BS: US Health Care Reform

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: bobad
Date: 24 Nov 10 - 10:48 AM

Dems to GOP: Don't like government health care? Then drop yours

By Sahil Kapur

Congressional Democratic and liberal groups are issuing a simple ultimatum to their Republican colleagues: If you dislike government-run health insurance so much, prove it and decline the coverage provided to you.

"Put up or sit down," said Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) to Republicans, who promise to repeal the sweeping health care law enacted in March. The congressman has introduced a bill to repeal the measure's most popular components, such as the ban on denying coverage for pre-existing illnesses.

"This will be the big chance for Republicans to do what they've vowed to do," Ackerman said, according to Mike Lillis of The Hill. "These bills will be their chance to at long last restore liberty and repeal the evil monster they've dubbed 'Obamacare.' "

Another New York Democrat, Joseph Crowley, on Tuesday sent a letter to Republican leaders challenging them to "walk the walk" if they intend to "deny millions of Americans affordable health care."

"You cannot enroll in the very kind of coverage that you want for yourselves, and then turn around and deny it to Americans who don't happen to be Members of Congress," the letter read.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/dems-gop-government-health-care-drop/

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: GUEST,Bobert, on the road...
Date: 10 Oct 10 - 09:09 PM

Yer right, Greg... If doctors and hospitals can get by nicely on what Medicare pays them for procedures then they shouldn't charge private insurance companies more and self insured even more... There is way too much gouging by the health industry...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Sawzaw
Date: 10 Oct 10 - 04:20 PM

"obscene profits"? That must be the insurance companies in Thunderdomia.

"Health insurance companies' costs are only 4 percent of all health care spending. Doctors, hospitals, medicines and tests are the biggest slices, and a government report says their rising prices are the primary driver of higher health care costs."

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Greg F.
Date: 01 Oct 10 - 02:16 PM

BB: what profit margin do the insurance industry and Wall street deem "acceptable" - particularly in the worst recession since 1929??

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: beardedbruce
Date: 01 Oct 10 - 12:58 PM

profit margins by industry

Health insurance profit margin by company

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: beardedbruce
Date: 01 Oct 10 - 12:43 PM

Greg F,

What profit margin to you feel is acceptable?

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Greg F.
Date: 01 Oct 10 - 12:35 PM

No, employers and insurance companies, in response to health care reform, are causing an increase in costs so that their obscene profit margins won't be reduced.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Sawzaw
Date: 01 Oct 10 - 12:30 PM

The message is that "health care reform" did nothing to lower the cost of health care so more people could afford it.

In fact it is causing an increase in health care costs.

Whitehouse.gov: Health reform makes health care more affordable, holds insurers more accountable, expands coverage to all Americans and makes our health system sustainable. I don't think so.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Greg F.
Date: 01 Oct 10 - 09:55 AM

So the greedy Oligopoly is whining and crying about a dent in their obscene profits and threatening to hold its breath until they turn blue.

What a goddamn surprise. Just like poor, underpaid wall street.

The health care legislation should have imposed price controls on these bastards.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Sawzaw
Date: 30 Sep 10 - 08:27 PM

McDonald's May Drop Health Plan

WSJ HEALTH INDUSTRY SEPTEMBER 30, 2010

McDonald's Corp. has warned federal regulators that it could drop its health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 hourly restaurant workers unless regulators waive a new requirement of the U.S. health overhaul.

The chain has told regulators it may ditch its plan unless a new health-care requirement is waived, Janet Adamy reports. The move is one of the clearest indications that new rules may disrupt workers' health plans as the law ripples through the real world. Trade groups representing restaurants and retailers say low-wage employers might halt their coverage if the government doesn't loosen a requirement for "mini-med" plans, which offer limited benefits to some 1.4 million Americans. The requirement concerns the percentage of premiums that must be spent on benefits.

While many restaurants don't offer health coverage, McDonald's provides mini-med plans for workers at 10,500 U.S. locations, most of them franchised. A single worker can pay $14 a week for a plan that caps annual benefits at $2,000, or about $32 a week to get coverage up to $10,000 a year. Last week, a senior McDonald's official informed the Department of Health and Human Services that the restaurant chain's insurer won't meet a 2011 requirement to spend at least 80% to 85% of its premium revenue on medical care. McDonald's and trade groups say the percentage, called a medical loss ratio, is unrealistic for mini-med plans because of high administrative costs owing to frequent worker turnover, combined with relatively low spending on claims.

