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Saturday, September 06, 2008
Nader Live! Memorial Hall, Monday September 8th, 7:30pm
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
Justin Jeffre works for the Nader campaign, and his name is on this flyer, too.
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06 Sep 2008 at 09:04 am | #
There are a bunch of rumors out there that a lot of the third party candidates are going to unite behind one candidate at a press conference on Monday morning.
Have you heard of this? Any inside scoop? Is Nadar apart of this?
This is just a rumor of course.
06 Sep 2008 at 02:50 pm | #
I haven’t heard of any such thing. I seriously doubt that will happen. It really doesn’t make any sense for a candidate to do that because it would betray their supporters hard work and tireless efforts.
Most Independents don’t agree on everything. Libertarians and Greens oppose the bipartisan imperial wars (including the War on Drugs), corporate welfare, ballot access barriers and the ongoing attack on our civil liberties, but we disagree on things like health care etc which are still major differences.
06 Sep 2008 at 03:11 pm | #
Something is going to happen on Monday late morning. Just wondered if you knew anything.
By the way, I think the Ls and the Gs agree on health care goals, they just disagree on how to achieve these goals.
Kucinich considers Paul an ally in congress and visa versa.
Freedom can achieve all the goals of the far left, but socialism can not achieve all the goals of the libertarians. Unless of course the true motive of the left is to create a situation where the people become dependent on government.
Food for thought.
06 Sep 2008 at 04:30 pm | #
Mr. Ryan, what exactly is the libertarian’s position on health care? Is there a model in use that is working?
06 Sep 2008 at 10:02 pm | #
Mr. Jeffre,
A libertarian, an objectivist, a truly successful industrialist would act out of pure self-interest. The successful ones, the ones that are able to grab a bigger piece of the pie over time would realize that a healthy and wealthy population would create more health and wealth for him or her self. They would encourage, promote, and participate in a healthcare system that would accomplish such a goal at the cheapest possible price.
What that would look like is not for me to dictate. It is for the market and the market alone to decide.
Before the time of heavy regulation within this industry in our country there was a glimpse of what this would look like.
Doctors making house calls.
Medicine prescribed only when absolutely necessary.
Private non-profits stepping in to help.
Pro Bono work performed by Doctors and Hospitals.
People being able to afford health care without insurance.
Remember, despite all the promises the political whores make, there is no perfect system, after all the system would be comprised of humans, an imperfect beast.
But only the market has built in mechanisms to reach a near perfect solution. (As near perfect as humanly possible.)
So you see the goals would be the same. A system that everyone can access. A system that maximizes health for everyone.
The difference is only in the means by which to achieve this goal.
Words of wisdom: Be careful what you wish for.
06 Sep 2008 at 10:09 pm | #
Justin,
Did you know that if Mr. Nadar were to join forces with the Libertarians, the only state where such a ticket would not have ballot access would be Oklahoma?
07 Sep 2008 at 01:27 am | #
Justin,
Libertarian’s advocate allowing the glorious market solve the planets problems. Libertarin’s know it’s true that the U.S. health care system is a mess, but this demonstrates not market but government failure. To cure the problem requires not different or more government regulations and bureaucracies, as self-serving politicians want us to believe, but the elimination of all existing government controls.
It’s time to get serious about health care reform. Tax credits, vouchers, and privatization will go a long way toward decentralizing the system and removmg unnecessary burdens from business. But four additional steps must also be taken:
1. Eliminate all licensing requirements for medical schools, hospitals, pharmacies, and medical doctors and other health care personnel. Their supply would almost instantly increase, prices would fall, and a greater variety of health care services would appear on the market.
Competing voluntary accreditation agencies would take the place of compulsory government licensing—if health care providers believe that such accreditation would enhance their own reputation, and that their consumers care about reputation, and are willing to pay for it.
Because consumers would no longer be duped into believing that there is such a thing as a “national standard” of health care, they will increase their search costs and make more discriminating health care choices.
2. Eliminate all government restrictions on the production and sale of pharmaceutical products and medical devices. This means no more Food and Drug Administration, which presently hinders innovation and increases costs.
Costs and prices would fall, and a wider variety of better products would reach the market sooner. The market would force consumers to act in accordance with their own—rather than the government’s—risk assessment. And competing drug and device manufacturers and sellers, to safeguard against product liability suits as much as to attract customers, would provide increasingly better product descriptions and guarantees.
3. Deregulate the health insurance industry. Private enterprise can offer insurance against events over whose outcome the insured possesses no control. One cannot insure oneself against suicide or bankruptcy, for example, because it is in one’s own hands to bring these events about.
Because a person’s health, or lack of it, lies increasingly within his own control, many, if not most health risks, are actually uninsurable. “Insurance” against risks whose likelihood an individual can systematically influence falls within that person’s own responsibility.
All insurance, moreover, involves the pooling of individual risks. It implies that insurers pay more to some and less to others. But no one knows in advance, and with certainty, who the “winners” and “losers” will be. “Winners” and “losers” are distributed randomly, and the resulting income redistribution is unsystematic. If “winners” or “losers” could be systematically predicted, “losers” would not want to pool their risk with “winners,” but with other “losers,” because this would lower their insurance costs. I would not want to pool my personal accident risks with those of professional football players, for instance, but exclusively with those of people in circumstances similar to my own, at lower costs.
