What’s wrong with conservatism, in a nutshell:
[Video no longer available]
In the video, Sen. Jon Kyl’s (R-AZ) wants to strike language from the Senate Finance Committee’s bill that mandates which which benefits employers are required to cover — for example, maternity care.”I don’t need maternity care,” Kyl said. “So requiring that on my insurance policy is something that I don’t need and will make the policy more expensive.”
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) interrupted: “I think your mom probably did.”
Once again, do Republicans not get risk pooling? If the only people who add maternity benefits to their insurance are young couples planning families, their insurance is going to go through the roof. It’s only by spreading the cost out across a big pool that it can possibly be affordable.
These people make me crazy.
Kyls mother did not need maternity coverage – she neded to be on the pill.
She should have been on thalidomide.
I love the way he uses the term”My” insurance. Kinda say something about where his head and heart are at. A typical egotistical white male conservative “I’m the center of the universe” mentality.
Over sixty years ago my mom did. OK now today things are different? You notice I wasn’t too specific, we all know who gets sick, Asswipe. Giving birth today is fundamentally different then when your sorry ass was born?
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Nearly seventeen years ago, on a blistering hot Florida late summer day, I came home from my pile driving job, and hopped in a cool shower.
My wife came into the room , and said she had something to tell me, and held up a little white plastic box that had a “+” on one side, and a “- “on the other.She appeared very upset because the “+” was highlighted. I asked her what kind of battery it was and she said sharply,”I’m pregnant!”.
She was 39 yrs old, and although she worked for a well known, nation wide insurance company, she had no maternity coverage. The company she worked for actually went to an outside firm for heath coverage because it was cheaper.
We had given up on having children because I had “lazy swimmers”, and we were happy enough to be childless, rather to spend thousands on fertility experts.The chance of her getting pregnant with my swimmers was somewhere near 1 in 100,000. One of the boys made it.
, a regular Mark Spitz, he was….
Luckily, both my wife and I are healthy, and she gave birth to a healthy baby, no complications. It took us about 10 years to pay for the medical bills associated with the easy (at least for me) pregnancy.
We shudder to think how things might have turned out had our daughter been born with “special needs”, or had my wife’s pregnancy become a medical emergency, the bills could have been impossible.
No Senator, no maternal care for you. But we’ll be sure to include proctological exams because you’re such an ASSHOLE!
erinyes,
Wow, what a nice story (funny too). And thankfully, your child is healthy. But what’s wrong with a society where it takes 10 years to pay off medical bills for a healthy baby? Or one where it takes even longer for one with special needs?
I think Kyl’s attitude explains just about everything that wrong with our country. To quote The Beatles: “I, me, me, mine!”
Republicans in fact do not get risk pooling. Understanding risk pooling requires some knowledge of statistics, which is a branch of the science of mathematics. Republicans don’t do science. You won’t find a single mention of risk pooling in the bible.
The other part besides risk pooling they don’t get is risk.
So go ahead Kyl and craft “your insurance” to some customized version unique to your circumstances and family history. But don’t complain when deaf ears are turned on you whining after something happens that you didn’t account for. You can’t change the terms after the fact, that wouldn’t even be insurance. It would be cheating.
Swami, I think Mrs. Kyl really was on thalidomide. I see that her son has two complete arms, but I hear that his brain stem ends in a cul-de-sac.
Wow, AZ’s well-represented in the Senate, ain’t it? They have the dude who gave us Sarah Palin and also this guy, who thinks we all need our own, individually-tailored health insurance policies. I don’t think he was reading that gaffe off a lobbyist’s cue card, since it’s not workable for any sort of insurance. Meanwhile, back on planet Earth…
It took us about 10 years to pay for the medical bills associated with the easy (at least for me) pregnancy.
erinyes, thanks for sharing that story. We drown out the stupid via our actual experiences.
The reason they hate risk pooling is that it’s also known as risk sharing. And they hate sharing…
The risk part is ok with them, as long as you’re the one taking it. They can afford not to take any risks, so why share?.
“You won’t find a single mention of risk pooling in the bible.”
I’d bet that if risk pooling somehow delegitimized homosexuals or illegal immigrants or (insert enemy de jour here) they’d find it in there somewhere.
It boggles the mind that this neanderthal – and there are others like him – is in the US Senate.
