The American Spectator : The Bad Road to Baucus

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The Bad Road to Baucus

By William Tucker on 10.20.09 @ 6:09AM

Everything you'll wish you had known about healthcare after the Baucus bill passes.

(Page 3 of 3)

At the same time, customers game the system by waiting until they get sick to sign up. I'm embarrassed to I say did this as a young father-to-be. My wife was pregnant and we had just been offered coverage through her new employer. She wasn't due until January, so we decided to forego the last three months and sign up after the first of the year. In December, our first son arrived prematurely. He spent a week in an incubator and we ran up hospital bills of over $10,000. It would have been a financial disaster -- except that someone at the company pulled some strings and got us signed up retroactively. It amazes me now that we would take these risks to avoid making a few $100 premiums, but that's the sort of thing you only learn with hindsight -- even though insurance salesmen are constantly warning us about it.

So health insurance represents a system of faulty regulation waiting to be resolved. Unfortunately, Baucus is a badly cobbled-together, Rube-Goldberg attempt to patch things up building on a flawed system. What should we do instead? Here's a four-point proposal:

• Repeal McCarran-Ferguson or at least allow insurance to be sold across state lines, as Senator Jon Kyl has repeatedly suggested.

• Give everyone the same tax benefits as ERISA employees -- the ability to buy insurance with tax-free money.

• Offer coverage to those who still can't afford it by setting up high-risk pools, just as states now have high-risk pools for dangerous drivers.

• Pass national tort reform by two simple steps: a) limit non-economic damages ("pain and suffering") to $250,000, and b) put a 3-to-5-year statute of limitations on claims.

You'd think with so much at stake, Republican Senators and Congressmen could unite around such a simple platform. National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Spectator have all suggested almost identical "one-pagers" as a Republican alternative that would erase the GOP's image as "The Party of 'No.'"

But no, the legislators can't seem to find this possible. "We've got 40 Senators and 40 healthcare plans and no one can agree on anything," says one Congressional insider. "We've actually had screaming fights over whether people should get a tax credit or a tax exemption for buying their own insurance." It makes you appreciate what Newt Gingrich did in 1994 in uniting the party around the Contract With America.

And so, facing a terminally disorganized opposition, the Democrats will probably be able to pass some version of Baucus, with Olympia Snowe representing the Republican Party. We're likely to spend the next twenty years trying to fend off the consequences.

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topics:
Health Care, Max Baucus, ERISA

About the Author

William Tucker is the author of Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (14) | Leave a comment

Robert Rosencrans| 10.20.09 @ 8:09AM

This health care farce has also turned into a "screw the elderly" extravaganza with higher premiums and cuts in service for Medicare/Medicaid and allowing the insurance companies to charge 4 to 6 times as much to the elderly in premiums. I'm convinced that something happens to people's minds once inside the beltway, separating them from the rest of society.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclat.....hy/3336609
"As you get older, you start consume more health care," explained House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller , D- Calif. "Age rating is a common practice in insurance underwriting," added Sen. Jeff Bingaman , D- N.M. , a member of the Senate Health and Finance Committees

So are gender differentials, he was told. Why are they being eliminated?

"I don't know all the answers," Bingaman said. "You'll have to ask someone else," said Miller.

Senate staffers explained one reason for the difference this way: Age-based premiums can be justified by consumers' experience, while gender-based differentials relying somewhat on potential pregnancy has the look of being blatantly discriminatory.

Experts have determined that age-based premiums can be justified as six to seven times as high as those charged the lowest risks.

owyheewine| 10.20.09 @ 9:21AM

The Baucus bill is over 1500 pages. How could that be realistically looked at as anothing but a government take over?
I like the proposal in the article.
I would also propose a KISS constitutional amendment that would prohibit any law or Federal regulation from exceeding the length of the Constitution, and repeal all of those that do.

Tim| 10.20.09 @ 10:30AM

Anyone that really believes that these characters in charge won't pull the plug on Grandma are using way too much of California's "Medical Pot"

These guys are into population control as well as Media control. They are devotees of what we were warned about in the book 1984.

Former Chairman Mao would be proud of some of these Neo Communists currently working in DC.

Yet these charaters never learn. People want Freedom and while millions have been wiped out through the years fighting for it, at the end of the day, Freedom rules because it is a God given right that won't be contained....

that is something that you can't teach at Harvard or in any other brick building it is something that every human is born with....it's in the DNA.

trying to control freedom is more than wrong, it's futile!

RC| 10.20.09 @ 11:02AM

I like where you are going with your Neo Communist comment. It fits exactly in one phrase what these people are "Neo Coms".

