BS: US Health Care Reform

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: pdq
Date: 07 Sep 09 - 05:37 PM

...from Huff 'n' Puff Goes Postal:

"Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius played down her controversial comments on health care reform in a speech Tuesday.

The former Kansas governor created consternation Sunday by saying on Sunday that a public option was 'not essential' to the legislation. But she brushed off the concerned reaction from many Democrats, saying the administration's outlook hasn't shifted at all.

'All I can tell you is that Sunday must have been a very slow news day, because here's the bottom line: absolutely nothing has changed,' she said. 'We continue to support the public option that will help lower costs, give American consumers more choice and keep private insurers honest.'"

[her statement was probably a "trial baloon"]

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 07 Sep 09 - 05:15 PM

HR 3200 said every employer should provide a standard plan or pay 8% of payroll to the government to fund the public option and enroll said employee. When Sebelius said the public option was non-essential - eveyone should have wondered about that 8% payment to see that the entire "plan" was just an illusion. *poof*

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 07 Sep 09 - 04:59 PM

I think a broad support for the HR 3200 can only be from people seeing what they want to see - Imagine it and pretend it's in there.

No - Wyden-Bennett didn't have broad based support because it was never floated or explained. It just sat there on a shelf. It never had a chance because the most powerful lobbyists would never tolerate it.

I don't think the "public option" is dead, either. Just depends, again, on what one thinks qualifies for that moniker.

We shall see soon enough.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: CarolC
Date: 07 Sep 09 - 04:47 PM

I don't see how my actions with regard to Wyden Bennett have effected it one way or another. I also don't see why one would think that Wyden Bennet would have more of a chance of succeeding than the HR 3200. I have not actually registered any opinion of Wyden Bennett myself, but I don't really see any kind of broad support among the Democratic base for that bill. I do see a broad support for the HR 3200.

My first choice is probably single payer, but I am interested in a bill that will have a lot of support among the base that at least breaks some of the stranglehold the insurance industry has on the delivery of health care and that has a chance of passing. Wyden-Bennett does not seem to be that bill.

Personally, I don't see the chances of a public option passing being as bleak as described above.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 07 Sep 09 - 04:33 PM

I told you to support Wyden-Bennet . . . .

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: CarolC
Date: 07 Sep 09 - 04:28 PM

In other words, no health care reform whatever.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 07 Sep 09 - 04:23 PM

Oh you big crybabies. I want:

First: Medicaid revamped to ensure routine chronic and wellness and preventive care properly delivered to the poor, and especially their children. - Ain't gonna get it.

Second: Dismantling of the employer tax breaks and the entire employment-linked system of funding private health plans - Ain't gonna get it.

Third: A public option to back stop the employment based insurance victims, with government pursuing the benefits claims against the insurers. Ain't gonna get it.

Fourth: Mandatory participation in catastrophic coverage. Might get it.

Fifth: Statewide community rated private insurance on a level playing field. Ain't gonna get it.

Sixth: Subsidized mandatory participation in private insurance on a sloped playing field. Might get it.

Seventh: Complete portability from job to job without cancellations or non-renewals for serious or chronic illnesses. Will probably get that.

And eighth while I am at it: If the employers are going to get huge tax breaks on overpriced plans, make THEM pay the damned COBRA. I see in Alice's link the "Baucus plan" will let you lose coverage if you get really sick and out of work and can't make your premiums. . .

Obama will tell us what we're getting on Wednesday. (Don't be manipulated. Fear not the cuckoos.)

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Alice
Date: 07 Sep 09 - 03:18 PM

From today on To The Point, KCRW radio, republicans pledge to keep up the "nightmare" in attacking health care reform as they have done during the August break.
headline "Congress Returns to Work and Healthcare Reform" CLICK HERE

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Alice
Date: 07 Sep 09 - 03:10 PM

The republicans will keep up the lie and hate campaign and there is no reason to expect them to be reasonable and honest about health care legislation. They had no intention of being "bi-partisan" and the dems like Baucus were just being played.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: CarolC
Date: 07 Sep 09 - 02:49 PM

People for real health reform have already made allowances. They want single payer, but most will accept a public option instead. The base of the Democratic party won't accept a bill without a public option, so the right wing of the Democratic party is just going to have to suck it up and vote for the public option if they want to get re-elected in 2010.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Riginslinger
Date: 07 Sep 09 - 02:21 PM

"We need to stop confusing a record of having taken a driving examination with an identification card."

