Fake Sarah is going to edjumicate you about health care using Facebook. Take notes kids!

Now that the Senate Finance Committee has approved its health care bill, it’s a good time to step back and take a look at the long term consequences should its provisions be enacted into law.

The bill prohibits insurance companies from refusing coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and from charging sick people higher premiums. [1] It attempts to offset the costs this will impose on insurance companies by requiring everyone to purchase coverage, which in theory would expand the pool of paying policy holders. (So far, so good. It seems that this ghostwriter has an essential understanding of the Baucus bill as it stands right now. Oooh somebody has been doing some reading, proof positive that this is not Palin.)

However, the maximum fine for those who refuse to purchase health insurance is $750. [2] Even factoring in government subsidies, the cost of purchasing a plan is much more than $750. The result: many people, especially the young and healthy, will simply not buy coverage, choosing to pay the fine instead. They’ll wait until they’re sick to buy health insurance, confident in the knowledge that insurance companies can’t deny them coverage. Such a scenario is a perfect storm for increasing the cost of health care and creating an unsustainable mandate program.

("Perfect storm"? More like a light sprinkle. First this assumes that MOST young people cannot do math, and also that they would prefer to stick it to "the man" rather than purchase insurance. A fine of $750.00 is a lump sum required when it is discovered that the person does not have health insurance, this will obviously come at the same time that they are also in the hospital for something fairly catastrophic since they would avoid the doctor at all costs until they had no choice but to go. So the $750.00 would be on top of many thousands of dollars of emergency care. How is that more cost effective than spending $200+ dollars a month in insurance costs? Is it the norm to discover young drivers driving without car insurance? Nope. It happens, but it is not something that the average young driver chooses to do. How is THIS any different? I don't think Palin has much confidence in the youth of America. Hmmm I wonder why?)

Those driving this plan no doubt have good intentions, but good intentions aren’t enough. There were good intentions behind the drive to increase home ownership for lower-income Americans, but forcing financial institutions to give loans to people who couldn’t afford them had terrible unintended consequences. We all felt those consequences during the financial collapse last year. Unintended consequences always result from top-down big government plans like the current health care proposals, and we can’t afford to ignore that fact again.

(Wrong again cupcake. The housing bust was the result of an out of control free market artificially inflating home prices, and using houses as poker chips in a risky attempt to make more money, WITHOUT adequate government oversight.)

Supposedly the Senate Finance bill will be paid for by cutting Medicare by nearly half a trillion dollars and by taxing the so-called “Cadillac” health care plans enjoyed by many union members. The plan will also impose heavy taxes on insurers, pharmaceutical companies, medical device companies, and clinical labs. (These companies are at the very heart of why our medical costs are out of control. Tax them? Hell we should seize the vacation homes, fancy yachts and private planes they purchased by overcharging sick people, sell it back to them, and use those profits to buy health care for the entire country. Don't think it would not cover the cost either!) [3] The result of all of these taxes is clear. As Douglas Holtz-Eakin noted in the Wall Street Journal, these new taxes “will be passed on to consumers by either directly raising insurance premiums, or by fueling higher health-care costs that inevitably lead to higher premiums.” [4] Unfortunately, it will lead to lower wages too, as employees will have to sacrifice a greater percentage of their paychecks to cover these higher premiums. [5] In other words, if the Democrats succeed in overhauling health care, we’ll all bear the costs. The Senate Finance bill is effectively a middle class tax increase, and as Holtz-Eakin points out, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation those making less than $200,000 will be hit hardest. [6]

With our country’s debt and deficits growing at an alarming rate ( Bush's legacy, not Obama's), many of us can’t help but wonder how we can afford a new trillion dollar entitlement program. The president has promised that he won’t sign a health care bill if it “adds even one dime to our deficit over the next decade.” [7] But his administration also promised that his nearly trillion dollar stimulus plan would keep the unemployment rate below 8%. [8] Last month, our unemployment rate was 9.8%, the highest it’s been in 26 years. [9] At first the current administration promised that the stimulus would save or create 3 to 4 million jobs. [10] Then they declared that it created 1 million jobs, but the stimulus reports released this week showed that a mere 30,083 jobs have been created, while nearly 3.4 million jobs have been lost since the stimulus was passed. [11] Should we believe the administration’s claims about health care when their promises have proven so unreliable about the stimulus?

