I think that because everyone over 65 is already covered by socialized medicine (paid for by MY tax dollars), and everyone in jail already gets coverage by socialized medicine (paid for by MY tax dollars), and everyone with a disability claim, bogus or not, is covered by socialized medicine (paid for by MY tax dollars). Having healthy 20 something covered is unlikely to raise the astronomical healthcare costs engendered by these incredibly needy segments of the population.

And quite frankly, it may drop costs since, when that 20 something who has no insurance goes out drinking and wrecks their car and nearly kills themselves, and then goes to the ER (on MY dime through passed on medical costs from hospital and emergency services) it costs A LOT.

I got an answer for you......Republicans had 6 years of FULL unmitigated control over the Federal Govt and didn't do a damn thing to reform healthcare insurance. This is why we are facing the tough choices now - because the GOP simply refuses to takes its governing seriously and solve problems.

If don't wanna be a part of the SOLUTION then by all means, GET OUT OF THE WAY!!

PS - to be more specific to your little strawman blog post.....how much is healthcare going to eat into our GDP if we DON'T do reform? Obama is dead-on when he says "healthcare reform IS budget reform".

The two questions posed :

1. what do you surmise this would do to the insurance premiums, will they go up or down?
2. Will the medical insurance be more or less affordable to the people who is[sic] now covered?

Are largely non-sequitor to the setup in the blog:

Obama's plan requires insurance plans to accept all people with pre-conditions, cover regular check ups (free of charge) and, moreover, they cannot drop anyone from the plan

1) Whether healthcare premiums go up or down is dependent on

• whether the bureaucratic overhead that currently exists in many insurance company offerings gets eliminated
• Whether or not the coverage provided to the uninsured is structured so as to provide sufficient incentives to forego ER care for standard primary care

2) Whether medical insurance will be more or less affordable to people who currently ARE covered (c'mon Gringo, a blogger that doesn't even get grammar right? Grammar DOES COUNT in blogs) largely depends on whether really bad ideas like removing State Insurance Comissioner controls get stopped.

The numbers are fairly simple:

• Uninsured ER costs drive about $1000/yr/household into every existing insurance premium through provider writeoffss that get covered through our overpayments
  
  Underinsured medical costs (includes primary care writeoffs) drives about $1500 into everyhousehold.
  
  For a total of $2500/insured household/year
  .
• The average insured household spends $12k/yr on healthcare insurance
• There are 112 million households in the USA.
• Each household has an average of 2.59 persons/household
• the are between 30 and 45 million uninsured in the USA

The rest is simple math:

45/2.59 ==> 17 mil uninsured households

112-17 => 95mil insured households x $2500 ==> $237.5Billion savings availble by insuring the uninsured

17 x $12000 ==> $204 Billion ==> Cost of insuring the uninsured households.

So YOU tell US Gringo. If it costs $204 billion/yr to save $237.5 billion/yr - Will that cost savings drive insurance cots up or down?

Hey Atlanta Bob, do yourself and us a favor and do some research before you type one of the DNC talking points. Bush and company actually had a pretty good proposal put together for Health Care Reform....The DNC/Far left/Special Interest killed it.....You remember that time frame when you and the other leftists were celebrating getting the House and Senate back.

Also, you and you ilk, including Obama himself, really have to stop blaming Bush for all that is bad in the world. Health Care has been an issue for YEARS and YEARS....As Obama pointed out there was an OLD Senator who's father and now his son had been hawking the same bill for over 5 decades now (WAKE UP Senator Dude...Time to think about moving onto another bill). ---- Speaking of Obama blaming Bush for his problems. Obama keeps saying that he inherited a $1 Tillion dollar deficit...$370 Billion of that was the TARP bailout which Obama was pushing for during the transition time fram. I also noticed that Obama failed to mention the ADDITIONAL $3 Trillion that he has piled on to the deficit in 6 short months....Failure to come clean on spending more money than ALL of the other presidents combined.

Yes, that was combined, as in includes George W. Bush....Explain to me again how you can spend you way out of a recession...Explain to me that if that process works that it will be the ONLY time in history that is has been successful. --- Or can we finally agree on one thing, if only one thing...That Barack Hussein Obama is way in over his head and he doesn't have a clue what he is doing.

RMR

WWII dipstick. Spent ourselves outta a goddam depression sunshine. Ain't no WW hidin in the shadows these days, so we gotta spend on infrastructure and construction. Seems to me, the economic indicators show signs of our little recession bottomin' out. Jobs always lag when you aren't shippin' the boys off under the draft to die in some dirty foriegn field.

Just exactly how much bigger do we the people want our federal government to become?

Is it big enough now? Does it have enough power for your liking?

I guess I would feel a bit better if the federal government had been a good steward with the resources we provide them over the years. the fact is they have not. They should in my opinion focus on increasing competition and putting a lid on malpractice suits, and more importantly balance the budget and start paying off our debt to China. If they could simply manage with what they have now for a few years, then come back to me with more great ideas about how government will save us all.

