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Showing posts with label socialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label socialism. Show all posts
Monday, September 21, 2009
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Socialist Seniors
Support for the public option -- the health care reform bill -- is highest among those between 18-29, and lowest among those over 65 -- among whom only 35% support current proposals for health care reform. Seniors are particularly important right now as we approach the 2010 midterm elections -- in midterms, they tend to vote in large numbers, and were instrumental in putting a Republican majority and the Contract for America into power during Bill Clinton's first term.
Simultaneously, though, seniors benefit the most from government-mandated, government-run health insurance. While 28% of people 18-29 are uninsured, those over 65 are the least likely demographic to lack insurance, coming in at just 3.6%. Medicare is the difference. Moreover, the way that economic expansion and tax burdens have progressed over the course of the 20th century, seniors alive today have on average received $2.50 in benefits for every $1 they've paid in health-care related taxes. Not only that, but the costs of Medicare are increasing at about 8.8% a year -- high, but not as high as private insurance's 9.9% yearly cost increase.
As has been pointed out almost infinitely, senior anger over the public option can't rationally come from a fear or dismissal of government involvement in health insurance. Instead, I believe it comes from a desire to protect their benefits -- as is the case made in this Ezra Klein editorial. Health care reform, although the vast majority of it doesn't affect seniors at all (and this includes all parts of the public option, for which seniors are not eligible, since they're already covered by Medicare), does try to cut costs across the board, and some of those cuts -- even if they're just attempts to decrease non-beneficial waste spending -- may affect Medicare.
Echoing Klein, a note to everybody under 60: seniors depend on and prefer Medicare to the point that they will throw screaming fits when confronted with reforms for everybody else that affect their benefits. This is absolutely their right -- they got their Medicare benefits in the first place through vigorous participation in the political process, and by insisting that their government serve their needs. I don't think there are very many people who would begrudge the Greatest Generation a warm bed and a course of antibiotics when they're sick.
Don't we deserve it too, though? Isn't the conviction of the one population in the United States that enjoys socialized medicine a strong recommendation for a government option in health insurance? And don't they show us that we can improve our system and provide for each other through concerted effort, and American stubbornness?
Simultaneously, though, seniors benefit the most from government-mandated, government-run health insurance. While 28% of people 18-29 are uninsured, those over 65 are the least likely demographic to lack insurance, coming in at just 3.6%. Medicare is the difference. Moreover, the way that economic expansion and tax burdens have progressed over the course of the 20th century, seniors alive today have on average received $2.50 in benefits for every $1 they've paid in health-care related taxes. Not only that, but the costs of Medicare are increasing at about 8.8% a year -- high, but not as high as private insurance's 9.9% yearly cost increase.
As has been pointed out almost infinitely, senior anger over the public option can't rationally come from a fear or dismissal of government involvement in health insurance. Instead, I believe it comes from a desire to protect their benefits -- as is the case made in this Ezra Klein editorial. Health care reform, although the vast majority of it doesn't affect seniors at all (and this includes all parts of the public option, for which seniors are not eligible, since they're already covered by Medicare), does try to cut costs across the board, and some of those cuts -- even if they're just attempts to decrease non-beneficial waste spending -- may affect Medicare.
Echoing Klein, a note to everybody under 60: seniors depend on and prefer Medicare to the point that they will throw screaming fits when confronted with reforms for everybody else that affect their benefits. This is absolutely their right -- they got their Medicare benefits in the first place through vigorous participation in the political process, and by insisting that their government serve their needs. I don't think there are very many people who would begrudge the Greatest Generation a warm bed and a course of antibiotics when they're sick.
Don't we deserve it too, though? Isn't the conviction of the one population in the United States that enjoys socialized medicine a strong recommendation for a government option in health insurance? And don't they show us that we can improve our system and provide for each other through concerted effort, and American stubbornness?
Saturday, August 29, 2009
What's the Public Option, Anyway?
Fivethirtyeight.com has an essay up about people's misperceptions and misconceptions about the public option, and how it's not even accurately defined in poll questions, much less in the answers of regular voters. So here's my best crack at a short definition of the public option as it appears in the House bill that passed earlier this August:
The public option is a set of government-run health insurance options available to those who make less than 400% of the poverty line and who have no employer-provided health insurance.
Estimates of the number of people who would actually choose this option vary widely, but the range of estimates I see is somewhere less than twenty million, and somewhere more than seven million. No seniors would be affected (although they might be affected by other parts of health care reform). No person would be 'forced' into public option insurance -- there will also be standardized private options made available to the same people.