            Well, Art, I would agree with that. We need better methods of keeping records of almost every kind in the country today.



    "What did he (Max Baucus" think, that caving in on the public option would make republicans start voting for him?"

    They need to come up with something that will pass. Right now conservative Democrats won't vote for the Hous bill, so they have to make allowances somewhere.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Alice
Date: 07 Sep 09 - 12:52 PM

I just wrote another email to my democratic senator, Max Baucus. Today I told him I'll NEVER vote for him again. What did he think, that caving in on the public option would make republicans start voting for him?
It disgusts me. He's all about the health industry money he gets for campaigns. Baucus proposed bill skips public option.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: artbrooks
Date: 07 Sep 09 - 10:59 AM

Well, I'm not sure what the Heller Amendment actually says, but the House Bill, as sort-of agreed upon by the three committees working on it, specifically forbids "individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States" from receiving benefits.

Citizenship is not "confirmed at birth". Citizenship upon birth is granted by Article XIV, Section 1 of the US Constitution. Good luck getting a constitutional amendment to change that.

E-verify relies on the validity of records of the Social Security system. Those records are screwed up beyond belief. For example, consider Mary Smith, who has a SSN under that name and who marries John Jones. If she doesn't notify immediately SSA, or if SSA doesn't, for whatever reason, update her records, e-verify will reject her if she is screened under the name Mary Jones. E-verify also will not detect if someone else is using Mary's name and SSN. No, if it is necessary for anyone (or everyone) to be positively identified, the US needs to start issuing national, unforgeable, ID cards - perhaps with both fingerprints and retina scans on them. We need to stop confusing a record of having taken a driving examination with an identification card. I've carried a government (military) ID card since I was 12...can't see that it has harmed me any.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Riginslinger
Date: 07 Sep 09 - 09:53 AM

Here's the problem, art: Congressman Heller tried to put a provision in the House Plan, in committee, that would guarantee that no illegal aliens could receive benefits under the plan, but the committee voted that down. Anything they did after that is just simply window dressing. They want to leave the option to add illegal aliens later--because they think that will gain them the Hispanic vote--otherwise, they would have included the Heller Amendment.
             In addition to that, they are refusing to include the
e-verify system in the bills that would assure health care providers and pharmacies that the person seeking benefits really is an American citizen, again for political reasons.
             Finally, citizenship being confirmed at birth is under fire all over the country, and hopefully it will soon be changed.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: artbrooks
Date: 07 Sep 09 - 09:36 AM

Of course, nothing in any of the health plans currently being discussed in Congress would give any care at all to undocumented aliens.   In all of them, citizenship is conferred on birth.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Riginslinger
Date: 07 Sep 09 - 08:58 AM

Of course, the article doesn't talk about the larger problem, and none of the countries cited in the text share a common border with Mexico, nor do they have "birthright citizenship."

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Amos
Date: 07 Sep 09 - 01:35 AM

Five Myths About Health Care around the World

is a must read.


A

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Barry Finn
Date: 06 Sep 09 - 10:58 PM

Bullshit slinger

Barry

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Riginslinger
Date: 06 Sep 09 - 10:36 PM

If they let illegal aliens in, every sick person in the western hemisphere will find his/her way to America.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 06 Sep 09 - 08:28 PM

Not if they let everybody in. Y'know, it all really comes down to whether or not we wish to consider adequate, affordable health care as a right (for all) or a privilege (for some).

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 06 Sep 09 - 11:59 AM

Yes but it can be skewed by who is allowed in and who goes in. And they could (possibly) be an entirely different Medicare sub-set with a different benefits package.

And I mean relative to the remaining non-Medicare population.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 06 Sep 09 - 11:36 AM

heric-
Medicare already has the high-expense portion of the population. Opening up would actually make it more cost-effective for its members.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 06 Sep 09 - 11:17 AM

Axelrod agrees: He just sent an e-mail press release saying he should not have been misinterpreted.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Alice
Date: 06 Sep 09 - 10:49 AM

To me, that means, don't let the right wing define "public option" as something evil and then make the debate all about how evil it is.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 06 Sep 09 - 10:13 AM

David Axelrod just said on Meet the Press that Obama believes a public option would be a good tool. But Axelrod says "it shouldn't define the whole health care debate."

