Passing notes on the Final Nine, AHIP and Romneyobamacare

The Supreme Court is going to rule on “Obamacare” in the not-too-distant future. Just a note or two:

1. The very idea that these nine people are acting as our Mullahs, our ruling council, is offensive. They were not set up in the constitution as the final arbiter of all laws. They took that power unto themselves in Marbury. So we are governed in effect by two sets of supreme rulers – Wall Street and the Final Nine.

2. What is called “Obamacare” ought to be called “Obamainsurance”, as “care” has little to do with it.

3. And anyway, it is really nothing more than “Romneycare” written after that experiment had some good fallout. The only reason we even had a health care debate was that AHIP was ready at last with their remedy. We could have had a health care debate in 1996, 2000, 2004 and did not.

4. And anyway, it’s not really “Romneycare” but rather “AHIPcare,” as both bills were written by American Health Insurance Plans, the lobbying group for the insurance industry.

5. Romney are Obama are third-rate men who fronted for AHIP, as did Baucus, and in their time and as scripted, did Joe Lieberman, Max Baucus, Ben Nelson and others.

6. It was a stage play, a Kabuki Dance. God, what a sorry cast of characters!

7. Government-run or single payer is still our best solution. There is no fix for Obamacare, as health care will continue to get more and more expensive for so long as we rely on the private sector for insurance.

8. The reason being that the private sector relies on exclusion for profit, so that they, the hospitals, the government and doctors are playing an extremely expensive game among themselves called “dumping costs on someone else.”

9. Private health insurance carriers dump sick and poor people on emergency room, old people on government.

10. Emergency rooms are frightfully expensive.

11. Doctors don’t so much fight with insurers as pad their costs so that it appears as though they are taking a hit when they are not. That is why costs spiral.

12. Hospitals have whole departments who do nothing except deal with insurers. The overhead is amazing!

13. Government, insurer of last resort (with the exception of the highly efficient VA), has to rely on the private sector for delivery of services, and so even though more efficient as an insurer, is still burdened with all of the inefficiencies of private sector health care delivery.

The answer? If you live close to Mexico or Cuba or Costa Rica or Brazil or France, go there. If you are close to Canada, you might try accessing their system, but they are wary of US patients, so good luck on that. (The idea that Canadians come here for coverage – that is undocumented bullshit.)

I don’t know how the Final Nine will rule, but it cannot be good. I know AHIP has thrown down the gauntlet – either a private mandate or no reform at all. The Final Nine are going to have to sort through the mess brought about by free market medicine, mix in the nonsense of free market ideology, and take our mess and make it an even bigger mess. For so long as we rely on private corporations for health care, our health care system is ailing.