Eternity RPC Board
05-14-2017, 10:47 PM
Monica Friberg - NL
I'm afraid we cannot support this bill as advertised. There is no contest that health costs are rising and squeezing the budgets of Nylanders everywhere, and something needs done about it. If it's a temporary measure to increase the size of the voucher programs, to make up shortfalls before other measures take effect, I believe we can live with that. We, or at least some of us, can even live with regulations on advertising.
What cannot be stomached, however, is this insistence upon socialist price controls to institute arbitrary caps on who can charge what for what. Eventually, this policy will come down to deciding whether one life is worth more than another by pricing one life-saving procedure for one disease much lower than the drug to treat another disease; it's wrong when the free market does it, and it's most certainly worse when deliberately done by some unelected bureaucrats in Nykoping. Nyland doesn't need socialist price controls, it needs tax incentives for investing into new and rare cures, a rework of the nature of insurance billing to prevent predatory practitioners from hyperinflating their reported costs, and greater direct federal investment into pharmaceutical research, to shoulder more of this costly burden that is the core of the inflated pricing instead of blunting our innovative advantages.
What's next, should we set price controls on automotive repair? Lawn care? It's a completely ludicrous and indefensible proposal.
Speaking of indefensible is the notion that you can just up and force insurance agencies to accept high-risk people with no caveat or adjustment to the nature of insurance defeats the entire purpose of this bill. As written, where we simply force insurance to accept the burden of patents they know will cost them more money, you're simply going to drive premiums into the stratosphere as agencies struggle to remain profitable, drive sick Nylanders out of the market after five or so years, and have us arrive back here in this Assembly, back to square one, arguing once again about how to fix the healthcare cost crisis.
Surely we can do better than...this.
I'm afraid we cannot support this bill as advertised. There is no contest that health costs are rising and squeezing the budgets of Nylanders everywhere, and something needs done about it. If it's a temporary measure to increase the size of the voucher programs, to make up shortfalls before other measures take effect, I believe we can live with that. We, or at least some of us, can even live with regulations on advertising.
What cannot be stomached, however, is this insistence upon socialist price controls to institute arbitrary caps on who can charge what for what. Eventually, this policy will come down to deciding whether one life is worth more than another by pricing one life-saving procedure for one disease much lower than the drug to treat another disease; it's wrong when the free market does it, and it's most certainly worse when deliberately done by some unelected bureaucrats in Nykoping. Nyland doesn't need socialist price controls, it needs tax incentives for investing into new and rare cures, a rework of the nature of insurance billing to prevent predatory practitioners from hyperinflating their reported costs, and greater direct federal investment into pharmaceutical research, to shoulder more of this costly burden that is the core of the inflated pricing instead of blunting our innovative advantages.
What's next, should we set price controls on automotive repair? Lawn care? It's a completely ludicrous and indefensible proposal.
Speaking of indefensible is the notion that you can just up and force insurance agencies to accept high-risk people with no caveat or adjustment to the nature of insurance defeats the entire purpose of this bill. As written, where we simply force insurance to accept the burden of patents they know will cost them more money, you're simply going to drive premiums into the stratosphere as agencies struggle to remain profitable, drive sick Nylanders out of the market after five or so years, and have us arrive back here in this Assembly, back to square one, arguing once again about how to fix the healthcare cost crisis.
Surely we can do better than...this.