Greg Krehbiel
Obama as guidance-counselor-in-chief, and the cost of “uncompensated care”
by Greg Krehbiel on 23 September 2009
I just found an interesting new site. reasononline.
This article is old news, but the author makes a good point on why Obama talking to schoolchildren is a little creepy.
“Children shouldn’t be taught that the president — any president — is a beloved paternal figure with a grand plan for everyone.”
And then there this. Just how much does ‘uncompensated care’ cost us, and does it justify making everyone buy insurance?
2009-09-23 » Greg Krehbiel
23 September 2009 @ 9:43 am
I don’t understand why numbers like this are so hard to get. Somebody shows up in the Er, skips out on a bill, and a number shows up in a tax form somewhere…
Anyways, I have no trouble with a health insurance plan that kicks in something like this:
You have no insurance. You have had income for x number of years. You owe the ER the “fair and reasonable”
amount you would have been paying if you have subscribed to whatever cheap and wonderful insurance Uncle Sam was recommending over that time, and in the future until your medical bills are paid. Peopl who say this will bankrupt the system are arguing against themselves – if the insurance payments were enough to cover future expenses, then , um duh, they are enough to cover them, right?
Now the rotten healthy schmucks who run around happy and without ER visits are uninsured and unpaying, or perhaps uninsured and paying (as we were for many years and still are in our dental bills – ow!) But someday, when they need care, they will pay up the same as the other guy.
And if it bankrupts people to do this, then they couldn’t afford all this stuff anyways, right?
23 September 2009 @ 9:53 am
Your idea might make sense if we were talking about real costs and real numbers. I’m not sure real numbers have anything to do with it. If they did, we’d have to address issues like how much care people are entitled to (death panels).
Same with social security. It’s obvious that we have to raise the retirement age, but nobody’s willing to do that, for political reasons, so we just keep on this senseless course that will bankrupt the country.
It’s not about real numbers. It’s about politics and power grabs and egos.