....Except for the kicking ass part.
Can I just say a short word about the HSAs, or Health Spending Accounts, that Dubya was touting tonight in the debate?
Now, as one of the functions of my job, I do a lot of research into the minutae of health care and the law. And I'll hazard the guess that not many people in the public (or on DailyKos) are aware of exactly what an HSA is.
What it is, is that people have tax-free savings accounts that allow them to pay much lower monthly premiums for their health care. The catch, of course, is that they have much higher deductibles, somewhere around $5,000 or, for families, even more.
Now, let me just put this to you: if people can't afford a premium of $80 - $300 a month for their health insurance, how the hell are they going to come up with $5,000 or even more if they suddenly find themselves too sick to work?
A lot of people have already bought into HSAs, and the report from hospitals and health care providers is that they can't collect the deductibles from these people. In other words, people aren't able to stand up to the huge hit of thousands of dollars, along with all the other costs they get hit with, when they're at their most vulnerable. They just can't pay it. They end up going into bankruptcy, and the hospital ends up having to
write it off as bad debt.
What does that mean? That means that the cost of these bad debts is passed along to the people who can pay. It's like shoplifting - the more it happens, the more honest people who don't steal have to pay for the goods they buy.
Now, I'm not putting people who can't suddenly come up with $5k when they're out a job because they're really sick are on a moral level with shoplifters. I'm just trying to make an economic point.
With hospitals, the people who can pay for care end up paying for the people who can't. That's one of the main reasons that health care costs are skyrocketing: because people have lost their health insurance, and are using the emergency rooms of our nation's hospitals as primary care. Why? Because they have no other choice. They don't have the money to pay to see regular doctors, and emergency rooms are required by law to treat people.
As for the debate tonight, I only have one thing to say: if it seemed to you that Bush was making sense or even winning, it's because he has excused himself from telling the truth. Lies often sound more palatable and cheerful than the truth. But they're still lies.
Remember that.