Please dont take this as me bashing your math, cause i simply am not - i am also not against health care reform....BUT, since when in ANY business will 204 billion make up for 237 billion LOST on a corporations balance sheet? if the 237 billion "savings available" actually HAPPENS, then prices will simply go up to make up for that deficit. the hospital is going to get their $$ either way....i cant really beleive they are gonna say "yea, so instead of paying me that 237 billion, just pay me 204 billion instead".

mominsky:

Please dont take this as me bashing your math, cause i simply am not - i am also not against health care reform....BUT, since when in ANY business will 204 billion make up for 237 billion LOST on a corporations balance sheet? if the 237 billion "savings available" actually HAPPENS, then prices will simply go up to make up for that deficit. the hospital is going to get their $$ either way....i cant really beleive they are gonna say "yea, so instead of paying me that 237 billion, just pay me 204 billion instead".

Read the post again - I haven't checked all the numbers but I think you are mis-reading the conclusion:

If we insure the uninsured, it will cost us $204 billion. Not insuring the uninsured currently costs us $237 billion. In other words, we will save $33 billion by insuring the uninsured. Sounds like an easy business decision to me...

hlthird:

Figures lie and liar's figure and half-baked ideas are not worth the time to noodle them.

The notion that we could add 30-40 million to the roles of the "insured" with no plan to increase the facilities or providers is beyond ludicrous, it’s reckless and disingenuous, and assuming the one positing the numbers has a grasp for basic economic mechanisms, I’d suggest fraudulent.

DirtyBird:

hlthird:

Figures lie and liar's figure and half-baked ideas are not worth the time to noodle them.

The notion that we could add 30-40 million to the roles of the "insured" with no plan to increase the facilities or providers is beyond ludicrous, it’s reckless and disingenuous, and assuming the one positing the numbers has a grasp for basic economic mechanisms, I’d suggest fraudulent.

But the uninsured ARE currently getting treatment, one way or another, sooner or later - and that costs everybody. Insuring EVERYBODY will reduce the cost burden of providing for the uninsured.

The sick don't just run off into the woods and die like a cat. When they get real sick, they show up in the emergency room, costing much more than it would have if they had been taken care of sooner. Or they get so sick they lose their job, now they qualify for Medicaid. Again, a costly second choice (one more person on welfare, one less productive member of soiciety). Or they declare bankruptcy because they don't have the funds needed to stay alive. You and I pay for that too. It comes down to pay now or pay later, and paying later always costs more. Those 30-40 million won't be added to the doctors waiting list, they are just as likely not to be on a doctors list because they received the preventative care they needed.

But the uninsured ARE currently getting treatment, one way or another, sooner or later - and that costs everybody. Insuring EVERYBODY will reduce the cost burden of providing for the uninsured.

This is true. But DirtyBird has a legitimate - though minor - point: the "market basket of services" currently offered is DIFFERENT than what we are currently staffed for.

OTOH, the 5:1 cost ratio we know exists between ER costs and primary care costs indicates there will be an easy change over to the new marketbasket

Furhtermore Dirtybird claims the numbers are not completly trustworthy - OK so please DB, show us some numbers with sources that ARE trustworthy. You don't get to make claims about how the market basket shift will be so expensive without offering a ballpark number. Otherwise you are just FUDding (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt - what IBM lost and anti-trust suit on)

degsme:

But the uninsured ARE currently getting treatment, one way or another, sooner or later - and that costs everybody. Insuring EVERYBODY will reduce the cost burden of providing for the uninsured.

This is true. But DirtyBird has a legitimate - though minor - point: the "market basket of services" currently offered is DIFFERENT than what we are currently staffed for.

OTOH, the 5:1 cost ratio we know exists between ER costs and primary care costs indicates there will be an easy change over to the new marketbasket

Furhtermore Dirtybird claims the numbers are not completly trustworthy - OK so please DB, show us some numbers with sources that ARE trustworthy. You don't get to make claims about how the market basket shift will be so expensive without offering a ballpark number. Otherwise you are just FUDding (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt - what IBM lost and anti-trust suit on)

Yup, you're right - wonder how long it would take to re-assign all the ER staff to preventative duties instead of ER duties? It has always bothered me that our entire health care system is analgous to putting an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff instead of putting a guardrail at the top of the cliff....

Degs, et al:

I do not have a more legitimate number because there are not any legitimate numbers. NOBODY knows what the costs will be and based on the history of government projections of large program costs: the costs are consistently understated by a factor of five, 10 or greater. At the very, very best, you have a WAG and without effective caps, limits and triggers that is just irresponsible management. I suspect some of the errors occur because of incompetence in dealing with way too many variables and unknows and part is deliberate, cynical political motivation.

I agree that those uninsured now wait until they cannot wait any longer and then show up at a public hospital's ER for "emergency" treatment. That process alone should inform you as to their level of access and use of the PC system. I agree that aggressive preventive care can limit the use of ER's, etc. but the fact remains and I stand by my assertion, that we do not have the PC caregivers that would be needed if those folks who currently don't (because they can't) access the family physician, internist, or other PC provider began to do so.

While people without insurance or the resources to pay out of pocket are able to access ER minimum treatment, they cannot access private doctor care. The PC practice will require insurance or payment up-front (not fools). If you show up at a private clinic with a true emergency and without the insurance or resources, you are advised to head to the ER. Sometimes they will even call a cab or an ambulance for you, but generally, treat you they will not.

Also, there's no argument that the current situation of unnecessary ER treatments cost more than a standard PC visit, but in reality if the ER gives you a prescription for the flu, the cost should be no more than a PC vist which provides the same care. It's just that their cost structure is built for trama care and not the lower pressur office visit.