Keen meets MMT

Ah, so there is propaganda going both ways.  For, of course, that’s not what we’ve been hearing about.  We’ve been hearing about polls that show a growing majority in Mass. that are favorable toward it.

That does sound awful.  I know I wouldn’t want to wait 8 hours for a routine follow-up.  And this isn’t a *new* program in Mass. any longer.  Do the people of Mass. have anything to say about it?  Are there people running to repeal it/change it in the event that the dissatisfaction grows to the level of a public outcry? 

Do you think it’s new enough that there hasn’t yet been enough time to ramp up the services well enough, or to any further degree?  Or do you think that will be it?

The only thing I’m curious about from your statement beyond the above is about the man who had the bypass surgery.  What was that experience like for him?  (I gather from the description above, it wasn’t pleasant - above and beyond the difficulties of the heart problem and surgery itself, of course, which would be challenging whatever else might be the case.)  What about his payments before and afterwards (perhaps like you, before his surgery, the insurance premiums he was paying before the new program were less than they were after the new law came into effect; but I’m guessing they didn’t go up any further after the surgery, or did they?  and what about his out-of-pocket expenses for both medical services and prescriptions?).

Now, of course, because you’ve never had a hospital stay in the past does not mean you’ll never need one going forward.  I was very healthy for most of my life, rarely ever sick, before I caught the flu – there had been an unusually high outbreak that year where I lived - that went on to permanently damage my lungs a few years back.  I did have insurance back then, fortunately, for I had surgery, I was 3 weeks in intensive care, and then a while longer in a regular bed.  That too would have ruined me and my family financially if I had not had insurance.  But even if that were the case for you, if you needed some sort of catastrophic care in the future, it may well be that the insurance you already had, and at a lower premium would have covered that well. (I’d be curious about what your deductibles and overall out-of-pocket for care and meds would be in such a situation vs. your previous level of insurance. For although the new act does not, so far, specifically regulate premiums, which is frightening – I imagine they are hoping the competition within the exchanges will help with that, but it is frightening, nonetheless – it *will* be putting caps on deductibles and out-of-pocket yearly and life expenses for services and meds.)

Of course, if we were to go to something like an all around extension of Medicare, more would be taken out of people’s income, but in a different way (yet there would be a lot less costs for administration; there would be much less as far as advertising; they could likely work with costs much better, etc., but there would still be more that many folks would have to pay than would be the case before).

I would think that the people of Massachussetts would be some of the first go-to people to ask what… if we were to attempt to move to universal healthcare in this country, what would the people of your state suggest as the best way to get there, if to try to get there at all, with the understanding that more and more people in this country are going without access to affordable healthcare?

Thank you, Randall.  That was helpful.  There’s so much propaganda going around these days on both sides of the issue (all smiles from the Democrats about what’s going on in Massachussetts, for example), that it’s very hard to get a real sense of anything. But without that, how can we intelligently go forward, regardless of what we ultimately decide to do?

Linda