I just got off the phone with Judson Hill about this AJC story on healthcare reform in Georgia. Sounds like the report misses the mark.
Senator Hill says his legislation does not contemplate nor does it have anything to do with medicare, but his legislation has everything to do with medicaid.
Under his legislation, the state would continue to fund insurance for Medicaid eligible children but give them a financial scholarship so they can stay on private health insurance to go to regular doctors rather than being turned away as medicaid patients which only makes their parents have to take them to the emergency room for treatment at taxpayers expense.
Senator Hill says this will actually save the state tens of millions dollars.
Today he also proposed a separate resolution in response to Obama’s proposal to make it clear that the federal government cannot force any employer or individual onto a government run healthcare plan and can’t punish you if you don’t participate.
On this bit:
Asked if Medicare, which is government-run health care for seniors, would also then be unconstitutional, Hill said, “That’s a good question. I don’t know yet. We’ll fight that battle when it comes before us.”
I think Hill would admit the response was poor. His legislation does not intend, nor does his amendment intend, to force any person into medicare, but it would not abolish medicare for anyone who chooses to go into it.
I think if Republicans can be fairly accused of using scare tactics when they bring up death panels, Democrats can be fairly accused of scare tactics by saying Judson Hill wants to get rid of medicare.
What he wants to do is provide greater access for kids to go to doctors with private insurance instead of having choices limited because so many top notch doctors refuse to deal with medicaid. And along the way, he wants to prevent people from being forced onto government healthcare plans, which will inevitably happen under H.R. 3200.
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Erick, just to clarify: the question about Medicare was not actually mine. It was another reporter’s. But the point was if the 10th Amendment makes Obama’s health care plan unconstitutional, doesn’t it also then make Medicare unconstitutional? The question had nothing to do with the legislation that Sen. Hill introduced last year. And that’s important, too: The legislation he announced today had nothing to do with anything other than the proposed constitutional amendment.
But, to your point about Medicare, and Sen. Hill saying his legislation from last year had nothing to do with Medicare, only Medicaid, I’d point you to this quote from him today, where he’s discussing the legislation he introduced last year that is currently in Senate committee: (And, I have a recording of the press conference and I believe the Senate Press Office recorded it if you want to see it).
“It’s our desire to privatize as much as we can. Whether it’s Medicaid or Medicare.”
“It’s our desire to privatize as much as we can. Whether it’s Medicaid or Medicare.”
So if either program could be privatized with proper controls in place, what’s the problem? Where is it written that everything has to remain a top-down bureaucracy?
You can’t have it both ways.
You can’t, on one hand, claim that a public option for health care insurance would put private insurers out of business because it could operate at lower margins or even negative margins… while on the other hand saying that privatizing the one thing government can claim to do with a mere 4% margin for administrative overhead is a good thing to privatize to somehow save the taxpayers money or improve its efficiency.
Unless, of course, your point is to encourage a situation where the cost of insurance for seniors and poor people goes up.
Harry, that’s not for me to answer. My point only was to Erick’s original post where Sen. Hill told him that his legislation had nothing to do with Medicare.
What was it JFK said about politics, the art of the possible?
He narrowed the scope. Seems like someone we know in DC just did the same.
Shorter Hill: we want to change the healthcare of people who don’t vote (Medicaid), not the healthcare of people who do vote (Medicare).
They might vote, but… (see where I’m going with this).
But they might not?
They would hope (he said hintingly).
Anyone, who has had any exposure to the legislature knows that Judson Hill is an intellectual lightweight.
I will mention here that TennCare, Tennessee’s Cadillac version of Medicaid, is bankrupting the state.
I will also mention that, under federal law, illegal aliens are eligible for WIC (as it used to be called) and Medicaid. For the adults, Medicaid kicks in for emergency care — that is, anything they want to call an emergency that brings them to show up in an ER; doesn’t have to be an actual emergency. This has covered millions of childbirths to illegal aliens. For children who are illegal aliens or the American-born children of illegal aliens, there are assorted federal and state welfare health-care programs, but really all are just Medicaid.
Sounds like Judson Hill is keen to squeeze more blood out of the middle-class turnip.
By the way, if Obama doesn’t get what he wants in the way of public option, etc., he and Congress will just further expand Medicaid, as he has done already. Same difference.
Illegal aliens aren’t coming here for the health care, they are coming here for the jobs. Even Mexico has public health care, and it is generally considered pretty good, so they are leaving that behind to come here and work for lawbreaking employers.
Uh, yeah, that explains why border-state hospitals are collapsing under the cost weight of illegals aliens crossing the border just to go to the hospital, in many cases just to give birth to automatic American citizens.
Benevolus, you need to spend some time down at the welfare office or the public clinics. The scales will fall.
You have a link to a news story on that? I hadn’t heard about any border hospitals going bankrupt because of illegals crossing over to give birth.
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/15/nation/na-hospitals15
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/14/health/14HOSP.html
“For years, these patients have strained hospitals and health clinics near the border, driving some out of business and forcing many to reduce their services. The American Hospital Association estimated that in 2000, the 24 southernmost counties from Texas to California accrued $832 million in unpaid medical care, a quarter of which was directly attributable to illegal immigrants.”