Democrats who drafted the health law wanted the requirement to prevent insurers from spending too much on executive salaries, marketing and other costs that they said don't directly help patients. McDonald's move is the latest indication of possible unintended consequences from the health overhaul. Dozens of companies have taken charges against earnings—totaling more than $1 billion—over a tax change in prescription-drug benefits for retirees.

More recently, insurers have proposed a round of double-digit premium increases and said new coverage mandates in the law are partly to blame. HHS has criticized the proposed increases as unwarranted.Democrats, looking toward midterm elections in which the health overhaul is an issue, say it already has stopped insurance practices they call abusive, has given rebates to seniors with high out-of-pocket prescription costs and has allowed parents to keep children on their insurance plans until they turn 26.

McDonald's, in a memo to federal officials, said "it would be economically prohibitive for our carrier to continue offering" the mini-med plan unless it got an exemption from the requirement to spend 80% to 85% of premiums on benefits. Officials said McDonald's would probably have to hit the 85% figure, which applies to larger group plans. Its insurer, BCS Insurance Group of Oak Brook Terrace, Ill., declined to comment. McDonald's didn't disclose what the plan's current medical loss ratio was. The issue of limited-benefit plans has also hit colleges, which face the same 80-to-85% requirement beginning next year.

"Having to drop our current mini-med offering would represent a huge disruption to our 29,500 participants," said McDonald's memo, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. "It would deny our people this current benefit that positively impacts their lives and protects their health—and would leave many without an affordable, comparably designed alternative until 2014." The health law expands Medicaid and offers large subsidies to lower-income people to buy coverage, but those provisions don't kick in until 2014.

Federal officials say there's no guarantee they can grant mini-med carriers a waiver. They say the answer may not come by November, when many employers require employees to sign up for the coming year's benefits. The government is waiting for the association of state insurance commissioners to draft recommendations. The head of the association's health-insurance committee, Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger, said she doesn't think these types of mini-med plans deserve an exemption.

"If they are sold as comprehensive coverage, we expect them to meet the same [medical-loss ratio] standards as other health plans," she said. Some options for low-wage workers if they don't get health insurance on the job

More Here

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Bobert
Date: 17 Jun 10 - 08:57 PM

Yeah, we didn't exactly get health care reform this time around.... We got health insurance reform... Hey, it's a start but we have some more heavy lifting to do so that 4 stitches don't cost $500...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 17 Jun 10 - 08:35 PM

""Hey gnu - a few days ago, I got four stitches in my thumb. The price tag was more than $500. What do you think about that?""

That's bloody disgusting Carol.

My breathing difficulties have now been found to have no cardiac connection, so one week ago I was told that I should contact the orthopods to re-schedule my postponed knee replacement.I phoned immediately, and have an outpatient appointment in two weeks time.

The op is predicted for the autumn, late Sept or early Oct, and I won't be asked for one penny.

I sincerely hope that one day sanity will prevail, and US citizens, all of them, will have the same level of care.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: CarolC
Date: 17 Jun 10 - 03:49 PM

Hey gnu - a few days ago, I got four stitches in my thumb. The price tag was more than $500. What do you think about that?

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: gnu
Date: 17 Jun 10 - 03:40 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Woman shoots herself to get help
From: gnu - PM
Date: 15 Jun 10 - 03:06 PM

bobad... good one.

But, not only is Amos correct on the issue of rights, NObody has free health care. SOMEbody has to pay for it.

The problem, I THINK (?) Yanks with "private" health care have is they believe that there will be an increase in taxes and the level of service will drop. And other arguements ensue, of course.

Case in point. Kendall (USA) had ready access to amazing (IMO) private health care for his throat. Over the past dozen years, I had reasonable access for the same condition (Canada.. and it varies by province)). My throat was taken care of. But, last June, something was wrong again. On July 13, my GP sent a referral for an ENT. I saw the ENT on June 1. She saw no cancer with the scope and diagnosed a breathing problem within my nose causing severe snoring, which, combined with my loss of 1.6 of my parotid glands (saliva), was aggravating the past surgeries.

Ultrasound... minimum 6 months on an "urgent basis". Eye doc... 12 months on an "elective basis" (loss of night vision, floaters, sensitivity to sunlight). Physiotherapy... 4 months "urgent" if you are self employed and can't get Workman's Compensation from the government. But, if you are bleeding, the emergency department will see you RFN, depending on how much blood is on the floor... and it's free.

Oh, yeah... presciption drugs are not free here. I pay private health care $1600 a year for an 80% co-pay. It covers some dental too. Single, no kids.

