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News & ArtsMonday, December 14, 2009
Books Minicomics and Health Care
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 4:25 PM
Mike Lynch Cartoons posted a great interview with cartoonist Julia Wertz about health care and what it means for the uninsured comics artists of the world:
However, if you'd like to help Wertz pay her outrageous medical bills in a non-socialist way because you totally love capitalism, you might want to buy a copy of this book by Wertz at Atomic Books. The Day I Killed Jesus/The Legend Of Rebob Mountain is a biographical minicomic by Wertz recounting two childhood stories. It's very different from her other work—she experiments with balancing the words and the pictures in a completely different way than in her comic The Fart Party, and the resulting comics are sentimental and sad and funny in a different way than any other work I've seen from her. And it's only $3.
4
I love the idea of framing the argument as "the poor insurance industry only makes 6%," because this is appealing to the part of your brain that knows 6 is a small Sesame Street number. If you are making 6% profit and your company grosses $100K a year, then you have a very serious overhead problem. If your company brings in billions, and sure, they spend 94% of it, but they get to keep 6%, that is enormous sums we're talking about.
6
Someone needs to disabuse this girl of her illusions about health care reform:
None of the bills before Congress would have an exchange, with or without a public option, open to her for another 3 years or so.
Some versions of the bills before Congress would require her to purchase insurance before that, though.
Depending on how the community rating provisions work out, she might well pay as much or more for insurance after the reform. In a pure community rating scheme, sick and healthy pay the same premium, but so do young and old. So while she would benefit from not having to pay more for being sick, she would loose the benefit of not having to pay as much because she's young. (Some versions of the bills do allow age-graded premiums to varying degrees. It's not clear how this fits ideologically with the ethics of socializing health care costs, but it may be politically necessary to avoid pissing off the Democrats' young supporters.)
$400-$500/month is a pretty good premium for a sick person who just had a $3000 ER visit and can expect more. Even a perfectly healthy 20-something would probably pay more than $250/month. If she really can get that price, she should jump at it.
None of the bills before Congress would have an exchange, with or without a public option, open to her for another 3 years or so.
Some versions of the bills before Congress would require her to purchase insurance before that, though.
Depending on how the community rating provisions work out, she might well pay as much or more for insurance after the reform. In a pure community rating scheme, sick and healthy pay the same premium, but so do young and old. So while she would benefit from not having to pay more for being sick, she would loose the benefit of not having to pay as much because she's young. (Some versions of the bills do allow age-graded premiums to varying degrees. It's not clear how this fits ideologically with the ethics of socializing health care costs, but it may be politically necessary to avoid pissing off the Democrats' young supporters.)
$400-$500/month is a pretty good premium for a sick person who just had a $3000 ER visit and can expect more. Even a perfectly healthy 20-something would probably pay more than $250/month. If she really can get that price, she should jump at it.
8
@5,
If she has any preexisting conditions, she can't buy insurance. And I don't mean that they'll charge her too much in premiums, I mean that they will not insure her at any price.
If she has any preexisting conditions, she can't buy insurance. And I don't mean that they'll charge her too much in premiums, I mean that they will not insure her at any price.
9
If she could just age herself to 55, she'd be included in the Lets Help Really Old People And Screw Everyone Else plan to "expand" Medicare.
10
Hey, look everyone, 4 thinks a response to low returns on capital is to just keep more money from gross revenue. And this can be done in insurance, which is a centuries-old, wickedly-competitive, heavily-regulated industry with historically low returns. The way to do this, you ask? 4 says the way is to ...wait for it...lower overhead! GENIUS!
Yeah, not one of the hundreds of thousands of people working in the financial services industry all across the country--nay, the world!--ever thought about cost control before you came up with that idea, 4. Quick, put together your power point and march into AIG's office and sort those fuckers out, dawg!
Oh, and a six percent return averaged over years does not mean the insurance companies keeps 6% of their gross revenue after they "spend" the other 94% of gross income from all sources. Look up "loss ratios" and "combined ratios" and let the education begin.
Yeah, not one of the hundreds of thousands of people working in the financial services industry all across the country--nay, the world!--ever thought about cost control before you came up with that idea, 4. Quick, put together your power point and march into AIG's office and sort those fuckers out, dawg!
Oh, and a six percent return averaged over years does not mean the insurance companies keeps 6% of their gross revenue after they "spend" the other 94% of gross income from all sources. Look up "loss ratios" and "combined ratios" and let the education begin.
11
@7 - lol. Feels REAL good.
@8 - I am more than aware of the pre-existing condition laws in the state of WA.
@8 - I am more than aware of the pre-existing condition laws in the state of WA.
12
@2 - Getting mugged? Well go fucking *not* get mugged.
What are you, stoopit? Do I gots to think of everything?
@2 - Getting mugged? Well go fucking *not* get mugged.
What are you, stoopit? Do I gots to think of everything?
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