Wow. You are up late, Neo. Isn’t it past your bed time out East?
I guess free markets are a thing of the past.
Every businessman in America with a brain needs to hire lobbyists. All profits will be political.
Well, the story is the double talk IMO.
Sticking to the deal is… to be fair… probably responsible. 80B is a ton of concessions. The idiots in the ‘progressive caucus’ would probably bleed so much as to kill the industry. All ‘our’ complaining about drug prices aside, most of them are Canada-esq low even in US (re: 90 days for $10ish if you shop around). Its just the new ones that cost more… and only until they go public domain when the patent runs out… and plenty of the best and/or very good ones have had their patents run out.
FTW??
“Failing to publicly confirm [the drug lobby’s] descriptions of the deal [to limit the cost reductions of meds] risked alienating a powerful industry ally currently helping to bankroll millions in television commercials in favor of Mr. Obama’s reforms. [emphasis mine]”
So the mystery of why the insurance companies, the AMA, the AARP, and the drug companies are onboard with this monstrosity is solved.
They’ve all already cut their backroom deals with Emir Hussein. Bastards.
We’re screwed, folks. Like, totally.
Lobbyists and Democrats…. Michelle Malkin goes into Obungler’s duplicity in fine detail in her latest book “Culture of Corruption”, which I’m about 60 pages into tonite. It’s quite interesting, to say the least….
But, you see, these are all just “facts” strung together with logic. Can’t you wingnuts get over these details and see that President Obama is above all of this messy politics? His vision for all of us will usher in a new era of wonderfulness if you will just shut up and let him sort things out his way. We finally have a president who is smart enough to know what is good for us – let him work his miracles. Oh, and ignore that beautiful man behind the green curtain over there pulling all of those levers… that is just a distraction. Nothing to see there.
(sarcasm alert)
All of this is getting quite entertaining – if being constantly proved right on past distressing assessments and depressing predictions can be considered entertaining, that is. When it comes to mindless (as opposed to “greedy”) corporations and their relationship to politics, it’s simply not possible to cynical enough. But focusing on details like this only serves to obscure the real issue: skyrocketing health care costs and how we should deal with them. To do that, it’s necessary to take a step back and level-set on a few basics.
1. Insurance is a tool intended to mitigate financial risk.
2. At one time not so long ago (hopefully, since I remember it quite clearly), everyone paid for day-to-day health care directly.
3. As Charles Krauthammer finally agreed with me the other day, it makes no sense at all to get one’s employer involved in paying for one’s health care.
The most important of these basics is the first. Somehow, when it comes to day-to-day health care (as opposed to catastrophic illness or injury), we don’t use insurance to manage risk. Instead, as it has evolved since the 1960s, comprehensive health care insurance has become a tool which redistributes wealth (in reverse) by distributing members’ health care expenses over a larger group. Whether it’s via employment benefits or directly, those of us who pay steep health taxes (i.e., health care insurance premiums) all receive essentially “free” (minus the co-pay) health care.
So I hate to be the bearer of bad revelations, but we’ve been living under a form of “corporate” socialized medicine for a long time. That wouldn’t be so bad, except for the law of unintended consequences, which always reveals the basic flaw in EVERY collective / socialist / Ponzi scheme. In the case of our present, “corporate” form of socialized medicine, comprehensive health insurance has been driving increases in the cost of health care, causing them to skyrocket at rates multiple times that of inflation, for decades.
How? Simple.
When consumers pay for commodities directly, as we did decades ago with health care, our subjective assessment of value, financial status and ability to comparison shop ALL provide a very strong set of controls over rising costs. Quotidian health care is the only commodity market where this model has been utterly neutralized. And not coincidentally, it’s the only commodity market where costs are quickly reaching the level where many consumers can’t afford even basic health care goods and services without distributing the costs they incur to others via “corporate” socialized medicine.
Skyrocketing health care costs, driven primarily by the open-loop mechanism of comprehensive health care insurance, has created a “crisis” that is now being exploited by the socialists in our federal government. In fact, politicians recognized the mechanism of comprehensive health care insurance for what it is a long time ago, which is why they’ve been trying to steal the insurance industry’s biggest cash cow for years.