So, I can understand in a way the fear some Yanks with private health care feel. They see their hard work and their health care access and quality being placed in jeopardy with "universal health care", along with increased taxes.

I am NOT saying the level of service for present US private health care WILL be degraded, but if the politicians have to make a choice between Gramma's hernia and sending a rover to Mars or bullets to Iraq, I expect Gramma's shittin her drawers.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: gnu
Date: 17 Jun 10 - 03:30 PM

Today

By Anne-Marie Tobin, The Canadian Press

TORONTO - A group that tracks how long it takes to get medical care in Canada says there's a "black hole" of data on wait times for procedures outside of five identified priority areas.

The Wait Time Alliance also reported Thursday on pediatric surgeries for the first time, saying that although 73 per cent of children received their surgeries within an established benchmark time, more than 17,000 kids waited longer for their surgery last year than medical experts recommend.

It has been six years since Canada's first ministers committed to reducing wait times in the five priority areas — diagnostic imaging, hip and knee replacements, cancer care, sight restoration and cardiac surgery — and the alliance noted there has been "slow improvement."

"But the big picture is that far too many Canadians still experience long waits for needed medical care, and are kept in the dark about the wait they can expect to face," Dr. Lorne Bellan, co-chair of the Wait Time Alliance, said in a conference call.

"Doctors who work on the front lines know that's just not enough progress. In the wait times marathon, we're still on the first mile."

Two provinces were singled out for not doing enough to keep their populations up to date.

"It is very troubling that Alberta and Newfoundland have failed to update their wait time data for more than six months," Bellan said.

"We really don't have a current picture of wait times in those provinces."

He also said that based on Wait Time Alliance benchmarks, Alberta gets an F and a D for cancer radiation therapy.

"This means that roughly half of all cancer patients wait longer than is considered safe by Canada's cancer specialists," Bellan said.

"The scientific evidence is clear. The wait for radiotherapy should be as short as possible. Canada's cancer specialists believe that long waits for cancer radiotherapy are putting patients' lives at risk."

In terms of non-priority areas, the alliance's report card said information is scarce or non-existent, and where it does exist, nearly half of all patients are waiting longer than is medically acceptable.

And in its section devoted to pediatrics, the report card said that delays in performing surgery on children can have a lifelong impact.

"Grades of D in ophthalmology and dentistry mean nearly half of all children wait longer than medically acceptable for these areas, jeopardizing normal vision and speech and brain development," Bellan said.

The issues in dentistry revolve around kids needing procedures for tooth decay, while the ophthalmology queues are driven by those needing surgery for the condition known as wandering eye. In addition, there's demand for plastic surgery to address a cleft lip and-or cleft palate.

The alliance also graded the provinces on how well they publicize wait times on their websites.

"Patients deserve accurate and timely information on the wait they can expect to face," Bellan said. "Ontario, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick have some of the better wait time websites, but there is great variability in the quality of provincial wait time reporting."

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Amos
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 04:56 PM

A slight correction: what is excellent about our system is the leading edge techniques and equipment. That is a very different thing than the system of delivering health care which usually requires well-established routines and commodified pharma and equipment. We have a great track record of doing very tricky expensive operations.

A

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Bobert
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 04:44 PM

Very little, Anne... The doctors ration out gobs and gobs of care on those with good insurance and withhold it from anyone who doesn't...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Rumncoke
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 01:52 PM

At the moment I am feeling rather tired as I am looking after my grandson. His mother has had an operation on her knee to correct a problem with a ligament which caused her knee to dislocate from time to time.

It would have been done earlier, but when she went for a scan which would have been the start of the process a routine pregnancy test came back positive, 1 to 2 weeks.

Being in the UK all re ante natal, birth and post natal medical needs were provided automatically.

The local clinic has monitored the baby's progress from birth, and he was called in for all the innoculations he needs.

Now that young Jake is 6 months old she has had the surgery on the worst knee, spent four days in hospital, but she was so eager to get home that she did not wait for the hospital transport to get home, so my son went to collect her. He had had to collect all the equipment that she would need to help her at home on his previous visits, so everything was ready for her well in advance.

Naturally it is all supplied free of charge.

I feel I should do my bit and look after Jake rather than calling on the services of the child care people who would assist in these circumstances, though he is rather a handfull.

Perhaps when the other knee is operated on in 6 months time and Jake is a one year old I might have to, but I feel that we get so much from our health service I am almost embarassed by it.

