Another reason for universal health care

Local, National, Virginia 1 Minute

Under sharp questioning from SCC Commissioner Theodore Morrison, Braly declined to say that her company would pass on efficiency savings to customers by lowering health insurance premiums.

AnthemSee? That’s a part of the reason why health insurance premiums are so high. The quote comes from this article, which appeared in The Virginian Pilot. It seems that as a part of its agreement to purchase Trigon, the SCC required that the purchaser, Wellpoint, Inc., keep certain services in Virginia. Now that company wants to move the operations out of state, or even overseas, in an effort to improve its bottom line.

Let me guess: Angela Braly, the president and chief executive of Wellpoint, gets a bonus based on the net bottom line.

“We have an obligation to fix the health care system. We have an obligation to provide better services at lower cost.”

Obligation to whom, Ms. Braly? That was a rhetorical question, by the way. I know who your obligation is to: the shareholders.

That’s right. Once these companies went thru the demutualization process, going from policyholder-owned to publicly traded, the focus shifted from the policyholders to the shareholders. The bigger question is who at these companies is looking out for the policyholders?

That would be no one.

As long as profits are driving the health care system, it can’t be fixed. We are beyond the time for needing some form of universal health care.

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82 thoughts on “Another reason for universal health care”

  1. The case law explains it. The general welfare clause. 1937. What government agency pays for your health insurance, Mouse?

  2. Just how many corpses are conservatives willing to step over before they get off their high horses? How many 12 year olds will die of bad teeth? You people make me sick, such selfishness and greed. You probably call yourselves Christians as well. But as long as you can save a dollar it’s all good.

  3. Case law? You cannot explain it, after four semseters of Constitutional Law? Perhaps you should get your money back.

    C’mon, the Preamble to our Constitution starts, “We the People….” The People are perfectly capable of understanding our Constitution as it is written. Yet you cannot explain how it allows such expenditures?

    “The general welfare clause”?! Please. Let me refresh your memory:

    “The Congress shall have Power… to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;….”

    I will repeat that, so even a lawyer can understand: “general Welfare of the UNITED STATES”

    Read it. The federal government is no more responsible for my personal welfare than it is responsible for my home defense or to pay my debts.

    What government agency pays for my health insurance? You will be happy to know that no State government agency, nor United States government agency, pays for my health insurance.

  4. Save a dollar while their health care is provided by the government, directly or indirectly. And challenge legal precedents that have been established since 1937, relying on a rejected theory most recently espoused by the Herbert Hoover administration. And then, go on with their lives, while others do not have that luxury.

    As I explained above, this could happen to anybody. Blaming people who are disabled and lack health care for their dilemma is just ignoring that truth. Many of these people did plan, did save, did work, did have health insurance, but the current structure of our health insurance system does not protect them.

    I really hope they are not forced to confront the truth the hard way. However, if it’s not them, it will be somebody they know.

  6. Mouse, much as I would love to debate long-settled Constitutional law with you and Tom, I have to deal instead with this little snippet from my sister:

    “Well … if there’s a complication to be had, I somehow get it … This time it’s that my wounds aren’t healing well. I’m allergic to latex & apparently they once again used something with latex. … I have four laparoscopic sites, each with a tiny hole or two. Since the day after surgery, all four sites have sported big angry-red, hot, itchy blotches. Last night, one of them went nuts … ”

    It goes on from there. I’m sure you’re not interested in the details, since you think the most important thing is to prevent the government, under any circumstances, from helping sick people. See, the rest of us have to live in cold, hard reality, whether we would choose in theory to do so or not.

  7. No, VAB. Pay attention, and see whether you can manage to read an entire comment. Since this sentence came at the end of a comment, I suspect your attention wandered before you got there. Thus, I will repeat myself:

    “Health care should remain in the States (as should education) where it belongs. Massachusetts, with Gov. Romney, is leading the way.”

    I have no problem with the STATES’ helping sick people. Got it?

  9. I don’t buy that underpaid argument, at least not overall. I have no doubt that it may be true in some high cost areas, such as NoVA, but it isn’t true down here. It used to be – back in the days when I worked for the government, which was part of the reason I left – but not anymore.

  11. Nope, not at all. I’ve been a government employee in the past for many years. I begrudge Tom his hypocrisy, though, collecting a government paycheck and then complaining that everyone else should be relegated to charity. And I do not intend to continue this conversation. My main point, one you have not even attempted to refute, is that everyone should have access to health care. I don’t really care how you do it. It is the mark of a civilized society. It is the least we can do. It is necessary and just. It is far more affordable than the present mess and many other things we take on without thinking. Go ahead, go on and on about how everybody else should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, etc. You just do not have enough real-world experience to understand the problem here. When you do, you will stop wasting your time thinking that the greatest tragedy that can befall us is that your cramped, rejected view of the Constitution has not prevailed since 1937. The greatest tragedy that can befall us is one that is now occurring to many of your hurting fellow citizens, while you fiddle away in denial of reality.

