Senator Bennett on health care (and the money crisis)

Attended an early-morning health-care speech with Senator Bennett.

First mentioned the money crisis (at someone's request):

• story about Cannon-Grant and their struggle to get money to avoid bank crash in 1893 money crisis
  
• Andrew Jackson destroyed Hamilton's national bank, resulting in a bunch of money panics (eg. 1893), so the Federal Reserve restored our national bank
• He is in the banking committee; calls to his office were 493 to 1 against the bailout; the 1 call was a car dealer who wouldn't be able to make payroll.

Then talked about a federal bill to address health care:

• Ron Wyden asked Bennett to co-sponsor Healthy Americans Act (AKA the Noah's Ark bill); core of agreement is that Republicans must give up bias against universal health care ("every American insured"), and Democrats will allow markets to run the system
• tax code affects this somehow... dictates something about 16(?) % of GDP...
• person putting up money is different from payer
• changes tax laws so that payer controls spending: employee can change HMO
• government will subsidize up to 400% of poverty
• every individual must have coverage (he says we already do with mandatory emergency service)
  
• employer gives money to employee tax-free
• feds must create a minimum standard of insurance for people to meet; cannot be proscriptive because it won't improve with time (and everyone will want in); plan must be actuarial equivalent to average federal employee plan
• won't address medicare yet
• HMO, fee-for-service, concierge plan, whatever; just cannot provide less service than federal plan
• very poor may benefit since those who help them navigate the bureaucracy could get paid
• best health care: Seattle, Rochester, SLC
• greatest cost control factor is quality
• story: daughter graduated, went to work idealistically at nursing home, called him complaining about medicare manager
• story: doctor would proscribe wrong procedure so that they could pay for right one
• story: Michael Leavitt & wife needed colonoscopy; hospital couldn't tell costs until after breakdown; got price easily (at half the cost) in Utah
• prediction: next president will be a senator (and will know the cloture rule)
• will give the money to medicaid recipients
• by CBO, will be revenue neutral for first 2 years and save money after that; other say it'll save 1 trillion in 10 years

This talk was very informative, and I got a sense Senator Bennett is one of those politicians with integrity (though I won't make a final judgement based on one talk :- ).

My own comments:

• It was interesting to hear about the constant money crises without a national bank. I'll have to see if that's true; it seems to be worse WITH a central bank and national management! Anyway, at least it looks like Senator Bennett has tried to understand the history of the system, and really thinks there is a crisis where government intervention is necessary for our security (rather than totally a knee-jerk reaction to Bernanke et al).
• He talked about Heber J. Grant's efforts to get money to ensure their bank would not fail, but he seems to miss the fact that his exemplar made things work without even asking for government assistance. He worked hard and almost failed, but succeeded at the last minute with his own creativity and persistence, which is what should be happening. Some will win; many will lose.
  
• I still don't like the idea of forcing every American to have health insurance, even if we currently struggle under some emergency laws. It's more government encroachment: suddenly, everyone will be forced to pay a certain amount to the government; nobody will be free to choose where to put their money and how much risk and responsibility to take over their own lives. It's best to roll back some of our current, overly protective laws.

Unfortunately, the way this is presented and the way they're planning, I'm willing to bet that this initiative (or something with a similar universal mandate) will pass. This is the age of government absolutism! It can leap over crises with a single bound! Speak loudly enough and I'm sure it'll be able to fix your problems, too (... for a small fee for everyone else... at least until the next administration...).