More Breaking News on Health Care
Dec 8th, 2009 | 19 responses
UPDATE BELOW
More breaking news on health care: Keith Olbermann just reported a deal in the Senate worked out by the so-Called “Gang of Ten” (it’s five conservative Democrats and five progressive Democrats that got together to work on the public option). Here it is: In exchange for dropping the public option, the conservatives have agreed to a Medicare opt-in program that would expand Medicare eligibility to begin at age 55. In other words, under this agreement, 55- to 64-year-olds will be able to enroll in the same national Medicare program that currently starts only at age 65.
Olbermann is just saying now that Harry Reid has confirmed an AP report about it.
UPDATE: Rachel Maddow just quoted a just-published Reuters report that says Harry Reid is denying the AP report’s claim that the public option has been abandoned. Maddow is interviewing Bernie Sanders right now.
19 Responses to “More Breaking News on Health Care”
When the group is 5 moderate Republicans and 5 moderate Democrats we will be really talking. Until then its just More Promise Breaking news.
John Mccain reminds us:
<span id=”apture_prvw1″ class=”aptureLink “><span class=”aptureLinkIcon” style=”background-position: 100% -1549px; “> </span><span id=”apture_prvw1″ class=”aptureLink aptureLink snap_noshots “><span class=”aptureLinkIcon” style=”background-position: 100% -1549px; “> </span>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9NhZaxw04o</span></span>
So where are the C-Span cameras during this Democrat only negoation?
Also for those interested, Obama's actual quote and promise::
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promise…
also
Politifact's conclusion:
“moderate Republicans”: Olympia Snowe, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.
A few more details on the deal itself:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126030062798482…
Looks like a victory for the more pragmatic members of the Democratic party.
In addition, according to the WSJ:
“When the group is 5 moderate Republicans and 5 moderate Democrats we will be really talking. Until then its just More Promise Breaking news.”
Good point. Of course one would have to find five moderate Republicans… which these days would take a time machine…
I think opening up medicare is a good thing that would cover some of the most vulnerable segments of the population. Unfortunately it still will do nothing to lower medical costs. None of the things the Dems have proposed are likely to do so.
As I've said before, age 55 is a gimmick. There's a group of people who actually, today, are unsatisfied with the long-obsolete arbitrary retirement age of 65, and (stuck in pre-1980 mental mud) they actually expect people to be retiring earlier and earlier, enjoying government entitlements. (The reality is, the age of retirement now properly belongs in the seventies, and retirement entitlements should be indexed or otherwise adjusted for increasing life spans.) Age 55 has often been floated as an earlier retirement age (for collecting Social Security sometimes, not just for Medicare). Bill Clinton flirted with lowering the age for Medicare eligibility to age 55 years ago.
Any lower age should not be arbitrary (and gimmicky, cheap stuff appealing to cheap minds) but should be accompanied by the basis for justifying this lower age. (Is there a threshold age beyond which there is a substantial rise in charges for health insurance or in the inability to become insured because some insurers don't insure beyond a certain age? If so, what is this age? Let's see some real-world support.)
Simply increasing the scope of Medicare (and Medicaid) is an obvious incrementalist strategy that could have been undertaken months ago (is was on the list of things I said the Dems could do), but there needs to be information to back up what they are doing (to help them pass the legislation, if for no other reason, such as to convince many of us that it is at least somewhat justified).
This isn't over. The “age pincer” strategy has always been there, whether it be all though Medicare or by involving Medicaid or other programs, so the House could try extending Medicare to children (probably too late now) or make more children eligible for Medicaid, or add another S-CHIP income limit rise, etc.
Don't neglect what they may do with the “public option.” If they (not just the Senate, but consider what the House might suggest or demand) set up a non-profit (that no doubt would be subsidized by us, the taxpayers), it could become an even more cutthroat bogus-competitor and drive the private insurers out of the market even faster and more effectively (which is to say, as some might, more thoroughly). Also take note of any federal encroachment into what has previously been private (federal “oversight,” etc.).
“Olympia Snowe, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus”
Replace wimpy Snowe with the more-magical-and-generous Fairy Godmother, and you have the correct trio of characters that constitute the liberal and Democratic concept of what Uncle Sam really should be.
