Hillary talks on health care reform
Posted by Moonage on 25 Jan 2006 | Tagged as: Health Care Debate
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., said Republicans had caved in to powerful health insurance companies during talks on the five-year, $40 billion budget cut at the expense of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.
At issue is an obscure provision in the budget bill slated for a final House vote next week aimed at keeping health insurance plans participating in the Medicare program from obtaining inflated payments from the government. Such payments come when doctors and insurance companies perform a service but exaggerate the extent of the care when billing the government.
Hillary Clinton is complaining about Republicans caving in to powerful health insurance companies? Wavy lines take me back to 1993…….
One of newly elected President Bill Clinton’s first targets was health insurance. he was touting a national health care plan. It was initially well received by the public and unions. In order to achieve this, he put his wife in charge of the issue. The first thing she did was team up with Aetna, Prudential, Travelers. Three of the major insurance companies. Also joining the panel were General Electric, General Motors, and Caterpillar. The end result was more of the public burden of health care was pushed on to the states. The states in turn, we given greater leeway in how they managed their health care costs. The one group that got no scrutiny at all when it was all said and done were, ( drum roll please ), the private health care companies. No mention was made of tort reform or workers compensation reform. All it did was give the private insurance companies a slice of the federal monies BEFORE the states could spend it via managed health care plans. Net effect? ( All table information comes from National Health Expenditure (NHE) Amounts by Type of Expenditure and Source of Funds: Calendar Years 1965-2014 in PROJECTIONS format.
National expenditures on health care continued at basically the same rate. In simpler terms, nothing was accomplished:
| 1993 | 888,063 | 7% | 497,703 | 6% |
| 1994 | 937,150 | 6% | 509,709 | 2% |
| 1995 | 990,206 | 6% | 533,388 | 5% |
| 1996 | 1,039,864 | 5% | 556,850 | 4% |
| 1997 | 1,093,054 | 5% | 589,818 | 6% |
| 1998 | 1,150,888 | 5% | 631,081 | 7% |
| 1999 | 1,222,198 | 6% | 671,909 | 6% |
| 2000 | 1,309,904 | 7% | 717,526 | 7% |
| 2001 | 1,426,394 | 9% | 771,763 | 8% |
| 2002 | 1,558,992 | 9% | 841,026 | 9% |
| 2003 | 1,678,868 | 8% | 913,200 | 9% |
Meanwhile, out of pocket expenses immediately increased:
| 1993 | 146,948 | 1% |
| 1994 | 143,790 | -2% |
| 1995 | 146,405 | 2% |
| 1996 | 151,767 | 4% |
| 1997 | 162,027 | 7% |
| 1998 | 175,571 | 8% |
| 1999 | 184,747 | 5% |
| 2000 | 193,110 | 5% |
| 2001 | 201,986 | 5% |
| 2002 | 214,200 | 6% |
| 2003 | 230,483 | 8% |
And, while overall health care expenditures increased:
| 1994 | 904,680 | 6% |
| 1995 | 957,628 | 6% |
| 1996 | 1,005,635 | 5% |
| 1997 | 1,055,815 | 5% |
| 1998 | 1,112,637 | 5% |
| 1999 | 1,180,172 | 6% |
| 2000 | 1,260,935 | 7% |
| 2001 | 1,373,808 | 9% |
| 2002 | 1,499,753 | 9% |
| 2003 | 1,614,223 | 8% |
Not every service was included in that mix:
( Home health care for example: )
| 1993 | 21,879 | 20% |
| 1994 | 26,066 | 19% |
| 1995 | 30,529 | 17% |
| 1996 | 33,602 | 10% |
| 1997 | 34,544 | 3% |
| 1998 | 33,575 | -3% |
| 1999 | 32,261 | -4% |
| 2000 | 31,616 | -2% |
| 2001 | 33,660 | 6% |
| 2002 | 36,526 | 9% |
| 2003 | 40,009 | 10% |
So, the ramifications of Hillary’s caving in to powerful insurance companies was we got fewer services at a much more expensive price. In the best case argument, it accomplished nothing. You gotta ask yourself one decade after the full impact of her "reforms" took place, "Is my health care better now?". Go ahead, make my day.
Where did all the money go? Well, I’ll just put it this way, Warren Buffett became a billionaire in the 90’s. How did they get on Hillary’s panel?
| 1998 | 6 | $30,128,078 |
| 1996 | 6 | $32,885,102 |
| 1994 | 5 | $21,602,010 |
| 1992 | 6 | $21,647,931 |
| 1990 | 4 | $12,794,103 |
The old fashioned way, they paid for it.
So, let’s let someone with a lot less baggage criticize the Republican efforts. The Democrat efforts didn’t accomplish anything. And, the leader of that "reform" is the Democrat complaining most. Another round of her reform and no one will be able to afford it. It’s bad now, but it can be worse.
3 Comments »
on 25 Jan 2006 at 7:22 pm 1.American Phoenix
said …
And let’s not forget Hillary’s role in our current flu shot fiasco. Advocating controlling the price of flu shots resulted in many suppliers going out of business because they couldn’t make a profit. The number of suppliers is now down to two - one, if you count reliable suppliers. (People in one of those two companies, incidentally, gave a lot of money to the Clintons.) For the last two years, one maker has not been able to get its supply to market because of factory problems. Good luck getting your flu shot. Let’s face it. This is good, old-fashioned Marxist economics.
on 25 Jan 2006 at 10:12 pm 2.Moonage
said …
The original intent of the “Health care debate” category was my intent to address all of the various aspects of health coverage, why it is what it is now, and what could possibly be done to make it better. However, the problems are so vast right now it’s pretty much overwhelming. Secondly, because a lot of the problems are in the private sector, some of the data I would have used is not readily available ( try finding historical health insurance premium rates, all you’ll get are people trying to quote insurance ). The main issue I have developed since I’ve been here is that people are looking at the issue, as they do with a lot of other issues, as a “right-now” thing. The problems are deep rooted and in a lot of cases historical. The ramifications we are suffering now are primarily the “reforms” of the mid to late 90’s. The vaccine shortage is a direct result of the same reforms I cited above, I just picked home health care as a vivid example because the numbers were readily available. But, they are both rooted in the same issue in that the “reforms” basically penalized everyone BUT private insurance. Now, Hillary is complaining about Repbulicans doing exactly what she did a decade before. Her message should have been “don’t do what I did”. Then I would have bought it. What needs to be done is a panel made up of representatives from all segments of health care, including 1/3 of the panel being people who can not afford private health care premiums. My goal is a national insurance board to replace the state boards. Insurance companies in a lot of cases are more politically powerful than the state insurance board in which they reside. They can’t do anything with them. The insurance company wants to raise their premiums, who’s to stop them? When these small state boards are eliminated and a federal board demands that all pharmaceuticals licensed to bill federal and state health programs be required to provide adequate supplies of these vaccines, the problem is solved. It doesn’t take a insurance executive to figure that out.
on 24 Aug 2007 at 8:52 am 3.Moonage Political Webdream » Blog Archive » Oh no, here we go again said …
[...] too well, and thinks she knows why ( blaming it on that vast health care industry lobby groups ). I blamed it on lousy reforms of 1993. Just when I thought she had learned her lesson, we get this: Hillary Rodham Clinton promised [...]