Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (131602)	2/26/2010 1:43:34 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541319

As for similarities between the two proposals, both open up health insurance to be sold across state lines. Selling insurance across state lines isn't the point of the R's proposal. It's a means to the end. And the unfortunate way the idea was titled. The end is to offer cheaper choices to people in states were cheaper choices aren't permitted both by getting them out from under that state's pricey regulation and by inviting competition. The Senate plan substitutes federal regulation for state regulation. Every indication is that the federal policy will be pricey, too, since it is loaded and since there is by law no competition. That's the similarity and it's the one that Obama used He didn't say that there was a superficial similarity. He said that the R's idea was already incorporated in the Senate bill and so did you ("The Rep proposal to sell health insurance across state lines is already in the Senate bill"). Obama is either mistaken or lying. (This is an oft used manipulation. You find some similarity in what the opposition proposes, just enough that you can fake compatibility, can claim you have adopted the proposal. If the opposition or some neutral party doesn't catch you, you've put one over on them. (I used to do use that with some regularity when dealing with unions. It's a bullying technique.)) I don't presume to know what motives are in play here. I only know that what is in the Senate bill is not an fair representation of the R's proposal and it's bogus to claim it as such. Obama advanced the concept that federal regulation was required to address that. I can agree that federal regulation is one way of creating an alternative to the current state fiefdoms. I don't see a case made for it being "required." Flexibility to use chose the regulation of a state other than one's own is also an alternative. If, however, your position is that that specific regulation is wrong, I'll be happy to discuss it. If you mean that the Senate plan for nationally regulated insurance is "wrong," I think I've already made my points. The lone federal offering is robust, which is more expensive than it probably needs to be, therefore it doesn't do much if anything about the cost problem. To constrain costs there needs to be some kind of competition even if the competition is only among variously structured, federally regulated plans. Either that or the single federal plan needs to be thinner with an understanding that many will have private supplemental insurance to go with it. Otherwise folks will be out of the frying pan and into the fire, or at least a different frying pan. Premium prices will remain high. One could invoke general economic corporate behavior of trying to enhance profits. There are a couple of things that constrain corporate behavior. One is competition. Another is oversight. Yet another is regulation. Another is transparency. I haven't given up on them. And I think you have to entirely give up on them before you go to a centralized command and control system. We forget Econ 101 where we learn about the the inherent problems of monopolies. And Poli Sci 101 where we learn about the inherent problems of centralized systems controlled by politicians and bureaucrats. I disagree on your first point above; they are quite similar. And disagree on the second, since I see a race to the bottom as about as certain as those limbs falling off my wonderful white pine outside my study window. Ouch. I'll keep my fingers crossed for your tree. I'm not sure we have anything else to discuss. On the first, I have apparently failed to convey the differentiation or you just refuse to recognize it. It's like marriage counseling where the woman claims "you don't talk to me" so the guy agrees to read her the baseball scores every day and acts like in doing so he has internalized her complaint and is responding to her concerns. On the second, perhaps you can explain why the feds can manage an entire insurance program including regulation on their own but are so lame that they cannot put together the wherewithal to keep the states in line.