Because of legal restrictions on the health insurers’ right of refusal—to exclude any individual risk as uninsurable—the present health-insurance system is only partly concerned with insurance. The industry cannot discriminate freely among different groups’ risks.
As a result, health insurers cover a multitude of uninnsurable risks, alongside, and pooled with, genuine insurance risks. They do not discriminate among various groups of people which pose significantly different insurance risks. The industry thus runs a system of income redistribution—benefiting irresponsible actors and high-risk groups at the expense of responsible individuals and low risk groups. Accordingly the industry’s prices are high and ballooning.
To deregulate the industry means to restore it to unrestricted freedom of contract: to allow a health insurer to offer any contract whatsoever, to include or exclude any risk, and to discriminate among any groups of individuals.
Uninsurable risks would lose coverage, the variety of insurance policies for the remaining coverage would increase, and price differentials would reflect genuine insurance risks. On average, prices would drastically fall. And the reform would restore individual responsibility in health care.
4. Eliminate all subsidies to the sick or unhealthy. Subsidies create more of whatever is being subsidized. Subsidies for the ill and diseased breed illness and disease, and promote carelessness, indigence, and dependency. If we eliminate them, we would strengthen the will to live healthy lives and to work for a living. In the first instance, that means abolishing Medicare and Medicaid.
Only these four steps, although drastic, will restore a fully free market in medical provision. Until they are adopted, the industry will have serious problems, and so will we, its consumers..
07 Sep 2008 at 01:44 am | #
In view of the fact we’re discussing health care if you are ever sent a bill by a hospital for the difference between what your insurance company paid the
hospital and what the hospital says you owe, call a lawyer.
You may not owe the money.
This practice is called “balance billing,” and in some
states it is illegal. Yet it is widespread. The hospitals
thrive on ignorance of the law. This report appeared in a
recent issue of “Business Week.”
When doctors or hospitals think an insurer has
reimbursed too little, state and federal laws
generally bar the medical providers from
pressuring patients to pay the difference.
Instead, doctors and hospitals should be
wrangling directly with insurers. Economists and
patient advocates estimate that consumers pay $1
billion or more a year for which they’re not
responsible.
There have been cases where the hospital has turned
the bill over to a collection agency. The phone calls
convince the victims to pay.
My view is that a lawyer should be calling the
collection agency. Maybe the funds should be flowing in
the opposite direction.
National statistics aren’t available, but there’s
little doubt that many consumers unwittingly fall
victim to balance billing. The California
Association of Health Plans, a trade group in
Sacramento, estimates that 1.76 million
policyholders in that state received such bills
in the past two years, totaling $528 million. The
group found that 56% paid the bills.
If you get hit with such a bill, do not pay it before
you have been assured by a lawyer that you owe it. Here’s
why.
California, New Jersey, and 45 other states ban
in-network providers from billing insured
patients beyond co-payments or co-insurance
required by the plan. Similarly, federal law
prohibits providers from billing Medicare
patients for unpaid balances.
For a series of horror stories on companies that have
been prosecuted and convicted for this practice, click
here:
http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/08_36/b4098040915634.htm
07 Sep 2008 at 12:26 pm | #
This is interesting. So do I really need to pay all those bills from when my boy was born? They do seem rather excessive!
07 Sep 2008 at 04:47 pm | #
Here’s a comment Dan La Botz wrote in an email he sent around.
07 Sep 2008 at 07:02 pm | #
Mr. Jeffre,
Dan La Botz says, “America’s problems will only be solved by challenging corporate power.”
This is true and should be done. Our goals are one.
The only difference in our philosophy is in the means by which we want to challenge corporate power.
If congress accepted the notion that they shall not pass any laws except where the constitution has explicitly granted power to do so (The 10th amendment), the the corporate whores would go away. The lobbyists would disappear from Washington. Property rights will be enforced and nusience suits would have equitible leverage in the court of law over the “public good”.
On the other hand, Mr. Nader wants to use government power to challenge corporate power. When you fight power with power and you win. Do you know what happens?
08 Sep 2008 at 02:00 am | #
While we’re sounding off about health care let’s forget this wonder drug the State outlawed.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/07/healthscience/09obdrug.php?pass=true
08 Sep 2008 at 08:14 am | #
Mr. Jeffre,
I need to correct something.
The announcement will come late morning Wed., not Monday.
09 Sep 2008 at 07:51 pm | #
Mr. Scott Ryan, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Corporations were given their power by government. It was expanded through government and must be reduced, limited or controlled through government.
This is just a rumor, as I said it would be silly for a candidate to betray their supporters. Ralph was asked about this rumor last night. He said they would be announcing some common ground issues which I imagine would include opening up the presidential debates and removing obstructive ballot access barriers.
09 Sep 2008 at 08:12 pm | #
Mr. Jeffre,
I was the one that asked the question.
As I have said many times, our goals are one.
The only difference that we would have would be the means by which we achieve our goals.
Assume Mr. Nader wins, or at least his ideals are adopted by a party elected to power. Fast forward 100 years when Mr. Nader is gone and no one else steps up to the plate with his integrity, or worse, some whore convinces the majority that he is just like Mr. Nader. What do you think will happen?
I am all about holding the electorate accountable, but at least give them a level playing field.