What The Affordable Care Act Means For Consumers
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-07-02/what-affordable-care-act-means-consumers
What the Affordable Care Act means for you. We take your questions on how implementation of the law could affect consumers.
Guests
Julie Rovner
health policy correspondent for NPR, author of "Health Care Policy and Politics A-Z," and contributing editor for National Journal Daily.
Susan Dentzer
editor-in-chief of Health Affairs, and an on-air analyst on health issues for The PBS NewsHour
Mary Agnes Carey
senior correspondent,Kaiser Health News.
Ceci Connolly
managing director and leader of PwC's Health Research Institute; co-author of "Landmark: The Inside Story of America's New Health Care Law and What It Means for Us All."
Comments
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Mike Sergeant wrote:
"Please reference the part of the Constitution that alludes to the fact that I am the Government, we all are the Government."
That is the socialist, collectivist view, and you are entitled to it. In fact, it is NOT the case that "we all are the Government". We have the right to elect our representatives who form the Government and make decisions on our behalf. That is not the same as "being the government". I posted this last week, but it bears repeating and will point you to the difference between personal responsibility for our neighbor and government responsibility for same.
"Americans are uniquely generous and can and would provide economic justice to their fellow American without the force or intervention of Government. Liberals are some of the most generous people on earth - with Other People's Money. Conservatives are generous with THEIR OWN money and studies show it. But EVERYONE becomes less generous when they believe that government will provide for their fellow man. "Why should I worry about it, the government will do for him or her". And once government "does for you", they control you. Which is why Conservatives are so afraid for their personal freedoms.
Study 18th and 19th century America and you will see the difference. As I have often pointed out, this culture started to change with FDR. He is principally at fault."
Potter wrote:
"There is no such quote in that [NY Times] article."
That exact quote is from a Jonah Goldberg column. But the exact thought is in the NY Times article to be sure ... right up front.
"Chief Justice Roberts ruled that the key provision in question, the so-called individual mandate requiring all Americans to buy insurance or pay a fine, failed to pass constitutional muster under the Commerce Clause, which was the heart of the administration’s arguments in favor of it. But the chief justice declared that the fine amounted to a tax that the government had the power to impose, and that the mandate could survive on that basis."
All you needed to do was Google it, Potter.
nohoplophobe wrote:
Roberts wrote the majority opinion, like it or not that is the guiding principal behind the passage of the law and the same one as reported by just about every news outlet. At this point I question the credibility of your assertions and must conclude you opinion is more guided by personal ideology and ignorance than reason.
Roberts wrote the majority opinion on the constitutionality of the individual mandate, not the majority opinion on the whether or not the individual mandate is a tax. In considering the individual mandate a tax he was in the minority (1 vs 8). Under your incorrect way of thinking, had Roberts not written the majority opinion, or had a judge other than Roberts been the one to opine that the individual mandate was a tax; your conclusions would have been different when the numbers would have been the same. This is why, as a matter of law, one justice's opinion does not carry any more weight than any other.
Any liberal or conservative, can spin a topic to meet their goals. It's really a very simple issue we have to deal with. Do we want our Country to resemble the principals upon which it was founded? Those principles being that which has made us a military and financial powerhouse, (individual hard work and self-reliance)? Or do we wish to go down the road of "socialism"? The Government will not only give you what you need; they'll tell you what you need as well, nothing more, nothing less! The key would be to make an informed choice, not one born of rhetoric and mis-information. Democracy or Socialism. Pick your poison and learn to live with the good, the bad, and the ugly! Is it going to be your choice, or the Government's choice. Hope you like "vanilla", cause that's all they'll have on the menu!
mrbvlo, well said and totally agree. All this back and forth garbage spins on the axis of another bad law upheld by the supreme court, the fact that so much hair splitting is even possible clearly demonstrates the weakness of the decision. Constitutionally we were all stabbed in the back last week with this ruling.
Wonderful show today. Real information about a confusing topic that will affect all of us. Please revisit this topic in the future when the ins and out of the Act become better known.
PCK
Richard Hoenes wrote:
"In considering the individual mandate a tax he was in the minority (1 vs 8). "
Unless you have some evidence for that statement, Richard, I believe it is false.
Thank you for the timely program on the supreme court's decision on the mandate.
After a caller claimed that single payer healthcare would be an answer, you quickly said that it would not be feasible. Getting women the right to vote was considered even less feasible, with most of the men against it and half of the women.
