[Vision2020] The Many Ironies of Health Care Reform: Sad, Wicked, Amazing, Delicious, Socratic, Dramatic, and Cosmic

Wed Jul 11 10:22:04 PDT 2012

Nick,

You are correct. That is interesting irony. I did sign the "Medicare for All" petition that is circulating the Internet. I truly believe that health care should be a government provided service, either directly or outsourced. Medicare is a great working system and it should be available to all. I think the Obamacare isn't good for most people. It has a lot of negatives and few positives. Many doctors would accept a government salary over the current system as you suggested if given the option. The VA is also an example of good health care for the dollar. The hospitals are not fancy, but the staff sure is dedicated to the patients. If the government is going to tax me for health care, they ought to be providing it, or just leave me alone to fend for myself. I don't make enough to afford health care without help from an employer. And I certainly cannot afford to pay the government anymore of my income. Nor do I qualify getting help from the government
 to pay for health insurance. 

The Obama Administration has made a huge mess of the student loans by giving them to private collection agencies. I cannot even make my payments anymore because they have my account upside, backwards, and inside out.  And the amount it costs to go to college is now many times the amount they will ever get back.

Students should be given a good education and workforce training before they graduate. Today they need a college education because employers don't consider high school good enough. Loans should only be given out in accordance with the number of anticipated positions in the field. Funding student loans for  2 million teachers when there is only 1 million spots is creating a problem in the future for paying back those loans. And demand for repayment just a few months after graduation is a burden. New students don't have much of an income even if they do get a job. Percentages of income should be taken in the latter parts of their career when they are making more money, and those funds should be used to support the next generation of students coming into the field. 

There is simply too much greed in our country and it is destroying our country. 

Donovan J. Arnold
From: "Gier, Nicholas" <ngier at uidaho.edu>
To: Donovan Arnold <donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com>; Kris Freitag <kfreitag at roadrunner.com>; thansen at moscow.com 
Cc: vision2020 <vision2020 at moscow.com> 
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 10:16 AM
Subject: RE: [Vision2020] The Many Ironies of Health Care Reform: Sad, Wicked,Amazing, Delicious, Socratic, Dramatic, and Cosmic

Hi Donovan,

Did you read the full version?  One of my ironies is that the polls against Obamacare include a good number that want single-payer instead, which is the most efficient way contain medical costs.  Separate polls that test for this find upwards of 59 percent in favor of something like Medicare for all. Using for-profit private insurers, whose CEOs fly around the country in private jets, will not bring down medical costs, although the rate of premium increases for RomneyCare has come down. 

I know that it is anathama to say this but I worked on salary all my career and education is just as essential to the health of this nation as medicine, so why can't doctors go on salary as well?

Most civilized countries do not charge tuition at their medical schools and their students graduate without a huge debt burden. (In fact, all Danish university students who keep up their grades are paid $800 per month.) Doctors should focus on medical care not not setting up capitalist enterprises that buy far too much expensive equipment and then compete for services.  Hospitals and doctors' offices in Denmark are spartan but provide quality care for all regardless of ability to pay and the country spends half as much for the result.

Medicare for all,

Nick

Nicholas F. Gier, Professor Emeritus
Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho
"The Palouse Pundit" on Radio Free Moscow, 92.5 FM
President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFT/AFL-CIO www.idaho-aft.org/ift.htm
208-882-9212, 410 Samaritan Lane, Moscow, ID 83843

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. 

-Greek proverb

-----Original Message-----
From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com on behalf of Donovan Arnold
Sent: Wed 7/11/2012 7:25 AM
To: Kris Freitag; Contact - thansen at moscow.com
Cc: vision2020
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] The Many Ironies of Health Care Reform: Sad, Wicked,Amazing, Delicious, Socratic, Dramatic, and Cosmic

Yes, I am being ironic. I cannot wait to pay a big corporation $500 a month of my easily obtained money in return for nothing at all. Yeepie, I can hardly contain myself! Thanks government for looking out for me, as obviously I am just too stupid to take care of myself and don't have anything to spend my money on, who needs food, clothing, shelter, they are way overrated. 

Donovan J. Arnold

From: Kris Freitag <kfreitag at roadrunner.com>
To: Tom Hansen <thansen at moscow.com>; Donovan Arnold <donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com> 
Cc: vision2020 <vision2020 at moscow.com> 
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 7:40 AM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] The Many Ironies of Health Care Reform: Sad, Wicked,Amazing, Delicious, Socratic, Dramatic, and Cosmic

