Thoughts on Healthcare Cost Containment
Today, some friends were having a Facebook discussion about impending healthcare reform. I couldn’t participate much because I was was busy setting up a new payroll provider for my company — which involves re-entering everyone’s healthcare elections. I tried re-joining the Facebook discussion, but ended up writing the following screed which, it turns out, exceeds the Facebook comment limits. So, after a long hiatus, I’m back to blogging.
We offer two plans: a high-deductible PPO plan that includes a healthcare savings account (HSA), and a point-of-service (PoS) plan.
The PoS plan works a lot like the HMO it replaced: most services are fully covered for a small co-pay. The PPO/HSA sports a $4500 family deductible; the employee pays everything up to that. Each year, the employee can squirrel away money via tax-free payroll deductions, up to their deductible, in their interest-bearing, portable healthcare savings account, and use that tax-free money to pay for healthcare services and goods rendered. The PPO/HSA includes a max out-of-pocket cost per year of $10K; beyond that, in case of emergency, most services are fully covered.
We’ve had these two plans for several years now. The premium cost for the PPO/HSA plan for the employee and their family is about 85% of the cost of the PoS plan. The HMO-turned-PoS plan increases in cost by 10-15% every year; the PPO/HSA increases by 2-3% per year. Why?
I suspect that those with the PPO/HSA plan are incented to spend their healthcare dollars carefully, because they bear front-end costs themselves. They are exposed to price signals that the PoS folks never notice. They are far more selective about what services they truly need, and may go so far as to bargain for a discount on them.
If government-administered healthcare advocates are truly concerned about controlling costs, they’ll expose the consumer to a meaningful portion of the cost of the services they use. If “universal coverage” means that even larger segments of the insured are protected from the financial consequences of their healthcare buying decisions, we’re no closer to controlling costs than we are today.
Worst of all, are we still naive enough to believe that the healthcare provider industry won’t lobby for an ever-widening scope of services to be bankrolled by taxpayers? Better to pay off a Representative or Senator to ensure that your slate of services are compensated at a favorable rate, or that your drug is included in their formulary at a decent profit, than to compete on the open market. American history is blighted with such rent-seeking nonsense, from the steamboat cartel, to the transcontinental railroad, to February’s $787 “stimulus” that bought an inordinate amount of pork and very little infrastructure spending to date.
The problem isn’t that we have a “free market” system, it’s that we don’t. In a truly free market, the consumer is exposed to price signals, and pays the consequences for their choices. In a truly free market, the producer doesn’t bribe corrupt politicians to avoid competition.
Bush vs. Specter
I’m here to say it as plainly as I can: Arlen Specter is the right man for the United States Senate.
President George W. Bush, stumping for Senator Arlen Specter against what turned out to be a very close challenge from Pat Toomey in the Republican primary, 2004.
Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.
Arlen Specter, announcing his decision to switch parties because there’s no possible way for him to beat Toomey again in 2010.
This post goes out to all my friends who insisted I vote for Spectre “for the good of the Republican party.” You got what you deserve.
Rest in Peace, Harry Kalas
Harry Kalas, the voice of the Phillies for my entire life, passed away today. He lost consciousness in the broadcast booth in Washington as he was preparing for a Phillies/Nationals game, and was pronounced dead at 1:20 PM.
I am thankful that Harry got to watch the Phillies win it all in 2008, but I will miss him terribly. Whenever I heard his voice, I was an eight year old kid again on a summer Sunday afternoon, watching the game with my Dad.
My condolences to the Kalas family and to the Phillies organization. Harry, you will be deeply missed by a city that loves you.
Paranoid? No.
You’re only paranoid if they’re not really coming to get you. In light of the MIAC debacle, wherein law enforcement agencies were directed to suspect Ron Paul supporters of domestic terrorism (before their report was retracted), one would expect jackbooted thugs hiding behind a badge and uniform to profile Ron Paul supporters at the recently-concluded Campaign for Liberty conference in St. Louis.
As it turns out, those jackbooted thugs work for the TSA.
It’s time for another letter to those who purport to “represent” me in Congress. The man detained, Steve Bierfeldt of the Campaign for Liberty, has grounds for criminal charges of kidnapping, I hope.
Surveillance Cameras Cut By Philadelphia Police
I do not know when this story broke (I have been away from the ‘net for the past week), but it seems that a Philadelphia Narcotics unit has some explaining to do. Long story short: while the Philadelphia murder rate goes through the roof (including the recent tragic shooting deaths of a number of police officers), and the street drug trade flourishes, five narcotics officers busted a Philadelphia shopkeeper for selling small baggies that the police deem to be drug paraphernalia (not drugs, mind you, drug paraphernalia).
During the course of the raid, officer Jeffrey Cujdik asked the shopkeeper, Jose Duran, about the security cameras in the store. From the audio transcript:
[Officer Richard] CUJDIK: There’s cameras all over the place.
[Officer Thomas] KUHN: There’s one here.