We see so much on TV about the problems of health care in the US, in hospital and other dramas where the problems compose almost the entire plot, I really do wonder what is so good about your present system.

Anne Croucher

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Bobert
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 04:35 PM

Bobert prediction:

After last night's State of the Union address, I think that we can now look for a bill to be passed thru budget reconciliation...

(But, Boberdz... Isn't that just below the nuclear option????)

No, it isn't... How do you think Bush got the tax cuts for the rich passed????

So that is what I see happening now...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: CarolC
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 03:52 PM

LOL

Turns out the current Great White Hope of the Republican party, Senator Brown, voted for the universal health care in Massachusetts when he was in the state senate there.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 01:42 PM

Yes, whether it should pass is almost certainly an academic question now, but still, I think, a worthwhile exercise and enlightening for future purposes.

(And Pelosi has been wrong before!)

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 01:37 PM

Pelosi has admitted that the bill cannot pass. Many Democratic votes will be against the bill in its Senate form. It is time to put the bill back into committees and work out compromises.

The economy and jobs are the first priority at this time.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 01:27 PM

What the Dems need is Balls.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 01:04 PM

The Health Care Bill Is Worth Saving

Anyone claiming this legislation is an easy call has delusions of omniscience.

Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010
by Jonathan Rauch

"Doing nothing would be better than doing what they are proposing to do," Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., told CNN in December. Regardless of what you think of Thune's answer, he raises the right question about the Democrats' health care reform. Is it better than nothing?

Republicans think that doing nothing this year might yield a GOP House majority in 2011 and a better bill in 2012. Maybe. But after the last attempt crashed in 1994, it was 15 years before Congress was willing to try again. If the current effort fails, the next chance for comprehensive reform might not arrive for years.

In the meantime, piecemeal changes might make matters worse instead of better. Absent broader reforms, legislative scrambles to cut Medicare would mostly shift costs to private payers, and requirements to cover all comers could price private insurance nearly outof existence. A few more years of ad-hockery and Band-Aids might leave the public in the mood for exactly the kind of single-payer socialized medical system that Republicans dread. Doing nothing, in other words, is not a risk-free proposition, even for the John Thunes of the world.

The Democrats' shocking loss this week of the late Edward Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts certainly increases the odds that Republicans will block the bill. Still, even without a filibuster-proof majority, House Democrats could finish the job by swallowing their pride and simply passing the Senate bill. Should they?

I think the answer is yes. The Senate health bill, though flawed, passes the Thune test.

True, it could have been so much better. If, for example, it were bipartisan (but Republicans chose to boycott it). If its "pay-fors" were more solid (but this is the U.S. Congress we are talking about). If it were serious about malpractice reform (but these are Democrats we are talking about).

The expansion of health care coverage to many, though not all, of the uninsured may prove to have found the exact sour spot: enough new beneficiaries to increase demand for health services and so raise system costs, but not enough to deliver the risk-spreading and efficiency-capturing benefits of true universality. Despite mandates, many people will manage to free-ride, and some who don't free-ride will pay more in premiums. There is plenty to worry about here.

So what's to like?

After reform is enacted, the taboo on taxing employer-provided health benefits will be shattered once and for all.

First, the expansion of insurance coverage to tens of millions more Americans and the abolition of the "pre-existing conditions" insurance exclusion are changes for the better. A friend of mine made a full recovery from prostate cancer, only to find that he could not get health insurance at any price. Stories like his are common -- too common to be politically sustainable, let alone morally acceptable.

On paper, Congress might have found better ways of making insurance available to high-risk individuals than by requiring insurers to cover them and by creating government-regulated markets ("exchanges") where these individuals can buy insurance; the alternatives, however, are complicated, lack political support, and in the end might make government even bigger. (Indeed, one striking feature of the reform bill, given its all-Democratic provenance, is the extent to which it leaves the existing infrastructure of private health insurance intact. In a few years, the public might be less willing to do that.)

Second, the bill is probably as close to paying for itself as the political system is likely to manage. It would be great if Congress made up-front reductions in other programs, rather than counting on, for example, Medicare savings that may or may not materialize. But, given the political unacceptability of horror stories like my friend's, the real-world alternative to plausible-maybe-almost-sort-of fiscal neutrality is something more like the Republicans' 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill, which made no attempt at all to pay for itself.

Although long-term budget projections are squishy, the Congressional Budget Office's are the best we have to go on. Notably, CBO scored the Senate bill as deficit-neutral (actually, it would slightly reduce the deficit) over the reform's second decade after enactment, which is well beyond the window of cost-shifting and timing gimmicks. We could do worse, and possibly will do worse next time around.

