Health Care - Where do the candidates stand? Depends on where they sit.
(No Ratings Yet)Part 1 - Republicans (updated 9/2/07)
Issues of health are definitely on my mind these days. It may have something to do with the fact that I am uninsured with a type 3 or type 5 AC separation in my shoulder - that may or may not need surgery (I’ll find out on Wednesday). Taking a step back, I am only one person among 46.6 million uninsured Americans. (check out the U.S. Census for more information)
To the point: I thought I would conduct a YouTube analysis to see what the presidential hopefuls were saying.
Starting with the Republicans: I was shocked that only 4 out of the 8 even have a video regarding Health Care. Lacking were McCain (struggling to maintain his candidacy), Brownback, Hunter, Tancredo and I’m ignoring Fred Thompson until he stops lurking in the shadows and declares his candidacy.
| former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee | |
|---|---|
| Emphasizes market solutions and adapting a preventative model. Undoubtedly he is focused on Diabetes, which he himself has struggled with. His plan seems nebulous, but the concept of preventative medicine is financially sound. For more information about his health care policy | |
| former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani | |
|---|---|
| wants tax breaks (15k for families 7.5k for individuals) to deal with health care “The American Way”. Personally I don’t pay anywhere near 7 and a half thousand in taxes, so this plan doesn’t do anything for me, besides if my first 7.5k goes to health care, that undercuts my ability to donate to non-profits. (I found no in depth issue statement regarding health care on Rudy’s webpage, all I found was this sentence: “I will give Americans more control over and access to health care with affordable and portable free-market solutions.“) | |
| Congressmen Ron Paul TX-14 | |
|---|---|
| the only physician running for president. Against corporate entitlement program (such as the Prescription drug act and socialist systems. He encourages health saving plans to “legal health care freedom”. (For more information on Ron Paul, please visit his Issue Page.) | |
| former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney | |
|---|---|
| points toward his experience as the Governor of Massachusetts. Touts an expert panel that was able to provide health care without raising taxes. Leans on state solutions to the health care problem i.e. a federalist approach. (Official Press Release) | |
Regardless of which of these approaches you agree or disagree with, I find it interesting that the Republican candidates are working so hard to differentiate themselves on this important issue. One thing all of these candidate have in common is that they seem to neglect young adults and fail to understand the current job market.
For many of us, graduating college is just one step toward a full-time job complete with health benefits. It can take many years of struggling through dead-end jobs and internships until we finally land benefits. Meanwhile we make too much money to qualify for government health care, and make too little to afford our own insurance (and I’m sorry, but in my tax bracket health saving accounts would be laughably insufficient).
What do you all think? What do you like/dislike about these potential presidents and what they have to say about health care?
(stay tuned this week for part 2 - Democrats)
on August 28th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
I’ve got to correct you on specifics of Giuliani’s plan: What he is supporting is a tax exemption, not a tax credit. A tax exemption means that the first $7,500 ($15K for famillies) that you make every year would not be taxed at all (I assume this would be on top of any current exemptions,) and as I understand this speech he is saying you would get this exemption whether or not you want/have/get health insurance. (A tax credit, on the other hand, would mean that the first $7,500, $15K for families, of tax liability would be waived.) So as he says if you find a plan for $12K you then have $3K of untaxed money to do as you please, including donating to any charities you might see fit. I’m actually glad I watched that, it’s the first time Rudy has made any sense to me. Maybe he could make a good cabinet member (as long as it isn’t Defense, Justice or Homeland Security.)
Ron Paul’s position is a little more nuanced and perhaps too novel (compared with the rest of the bunch in both parties,) to be summed up in a few sentences or a 4-minute interview where YouTube asks “How would you fix health care?” His issues page on his website has a few more interesting stances, including a desire to stiffle FDA expansion, remove barriers to natural, holistic and other non-traditional forms of treatment, and opposition to government-forced immunizations that were authorized in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (H.R. 5005, section 304)
I’ll save my litany on Romneycare and other “universal” (i.e. forced coverage) plans for next week. Good luck with the Dems by the way, they have a lot more to say, it is just more of an issue to their base.