Later in your program the guest mentioned that there is very little we can do about rising healthcare costs. Yet HR676 lessens the exponential cost increases by eliminating the insurance companies, which take out up to 31% of the healthcare premiums for profit, advertising, high CEO salaries, and salaries for people employed to deny healthcare claims. Also called the Medicare For All bill, HR676 would give the single payer the government the leverage to bring the drug prices down to an affordable level.
We need more people to know about Single payer (HR676), so that the people demand this fiscally conservative and morally upholding solution to universal healthcare. Could you have a program on Single payer and go to www.pnhp.org or www.ksph.org for speakers? Thank you.
mrbvio wrote:
"Democracy or Socialism. Pick your poison and learn to live with the good, the bad, and the ugly! Is it going to be your choice, or the Government's choice. Hope you like "vanilla", cause that's all they'll have on the menu!"
Yes, that is the choice. Perhaps the most important election in the last 100 years. I am trying to stay optimistic, but I don't know anymore if America has it in her to save herself from what seems like an inevitable creep toward Socialism. People just don't realize it. They don't understand what Freedom means, which is why you hear what boils down to "Government control is the Christian thing to do"!
Part II:
I often think of the following as I see events unfold around me in this country.
The attribution is discredited by Snopes (for what that's worth), but the heart of the idea is true no matter who said it and rings even truer since the decision last Thursday. It is playing out before our very eyes.
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."
"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From Bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."
IMO, we are somewhere between apathy and dependence.
Richard Hoenes, I never said Roberts vote carried more weight in the final decision, I said writing for the majority caries with it the guiding principle of the decision and apparently the media in it's entirety agrees with that sentiment, always did always will.
ecgberht, Richard Hoenes writes an ideological argument of diminishing returns. Bent on proving me wrong he reshapes his argument to a point completely unrecognizable from his original assertions. When an argument gets to a point where all of it's false assertions are pealed away we arrive at a point of arguing what the meaning of "is" is.
WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT, by the simple fact that we choose who governs. It's called the vote. If the people do not like the way the government is acting or how the people in the offices are performing their duties they can VOTE THEM OUT and get ones in that will do what the people want. If you cannot follow this logic, I pity you.
The difference between 18th and 19th century America is that in the 18th century we were controlled by a "Foreign" monarch. In the 19th century, we were controlled by the Oligarchy (whether it be trains, steel, oil, automotive, timber). Not much difference, just the number of people at the head.
If Americans were so generous, then why was there such an economic disparity between those in the the slums and those in the mansions? If they were as generous as you claim they are, there shouldn't have been anyone living in such appalling conditions as at the end of the 19th century.
FDR had to do something, 25% of the population was out of a job and the wealthy (you know the REALLY GENEROUS people) were hunkered down in their alcoves waiting for the financial crisis to pass. Somebody had to break the log jam, where the job creators weren't creating any jobs because the working people didn't have any jobs to buy stuff. Circular logic never goes anywhere. FDR broke the cycle.
ecgberht wrote:
From Bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."
Who could argue with that! perfect.
jharmer wrote:
Thank you for the timely program on the supreme court's decision on the mandate.
After a caller claimed that single payer healthcare would be an answer, you quickly said that it would not be feasible. Getting women the right to vote was considered even less feasible, with most of the men against it and half of the women.
Later in your program the guest mentioned that there is very little we can do about rising healthcare costs. Yet HR676 lessens the exponential cost increases by eliminating the insurance companies, which take out up to 31% of the healthcare premiums for profit, advertising, high CEO salaries, and salaries for people employed to deny healthcare claims.
So let me get this right you are in favor of higher unemployment? And against profit. Great quit your job and convert all of your investments into currency. Being that I am not a fan of government intervention, I am certainly not a fan of the government putting an entire industry out of business, just so they can do it for significantly more cost with significantly poorer performance.
"WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT"
Are you currently serving in office, Mike? If you are, then, YOU are the government. I am not serving, so I am NOT the government. I get the whole "we vote to elect and we change if we want" thing. But you miss my point completely. Once you elect someone to office, you relegate or perhaps better, delegate authority to act for you. When that action includes what YOU should do as a citizen for the betterment of your neighbor you have essentially ABDICATED your responsibility to your fellow man as well. Like I said, the philosophy becomes, "I don't have to do for anyone, the government will do for them".
Your statement "If Americans were so generous" is absolutely STUNNING to me. The fact is, beginning in the 30's and through the failed welfare state and now to healthcare, Americans have been given no reason to do for anyone but themselves. And you marvel today that people are selfish?! You reap what you sow.