If we ever see TRUE health care and health care insurance reform, it will have to involve some variation of the following. No other approach addresses the major factors that have driven health care costs to skyrocket:
** Eliminate comprehensive health insurance plans, just as all other Ponzi and wealth redistribution scams are treated. Do this through legislation over a period of 5-7 years. If we can’t break out of the box we’ve taped ourselves into and realize that this is vital, we will either go bankrupt paying for health care in 20-25 years using our present broken system, or we’ll lose our liberty and, ultimately, the quality of our health care to socialized medicine. Those are our choices.
** Transfer 95% of all monies that were being paid by employers to comprehensive health care insurance companies back to employees. Everyone enrolled in a health care plan at work gets an instant annual raise of from $4,000 to $16,000 per employee / family, or more, depending on the cost (to the employer) of the plan they’re in. New hires won’t typically enjoy this increase, but it’s only intended to help individuals and families cover the direct-pay costs of quotidian health care while other mechanisms phase health care costs back in line with other commodities.
** Direct the remaining 5% into a state (not federal) level fund that’s distributed to health care providers to recoup costs of providing care to those unable to pay (e.g., per EMTALA), means-tested based on the facility’s patient demographics and inversely proportional to the tax breaks they may already be getting in their municipality (tax freeloaders like Yale-New Haven Hospital spring to mind). This contribution has a permanent 5% cap.
** Through tax credits (remember, we’re now being taxed on larger incomes – see above), encourage the use of catastrophic plans for catastrophic illness and injury, and administer these as group plans through local municipalities (and no more broadly than that), not employers. Municipalities can take advantage of enormous actuarial group sizes, compared to small businesses, and they already have all the mechanisms in place for collecting and paying out funds. Since most people are far more active in local politics than any other, municipal plan administrators are more likely to be held accountable for their decisions than State/federal bureaucrats (much less employers – ever try to hold an employer responsible for something s/he’s not legally required to do?). This change will help to focus interest in local politics even more.
** Very important, and on-topic here: legislate away direct-to-consumer marketing of prescription drugs. We did this with cigarette ads and can use the same justification here, given the tens of thousands of deaths and hospitalizations caused by “correctly prescribed” pharmaceuticals each year. This will save big pharmas billion$ per year in advertising fees, which will facilitate lower-cost drugs. Far more importantly, the demand for these drugs will no longer be artificially inflated far beyond the actual medical need, which is part of what’s causing the skyrocketing health care costs (pharmas direct-advertise only their most expensive drugs). A nice side-benefit of this is that the billion$ will mostly be taken away from the entrenched, Fifth Column media. That’s a feature, not a bug.
** Let the resulting free market economics of direct-to-consumer commodity goods and services force the cost of day-to-day health care, equipment and pharmaceuticals back to a more reasonable equilibrium through profit reduction, cost cutting, salary reduction, firing slackers and efficiency improvements.
Some folks would add tort reform to the list above. I’ve never been convinced that tort reform will have the slightest affect on health care costs, since comprehensive insurance is the real culprit. Once direct-pay is reinstated, the market will control what a doctor can demand in compensation and, therefore, what s/he can pay out for liability insurance. Liability insurers will either adjust to that or stop offering the insurance. Either way, this eliminates the aspect of torts that drives up health care costs.
If we don’t find the common sense needed to recognize how comprehensive health care insurance is bankrupting us through skyrocketing health care costs, and force our alleged “representatives” at the State and federal level to perform a course correction, we will lose our liberty to a single-payer system controlled by people like BHO. Those are our choices.
Neo: The “Politico” and NYT stories to which you linked were yesterday’s stories. As soon as they came out our “progressives” began to protest, and as of this morning the Obama administration has backed away from the “$80 billion cap” deal with big pharma, in fact to insist that there never was a deal in the first place: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/us/08lobby.html
—–
August 8, 2009
Obama Reverses Stand on Drug Industry Deal
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
WASHINGTON – Caught between a pivotal industry ally and the protests of Congressional Democrats, the Obama administration on Friday backed away from what drug industry lobbyists had said this week was a firm White House promise to exclude from a proposed health care overhaul the possibility of allowing the government to negotiate lower drug prices under Medicare.
