Health Care Price Control Bill Roll Call Vote

My thoughts. (0.00 / 0)

Yesterday, after considering the 188 page Health Care Price Control bill, as Rob posted, I joined 6 colleagues in voting against the final House version of the bill. While many lofty goals were stated, I could not in good conscious vote to limit the health care options of the citizens of our Commonwealth. This bill adds millions in costs to our health care system now in hopes of possible savings 15 years down the road. In order to achieve these cuts, staffing levels from our nurses may be affected in the future. I also have serious reservations about trusting bureaucrats to manage our health care and 18% of our state's economy. We all agree that health care costs are out of control, but creating a huge new agency to ration health care is not the solution.

---

by: Rich Bastien @ Wed Jun 06, 2012 at 14:31:10 PM UTC

Thank you Rep. Bastien. (0.00 / 0)

Your vote was not in vain.

On the other thread, I asked if Rob could get some Reps. who voted for the bill to comment.  It will be interesting if any do.  I'd like to know what they were thinking.

When I questioned my own rep, his reply was that his "yes" vote was cast to gain "concessions".  Specifically "like upping the number of employees small businesses can have before they have to pay for employees".

As a small business owner myself, this (# of employees) isn't an issue for me.  I'm not really certain how this is a large issue for any other small business owner.

I do know that having to pay more is an issue for those of us who do pay.  And none of us should want government having any more control than they do.  Quite the opposite.

I am not a fan of concessions and I am glad that there are members like you who can see the pitfalls (millions of dollars in cost now in hopes of possible savings later).

Keep up the good work.

"Gee, I had no idea..."  Simple J. (Festus) Malarkey  

---

by: V @ Wed Jun 06, 2012 at 14:51:20 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Thank you! (5.00 / 1)

Thank you for your vote.  Any bill that increases the role of government in healthcare is a bad one. Period.  

Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.  

---

by: Hayek @ Wed Jun 06, 2012 at 16:05:37 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Best predictor of future performance is past performance (4.00 / 1)

First, let me say that the efforts of the Health Care Finance Committee were yeoman.  This was a huge piece of well-intended legislation dealing with an issue that is core to all of us.  And for that alone, all involved should be recognized and commended.  It was said at one point during the debate that perhaps as much as 1/3 of the $60B+ we spend on HC each year is waste, fraud or abuse.

Waste is bad.  Fraud is bad.  Abuse is bad.  But you don't necessarily need to flip the apple cart upside down to find the bad apples, and that is what happens if / when this is adopted.  We will be impacting 1/6th of the state's economy with this bill. It concerns me that this is a "bet the business" piece of state legislation, based on some unproven concepts, that will be followed two years later (assuming the Supreme Court allows it) by a second "bet the business" piece of Federal legislation.

In the immortal words of Clint Eastwood, "Feeling lucky, punk??", I am not.  And I'll tell you the underlying reason why... history.

The single best predictor of future performance is past performance.  And I'm struggling to find a single instance in history where a new bureaucracy, with new taxes, fees and mandates involved, did ANYTHING less expensively than the private sector.

Yet somehow this massive bill will save 1 out of every 6 dollars we spend on health care in the Commonwealth?  And it'll do so without meaningful malpractice tort reform?  Really???

One of the key drivers of the proliferation of tests that doctors order in the current "Pay for Service" model is the fact that they need to cover themselves for fear of a malpractice lawsuit.  So they order multiple redundant tests so that they don't get sued.  This obviously adds cost.

But rather than directly addressing the cause of much of the cost, we addressed the symptom that Pay for Service is expensive by completely re-inventing the payment model.  Let's be clear here... Pay for Service is neither inherently bad nor expensive.  "Pay for Unneeded Service" is incredibly so.

I hope for all of us that the vote I took on Tuesday was wrong.  However, I find it hard to argue with history despite the well-intentioned nature of the bill and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle that supported it.

"Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty." - Ronald Reagan

---

by: kjkuros @ Thu Jun 07, 2012 at 07:25:38 AM UTC