And what about bending the cost curve? Health care inflation devours wages, burdens employers, and could eventually bankrupt the government. A reform that fails to grapple with the cost problem, the critics say, is not worth having. I agree.

So how does the reform score on cost control? The original House bill does poorly. However, the Senate-passed bill is better on cost control than many people realize. Although far from optimal, it contains a potential pathway to a restructured health payment system that gets incentives right instead of wrong.

I'll return to that weasel word "potential," but first the major elements. Most economists believe that two pervasive market distortions fuel health cost inflation. The first is Medicare's fee-for-service payment system, which pays providers based on the number of procedures they perform, rewarding inefficiency. The second is the tax deductibility of employer-provided health insurance, which subsidizes high-cost policies, hides the costs of those policies from employees, and denies employees the opportunity to shop around.

Both distortions inhibit market discipline, and both originate with bad government policy. If socialized medicine is state payment for most health care, then the country is there already: When the value of the employer tax subsidy is included, the government (federal and state) pays for almost 60 percent of all U.S. health care, according to Paul Van de Water, an analyst with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Dealing with Medicare and the employer tax deduction is therefore crucial to cost control.

Medicare is a tough problem, both because of the politics and because no one really knows how to fix it on a national scale. The reform bill includes programs designed to identify better payment methods, and it establishes a special commission that could, theoretically, help push through worthwhile Medicare reforms. There is no guarantee, obviously, that those schemes would work. But they might well improve the situation, and they are unlikely to do any harm.

As for the employer tax break, the Senate bill docks it. Not a ton. Only high-premium policies covering a minority of workers would be taxed. But even the limited tax is very important, for several reasons.

Crucially, the threshold for taxation would not rise as fast as health inflation. Translation: Gradually more and more employer-provided policies would be taxed. The change would be incremental, even glacial -- but slow seems to be the only pace with which Americans are comfortable.

Moreover, after reform is enacted, the taboo on taxing employer-provided health benefits will be shattered once and for all. From then on the question will be how much to tax, not whether. A door that had been welded shut will have been pried open. The country will be able to have a new kind of discussion, one in which the tying of health insurance to employment -- which is insane, when you think about it -- is no longer sacrosanct.

Meanwhile, the reform also includes a provision quietly inserted by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., that allows a narrow band of workers to cash out their employer's health insurance tax break and use it to buy a policy of their own choosing. In other words, instead of being captured by the employer, the tax subsidy would flow to the employee.

Again, the provision applies only to a few workers -- at first. However, as rising costs push up premiums, more workers would qualify. No less important, the provision puts in place both a precedent and a mechanism for rewiring the system so that consumers, not employers, can make the choices.

Taken together, these measures could set in motion a virtuous cycle. As health costs rise, more employer-provided health plans become taxable, giving employers an incentive to find cheaper plans. As employer-provided plans grow less generous, more employees have an incentive to take a tax credit and shop around, and, as premiums rise, more qualify to do so. Little by little, insurance coverage shifts toward an individual-based, consumer-driven market. And the faster health insurance costs rise, the faster the transition happens. The disease triggers its own antibodies.

Again, no guarantees. The transition would be very gradual, and political blowback could easily disrupt it. But the point is that the reform contains a pathway to sanity. No one can say that about the status quo.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: CarolC
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 04:52 PM

Both of the bills are definitely centerist. They rely on market based solutions. They are about halfway between the more left idea of single payer not for profit and the more right-wing idea of letting the insurance industry do whatever it wants. That puts them right at the center.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: DougR
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 02:05 PM

Bobert: "The bill is not liberal but centrist/conservative ...and
Obama never found a way to sell it."

Right now I don't think Obama could sell fur coats to Eskimos.

And the bill WAS liberal - not centrist and certainly not conservative!

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 12:28 PM

It doesn't have to die. I don't think Obama will just pack up. Rather than setting up a NASA-inspired command and control center, we can understand and accept building blocks. Mandatory community rated pools with insurers selling across state lines. Tax vouchers and credits to indivuduals with tax benfits to themselves, bit their employers. Federal subsidies of state high risk pools, if we can't get agreement on rules to get them into the larger community ratings.

None of this helps Medicare which needs to be fixed, but that part of the plan wasn't being sold honestly.

