Mike Huckabee wants to defend the exclusion of pre-existing conditions? Bring it on.
If Mike Huckabee wants to have a debate over the next month and a half about whether sick people ought to be able to buy health insurance, I say: Bring it on!
The problem with not having a Fox News analogue on the Democratic side is that we can’t force a days-long national conversation about every foolish thing our opponents say. But this has to be high on the target list.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
I'm disappointed. I was hoping to hear a taste of your position in this debate, and the RSS indicated that the topic was "pre-existing conditions" not "sick people."
Excluding "pre-existing conditions" means that sick people can't get insurance for the diseases they need treatment for. Of course, Huckabee is right: you can't just let people go uninsured until they get sick and then buy insurance. What he ignores is that even people with insurance can lose it: if they lose their job, or their employer drops health coverage, or if they have individual insurance and the insurer just jacks up their rates. So the only way to make sure sick people can get their medical treatment paid for is with a mandate to purchase and a subsidy for those who need it. In other words, Obamacare.
If someone does not pay into the premium's for years and years, and then gets sick, and then wants 'insurance', than that isn't fair or moral or right for all of those who did pay into the insurance pool for years and years before getting sick. To say that the sick should get insurance after they get sick is a selfish argument based on infantile beliefs about how the world really works.
If someone does not pay into the premium’s for years and years, and then gets sick, and then wants ‘insurance’, than that isn’t fair or moral or right for all of those who did pay into the insurance pool for years and years before getting sick. To say that the sick should get insurance after they get sick is a selfish argument based on infantile beliefs about how the world really works.
That is true, but has absolutely no relevance to the discussion at hand. I had health insurance my whole life until I lost my last job. Without ever having gone through that period of not having coverage, I then had to try to get an individual policy. If you have a history of depression, fibromyalgia, chronic sinusitis and acid reflux, forget it. All anyone offered me was a policy with $800 a month premiums and a $10,000 deductible. That's not a family policy, just for me.
That you and Mike Huckabee wish to dishonestly frame the debate is telling about both of you.