This list is great. I’ve copied and pasted my favorites, helpfully annotated.
You are young and don’t want health insurance? You are starting up a small business and need to minimize expenses, and one way to do that is to forego health insurance? Tough. You have to pay $750 annually for the “privilege.” (Section 1501)
Freedoms being lost: The freedom to have me pay for your uninsured emergency room visits and your freedom to start up a business which can’t bring in enough revenue to cover a single annual expense of $750. Jesus wept!
You are young and healthy and want to pay for insurance that reflects that status? Tough. You’ll have to pay for premiums that cover not only you, but also the guy who smokes three packs a day, drink a gallon of whiskey and eats chicken fat off the floor. That’s because insurance companies will no longer be able to underwrite on the basis of a person’s health status. (Section 2701).
Freedoms being lost: The insurance companies’ freedom to deny coverage to anyone who isn’t young and healthy.
You would like to pay less in premiums by buying insurance with lifetime or annual limits on coverage? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer such policies, even if that is what customers prefer. (Section 2711).
Freedoms being lost: Your insurance company’s freedom to refuse to pay for you to be cured of most serious illnesses, such as cancer. You are also losing the freedom to have me pay for your uninsured emergency room visits during your downhill spiral. More Jesus tears!
Think you’d like a policy that is cheaper because it doesn’t cover preventive care or requires cost-sharing for such care? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer policies that do not cover preventive services or offer them with cost-sharing, even if that’s what the customer wants. (Section 2712).
Freedoms being lost: Your freedom to drive up my insurance premiums by needing a lot more expensive medical treatment for conditions that, had you used preventive care, could have been circumvented or caught far earlier in their much less expensive phases.
If you are a physician and you don’t want the government looking over your shoulder? Tough. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to use your claims data to issue you reports that measure the resources you use, provide information on the quality of care you provide, and compare the resources you use to those used by other physicians. Of course, this will all be just for informational purposes. It’s not like the government will ever use it to intervene in your practice and patients’ care. Of course not. (Section 3003 (i))
Freedoms being lost: Your physician’s freedom to hide from you the quality of the care he provides and how much it tends to cost. I personally am going to miss the current system of finding a physician, which if I’m lucky can be based on a friend’s recommendation but is more often a total crapshoot based on geographic proximity to my home or workplace, where I get to test-drive him on my precious, one-and-only body.
You are a health insurer and you want to raise premiums to meet costs? Well, if that increase is deemed “unreasonable” by the Secretary of Health and Human Services it will be subject to review and can be denied. (Section 1003)
Freedoms being lost: Your insurance company’s freedom to jack up your rates without any explanation or justification. Jesus Tears Mark III!
The government will extract a fee of $6.7 billion annually from insurance companies. If you are an insurer, what you will pay depends on your share of net premiums plus 200% of your administrative costs. So, if your net premiums and administrative costs are equal to 10% of the total, you will pay 10% of $6.7 billion, or $670,000,000. In the reconciliation bill, the fee will start at $8 billion in 2014, $11.3 billion in 2015, $1.9 billion in 2017, and $14.3 billion in 2018 (Section 1406).Think you, as an insurance executive, know how to better spend that money? Tough.(Section 9010 (b) (1) (A and B).)
Freedoms being lost: Your insurance company’s freedom to funnel as much of their profits as possible into “administrative costs” rather than into your medical care.
You will have to pay an additional 0.5% payroll tax on any dollar you make over $250,000 if you file a joint return and $200,000 if you file an individual return. What? You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9015).
That amount will rise to a 3.8% tax if reconciliation passes. It will also apply to investment income, estates, and trusts. You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Like you need to ask. (Section 1402).
Freedoms being lost: For 98.5% of Americans, absolutely none.
Where did the original list come from?
It’s linked in the post; just click on the very first sentence.
My rebuttal would be this list from Firedoglake, if you happen to be interested in anything other than jubilant triumphalism right now.
As LadyPoverty puts it, “it is hard to see this as a stepping stone to anything but a much bigger fight.”
I will happily eat my words if health care– which means, not health insurance from private industry whose profit motive intrinsically gets them looking for loopholes to deny us care– gets any serious reform within the next ten years.
Yeah, I don’t care about the list of supposed “freedoms” we’re losing. I do care about Firedoglake’s list.