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“There's a group of people who actually, today, are unsatisfied with the long-obsolete arbitrary retirement age of 65″
Big hole in the argument is that early retirement is not always optional. Often illness plays a big part.
Type 2 Diabetes is an example. When a worker acquires type 2 diabetes, the person is in danger of being fired for poor performance (due to the required drugs and general lethargy) or the person may no longer be able to work. And if that happens, then A. no insurance company will touch him or her, and B. no company will hire him or her, not only for being fired, but because they don't want the company's insurance rate to increase. In fact, I know of one gentlemen who was fired when his wife acquired type 2 diabetes and he was given a choice, either drop his wife from the plan. This was adjudicated later by a “judge” not to be a proper reason for him to be fired and was awarded back unemployment insurance and nothing else.
Gotta love the “right to be fired if I don't like the color of your tie states.”
“Big hole in the argument is that early retirement is not always optional. Often illness plays a big part.”
Oh, yes. More than that, in fact. There's a bigger “hole” out there (and I'll state it — I'm not hiding it).
First, I want to note that there's nothing wrong with my argument at all. Retirement that involves government entitlements, of course, and also nearly all employer benefits no longer is the obsolete concept of a deliberately long, ever-increasing period of leisure, paid for largely by others. It still is related to old age, and associated disability with aging, but our lives have changed greatly since the 1930s or earlier, and nowadays good health normally extends beyond the seventies, disability onset is in the seventies, and in the medical field, age seventy is frequently the benchmark for aging-related characterization (such as age of an organ donor for transplantation — that's as authoritative an examples as can be conceived).
Obviously the pre-modern view of old age, and the ultimate lavish-earlier-than-ever-retirement concept that is decades obsolete, that retirement (at other people's expense, largely) should begin (at an age that itself is being pushed back, to later years) at about the time of menopause in females (it's not distinct in that way with males, but the same age would be assumed), to “make room for the young,” is not only outdated, but is directly antagonistic to decades of developments, progress, and — financial realities. We can't afford to have taxpayers and employers pay people to be out of work half their potential working lives, obviously. That issue of early retirement as an expectation is closed. It's wrong, and wrong for decades.
Anyone who has questions can review the CDC's mortality data and zero in on what is correctly pertinent in this regard, which is the “survival curve” percent-mortality-according-to-age information and corresponding expected remaining years of life at a given age. (Average life span contains distortions and inaccuracies, and it's dishonest for early-retirement advocates to misuse such information alone. And it is expected remaining years of life at any age that should be incorporated into an indexing scheme that may be applied in the future to retirement benefits.) Financial realities should be addressed by reviewing the demographics related to aging of our society and future “replacement ratios” of retirees to workers. (Those who have been particularly negligent or petulantly in denial should review the Trustees' Reports or the Summary on Social Security and Medicare, even the watered-down versions by the current Obama team, which chose to
remove some material from previous annual reports, for suspicious reasons.)
OK, now to the ugly realities that are not holes in my argument but intrude upon our ideal world.
1. Chronic illness. I'm aware of illness. (I have a serious pre-existing condition myself — it's been a load of laughs over the years scramgling and struggling to obtain or maintain health insurance). Note that one side issue here is that disability from illness can be addressed separately, by “retiring” on disability status. This doesn't pay very much, but that's an issue everyone's going to to face eventually and should probably be viewed just as a subset of a bigger problem. (See below.)
2. I'm aware of company politics or management whims (not having suffered that badly in this regard, but the point is, I know it happens). More to the point with health status, I know not only about pre-employment health exams (gee, why are these being done?) but as I've written numerous times before, the sininster threats behind employer “wellness” programs. Sappy social engineering of “lifestyles” is bad enough, but I'm cynical and view it as a way to find out who might be sick, therefore costly, and thus the candidates most likely to be laid off or fired if an excuse can be found or contrived.
I spotted the following, and posted the link on this site, a number of times, years ago. Who among the alive and awake would fail to be suspicious about this?
[now relocated, but I found it nevertheless]
http://www.corsolutions.com/resources/papers/wp…
3. But there's more. Though it's somewhat less blatant now (are people used to it?), there is not only a youth cult (that has been in our society for quite some time, maybe as Baby Boomers grasp with aging), but worse, ageism, which includes ageism in the work place. This is the biggest logical and practical “hole” as you put it, because it deliberately works against what needs to done in order to accomodate as well as to face reality.