? 
I'm pretty sure Donovan was being ironic.
Kris
----- Original Message ----- 
>From: Tom Hansen 
>To: Donovan Arnold 
>Cc: vision2020 
>Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 5:46 AM
>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] The Many Ironies of Health Care Reform: Sad, Wicked,Amazing, Delicious, Socratic, Dramatic, and Cosmic
>
>
>Mandated health insurance does not go into affect until January 1, 2014.
>
>
>Courtesy of HealthCare.gov at:
>
>http://www.healthcare.gov/law/timeline/ 
>  
>-----------------------------------
>
>
>INCREASING ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE CARE
>Promoting Individual Responsibility
>Effective January 1, 2014
>Under the new law, most individuals who can afford it will be required to obtain basic health insurance coverage or pay a fee to help offset the costs of caring for uninsured Americans.  If affordable coverage is not available to an individual, he or she will be eligible for an exemption.
>Learn more about individual responsibility and the law
>
>
>-----------------------------------
>
>
>You realty ought to check things out once in a while.
>
>
>Seeya round town, Moscow.
>
>
>Tom Hansen
>Moscow, Idaho
>
>
>"If not us, who?
>If not now, when?"
>
>
>- Unknown
>
>
>
>
>
>On Jul 11, 2012, at 4:25, Donovan Arnold <donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>Has your health insurance premiums dropped? Has you health improved? If not, then obviously mandated health insurance is a scam because it didn't do as promised. 
>> 
>>Donovan J. Arnold
>>
>>
>>From: Nicholas Gier <ngier006 at gmail.com>
>>To: vision2020 <vision2020 at moscow.com> 
>>Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2012 11:23 AM
>>Subject: [Vision2020] The Many Ironies of Health Care Reform: Sad, Wicked, Amazing, Delicious, Socratic, Dramatic, and Cosmic
>>
>>
>>Hail to the Vision! 
>>
>>
>>This is my radio commentary/column for this week.  To read about Socratic, dramatic, and cosmic irony you will have to consult the full version attached.
>>
>>
>>May the Force Always be with Universal Health Care for All Americans,
>>
>>
>>Nick
>>
>>
>>THE MANY IRONIES OF HEALTHCARE REFORM
>>
>>
>>Using tax penalties, as we did [in Massachusetts], encourages "free riders" to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others.
>>
>>
>> Here is where the federal government can do something
>>we could not: Take steps to stop or slow medical inflation.
>>-Mitt Romney, USA Today, July 30, 2009
>>
>>
>>         There are many types of irony: sad, wicked, amazing, and delicious. The tasty ones are those that make you smile and smack your lips as you savor the incongruities of improbable events. 
>>          Let us begin with the most scrumptious ones. The individual mandate-the principle that all Americans should be required to buy health insurance-was originally proposed by conservatives at the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation.
>>          In the 1990s conservatives used at least two principles in their argument for the individual mandate: (1) the obvious truth that the larger the insurance pool the smaller the risk; and (2) the idea of personal responsibility.  Following Republican principles (including states' rights), no one will pay a penalty if everyone takes responsibility for her/his own health care in the free-market state insurance exchanges.  
>>          Critics of the Affordable Care Act confuse the tax for noncompliance with the new taxes that are designed to pay for providing about 30 million Americans with health insurance.The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that 4 million Americans will refuse to buy insurance, and at $95 per individual the total would be $380 million in 2014. The non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that even with the new taxes Obamacare will provide a deficit reduction of $437.8 billion by 2019.
>>Conservatives are now accusing Democrats of lying about the mandate and taxes, but that makes Romney also a liar when he said that those who did not comply with Romneycare would only pay a penalty, one which is actually much higher than that in the Affordable Care Act.
>>The most delectable ironies abound in the history of Romneycare.  Bay State Democrats, just as Obama was in his debates with Hillary Clinton, were against the mandate, but Romney vigorously supported the idea and won in the end. He now insists that he never raised taxes while he was governor, but he did impose the mandate tax and added fees totalling $502 million in lieu of taxes. 
>>It is sad irony that the Mormon Romney, whose coreligionists are famous for their honesty and probity, not only speaks falsehoods, but repeats them even after they have been publicly corrected. 
>>On healthcare Romney repeats a falsehood that many Republicans spout: "Obamacare means that up to 20 million Americanswill lose the insurance they currently have, the insurance that they like and they want to keep."  
>>Also false are Romney's claims that the Affordable Care Act "cuts Medicare by $500,000 billion," that"ending Obamacare saves $95 billion," and that "Obama is ending Medicare as we know it." Romney supports the Ryan budget that truly does end Medicare. The CBO has calculated thatrepealing the Affordable Care Act will add $210 billion to the deficit over ten years, and that it contains (not cuts) Medicare costs.  
>>It is also ironic that many of those who oppose Obamacare want a much more efficient single payer system instead.  In February of 2009 a New York Times/CBS poll showed 59 percent agreed with the statement that "the government should provide national health insurance." 
>>Those who said that Uncle Sam should cover all medical problems made up 49% of the respondents. Except for the mandate, nearly every other part of the Affordable Care Act has overwhelming support, including the insurances exchanges.
>>In an op-ed in USA Today (7/30/09) Romney ironically conceded that only the federal government was in a position to control our soaring medicals costs.  This of course contradicts his current position that the states should decide everything on their own. 
>>After analyzing Romney's column, Ryan Grimm (Huffington Post 3/4/12) concludes that the 2010 Democratic Congress did everything that Romney asked for: sufficient time and reflection, a Senate bipartisan effort, provisions for cost containment, deficit reduction (verified by the CBO), and rejecting the public option.  That is yet another delicious irony.
>>Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.  
>> 
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>          mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
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