Gingrich and health care

And I agree with that sentiment. A policy purchased in Colorado should be just as valid in any state that belongs to the same union as Colorado does, just as my automobile insurance is. I should be able to purchase a policy from a company in New York as well as from a company in Colorado. What gets in the way of that is minimum coverage requirements enacted by every state, which prevents interstate commerce, which the keeping regular of is one of the powers actually given to the federated Congress.

Let's have Congress establish a base minimum coverage that is allowed to be sold in each of the states, from any state, that is good in all of the states so that you don't have to purchase a new policy when you move. Every policy doesn't have to have mental health coverage, substance abuse coverage, free annual exams or most of the other requirements added by the individual states to reward a special interest group. There ought to be a bare bones major medical plan that covers 100% of the cost after a deductible amount has been paid by the insured with riders available for other things that you may want to purchase. Insurance is for when you actually get sick, seriously sick, not to cover a part of every expense you incur.

Think of how expensive gas insurance would be if you only had to come up with a copay of $10 every time you filled your tank. You wouldn't care what kind of mileage your vehicle returned from a gallon of fuel. You wouldn't care what the cost of a barrel of oil was either. You wouldn't care if the government taxed each gallon at $0.40 or $4.00, or if a gallon of fuel cost $3.00 or $30.00. But boy how loud would you scream at the insurance company when they raised your insurance premium to cover the increased costs they incurred every time you filled your tank or raised your copay from $10 to $20.

That is one of the primary reasons that health care is as expensive as it is. Most people don't know what their doctor is charging the insurance company when they come in to have their sniffle checked out, neither do they care - it costs them $35, which is the only cost they care about at the moment. They don't know how much that prescription would cost to fill, nor do they care because the insurance company is picking up the tab after their $15 or $40 copay. But my oh my, listen to the screams that come out when their premiums go up because so many of them are asking for that latest drug (the cost of which they could care less about) they saw advertised on the TV last night that the company is getting $100 or $200 a pill for because it is protected by patent and they will complain loud and long when their prescription copay is for only 5 of the $200/pill medicine they have requested the prescription for. Those evil insurance companies - how dare they rip me off this way, we have to get the government to do something about this.

Yeah archer, the system does need to be reformed. Unfortunately for our entitlement addled brains, a fair portion of that reform has to be in our thinking process in our consumption of health care and its true costs. As long as it costs us the same $35 whether the doctor bills the insurance company another $100 or $500, the cost of care and insurance will continue to quickly rise. As long as the only way a person can become a doctor is to borrow the money for university tuition and start their professional career hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, the cost of their care will continue to go up and up. As long as it is cheaper and safer to settle a baseless malpractice suit than it is to take it to trial, the cost of the malpractice insurance will continue to add to the other increased costs of our care. We really have no one to blame but ourselves for the current exorbitant cost of health care and health insurance. When we are willing to take responsibility for the cost into our own hands once again, we can reduce the cost of both. As long as we continue to avoid bearing that responsibility we will have to continue to pay ever more to others to bear it for us.

Just as you don't expect your auto insurance to pick up a majority of every expense with your car, you should not expect your health insurance to pick up the majority of every expense for your health care. When you remove the cost restraint that is inherent in paying for what you consume yourself, you should not be surprised when no one else exercises any restraint on your behalf.

Back in the days when everyone paid for their own care out of pocket, the biggest concern they had was not how much their care was going to cost them, but how many days they would miss being paid for being off of work. The reason they cared less about the cost was that the cost was kept low because the people receiving the care were the ones paying for the care. The doctors and hospitals couldn't afford to charge more than their patients were reasonably able to pay. We've fixed that, and fixed it well by gosh, haven't we.

Speaking of "Flip-Flopping"... I'm getting whiplash just trying to keep up:

From the Department of Walk Backs, Gingrich and mandates

Newt Gingrich on Meet the Press acknowledged his past support for an individual health-insurance mandate:

“I agree that all of us have a responsibility to help pay for health care. And I think that there are ways to do it that make most libertarians relatively happy. I've said consistently, where there's some requirement you either have health insurance or you post a bond or in some way you indicate you're going to be held accountable.”

But now Gingrich is walking that back. In a video posted on his Web site, he says:

"I am completely opposed to the Obamacare mandate on individuals. I fought it for two and half years at the Center for Health Transformation. You can see all the things we did to stop it at HealthTransformation.net. I am for the repeal of Obamacare and I am against any effort to impose a federal mandate on anyone because it is fundamentally wrong and I believe unconstitutional."

Dang... Which is it?

sheesh LJ, when will you learn that if a republican changes his mind on an issue it's because, after further extensive study, he/she has come to a different educated conclusion....if a democrat changes his mind it's flip-flopping.

My bad...