It takes a lot of faith in the people of this country to maintain freedom. You seem to be lacking that. Essentially, Mike, you have absolutely no confidence in the American people or the personal freedoms and personal responibility tenets on which this country was founded. For that reason, I pity you. Your answer is, the American people are not capable of managing their own affairs, looking out after their families, and caring for their neighbors when necessary, so we need big government to do it. So far, how's that workin' out, Mike?
"FDR had to do something"
Well, he did something all right.
See the following BRILLIANT piece
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123353276749137485.html
Be sure and scroll down to the text of the article.
To set the record straight, I do believe that the American people have the ability to manage their lives, make their decisions, and look out for their fellow man and we have done so very well when we have been left alone to do these things. However, I do rail against this anti-Big Government crusade, because it is only attacking 1/2 of the problem. There are Big Corporations, that are just as dangerous as Big Government, except if I don't like the way they operate, I cannot vote them out and put new in. The only way the American People can have any influence over Big Corporations, is by Big Government. Do you think it is just a coincidence that Big Government arose only 20-30 years after Big Corporations?
Once Big Corporations began to look at their employees (The American People we are talking about) as a line item on the balance sheet, all this generosity went out the window. The Corporation's sole goal is to make a product at the lowest cost. What is the MOST expensive thing in making a product? The labor. Big Corporations then cut workers wages to levels where they were just at or below the cost of just living (forget the luxuries like furniture). With wages as low as they were there wasn't anything to help out the neighbor with. I will give up this argument, once middle class wages actually rise as fast as upper management wages do. Let's see what happens to the selfish mood of the country when this actually occurs.
Is government out of control. Yes, it most certainly is. But please don't be so blind as to see that corporations are just as evil as government. The Marketplace will not save us. The Marketplace just drives things to the lowest common denominator and without any opposing force, the middle class will decend back to the slums of New York.
A fair argument.
"The Marketplace will not save us. The Marketplace just drives things to the lowest common denominator"
Actually it will, but not in the way you would like. Markets move up too - they don't only move "to the lowest common denominator". You focus on labor and that is the right place. The problem isn't that "Big Corporations", as you term them, take advantage of labor just because they can. The problem is that globalization has allowed the labor force to expand in ways we've never experienced in this country. And that is not for the good. The problem tantential to that is that wages have been held artificially high in this country, supporting higher wages and a higher standard of living for factory workers here than anywhere in the world. Unions have contributed to that too. When GM had to pay $70/hr for the same work Toyota paid $40/hr, a "problem" for them is bound to develop! So far, the FG propping up GM is all that is keeping it afloat. There are a couple of alternative outcomes; reduce the wages and therefore the standard of living for those in manufacturing businesses in this country and allow WORLD labor markets to dictate when it makes sense for Big Corporations to take their manufacturing overseas; focus on technical disciplines like software and service industries; or play isolationist and risk a trade war. Also, there is a lot we can do today with tax and regulatory policy to encourage manufacturers to stay here. At the root of economic problems in this country lies the decline of manufacturing and at the root of that lies world labor markets. Like it or not, that's the ugly truth. It's time we get used to it and find some solutions instead of just bellyaching about it.
ecgberht,
You wanted "one thing the United States Federal Government does better than the private sector".
How about the Army or Navy Or Air Force or Marines? e.g. Even the 19th century Marines fought better than the "private" Tripolitan Pirates......and the modern Navy wiped out the private pirates who kidnapped a US tanker captain and the Seals killed Bin Laden and his henchmen and the Army and Air Force have killed hundreds of Al Qaeda and Taliban in many places.
The US highway system is longer, more complex, and better than any private road system. The US Postal Service is more efficient and lower overall costs than either UPS or FEDEX and serves remote locations that private couriers refuse.
Medicare is more efficient and actually runs at much lower cost than ANY private insurer......thats been well documented.
I could go on.......
ecgberht,
Did you actually point to a Wall Street Journal link to "prove" a slam at FDR? Why not a Fox clip? Or a Limbaugh outtake?
Maybe Mike should flood you with MoveOn.org literature. Be serious.
And that crack about the "socialist view" of the Constitution is absolutely priceless. Did you know that socialist thinkers waited until the late 1800s and early 1900s to expound their theories? Thats a bit late to have been captured in "We the People".....the founding fathers and their thinking evolved from the Age of Enlightenment in Europe from the 1700s by contrast. That is unless you count those "commies" that formed the early Christian church.......the Acts of the Apostles etc.
The true "democrats" were the early Greeks and involved no "republican" principles........that notion came from Rome. Our republic is a hybrid that evolves daily and morphs ideologies from many eras and sources. E,g. The torturous criticisms being launched at Justice Roberts demonstrates that even highly educated specialists can meld "isms". Using various labels of socialist etc. only gets muddy and muddled.
