Michael Smerconish: CNN’s Chris Cuomo “a Stud”
Of course Cuomo thought it was the best part of the show.
During a discussion on CNN this morning of the health care mandate, radio host Michael Smerconish said, “The way in which you can afford to pay for people with pre-existing conditions is if you get a guy who’s a stud like Chris Cuomo who works out and is healthy, and get him into the pool.”
From far rejecting Smerconish’s embarrassing bit of ingratiation, Cuomo engaged in some dabbing that would make Cam Newton proud. See the screencap.
CHRIS CUOMO: They are jeopardizing that by compromising on something like pre-existing conditions. Because if there is flexibility in that, a lot of people will not get care.
MICHAEL SMERCONISH: I see it a little bit differently. The issue here is whether the business model can sustain itself by affording care to people with pre-existing conditions. Unless you say everybody has to have insurance.
CUOMO: The mandate.
SMERCONISH: Chris, yeah. In other words, the way in which you afford to pay for people with pre-existing conditions is if you get guy who’s a stud like Chris Cuomo, and works out and is healthy, and get him into the pool.
DAVID GREGORY: How did we get into this?
ALISYN: Why, Michael? Why do you do this?
CUOMO: This is the best part of the show!
SMERCONISH: Unless you get those young invincibles in the pool, you can’t offset the costs.
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Comments
Chris, he meant this kind of stud,
http://www.build-my-own-home.com/images/Framing-wall-blocking.gif
You know, they kind meant to be kept from view.
Obviously, a Tennessee Stud. Sing it!, Eddy.
https://youtu.be/nFJtD3y3n08
Smerconish – just another northern liberal who used to pretend to be a conservative, just so he could get attention when he began preaching the Gospel according to Obama.
He claims he’s “independent”, about as independent as Bernie Sanders is.
The issue here is whether the business model can sustain itself by affording care to people with pre-existing conditions. Unless you say everybody has to have insurance.
For all the yakking we’ve been hearing for years, these yahoos still don’t grasp the problem. You can lose your coverage even if you’re already in the pool.
Scenario—Mr. Average Schlub, slogs in to work every day, gets a reliable salary, participates in his employer’s group insurance plan with some major insurer. Straight out of school, he pays into it month after month, but he’s a sturdy ox, never does stupid stuff, keeps in reasonable condition, and never files a claim, not even for a blood test. Pure profit so far as the insurer is concerned.
The, as middle age approaches, the usual crosses of maturity have to be carried. Mr. Schlub has, say, a heart attack. He survives but racks up quite a bill. The insurer picks up most of the tab, as it should.
Shortly thereafter, his employer goes out of business, or the parent company closes his division, whatever. He may be a schlub but he’s a skilled and experienced schlub, and he lands a similar job elsewhere, with a new employer who has a new group plan. But now Mr Schlub has a preexisting condition. The new insurer doesn’t want to cover his continuing treatment for coronary artery disease; it didn’t see a dime of the money he paid during all those years when he never had a claim. Actually, the new insurer doesn’t want to pay for any of Mr Schlub’s health care; he’s going to be a money loser right from the start.
Mr. Schlub is now uninsurable even though he’s been paying for health insurance for his entire working life. To actuaries this makes perfect sense, but to the individual, it’s a disaster.
But health insurance is not an investment. If one had a hybrid of savings plan and catastrophic coverage this might work. Also, insurance has been sold with the plan of dumping the later higher costs on Medicare or Medicaid. Adoing to this, the individual paying for their own coverage is further left out in the cold. Somewhere along the line everyone gets a pre-existing “something”. Years back it was calculated that half of all medical visits are spent for the last 30 days of life.
actually Mr Average Schlub should be consider GOLD to the insurance companies, he/she is not the problem, he should be able to get insurance with out any addition requirements, in other words the pre-existing condition should be considered as never existing, the problem is the person that goes all that time with out insurance then gets sick and expects to get insurance at the same cost as Mr Average Schlub
The problem has never been health insurance costs. This is a red herring to disguise the actual problem, health care costs.
In a pure market forces economy, cost of services, including medical care, would be entirely dependent upon the market’s ability to pay for those services. However, when you introduce a guaranteed, third-party payer [insurance] into the mix, costs rise.
Where a patient could afford to pay $1000 for a procedure, with insurance, the provider can now charge $1500. The insurance company will pay $800 and the patient $700 and both are happy. As the charges for specific services continue to rise, insurance companies install price controls, on the services, by setting up networks where their contracted physicians agree to accept a much lower price for a given service. Services provided outside the network place a far greater burden on the patient, as deductibles and out-of-pocket costs are considerably higher. So, to balance the market forces at work in the healthcare profession, price controls have to be established on services, if there is widespread guaranteed, third party payers. Otherwise, cost of services will continue to rise, which requires the third party payer to increase its charges to make a profit [or, in the case of Medicare, break even]. Without price controls, to reduce medical care costs, there is simply no way to get enough people into the insurance pool for the insurance companies to consistently make any money.
What the ACA would have accomplished, eventually, was to push everyone into a government funded, third party payer [insurance] situation. Then, that government insurance entity would do what the insurance companies are doing now, use a backdoor approach to installing price controls. Unless they just did what most governments do when they socialize medical care, openly establish price controls and limit accessibility to the services.
The problem we have today, is that the medical care cost situation has reached the point that almost no one can afford medical care without insurance. And, the cost of that care keeps increasing to the point where many people can not afford to purchase medical care insurance without a subsidy. There are three things that can happen. Medical care businesses can reduce their charges to a level affordable without insurance [not likely to happen]. Medical insurance will be nationalized and the government will place controls on medical care [very likely to happen]. Or, the government can simply get out of the health care insurance industry altogether, over the next few years, and allow market forces to take care of the problem [again, not too likely].
How to fix the problem? Nothing looks good. But, the best political solution is to simply let it ride until the government can justify taking control of the medical care and insurance industries. Otherwise, some people will lose medical care insurance and, therefor, medical care. At least for a while. This would cost politicians their jobs.
“stud”
They misspelled Stup.