Bruce| 10.20.09 @ 6:54PM

Think "Soylent Green."
Old(er) age is a time when health issues are more important than ever, and here we go getting screwed again. The only way to prevent this kind of crap is to make members of Congress and the President subject to the same plans as the rest of us shmucks who pay the bills - not allow them to contaminate the hallowed ground of our military heros by getting treatment at Walter Reed.

Robert Rosencrans| 10.20.09 @ 10:40AM

Here's Robert Reich with the Democrat "Throw Grandma/Grandpa Under the Bus" plan.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p.....oresPaging Congressman Alan Grayson! Here is a quote that validates what you said about those EVIL Republicans: "We're going to have to, if you're very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It's too expensive…so we're going to let you die." Aha! So it turns out that Grayson was right when he said "Republicans want you to die quickly." Only one "little" problem here. That quote did not come from a Republican. In fact it came from the very liberal former Labor Secretary Robert Reich who is now an economics adviser for Barack Obama.

Bruce| 10.20.09 @ 7:06PM

Thanks for the link to that story, Robert - but the link as given was incorrect. After a search I found the correct page (assuming it wasn't screwed up by length), which I have shortened via Tiny URL as follows:
http://tinyurl.com/yj2pdpj

Ken (Old Texican)| 10.20.09 @ 11:29AM

I'm sending Rush a new buzz-word phrase as soon as I finish this post To Congress " You Are Fired!"

Rush follows TEAM AMERICA on twitter.
www.myteamusa.org now free admission to membership.

Richard Johnston| 10.20.09 @ 1:07PM

Mr. Tucker, your article states: "She told ERISA horror stories to convince people the insurance companies were acting irresponsibly. But insurance companies were prevented from acting arbitrarily by state laws. ERISA plans could be highhanded because they were exempt from state laws."

I believe this is a bit misleading, although I am certain not intentionally. Insured and self-insured plans alike are immune from any meaningful civil liability for anything from breach of contract up to and including fraud or wrongful death. This unavoidably has a deleterious impact on their behavior and in fact encourages arbitrary and wrongful behavior.

It is of course true that state regulations do apply to insurers, but ERISA nonetheless unduly curtails the ability to take an insurance company OR a self-insured plan to court. It makes it unduly difficult to win a case and it provides wholly insufficient remedies if you are able to win.

See generally http://problemiserisa.blogspot.com

Thanks.

Jim O'Brien| 10.20.09 @ 8:41PM

We still have the best medical care in the world, and that is a result of free enterprise: 1) great doctors and hospitals; 2) a steady stream of new drugs and procedures developed with private risk capital; and 3) very competent private insurance companies. To the extent we have a health care "crisis", the problems are almost all the result of government legislation, regulation, and now major Congressional threats to both doctors and patients. Congress will cause a shortage of doctors and a drastic reduction in the quality of medical care for patients, while at the same time increasing the expense of insurance and medical care. It's the "perfect storm", or put more accurately, the "perfect screwup".

The socialists, Obama and his party in Congress, are about to destroy the great medical care we enjoy, while at the same time threatening our entire economy by dictating socialized medicine. Obama and his fellow travelers apparently learned nothing from the collapse of the former USSR and other socialist "paradises". They think the government can run a medical system for over 300 million people, when in fact the government can't even run Amtrak, or stop illegal immigrants from entering the U.S.

JBobs| 10.21.09 @ 9:10AM

The socialists promise utopia but instead ensure just the opposite. Honesty and integrity are merely words used by our leaders to deceive us. Morality is now the perversion. Our nation's future becomes increasingly dark with each passing day of this administration. As citizens we ultimately will be faced with a choice: Capitulate, and die meekly. Resist, and die fighting.

Jim O'Brien| 10.21.09 @ 3:12PM

"Live free or die." - State motto on NH license plates.

Dr. Gregory Garamoni| 10.21.09 @ 6:25PM

Mr. Tucker:

This is an excellent article that puts things in perspective.

You state: "the states have reverted to the old game of favoring big players by setting up barriers to competition. " I find this quite plausible, have seen similar assertions elsewhere, but have not yet seen any supporting evidence. Could you or any of your readers point to any studies? I am familiar with data on the costs of state mandates. I am looking for data on state barriers to competition.

Dr. Gregory Garamoni
Doctors on Strike for Freedom in Medicine
http://www.doctorsonstrike.com

Dr. Gregory Garamoni| 10.21.09 @ 6:42PM

Richard Johnson states, "ERISA nonetheless unduly curtails the ability to take an insurance company OR a self-insured plan to court. It makes it unduly difficult to win a case and it provides wholly insufficient remedies if you are able to win."

I have been following the health care debate for several months, and this is only the second time I've seen a call for ERISA reform. Why? Are there any legislators leading the charge on this important issue?

Dr. Gregory Garamoni
Doctors on Strike for Freedom in Medicine
http://www.doctorsonstrike.com