The" exact thought", ecgberht and the "exact quote" are not the same. Shame on you.
Jonah Goldberg as you must know is an obnoxious partisan. There are other interpretations on this ruling from legal scholars.. which you should Google... that parse this better for the fair minded.
Well, an admirable try, LibVet.
Last I checked there was no "private sector" army. And the armed forces are Constitutionally mandated. By the way, have you looked the Defense budget lately?! Don't misunderstand me. The best, bar none, in history, ever, world without end, fighting force. But, uh, not terribly efficient.
How many private road systems do you know, LibVet? Article 1, Section 8, says that the government should provide roads. The lion's share of what you pay for a gallon of gasoline goes to taxes that support those roads. So again, I would argue with efficiency there. Have you never noticed 9 out of 10 guys on a road crew just standing around watching one guy work?! By the way, the Constitution also mandates that the FG should protect our borders. We could go a long way toward doing that with a double wall along the Mexican border. And to the idea that "in that terrain it would be impossible", your statement about the magnificence of our interstate highway system (with which I completely agree) puts the lie.
Part deux:
I would have to see the evidence that "The US Postal Service is more efficient and lower overall costs than either UPS or FEDEX". I don't believe it's true. The Postal Service is looking to cut out Saturday Delivery. I don't see UPS or FEDEX doing that and both those companies make hefty profits and reward their shareholders. Meanwhile, even with the breaks and subsidies it recieves from the FG, it is going broke. As for "serving remote locations that private couriers refuse" again, that is a constitutionally mandated duty (see that pesky Article 1, Section 8 again). Maybe the USPS just needs to raise its prices. Maybe it needs to just concentrate on letters and not try to compete with UPS or FEDEX on packages, maybe just admit we like mail delivery and agree that our taxes will subsidise that. I don't know what the solution is, but I have a hard time seeing a going-broke USPS as "doing something better than the private sector".
The customary fallback of the left in these sorts of discussions is to rattle off things that the FG is Constitutionally mandated to do and taxes us to death to accomplish. I would not call that efficient.
Now ... Medicare. Not Constitutionally mandated at all. With all the leverage of the FG, and billions in tax dollars rolling in, Medicare which you claim runs "at much lower cost" is going broke. Last I checked, private insurers were raking in record profits ... which everyone complains about ... so I'm going to need to see that "well documented". UHC (symbol UNC) for example took in over 5B in profit last year. Doctors don't like Medicare and some won't accept Medicare patients. Perhaps it's because Medicare does insurance so much better than the private sector! I could go on and on ...!
What else ya got?
Potter wrote:
"The" exact thought", ecgberht and the "exact quote" are not the same. Shame on you. "
Uh ... that's why I differentiated them, Potter.
"There are other interpretations on this ruling from legal scholars.. which you should Google"
I'll discuss that if you like, but it wasn't the subject of my post or that of nohoplophobe. The NY Times article was. What you have done is introduced what is known as the "strawman" argument. It's a logical fallacy. You can Google it if you like!
I'm going to leave it to you to explain the difference in meaning between the NY Times statement and Jonah Goldberg's since he is such "an obnoxious partisan". Good luck!
"Chief Justice Roberts ruled that the key provision in question, the so-called individual mandate requiring all Americans to buy insurance or pay a fine, failed to pass constitutional muster under the Commerce Clause, which was the heart of the administration’s arguments in favor of it. But the chief justice declared that the fine amounted to a tax that the government had the power to impose, and that the mandate could survive on that basis."
-NY Times
"In the majority opinion written by Roberts, the Supreme Court held that the mandate to buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) is unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. But Roberts also found that it's constitutional under Congress's power to tax. It is on these grounds that Roberts upheld the constitutionality of ObamaCare, siding with the four liberal justices of the bench."
-Jonah Goldberg
Surprised anyone bothered to read the link accept for you ecgberht. I got a little lazy and neglected to put the second link in but as you know it basically says the same thing in a slightly different way. Thanks for the input on that, it made the responses more interesting and exposed more intellectual dishonesty than it would have on it's own. Intellectual dishonesty is also a pretty good way to describe the SCOTUS ruling or at least Roberts writing for the majority.
Sorry, ecgberht,
Your Constitutional credentials are truly questionable, as you demonstrate in each post. But I guess you will remain in a miasma of self agrandisment, ignoring the legal backgrounds of those more qualified, including Roberts and the O himself.
Welcome to the 21st century..........we are never going back to the 18th.....that coach left long ago. Conservatives have as much chance of turning back the clock as presenting Shakespeare in an Adam Sandler flick.
