The Uncomfortable Truth

The house passed an SCHIP bill today—again. As we have all been told, the purpose of the bill is to provide health care to “millions of children.” Yada, yada, yada.
Gag.
The purpose of this bill is to continue along with the broken system that we call health care.
How does giving thirty-five billion dollars to insurance companies cure anyone of anything?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to give thirty-five billion dollars directly for health care?
(It makes more sense, but will just cause a price increase—the subject of a future essay.)
Insurance is WHY health care is so expensive!
People who have good insurance don’t complain a great deal about their bills when they arrive.
It is called transparency.
I was listening to right wing hate radio and the host was agreeing with me that transparency is the culprit in high medical costs.
If people actually had to pay the bills themselves, then market forces would drive the prices down.
You can only charge what the market will bear.
I don’t believe for a second this would lead to a reduction in available services. Quite the contrary. There will just be less money spent on it.
An example: Shortly after my vasectomy twenty years ago, I had a curious lump where I didn’t think one belonged. I went back to see the urologist. His exam took less than ten seconds, and he told me I had nothing to worry about; it would go away shortly.
Relieved, I said, “Thanks doc, that’s worth the forty bucks.”
He said. “I ain’t gonna charge you for that—unless you got insurance.”
I reminded him that I did not, and the visit was free.
I deeply appreciate his generosity and don’t blame him a bit for how he runs his business—it would have taken longer to fill out the paperwork. Nevertheless, it illustrates the point.
The Right Wing says to let market forces decide the cost of health care. I agree.
Let’s get the government out of health insurance business.
Let’s get the government to repeal every single law that mandates health insurance, and watch the price of insurance drop like stone.
Watch the cost of health care follow.
Unless the government can get it right—a single-payer, non-profit system that would actually control the price of health care, the government should stay out of it.

Posted by Quentin Colgan at 06:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I am a fairly intelligent person. There are many subjects I know a great deal about. On some subjects, I have pieces of paper hanging on the wall to prove I know it. But alas, I don’t know it all.
Two things I know little about are economics and accounting. They seem a little like voodoo to me (OK, I don’t know too much about voodoo either), very mysterious.
For example, the government—and the so-called liberal media—say that our 2007 budget deficit was around 354 billion dollars. But that doesn’t include “off budget” items, which bring the total closer to 600 billion.
Therein lies the mystery of accounting: How can they not count 250 billion dollars?
That reminds me. When the right-wing blowhards tell you that Bush’s tax cuts are reducing the deficit, they lie. They do not take into account “off budget” items. But, I digress.
The one thing I know about economics is the old joke, “If you laid all the economists in the world end-to-end, they would not reach a conclusion.” So if I get conflicting answers to these ponderables, I suppose I won’t be surprised.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at a record high, but the dollar’s value relative to the euro has fallen into the abyss—euros cost almost fifty percent more than they did five years ago. Does that mean that the actual value of the Dow stocks is just two-thirds of what it would be?
The market recently shot up on word that the Fed was lowering interest rates. I know enough about bonds and such to know that if the interest rates go down, the price of them goes up.
In order to finance our deficits, we need to sell American debt instruments. Ideally, we shouldn’t be having deficits, but . . .
If we make those instruments more expensive, we will sell fewer of them—even I know that.
How then, do we keep up our lavish spending? What if no one steps up to buy US bonds? Historically, the Fed has stepped in. When that happens, inflation follows. A sure harbinger of the return of inflation is the price of gold, now trading at prices not seen since the 70s
Are we headed for a return to the 70s? In the 70s, we weren’t nine trillion dollars in debt. Will the next decade be worse? It may seem like a good idea to some people to borrow huge sums of money and pay it back with dollars that are worth less, but to me in just seems crazy.
But then, I’m not an economist.

Posted by Quentin Colgan at 07:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)