Just wondering
Carhead August 17th, 2009
Why is it more legitimate for our country to provide its citizens new cars in a giant “cash for clunkers” program than it is for our country to provide its citizens with health care?
Erik Ryberg
Why is it more legitimate for our country to provide its citizens new cars in a giant “cash for clunkers” program than it is for our country to provide its citizens with health care?
Erik Ryberg
August 17th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
I don’t think you’re going to find a group that supports one but not the other. Proponents of an strong state (Krugman, et. al.) generally support both and those who find the state intrusive don’t support either, because there are other ways for people to get around or find health insurance that have not yet been explored.
August 17th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Count me in the latter group. Rechecking the rather limited powers granted the federal government by the Constitution, I don’t see mention of either one.
August 19th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Government can’t run “Cash for Clunkers”, it’s turning into a debacle. The Department of Transportation is so overwhelmed they can’t possibly process all the sales, dealers are shutting the program down because of outstanding payments owed to them. Just imagine how badly the government could screw up health care. Is there anything the government can do right?
August 19th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Don,
Government is an easy target for many but have you considered the failures of the free market. Insurance companies with profit as their motive decline to cover the sick. They use their profits to do back ground checks to find a way to eliminate coverage to those who are at risk of getting sick. Medicare and Medicaid, government run, do a great job up picking up costs of care for those most vulnerable, those who insurance companies refuse to cover because they are too costly. Thank you government for covering the most vulnerable. We can only hope that our congressional leaders can avoid the lobbyists of the insurance companies long enough to pass some sort of reform.
August 20th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Oooohh- profit motive! Obviously they must be evil, what with wanting to stay solvent and all…
Good thing government doesn’t have to worry about such trivial things like fiscal responsibility to their shareholders – i.e. us, taxpayers, working stiffs who have to keep shoveling more and more of their meager earnings into the ever growing gaping maw of government. Medicare and Medicaid are poorly managed money-bleeding band-aids at best. And BTW, the US hasn’t entertained an *actual* free-market for longer than any of us have been alive.
August 20th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
My very first bicycle case involved a homeless guy who got hit in an intersection. He was not at fault. When he got out of the hospital he went to BICAS to get a new bike, and they sold him one for 25 bucks since that’s all he had.
So the insurance company offered to give him 25 bucks. They wouldn’t pay him a penny more for what he suffered from his accident.
That is, until he hired me.
It’s a messed up system. I don’t disagree that we lawyers suck an awful lot of money out of it, but on the other hand, it isn’t like the insurance companies treat people fairly without us.
There is something really broken, I mean broken down to the very core, with how we handle health care in this country.
EBR
August 20th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
First, are you talking about the driver’s health insurance company or his auto insurance? If the latter, what exactly does this apples/oranges example actually have to do with “how we handle health care in this country?” Are you saying he wasn’t treated for injuries? Or was he – his total personal monetary loss was only $25? You make it sound like he didn’t accrue medical bills, so I’m assuming that the taxpayers picked up that tab? If that’s the case – and understand that I’m not saying that he shouldn’t recover for pain and suffering – but I still need to ask, did the additional settlement you got him go toward paying off that debt, or did he pocket the money and still leave the taxpayers stuck with the medical bills for a collision that wasn’t their fault either?
August 21st, 2009 at 11:18 am
My point was that there are lots of intermediaries between a patient and health care, and as it is currently set up, those intermediaries all benefit from reducing the amount/quality of what the patient gets. I include lawyers in this critique.
In my example above it was the driver’s auto insurance that did not want to pay either for my client’s health care or compensate him for his injuries, or even pay the value of his bike that was destroyed. Only by hiring a lawyer was he treated fairly, and of course the lawyer (me) took a cut of that.
And I have many cases where the insurance company would rather pay lawyers (including their own) than pay the injured person. I’ve got several cases in litigation in which the litigation fees are guaranteed to add up to more than the injured person is even asking for. The incentives are all mixed up and work against the people the system is supposed to have been created to help.
EBR
August 21st, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Sorry, from what you wrote I inferred that the issue didn’t pop up until *after* he had received the care that he needed – in which case they wouldn’t have interfered with that care at all, challenging only responsibility for payment after the fact.
August 21st, 2009 at 3:12 pm
No, you are correct, this was all post-care. He didn’t get turned away from the hospital. I was trying to make a point that the system is immensely costly for reasons involving middlemen and their profit incentives. And, he certainly didn’t get any money for physical therapy or post-ER treatment, and thus did not get any such treatment.
Poor people are in a catch-22 with that stuff. If they don’t go to a doctor, not only can they not collect for it from the driver’s insurer, but the driver’s insurer will claim the injury didn’t even happen. So if you get hit by a car and have back pain but you don’t have insurance and cannot afford a doctor, the insurer’s attorney will forcefully argue that you are making up the back pain and all the wages you lost for not going to work those days are on account of your laziness and desire to rip off the insurance company.
Happens all the time. Another common one is scarring. You get a huge scar across your face and the insurer’s attorney will say, well, since you didn’t get plastic surgery, it must not bother you that much. In fact, you probably like having that scar.
I’m not saying these arguments always work, but they are certainly attempted.
Erik
August 21st, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Erik OK, now you have jumped into a real topic that should interest us all….. “TORT REFORM”. If we did something about the lawyers and the law suits, all the things you speak of could change. Doctors are afraid of being sued, they run needless tests that jack up costs to health care just to cover their ass. Insurance companies, cover their ass all the time because of law suits. On and on and on. You said he got out of the hospital and Scott is right, he got health care at taxpayer expense. No one can argue the point, we need sound, sensible health care, but I wonder if government is capable of doing it right. So, to you “CARS”, you make a good point, government is an easy target, far to easy, but I think many of the free market failures are because of government intrusion. Look at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as the perfect example. In the end, if I need a lawyer Erik, I’ll come see you. And we are talking in a respectful way, not throwing stones at each other. Maybe , it’s because we are “bikers.”