No private armies?? That'll be sad news for Blackwater. What about all those "contractors" in Iraq and Afghanistan? They must be "schoolteachers", right?
Roll away Medicare as "unconstitutional"? Yeah, best of luck on that one. These ideas get funnier each time a "conservative" tells them.
Next time you travel to a city where a large corporation rules the local roost, check out the private road systems they build. I personally know of an area in a large city where a pharma giant literally took over an entire road system and rerouted all traffic and blocked away public travel. I guess you will have to bow to the foresight of that vaunted socialist Dwight D. Eisenhower who began the Interstates too.
The future belongs to Progressives in the long run.
LibVet wrote:" truly questionable" "The future belongs to Progressives in the long run"
Appealing to the unreachable is truly questionable.
The future belongs to the "Progressives", sounds like more psychological arm twisting, there's nothing progressive in the entirety of the democrat party. However you could be right that the progressives (2012 lingo) will win and are winning, then you can lord over the depravity it has brought and take all the credit for it..
Progressive, socialist, liberal, etc. Whatever you want to call it; it will all turn out the same as Greece! "Greece and the goose that laid the golden egg", a favorite bedtime story of mine. Please read on.......
"According to the socialists the rich don’t need all their profits. Rich people have more than enough. Why should they keep all that money while other poor people have so little? Why don’t we tax the profits of those evil rich people and redistribute the money for the “common good” or to poor people? After all, how can we live in a society where some people don’t have health care, don’t have a house, don’t have child daycare, don’t have enough vacation days, etc., etc. This is how socialist sell their policies to the public. There is one tiny problem though:
The profits and the people who generate them are the geese that drive the economy and give us the prosperity and tax revenue we have, which is the equivalent of the golden eggs. The more profits the government takes away and the more of a target those who generate profits become, the less incentive people have to invest, achieve, and produce the prosperity we enjoy.
After all the centuries the story of the Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs has been in circulation, it is difficult to believe people still fall for the promise of taking from those who produce to give to non-producers for a better society. And given that the socialists’ policies not only kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, but also fleece the middle class, and end up benefiting the powerful and politically connected, it’s even more astonishing that they are not all voted out of office in humiliation."
And you thought those college educated lawyers in Washington were on a mission for the suffering masses? Wake up and smell the coffee, it's always been about power.
LibVet wrote:
"Your Constitutional credentials are truly questionable, as you demonstrate in each post."
I can always tell when you know you've been had, LibVet, you bring out the personal insults. As for the above claim, you're going to have to bring out Chapter and Verse and let me respond. Otherwise it's just blather.
Blackwater? Private army? I don't think so. Blackwater provides security and does training. But, never mind. For argument's sake, let's call it an "army". You make my point anyway. The challenge was "Name one thing the United States Federal Government does better than the private sector." Now one can argue the details of what "better" is, but certainly efficiency and effectiveness must be considered near the top of the list. Which do you think is more effective and more efficient, the Armed Services (taken as a whole) or Blackwater WHOM THEY HIRED for security and training ... right down to the Navy SEALS, the most elite fighting team in the WORLD! Now, that is not to belittle any of the dedicated men and women of the Armed Forces. Nothing like it. It's to indict the governmental agency that hires them.
Part deux:
You keep beating on the roads thing, LibVet. Again, the proper and Constitutional role of the FG. In theory, they SHOULD do a good job. And they do. But it is VERY expensive. Are they effective at doing highways? For the most part, but that varies greatly from state to state. Are they efficient, especially compared to the private sector? Not very. Again, that's why your gasoline taxes are so high.
"Roll away Medicare as "unconstitutional"? Yeah, best of luck on that one"
I didn't suggest that would happen. Along with Potter, you need to look up the definition of the "strawman" fallacy. I've got some excellent links on that if you would like. Yours is a classic example. "Not Constitutionally mandated" does not equal "Unconstitutional". What you cannot refute is that Medicare is going broke, and private insurers are earining billions for their stock holders. The reason I mentioned Constitutional mandate, is, the things that are Constitutionally mandated for the FG to do, they SHOULD do well, don't you think? Unfortunately, that's not the case.
"The future belongs to Progressives in the long run."
I pray God you are wrong, LibVet. Progressivism is little more than Socialism in sheep's clothing. What I fear, however, is (based on my earlier post with respect to the progressive decline of democracies) you may be right.
You are right on, mrbvlo. Redistribution is the game. Healthcare is the perfect example. Liberals don't care about getting everybody good healthcare. They just want everybody to have the SAME care. As many times as I've posted that thought, I've never had anyone refute it.