Political Irony

An interesting opinion piece in the New York Times predicts that a little known provision of the health care reform act will mean that American health insurance companies will go the way of the dinosaurs by the year 2020.

The provision in question sets up Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), which are paid not for preforming procedures and tests like our current insurance reimbursed doctors and hospitals, but for keeping patients healthy.

It sounds like a good idea. In fact, such a good idea that it already exists in Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs). Aware of this, the article devotes a paragraph to explaining how ACOs are not the same thing as HMOs.

I want to believe, but I’m not sure.

It isn’t that I disagree with the article’s basic premise — that the health insurance industry is already largely superfluous. In fact, it is hardly providing insurance at all. Sixty percent of people with employer-provided health insurance work for companies that are self-insured, where the company assumes the risk of providing the insurance part of the equation. In this case, which is most of the time, health insurance companies are acting as glorified billing claim processors. And that doesn’t even include all the people who are on Medicare or Medicaid.

For individuals and small business, health insurance companies do actually assume the risk, but again they are not acting as providers of true insurance where risks are spread out evenly over a population since they cherry-pick healthy people to insure and exclude unhealthy people from coverage.

And they aren’t even very good at processing health care claims. They are not only expensive themselves, but they increase costs for doctors, hospitals, patients, and also often stand in the way of treating people for simple health problems that later become expensive problems. No wonder our health care system is so expensive and has such poor results.

So, will ACOs actually solve this problem? Or will they fall prey to the same issues that plagued HMOs?

© Adam Zyglis

Will 2012 be convincing evidence that the Citizen’s United decision by the Supreme Court now means that it is now possible to simply buy an election?

UPDATE: Romney claims that he was “vastly outspent” by Gingrich in South Carolina, which is why he lost there. But independent analyses show that Romney’s campaign and associated super PAC spent almost twice the amount of pro-Gingrich groups in South Carolina. And now in Florida, Romney is outspending Gingrich five to one.

Mitt Romney may be financed by Wall Street, but it could be worse. The Las Vegas casino owner who has almost singlehandedly financed Newt Gingrich’s surge in South Carolina by donating $10 million (and promising even more) to Newt Gingrich’s super PAC “Winning our Future” is being investigated by the Department of Justice and the SEC for violating federal bribery laws and for ties to Chinese organized crime. Sheldon Adelson is the founder and CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corp, which also owns casinos in China. Adelson is the 8th richest man in America.

Super PACs, of course, were made possible by the Supreme Court decision in Citizen’s United.

© Matt Wuerker

I’m a great believer in following the money, so I often wonder where Mitt Romney gets most of his campaign money? It doesn’t seem to be from the Republican base, unless if you consider Wall Street to be the (real) Republican base.

Romney has raised millions from Wall Street. In fact, Romney has received more campaign money from the financial sector than all other presidential candidates combined (yes, that includes Barack Obama).

Of course, Wall Street will be getting their money’s worth. Romney has promised to repeal the Wall Street reform bill passed in 2010, designed to prevent another financial crisis.

© Ben Sargent

Obama is a socialist! Obama is a fascist!

He enacted a government takeover of health care. He’s cutting Medicare.

He’s a big spender. And he wants to destroy our military by reducing its budget.

He’s in the pocket of Wall Street. He’s anti-business.

Plus he destroyed our economy and jobs before he even got elected president.

[feel free to submit other contradictory prognostications on the president in the comments. Extra points if they were said by the same person.]