4. Look to the future, which will be even uglier. It's kind of like the situation I've identified and described before, with Social Security. Reductions in the growth of benefits will need to be addressed eventually, even actual reductions in benefit amounts, while also looking at overdue things like raising the retirement age (and probably greately reducing, if not ending,early retirement). All this will be in addition to tax increases (as the pain is shared by everybody). This will happen at the same time that many retire (are forced to, if not by their choice — I suspect many will want or have to keep working later than they would wish), and they will believe benefit payments are woefully inadequate or constitute a cheating of them given how much in taxes so many have paid. Ironically, the most logical thing to do in our stark future is even worse — other than to go to means testing, end universality (which smart leftists know may doom the
program, and which they will fight, as they should, logically), is to convert our already-regressive distribution scheme (which grossly underpays and shortchanges already those who have paid the most in taxes while working) to a flat benefit scheme, minimal but affordable and hopefully adequate benefits to everybody, the elderly-and-disabled-subset version (as with Medicare) of what would be the model for a universal guaranteed minimum income system. Retirement benefit qualification will probably not only happen later in life in our future, but involve lower, not higher, benefits for everyone (even, conceivably, equally low benefits for everybody). It is cruel and seems unfair, but is perfectly just as well as logical, and unpleasant as it is, will we be able to afford more? My flat-rate idea may be better than ending universality by imposing means tests on everyone and only giving benefits to a few, while cheating taxpayers even more.
Have a nice, sweet, pleasant, healthy, disability-free kind of day. [grin]
Just a couple quick comments: 1.) This isn't about retirement age (which is another subject altogether) it's about expanding affordable healthcare. 2.) Insurance companies don't lose any sleep when they deny coverage to those who need it because they are in effect mercenaries, not healthcare providers.
More like a quick look around.
You can find 4 right off from the old “Gang of 14″
Olympia Snowe, John McCain, Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham and add George Voinovich, also a widely recognized moderate.
From the Democratic side take old “Gang of 14″ members
Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor, Daniel Inouye, and Robert Byrd
Throw in an 11th, also a former member of the “Gang of 14″ Independent Joe Lieberman.
There a moderate group of 11.
I think the Wicked Witch of the West better describes Pelosi =P
“I'll get you my pretties, and your tax dollars too”
Note, “vey9,”
“A. no insurance company will touch him or her, and B. no company will hire him or her, not only for being fired, but because they don't want the company's insurance rate to increase. In fact, I know of one gentlemen who was fired when his wife acquired type 2 diabetes and he was given a choice, either drop his wife from the plan.”
1. As I wrote, not only are pre-employment medical exams something that raise my suspicion and my level of cynicism, but I'm particuarly wary of those “wellness programs,” and other things that cynically you can view it as a way to find out which employees simply are more costly than others, and thus are slated to be the first ones to be let go. That white paper I linked to is very easy to interpret in this light — management can use “wellness” programs to obtain precisely the kind of information they need (ranking employees from lowest-cost to highest-cost) to make cost-reduction decisions in the future.
http://www.corsolutions.com/resources/papers/wp…
That's in addition to the idiotic-to-sinister nature, anyway, of “wellness” and “lifestyle” programs that are paternalistic (or maternalistic — that “wellness” company, Matria, chose a good name, did they not?).
2. Don't be surprised if employee spouses and dependents eventually are dropped from plans, which makes perfect sense, if these other people are not also employees. (It's yet another reason, among others, why spouses shouldn't be augmented by unmarried partners, financially and logically, as well as morally, arguably.)
3. More to the point here with pure finances and “lifestyle” and “wellness” issues, don't be surprised at all to see this in our future, as affecting government entitlement programs, for health care and for retirement, the rationalization in more depth and extent than before of cost control and reduction, if not elimination. In our future, taxpayers will be more oppressed, more anguished, and more conductive to arguing for this.
“the Wicked Witch of the West better describes Pelosi”
Absolutely. Who thought that the Hillary Clinton of the 1990s would have had such competition?
Welcome to the 8th grade boys.
A quote from Ezra Klein after observing the hospitals freaking out over the proposed medicare buy-in:
It was joke… Maybe not funny, but this place needs to lighten' up.
kdj