I’m interested in everything.
“Jubilant triumphalism” nor Firedoglake’s “nonjubilant nontriumphalism” not any more so than anything else. I neither am wildly in favor or wildly in disfavor of the bill that got passed. I just enjoy mocking people from the top 1.5% of the American economic stepladder who are pitching three kinds of fit about the current legislation.
“The freedom to have me pay for your uninsured emergency room visits and your freedom to start up a business which can’t bring in enough revenue to cover a single annual expense of $750. Jesus wept!”
Or we could use the third option, which is he pays his own bills.
“The insurance companies’ freedom to deny coverage to anyone who isn’t young and healthy.”
Insurance is, by its nature, a risk pool. If you have too much risk in the system, the company goes under. Additionally, the average health insurance company denies 3% of its claims and gets 4% of the money it takes in as profit. Gasp! Scoundrels!
“Your insurance company’s freedom to refuse to pay for you to be cured of most serious illnesses, such as cancer. You are also losing the freedom to have me pay for your uninsured emergency room visits during your downhill spiral. More Jesus tears!”
Again, insurance == risk pool. Also, if you’re so worried that your money will be taken for their emergency visits, you could always campaign for a law forbidding government to pay for any non-veteran related health care, so you can guarantee that nobody’s money would be stolen for the unauthorized use of others. Though I suppose that solution may not be statist enough for you.
“Your freedom to drive up my insurance premiums by needing a lot more expensive medical treatment for conditions that, had you used preventive care, could have been circumvented or caught far earlier in their much less expensive phases.”
The idea is that you pay out of pocket for preventative care, not that you languish in your home until you’re dying. It’s called “responsibility.” Some people still have it.
“Your physician’s freedom to hide from you the quality of the care he provides and how much it tends to cost. I personally am going to miss the current system of finding a physician, which if I’m lucky can be based on a friend’s recommendation but is more often a total crapshoot based on geographic proximity to my home or workplace, where I get to test-drive him on my precious, one-and-only body.”
You’re assuming that doctors are automatically going to be unethical and that the government will be able to prevent this possibility through preventative measures. What planet do you live on
“Your insurance company’s freedom to jack up your rates without any explanation or justification. Jesus Tears Mark III!”
We’ll have single payer within 10-15 years at the outside as the companies’ inability to charge enough to cover costs drive them out of business. I know you think that’ll be wonderful now, but let’s just say that if you think health care sucks under private management now, wait until it’s “free” and under public management!
“Your insurance company’s freedom to funnel as much of their profits as possible into “administrative costs” rather than into your medical care.”
Well, we could solve this problem by opening up competition across state lines, thus forcing the insurance companies to adapt and improve or go out of business, but that’s one blatant, commonsense conservative suggestion liberals have ignored from day one.
“For 98.5% of Americans, absolutely none.”
For the 77% of Americans who proclaimed themselves satisfied with their current coverage and all the Americans who will be forced to pay for this travesty, plenty.
I’m going to hold a party with the theme of “Nonjubilant Nontriumphalism” just to see what kind of people show up.
I love conservative land. It’s a place where words like “personal responsibility” and “common sense” roughly translate to “Screw you, I’ve got mine!”.
Like how when we did that with credit card companies it became AWESOME for consumers.
Wait.
Oh good, someone got offended.
“I love conservative land. It’s a place where words like “personal responsibility” and “common sense” roughly translate to “Screw you, I’ve got mine!”.”
Or as some of us call it, “growing up”, where you look ahead and don’t make commitments that you’re not prepared to cover. Like buying a house you know is too rich for your blood, because the mortgage broker told you that – by magic – you really can afford it and not to worry that his math doesn’t match up with yours.
I know we’ve had this discussion before. Foresight is important, but people are lazy and if they have half a chance they will always choose to avoid thinking and then complain about the consequences later. If you’re one of the people who lived within your means in the last decade, it doesn’t seem very progressive watching all the people who didn’t (and I mean bankers too) get bailed out with your tax dollars while the national debt gets so huge that we’re actually talking about the possibility of default, Argentina-style.
Okay, so growing up to be a jerk that translates to “Screw you, I’ve got mine”.