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 05 Sep 09 - 06:28 PM

"thoughtful" would be a better way to spell that.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 05 Sep 09 - 06:28 PM

Witty and trughful he is. I've been pondering his final statement as well: A voluntary early buy-in to Medicare.

Some tricks to that, probably some we don't see - but it certainly clarifies the public option discussion.

The thing is, though - if we allow private insurers to just throw the high-expense population into medicare by "choice," then they win again, and taxpayers continue to pay and then pay again.

But if we do most of the main private insurance proposed rules - no denials on pre-existing, etc., we ought to be able to make the "option" fair and funded and competitive.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Azizi
Date: 05 Sep 09 - 06:06 PM

Here's a powerfully articulated special comment from Bill Moyers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8IeZHZRwC4&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Edailykos%2Ecom%2Fstoryonly%2F2009%2F9%2F5%2F777377%2F%2DMoyer
BILL MOYERS JOURNAL | Bill Moyers on Health Care | PBS

-snip-

The transcript can be found here.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 05 Sep 09 - 04:46 PM

Just think, if that Boston crowd had made themselves a pot of tea, lit their pipes and chilled out, you would all be English, and you would all have healthcare without needing to be millionaires.

What a mistake-a to make.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Alice
Date: 05 Sep 09 - 03:37 PM

I'm watching two news reporters talking about how to deal with the health insurance companies to "battle" for coverage of tests, etc., that the insurance companies don't want to pay for. They are using words like telling "white lies" getting your doctor to "fight" for you. THIS IS INSANE that people have to do it, and yet they are talking as if... wow, what great "secrets" these are, never pointing out that it is CRAZY that people whose life is on the line need to battle just to get tests.
This makes me so angry that our country is like this.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Ebbie
Date: 05 Sep 09 - 03:18 PM

LOL here too.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Sep 09 - 12:54 PM

LOL

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 05 Sep 09 - 12:27 PM

The scene: On the front porch at a retirement center, two very old men, George and Gus, are sitting side by side in rocking chairs, conversing.

George: Heard you had a meeting with the death panel.

Gus: Yep, I sure did.

George: Anything happen?

Gus: Yep. They said I should die next Tuesday. Actually, they said I should "plan to transition to post-viability status" next Tuesday. You know how those government people talk.

George: Won't see you at bingo next Wednesday, then, I suppose.

Gus (chuckling): Oh, yes, you will. Death-panel decisions trigger a
mandatory appeal. It takes them 90 days just to file the paperwork for that.

George: Oh. So you're good for three more months? Buy the green bananas, brother.

Gus (chuckling again): More like 18 months. It takes them that long to review the mandatory appeal after they get the paperwork. And then I can appeal the appeal to the Federal Board of Death Panel Appeals Appeals. That takes a couple of years longer.

George: So now you're up to 3 1/2 years.

Gus: Darn near an eternity.

George: Say, how old are you, anyway?

Gus: 104. I was kind of thinking I might be nearing the end of the road. But now it looks as if I can't go until 107 at the earliest. Too much red tape to get through first.

George (snorting): Not exactly express checkout, is it?

Gus: That's for sure. You should see the paperwork I have to do.

George: Don't bother filling it out. What are they going to do? Kill you?

(They begin laughing uproariously.)

Gus: Guess what they told me? "Failure to file is a federal offense
punishable by up to five years in prison."

George: Well, there you go. Add that to the 3 1/2 years they already gave you, and you'll be --

Gus: 112! I'll be older than some countries.

George: The birthday candles alone will bankrupt your kids.

Gus (wiping tears of mirth from his eyes): You hear what happened to Ted Johnson?

George: What?

Gus: He called the death panel, and the office put him on hold. Now, you know how stubborn Ted is. He wouldn't hang up. So he stayed on hold for three weeks.

George (slapping his knee): That's just like the old mule.

