Under the Oak

Today, the Republicans are offering An Alternative to Obamacare in the form of the Patients’ Choice Act. I am by no means an expert on health care (just mine) or on health insurance, but this sentence alone has me sold:

We do this by first ending the discrimination in the tax code that rewards corporations and employers for offering insurance yet offers no benefit to the unemployed and is unfair to the self-employed.

As a preacher, I don’t have health care provided by an employer (God didn’t care much for the tax incentives). The health insurance companies offer plans for self-employed and unemployed folks, but they are very expensive. When I moved from Kansas City to Clovis, NM, I was paying almost $200/month for a bare minimum coverage plan. After living in Clovis for six months or so, I received a letter informing me that starting with the next month, my premium would be almost $400/month and giving a detailed explanation of how each of the coverage areas was being cut in half – half the coverage, twice the cost. I haven’t had health insurance since then. I’m hoping to change that when I pay off the credit card (October? Maybe!), but I fully expect it to be in the neighborhood of $300-$400/month. That is a lot of money that could be going to paying off debt, buying a decent mattress, gym membership, etc. You know…the kinds of things that would improve my health dramatically. It is very hard for me to justify that monthly expense given that I haven’t even been to a doctor in five years (I know, I know…its still a huge risk).

What the Patients’ Choice Act does (among other things…some of which I don’t really understand) is sever the tie between health insurance and employer which never made sense anyway. Why should my health insurance be tied to my employment? How many people are sticking to jobs which they do not like or are not good at because it provides health insurance? How many times have we heard someone say something to the effect of “well I’d like to quit but we have the kids on my health insurance and it would cost XXX more per month if it was just (the spouse) working”. How does that make sense? By rending apart that which Government has put together, the “playing field will be equal” as the liberals like to put it. We “self-employed” people will have the same chance for affordable health insurance that other folks have. I suspect that not having people working jobs they don’t like (and likely are not productive at) will be a healthy thing for our economy as well.

Finally, our bill accomplishes these goals without spending any new federal money, or raising taxes. If this sounds too good to be true, we would note that the problem in health care is not that we don’t spend enough, but that Americans aren’t getting enough value for their dollars. On a per capita basis, America spends nearly twice what other industrialized nations spend on health care yet we are hardly twice as healthy.

The American people deserve better. Congress should be looking to 2040, not 1940 or 1965. We can achieve universal access to quality, affordable health care without bankrupting our children with trillions more in debt or imposing draconian tax hikes on all Americans. It can be done, and the Patients’ Choice Act shows us how.

Emphases mine.

Aside from the fact that in most circumstances throwing a waffle loses you a waffle, we now have an additional reason not to throw waffles – you just might get shot.

…also I hate sticky

While I’m glad to hear that someone is doing something about these frauds (they’ve called me dozens of times), I’m not sure I understand why the Senators feel it necessary to imply that the “old FTC” (Bush Administration) would not have pursued legal action against them.

“It’s a clear signal that the new FTC is on the side of the consumer and hot on the trail of the scammers,” he said.

What a lovely post-partisan world we live in.

(Sorry about the lack of posts. Its been a crazy couple of weeks)