The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.
Lobbying under the knife
: G’bless Hillary Clinton: She takes the opportunity of her huband’s quadruple bypass surgery to lobby on the health insurance crisis in this country:
“We’re delighted we have good health insurance. That makes a big difference. And I hope someday everybody will be able to say the same thing.”
Damned straight.
There’s a nice little quip on Lucianne.com that if we had had Hillarycare in place, Bill’s angiogram would have been scheduled for six months from now.
I wonder if she and Bill have private insurance or use the government programs, link Tri-care that I had in the military?
What about auto insurance?
Doesn’t everybody need auto insurance? Howcome the govt and/or our employers give us auto insurance?
IF we all had auto insurance that covered 100% of every ding, no matter how we drove, and that allowed us to sue anybody who irritated us, nobody could afford auto insurance.
The problem is not with the coverage or the quality of medical care. The problem lies in that the consumer is not paying the medical bills. Patients do not pay doctors for services. Insurance rates are not based on lifestyle or history or other patient controlled experience.
The Coddled want Unlimited, Free, Now and the Right-to-Sue-For-Unlimited-Amounts without regard for personal responsibility or personal actions. To get this wonderful gift they will saddle the nation and mortage our collective future.
MSA’s will help by providing coverage for catastrophic illness or accident but not for every whim, pang, twitch or flutter. Those we can pay for ourselves. The lawyers are another subject.
The Clinton’s could pay for his healthcare simply by writing a check. They have both sold enough books. In reality, their health coverage comes from Federal Govt. as a freebie.
I thought libertarians wanted market forces to control prices? I thought they opposed govt freebies on principle.
I’ve heard Bill say recently that he and Hillary are now in the top 1% wage earners in the US. I’m pretty sure a health insurance plan for the rest of us wouldn’t be anywhere near equal to their insurance plan, which she seems to imply. Should republicans question the timing of Bill’s health problem? Is this just a ploy to try and prevent a bounce for President Bush from the RNC? Ha Ha!
Jeff – Are you being facetious? Her husband, the man she loves (?) is preparing himself for a major operation, and she primps in front of the cameras cold as a cucumber trying to score political points? I was amazed, disgusted and not surprised at all.
Not a fan of Bill, but i forgive him everything for having to have spent so many years with this heartless harpie.
After the Monica affair everyone was saying why does she stay with him. My question is why does he stay with her? She’s the Wicked Witch of cartoon fame without the personality or warmth.
Jeff, well said. Andy, I don’t think you’re going to help your cause much with a car insurance metaphor.
People without health insurance will still get emergency surgery. Hospitals are not allowed to turn away patients. But of course you knew that.
I look forward to the day that my taxes will be spent buying bypass surgery for slobs who spend their lives eating fried food and saturated fat.
I’m not sure how many around here fit this actual demographic, but I actually am poor and uninsured. But I’m working myself back to solvency, and am looking forward to getting good insurance again; as a relatively poor person, though, the prospect of health care becoming socialized, seeing how the process destroys incentive for the medical field and choice for the consumer and, worse, creates unmanageable backlogs due to abuse of the system (that quip on Lucianne.com isn’t just a joke, we all know it’s true of socialized systems elsewhere) I am terrified at the prospect of a Hillary-type scheme being put into place.
Socialized medicine is nothing but one thing: a comforting salve for upper-income liberals at the expense of millions of other people who never did them any harm. In the process of selfishly alleviating some abstract personal guilt, the rest of us must suffer.
Having said that, I wish President Clinton all the best, and hope he pulls through with flying colors, as the competent, free-market doctors are predicting.
when the average person in the richest, most advanced country in the world, even has to think twice about health care while the average person in many other countries doesnt
then there will be some, like hillary, and me, who will stand up and say this country can do better.
forgive us for giving a crap about tedious things like the health of the nation.
now back to your war on terror.
I look forward to the day that my taxes will be spent buying bypass surgery for slobs who spend their lives eating fried food and saturated fat.
Sadly for all the health manichaeans out there, even vegetarians, health foddists, and distance runners have heart attacks.
But Jeff, if you’re so hot for universal health insurance, how’re you going to solve all those problems I listed in the health-insurance thread previous?
I agree with you here, Jeff. No matter what the Right has to say, the simple fact is America lags behind in health care.
A friend of mine’s dad (an American citizen) was recently in England. He didn’t have a history of heart problems, but he started having chest pains while touring London. He checked into a hospital, and they discovered he needed a bypass (single or double — i forget.) Anyways, completely free of charge, he was given one and sent on his way in a few days.
So, all these fears of long lines is completely unfounded. Britain survives, and their citizens live longer. Why can’t we do the same?
