GOP senators challenge Health Facilities Planning Board
The above headline from SJ-R today. Some quotes,
"We don't think the current board is as effective as it could be," said Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington, chairman of the Republican task force.
"I personally think that the board insulates hospital executives and their board members from bad financial decisions by guaranteeing market share," said Sen. Jeff Schoenberg, D-Evanston, co-chairman of the legislative fiscal commission.Empower consumers with mandated health insurance (instead of letting the uninsured put the risk and costs on Medicaid and charity) and we'll get demand for health care spread evenly accross populations without need for Illinois Pols and lobbyists to do planning for underserved areas (supposedly). We'll avoid the corruption and abuse the Pols can't seem to resist.
Don't renew this board.
10 comments:
It ought to be abolished.
This is a Soviet-style allocation of resources.
Its primary beneficiaries are consultants and lawyers.
I was waiting for this question. And I'll get to it in more detail tomorrow...
...suffice to say sometimes it's the governments job to empower those who would prefer not to have the power...
...power means responsibily, and sometimes government's job is to make you responsible -empowered- whether you want it or not...
...no libertarian am I.
bill baar:
While we are at it, let's empower people to quit smoking by mandating that it is illegal. Let's empower them to lose weight by mandating that they join health club and stop eating transfats. What the hell, let's flip over all the cards, and empower them to live on a collective and donate all of their work product to the State.
It's mandated empowerment. It's mandated ownership.
Mandate people to own assets instead of Illinois coercing income transfers from one group to another.
It's coercing people to save, invest, and own.
Democrats don't like it because as assets grow, people have something to conserve, and no longer depend on the State.
I'd just mandate the savings.... and whither away a lot of the State. Including this archaic State planning board which has just given us corruption.
"mandated empowerment" is the new "jumbo shrimp" or "military intelligence". As for coercing people to save, for many that is the same thing as coercing them not to eat or coercing them not to purchase medicine for their kids. Trust me, the state won't wither, the coerced will.
As for coercing people to save, for many that is the same thing as coercing them not to eat or coercing them not to purchase medicine for their kids.
It's coerce with taxes or coerce with forced savings and ownership.
I'd coerce you to save and invest for retirment, and health care for you and your kids; before I'd tax you or let you buy the big screen TV.
Those are the trade offs.
Has the big screen TV become the modern analogue to the Cadillac of the welfare queen days? The people I am talking about cannot afford a little screen tv. What you propose is a tax by another name, except that it is regressive.
No, not at all Tom. Look at the Mass plan. They would get Gov subsidized insurance. In fact, the Gov would make them get Gov subsidized insurance.
We don't have welfare queens. We have healthy young people who opt out of purchasing insurance to spend on cars and vacations and those bit TVs.
If you're a libertarian, that's ok and they pay the piper later if their luck runs out.
If your a liberal, you empower a health care power structure... a medical industrial complex that makes the Defense business look like amatures.
If you're a Socialist or Social Conservative who realizes market allocate resources far better than state planners and keeps Government small, you realize the best think to do is force everyone to save, to own, to invest so they take care of themselves and their futures. A little Socialistically Paternal maybe but you also make everyone an investor... a capitalist... whether they want it or not.
It is not the market at work when the government makes you do something. It is the government deciding what is best for you. They can either do it your way or through taxation. No matter how you try to dress it up, what you advocate is the same as taxation.
Of course it is. And you can't tax the poor by the way. They have nothing. So leave them out the story here.
It's coercion, a tax, with the difference you set the proceeds aside in a fund you own (with Medical Savings Accounts), or an insurance plan you own for yourself.
That's a big difference.
But it's a tax and I'm certainly advocating forcing people with means to invest in their health security before they buy the big TV.
You can't coerce the indigent to save (they have nothing) so for them the Gov subsidizes the plan. (I'd argue borrowing and have Illinois fund their HSAs).
I think there is an intangible here too. People take control and manage their own health care. I think they'll get better health care. Again, we force empowerment on them. We force them to fund and make their own decisions. Just like IRAs and 401Ks have forced people to become investors and manage investments.
In the not so long run, it will be a very good thing.
Post a Comment