I read an article by Joe Conason (HuffPost?) about how a group of conservative politicians in Europe hosted a conference on global warming. They cannot believe that US conservatives still deny it.
I know Republicans that object to property taxes for schools (no school age kids) and libraries (why should some bum have free access to books? ).
Seriously. He would like to not pay for schools and libraries because they don’t directly benefit him. Pointing out that education and access to books lowers crime and makes a more capable workforce just doesn’t register.
I’ve given up engaging with this particular Republican’s “I got mine – You’re on your own” extremism. It’s like trying to teach a pig to sing, it just annoys the pig.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Israel
Every time Kyl opens his mouth, he displays his ignorance, but Arizona won’t retire this clown or McCain.
Arizona won’t retire this clown or McCain.
After I mocked AZ’s senators, I realized I’m in no position to talk. My state is represented by the thick-skulled DINO Ben Nelson, and by Mike Johanns, who has turned into that little bug-eyed rat-like creature from the Ice Age movies. (Yeah, dude, rassle that ACORN! What a tough guy!)
Alas. Perhaps I should move to Minnesota. Just not Michelle Batshit’s district.
While I agree with what you say, and it would be unarguable in the single payer system that we should be talking about and would be if our government had any courage, we are talking about the purchase of individual policies here – individual policies into a larger risk pool, but individual policies nonetheless. In auto insurance, which is also “risk pooling,” I am allowed to decide my own coverage limits and what kind of coverage I want to carry, and that system seems to be working quite well; why should not the same principle apply in health insurance?
My wife pointed out that we pay for schools even though we have never had any kids. That is the beauty of true risk pooling. Everyone pays the same because everyone is paying the cost of maintaining a societal value. Healthcare is a societal value, and yet health insurance is not true risk pooling. Allowing youth to pay 1/5 the premium of older people for the same benefit is hypocrisy. The fact that older people will use that benefit to a somewhat higher degree does not make it a higher benefit, and those young people will be older some day.
But so long as you are selling individual policies, at prices which depend on the degree to which you expect to use the policy, then the purchaser should be allowed some degree of determination as to what that policy will cover, just as we do now with car insurance. I’m not suggesting that Kyl should be allowed to make your policy not cover maternity benefits, but maybe he ought to be allowed to make his policy not cover maternity benefits.
You understand, I think the whole issue should be moot, as I don’t think we should be selling individual policies, but should be using single payer.
He should not have to pay for a policy that covers heart attacks or brain tumors either. Why should I (female) pay for prostate exams? I think we might be on the track of making insurance affordable. Now if that were the whole problem, we’d be geniuses. I knew we were in trouble when we started talking about “health insurance reform.” Yep, like re-forming a pig to sing. It only annoys the pig. We are seeing some damn annoyed pigs.
Do they understand risk pooling? Probably. As much as I feel that many of these politicians lack the gray matter to understand simple concepts, I have to allow them the benefit of the doubt, if only because I am severely aware of my bias toward them. But given the fact that this party has gone out of their way to spread disinformation (death panels; immigrants getting fed money for healthcare, etc) the tactic to put out a meme of wasteful benefits is well within their modus operandi. So if anything, his comments are purposeful if only to put out another rationale to fight the bill.
Coincidentally, at one of the townhall meetings I attended, I got into a debate with a libertarian who pointed out that maternity issue. As mentioned before, he felt that since he would never use it, it was wasteful. His feelings on tort reform were much stronger. Even when I handed him papers that suggested tort reform makes up for less than one half percent of the overall costs, he countered by saying even that percentage would help, so it mattered. Yet, he couldn’t grasp the concept of savings in risk pooling.
Hmmm, I think I just argued against my initial point. Perhaps I prefer to be cynical of politician’s motives rather than skeptical of their intelligence.
Debbie Stabenow is a cosponsor of H.R. 676. Let’s keep sending these representatives in, and giving the heave-ho to those Kyl’s mother brought into the world, and then raised to be the way he now is.
Kyl has daughters and granddaughters, too.
These Repig senate jerks need to lose their government-provided (horrors!) health coverage.
Let these middle-age-and-older guys hunt for private health insurance and witness the ‘magic of the marketplace’ firsthand.
These Repig senate jerks need to lose their government-provided (horrors!) health coverage.
Let these middle-age-and-older guys hunt for private health insurance and witness the ‘magic of the marketplace’ firsthand.