Baucus Releases Bill With No Republican Support

[The Minsky Moment]

Though I think the public option is really unimportant in comparison to the amount of attention it's attracted. 

Actually reading this bill makes me think otherwise.
Single payer is a very clean solution.  The government pays for a base level of care; the free market takes care of the rest.  There is a budgetary cost of course and political decisions have to be made about the base level of services provided.  But it gets you universal coverage without having to fiddle around with mandates, adverse selection, fines, tax credits, "health care cooperatives," and all these fiddly bureaucratic rules that in practice are going to bog down this plan in an inpenetrable morass of regulations.

[DGuller]

Incidentally, does anybody understand the whole "fining Americans who don't have health care" bit?

It sounds like a misguided attempt to transfer similar idea about car insurance to health insurance to me.  It sounds horrible but it depends on the details.

How is this misguided?  What is criminally misguided is prohibiting denial of coverage based on pre-existing conditions, without mandating that everyone have health insurance.  That would lead to people buying insurance right before needing major expenses, and saving on premiums before that.  Incidentally, the comparison with car insurance is also misguided, although it's easy to make a misleading connection.  The reason for mandates are very different for those two types of insurance.

[alfred russel]

Though I think the public option is really unimportant in comparison to the amount of attention it's attracted. 

Actually reading this bill makes me think otherwise.
Single payer is a very clean solution.  The government pays for a base level of care; the free market takes care of the rest.  There is a budgetary cost of course and political decisions have to be made about the base level of services provided.  But it gets you universal coverage without having to fiddle around with mandates, adverse selection, fines, tax credits, "health care cooperatives," and all these fiddly bureaucratic rules that in practice are going to bog down this plan in an inpenetrable morass of regulations.

If the public option was something akin to the VA, I would agree—but I don't think that was in the cards. For example, republicans put in an amendment that all congressmen be on the plan. If the public option is something along the lines of medicare, I'm worried about breaking the budget.

A mandate can be the cleaner option.

[DontSayBanana]

There's a simple, basic flaw in mandated coverage with no public option- with the car comparison, one can elect not to drive to avoid the hike in cost of living. The vast majority of uninsured remain so simply because they cannot afford to purchase coverage- fining people another thousand dollars for not being able to pay an unavoidable cost would only exacerbate the problem.

[Sheilbh]

There's a simple, basic flaw in mandated coverage with no public option- with the car comparison, one can elect not to drive to avoid the hike in cost of living. The vast majority of uninsured remain so simply because they cannot afford to purchase coverage- fining people another thousand dollars for not being able to pay an unavoidable cost would only exacerbate the problem.

I believe it's not a fine but a sliding scale tax for people a certain percentage above the poverty line who don't have insurance, while those from the poverty line to very high above it receive a sliding scale of subsidy if they don't have employer-provided insurance to buy insurance.

[Admiral Yi]

There's a simple, basic flaw in mandated coverage with no public option- with the car comparison, one can elect not to drive to avoid the hike in cost of living. The vast majority of uninsured remain so simply because they cannot afford to purchase coverage- fining people another thousand dollars for not being able to pay an unavoidable cost would only exacerbate the problem.

How does the existence of a public option affect this one way or the other?

[Neil]

There's a simple, basic flaw in mandated coverage with no public option- with the car comparison, one can elect not to drive to avoid the hike in cost of living. The vast majority of uninsured remain so simply because they cannot afford to purchase coverage- fining people another thousand dollars for not being able to pay an unavoidable cost would only exacerbate the problem.

How does the existence of a public option affect this one way or the other?

Because the public option costs nothing.

[DGuller]

There's a simple, basic flaw in mandated coverage with no public option- with the car comparison, one can elect not to drive to avoid the hike in cost of living. The vast majority of uninsured remain so simply because they cannot afford to purchase coverage- fining people another thousand dollars for not being able to pay an unavoidable cost would only exacerbate the problem.

One counter-argument is that the mandate removes the biggest reason for individual health insurance being unaffordable.

[Eddie Teach]

It may become affordable to some, but there will still be many people who can't pay the lesser rates either.

[garbon]

Poverty sounds like such a downer.

[DontSayBanana]

It may become affordable to some, but there will still be many people who can't pay the lesser rates either.

Yeah, that. Poverty level shouldn't be confused with a threshold for financial independence. The federal government defines the poverty level for an individual in 2009 as $10,830 (it increases by $3,740 for each additional person in the household). In the "Minsky Moment" thread, it mentions "Ponzi borrowers," who I would probably classify as those falling between the poverty line and the real cost of living for their area; all those people would be susceptible to the penalties if poverty line is the indicator being used.

[Hansmeister]

Incidentally, does anybody understand the whole "fining Americans who don't have health care" bit?

It's a retarded way to force people to buy health insurance, and blatanly unconstitutional to boot.  It doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of passing into law.

[Admiral Yi]

It's a retarded way to force people to buy health insurance, and blatanly unconstitutional to boot.  It doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of passing into law.

How's it unconstitutional?

[DGuller]

Incidentally, does anybody understand the whole "fining Americans who don't have health care" bit?

It's a retarded way to force people to buy health insurance, and blatanly unconstitutional to boot.  It doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of passing into law.

What's a non-retarded way to force people to buy health insurance?

[The Minsky Moment]

In the "Minsky Moment" thread, it mentions "Ponzi borrowers,"

Different concept.  Minsky defined "ponzi finance" as financing in which the interest or carrying cost exceeds the current income available to make payments.  It is a concept that relates primarily to business financing, although it can be applied to individuals.  PIK instruments would be a real world example of Minskyite "ponzi finance".  When Ponzi finance begins to come prevelant, that is a sign that the boom has reached unsustainability and the system becomes unstable and prone to collpase.