AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

I agree that developing accurate estimates for healthcare insurance plans is always difficult!

However, private insurers are able to develop adequately accurate estimates for the healthcare insurances they sell. That's why such insurers usually make profits on the healthcare insurance costs they estimate.

The federal government acts incompetent to develop adequately accurate estimates for the healthcare insurances they provide. The federal government invariably estimates costs for their healthcare insurance programs to be far less than they actually turn out to be. The reason could be simply that the federal government is incompentent to make such estimates. However, I suspect the real cause for their gross under estimations is political. To convince the voters to support what they advocate for healthcare insurance, they knowingly make gross under estimations of the costs for the healthcare insurance provided by them.

ican, The reason it's easier to establish cost for already established plans is they have enough information from which to work from. A universal health plan that doesn't have previous records is much more difficult. No community (local), state or other country's plans is similar to what the US is trying to plan for universal coverage. We have some information on how to build in efficiencies, minimize waste and fraud, and the number of American citizens who have no insurance or inadequate insurance. What we do not have is what the cost will be to insure all Americans vs the anticipated savings; the short-term and long-term effect of any plan.

We also know that health care in the US is very expensive and continues to increase in cost greater than wage increase or the inflation rate. The current health care system is broken; and our country cannot continue to pay higher and higher prices for less people. Our country already spends the most for health care of any developed country; some poor countries provide universal health care.

Well then the solution is obvious! The feds should abandon their own universal healthcare insurance, because they cannot compute its costs well enough. They instead, should help those who want, but are unable to buy, healthcare insurance from private insurers, The cost is accurately knowable in advance.

That would be preferable to taking away everybody's freedoms and options, but I would rather the federal government get out of the business altogether and focus on initiating reforms to limit or restrict the predators and otherwise provide uniform incentives and opportunity for the free market to work better. That is our very best chance to not only make healthcare more affordable for many more people, but it is our best chance to keep healthcare affordable over the long haul.

Government has a long track record of making just about everything it touches more costly than it otherwise would be.

And what kind of reforms?

We can't watch television on any night on any cable or free channel without seeing an advertisement from some law firm soliciting 'vicitims' for some class action suit. I still have a nice assortment of bridges to sell to anybody who thinks that kind of thing isn't driving up healthcare costs. Typically, it is the lawfirm who rakes in almost all the winnings from a successful suit, however, while the 'victims' receive little or nothing. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. It is something Congress should be paying close attention to.

Hey Manchester UK is going to be twinned with Los Angeles USA.
Do we deserve each other?
I'm so excited I don't know what thread to post this on.

One would think that someone who is so sure that cases like this are 'driving up costs' could provide even a tiny bit of data showing this is true; but you won't be able to do so, because it isn't true. Neither the rate nor the amount of medical malpractice lawsuit awards have risen significantly in the last decade, yet costs have skyrocketed. What is your explanation for that?

Cycloptichorn

As a matter of fact from what I've been reading, malpractice settlements have been getting smaller and less suits won in court. More are being settled out of court.

Geeze, imagine that, Foxy, 'due process'. You aren't a MAC, you're a whiner who looks to memes for your background information.

are you for or against a free market? more government involvement or less?

Or does "paying close attention" = "not do anything about it" to a MAC as you define them?

I am for a free market. And I am for protecting the unalienable, Constitution, legal, and civil rights of the people. I am opposed to anarchy and very much appreciative of the social contract by which people join together and agree on specific ways to govern themselves. For MACs, one component of that social contract is a conviction that the government should have a role in preventing the people from doing physical or economic violence to each other and also a role in enforcing common standards of ethics and decency so that the strong are prevented from preying on people without the people's knowledge or consent.

So, we have truth in lending, full disclosure laws, and requirements of good faith in contracts. And we have reasonable laws to as much as possible prevent products with hidden dangers from being sold, at least without informing the public of the dangers.

So, the social contract supports a free market that allows people the freedom to look to their own interests and to provide a playing field in which all can compete. In so doing, we provide incentive for all providers of goods and services to strive for excellence and provide the best possible products at an attractive price.

But the social contract does not support a free market that allows people to look to their own interests in a way that deceptively harms others. You can say your product is best when it isn't. That doesn't hurt anybody. But you can't say your product will cure cancer when it won't. That could cause somebody seriously injury or cost them their life. It is a proper role of government to regulate that kind of thing.

The government that allows one industry to exploit something that does not deliver a benefit as advertised and in fact harms the whole of society is not promoting the common welfare. The government should be taking a close look at class action suits that are substantially driving up the cost of healthcare while providing little or no benefit as advertised. And if in fact class action suits are a dishonest exploitation of individuals and/or the general public, they should be regulated so that they do not wreck economic violence upon the people.

And that would be a MAC principle.