It didn't need to be this complicated to be effective. People didn't believe the federal government could make good on all promises, especially when their promises changed so much over time, for "political realities," as if the ideas and plans didn't have cohesiveness.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Bobert
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 10:38 AM

David Leonhardt's NYT op-ed is entirely correct in that:

1. The bill is not liberal but centrist/conservative and...

2. Obam never found a way to sell it...

This is the problem that Dems have had going back for decades... They talk too much... It doesn't much matter if they are right and advocating policies that would benefit the country it's just that they seem incapable of narrowing down their positions to fit on a bumper sticker... The Repubs have mastered the bumper sticker message and it shows... Here in this area of rural Virginia most of the folks can recite the bumper stickers... Try to engage them in conversation and they are totally incapable of explaining the positions at all but revert back to the bumper sticker, over and over and over...

This is why the Dems have failed...

Sellin' isn't running yer mouth... It's first listening, then trying feed back what you have heard in the fewest words to show that you are listening... Dems don't understand that concept...

If Obama had just said from the very beginning something like "We can't afford to spend 17% of our GNP on health care and be competetive enough to create new jobs" and just left it at that but say it over and over and over and have all the Dems in Congress say the same thing over and over until it was hammered into the pea-brains of the electorate he would have a bill by now... But no... He and the Dems couldn't stay on message... They have been like a football team where none of the player know what play was called... And it shows...

So... Not this time either, folks... Maybe in 2030... or 3030...or 4030???

B~

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Riginslinger
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 10:19 AM

It looks like its dead. Pelosi says she doesn't have the votes in the house to pass the Senate version.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: beardedbruce
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 03:29 PM

As opposed to the padded cell for Greg F?

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Greg F.
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 03:13 PM

Which residential facility for the terminally bewildered does this paranoid imbecile inhabit...?

He shares a room with Douggie-Boy R

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: DougR
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 12:47 PM

Heric: Thanks for posting those two interesting articles. I found the NYT article particularly interesting and am sure I would never have seen it had you not posted it.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 11:39 AM

Why public support for health care failed

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Riginslinger
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 09:50 PM

"Don't you think Mr. Obama would have gladly taken some heat from trial lawyers in exchange for passing health reform with bipartisan support and making himself look like a transformational leader?"


            No, I don't think so. But the best thing they can do now is to simply pass the Senate version of the bill, and hopefully some future Republican administration can go after trial lawyers.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 09:31 PM

January 20, 2010 Economic Scene
Centrist, and Yet Not Unified
By DAVID LEONHARDT, The New York Times

The stunning victory of Scott Brown, the Massachusetts Republican who will have Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat, suggests that public opinion has turned against the proposal. It's hard to know exactly how Democrats will respond. But given the sudden uncertainty over health reform's fate, this does seem to be an important time to boil down its substance.

Here's my attempt: The bills before Congress are politically partisan and substantively bipartisan.

What does that mean? The first part is obvious. All 60 Senate Democrats and independents voted for the bill, and all 40 Republicans voted against it. The second part is the counterintuitive one. Yet it's true.

The current versions of health reform are the product of decades of debate between Republicans and Democrats. The bills are more conservative than Bill Clinton's 1993 proposal. For that matter, they're more conservative than Richard Nixon's 1971 plan, which would have had the federal government provide insurance to people who didn't get it through their job.

Today's Congressional Republicans have made the strategically reasonable decision to describe President Obama's health care plan, like almost every other part of his agenda, as radical and left wing. And the message seems to be at least partly working, based on polls and the Massachusetts surprise. But a smart political strategy isn't the same thing as accurate policy analysis.

The better way to describe the Obama agenda, I think, is that it's ambitious (even radical) in its scope and sharply different in direction from the Reagan-Bush era, but mostly moderate in terms of how far it goes on any single issue.

Mr. Obama wants to undo George W. Bush's high-income tax cuts, but would keep the basic Reagan tax structure intact. The administration is trying to re-regulate financial markets, but has rejected the sweeping ideas favored by the former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, British regulators and many liberals. The pattern is especially clear on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now, a centrist approach isn't necessarily the best one — no matter how good it may sound to call yourself a centrist. Sometimes, Republicans are right about an issue (whether the welfare system was broken) and sometimes Democrats are (whether to respond to an economic crisis with fiscal stimulus or a Hooverite approach).

Maybe the country would be better off with a big-government health care plan, like a Medicare for all. Or maybe we'd be better off with a free-market version, in which people shopped for their own plans in an open marketplace. Those are interesting enough arguments. They also make it clear that the bills before Congress are not particularly radical.

