One of the things that many people have overlooked when talking about ObamaCare is its effect on free speech, as Thomas Sowell points out in the Jewish World Review:
What does your right of freedom of speech mean if saying something that irritates the Obama administration means that you or your business has to pay huge amounts of money and get hit with all sorts of red tape under ObamaCare that your competitor is exempted from, because your competitor either kept quiet or praised the Obama administration or donated to its reelection campaign?
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It’s a law, so if free speech means that you don’t want to follow the law, well that’s great, but it’s still a law, so there will be red tape if you don’t follow the letter of it.
But the quote above makes no sense, as the law has not gone into effect yet, and the majority of it will not effect business until 2014, and the only effect on business will be either A) you begin to offer health insurance to your employees (and they can be pretty crappy plans) or B) you decide to not offer health insurance to your employees (your decision) and instead pay a $2,000 penalty per employee.
Now most employers and businessmen don’t think that healthcare is a right, but is instead a privilege (as does the Republican party), and that’s fine. Up until the 1980’s most employers offered a health plan for their workers as a benefit, but this has swiftly disappeared, and buying an individual health plan without the benefit of group savings has become increasingly costly.
Healthy and happy employees are more productive employees, so I think in the long run these businesses will find that if they do not offer health plans, the cost of the penalties and having to retrain workers (since many workers will just migrate to jobs that offer health plans) would be more costly and time consuming than just offering a low grade health insurance plan which the employee doesn’t even have to enroll in since they can choose between the employer plan and whichever other plan they find on their own.
I don’t hear a lot of individuals complaining about the law. Which you would think you would, since individuals must also pay penalties if they do not have health insurance.
I am by no means saying the law is perfect, since it is hard to change a system where healthcare is a for profit industry. But, this complaining about so called “Obamacare” will most likely vanish into thin air once the law goes into effect and the kinks are worked out.
I don’t agree with anything of what you said. Health care is neither a “right” nor a “privilege”. It is a service for which each of us ought to pay for. Much like we have to pay for whatever other service we want.
And since most expenditures on medical care are below, say, $1,000 per year, it should not be covered by an insurance plan. First because it causes more bureaucracy costs than what it’s worth. Second it not what an insurance is all about. Especially if it is because of some more or less predicable illness (e.g. a winter cold). Insurance is there to pool risks of extremely costly and (more or less) unpredictable illnesses (e.g. cancer).
Thus I very much like the Swiss system where people buy insurance from private (of course for-profit) companies. Their insurance plan usually covers expenditures above $1,000 per year. All else is paid by the patient himself.
There no link between health insurance and employment. Nor is there any reason why you should have it. In the US you only have this weird connection because of some flawed politics during/after WW2, as I pointed out some months ago:
https://swissecon.wordpress.com/2012/06/06/health-insurance/
I understand that you don’t get American healthcare, and I agree it is bizarre to link it to employment. I think most people hoped to disentangle it with a more progressive system, but that unfortunately did not happen.
One thing that you have to realize is that private health insurance, though available to the individual here in the states, is incredibly costly. You only get discounts if you are “pooled” with other customers which is why it has been attached to employers for so long. Big pools equal bigger savings, no pools (individuals) equals you are pretty screwed.
My wife and I have looked into buying health care as small business owners, and here was the best deal available to us when we last checked a year ago: $350 a month between the two of us, one free doctor visit a piece per year(if you think Americans go to the doctor mostly for everyday winter colds, then you have become a grand generalizationist), a deductible of $8,000 out of pocket for each of us (total of $16,000 worst case scenario if we both get really sick in the same year) before the insurance company coverage kicks in and they split the rest of your accrued bills 80/20 with you.
What a great deal. Just don’t get cancer, or have a heart attack, or really have to have any type of surgery at all. Appendix removal … only $30,000, your out of pocket costs … $12,400.
Yay American insurance system!
So you see it is nothing like the Swiss, but you can go on ignorantly thinking that it is if you like.