Romney Outlines Health Care Plan Using the Consumer Model

[Torie]

Poor states are going to need some money from some place to care for their impecunious uninsured sicks.  That's the bottom line Mitt.

[Torie]

Poor states are going to need some money from some place to care for their impecunious uninsured sicks.  That's the bottom line Mitt.

I don't see why that is necessarily the case. The poorest state in the US(Mississippi) has a GDP per capita comparable to that of South Korea and Israel, which both manage to fund their healthcare without any outside assistance.

Somehow I don't think that would translate well to the States. There are just so many variables in play. For example, to start off, Mississippi is full of sedentary fats.

[Torie]

Making the medical insurance industry more competitive is the central theme of the Pub vision on medical care (e.g. national markets and so forth). However, I really don't agree with the premise that it isn't competitive. Maybe at the margins it can be made more competitive, but that is not the reason costs are soaring. They are soaring due to medical technology, and mandates, including Obamacare, forcing insurance companies to undercharge olds, offer more coverage, and so forth. Some study just came out that insurance premiums have gone up 4% just due to the Obamacare mandates, much to the shock of the analyst who crunched the numbers for it when it was put together.

There is one constant to medical services and subsidies:  the actual costs over time will be far higher than the government tells you or projects that they will be - way more.

[Torie]

Yes, the US system sucks, and it gets rather little bang for the buck relatively speaking, for a host of reasons, including subsidizing medical research, particularly drug research, for the planet. And Medicare is a license to steal, and on and on. Those who say the US has the "best" medical system in the world are either disingenuous, or clueless clowns.

[Torie]

Also, if you ok interstate sales of insurance, every insurer moves to the one state that makes itself "friendliest" to the industry and offers policies there. The other 49 states' regulation becomes a dead letter because no one's going to need to offer insurance to those standards when they can buy off the insurance commissioner in, say, South Dakota or Delaware and do what they want and sell across state lines.

Yes, you made that point before, and I parried with the obvious answer that yes, you need national standards governing a national market. On that one, the states should just butt out. Did I ever tell you that this is one Pub, who has little or no interest in states rights?  I never have from day one, along with the doctrine of "subsidiariness," to wit, that body closest to the people governs best. I "knew" that was BS as a teenager, and have not changed my mind since.