John

So, whadya know. A (gay) guy is introduced in a prime-time television series (“Bones” in this instance) and is immediately cast as an evil, homicidal villian. As the show progresses, we’ll see how this plays out… but in the meantime.. I am reminded of the 1995 film “The Celluloid Closet” narrated by Lily Tomlin. This version of the homosexual is a recurrent theme in Hollywood and has been for decades.

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The Pilot has some good ideas for health-care (payment) reform. My two personal favorites are:

• Coverage For Pre-Existing Conditions/No Cancellation: Any medical insurance policy written by a company involved in commerce shall not exclude coverage for pre-existing conditions as long as the insured has been continually insured for the previous year. If not insured for the previous year, the insured shall have coverage for pre-existing illnesses not more than one year after insurance commences. And no insurance policy in force for one year or more may be canceled or contested for any reason except nonpayment of premium.
• Interstate Sale of Insurance: In order to aid in the expansion of interstate commerce in intangible goods, it shall be permissible for persons licensed to sell health insurance in any state to sell health insurance through a licensed insurance broker in the state in which the policy is purchased.

The pre-existing conditions limitation is, I think, absolutely necessary for the industry. Unfortunately, it doesn’t go far enough. Requiring any insurance company to at any time cover payments and expenses for a pre-existing condition is akin to requiring home-owners insurance to cover houses that have already burnt to the ground. This isn’t insurance, it’s socialized payment of medicine whereby the healthy people of the country (who are mandated to purchase insurance that fulfills government requirements) have to pay higher premiums to cover the extraordinarily large expenses of those with chronic conditions.

If you want health-care reform, reform the health-care providers. Don’t go after the payment system.

The second policy increases the ability of insurance companies to offer plans and rates outside of single state areas. Hilariously, pelosi’s reason for being able to control health insurance sales is that it falls under the commerce clause that allows the congress to regulate commerce between the states. Strange then that insurance is one of the few things that is explicitly intra-state only (being illegal to have interstate insurance sales). If the govt takes control of this, they can take control of everything.

see NPR’s article to see how the rise of insurance in pet care increases the amount of services requested. The same thing happens with people. As distasteful as it may seem, we have to place a dollar value on human life. Actuaries have already done this for us (note that the Stanford study doesn’t actually measure the value of a “quality year of life”, simply how much the government is willing to overpay for it).

Nearly all other industrial nations – including Canada, Britain and the Netherlands – ration health care based on cost-effectiveness and the $50,000 threshold.

Accordingly, the AARP and other political groups who advocate for the senior class of citizen that increasingly demands an ever larger portion of government resources (that are paid for by the lower class, aka people still in the workforce) will hate this proposal. If the average life expectancy is 74.37 (for males), and the average age of soldiers who die in Iraq is 30, then the govt is discounting the value at appx 9.5%.

so a 60 year-old male who needs extensive medical services should qualify for anything less than $366,000. However, if they need those same services later, they only qualify for $154,855. How about if the have to personally pay for the rest. A woman though, at the same age of 70, would qualify for $312,700 worth of services.

Bottom line is…. it is medically possible to keep a body alive for an indefinite period of time if money is no object. However, money is an object. As long as we live in this place economists like to call “reality” where there are unlimited desires and scarce resources to fulfill those desires, there will be rationing involved (for all things, not just healthcare). Money is simply the most convenient method man has come up with to measure the relative value of resources (labor, capital goods, services, etc) and allocate them.

if we redesign the system so that the discount rate is equilvalent to the 30-year treasury yield, then we can gain an additional stabilizing element to our national economy, as the govt will then have reasons to allow treasuries to float at a market level, rather then pegging them artificially low (which would increase the present value of a life). The costs of services would then fight against the costs of interest payments, which are now held artifically low because the govt has no incentive to allow them to rise.

really, the only good things i can say about his entire speech was that someone actually managed to get a tie on him before he walked out the door, and he was able to make it through the entire speech without lighting up.

other than that, it was lies, deceit, mischaracterization, and rhetorical manipulations as per usual whenever his teleprompter is running.