- Jun 26, 2009
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...the-audacity-of-gop-dopes-on-health-care.html
From Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky
Down with Obamaca--wait, not all of it. We love some of it!
Don't touch it! It's ours now!
How is it that Republicans are going to justify a backpedaling of a strategy that's been so obnoxious for so long and expect people not to notice?
From Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky
The idea is to preserve the language that requires insurers to cover people with preexisting conditions, because everyone likes that; to continue to permit young people up to age 26 to stay on their parents’ insurance, because that’s helpful, especially in a rocky economy; and to press forward with eliminating the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole,” whereby seniors have to pay 100 percent of medication costs within a certain price range.
The last two are fine. But that first one is the gobsmacker. You cannot just make insurance companies cover really sick people. Sick people are expensive people, and insurers’ costs will shoot to the heavens, and those costs of course will be passed along to everyone else. Is there a solution to this problem? Yes. The solution is to get more people in the insurance pool—especially more healthy people, who don’t cost a lot to cover. Then, insurers have more money to use paying for the care of the sick people. But since you can’t just wish for more healthy people to buy insurance, you have to figure out some way to get them to do so. And hence ... the individual mandate. It broadens the pool and brings premiums down. It’s how you manage to pay for all those people who need radiation and chemo and dialysis.
Down with Obamaca--wait, not all of it. We love some of it!
Don't touch it! It's ours now!
How is it that Republicans are going to justify a backpedaling of a strategy that's been so obnoxious for so long and expect people not to notice?
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