On the larger conclusions you make, I’d take some exception as well. Giuliani’s speech (and believe me I am starting to get ill defending him, even more than the last couple of weeks of trying to humanize Mike Vick,) really does address the number one problem with health care as I see it as a young American, and that is the system that promotes employer health care coverage. In today’s job market, as Rudy explains, an average individual is going to run through near a dozen different employers (I’ve already hit seven.) Also, with advances in communication technologies self-employment, either as a career, a supplement, or in short spurts, is becoming more and more prolific and manageable. Many employers, including many government employees, due to many restrictive regulations, are resorting to hiring two part-time workers, instead of a full-time employee for whom the company would be required to offer coverage (This particularly has become a problem in many colleges and universities where temporary adjunct faculty have almost become the norm, with deleterious consequences.)
We need to create a system that allows every individual the choice to maintain healthcare even if they find themselves jumping from employer to employer, or supplementing a part-time job. Health care savings accounts is a piece of that, but I see that more as a substitute for social security and medicare entitlements. We also must, as Ron Paul asserts, end corporate welfare, and stop wasting money on misguided foreign policy.
on August 28th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Sorry for a moment I confused Rudy’s plan with something that might make a remote amount of sense (i.e. credit v.s. exemptions).
I decided to take a gander at the 2006 Federal Tax Rate Schedules, to see what kind of savings a 15,000 tax exemption would get a family. As it turns out, the first 15,000 dollars of jointly filed taxes are taxed at a rate of 10%. So under this scheme an entire family would receive approximately $1,500 of relief, which would come nowhere near the cost of insuring oneself let along a family (an individual would gain a mere $750 ).
All of this is not to mention the tendency of insurance companies to screw people over via the pre-existing condition clauses; doctors who themselves are paying such ridiculous prices for insurance that they are being run out of business; a health care model based on treatments (not cures or prevention).
If we want to call it a tax cut that’s fine, but exemptions do not address the fundamental problems of health care in this country, nor does a paltry 1,500 or 750 make coverage anywhere near affordable.
on August 28th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
I’m no accountant, but I think an exemption like this reduces total liability, which would in effect knock it off the upper end of someone’s tax bracket. (An individual making $38,150 then saves $1,875, and any making at least $15,050 saves at least $1125. A family making at least $30,100 saves at least $2250.)
That aside, it is still a pittance, but it isn’t intended to pay for health care, it is intended to prod individuals like you and me to secure their own insurance. In Rudy’s mind we have Medicaid to pay for those who can’t afford healthcare, this is a plan to entice those who can pay but choose against it.
It really is unfair to compare the GOP candidates approach at this point with the Democrats though. The GOP primaries are just not that interested in healthcare, so many of the candidates have spent little time fully fleshing out their positions.
on August 29th, 2007 at 8:07 am
I chose to simply look at the bottom tax bracket, because without further examination of the policy it’s just speculation.
(ps we need an accountant on here)
In all honesty, I think the policy shows the disconnect between the abstract theories of economics and the actual reality of what people experience and why or why not they choose to purchase health care coverage. There is a perception that must be changed in this country, people must realize that health care coverage is a necessity. As that paradigm shift occurs then we can discuss the best way via markets and/or government to provide for that necessity.
on August 29th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
True, I’m not even sure we can call it a policy, it’s just a comment Rudy made in a speech more than a year before any primaries. (Oh and also he won’t be elected, so we shouldn’t have to worry.) I should also mention, I am half-Jewish, so until we find a real accountant I think the 25th Amendment puts me in charge on these questions.
Health care coverage is a necessity? I remember learning about food, water, and oxygen, but I must’ve missed that day of kindergarten.
Health coverage is a luxury. It has much more utility than most luxury items, but it still isn’t a necessity. In the last 5 years I have spent $0 on medical bills, $0.00. Can anyone explain to me how I would’ve been better off paying for coverage? (To be fair, I was actually covered for part of that time on my parents’ plan, but I never used it, other than as an excuse to do stupid, risky things that I should probably know better by now.)
I understand that being uninsured at a time when you need it could really hurt, but if I had put away the money that I would’ve paid for insurance (which I didn’t,) I would have a pretty healthy savings account by now (especially if it was all invested pre-tax, and even more if it included FICA taxes.)