R. CUJDIK: Where’s the video cameras? The cassette for it?
[Officer Jeffrey] CUJDIK: Does it record? Does it record? I’m gonna seize it as evidence because you’re selling drug paraphernalia. So we gotta get rid of it (inaudible). You got yourself on video selling drug paraphernalia.
One wonders why they have to “get rid of” the “evidence;” perhaps Officer Cujdik misspoke. However, as soon as Mr. Duran confirms that the cameras record to an offsite location, the officers cut the cords to the cameras:
[Officer Thomas] TOLSTOY: Hey sarge?
[Sergeant Joseph] BOLOGNA: Yeah.
TOLSTOY: Come ‘ere.
J. CUJDIK: There’s one in the back corner, right there.
TOLSTOY: It can be viewed at home.
BOLOGNA: OK, we’ll disconnect it. That’s cool.
(screen goes black, audio only)
BOLOGNA: They could watch what’s happening at the store at your house?
That the officers destroyed a perfectly legal $15,000 security system is without question: the offsite video shows one of the officers disabling one with a knife. Mr. Duran further alleges that after the raid, $10K was missing from his store, along with several cartons of cigarettes and several food items. The officers filed a report stating that they confiscated only $785.
The article implies, and Mr. Duran alleges, that the officers disabled the security system’s cameras to cover their misdeeds. This is purely an inference: cutting the camera wires does not require the officers to steal anything from the store. Nevertheless, one hopes that Philadelphia police commissioner Charles Ramsey asks them the tough questions:
- Why not keep the cameras running? Disabling them would not affect the evidence already collected, whether on tape in the store or on Mr. Duran’s hard drive.
- If they needed evidence of prior trafficking in drug paraphernalia, then why, having established that the video was recorded off-site, did they not move to seize the off-site video?
Been Unplugged for a While…
I returned yesterday evening from a 6-day trip to Potter County, PA. I was “off the grid” (well, we did have electricity) at a friends’ cabin, chaperoning a school trip where the students and chaperones learned about gathering, boiling, and producing maple syrup. The weather was perfect, and the trees were cooperative, and the syrup we produced was Grade-A fancy.
There was no coverage for my Blackberry, and no internet access for my laptop. It was a welcome change.
Apologies to those who submitted comments that didn’t get approved in a timely fashion.
He Will Take the Tenth of Your Flocks
I have not watched NBC’s new “Kings” series, nor do I plan to. In the current political climate (”current” meaning from the days of Woodrow Wilson through the present), any series that glorifies absolute power concentrated in the hands of a monarch gives me the willies. This, aired to a nation that by and large couldn’t pick the Constitution out of a deck of playing cards, spells trouble.
I have read that the series is based on the story of King David in I and II Samuel. As more and more economic and military power is concentrated in the hands of a U.S. presidency seemingly bent on enslaving a populace that begs for it, I share Samuel’s warning to Israel, occasioned by their demand for a king (who turned out to be the abysmal King Saul):
So Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day. (I Samuel 8:10-18, ESV; emphases mine)
A Nation of Cowards (The Original Essay)
Found this quote while reading “Dismantling the Killer Elite” by William Norman Grigg over at LewRockwell.com:
To own firearms is to affirm that freedom and liberty are not gifts from the state. It is to reserve final judgment about whether the state is encroaching on freedom and liberty, to stand ready to defend that freedom with more than mere words, and to stand outside the state’s totalitarian reach.
The entire essay, by Jeffrey R. Snyder, is entitled “A Nation of Cowards.” It is a gem.
Hope for Pennsylvania
Kudos to State Representative Sam Rohrer, and others in the Pennsylvania legislature, for introducing legislation to preclude Pennsylvania’s compliance with the federal REAL ID act. The tenth amendment can be a real sharp stick in the eye of collectivists, Republican and Democrat alike, who sell false promises of security at the expense of liberty.
We’re no New Hampshire, Montana, or South Carolina, but maybe we’re getting there.
Remember the 10th Amendment?
In case you forgot, this is the 10th amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
This amendment summarizes the stuff and substance of the federalist/anti-federalist debates of yore: the balance of power between the new federal government and the states.
In the wake of Stimulus Rex, several state governments are re-asserting their sovereignty that is protected by this amendment. I haven’t heard boo about this in the MSM, probably because constitutional issues are beyond the grasp of most journalists – at least while they’re still recovering from their Obama hangovers. From HumanEvents.com:
In the first five weeks of his presidency, Barack Obama has acted so rashly that at least 11 states have decided that his brand of “hope” equates to an intolerable expansion of the federal government’s authority over the states. These states — “Washington, New Hampshire, Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, [Minnesota]…Georgia,” South Carolina, and Texas — “have all introduced bills and resolutions” reminding Obama that the 10th Amendment protects the rights of the states, which are the rights of the people, by limting the power of the federal government. These resolutions call on Obama to “cease and desist” from his reckless government expansion and also indicate that federal laws and regulations implemented in violation of the 10th Amendment can be nullified by the states.
