Where is the cost control in HCR?

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Monday April 19, 2010 · 4:32 PM PDT

2010/04/19 · 16:32

With the passage of health care reform, many people are concerned about how it will affect their health care premiums. If health care premiums go down, then the reform succeeded; if they go up, then the effort was for nothing. So what in this bill actually controls the cost of health care premiums? I have seen many on DailyKos declare that there are no cost controls and that premiums will just keep going up. While it is true that the bill doesn’t mandate the prices of premiums or medical services directly, a number of provisions in the bill provide strong downward pressure on both premiums and medical cost, thus keeping cost under control.

alkaline9

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Tuesday April 13, 2010 · 4:13 PM PDT

2010/04/13 · 16:13

I just finished reading the Kaiser Family Foundation's summary of the health care reform (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), and I discovered a few very interesting things that I heard nothing of during the health care debate or even afterwards. (They may have been mentioned during the 7 hour health care summit, but who watched that?). So I jotted down the six most interesting things in the ACA that I hadn't heard of before, plus 1 that I had (but I only saw one reference to after passage). Text quoted from the KFF summary is in quotes.

alkaline9

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Monday September 21, 2009 · 5:14 PM PDT

2009/09/21 · 17:14

When you discuss the matter of government with libertarians, they will rail against the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of government. They will talk about the superiority of private enterprise, because they say that the incentive of profit drives better efficiency and performance. If you just try to argue back, trying to defend specific government institutions, you will probably not win. The Libertarian will have an endless string of examples where various government institutions have failed in one way or another.

In order to successfully argue in support of government, you need to reframe the discussion. You need to step back and ask the question, "What is government?" You have to define government in the right way in order to have a chance of defending it. I like to define it this way:

Government is a body of people banding together to solve problems that cannot be solved by the profit motive.

alkaline9

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Wednesday September 16, 2009 · 7:17 AM PDT

2009/09/16 · 07:17

Hello dKos,

Over the last couple months I have been watching the health insurance reform pretty closely. I started having conversations with my coworkers about health care and in particular the public option. My conversations with them about the health insurance reform evolved into a discussion of whether government-run institutions are desirable in opposition to private institutions. I am a software developer and a Seattlite, so I expected that most of my coworkers would be democrats or at least sympathize with the ideal that the government can be a force for good and solve problems (since both higher education level and living in Seattle are correlated with being liberal). I was surprised to learn that I have a number of coworkers that sympathize strongly with the libertarian ideals of limited government involvement and non-progressive taxation.

I personally believe that government institutions can be effective and serve as a force for good. However, I lack the information I need to argue effectively that this is true. My coworkers listed a number of examples of government institutions that have problems.

alkaline9

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday September 02, 2009 · 10:25 PM PDT

2009/09/02 · 22:25

Everyone has heard how the democrats want to kill your grandparents. They want to set up death panels, decide which grandma has the least chance to live and which grandpa has the most health problems so we can pull the plug on them first. I'm sure there are even a few democrats that are getting giddy about the chance to sneak into nursing homes late at night and smother the unsuspecting seniors who have lost the ability to defend themselves. Of course the democrats have been plotting this for decades, ever since they lost the last health care reform fight. This time around they decided to sneak in provisions to kill old people, just to get back at everyone for defeating their reform efforts the first time.

Well I have news for everyone, news that hasn't gotten much coverage recently. The democrats haven't focused on this because they are stuck on trying to get the republicans to buy into their plots, so they don't want to upset them too much. This may startle some of you, but everyone needs to know - the republicans want to eat your babies. They want to stick them in the oven, roast them in a honey glaze, and dig into them with forks.

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