There has been some criticism of Hillary here because of her using her husband’s heart problems as a platform to tout her healthcare agenda. These people are wrong. Those of us who think “My god, if my loved one was in the hospital facing this kind of surgery, the last thing I would be thinking of would be a policy statement”. You do not understand the Clintons. Both Hill and Bill live, breath, eat, drink and live for politics. That is their reason for being. So the next time you see something like this from one of the Clintons, remember, they have no lives that are outside politics. Think of them the same way you think of those people who faithfully attend Star Trek conventions. Just adding some perspective here.
Tony:
when the average person in the richest, most advanced country in the world, even has to think twice about health care while the average person in many other countries doesnt.
Good godamighty, it must be a burden to actually have to think about something.
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Anybody who thinks a mandated, state-run health insurance industry is a good thing has never lived under one.
Here in Germany, I pay over $200 a month for single-person coverage, which gets taken directly out of every paycheck, and I still have a deductible. That’s in addition to the 60-70% tax rates that accompanies the insurance fees to cover the category ‘other’. The dentists’ offices are absolutely filthy. The doctors are over-worked and cranky. You’ll wait in line with bronchitis, while 20 unemployed pinheads crowd the office with hangnails. My roommate broke his *finger* snowboarding, and they put him under full anaesthetic to set it. Why? I figure it’s because they could send a bigger bill to uncle Gerhard for the treatment.
Health insurance is easy to get in the US, and it’s cheap compared to Europe. People who don’t have it are just waiting for somebody to force them to get off their butts and get it. Why Liberals would want Ashcroft to control health care, I’ll never understand.
Here’s a thought: Should smokers then be excepted from mandatory health insurance? Or charged more for being a high-risk group? Then what about promiscuous gays? Or intravenous drug users? I guess we’ll need to start investigating people’s lifestyles, just to make sure everything’s fair ‘n’ square. Cause that’s all we want, right? Fairness?
I agree with HE. You must be kidding, Jeff. It says a lot about Hillary that she would think of politics first and her husband second. That you would think that was entirely appropriate makes me wonder.
I don’t want anything other than what those in Congress and the Senate get from the tax money I send in to DC…if good enough for them, then good enough for me and my family. I served twice in the military, my son served too…how many in Congress or the Senate served?
Nice to see that his wife cares so much about him that she turns the thing into a snarky political point.
There’s a reason these people are disliked.
A friend of mine’s dad (an American citizen) was recently in England. He didn’t have a history of heart problems, but he started having chest pains while touring London. He checked into a hospital, and they discovered he needed a bypass (single or double — i forget.) Anyways, completely free of charge, he was given one and sent on his way in a few days.
Completely free of charge? For your friends father maybe. For the people of England? Absolutely not.
But hey, if your friends father was having chest pains here, he’d be turned away at the hospital, barred from the ambulance, right? RIGHT?
I also thought Hillary’s comment was tasteless. Healthcare coverage is a pretty tricky business. We know that in the US, the government is, in fact, the largest payor of healthcare. If we want to cover everyone, well, okay, just be prepared to have your gas prices double like they are in Europe. The money has to come from somewhere.
I happen to believe that (at least) catastrophic healthcare coverage would be something a family would put right at the top of their “must pay” list each month.
“No matter what the Right has to say, the simple fact is America lags behind in health care.”
It has the best health care in the world, and will until it ceases to lag behind the Britains and Romanias et al in rationing what lowest-common-denominator medicine remains after the industry’s seized by bureaucrats. Medical care from lawyers, instead of those bound by Hippocratic oaths?
I really don’t understand. Unless you’re poor and out of a job, health care is available. You just have to pay for it — like your car insurance. I pay about $176 to Kaiser Permanente every month for mine, plus I have a deductible at the doctor’s office and for prescriptions. It’s a necessity of life. Of course, some choose to forgo it and gamble that they won’t get sick, which means they don’t go in for checkups either — which could potentially catch a major illness. A major problem is, a lot of people who COULD pay would simply rather not. Then there are the poor. My best friend is an epidemiologist, and he’s regularly shown me data that it’s actually cheaper for us to provide preventive care for the poor than it is to wait for them to come down with something catastrophic and care for them then. I’m no socialist — in fact, I’m a capitalist and I have my own business — but what’s the wisest thing to do (beyond what’s simply the humane thing to do) comes down to simple addition. Make anybody who can afford health care pay for it — and pay for the poor to have adequate care.
Wackyguy: “…the simple fact is America lags behind in health care.”
America leads in health care. It lags in redistribution.