The reversal underscored the delicate balancing act the White House has pursued in its strategy of negotiating behind-the-scenes deals to win industry support without alienating liberal supporters on Capitol Hill…
In a telephone interview, Linda Douglass, a White House spokeswoman on health matters, said the question of government drug-price bargaining “was not discussed during the negotiations.” Asked if that meant such a provision was excluded, as the top drug lobbyists had previously said, Ms. Douglass declined to comment, repeating, “It was not discussed.”
White House officials said Friday that Mr. Messina, the deputy chief of staff who sent the e-mail message, had not intended to confirm that the deal ruled out price negotiations.
—–
Once an office holder has established a reputation for untrustworthiness and untruthfulness, for making deals, breaking them, and denying they were ever made in the first place, parties will shy away from entering into discussions with that figure or those representing him. The office holder gets nothing more than what he can get by the power of law, decree, or force. The Obama administration has now established that reputation over $80 billion dollars, a small fraction of the money in play in the health care reform effort. It seems a very odd calculation of price and value, to the point of being politically clueless.
David L. – this is a great outcome since it reveals, yet again, the unprecedented hypocrisy of this administration as well as its impotence.
What I find remarkable is that no one on the pharmalobby side ever saw The Empire Strikes Back, and actually believed that BHO would honor the deal once they’d helped him push through O-care.
Beverly Says:
“They’ve all already cut their backroom deals with Emir Hussein. Bastards.
We’re screwed, folks. Like, totally.”
I’m hearing some of them are backing out. They made the deals under duress and now that they see the polls…..
David L. Says:
“Neo: The “Politico” and NYT stories to which you linked were yesterday’s stories. As soon as they came out our “progressives” began to protest, and as of this morning the Obama administration has backed away from the “$80 billion cap” deal with big pharma, in fact to insist that there never was a deal in the first place:”
Too funny. 🙂 I stuck up for the Whitehouse a tiny bit by saying this was a pragmatic move on the Obama admin’s part that might not destroy the pharm industry compared to what the idiot progressives might do… and he backs down to the base / idiot progressives the next day.
This article was actually featured on The Huffingont Post last night. To which I made the following comment:
Vieux Charles
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America for their skill, dedication, innovation and determination in creating the pharmacuticals and techniques that have saved and improved millions and millions of lives in the United States and throughout the world.
Posted 10:08 PM on 08/07/2009
I know it’s sad. I need to get a life, but I just love messing with these clowns. The responses I got were pathetic. Personally, I’d recommend everyone here get an account, mess with these guys, then boycott their sponsors.
David L. Says:
August 8th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
“Once an office holder has established a reputation for untrustworthiness and untruthfulness, for making deals, breaking them, and denying they were ever made in the first place, parties will shy away from entering into discussions with that figure or those representing him.”
Obama’s reputation “for untrustworthiness and untruthfulness, for making deals, breaking them, and denying they were ever made in the first place” began on the national scene sometime around February 2008. Some how this guy remains unscathed.
We need to tax the Reds with this. Their Messiah cut a backroom deal with those evil capitalists and their running dog lobbyists. Perhaps we can generate some nice fraticidal red-on-red internecine bloodletting.
Occam’s Beard Says:
“We need to tax the Reds with this.”
On another level, a chant for the rallies should be to tell the union guys ‘we will put you on public healthcare with us… next time we win… stop it now’
We might also shoot for the populist angle: “Cadillac care for the bosses, veterinary care (or “euthanasia”) for the workers.”
Union guys are often pretty sensitive to that sort of thing, even though they may in fact be exempted.
One day you have a deal with Obama, and the next day you don’t. It is very clear that all of Obama’s statements come with an expiration date.
Occam’s Beard Says:
“Union guys are often pretty sensitive to that sort of thing, even though they may in fact be exempted.”
Yeah… same as Canada. The politicians and wealthy don’t use the crap public system.
Check out this horrifying summary of the contents of the Health Care Bill that somebody has put up on Twitter (http://tinyurl.com/m29z46).
To make sure the bill contains what this blogger says it contains, you can read the cited pages. I know legislative language can be pretty daunting, but persevere.
This posting must have hurt, ’cause various opponents of people knowing what is in this bill have apparently already dredged around and found and divulged his personal information on Twitter.
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Wow. You are up late, Neo. Isn’t it past your bed time out East?
