Today it’s all over Fox News (but not mentioned on CNN’s website, which has changed almost imperceptively since yesterday) that an audit on the healthcare bill shows a $4,000 per year hike on insurance premiums per family within 10 years – that is $333 per month more than if the government just stayed out of it.
What a surprise! Yawn.
I hate not being able to use multiple new commentaries on a news story, but lately CNN is blatantly ignoring so many stories that I hardly bother there anymore. Drudge doesn’t have this on the front page today. Breitbart mentions it halfway down their front page. The Washington Post considers it their #1 news story right now – and the Times doesn’t bother with it at all. Am I being too one-sided in my news sources? I’m constantly seeking new sources from both “sides” – no one reports everything – so if you know of a good one, let me know.
Details:
- This is for a typical family of four
- Costs per family could be $150/month higher within only three years.
- Individual costs could be $1500/year higher within ten years
- These increases represent the increase we’ll see beyond the current insurance increases, not totals. This is just what the government will tack on additionally.
Based on what our family is paying per month already, this increase would make our health insurance almost as high as our mortgage payment. Does anyone else see the inherent stupidity in this? What happened to “we’re going to help taxpayers with soaring insurance costs”??
This healthcare plan still won’t cover all Americans. Wow. I’m so curious what we’ll be paying for, exactly! Many of the uninsured Americans helping push for this plan probably don’t realize they’re still going to be out in the cold.
What is Congress’ brilliant response so far?
Paraphrasing: “this audit was staged by the insurance companies and is false” (Baucus, the bill’s author, sent his spokesman out to say specifically “this is an insurance company hatchet job”).
Not so fast. This audit was done by PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of the most trusted accounting firms in the country. No way is PwC putting their name on a false audit, not for anyone.
Congress is also saying the audit is false because it was paid for by insurance companies.
The thing is, if you’re a publicly traded company and you need your financial statements audited by an third party – you go to PwC (or one of their competitors). And you pay them. And the government accepts that audit as being impartial and allows you to keep doing business based on it, despite the fact that you paid for it.
The only reason they would claim PwC is being dishonest on this one is… political. I would be willing to bet that $4,000 figure is conservative. It could be far higher.
I hear all the time people saying, “I don’t care about the news or politics. It doesn’t affect me. Etc.”
It’s time to care. This will affect you, dramatically. Have you looked into what this bill will really mean, and whether your congressperson is planning to vote the way you want? Have you written to you congressperson to tell him or her what you think? If you don’t plan on doing this, I don’t want to hear you whine when you have insurance premiums that force you to sell your house, or that keep you driving a 20-year-old car.
The Senate Finance Committee plans to vote on this tomorrow. If it passes there, it will go before Congress very soon.
And as for Congress: what you’re working on is obviously not the answer. You have think tanks feeding you bills constantly. Where is the brilliant thinking on how to fix health care? Why are we doing nothing but putting trillions of tiny bandaids on a leaky boat that has cannon-ball sized holes in it?
Maybe it’s time to get a new boat, a whole new idea on managing healthcare.
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