A little history is useful here. The first modern attempt at health reform, as you've probably heard, came from Harry Truman. After World War II, he proposed a government insurance plan that would cover everyone. Republicans and the American Medical Association labeled the plan "socialistic" — which, in some ways, it was.

Opponents instead called for expanding the private insurance system. Nixon, then a young California representative, and others suggested government subsidies for people who couldn't afford insurance, as Paul Starr explains in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "The Social Transformation of American Medicine." But the socialism critique was strong enough to defeat Truman's plan without need for compromise.

The next push came from John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, who tried to cover only the elderly. Critics cried socialism about Medicare, too. "Behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country," as Reagan, who was then working as the American Medical Association's spokesman, said in a widely circulated speech. This time, though, big Congressional majorities and sympathy for the elderly let the Democrats prevail.

Once Nixon was president, the focus switched from expanding access to controlling costs, as you might expect with a Republican. He favored giving doctors incentives to set up prepaid group practices, which had the potential to provide better, cheaper care than the fee-for-service system. Ted Kennedy often said he regretted not making a deal with Nixon on health reform.

The current bills, for better and worse, are akin to a negotiated settlement to this six-decade debate. It would try to end our status as the only rich country with tens of millions of uninsured people, as liberals have long urged. And it would do so using private insurers and government subsidies, as conservatives prefer. (I realize that some liberals argue that a more liberal bill would have fared better, but the history of the health reform — not to mention this country's conservative instincts — offers reason for doubt.)

On cost control, the bill is similarly centrist. In 1993, Mr. Clinton pushed for putting a cap on the growth of insurance premiums — an idea similar to having a national health budget, which conservative governments in other countries have done. Today's Democrats saw that move as too radical. Instead, they have borrowed Nixon's old push for prepaid group practices, which are now called accountable care organizations.

Together, the cost-control measures are serious enough that the Congressional Budget Office estimates they would save the government $1 trillion in the next 20 years, over and above the cost of covering the uninsured. Some experts remain doubtful of these projections. Others, though, think the budget office is underestimating the savings, as it has with past Medicare changes.

The one big conservative idea that's largely missing is malpractice reform. But the White House said several times that it was willing to negotiate on this issue. And think about it: Rahm Emanuel, the Obama chief of staff, likes to say the only thing that's not negotiable is success. Don't you think Mr. Obama would have gladly taken some heat from trial lawyers in exchange for passing health reform with bipartisan support and making himself look like a transformational leader?

The obvious question, then, is how the current bill could have inspired such skepticism from voters.

The unified Republican message is part of the answer. So is the fact that Mr. Obama never found a strong, consistent way to sell the bill. That said, health reform was never going to be easy.

Something like 90 percent of voters already have insurance. Many imagine that they will never lose it. Many people even believe they don't pay for their insurance, because the money comes out of their paycheck before they see it. (They do pay in lost income.) Polls also show that Americans are more aware of our medical system's strengths than its weaknesses (like needlessly high error rates). As for Medicare being on course to break the bank — voters rarely get excited about future fiscal problems.

So health reform was probably destined to inspire more fear than hope. It's been that way since Truman.

In the wake of Mr. Brown's victory, the decision facing Democrats is not whether to start with a blank slate and try to write a bill based on both liberal health care ideas and conservative ones. They've already tried that.

The decision is whether to expand insurance and try to control costs, despite the political risks, or whether that project will once again be put off until another day.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Riginslinger
Date: 10 Jan 10 - 08:12 AM

At least we know Joe Wilson didn't lie after all!

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Bobert
Date: 09 Jan 10 - 07:22 PM

Me thinks that Mr. Connelly recieves monthlt checks from the insurance lobby...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 09 Jan 10 - 06:58 PM

""The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business, and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats, and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled by the government.
However, as scary as all of that is, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever
occurred, or even been contemplated. If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.
The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people, and the businesses they own.""


Which residential facility for the terminally bewildered does this paranoid imbecile inhabit, and who gave him a platform upon which to spout this arrant bullshit?

There are at least a dozen countries with proper healthcare, and not one of them is without a private system, happily operating alongside the National system, without the slightest detriment to either. And there is not one of those countries in which ANY,, let alone "ALL", decisions about personal care are made by government bureaucrats.