Gus (shaking with glee): When he finally got through, they told him he was supposed to be dead a week and a half earlier. Ted laughed so hard, it dropped his blood pressure 40 points, unfroze his knee and cleaned out a coronary artery. I saw him dancing the other day.

SO TO SPEAK
Death panel would put 'the end' out of reach
By JOE BLUNDO

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 09:12 PM

postsript: In the long article I just pasted, Brooks starts off with a recommendation for David Goldhill's essay, "How American Health Care Killed My Father," in the current issue of The Atlantic. Goldhill is an HSA proponent too radical for me - so I never referred to it. Wyden Bennett is NOT too radical, even though Brooks (NYT) describes it as "more comprehensive" than Goldhill.

(I wonder why Obama is bringing in all the progressive Congresspeople on Tuesday or Wednesday, shortly before his speech.)

Good luck to us all!

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 02:42 PM

Repeat: Under Wyden-Bennett, instead of getting Medicaid, the poor now would get:

(1) Medicaid;
(2) The Blue Cross/Blue Shield (FEHBA) Standard Plan;
(3) A primary care provider to devise and monitor a care plan (with expert understanding of the benefits now available, even if the patient isn't up to speed on them), for free wellness care, comprehensive disease prevention, early detection, disease management, chronic pain treatment, and chronic condition management;
(4) Guaranteed participation in any standarad plan without discrimination based on health status (or genetics); and
(5) Peri-natal care as good as anyone's.

Under HR 3200, with the public option as it was written, and as it is still written, they would get:
(1) Medicaid.

For children up to age 18, even if their parents are crack-heads or illegals, the state would be required, with federal assistance and funding, to actively seek them out and provide all of the above.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 02:25 PM

Forgive me I have to set that second article out in full. He says everything I've tried to say:

If I were magically given an hour to help Barack Obama prepare for his health care speech next week, the first thing I'd do is ask him to read David Goldhill's essay, "How American Health Care Killed My Father," in the current issue of The Atlantic. That essay would lift Obama out of the distracting sideshows about this public plan or that cooperative option. It would remind him why he got into this issue in the first place.

Goldhill's main message is that the American health care system is dysfunctional at the core. He vividly describes how the system hides information, muddies choices, encourages more treatment instead of better care, neglects cheap innovation, inflates costs and unintentionally increases suffering.

The essay is about the real problem: the insane incentives. Goldhill is especially good on the way the voracious health care system soaks up money that could go to education, the environment, economic development and a thousand other priorities. Health care, he writes, "simply keeps gobbling up national resources, seemingly without regard to other societal needs."

Then I'd ask Obama to go to the Brookings Institution Web site and read a report called "Bending the Curve: Effective Steps to Address Long-Term Health Care Spending Growth." This report was written by a bipartisan group of battle-tested experts, including Mark McClellan, David Cutler, Elizabeth McGlynn, Joseph Antos and John Bertko.

This report also focuses on the key issue: perverse incentives. It's got a series of proposals on how to restructure insurance markets, reorganize provider payments, change the way effectiveness-research findings are implemented and cap the employee tax deduction.

These aren't pie-in-the-sky ideas. The authors have combed through the bills that are already out there. They've taken good ideas that are now in embryonic or neutered form. They show how the ideas would work if fully implemented. We're not going to revolutionize 18 percent of the American economy overnight, but these proposals would put us on the path toward real reform.

We're not on that path right now. Several months ago, President Obama made a promise: People with health insurance would be able to keep exactly what they have.

We all understand why he made that promise. He wanted to reassure people who are happy with what they've got. He wanted to mollify the industries that have a vested interest in the status quo.

But Obama's promise sent the reform effort off the rails. It meant that efforts to expand coverage marched ahead, but efforts to fundamentally reform the system got watered down.

Instead of true reform we got a series of bills that essentially cement the present system in place. The proposals do not fundamentally challenge the fee-for-service system. They don't make Americans more accountable for their own health care spending. They don't reduce costs. They just add more people into the mess we've got.

The president made this promise to ease passage. But it ended up hollowing out the substance of the reform. And the political benefits didn't even materialize. Voters are still spooked by the costs, the centralization and the cuts they are sure will come.