I'm gone for awhile, and come back to find the same people taking the same shrill partisan positions. The Left is now in control of the levers of government, and defend this administration for the same stuff they criticized the last one for. The National Debt has exploded, but that hasn't cooled their lust for spending other people's money yet. The economy has not improved significantly so far as I can see because of the Democrats have been shoveling money into the furnace. I see that the Raptor program was canceled. That might be a short sighted savings, but any savings is offset by a Health Bill that may cost more than those terrible wars we fight to preserve freedom.

Of even greater concern than the cash is the likely expansion of federal fingers into the daily lives of citizens. The biggest effect the runaway spending seems to be that the federal government now has more control over private industry than at any time in our history. Even a few years ago the suggestion that the federal government dictate salaries would have set off a fire storm of public indignation. It appears that Ms. Sotomayor will be confirmed in spite of her prejudices; prejudices that would have spelled doom for a conservative nominee.

On the other hand, Obama and the Left promised that the world would stop hating us if only we abandoned 0ur reach for evil empire. All we need to do, they said, was to apologize for being wealthy and for trying to extend the benefits of liberty to the rest of the world. I haven't been following the news as carefully as the folks here so perhaps I missed headlines like: "Peace in the Middle East: Palestine and Israel Join Hands"; "No Violence for the Past Three Months in Iraq"; "Iran Opens Doors to Verify No Nuclear Weapons Developent";"Kim Jong-Il Abandons ICM and Nuclear Testing"; "Taliban Apologizes for Terrorism"; "South American Communist and Socialist Movements on the Decline"; "Illegal Border Crossing so low that Border Patrol can be cut back". I guess I'm just not paying enough attention.

Seriously, the world hasn't changed for the better by putting this gang into power. The same problems exist with the same constraints on how those problems can be addressed. Promises are hard to keep, and in trying to keep even some of those promises... the risks to our traditional values are raised considerably. Humans and the things that motivate them haven't changed in millennia, nor are they likely to change in the next few hundred years. People want to be free and secure from the heavy hand of government. They want to increase the wealth and property available their family. They want to be treated with dignity and equality before Laws that are equitable and Just. No government, no party or political theory, has ever proven better at delivering those essentials than the United States Constitution. Imperfect, though it is, it is far better than the idea that government can dictate prosperity and happiness for everyone equally.

OK, that's my Sermon for the Day. You can go back to sleep now and continue dreaming of Utopia. The voters were persuaded and now the Left will have to deliver that better world they promised. In the meantime, the GOP will hold the line, recover and then try to set things Right after this bunch leave office. Time for my nap now.

No. This is YOU making things up as you go.

Class action lawsuits are already regulated by the rules of civil procedure.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/Rule23.htm

The Constitution guarantees the right of the people to seek redress of their grievances. Resort to our courts and judicial process is the proper means for the resolution of civil disputes. If you truly were in favor of protecting the rights of the people, you would not be advocating any policy that would shut the court house doors.

Thanks Ash. You are welcome and invited to drop in and 'sermonize' anytime.

Foxie says she's against anarchy. Of coarse most Americans are for anarchy. What a putz!

You come back with the same drivel you've always spouted here, Asherman.



Thank heaven for small mercies.

amen!

She equates class action lawsuits as a form of anarchy. ROFL

OMG! In typical fearmonging "conservative" fashion where the interests of business outweigh the interests of people, she alleges a fear that class action lawsuits (e.g., against pharmaceutical companies and the like) might drive up the costs of healthcare!

God forbid that the manufacturers and vendors of products that injure and kill people might be held liable for their conduct because, if they have to produce and sell safer products, the cost might go up!

That's probably why Ford should have been allowed to make exploding Pintos without any fear of liability. Making them safer cost a few more dollars per unit, and that would drive up the price, so who cares how many people were injured or killed in a preventable inferno? According to Foxfyre, Congress should have prevented the exploding Pinto lawsuit because it caused financial harm to the manufacturer.

You don't have to watch or listen to the Micheal Savages, the Rush Limbaughs, the Glenn Becks, for inevitably, they show up here.

It certainly reads as if you're for a lot more government involvement in private lives and private businesses than I'd have expected from someone self-identifying as a conservative (of whatever particular pinstripe).

In my opinion, Modern American conservatives are not anti-government. Modern American conservatives are not anarchists and they hold a somewhat different view of social contract than do pure libertarians as MACs allow the community to regulate itself according to its own conscience more than most pure libertarians would want. In other words, MACs put more importance on shared values than do most pure libertarians.

MACs do see a role for the Federal government in establishing, protecting, and enforcing unalienable, civil, legal, and natural rights of the people. But they see the role of Federal government as freeing the people to otherwise look to their own interests and not inhibit them in that pursuit nor dictate to them what that must be.

It is mostly in that last principle that MACs differ most from modern American liberals.