Dylan Ratigan is becoming a legend before our eyes. He is almost O'Reilly-like, which is kind of scary, but instead of telling the inventor of the "death panels" lie to shut up like O'Reilly would, he keeps asking her to answer his questions instead of spouting her prepared talking points! I remember when Ratigan used to only report from the floor of the NYSE, occasionally appearing on the McLaughlin Group. Ratigan serves up "the woman who killed health care," Betsy McCaughey, on a plate then sticks his fork in her. Betsy's only ideas to contain health care costs are eating right, and tort reform. (The Congressional Budget Office said tort reform would decrease health costs by less than 2%.) In other words, she said we pay 2x more than the rest of the developed world because we have too many lawyers and too much fast food.
Thanks to Ratigan, I learned at least two very interesting things. First, that health insurers are given an exemption in states from anti-trust legislation, meaning one insurer can capture a monopoly in the state. That said, I'm not sure that more competition among insurance companies is the answer, since that would mean smaller pools of risk, and less negotiating leverage, and anyway, they are not generating most costs (except admin. overhead), medical professionals are. Ratigan said, "I just want capitalism back! ... I want an end to corporate communism!" Like I said, I'm skeptical, but anyway...
...Second, I learned that American seniors today receive, on average, $3 in Medicare for every $1 that they paid in during their lifetimes ($65,000 paid in vs. $174,000 paid out.) That means that the Greatest Generation and their Boomer kids are technically welfare queens. And they're fighting to keep every dollar at our expense, including the $12 billion annual federal subsidy for "private" Medicare Advantage. For shame!
October 6, 2009 | MSNBC
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