  12. I do not disagree with your main point, either, VAB, only with the notion that it is the federal government’s job to provide health care to everyone.

    You have no idea what “real-world experience” I have. Stop wasting your time thinking you do. Despite “four semesters of Constitutional Law,” you are unable to explain the rationale behind the largest power grab in our nation’s history. Pitiful.

    Yes, VAB, I do indeed think that the greatest tragedy that can befall us is to forget and ignore our own Constitution.

  13. VAB pointed you toward a much greater authority on the matter than him/herself, Mouse. That you’re too lazy to read the caselaw isn’t anyone’s fault but your own. Pitiful, indeed.

    Why don’t you go play with the No Authority for Federal Income Tax nuts, instead? They’re more your type.

  14. You really don’t have anything but ad musinem attacks, do you, BM?

    I have read the case law, as I will show shortly. I’ve also read this:

    In the 1930s, the Supreme Court struck down many pieces of Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation. In the spring of 1935, Justice Roberts joined with the conservatives to invalidate the Railroad Retirement Act. In May, the Court threw out a centerpiece of the New Deal, the National Industrial Recovery Act. In January 1936, a passionately split Court ruled the Agricultural Adjustment Act unconstitutional. In another case from 1936, the Court ruled New York state’s minimum-wage law unconstitutional. President Roosevelt responded with an attempt to pack the court via the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937. On 5 February 1937, he sent a special message to Congress proposing legislation granting the President new powers to add additional judges to all federal courts whenever there were sitting judges age 70 or older who refused to retire.[7] The practical effect of this proposal was that the President would get to appoint six new Justices to the Supreme Court (and 44 judges to lower federal courts), thus instantly tipping the political balance on the Court dramatically in his favor. The debate on this proposal was heated and widespread, and lasted over in six months. Beginning with a set of decisions in March, April, and May, 1937 (including the Social Security Act cases), the Court would sustain a series of New Deal legislation.

    One of those was pieces of legislation was Social Security, The decision was


    Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937)    , decided on the same day as Steward, upheld the program because “The proceeds of both [employee and employer] taxes are to be paid into the Treasury like internal-revenue taxes generally, and are not earmarked in any way”. That is, the Social Security Tax was constitutional as a mere exercise of Congress’s general taxation powers.

    So the tax is constitutional. No problem. The question of the Title II, the “Federal Old-Age Benefits,” was then examined as it pertains to the “general welfare.” In the entire decision, they can only make references to the plight of individuals, and say that it is a national problem. However, there is no mention of how these benefits, which are given to individuals, will increase the general welfare of the United States. (The government does not pay our personal debts, either.)

    The decision continues with a beautiful non sequitur:

    The purge of nationwide calamity that began in 1929 has taught us many lessons. Not the least is the solidarity of interests that may once have seemed to be divided. Unemployment spreads from State to State, the hinterland now settled that, in pioneer days gave an avenue of escape. Home Building & Loan Assn. v. Blaisdell, 290 U.S. 398, 442. Spreading from State to State, unemployment is an ill not particular, but general, which may be checked, if Congress so determines, by the resources of the Nation. If this can have been doubtful until now, our ruling today in the case of the Steward Machine Co., supra, has set the doubt at rest. But the ill is all one, or at least not greatly different, whether men are thrown out of work because there is no longer work to do or because the disabilities of age make them incapable of doing it. Rescue becomes necessary irrespective of the cause. The hope behind this statute is to save men and women from the rigors of the poor house, as well as from the haunting fear that such a lot awaits them when journey’s end is near.

    The decision equates the general unemployment situation, which does indeed propagate state-to-state, with old-age and disability unemployment, which does not. It claims that because the one propagates state-to-state, the federal government can attempt to remedy it. Then it says that the federal government can also remedy the other, which does not.

    Now you see why VAB is incapable of explaining it — because the logic is inexplicable!

  15. Then clearly, o mousey one, you ought to move post-haste and bring your great intellect to bear on this grave Constitutional crisis by bringing a challenge and showing the Supreme Court what’s what. Let us know how it goes, yes?

    (And I must tell you, I’m rather disappointed with the sweater. I assumed that all of your talent went into things domestic, since they didn’t seem to be on display in the public sphere. Ah, well. I’m sure you’ll find your calling some day.)

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