(It looks like you’ve drug out my opinions on “universal” plans anyways:) Now I’m willing to exempt all health care expenditures from taxation (of course, I’d like to remove all taxation except for consumption based taxes which would ideally exempt a wide range of healthcare expenses.) I am even willing to allow organizations, or individuals the chance to take an exemption, or even a credit, for any healthcare coverage they provide to anyone else (think churches and medical associations here) without requiring a condition of employment. But I cannot for the life of me fathom any plan that involves any direct government financing that doesn’t woefully discriminate against the healthy, some of the religious, or many believers in alternative medicines. I’m much more worried about government-financed discrimination, but maybe I would see things differently if my collarbone was sticking up.
on August 29th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
“I would see things differently if my collarbone was sticking up.” -Perhaps
or perhaps if you hadn’t been covered by your parents health insurance for all of those years - you may understand the cost a little better. Perhaps if you ever had a chronic problem which requires treatment - you may understand it better. Perhaps if you were a women and wanted to pay for “luxuries” like childbirth and such, then you may understand it better.
I’m not articulating a policy position on this issue, but I am saying that people attend doctors as part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle (a reasonable interpretation of the “pursuit of happiness”). Whether that be from a ridiculous sports related injury or egregious pollution related cancer. In any case, medical problems are a threat not only to a persons life, but also to their property and from which people have no remittance except via policy - market or government oriented.
on August 29th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
But you have articulated against a policy position, and you’ve suggested that government policy might be acceptable. I’m simply saying that I don’t see much in the way of justifiable government intervention other than a version of the one you have dismissed, (and the removal of current unjustifiable government intervention, like corporate welfare, etc.) Government-mandated, or government-funded provision of healthcare amounts to the subsidization of sloth, ignorance, hypochondria, and promiscuity.
As for childbirth, it is indeed a luxury, which I mean here in the highest sense. Further, childbirth in a modern facility is an immense luxury, just ask the vast majority of women in the world today, or America throughout history.
on August 29th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
I’m all for a universal coverage plan like they have in EU and Can. Finacially affordable to all based on a sliding coverage - as you age the ratio of ROI on many procedures places the older at the end of the waiting list. The waiting list is managed and no one will be required to wait longer than ten years. Contradiction treatment & care (e.g. heart and lungs for smokers and obese; liver and organs for drinkers; accidentaly injury for well, any activites, etc.) are excluded as optional conditions. We could name this health plan “Soylent Green”.
Now I want to see the democratic party candidates videos and comments.
on August 30th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Houses are a luxury. We could all live in shacks, or tents, or better yet caves, just ask the vast majority of people in the world today, or America throughout history who don’t live in McMansions. Well-made leather or synthetic shoes are a luxury. Our feet can gain callouses if we ever decide to leave our caves, just ask the vast majority of people in the world today, or America throughout history who never had sneakers. In fact, leaving the cave is a luxury. For a woman to do anything other than that which God or Nature or whatever-else designed her body to do (be a vessel to carry man’s seed by making and suckling babies) is a luxury of self-gratification, just ask the vast majority of women in the world today, or America throughout history.
So it seems to me the only logical conclusion is that all women should stay in caves, barefoot and pregnant. Then die while having babies. Such is our only defense against the tyranny of universal annual check-ups.
on August 30th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Wow Josh, I never thought you’d take it so personally. Your trail of logic borders on absurdity, but perhaps it was just a misunderstanding.
Houses ARE a luxury, as are shacks, tents, and caves to some small degree. I think anyone who spent last summer with me in Montana can remember my position on shoes, but for those who didn’t have that pleasure: they are luxuries also, and in my opinion are highly overused. I am using luxury here not in the common pejorative sense of excess or extravagance, but in a sense antonymous to necessity. I apologize if my meaning was unclear.
I might be willing to cede medical treatment as a necessity (if you’ll include within that all forms of treatment from the accepted to the absurd.) But I cannot accept health care insurance as a “necessity.” That is just the kind of perversion of language that can be used to justify the kinds of government-mandated and/or government-funded plans of which I spoke, and we can look forward to seeing from a few of the Democrats.