Senator Cardin Does Not Get It
by Big Dog on Jul 21, 2009 at 19:18 Political
Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland was involved in a Town Hall meeting and was asked by a person about health care and why the government would fine him if he did not get a policy. Robert Broadus laid it out for Cardin:
“I decided not to get the health insurance. That’s working out for me because I’m able to save that extra money and give it to my family members and use it on myself. Senator Cardin, I want to know are you going to tell me an individual…that I have to buy health care or else you’re going to fine me $2,500 every year I don’t get it? Our founding fathers assured us we have a Bill of Rights and I want to see you uphold that,” Broadus said in an increasingly emotional voice and to scattered applause. WUSA9
Cardin’s answer was a scary one because he basically stated that the guy would have problems if he had a serious medical condition. This could be true but Cardin made it sound as if the guy was a freeloader who would not make arrangements to pay his bill.
Cardin responded by asking Broadus what would happen if he became sick, broke a bone, had a car accident and ended up in an emergency room.
“You don’t pay. You are part of the population that shifts its costs over to a person who does pay, and they’re paying for you,” Cardin said.
Explaining how hospitals have often to absorb those costs, Cardin said many hospitals would chose simply to leave the community.
“I just think the overriding public interest is to require you and everyone in this country to have health insurance,” Cardin said.
Cardin said that it was in the public interest to require everyone to have health insurance. Why? Cardin’s lame excuse about hospitals and individuals who pay absorbing the cost falls flat. Hospitals and people who pay already absorb a great deal of cost. Hospitals also absorb the cost of government run Medicare and Medicaid. The government sets rates and never reimburses the total cost. This is one reason that patients have a plethora of tests and procedures. It is done for two reasons. The first is to prevent a lawsuit for some undiscovered problem and the other is to jack up the bill so the reimbursement is higher.
Additionally, with government run health care or a public option, if you will, everyone pays the bill. Well, the people who pay taxes pay the bill. There is no difference between the cost being spread out in the case Cardin describes and the cost being spread out among the populace in order to cover everyone.
There are plenty of ways to solve this problem that do not involve the government getting involved. Government does not have any money and it does not make money. Government extorts money from people who produce and then redistributes it to those who don’t. Washington DC only consumes, it does not produce.
Cardin is out of touch with reality because he is like the rest who want complete control over our lives. They already hold the elderly hostage with Social Security and Medicare and now they want to expand their reach to hold everyone hostage.
It is all about control over our lives and nothing more.
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Tags: ben cardin, control, health care, punishment, taxes
Unfortunately he’s not the only one to get it. I firmly believe that some of the things in this bill will violate the very heart of our Constitution and founding beliefs. One of which being the right to life. How can you put a price on someone’s life? How can you use cost effective analysis to decide what treatments should be allocated and to whom? I can’t even bring myself to treat animals that way much less consider using an Excel spreadsheet and insurance life expectancy tables to determine whether or not someone should receive a treatment. That is withholding the right to life. That should be their choice and only their choice (or of course their appointed representatives), not the government or some lame committee established by it.
They even have provisions in this bill to allow the government access to your personal accounts to get money (and we know how they love to dip their hands and take from someone else’s cookie jar) not to mention covering ILLEGALS which is beyond ridiculous.
Yes, but in Mass. they have begun denying coverage for Legal Immigrants, to cut costs- these people are legal- somethings not right.
And how come when it comes to one particular medical treatment — an abortion — that right to choose is personal and should never be infringed upon or questioned but other medical decisions and treatment do not qualify for the same privacy?
Because Liberals are hypocrites- it’s OK to kill the most innocent of our population, and use our tax money to do this, but then they are against Capital Punishment. Go figure.
Cardin is exactly right. The guy is a freeloader. Let’s take his question and modify it slightly:
“I decided not to get the [AUTO] insurance. That’s working out for me because I’m able to save that extra money and give it to my family members and use it on myself. Senator Cardin, I want to know are you going to tell me an individual…that I have to buy [auto insurance] or else you’re going to fine me $2,500 every year I don’t get it? Our founding fathers assured us… blah blah”
DAR
There was a time when auto insurance was not required. That didn’t work out so well. The UK required it in 1930. All US states require it now except for New Hampshire. In Virginia you can just pay a $500 fine instead. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of argument about it. Each person should pay for their risk. Same with health care.