A friend of mine went to college, got a degree, hooked up with a nice gentleman and, after setting some money aside, bought a moderately nice town home. They paid the mortgage on time every month, like people are supposed to do.
He got laid off, she got laid, he’s unemployed, she works as a flight attendant, and their mortgage is now worth more than the value of the home because the housing bubble.
Tell me which part of this was irresponsible? Tell me which part of it they should have not done? Waited until they got house that they could pay for in cash?
Or, you’ve got me over here- worked hard in school, went to college, got a degree, got out into the “real world” and found…zero jobs. And now am working in temp hell. Can’t get manufacturing jobs because I’m “overqualified”. Can’t get professional jobs because a) I’m competing with people who have 20 years experience b) no one’s hiring right now.
Or my other friend who was working his way through music engineering school and is now in his mom’s basement because he was sick without health insurance, and now he’s really sick and in medical debt. Surely he was just not responsible enough to buy medical insurance with his loads of student money.
Foresight is important, but none us us can actually see the future. I know nothing about buying a house (figuring it’s nothing I should think about until those student loans are at least more than half paid off). I’m not sure I wouldn’t have gotten suckered into the sub-prime scam myself if I had been looking for a house because mortgages are not exactly the easiest thing in the world to understand (which is why we should have usury controls in the first place). If you did get suckered into the sub-prime scam, I don’t think that’s a sin great enough to mean you should be homeless like most people ended up. I also don’t think it makes you lazy to not understand something. And, of course, there’s the whole “pushing people who qualified for regular loans into subprime loans” scam as well.
The biggest reason I think the conservative personal philosophy is “Screw you, I’ve got mine” is that whenever they think about somebody in a tough spot, mostly being poor, they think “They must have DONE something been too lazy/ stupid/ not at all brilliant like me” for them to be there and not where they’re at. They don’t seem to have a lot of concept of “shit fucking happens”. If anything bad happens to them, it’s because of other people, if anything good happens to them, it’s because of their hard work and it’s exactly the opposite for everyone else.
I personally couldn’t care less if the reason that you need help is because you were the laziest motherfucker in the world who was something out of a 1990′s stoner comedy. You want help to try and put your life back together, you get help to put your life back together. It’s in my best interest, in the long term, for everyone to try and come into their full potential. I often wonder what a world where Tesla DIDN’T get screwed over would have looked like, and others like him.
“The idea is that you pay out of pocket for preventative care, not that you languish in your home until you’re dying. It’s called ‘responsibility.’ Some people still have it.”
Correction: It’s called “money”. Some people have it, and others don’t.
[...] The big news story (“It’s a big fucking deal“) this week is that in the US, healthcare reform has passed. This followed months & months of rancor, protests, appeals, appeasement, wheeling & dealing and wrangling. The final product is a mixed bag – there’s no public option and women’s reproductive rights weren’t as well preserved as had been hoped. Insurance will eventually be extended to some 32 million uninsured individuals, but there will still be several million more not covered. Depending on which health care plan you have you may still be subject to discriminatory premiums. Some of the changes go into effect now, while others won’t go into effect for a few more years. Some Democrats who voted “Yes” on reform have been targeted with threats of violence and had their offices vandalized by teabaggers & militant anti-reform groups. So here are some links to that effect: Feminism, Abortion Rights and Health Care Reform President Obama agrees to sign anti-choice executive order House passes health reform bill (UPDATED) The Health Care Bill and Women’s Health: Wins, Losses, and Challenges Health Care Reform: NCTE On its impact on Transgender People 20 Ways ObamaCare Will Take Away Our Freedom To Screw Other People Over [...]
Yeah, you totally earned that trust money, dude!
The only people I know of who worked for their estate money are the Menendez brothers.*rolleyes*
Brianna – your final point relies on Americans being more satisfied with their healthcare system than people who live in countries with single-payer systems are. Got any evidence? Where are all the disgruntled Europeans protesting against universal healthcare and demanding a switch to a US-style system? How are you quantifying this belief that the US system is the best one – I mean, are you looking at life expectancy, cost comparisons as a proportion of GDP, infant mortality…?
Seriously, it seems like arguing in favour of the healthcare status quo relies on pretending that countries outside the USA do not exist. I have yet to see anyone explain, with data, why the US’s overpriced, patchy system is better to any other, let alone all others.