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,995145-1,00.html
“Unlike big governments, small community hospitals cannot run deficits forever. The Copper Queen’s [hospital in Arizona] shortfall from treating illegal aliens grows each year. This year it will be about $450,000, bringing the total for the past few years to $1.4 million. With each money-losing year, a tiny piece of the 14-bed hospital dies. When that happens, the entire community suffers. Dickson’s most agonizing decision came when he was forced to shutter the long-term-care unit. ‘It was the only place the elderly could go,’ he says. ‘If someone had dementia, we had a room for them.’ But no more. Now if people who spent their life in Bisbee need elder care, they must leave the area. ‘The more free care we give,’ Dickson says, ‘the more we have to ration what’s left.’”
“Dickson emphasizes that not all the free care is going to illegal aliens passing through on their way to other states. About half goes to Mexicans who use the Copper Queen as their personal emergency-care facility. In effect, the hospital, which performs general surgery, has become the trauma center for that stretch of northern Mexico. If an ambulance pulls up to the border-crossing point near Bisbee and announces ‘compassionate entry,’ the border patrol waves it through, and the Copper Queen is compelled to treat the patient. It is one more program that Congress mandates but does not pay for. ‘If you make me treat someone,’ says Dickson, ‘then you need to pay me. You can’t have unfunded mandates in a small hospital.’ Although the Medicare drug act that passed last year provides for modest payments to hospitals that treat illegal aliens, Dickson says there is a catch that the U.S. government has yet to figure out. ‘How do I document an undocumented alien? How am I going to prove I rendered that care? They have no Social Security number, no driver’s license.’”
Or Google around and you’ll find more info about border-state hospitals and their crises caused by illegal migration. Yes, ERs and entire hospitals have closed because of this situation.
All I’m saying is that illegal immigrants aren’t coming here for the health care. None of those links dispute that assertion except the Time article from 2006, which mentions a problem at one tiny hospital 7 miles from the border in Arizona. I found a more recent interview with the same guy in which he explains that the people coming to his hospital are from a little town right across the border that doesn’t have a hospital.
http://www.svherald.com/articles/2006/05/03/local_news/news2.txt
Those people aren’t really even immigrants. They go there because it’s the closest hospital and then they go home.
Anyway, in googling around, I did find another article about that little Mexican town. Ironically, it turns out Arizonans go there to shop and get their prescriptions filled.
http://www.riosonora.com/naco.html
I also found a few articles about Americans going to Mexico to take advantage of the health care there.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-08-31-mexico-health-care_N.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32404952/ns/health-health_care/
I don’t think anyone disputes that illegal immigrants place a burden on our health care system. But that burden exist now. The solution to that problem lies elsewhere than reform of our insurance industry.
Rogers and Hill will be running up legal bills over this one. The Commerce clause applies to the business of insurance, and Congress is within its power to regulate. There is case law on this, argued before the Supreme Court (322 U.S. 533 (1944)) which makes it pretty clear:
“4. Any enactment by Congress either of partial or of comprehensive regulations of the insurance business would come to us with the most forceful presumption of constitutional validity. The fiction that insurance is not commerce could not be sustained against such a presumption, for resort to the facts would support the presumption in favor of the congressional action. The fiction therefore must yield to congressional action, and continues only at the sufferance of Congress.”
You are assuming this legislation actually makes it out of committee, passes the full house and senate, and gets signed into law.
Thanx, sunkawakan, I was looking for some SC decisions on insurance & the Commerce Clause
Health care reform should also start on the grass roots level working toward small individual successes. As a Professional Care Manager that is exactly what I do. Work with individuals and organizations to maximize treatment plans by helping implementation at the community level and acting as a liason between all the entities that are involved including providers. The gaps that are inherent to our system is where much time and money is lost. This is market driven solid measurable reform with REAL impact.
If I don’t assume that, then it is clearly just a waste of the taxpayers’ time and money; that is, just a political “stunt.”
It’s not just that. With the potential ripple effects that this idiocy will have on other, competitive races, it is so much more.
Judson Hill is representative of what type of half wits are put into office because of ignorance of the voter, corruption, and corporations funding political campaigns.
I work in health care with private insurances, let Georgia privatize and see how much money the middle class turnips have left. See when your child has cancer and and they reach their lifetime benefits or are denied a life saving treatment or medication. I see it happening now with private insurance every day.
The truth is even a public option in reality is a farce because it’s backed by corrupt politicians (all politicians are corrupt). Our system in it’s entirety is crippled by all the greedy, stupid politicians that are in office now making decisions. They are all puppets on a corporate string. It’s not a country governed by the people anymore, no matter what it seems like or what promises are made during election time.
The other things is where is everyone’s morality? Who are you to decide whether or not someone should be denied life saving treatment? You want to care about being bled dry? Then care when billions are spent in defense bills on unnecessary crap because your elected officials care more about companies then you. Care when they bail out banks, care when they pork bills, care about quarterly profits up 200% while unemployment is at 10%- all the politicians do this stuff- no party republican or democrat is free from the taint of corporate greed. Your being fooled by dog and pony show when there is a larger issue at play here.
Good luck to all our children and grandchildren if people don’t start correcting the disease where it stems.
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