'Down the Insurance Rabbit Hole'
From Angela Louise Campbell at the New York Times:ON the second day of oral arguments over the Affordable Care Act, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., trying to explain what sets health care apart, told the Supreme Court, “This is a market in which you may be healthy one day and you may be a very unhealthy participant in that market the next day.” Justice Antonin Scalia subsequently expressed skepticism about forcing the young to buy insurance: “When they think they have a substantial risk of incurring high medical bills, they’ll buy insurance, like the rest of us.”May the justices please meet my sister-in-law. On Feb. 8, she was a healthy 32-year-old, who was seven and a half months pregnant with her first baby. On Feb. 9, she was a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the chest down by a car accident that damaged her spine. Miraculously, the baby, born by emergency C-section, is healthy.
Read it all. I wish there was a way to mandate that the conservative justices on the Supreme Court read the story, especially Antonin (Broccoli) Scalia, the clown on the bench.
H/T to Charles Pierce at The Politics Blog.
Do you suppose he cares, Mimi?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Lapin. I added the picture to the post. Iconic, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteI do still have problems with the requirement to buy health insurance; I admit I'm not readily conversant with the requirements, but, unless the government is providing an extremely low-cost alternative with equal coverage or requiring employers to buy health insurance for their employees, this is an added burden and in no way a help.
ReplyDeleteMark, if everyone is in the risk pool, including the young and mostly healthy, the price of insurance should go down for everyone. If the young and healthy are not in the pool the price rises. And what about emergency care for those without insurance? We all end up paying, because doctors and hospitals pass on the costs to patients who have insurance.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as I see it, all the plans besides a single-payer health care system, similar to Medicare, that covers everyone are merely stop-gaps.
The price should go down? We've seen that corporations are so reasonable!
ReplyDeleteWhat about those of us, Mimi, who still won't be able to afford it? 15% off of 200% too much is still too much. If it's not taken out before taxes, and everything else, in my paycheck, then I'm left having to pay it out of the $217.50 I'm left each week from two garnishments while our government plays hired muscle for loan companies - all because I had the audacity to think I should get a college education.
Mark, those who cannot pay will get help. As I said, I want a single-payer system like Medicare for everyone. What was passed was the best Obama could get through Congress, and many more people will be covered when it goes into full effect, if the Supremes don't throw all or parts of the law.
ReplyDeleteUntil I know the help is real help, no. I don't trust the government. I don't trust Obama. I wish I still had the spiel I got from the White House when I presented my story about the student loans and asking why forgiveness of those loans can't be pushed forward. What I got was an apologetic that basically said keeping the loan companies happy was more important than people falling through the cracks. You may have benefited from our society, I haven't, much. I have no reason to trust.
DeleteMark, you may want to read Bp George Packard, who writes as Occupied Bishop, on student loans.
ReplyDeleteShe—and many in her generation—live under this sentence of penury making life decisions (or not) based on the indentured nature of their lives.
You know, I really don't understand you. You're such a rich nation and so medically advanced that surely you could run some sort of National Health Service. We've got one in the UK (as have practically all other European countries) and surely you can design one suit your own particular needs and style; there are enough examples around to copy - or avoid!
ReplyDeleteBut perhaps you don't love each other enough(?) Its such a puzzle, Charlie Farns-Barns.
Charlie, I don't understand us, either. We're the only country in the industrialized West with no national health care. Perhaps we don't love each other enough. We surely do not care enough about the common good.
ReplyDeleteThat story is so disturbing . . . and in my State (CA). I'm insured, for now . . . but that could change at any time (if parental largesse sitch changes).
ReplyDeleteDoes Scalia not care that he will be the textbook case for a *horrible* SCOTUS Justice for decades to come?
I doubt that Scalia would care, but I'd hope that one of the other conservative justices would. Perhaps Chief Justice Roberts would not want his court to be remembered for striking down the health care law.
ReplyDelete