Relentlessly anti-gun idiot House Representative from California Henry Waxman announced that he’s retiring, after 20 terms trying to take your rights away, in a temper tantrum over not being more successful at punishing working folks, buying off the poor, not being able to control his hatred for those wanting less government, his inability to work with people less liberal than a RINO, and because freedom is still found in some corners of the nation. While I have no doubt that his district will elect someone else just as liberal as he is, and maybe even dumber and more poorly educated, they will not have the same political connections or seniority, so it’s a Good Thing ™.
To demonstrate just how bizarrely disconnected from reality he is (or how far our of the mainstream his values are), the final line from the news article reads:
“I’m proud of the Affordable Care Act,” he said. “I think it’s a terrific piece of legislation.”
He’s right about Obamacare — “terrific” originally meant “inspires terror”. You just have to excuse his archaic word choices — the result of being insulated inside the Beltway for that long.
He’s leaving “in disappointment over the partisanship and ineffectiveness of a Congress that may end up as the least productive in history.”
Personally, I like gridlock and ineffectiveness. It’s one of the primary virtues of our governmental system. Yet, even with all the political inertia that must be overcome to “get something done” – the fools still manage to enact hundreds of unneeded laws every year.
One burnt out old Soviet Useful Idiot hippie at a time.
He was a very effective congressman for people who live in his district. I’m sure he’ll be replaced by someone who is very similar.
While he is disconnected from YOUR reality, he seems to have no problem relating to the people he represents.
It he truly did represent the people of his district, it’s scary to think there are so people people who can’t do science, math, or economics, and had such a poor grasp of history.
That made my day yesterday.
UBU52, his district was redefined after the last census and he won re-election by only 8% from an independent. I doubt his clone stand much of a chance.
20 terms in congress defines the problem.
“As of April (2012), 44 percent of the district’s 434,677 registered voters are registered Democrats, while 28 percent are registered Republicans, according to the California Secretary of State’s office.”
I heard on the news that Wendy Gruel was planning to run for his seat.
Hopefully, his replacement will at least look a tad less….porcine.
Seriously, is that a nose, or some kind of snout on that man-thing?
Did everyone catch the Republican plan to replace Obamacare? http://www.nationaljournal.com/health-care/republicans-unveil-their-obamacare-replacement-20140127
“In essence, the plan attempts to lower health care costs by making people shoulder a greater share of those costs—or “sensitizing” consumers to the actual cost of health care, as Senate aides put it in a meeting with reporters on Monday.”
The Republican “leadership” has a lot of stupid ideas, as I’m sure you have noticed.
However, the idea of lowering costs by making them much more more visible and obvious to the end user at the time of use, even if it’s not a lot higher, is a good one. With cost immediacy and transparency comes identifiable financial pain, and therefore better informed financial decisions. Hiding and deferring costs is bad for everyone in the long run. It’s like correcting a dog with a swat while they are chewing the furniture, vs. and hour later. One alters the behavior, the other just confuses the poor beast.
So, you’re okay with paying more? Their plan isn’t to make sure you get more, it’s to make sure you pay more. They would be more visible to you because they would be coming out of your pocket.
I don’t know if you are deliberately dense, or just forget previous discussions. If costs are hidden, people consume more. How much does a teenager want to buy at the mall if they are given daddy’s credit card, versus how much do they want to buy if they have to pay with cash they earned the register? If you make costs easily discoverable, and upfront, you encourage shopping around. Increasing deductibles and co-pays tend to decrease usage. Decreases usage leads directly to lower rates for everyone. You increase the upfront costs in order to decrease the total cost.
Example: my neighbor works for a large PNW company with really great medical coverage. He has a medication they paid for. He had zero copay and deductible, so he never asked how much it was. When the company changed their plans, and added deductible and copay, he discovered it was several thousand dollars per month. His doctor was getting a “study participation fee” for keeping him on that (patented) medication. He shopped around, switched to a different (generic) med that was only a couple hundred per month, and got better results. He spends more out of pocket now, but his total medical cost to himself and his employer dropped by tens of thousands of dollars annually.
So, yes, Econ 101 works, and raising prices can save money because people change their behavior when you change the incentives.
I understand all that, but did you actually read the article? The subhead (under the headline) reads “The plan is for people to pay for more of their health care.” Part of the plan includes people paying more for their health insurance if they get it through work.
More from the article: “If your plan is in line with the average, you’d pay taxes on 35 percent of your premium. If it’s above average, you’d pay taxes on more. If it’s below average, you’d pay taxes on less. The idea is to make consumers more aware of how much their health care plan costs (by making them pay part of it), so that employees will go to their bosses and ask for cheaper plans.”
Cheaper plans don’t cover as much. So, you’ll either pay the same for less, or you’ll pay more to get what you have now.
Like I said the first time, the Republican “leadership” proposed a lot of stupid things. This is one of them. If your point is that party Republicans in DC are idiots, and have interests that often do not align with the electorate, I see no reason to argue. If you have some other point, please make it. MY point was that there is a core of truth in the statement “increasing upfront prices can decrease overall system costs,” even if this particular plan is (I hope) DOA.
You have to love the Republican psychology behind the whole thing. It’s kind of like “If we tax your pay more, you’ll want to be making lower wages so you don’t have to pay as much in taxes.”