(Now cross-posted at dKos and MyDD. Also, Check out Shum's single payer update for more on the $3.7 billion. - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
Today is going to be a busy day. But let's start with some health care talk in the morning. I just got off a call with Harry Reid, where much of the talk focused, with good reason, on the mess in Iraq and the President's posturing on Iran. However, I'll leave that to the national bloggers. I highly recommend Bob Geiger for coverage of all things Senate. Oh and check out the MoveOn.org ad they are trying to get aired in DC during the Super Bowl.
I, however, wanted to address Arnold Schwarzenegger's health care plan. This is relevant primarily because Schwarzenegger plans on asking for $3.7 billion in new federal funds for the plan. So, I asked the majority leader, what he thinks of California's plan, if the Governor will get his money, and where we should go from here.
Unfortunately, I'm not a great transcriber, but he is certainly up on the issues. However, he pointed out something that I also addressed in my post entitled "Health Insurance Sucks", namely that the insurance industry, well, sucks:
The problem is that the insurance industry is the enemy of most everything we do today. They have an anti-trust exemption from the Depression era that was supposed to last only a few years (the McCarran-Ferguson Act) but is still with us today. This exemption allows the industry to do harmful things to the country. They are fixing prices, which would ordinarily be a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, but there is nothing we can do.
Well, I couldn't agree more with the statement that the insurance industry is the enemy of good health care. While Sen. Reid is just looking to eliminate McCarran-Ferguson, I'd like to eliminate it all together, but Reid's strong language is a great start. By the way, the words in bold were a direct, and accurate, quote. I was sure to get that sentence perfect because it was such a thrill to hear that from the mouth of the Senate's Leader.
We moved on to the issues relating to Arnold's plan:
The insurance industry is broken, there are 47 million uninsured Americans, and there all sorts of hidden costs. I'm glad that the Governor is at least taking health care on. He's the Termainator, and that could bring attention to the issue. But we have to see how Massachusetts works first.
There was an article by the syndicated columnist Mike Samuelson (spelling?) that said the cost of insurance in Massachusetts with their plan was twice what the state expected, or about $4600 per person. They are having problems with the costs. I think that we everybody should have the same kind of care that I have, that Congress has.
We need to first look at McCarran-Ferguson and what we can do to stop the insurance industry from hurting us. The Gulf Coast situation is an example of that. Even some Republicans are beginning to talk about how the insurance industry has failed us. So we could see some movement on these issues soon.
So, I guess the big question that stands out here is whether we can afford Arnold's plan if the Congress doesn't plan on providing the additional federal funds. Is this plan DOA? The debate is certainly worthwhile, but don't we need to deal with the insurance industry as well? Do we really need to give them a huge windfall that would require everybody to pay them for their overpriced services?
