{"id":101422,"date":"2009-12-24T21:10:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-25T02:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5587346.post-5412938917973229385"},"modified":"2009-12-26T09:39:05","modified_gmt":"2009-12-26T14:39:05","slug":"the-health-care-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/101422","title":{"rendered":"The health care bill"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Odds are <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/health\/2009\/12\/24\/the-senate-health-care-bill-six-key-numbers\/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wsj%2Fhealth%2Ffeed+%28WSJ.com%3A+Health+Blog%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader\">something like the Senate bill<\/a> passed today will become law.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I didn&#8217;t hope for much, but I did have one selfish desire. I hoped we&#8217;d get alternatives to employment based healthcare. I hoped individuals would be able to purchase insurance with large group pricing. It looks like we won&#8217;t even get that. Instead the cost of open market insurance is expected to <i>increase<\/i>. Subsidies will offset those costs, but they will have an income cap. <\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Oh, and <a href=\"http:\/\/economix.blogs.nytimes.com\/2009\/12\/23\/christmas-in-the-senate\/\">we&#8217;ll be paying for the benefit expansion too<\/a> &#8211; since costs won&#8217;t be significantly contained.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Sigh.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>On the other hand the current debauched system will be shaken up. I think, on balance, we&#8217;ll move closer to <a href=\"http:\/\/notes.kateva.org\/2009\/03\/health-care-reform-lessons-from-quebec.html\">what we need<\/a>, even though that won&#8217;t be the fantasy most Americans expect. We&#8217;ll take two steps backward, 3 steps laterally, and 2 steps forward and we&#8217;ll make progress. Given how stunned and confused Americans are and the state of the GOP this is probably the best we can do.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>We need a better American citizen.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><b>Update<\/b>: J<a href=\"http:\/\/www.joepaduda.com\/archives\/001700.html\">oe Paduda is even bleaker than I<\/a>, but still thinks this bill is worth doing.<br \/>&#8212;<br \/><small><a href=\"feed:\/\/www.google.com\/reader\/public\/atom\/user\/06457543619879090746\/state\/com.google\/broadcast\">My Google Reader Shared items (feed)<\/a><\/small><\/div>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img width='1' height='1' src='https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/5587346-5412938917973229385?l=notes.kateva.org' alt='' \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Odds are something like the Senate bill passed today will become law. I didn&#8217;t hope for much, but I did have one selfish desire. I hoped we&#8217;d get alternatives to employment based healthcare. I hoped individuals would be able to purchase insurance with large group pricing. It looks like we won&#8217;t even get that. Instead [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":711,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/711"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}