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Government Healthcare, Again

I think you can pretty much figure in that there is going to be an awful lot of discussion between now and November as regards government run health care and the benefits thereof. I did notice today that there was an awful lot of discussion on Outside the Beltway, yesterday [1] and the day before [2] on this very topic, in two posts by Steve Verdon.

From day before yesterday

;Of course, there is the pooling problem. A person who has a serious medical problem and is receiving health care benefits via an employer might be in for some trouble. Healthy co-workers might look around and find better deals with the tax credit and purchasing their own health care, thus leaving the employer with the most costly employees from a health care stand point. Firms not liking this might look for ways to get rid of these employees and or their benefits.

Well, certainly, one can understand why that would happen.  Eventually the cost of benefits over ways the payments made to the plan by the employees. this is a point that gets raised in one of the comments over there,  which I jumped all over.

Here is the first issue, then;

Is insurance to be

* A guard against Emergencies, where you stockpile money against the event of an illness, wherein you actually pay your way

* A means by which you obtain meds cheaper, because someone else is paying for them?

The obvious flaw in the latter plan, is that if you get over a set level of people doing that, you no longer have a chance for the plan to be sustainable..  It amazes me, that with so much talk of sustainable growth, as regards the environment, liberals tend to lose all sense of what is sustainable when it comes to government giveaway programs. as I told one commentor over there:

So, let me understand this;

You’re into the ‘insurance’ plan… and you want the government to take it over, because you want someone else to pay for your healthcare… put another way, you want something for nothing… and yet it’s the oil companies, and anyone else making a profit that is being ‘greedy’?

The narcissism involved here is the stuff of legend.

And so Steve Verdon, for whatever reason decided that he wasn’t going to jump into the conversation on that thread, but started a separate one.   Notice that Steve made pretty much the same point that I made earlier.

An edit of it:

This is one thing that really annoys me, when people complain that they have a pre-existing condition and that they can’t get health insurance. Well no kidding.

But when you pool people with pre-existing conditions with those who are healthy, you are basically providing a transfer of income form those who are healthy to those who have pre-existing conditions. So please, call it what it is. You want to give people with pre-existing conditions other people’s money so they can get treatment. Calling insurance is simply a lie.

Steve, I have to tell you that there are a number of people who do not mesh well with reality.  On that basis I hope and assume that you have brought your polycarbonate protector cup.  You’re going to need it. ask anyone who has worked in retail sales, particularly those who’ve worked on Black Friday, and they will tell you the temperament of most people when they find out they actually have to pay for something that they thought they were going to get for free.

Let us be honest here, to admit to ourselves that any attenpt at further governmental takeover of the Healthcare system is in fact nothing but a wealth transfer and a government mandated one at that. It amazes me, the number of people that are willing to sign onto this monstrosity.  Given that the majority of them figure they’re probably going to get something for nothing out of the deal, it makes me wonder how long the plan will actually be sustainable.  Yes, there’s that word again.

I suppose an expect it will be sustainable so long as taxes can be raised and money can be printed to keep the coffers filled.  However I warn you that that can only go for so long, before the golden goose lies dead in her nest. Which, given what I’m seeing in the discussions on this topic already, won’t be very long at all.