Bigd: “he basically stated that the guy would have problems if he had a serious medical condition. This could be true…>>
DAR
Exactly right! It could be true. And often it is true. If the guy gets sick, or hurt, beyond what he can pay, it will be true. This happens what, six thousand times a day or so?
Bigd: “…but Cardin made it sound as if the guy was a freeloader who would not make arrangements to pay his bill.”>>
DAR
Exactly right again. Anyone can become ill, or injured with a medical condition costing $100,000 or more. It happens thousands of times a day in the US. How many Americans can pay a $100k bill? Lot’s of them could (they, like myself, usually have insurance for the purpose of protecting their savings). How many cannot, ever, pay a $100k bill? Tens of millions. Perhaps a hundred million.
It’s time to insure everyone, lower the costs and stop the needless suffering.
I watched an extra from Sicko tonight. It was about a guy who died of cancer after he couldn’t raise the $140k to keep up his cancer treatments (he had already paid $40k or so). Here’s a short trailer.
About 18,000 die each year in the US because they don’t have insurance. That’s six 9/11’s each year. We fought a multi-trillion dollar war because of one 9/11 event yet we can’t spend the money to figure out this problem?
D.
The government IS the problem, not the solution. If there need to be regulatory agencies to moderate costs. I can see that, but government total control? I don’t think so.
Insurance cos. charge twice what they know they are going to get, and settle with doctors for a third sometimes.
The biggest abusers of the insurance cos. are the hospitals themselves, charging ten dollars for a box of kleenex.
I understand a certain level of mark up- after all this is not a hobby for the hospital, but to charge three times or more for these things could be moderated.
Government, however, will kill you.
Because they do not care.
BLK: “The biggest abusers of the insurance cos. are the hospitals themselves, charging ten dollars for a box of kleenex.”>>
DAR
They charge like this to pay for the costs of those who freeload on the system.
You know who you are.
D.
No, they charge like this because they can, D- I have paid my own way, and I shall continue to do so.
Quit trying to insult me- I have paid every bill,including one that exceeded $80,000- so shut your mouth.
no, Darrel- remember you are in a (for now) Capitalist country- it’s to make money. Yes, there is padding in there, to account for the odd person who wants to pay in goats, but by and large it is to make money.
When a contractor is presented with a situation they cannot put a firm price on, they general;ly say, “Cost plus 15%” or 10%, or whatever the going rate is, and hospitals do this also, as there are many variables in determining cost, including an out of control, mentally unstable government that intrudes on the whole process in a method known as “Bigfooting”.
A Zogby poll showed that 84% of people were Extremely satisfied, or satisfied with their healthcare coverage, so what’s the deal?
We need to tweak the system, not destroy it.
If I’m not mistaken, at least in MD, we still pay additional for those uninsured motorists that ends up costing those of us working hard for our money even more. This man may never get sick or injured. He may get hit by a bus and die instantly and have wasted all that money giving on the government’s insurance for nothing. Why should he be forced to do anything? This country is not about being forced. If someone gets sick, they can get treatment with or without insurance. And as long as they have an SSN (unlike illegals) they can be tracked down and have their wages (or whatever) garnished to get payment. Or their estate can be attached if they do not survive. Judgments and liens can be levied in order to pay for treatment. Instead of trying socialized medicine, reforming the healthcare system is a much better option and more in line with our basic values of freedom and choice. We could start by making it harder for slip and fall lawyers to file all these egregious suits to try and get settlements for the heck of it. That’s reform – not marxism.
People do not die because they don’t have insurance – they may die because they don’t receive the medical treatment they need. But that could be for a lot of reasons. Maybe they didn’t want it. Maybe they got treatment and it didn’t work. Maybe they didn’t even go to the doctor for fear of learning the truth or because they didn’t want to go through long and tortured treatment for a disease that may win out in the end. Maybe their religion forbids medical treatment. No one dies because they don’t have insurance – they die from disease, old age, heart failure, gunshot wounds…
I would suggest that Congress set up a “pilot” program where they and their families all use this so-called government option plan for their treatment – and solely use it for a period of say five years and then we can better explore what the pros and cons are without interfering with our liberties. I would bet that Ted’s cost effective analysis would be pretty low for his cancer treatment – since he is not in the best of health and of an advanced age. Should we just add him to the body farm and not bother spending our tax dollars on extending his life?