I guess free markets are a thing of the past.
Every businessman in America with a brain needs to hire lobbyists. All profits will be political.
Well, the story is the double talk IMO.
Sticking to the deal is… to be fair… probably responsible. 80B is a ton of concessions. The idiots in the ‘progressive caucus’ would probably bleed so much as to kill the industry. All ‘our’ complaining about drug prices aside, most of them are Canada-esq low even in US (re: 90 days for $10ish if you shop around). Its just the new ones that cost more… and only until they go public domain when the patent runs out… and plenty of the best and/or very good ones have had their patents run out.
FTW??
“Failing to publicly confirm [the drug lobby’s] descriptions of the deal [to limit the cost reductions of meds] risked alienating a powerful industry ally currently helping to bankroll millions in television commercials in favor of Mr. Obama’s reforms. [emphasis mine]”
So the mystery of why the insurance companies, the AMA, the AARP, and the drug companies are onboard with this monstrosity is solved.
They’ve all already cut their backroom deals with Emir Hussein. Bastards.
We’re screwed, folks. Like, totally.
Lobbyists and Democrats…. Michelle Malkin goes into Obungler’s duplicity in fine detail in her latest book “Culture of Corruption”, which I’m about 60 pages into tonite. It’s quite interesting, to say the least….
But, you see, these are all just “facts” strung together with logic. Can’t you wingnuts get over these details and see that President Obama is above all of this messy politics? His vision for all of us will usher in a new era of wonderfulness if you will just shut up and let him sort things out his way. We finally have a president who is smart enough to know what is good for us – let him work his miracles. Oh, and ignore that beautiful man behind the green curtain over there pulling all of those levers… that is just a distraction. Nothing to see there.
(sarcasm alert)
All of this is getting quite entertaining – if being constantly proved right on past distressing assessments and depressing predictions can be considered entertaining, that is. When it comes to mindless (as opposed to “greedy”) corporations and their relationship to politics, it’s simply not possible to cynical enough. But focusing on details like this only serves to obscure the real issue: skyrocketing health care costs and how we should deal with them. To do that, it’s necessary to take a step back and level-set on a few basics.
1. Insurance is a tool intended to mitigate financial risk.
2. At one time not so long ago (hopefully, since I remember it quite clearly), everyone paid for day-to-day health care directly.
3. As Charles Krauthammer finally agreed with me the other day, it makes no sense at all to get one’s employer involved in paying for one’s health care.
The most important of these basics is the first. Somehow, when it comes to day-to-day health care (as opposed to catastrophic illness or injury), we don’t use insurance to manage risk. Instead, as it has evolved since the 1960s, comprehensive health care insurance has become a tool which redistributes wealth (in reverse) by distributing members’ health care expenses over a larger group. Whether it’s via employment benefits or directly, those of us who pay steep health taxes (i.e., health care insurance premiums) all receive essentially “free” (minus the co-pay) health care.
So I hate to be the bearer of bad revelations, but we’ve been living under a form of “corporate” socialized medicine for a long time. That wouldn’t be so bad, except for the law of unintended consequences, which always reveals the basic flaw in EVERY collective / socialist / Ponzi scheme. In the case of our present, “corporate” form of socialized medicine, comprehensive health insurance has been driving increases in the cost of health care, causing them to skyrocket at rates multiple times that of inflation, for decades.
How? Simple.
When consumers pay for commodities directly, as we did decades ago with health care, our subjective assessment of value, financial status and ability to comparison shop ALL provide a very strong set of controls over rising costs. Quotidian health care is the only commodity market where this model has been utterly neutralized. And not coincidentally, it’s the only commodity market where costs are quickly reaching the level where many consumers can’t afford even basic health care goods and services without distributing the costs they incur to others via “corporate” socialized medicine.
Skyrocketing health care costs, driven primarily by the open-loop mechanism of comprehensive health care insurance, has created a “crisis” that is now being exploited by the socialists in our federal government. In fact, politicians recognized the mechanism of comprehensive health care insurance for what it is a long time ago, which is why they’ve been trying to steal the insurance industry’s biggest cash cow for years.
