Further to my seminal brainstorm of yesterday on the formation of “Tea Party Hospitals” to serve constitutional purists who reject mandatory health insurance, I would also propose a new HMO – “Patriot Care”. Doctors and nurses in this HMO would be trained to provide care that the Founders would have experienced in late
Tea Party Hospitals and Patriot Care
December 15, 2010 by rantcaster
Here’s another idea. Stay out of their lives. That’s all they want.
Here’s a more articulate treatise to respond to your comment:
http://www.salon.com/news/healthcare_reform/index.html?story=/opinion/feature/2010/12/29/gene_lyosn_healthcare
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/06/cbo-health-care-repeal-deficit_n_805192.html
Whatever happened to “e pluribus unum” (from many, one) the original motto of the US, or “all for one, one for all”? Without understanding the real economic principal of distributed risk resulting from a large insurance pool, Tea Party fanatics reject the insurance mandate as “socialized medicine”. So I say let them be uninsured, but let’s also change the federal regulation that requires hospitals to provide care to the uninsured – especially to the deliberately uninsured – when they show up at the emergency room. I’m more than happy to stay out of their lives. They, in turn, better stay the hell out of my wallet when they get sick.
Here’s an idea. As you don’t need insurance for medical treatment, don’t require anyone to have it. Conversely, keep the government out of the requirements business as all-too-often enforcement regulation is more costly than the savings it intends to ensure.
It’s frankly scary that you’ve decided that you want to refuse medical treatment to people that are of a different political ideology than yours. Scary.
The government has instituted an unconstitutional mandate requiring people to buy an unnecessary product. When this happens and people like you inadvertently (or purposefully) literally are willing to have opponents die for your point, you are acting irresponsibly to say the least.
Here’s an idea. The Tea Partiers don’t want change. You do. Why force the change on other people that neither want it or benefit from it. You change — pick up a fat policy which insures millions of others that are all too happy to have others pay for their benefits. Either this, or move. But don’t try to kill off your opponents.
You have completely missed my point, and this – frustratingly – is the common misinformed and misguided attitude of Tea Party advocates who reject “Obamacare” without thinking of how the real world works. We have, now, a FEDERALLY MANDATED requirement that hospital emergency rooms cannot refuse care to people without insurance. That is the morally right thing to do, but what it means is that people without insurance don’t go to doctors for preventive care, and then show up in emergency rooms for extraordinarily expensive emergency treatment that I, and you, and everybody else pays for. What does the Tea Party think of that? If Tea Partiers want to opt out of the insurance mandate, who will pick up the cost of their care when they, inevitably, show up in hospital emergency rooms? Do they expect to get a free ride: no insurance cost, and a freebie at the hospital? Please tell me what your alternative healthcare solution is for a large percentage of the population that might decide to “go naked”. GOP leaders and Tea Party advocates rage against what they mistakenly think is a government “takeover” of healthcare, but offer absolutely no real-world practical solutions to this enormous monster of rising healthcare costs that will bankrupt millions of families if not brought under control. All bitching, no solutions, and no credibility on the right.
I guess where you’re missing the point then is that previously, I had a catastrophic care policy — covered my family for ER visits. The rest of our care we paid out of our pocket. I negotiated directly with caregivers on rates, and paid cash. This saved me hundreds or thousands per year. Now I have to pay far more because I’m forced to have full health insurance, because someone thought they knew better for me and my family. Who called for this? You guessed it: The government.
Furthermore, look at the provisions of the bill. In addition to all of the non-healthcare provisions in it, it also forces larger regulations in on caregivers. Additionally, by driving up the cost of the healthcare (which we’ve seen happen in MA, the model for the federal plan) we’ve seen companies opt to go to a government-subsidized (read: government) plan. I’d say that’s a takeover, just behind the scenes.
Real world practical solutions? I’d say allowing people to shop nationwide for their own insurance is real-world and practical. When consumers shop based on their wants/needs companies are forced to compete. Tort reform — limiting damages people can receive for care mistakes, and the process in which they can get them. This is real-world, and directly reduces caregivers’ costs. There are lists out there of “real-world” solutions out there that were disregarded by the left once they no longer had to listen to reason. So the left just repeated lines like “All bitching, no solutions, and no credibility on the right” despite facts to the contrary.
Oh, and as for the comments you made about my “proposal” being scary, my proposal would be in the nature of irony and satire. Not snark and vitriol, which is largely dominated by commentators on the right.
It’s satirical to wish that someone were denied healthcare because they dispute your politics? I think you need to understand satire a little better. I’d say that equates with the very vitriol you the right spews.
Thanks for the clarification. Good that you have a solution, but there are 43million Americans who don’t have/cannot afford health insurance. There is no way they can be served by “nationwide shopping” with private insurance companies. There is already a dangerous concentration of market share in that industry, and no one should imagine that insurers will act any differently than bankers did following interstate banking reform and systematic deregulation of that industry (less choice, virtually zero interest on consumer deposits, astronomically high consumer lending rates, same on endless fees – in short, consumers have taken it in the shorts). The health insurance industry will spend record amounts of money lobbying not to protect the interests of consumers, but to line their pockets and those of compliant pols on both sides of the aisle. I advocated for a national healthcare solution, such as virtually all advanced countries in the world now have: healthcare is treated as a citizen’s right, not a privilege for those who can afford it. We have a dangerously broken system that is vastly more expensive than other countries, and produces significantly substandard health outcomes. Obama had the courage to try and conquer this monster, and the ideologically pinch-minded obstruction to this action, ignoring all the legitimate research on costs/benefits, is beyond perplexing. Last, but not least, the simplistic notion that “government-mandated health insurance” is unconstitutional is just not true. See this bit of history.
http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/01/17/congress-passes-socialized-medicine-and-mandates-health-insurance-in-1798/