Sunday Morning Talk Show Thread 21 February 2010

All too often ‘letting’ turns into ‘mandating.’ One reason insurance costs are so high now is mandates in various states. For example, CA requires short term disability care for every policy, which is one reason they pay 60% more than other states.

Morgan, I don't know when you got the idea that CA requires a short term disability with every ins policy, The state has a SDI ins that I pay in to and my company offers a separate short and long term disability if i want it. I have used the SDI twice in 30 plus yrs of working pays about 60% of my take home pay.. after I have used any sick time and vac time i may have

I know Maine is supposed to have especially painted itself into a healthcare corner, but could you briefly explain the major legislation that has caused such problems?

I can address that.

In 1993, when HillaryCare was bombing in DC, the geniuses in the Maine Legislature killed their high risk pool (which was functioning perfectly) and enacted the legislative "reforms" of Community Rating and Guaranteed Issue.

From this. I post the link so others can read about their states, how and why they rank.
http://mercatus.org/publication/freedom-50-states-index-personal-and-economic-freedom

California
Contrary to popular perception, California not
only taxes and regulates its economy more than
most other states, it also aggressively interferes in
the personal lives of its citizens. California ranks #48
on economic freedom and #37 on personal freedom.
California simply needs to cut government spending.
The budgetary categories most out of line with the
rest of the country are public safety, natural resources
and environment, and administration. The state actually
does not spend more than average on education
and social services. For a large state, it is also fairly
centralized, with local governments receiving about
half of their revenue in state grants, and almost two
thirds of all state and local tax revenues controlled
by Sacramento. Labor laws are of course extremely
strict; for instance, California is one of only five
states to mandate short-term disability insurance.
Health insurance mandates add about 60 percent to
the cost of premiums in the state. Eminent domain
reform has been cosmetic, and the state’s liability
system almost reaches the abysmal quality of the
Deep South. On personal freedoms, California does
well of course on same-sex partnerships and marijuana,
but it also has the most restrictive gun laws
in the country, a highly restrictive policy regime for
motorists, and smoking bans. Arrests for victimless
crimes are surprisingly high, with 21.6 percent of all
arrests being for victimless crimes, the fifth highest
in the country. Effective homeschooling regulations
are about average, but the state has no statute explicitly
permitting homeschooling. Fortunately, the state
has a reasonable asset forfeiture regime (burden of
proof on government, owner knowledge of criminal
activity required).

BTW, thank you for forcing me to reread this. The 60% I have been saying is wrong if only applied to short term disability. The percentage applies to total mandates.

We have similar issues here in CO, which is why I initially got caught up with this. I’m not saying things like a mammogram is not needed, beneficial and effective to combat breast cancer. I’m not saying we should not promote prostrate cancer protection for men. What I AM saying is these are “elective” procedures that should NOT be mandatory but elective and let hte person control his or her own destiny.

Any time we have mandates it increase overall costs. Darn it, let the people decide what they want and pay for items that are beneficial to themselves and not saddle everyone with higher overall prices.

I mentioned CA and CO but this is a problem nation-wide to one degree or another.

sorry to drop out guys I'm functionally blind and reading and writing are too difficult for me to even read the thread much, let alone post. I only get on FR or most other sites rarely. I have to use what limited abilities I have to slog through my work. Written stuff takes me an order of magnitude longer to get through and you wouldn't believe how carefully I have to proof read to make sure I haven't misread or mistyped something. "Semi" transplant surgery last month to try to fix things didn't work. In fact it made things worse. We're looking at a redo of that procedure in March. if that doesn't work we probably do a full on corneal transplant soon after. Celiac is mostly stabilized. The biggest thing there is that I'm now 90 pounds lighter. I needed to lose the weight but 18 months of involuntary bulimia while they tried to find out what was wrong wasn't the way I'd suggest going about it. If you remember me limping or using a cane at the last Tech Ed that was actually from another arthritis like symptom of the Celiac disease. I'm only on FR this morning to try to find news about the earthquake in Chile and reports about the tsunami. I'm spending the bulk of my limited online time right now keeping up with friends and news related to the death of the trainer at SeaWorld. We were friends with her and a few of the other folks there for over a decade, though we haven't been in touch in a couple of years. We were actually with her the morning after the last incident with that whale. I won't go into it here but the news reports about the other two incidents are grossly inaccurate, at least based on what she told us. I miss you guys a lot. Keep up the good fight. the above took me over 30 minutes. I hope it's coherent

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