If we ever see TRUE health care and health care insurance reform, it will have to involve some variation of the following. No other approach addresses the major factors that have driven health care costs to skyrocket:
** Eliminate comprehensive health insurance plans, just as all other Ponzi and wealth redistribution scams are treated. Do this through legislation over a period of 5-7 years. If we can’t break out of the box we’ve taped ourselves into and realize that this is vital, we will either go bankrupt paying for health care in 20-25 years using our present broken system, or we’ll lose our liberty and, ultimately, the quality of our health care to socialized medicine. Those are our choices.
** Transfer 95% of all monies that were being paid by employers to comprehensive health care insurance companies back to employees. Everyone enrolled in a health care plan at work gets an instant annual raise of from $4,000 to $16,000 per employee / family, or more, depending on the cost (to the employer) of the plan they’re in. New hires won’t typically enjoy this increase, but it’s only intended to help individuals and families cover the direct-pay costs of quotidian health care while other mechanisms phase health care costs back in line with other commodities.
** Direct the remaining 5% into a state (not federal) level fund that’s distributed to health care providers to recoup costs of providing care to those unable to pay (e.g., per EMTALA), means-tested based on the facility’s patient demographics and inversely proportional to the tax breaks they may already be getting in their municipality (tax freeloaders like Yale-New Haven Hospital spring to mind). This contribution has a permanent 5% cap.
** Through tax credits (remember, we’re now being taxed on larger incomes – see above), encourage the use of catastrophic plans for catastrophic illness and injury, and administer these as group plans through local municipalities (and no more broadly than that), not employers. Municipalities can take advantage of enormous actuarial group sizes, compared to small businesses, and they already have all the mechanisms in place for collecting and paying out funds. Since most people are far more active in local politics than any other, municipal plan administrators are more likely to be held accountable for their decisions than State/federal bureaucrats (much less employers – ever try to hold an employer responsible for something s/he’s not legally required to do?). This change will help to focus interest in local politics even more.
** Very important, and on-topic here: legislate away direct-to-consumer marketing of prescription drugs. We did this with cigarette ads and can use the same justification here, given the tens of thousands of deaths and hospitalizations caused by “correctly prescribed” pharmaceuticals each year. This will save big pharmas billion$ per year in advertising fees, which will facilitate lower-cost drugs. Far more importantly, the demand for these drugs will no longer be artificially inflated far beyond the actual medical need, which is part of what’s causing the skyrocketing health care costs (pharmas direct-advertise only their most expensive drugs). A nice side-benefit of this is that the billion$ will mostly be taken away from the entrenched, Fifth Column media. That’s a feature, not a bug.
** Let the resulting free market economics of direct-to-consumer commodity goods and services force the cost of day-to-day health care, equipment and pharmaceuticals back to a more reasonable equilibrium through profit reduction, cost cutting, salary reduction, firing slackers and efficiency improvements.
Some folks would add tort reform to the list above. I’ve never been convinced that tort reform will have the slightest affect on health care costs, since comprehensive insurance is the real culprit. Once direct-pay is reinstated, the market will control what a doctor can demand in compensation and, therefore, what s/he can pay out for liability insurance. Liability insurers will either adjust to that or stop offering the insurance. Either way, this eliminates the aspect of torts that drives up health care costs.
If we don’t find the common sense needed to recognize how comprehensive health care insurance is bankrupting us through skyrocketing health care costs, and force our alleged “representatives” at the State and federal level to perform a course correction, we will lose our liberty to a single-payer system controlled by people like BHO. Those are our choices.
Neo: The “Politico” and NYT stories to which you linked were yesterday’s stories. As soon as they came out our “progressives” began to protest, and as of this morning the Obama administration has backed away from the “$80 billion cap” deal with big pharma, in fact to insist that there never was a deal in the first place:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/us/08lobby.html
—–
August 8, 2009
Obama Reverses Stand on Drug Industry Deal
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
WASHINGTON – Caught between a pivotal industry ally and the protests of Congressional Democrats, the Obama administration on Friday backed away from what drug industry lobbyists had said this week was a firm White House promise to exclude from a proposed health care overhaul the possibility of allowing the government to negotiate lower drug prices under Medicare.