Freeloading is what these government officials are doing off the backs of hardworking people like us. Freeloading is what those receiving welfare and disability and using those programs as ways of life rather than what they were developed for originally (no matter how wrong the programs were to begin with).
Anyone who wants socialized medicine should relocate to Canada and check it out for a while. The majority of Americans do not want this kind of change – and for good reason.
SCHAT: “People do not die because they don’t have insurance – they may die because they don’t receive the medical treatment they need.”>>
DAR
Sometimes you can refute a persons argument by simply quoting their argument. This is one of those times.
SCHAT: “Congress set up a “pilot” program where they and their families all use this so-called government option plan for their treatment…”>>
DAR
They have for decades already. And it works very well. We should all have their plan.
SCHAT: “Freeloading is what these government officials are doing off the backs of hardworking people like us.>>
DAR
Now you are getting it! So don’t get fooled into thinking that if we fix this by all paying for a similar system, cover everyone, lower costs, remove the bloat, get rid of a thousand parasitic insurance companies and their legion of billing clerks, that this is a bad thing for the people. It’s only a bad thing for the parasites currently feeding off of our money. They are desperate not to have their system changed.
SCHAT: “Anyone who wants socialized medicine should relocate to Canada and check it out for a while.>>
DAR
I agree. I was born in Canada and lived there for 21 years. And I am in B.C. (British California) right now. Any questions?
Be very skeptical of anything you hear about the Canadian medical system from the US media right now. It’s mostly lies and spin bought and paid for by the trillion dollar US medical parasites (and then there is no end of those “true believers” who spread the misinformation for free).
In fact be very skeptical of most of your media. The rightwing purchased most of your media sometime ago and it has a high ratio of lies and spin.
Canadians look at the US mess and shake their heads. Any Canadian politician proposing something similar would be laughed, or booed, out of the room. The fellow who was considered “Canada’s ‘father of Medicare'” was just voted the Greatest Canadian of all time. You can read about him here:
http://www.cbc.ca/greatest/top_ten/nominee/douglas-tommy.html
Excerpt:
“His family’s socialist leanings were solidified after Douglas was hospitalized at the age of 10. Due to a bone infection suffered four years earlier, Douglas’s knee required several operations – none of which were successful.
Without the money to pay for a specialist, his parents were told that the only option was to amputate their son’s leg before the infection spread to the rest of his body. But before that could happen, a visiting surgeon offered to operate on Douglas for free, as long as his students were allowed to attend. The surgery saved Douglas’s leg – quite possibly his life – and would serve as his inspiration for his dream of universally accessible medical care.”
So he grew up in a time when Canada suffered under a system similar to what the US scrapes along with now. If you don’t have the money, off with the leg! Canada wonders why the US hasn’t figured out how to deliver health-care to all of its citizens even though it spends far more.
D.
No- Congress should have to be on the same plan they propose for everybody else- that is only fair, wouldn’t you agree, Darrel? Or is it ok for them to be, in essence, freeloaders? This includes the Loser in Chief, also.
Gee, and I thought (from what I hear from Canadians) that the founder of Labatts Beer was the greatest Canadian, eh?
Yeah yeah, and a guy in the UK died because he was refused a liver transplant. We can all come up with horror stories.
Cardin and you are wrong. The guy is not a freeloader. You all presume he will not pay his bills.
Auto insurance? Come now. Driving is a privilege. But since you mentioned it, you pay for auto insurance based on your risk and you have to pay for ALL the maintenance on your car. Let’s do that with health care. Those in poor health can pay more and we can pay for all our wellness visits and check ups, just like with a car.
The problem with people is they expect everything to be paid for and they, like you, expect the government to take care of them and give them a ride on someone else’s back.
