This bill will be a good litmus test on the General Assembly’s ability to reach a compromise on a contentious issue. If you recall, the House Republicans (and several Democrats for that matter) rejected Governor Rendell’s initial health care proposal, which required using monies from Mcare Fund and raising tabacco taxes as revenue streams. The House Dems have now introduced a plan that attempts to allievate the concerns of both House and Senate Republicans. The new proposal, while not covering as many uninsured as the original, does not eliminate PA doctor’s medical malpractice assistance, as it ensures Mcare abatements are paid prior to any monies moving to PA ABC; nor does it require an increase in any tabacco taxes. In other words, no PA ABC funding until Mcare abatements are paid, thus providing a better use of the surplus in the Mcare Fund. Of course, anything is preferable than letting the monies sit idly by while thousands of working Pennsylvanians and their families go another day without health care.

JM

More waste. Socialized medicine doesn’t work, and in this case it’s just an excuse to make the young and healthy impoverishe themselves by having to pay for more of what they don’t need.

Greater access means letting free market loose.

Government has no constitutional right to take from one group and give to another group.

You need to smarten up and read some John Locke or Adam Smith.

You have no place calling JM ignorant when it’s you that needs to do some reading. Like today’s paper. Our government interferes with the free market on a daily basis. What do you think the government is doing by bailing out all these sub-prime lenders from the mess they brought on themselves. What do you know about Locke and Smith? Their probably two names you heard mentioned in your highschool economics class. Please try to have some idea what you’re talking about before calling someone ignorant.

Free markets are a wonderful thing and it’s one of those cornerstones of a free society like our own. But when a free market allows the cost of a “necessary service” to outrun the resources of the lower upper class and literally crushes the middle class, then governmental attention is required. It’s important to remember that the middle class of workers is what makes this country and the world go round. They are what makes the “free market” free. Their recycling of cash back into the market place in exchange for cars, washers and dryers, food, clothing, education etc is what makes the market click. But when a specific sector demands an out of balance piece of the middle class financial pie, the rest of the market unnecessarily takes a hit. It is true that gasoline and food are beginning to cause cash flow problems, but health care has been on a steadily rising track for a decade or more with absolutely no relief in sight. And I haven’t even mentioned the poor. My point being is the free market can only be allowed to run free, when IT allows its financial nourishment to run free!
JP

Would any of my friends from across the aisle here mind “adopting” this conservative? I swear that my political “family” becomes more and more estranged from reality by the day. Yes, let’s preach the virtues of Adam Smith and John Locke to a young couple with small children, all of whom are uninsured. I’m sure a recent grad with no health insurance wouldn’t mind a lecture or two on free-market capitalism as well. I have nothing against Adam Smith or John Locke (or free-market capitalists, for that matter – I happen to be one), but ordinary people tend to tune out when politicians or the politically-driven substitute platitudes for practical solutions to their everyday problems. It is responses like those above, posted by someone I assume is “conservative”, that feeds the impression that conservatives have nothing to say on domestic matters beyond, “Let the market handle it”. As a conservative, my response would be, “Let’s empower individuals to handle it”. In my opinion, taken as a whole, the “ABC” bill, as it’s called, is a financial shell game that does little do address the two-headed monster in American health care: access and cost. The only redeemable aspect of the bill are the provisions to aid small business in providing coverage to their employees, but I’d like to see more specifics on exactly how state government plans to do that. Small-business employees and independent contractors comprise a large segment of the uninsured, so I hope ABC works out in that respect, but I believe there are more fiscally responsible avenues from which to approach that aspect of the health care problem than creating a new, huge government program (for example, refundable tax credits come to mind). Secondly, ABC does little to contain costs. In fact, under the bill’s own projections (I believe), health care costs in the Commonwealth would explode. Under such weight, the bill’s funding mechanisms simply do not hold up (and it’s simply a joke that draining the medmal fund, a terrible idea in the first place, provides any true long-term source of funding for this program). Any intellectually honest individual knows where the funding will eventually come from: tax increases. Now, to my intellectually honest friends on the other side, I have a hypothetical: on one hand, we have “ABC” as a solution to access. However, what if our legislators actually practiced sound budgeting for once? What if they ended the outright thievery known as “WAMs” and other “economic-development”, ahem, “projects”, and restrained annual spending increases to a figure close to inflation? What if they took those annual savings and provided refundable tax credits to independent contractors and students across the state to purchase health insurance from any plan of their choice? What if our small businesses were given tax incentives to offset the cost of providing coverage to their employees? What if the state further sweetened the pot by focusing on enhanced primary care and “healthy” living incentives, decreasing the likelihood of costly hospital stays down the road? Under a tax incentive policy such as that, government is “giving away” anything – it’s “giving back”. Some libertarians may see it as an “income transfer”, but if it means a strong emphasis on primary care, the state (and ultimately the federal government) would be saving a great deal on future “income transfers” to the elderly and other individuals with afflictions that might have been prevented through regular check-ups. In other words, it’s smart budgeting achieved through free-market principles, which should make any conservative with a lick of sense stand up and cheer.

Let me begin by saying how much I appreciate the opportunity to share my opinion with other interested parties on KP. I agree with many of the points you’ve posted concerning health care. Specifically, your notion that any health care policy worth its weight must consist of both a wellness and preventitive component, which, as pointed out by gent, would be most effectively implemented with REFUNDABLE tax credits. I highlight the word refundable, as these types of tax credits actually put money back into people pockets rather than just reducing their tax liability… thus, almost immediately increasing the demand for such programs and the number of participants.

However, there are some disadvantages of using tax credits to achieve a desired policy outcome. For instance, by embedding targeted subsidies in the tax code rather than in spending programs, the increased use of credits will make it more difficult to bring about broad-based tax reform, as those who benefit will make it politically impossible to change the system.

And finally, to refute my friend on this thread, market failure as a result of information asymmetries is the the primary reason for the constantly rising cost of health insurance. The teaching of Adam Smith’s free market priniciples assumes perfect information on the part of buyers and sellers in the market and is used in Econ 101 to convey basic econimic principles. Today’s health care questions, of course, are much more complex.

JM