People Are Stupid, Part CMLXXXVII – Learn It, Live It, Love It

Complexity is the handmaiden of failure, especially when it comes to public policy.  Long lasting and popular programs, like Medicare and Social Security, are relatively straightforward at the individual level.  Basically, in programs done right – the government just says, “you’re in” sends you are card – or something – and then takes some of your money, and when you need the program it’s there.

Poorly designed programs are a clusterfuck of requirements and mandates and traps for the unwary, that cause massive confusion, they don’t wok very well, and are set up to fail on a massive scale.

WASHINGTON — Two weeks after President Barack Obama signed the big health care overhaul into law, Americans are struggling to understand how — and when — the sweeping measure will affect them.

Questions reflecting confusion have flooded insurance companies, doctors’ offices, human resources departments and business groups.

“They’re saying, ‘Where do we get the free Obama care, and how do I sign up for that?’ ” said Carrie McLean, a licensed agent for eHealthInsurance.com. The California-based company sells coverage from 185 health insurance carriers in 50 states.

McLean said the call center had been inundated by uninsured consumers who were hoping that the overhaul would translate into instant, affordable coverage. That widespread misconception may have originated in part from distorted rhetoric about the legislation bubbling up from the hyper-partisan debate about it in Washington and some media outlets, such as when opponents denounced it as socialism.

The root problem here isn’t scare mongering and misinformation, it’s the human condition and the fucked up nature of the program itself.  People are busy and distracted, and plenty more are simply lazy and stupid.  So it has always been, and so it will always be.  Setting up a program that is a clusterfuck of requirements, with certain benefits showing up now, and others showing up later, and forcing people to choose between paying off Capital One and hopping on the exchange to buy insurance, and similarly forcing people to apply for subsidies to buy the insurance on the exchange is utterly insane.

You may as well send out the Blue Angels to skywrite, YOU WILL NEVER FIGURE OUT HOW TO USE THE HEALTH CARE PROGRAM, SO YOUR LIFE IS STILL GOING TO SUCK!!!

The Obama administration is embarking on a years-long public education campaign about the overhaul, including a Web component. However, much of the guidance will depend on Department of Health and Human Services regulations that are still being developed.

Yup, good luck with that.  On a somewhat brighter note, my mission to encourage default on a massive scale is, at least getting a few legs.  Matt Taibbi takes a look at Max Keiser’s call for Greece to simply default on the Goldman bonds that fucked up its public accounts, and notes:

But I think Keiser’s idea does underline an important point about the situation, which is that as powerful as these Wall Street banks may seem, they are also exquisitely vulnerable. Right now virtually all of them are dependent upon the government keeping accounting standards lax enough for all of them to claim to be functional businesses. It is generally accepted that if the major banks on Wall Street were forced to mark all of their assets to market tomorrow, they would all be either insolvent or close to it.

Thus their “healthy” financial status is already illusory. So imagine what would happen if large numbers of those dubious loans on their balance sheets that they have marked down  as “performing” were suddenly pushed ahead of time into the default column. What if Greece, and the Pennsylvania school system, and Jefferson County, Alabama, and the countless other municipalities and states that are wrapped up in these corrupt deals just decided to declare their debts illegitimate and back out?

That is exactly what needs to happen.  We can’t have any sort of real economic recovery until the stock of debt is gone.  Look, all those nimrods out there that are saying that we’ve accomplished tremendous deleveraging in just a couple years are fucking idiots.  All that’s happened is that small amounts of debt has been written off of the balance sheets of some of the banks – let me emphasize that it is a small amount of the debt that will never be paid back – and has simply been bought up by collection agencies, who are going around giving people huge paycuts that accomplish little in terms of actually resolving the situation.

Debt counseling or consolidation, IBR, or other such bullshit is just fucking useless.  It’s the same sort of complicated nonsense that destines the health care plan to be an complete failure. Our problems (debt being the most serious, but health care is on the list) are deep, structural, and severe.  We need blunt instruments to wipe the slate clean, so we can start rebuilding a real economy and a health care system that is something other than a Rube Goldberg machine.

Nothing else will even begin to work – nothing.

Bailouts 4eva! Health Care Edition

Here at AFEP we don’t limit ourselves to debt, the destruction of the working classes, and the shenanigans of the motherfuckers on Wall Street. We’re a Renaissance blog! We’re happy to discuss any issue that represents the wholesale ratfucking of the American people. With that in mind, we discuss the new health care “reform” bill recently passed by the House and Senate and headed for Obama’s desk. To know whether or not this is a good deal for the American people, you need look no further than this headline:

Stocks rally as health care shares rise

The broad-based bill will extend coverage to 32 million more people, require all Americans to have coverage and will prevent companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. Medicare prescription drug coverage will be expanded and people will be given subsidies to help pay for insurance.