(Should we perhaps give the programs a chance to work before we judge them as failures? You don't decide a car is a good purchase if all you have done is back it out of the driveway. Let this vehicle hit the road for a while before calling it a lemon. And Jesus, what did Sarah Palin ever do that stood up to any public scrutiny at all?)

In January 2008, presidential candidate Obama promised not to negotiate behind closed doors with health care lobbyists. In fact, he committed to “broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are. Because part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process. And overcoming the special interests and the lobbyists...” [12] However, last February, after serving only a few weeks in office, President Obama met privately at the White House with health care industry executives and lobbyists. [13] Yesterday, POLITICO reported that aides to President Obama and Democrat Senator Max Baucus met with corporate lobbyists in April to help “set in motion a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, primarily financed by industry groups, that has played a key role in bolstering public support for health care reform.” [14] Needless to say, their negotiations were not broadcast on C-SPAN for the American people to see.

Presidential candidate Obama also promised that he would not “sign any nonemergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House Web site for five days.” [15] PolitiFact reports that this promise has already been broken three times by the current administration. [16] We can only hope that it won’t be broken again with health care reform.

All of this certainly gives the appearance of politics-as-usual in Washington with no change in sight.

Americans want health care reform because we want affordable health care. We don’t need subsidies or a public option. We don’t need a nationalized health care industry. We need to reduce health care costs. But the Senate Finance plan will dramatically increase those costs, all the while ignoring common sense cost-saving measures like tort reform. Though a Congressional Budget Office report confirmed that reforming medical malpractice and liability laws could save as much as $54 billion over the next ten years, tort reform is nowhere to be found in the Senate Finance bill. [17]

(For one thing "tort reform" will not bring the costs of medical coverage down nearly as much as the Republicans say it will. If this was the "end all" to the high costs of health care then why did the Republicans not deal with it when they were in control of the Presidency, the Senate and the Congress? Because it would not do a damn thing to bring down health care costs and they know it! And since much of their campaign money comes from the insurance companies why would they want to damage their ability to make a profit?)

Here’s a novel idea. Instead of working contrary to the free market, let’s embrace the free market. (Because it did such a bang up job in the housing industry and wall street right?) Instead of going to war with certain private sector companies, let’s embrace real private-sector competition and allow consumers to purchase plans across state lines. Instead of taxing the so-called “Cadillac” plans that people get through their employers, let’s give individuals who purchase their own health care the same tax benefits we currently give employer-provided health care recipients. Instead of crippling Medicare, let’s reform it by providing recipients with vouchers so that they can purchase their own coverage. (What is it with these people and "vouchers"? They wanted them for private and home schools and now they want them for health insurance? Will these also be used for "Christian based" health care, like the school vouchers were used to pump federal money into Christian school organizations?)

Now is the time to make your voices heard before it’s too late. If we don’t fight for the market-oriented, patient-centered, and result-driven reform plan that we deserve, we’ll be left with the disastrous unintended consequences of the plans currently being cooked up in Washington.

- Sarah Palin('s Ghostwriter)

You know I hate to piss on this Facebook writers little pity parade here, but if you boil down her/his entire argument, it looks like she/he is in favor of a public option but just does not know it.

Are insurance costs for patients too high? Yep.

Are insurance costs for doctor's too high? Yep.

Are medical supply companies charging way too much for their products? Yep.

Is there ANY incentive for the insurance companies to change their wildly profitable methodology. Nope.

Will the Baucus bill fix all of this? Nope.

But do you know what WOULD bring down health care costs? A public option. An option to purchase insurance that would force the big insurance companies to compete or fail. That would refuse to pay pharmaceutical companies the exorbitant prices they charge in America for brand name drugs. That would pay for necessary medical treatment while refusing to pay for unnecessary, but more profitable, medical treatment. And that would not refuse a patient with pre-existing conditions like a Cesarean, spousal abuse, or current pregnancy.

And perhaps while we are suggesting a public option for patients it would not be a bad idea to provide a public insurance option for doctor's so that insurance companies cannot charge them these incredible premiums.

It seems that in some bizarre way, Palin's ghostwriter and I are in agreement that something must be done about health care costs in this country. We only disagree on the method for dealing with the problem in that, I would actually like to do something that would work, and she/he wants to continue to use the faith based method. You know, praying for a miracle.