Bigd: “You all presume he will not pay his bills.>>
DAR
Earth to Bigd… a lot of Americans, tens of millions if not a 100 million people in the US live from pay check to pay check (I have been a landlord of several properties for many years, I know these folks). It is not an assumption to assert that if these people get really sick, or really hurt, they will not be able to pay their bills. It happens thousands of times every day. This is not an assumption. This is a fact.
Just like car insurance, people can pretend that they can pay their liability bills but we know in many instances this is not the case. So we require it.
Bigd: Auto insurance? Come now. Driving is a privilege.>>
DAR
Good example. Getting health care in America is also a privilege! The poor, the ill, can be damned.
Bigd: “Those in poor health can pay more and we can pay for all our wellness visits and check ups, just like with a car.>>
DAR
Problem is, the for profit industries aren’t interested in covering the chronically ill or even those who have had ANY illness (see Blake). So we can either:
a) let these people crawl around in the street and die when they get sick (we do a little of this now but since it’s embarrassing when international visitors come by we find it unacceptable).
b) pay for everyone in a haphazard, last minute emergency care, patched together, cost shifting way that lets many suffer which actually costs us FAR more and gives profoundly inferior results.
We have been going with “b” for quite some time and while it has made some people exceedingly rich, it’s getting a little embarrassing.
Bigd: “The problem with people… they expect the government to take care of them and give them a ride on someone else’s back.”>>
DAR
You shouldn’t be so hard on Blake. I pay for myself, every month, and I pay for his risk too.
If I didn’t have life savings and property to protect from a catastrophic incident, I might chose to freeload like Blake. I don’t disagree with his strategy. From an individual perspective, it’s actually kind of smart, in a cynical sort of way.
Well, unless his heart blows a valve or two. I knew a customer of mine that paid, I think (he was wealthy by medicare paid it I think) about $180k for complications regarding a quintuple bypass.
What percentage of Americans do you think can pay that bill Bigd? I’m guessing less than 30%, even with easy payments.
D.
Quit lying Darrel- I pay my own way- worry about your immigrant butt and that of your mother- she is probably being scored by the Administration and found to be not worth the care- she will be sent home with instructions on how to die with dignity.
When the time comes when I cannot pay my bills, I will tell them that you are willing to do so.
I thought it was very telling when Hussein told that woman on an ABC news town hall that her mother wouldn’t be eligible for a pacemaker on his health plan, because her mom was 100 (now 105, with a pacemaker), and she perhaps should just take a pain pill.
The emphasis will be on euthanasia, so people don’t collect Social Security.
“Quality of life” will be his mantra.
I am on Tricare, provided to me by the United States of America for my Service from 1973 to 1993. It isn’t perfect but it was as good as the plans offered by the aircraft company that laid me off. In fact, I did not enroll in any of the plans that were offered. The copays and deductibles were within ten to twenty-five dollars of each other. It is in effect at all times, including when I am out of work. So, if I am out of work and am “required” to buy insurance, what good does it do to fine me an obscene amount as “punishment?” As a note to Senator cardin, I don’t owe anyone, anything anymore. That account was settled on 30 September 1993, the day I retired from Active Service.
Hopefully, in the very near future, I will be starting a new job with the Air Force and I will keep my Tricare. The job is at an Air Force Base in California but it pays well and has other benefits that I do like, such as vision and dental. Even with the government offered choices, I will stick with Tricare. It works.
If the gentleman in question chooses to not participate because of his current situation, that is his choice. If he can pay out of pocket, so much the better. It is an immediate counter to the proposal of the cinc, speaker and the rest of the thieves.
Darrel pretends to be an expert on Canada’s health care system and all others, including Canadian doctors, who say otherwise are just not as smart as Darrel.
Newsflash to Darrel. Whether I pay extra for the uninsured or my taxes pay to insure them, I am still paying for them. They are freeloaders, by your definition. I am still paying for their health care.
Those without insurance are a very small burden to the system.
I think that 180k would be easy to pay like a 30 year mortgage.
Funny how people balk at that for their health but insist it is racism or discrimination if a bank refuses them that amount for a home.
I think it is telling that people are beginning to wake up and smell what is coming out of the WH- and it smells like a stable, but that’s par for the course when donkeys are in power. Stubborn, and not too smart.