As to his lunatic conspiracy theory, in most countries that would get him sectioned to the local Laughing Academy without delay, but it seems that US lunatics get a chance at being President, and running the whole Asylum.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: CarolC
Date: 09 Jan 10 - 05:07 PM

Mr. Connelly has neglected to tell us which Bill he is commenting on. We have no way of knowing whether or not he is even commenting on one that is still being considered, since we don't even know when Mr. Connelly wrote his little screed. We don't know if he is talking about a House bill or a Senate bill, and we still don't know what the final bill will look like, so we know he can't possibly be commenting on that.

More bullshit from the insurance industry cabal.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 09 Jan 10 - 03:54 PM

Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2010 22:16:18 -0700
I fear that too many good, God fearing people in the United States are so concerned about just making it day to day they are not watching what is going on with this corrupt government, Democrats and Repulicans alike. I pray that we all wake up before it is too late. If you love this country and everything that our forefathers fought for, please forward this to everyone you know and let them know we have to be verbal and fight this fight.

Jon E. Melton



The Truth About the Health Care Act
Michael Connelly,
Ret. Constitutional Attorney
Well, I've done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was
frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.
To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal
immigrants, free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.
The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business, and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats, and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled by the government.
However, as scary as all of that is, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever
occurred, or even been contemplated. If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.
The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people, and the businesses they own.
The irony is that the Congress doesn't have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with! I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care.
This legislation also provides for access, by the appointees of the Obama administration, to all of your personal healthcare and financial information, and personal information from your employer, physician and hospital: a direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, which provides protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivion regardless of what the 3rd and 4th Amendments may
provide.
If you decide not to have healthcare insurance or if you have private insurance that is not deemed acceptable to the Health Choices Administrator appointed by Obama, there will be a tax imposed on you. It is called a tax instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid application of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. There is nothing in the Health Care Bill that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax; which deprives us of property without the due process of law.
Three amendments out of the original ten in the Bill of Rights, are effectively nullified by this Health Care Act. Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control.
I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you get the idea. This is not about health care; it is about seizing power and limiting rights. Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members of both houses of Congress to "be bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution." If I was a member of Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or
anything like it without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or affirmation. If I voted for it anyway, I would hope the American people would hold me accountable.
For those who might doubt the nature of this threat, I suggest they consult
the source, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. There you can see exactly what we are about to have taken from us.
Michael Connelly
Retired attorney,
Constitutional Law Instructor
Carrollton, Texas

WE MUST HOLD CONGRESS ACCOUNTABLE BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: CarolC
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 04:38 PM

Thanks, heric. I'll check it out.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 03 Jan 10 - 03:56 PM

Carol: You probably know about this, but here is the interim high risk pool to be put in place until 2014, when the exchanges will be in place:

http://democrats.senate.gov/reform/patient-protection-affordable-care-act.pdf at pages 41 et seq. (starting with section 1101.)

I can't guess what it would cost you, but I get the impression that it would be the average individual premium for a "standard" population, i.e. pre-existing issues can't be grounds for denial or rate setting. This might be based on national averages(??), which we saw earlier was far lower than your state average.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: michaelr
Date: 28 Dec 09 - 12:10 PM

Fucking traitors. Let's vote every one of the bastards out at the next election.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Riginslinger
Date: 28 Dec 09 - 10:55 AM

It sounds like the Dean followers have given up on a public option. House members are backing off of that.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: CarolC
Date: 28 Dec 09 - 10:04 AM

I don't think they do according to the Senate bill. Hopefully in conference they will make something available to the people with pre-existing conditions right way as well. That would help the Democrats in the 2010 election.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 Dec 09 - 09:38 AM

Well, children can't vote, but their parents and grandparents presumably can.

But won't the restrictions on the ability of insurance companies to refuse to meet their moral obligations kick in sooner than that?

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Greg F.
Date: 27 Dec 09 - 12:29 PM

Now that was disappointing - hopefully This One will work

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Dec 09 - 03:01 AM

It's very possible that not many people who currently don't have access to care will have received it by the 2010 election. Depends on when they decide to have the reform kick in. If the Senate version is what they go with, only children will experience a change until 2014.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Dec 09 - 07:38 PM

I rather suspect that by that time rather a lot of people will have had medical treatment they'd have been unable to get previously. That could be enough on its own for a pledge like that to lose them the election.

It's worth noting that the British Conservatives, who fought tooth and nail against the setting up of the NHS, ever since then have had to declare their undying support for it. Even when they haven't necessarily meant it.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Greg F.
Date: 26 Dec 09 - 06:37 PM

Can it be assumed that the Republicans will pledge themselves to reverse these reforms...

Yup, right back to 1959-

Plus ça change...