The bill is expected to cost $940 billion over ten years. (For highlights of the plan, click here.)

Health care stock movers: Dow pharmaceutical stocks Merck (MRK, Fortune 500) and Pfizer (PFE, Fortune 500) both rallied around 2%. Hospital operators advanced as well, as they are seen benefiting from the increased number of customers. Tenet Healthcare (THC, Fortune 500) gained more than 7% and Community Health Systems (CYH, Fortune 500) rallied 4%.

Yup, whatever garbage was being spread around about how the health insurers didn’t want the Obama health plan to pass was just so much shadow boxing and bullshit.  The stock market speaks the truth.  Tens of millions of new captive customers, forced to buy insurance from companies that maintain their antitrust exemption, and face no real competition from a government plan, e.g. Medicare buy-in or public option.

This plan is nothing but the wholesale transfer of wealth from the middle class (via the treasury) to the health insurers enforced by the world’s biggest and most aggressive collection agent – no, not Sallie Mae – the IRS.  Sound familiar?  It is eerily similar to TARP, TALF, free money from the Fed, and non-recourse loans backed by Toxic waste at par.  And what, you ask will the presently uninsured be getting for their insurance payments and government subsidies?

Here’s a story from commenter soulmatic09 over at the Big Picture:

A few years back, I fell and broke my jaw on vacation. I went to the ER via an ambulance on a Thursday afternoon, and am finally admitted as an inpatient to have surgery at about 1 AM.

After waiting all day Friday to hear from a doctor, they waited until 5 pm that day to tell me that hospital does not do jaw surgery. (Then why did ER guys admit me?) Not only that, the doctors offices were all closed at 5pm, so I had to wait in a hospital bed until Monday to a surgeon. No big deal, I figure they transfer me to the right hospital, have me eat pudding for a few days, I get my jaw fixed, and I go home.

Monday comes around, nothing. Tuesday comes around and the surgeon shows up. “There’s a problem,” he tells me: “Your insurance company won’t approve this b/c they say it’s a dental procedure.”

I’m like “WTF?!?! My jawbone is considered a tooth? What kind of messed up anatomy books are you guys using?” He tells me that he didn’t understand it either, and were working on getting the approval.

I spend the rest of the week in the hospital, getting moved from room to room waiting for this simple surgery to be approved by HealthNet.

By the end of the week, I am absolutely fuming, as is the surgeon. Keep in mind, this was my vacation, and I was due back days ago. My broken jaw is starting to set, and eventually the surgeon says “Screw it, I’m doing the surgery. We’ll figure out how to pay for it later.” And I had health insurance!

I finally get the surgery done, and get the bill: $30,000. And you know what the bulk of the bill was? Inpatient services for being in the hospital for over a week and a half, which was the result of them rejecting the procedure day after day!

I spent the next six months trying to get them to pay the bills; I was 25 years old & didn’t have $30k lying around. After getting them to realize my mandible isn’t a tooth, they denied the claim because of geography. (I lived in Glendale, CA, but had the operation in Glendale, AZ. They tried to say I had no coverage in Arizona, but my emergency coverage clearly stated it applies in all 50 states. Then they said my claim got screwed up because the name of the cities were the same.)

Then I had to contest each claim one by one (the stack of claims was over 1 inch thick) but I finally got them to pay for it.

There’s actually more to the story I don’t want to get into, but how on earth someone could say this is the greatest health system in the world?

Multiply that story by 50 million, and that’s what we just bought.  All for the bargain price of 940 billion.

Heckuva job Obama!

At least they have socialized medicine in Costa Rica.  Not sure if it’s available to expats though.  Need to look into that.

Update: This FDL chart explains some of the key provisions and generally why the bill sucks.

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Saturday Youtube – Healthcare Edition

In honor of Medicinesux, and our first entry in the “Disgruntled Docs” blogroll category, today’s Youtube will focus on healthcare.  Pretty much everyone thinks that the clusterfuck of public, private, and no insurance that we have here in the states is a complete disaster.  It is the one thing that everyone on the left, the right, and in between agrees on.  Of course, the agreement ends there, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have some some fun with it.

First up, from the left:

The opening scene of Michael Moore’s Sicko

Taibbi and Maddow

Keith Olbermann Special Comment

And from the right:

Ron Paul on Mandates as Corporate Welfare

Congressman Mike Rogers’ opening statement on Health Care reform in Washington D.C.

Michael Cannon Discusses Health Care Reform on FOX’s “Glenn Beck”

Oh well.  Doesn’t matter to me, I’ll be leaving the country soon.