So when I see people up in arms about socialized medicine, or a government takeover, I feel like there's a certain amount of disinformation at work -- this is a policy that bends over backwards to make sure that everybody gets to choose the insurance they want. It simply creates opportunities for working families, small business employees, and others who make too much to be eligible for Medicaid, but not enough to be able to afford terrifically overpriced private insurance. The argument that the public option will put private insurers out of business assumes 1) that the government-run insurance option will be so successful that private insurers can't compete, and 2) that our system of private insurance is somehow financially dependent on the working poor and the lower middle class -- that they'll collapse if 10-15% of the population, many of whom are uninsured or underinsured, choose a government option. That doesn't, to me, make sense -- how can you price a group of customers out of the market, deny them the opportunity to be covered, and then turn around and argue that you can't survive without them?
For more, here's a description of the bill at OpenCongress and a journalist from the Nation describing the public option.
The public option is a set of government-run health insurance options available to those who make less than 400% of the poverty line and who have no employer-provided health insurance.
Estimates of the number of people who would actually choose this option vary widely, but the range of estimates I see is somewhere less than twenty million, and somewhere more than seven million. No seniors would be affected (although they might be affected by other parts of health care reform). No person would be 'forced' into public option insurance -- there will also be standardized private options made available to the same people.
So when I see people up in arms about socialized medicine, or a government takeover, I feel like there's a certain amount of disinformation at work -- this is a policy that bends over backwards to make sure that everybody gets to choose the insurance they want. It simply creates opportunities for working families, small business employees, and others who make too much to be eligible for Medicaid, but not enough to be able to afford terrifically overpriced private insurance. The argument that the public option will put private insurers out of business assumes 1) that the government-run insurance option will be so successful that private insurers can't compete, and 2) that our system of private insurance is somehow financially dependent on the working poor and the lower middle class -- that they'll collapse if 10-15% of the population, many of whom are uninsured or underinsured, choose a government option. That doesn't, to me, make sense -- how can you price a group of customers out of the market, deny them the opportunity to be covered, and then turn around and argue that you can't survive without them?
For more, here's a description of the bill at OpenCongress and a journalist from the Nation describing the public option.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Friday Short
Quick because I have to make dinner and I spent all afternoon taking the 212 bus to go watch pure light. (Note: also not a euphemism. Admission cost me $8.)
By my count, there are three reasons we make an industry public (i.e. give the government significant power over it). 1) when the thing the industry sells is absolutely necessary for survival and people who need it will pay any amount of money for it (i.e. water, perhaps electricity). 2) when the item or items it sells are a finite resource that has to be shared (water, roads + highways). 3) when the nature of the industry is such that a monopoly corporation in that industry would have too much control over the nation (defense, the post office).
Health insurance clearly fits all three categories: the vast majority of us rely at some point or another on some form of health care; we have come to the point where we realize that this is not an infinite resource that we can continue sinking 15% of our GDP into funding it; and increasing monopolization and control by large health insurance companies (Wellpoint, United, Blue Cross) has meant that they, not us, are setting national health policy.
The public option for national health insurance, because it would be operated by the government, would be more socialist than the current system. That's true. But no more socialist than our water system -- and you'll still be able to buy the bottled stuff if you want it.
EDIT: PS -- a veterans' organization is in the news today for defending their own socialized medicine against flat out lies by opponents of the public option (in this case Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele).
By my count, there are three reasons we make an industry public (i.e. give the government significant power over it). 1) when the thing the industry sells is absolutely necessary for survival and people who need it will pay any amount of money for it (i.e. water, perhaps electricity). 2) when the item or items it sells are a finite resource that has to be shared (water, roads + highways). 3) when the nature of the industry is such that a monopoly corporation in that industry would have too much control over the nation (defense, the post office).
Health insurance clearly fits all three categories: the vast majority of us rely at some point or another on some form of health care; we have come to the point where we realize that this is not an infinite resource that we can continue sinking 15% of our GDP into funding it; and increasing monopolization and control by large health insurance companies (Wellpoint, United, Blue Cross) has meant that they, not us, are setting national health policy.
The public option for national health insurance, because it would be operated by the government, would be more socialist than the current system. That's true. But no more socialist than our water system -- and you'll still be able to buy the bottled stuff if you want it.
EDIT: PS -- a veterans' organization is in the news today for defending their own socialized medicine against flat out lies by opponents of the public option (in this case Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele).
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