If Hillary gets credit for lobbying for health care when her husband has a heart attack, then I guess it is true that the personal has become political. And I had just read above that you were a centrist Mr. Jarvis. If the government tries to deliver health care predicated on need, we are headed for serious trouble because the need has no bounds, and you have to know that rationing by any other means than the market is doomed to failure and abuse.
America doesn’t have a health care problem, we have the best health care system in the world. America does have a health care delivery problem, especially for those in rural areas and at the bottom of the economic ladder. How would health care change if we woke up tomorrow and everyone had insurance? Would the arguments all then turn on making sure everyone had “equal” insurance, whatever that might mean?
The arguments about the uninsured frequently remind me of the CBS documetnary about the poor in the US that was shown in the former Soviet Union. It did not have the desired effect though, as the people in the U.S.S.R commented that they wanted to live where the poor people are fat. Yes, there is hardship, and, yes, there are a lot of things we can and should do better — starting with free prenatal care, but I don’t think it is necessary to destroy a system that works for the vast majority and has spurred to address the needs of less than 20% of our population.
Oh, I lived in England for a year and witnessed socialized medicine up close and personal. No thanks. Maybe I’ve read too much into what you intended, but I do know what Hillary Clinton intended, and like I said earlier, no thanks.
What Hillary is really saying (since she’s too bright to think that health care falls off of trees) is that despite her and Bill making a goodly pile off their bestselling books, she’s damn glad they are enrolled in a plan that spreads out the costs onto the backs of everyone else.
And just think, if Hillary’s plan went through, we could also be paying for Ross Perot and George Soros’s health care too.
BTW, in case you think the health insurance situation will get better in this country, note that Average Joe and Jane don’t even want to pay the cost of their insurance, let alone the actual costs of the services they receive. The farther that the consumer gets from choosing services based upon cost, the quicker those costs will spiral upward.
As of right now, consumers don’t give a fug about the costs of health care. They only care about the price. And Hillary likes the prices she’s seein’, you bet your ass…
P.S. Amy Alkon is one sweet patootie.
What is the percentage of a citizen’s check going to insurance coverage in Britain or Germany? 10%? 20%? Will that percentage hit minimum wage earners as well as Madonna? What about multi-million dollar lawsuits? Europeans don’t sue like Americans as far as I know. Will baby boomers really except waiting months for MRI and hip replacements? Don’t payers cover for the poor now? The poor or uninsured just go to the Emergency Room and that cost is spread out to every patient that enters a hospital.
The only thing that bothers me with the present system is the reluctance of some with no insurance to go and have the care they may desperately need. There are people in that catagory and they are the one group that makes me doubt our system at times. Otherwise, I know the government will just screw it all up and the waste and chaos created will never be worth the promised results.
Ptolemy:
I live in Germany; in my tax bracket, you pay about 13% of your monthly income to the “krankenkasse”, or Health Ministry. Including health tax, income tax, social security, and the national VAT of 16%, my tax rate in Germany comes pretty close to 70%. (Many people will claim it’s around 50%, but forget to factor in the VAT)
With double-digit unemployment, and an early mandatory retirement age (63 years old), a lot of the income tax goes to paying health insurance for the unemployed and retired, but I couldn’t really say exactly how much.
Germany has already started cutting back health benefits. Starting this year, for example, you have to pay 10 euros cash every time you walk into a doctor’s office now, no matter what you’re there for. The insurance doesn’t pay for false teeth or glasses any more, either. Methadone treatment, of course, is still covered, even if you’ve never worked a day in your life.
Viva la revolucion.
“A friend of mine’s dad (an American citizen) was recently in England. He didn’t have a history of heart problems, but he started having chest pains while touring London. He checked into a hospital, and they discovered he needed a bypass (single or double — i forget.) Anyways, completely free of charge, he was given one and sent on his way in a few days.”
There is no such thing as a free government service. The question is will the consumer pay the bill or the taxpayer?
First off, I’m a Republican who supports President Bush.
Having said that, I hope President Clinton gets well soon. I have to say he was one of the two Democratic Presidents in my lifetime I thought did a pretty good job. The only other one was John Kennedy. The other Dems should never have been President!
But back to health care. I agree we need better health care. I don’t want my taxes paying for everybody. If I did, I would move to France or Germany and live there. Not a chance of that ever!
We need reform in the legal system and reform in health care providers. But keep in mind there are not enough medical providers as it stands. Look in the local newspaper, there are always openings for medical people. It’s been like that for more than ten years. What to do about those jobs?
Until I see improvements in the process of health care, I don’t want my taxes raised to pay for government waste. I learned that lesson under President Johnson and its lessons will not be forgotten by this American.
Don