The reversal underscored the delicate balancing act the White House has pursued in its strategy of negotiating behind-the-scenes deals to win industry support without alienating liberal supporters on Capitol Hill…
In a telephone interview, Linda Douglass, a White House spokeswoman on health matters, said the question of government drug-price bargaining “was not discussed during the negotiations.” Asked if that meant such a provision was excluded, as the top drug lobbyists had previously said, Ms. Douglass declined to comment, repeating, “It was not discussed.”
White House officials said Friday that Mr. Messina, the deputy chief of staff who sent the e-mail message, had not intended to confirm that the deal ruled out price negotiations.
—–
Once an office holder has established a reputation for untrustworthiness and untruthfulness, for making deals, breaking them, and denying they were ever made in the first place, parties will shy away from entering into discussions with that figure or those representing him. The office holder gets nothing more than what he can get by the power of law, decree, or force. The Obama administration has now established that reputation over $80 billion dollars, a small fraction of the money in play in the health care reform effort. It seems a very odd calculation of price and value, to the point of being politically clueless.
Sharing some of my art work here:
http://i32.tinypic.com/fu2lpy.jpg
David L. – this is a great outcome since it reveals, yet again, the unprecedented hypocrisy of this administration as well as its impotence.
What I find remarkable is that no one on the pharmalobby side ever saw The Empire Strikes Back, and actually believed that BHO would honor the deal once they’d helped him push through O-care.
Beverly Says:
“They’ve all already cut their backroom deals with Emir Hussein. Bastards.
We’re screwed, folks. Like, totally.”
I’m hearing some of them are backing out. They made the deals under duress and now that they see the polls…..
David L. Says:
“Neo: The “Politico” and NYT stories to which you linked were yesterday’s stories. As soon as they came out our “progressives” began to protest, and as of this morning the Obama administration has backed away from the “$80 billion cap” deal with big pharma, in fact to insist that there never was a deal in the first place:”
Too funny. 🙂 I stuck up for the Whitehouse a tiny bit by saying this was a pragmatic move on the Obama admin’s part that might not destroy the pharm industry compared to what the idiot progressives might do… and he backs down to the base / idiot progressives the next day.
This article was actually featured on The Huffingont Post last night. To which I made the following comment:
Vieux Charles
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America for their skill, dedication, innovation and determination in creating the pharmacuticals and techniques that have saved and improved millions and millions of lives in the United States and throughout the world.
Posted 10:08 PM on 08/07/2009
I know it’s sad. I need to get a life, but I just love messing with these clowns. The responses I got were pathetic. Personally, I’d recommend everyone here get an account, mess with these guys, then boycott their sponsors.
David L. Says:
August 8th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
“Once an office holder has established a reputation for untrustworthiness and untruthfulness, for making deals, breaking them, and denying they were ever made in the first place, parties will shy away from entering into discussions with that figure or those representing him.”
Obama’s reputation “for untrustworthiness and untruthfulness, for making deals, breaking them, and denying they were ever made in the first place” began on the national scene sometime around February 2008. Some how this guy remains unscathed.
We need to tax the Reds with this. Their Messiah cut a backroom deal with those evil capitalists and their running dog lobbyists. Perhaps we can generate some nice fraticidal red-on-red internecine bloodletting.
Occam’s Beard Says:
“We need to tax the Reds with this.”
On another level, a chant for the rallies should be to tell the union guys ‘we will put you on public healthcare with us… next time we win… stop it now’
We might also shoot for the populist angle: “Cadillac care for the bosses, veterinary care (or “euthanasia”) for the workers.”
Union guys are often pretty sensitive to that sort of thing, even though they may in fact be exempted.
One day you have a deal with Obama, and the next day you don’t. It is very clear that all of Obama’s statements come with an expiration date.
Occam’s Beard Says:
“Union guys are often pretty sensitive to that sort of thing, even though they may in fact be exempted.”
Yeah… same as Canada. The politicians and wealthy don’t use the crap public system.
Check out this horrifying summary of the contents of the Health Care Bill that somebody has put up on Twitter (http://tinyurl.com/m29z46).
To make sure the bill contains what this blogger says it contains, you can read the cited pages. I know legislative language can be pretty daunting, but persevere.
This posting must have hurt, ’cause various opponents of people knowing what is in this bill have apparently already dredged around and found and divulged his personal information on Twitter.