real dope is right at your fingertips, you must educate yourself.
I am 28, healthy and uninsured. I make around $30,000 so I take home around $20,000. I want to emphasize that I am the type of person they are counting on to bear the financial burden of carrying a policy I don’t need in order to reduce the cost for those Americans with a pre-existing condition. Those Americans who smoke, eat fast food, and don’t exercise. The overhaul proposed by Obama and the Democrats will allow me to afford health insurance that will provide unlimited catastrophic coverage, primary care, and will include financial incentives to eat healthy food and exercise more.
Speaker Pelosi said something today that seemed directed toward me and my whole generation. I’ll close with this quote.
“But I want to talk for a moment about what it means to the economy. Imagine an economy where people could change jobs, start businesses, become self-employed, whether to pursue their artistic aspirations or be entrepreneurial and start new businesses if they were not job-locked, because they have a child who’s bipolar or a family member who’s diabetic, with a preexisting condition, and all of the other constraints that having health care or not having health care places on an entrepreneurial spirit. Think of an economy with that dynamism of people following their pursuits, taking risks — we want them to take risks and yet we lock them down, and we have an anvil around their businesses because of these increasing costs of health care. So this bill is not only about the health security of America. It’s about jobs.”
