Jase Bolger is content to let you die if it'll help win an election

by: Eric B.

Sun Jul 08, 2012 at 14:06:25 PM EDT

Hyper-bowl? Not really.

And now for the next issue: Creating a Michigan Healthcare Marketplace.

The governor wants one. The House Speaker not so much.

Speaker Jase Bolger says, “Having the state establish a healthcare exchange is not something we want to do.”

Some of this appears to be sour grapes because the U.S. Supreme Court didn't give Bolger what he wanted, but he put the health care exchange on the back burner at the behest of the teabaggers of his caucus who want to run against "Obamacare" this fall.

Okay, let's review. People who don't have health care insurance are more likely to put off getting treatment for health problems until they've ceased to be preventable or treatable and become very serious. They are more likely to seek care, not by going to a proper physician, but by going to an emergency room

This, in turn, makes treating their health care problems more difficult and more costly. Also, because it is more costly and because people without health insurance are almost invariably poor, it pushes up the price of private health insurance premiums because hospitals at the end of the year have to have balanced ledgers.

The longer it takes the state to create a consumer-driven health care exchange and implement other parts of what we all now know is a Constitutional health care reform law, the longer people who currently lack health care insurance will continue to be without it. The longer that happens, statistically speaking, the greater the chance that individuals in that situation will die.

I'm sorry. Them's the facts.

By the way, this also.

The governor did lament that the ACA “misses the point” on what is really needed in the health care system - namely prevention. And he believes it is a “detriment to economic recovery…caused by the massive uncertainly regarding medical costs which discourages job creation.”

Employers may not entirely offload employees from employer job plans. Also, job creation is dependent not on health care costs, but on whether a business has customers will to pay for its goods and services. So, that's inaccurate.

As to the rest of it, he's absolutely correct. Prevention is important. What's a key component to prevention? Healthy, nutritious diets, which are also the most expensive foods. Benevolent overlord Rick Michigan's administration has actually gone to lengths to make it more difficult for the poor to afford healthy, nutritious foods by purging people left and right from food stamps, which is a federal program in the first place. By doing that, his administration has saved the state 0 dollars while at the same time making it more difficult for the people statistically most likely to lack health insurance to afford wholesome foods. In other words, he's working at cross purposes here, and mostly because Maura Corrigan is so out-of-touch she thinks you can still work your way through school washing dishes part time.

Update! ... By the way.