I just noticed an interesting phrase, though, in the first paragraph:

“Americans who refuse to buy affordable medical coverage could be hit with fines of more than $1,000″

Interesting it didn’t add an “…or go on the public government option” in there….

So the government is taking over health care, which everyone thinks will mean we get it for free and will end up costing the government trillions it doesn’t have, and we’ll *still* have to buy it?

Wow, longing for the Reagan/Bush41/Bush43 years is easy, but when I’m thinking that *Clinton* is looking good right about now….I fear that the rope on our handbasket that’s been slowing our descent has just been cut.

1. How do we pay for it?

2. Reducing cost.

Obamacare is being touted as “making healthcare affordable for everyone” by nationalizing single payer.

How the heck does that affect cost? That is a way to pay for health care. It has nothing to do with efficiency or cutting any costs.

As pointed out, when you pay your $29.95 for the buffet you tend to overeat.

Compared to the premium I pay for my insurance, that’s a fine of about $225. And if I weren’t a thinking man, I’d leave it at that. But I am, and I know that what I pay for my health insurance each year is at best, 30% of what the cost is with my employer paying the rest. And I’m cheap because I’m single and unmarried so they aren’t paying the full load they would be if I had the family plan (which if I had, would make my part something on the order of $3000 per year if I recall correctly). So the real cost of my health care is something on the order of $3200. On a strictly cost basis, an employer would be insane to pass up that kind of opportunity to save money. Which would make dumping the cost on me, and me paying the fine a rational choice.

Mind you, being on some sort of National Health Care plan is the last thing on this planet I want. I know that ultimately I’m better off trying to wrangle money out of a private sector dweeb trying to protect the company bottom line than I ma trying to wrangle money out of a government dweeb who is only concerned that he manage to end my call in time for him to start an early lunch break.

What scares me about the Obama plan isn’t the amounts of the fines, its the insidiousness of the whole thing. It makes the fines cost effective solutions to putting people on the dole and the fines have no chance of financing the system. But by the time most people figure that out, the current system will have been burned to the ground in a blaze of bankruptcies and government takeovers because some health care providers are too big to fail/too important to the nation to fail/take your pick of favorite government inanities for actions they want to take that aren’t explicitly enabled by constitutional writ. The whole thing makes Bernie Madoff look like a three card monte scam artist by comparison.

That would have the benefits of forcing those who just end up running huge debts then filing for bankruptcy, in effect forcing all of us to subsidize it, would at least be funding some of the costs, and it would also not end up covering those folks who run to the doctor for every little sniffle.

The main rationale for compulsory coverage and pooling risk is to homogenize the process, smoothing out a lot of the variance between individual consumers’ costs. That being said, those who have the highest risk don’t just consume more health care; they consume a LOT more. There is a reason that a small group of people face staggering health insurance premiums (if they are able to get insurance at all), and that’s because the insurance companies know one of two things has to happen; either they charge said individual a rate commensurate with expected costs of coverage, or attempt to pass their costs along to everyone else (who, needless to say, aren’t all that thrilled with the prospect). In the Massachusetts system, not only are the insurers having to take the high-risk people, they can’t pass along their costs to the healthy people beyond a certain point. Hence the losses.

There are certain things being done in this area to help smooth over that discrepancy (health status insurance, in particular), but a lot of the private-sector solutions are likely to get wiped out if the government has their say.