Bob's Backyard

Finally, health care “reform” I can believe in.  And it explains how the mess came about to begin with.

I didn’t write this, it’s from Clark Howard

“For months, there have been angry words and both sides of the aisle have been talking past each other. But tonight I propose we go to a health care system that we can afford and that will allow market forces to finally enter health care in the United States.

We must address head-on that the federal government deficits we are running are not sustainable. The commitments to seniors with Medicare and the impoverished with Medicaid are not sustainable. We can not afford as a federal government to provide for the health care of the citizenry. It’s just not possible.

In addition, our current system is based largely on luck. Either you’re lucky enough to work for an employer that provides health coverage or you unlucky enough to be self-employed, work for a smaller employer or have a pre-existing condition that makes you a pariah for insurers.

Employer provided health care was an accident of history. It only exists because of a move by employers some 50 years ago to provide health care as a back-door way to give raises during the days of wage price controls — when the feds said that employers couldn’t give pay raises.

Unfortunately, it’s grown into an unsustainable haphazard system. If you go back 50 years, an employee would be a “lifer” at a job and there was a reciprocal relationship between employer and employee. Today it doesn’t work like that. Employers add or subtract employees at will and we pick up and move as we see fit.

But many times someone may have an illness and can’t leave an employer because of health coverage. We need a new system to address the fact that we don’t stay put for a long time. We need to move away from centralization of health care from government or employers.

We also need to introduce the marketplace. How can this be done? We need to create an individual health insurance market where each individual in each family buys his or her own coverage. We can’t allow employers to be the sole source of safe venue for coverage, but instead have to create an insurance market based on the principles of standardized policies.

Insurers will be allowed to charge what they wish based on age/sex, but we need standard policies you can pick and choose from.

Choice is the key to driving smart decisions. Some like the structure of an HMO, some like the freedom of a traditional fee-for-service plan. Others want an in-between option like a PPO with a list of cheap in-network providers and more costly out-of-network ones. Yet others, such as entrepreneurs, love HSAs, where you take a high-deductible health insurance plan and you are essentially your own insurer for routine things.

We should allow Americans to choose from all 4 options, but the coverage should be standardized across all insurance companies so consumers can comparison shop.

Not everybody should have to buy the same HMO or the same PPO coverage. I think there should be 3 levels of choice in each — 3 different HMOs, 3 PPOs, 3 traditional plans and 3 HSAs, each with different levels of coverage.

For example, a basic plan would provide only generics medications and no experimental treatments. Each level would have different care for you. But you would have the choice of what you want to buy.

If an employer wants to subsidize the health care with a voucher, that’s fine, but you would still be in control of the purchase. So even if you left your employer, you would still have insurance.

If someone chooses not to buy insurance, that’s fine too. If you do become ill, you’ll be barred from buying coverage for 24 months. Otherwise, the healthy would never buy until they’re sick.

The moral choice is so key here. If we rely on government or an employer to decide what coverage is good for us, we give them the power of life and death over us. But if we make our own choice, then it puts us in control and eliminates the moral dilemma of will we tax ourselves more to provide more coverage or tax less to provide less coverage.

And for those without means, both sides of the aisle seem to agree on a voucher system that would scale back as the level of income rises. I think that’s a reasonable option. But I can tell you that we can not solve the cost issue with health care, without having a collision with morality, if we do not put the patient in charge. That’s the key.

You must be the person who decides what coverage you want, what coverage you choose not to buy and who you buy it from. It’s that simple. Health care costs account for one-sixth of our economy and we have to get control of that one-sixth, but at the same time provide true power back where it belongs — with the American people.”

If speech is not independent and untrammeled,

if the mind is shackled or made impotent through fear,

it makes no difference under what form of government you live,

you are a subject and not a citizen.

I locked my keys in my car outside of an abortion clinic last night.  Man, they get downright pissy when you go in and ask them for a coat hanger.

I’ve been using Mozy Home for a couple of months now to back up important data on my PCs to the “Cloud”.  So far I like it a lot, and the best part is, it’s free.  And yes, it works on Mac OS X.

The free accounts allow 2GB of storage, and if you sign up by following the links in this post you will get an extra 256MB of storage for free.  Unlimited storage is only $4.95 per month.  Since most of my important photos are already hosted online, I only backup the “My Documents” folder of my PC, so the 2GB account has been working out for me.  But I probably will eventually upgrade.

So give it a try.  It’s free, you have nothing to lose.  It has a funny name, but it’s a great service.  (And if you try it out using the links here, I also get a bit of extra space for free.  Free is my favorite price).

..that if you rearrange the letters in the words “illegal immigrants” and add a few more letters, it spells out:

“What the hell are you doing here? Go back to wherever you came from and don’t come back until you’re legal.”

How weird is that?