If I had a magic hour with the president, I'd tell him this is his ninth-inning chance. He can stay on the current path. He might be able to pass some incremental bill that extends coverage. But he won't have tackled the fundamental problems that first drove him to this issue. He won't have cut health care inflation. He won't have prevented a voracious system from bankrupting the nation, defunding the schools, pushing down wages and impoverishing the young.

On the other hand, he can shift back to the core issue: the perverse incentives that make this system such a mess. He can embrace proposals—like the Brookings proposals or, more comprehensively, the Wyden-Bennett bill — that address the structural problems instead of simply papering over them.

This remains a politically risky strategy. There are many industries that have an interest in making sure health care spending rises to 20 percent of G.D.P., and then 22 and then 24. But the president's in political hot water already. He got there trying to dodge the hard issues. He might as well be there because he's fighting for something real.

There are many people telling him to go incremental. They're telling him to just enlarge the current system a bit and pay for it by pounding down a few Medicare fees. But did Barack Obama really get elected so he could pass the Status Quo Sanctification and Extension Act?

This is not the time to get incremental. It's the time to get fundamental. Reform the incentives. Make consumers accountable for spending. Make price information transparent. Reward health care, not health services. Do what you set out to do. Bring change.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 02:16 PM

Here is the article about Obama's political problems with dramatic change.

It was by editorialist David Brooks, who has an even better article about the perverse financial incentives, and the damaging effetcs of incrementalism here .

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 02:05 PM

Here's one little and effective suggestion about cost shifting:

"After some negotiation with New Jersey's hospital industry, the governor on May 5, 2008, introduced Assembly Bill No. 2909, limiting the prices charged uninsured residents of New Jersey with an income below 500 percent of the federal poverty line to 115 percent of the applicable Medicare rates. By August 2008, the state assembly had passed the bill, and the governor promptly signed it into law.

As President Obama prepares his address to the joint chambers of Congress on Sept. 9, he would do well by America's middle class to follow New Jersey's lead by proposing to apply this upper limit nationwide."

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/ending-hospital-price-discrimination-against-the-uninsured/

(There's no reason to limit it to 500% of poverty, either - that's just what the provider lobbyists extracted since they don't collect on those charges from the poor anyway, they attack the middle class with insurance problems. Not even uninsured, necessarily - Hospitals can and do do it if the insurer didn't have to pay the charges in part or in full.)

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Riginslinger
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 01:57 PM

"That's why I despise Congressional sausage manufacturing. They haven't even set a clear target as to who we are going to help and
how..."

          Yes, heric, I think if the president is going to move this forward, he's going to have to be a lot more specific than anyone has been to date.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: CarolC
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 01:52 PM

The problem is that a huge chunk of the money we're spending on health care is not going to pay for health care. It's going to pay for corporate profits, lobbyists, dividends to share holders, obscene executive salaries and bonuses, and other non-health care related expenses.

Just think of how many lives could be saved if all of that money was going toward providing people with needed care instead of lining the pockets of greedy people. (The answer is many tens of thousands, and certainly a hell of a lot more than the number of people killed on 9/11, for which we have fought two wars and are still paying through the nose).

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 12:47 PM

I used to agree with that pdq, but from 2000 to 2008, the U.S. economy grew by $4.4 trillion; of that growth, roughly one out of every four dollars was spent on health care. Household expenditures on health care already exceed those on housing. That share is growing, and a Medicare funding crisis is coming. We're now at $2.4 trillion per year. We should spend what we have to spend, but not as wastefully as possible.

That's why I despise Congressional sausage manufacturing. They haven't even set a clear target as to who we are going to help and how. How in the world can they say the Medicad population stays on Medicaid, and the "public option" (safety net for the employed - as I see it) is non-essential, but with a $trillion underfunding over ten years in addition to the $2.4 trillion per year? ($1 trillion is only 4% of the total spending over ten years, but still . . . )

(That $2.4 trillion per year figure comes from the same Atlantic article. I'm sure there are widely varying estimates, but aren't we approaching twice the per capita spending of European nations? Pick your sources but I doubt you'll come up with something less than an amazing number.)

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 12:29 PM

For every two doctors in the U.S., there is now one health-insurance employee—more than 470,000 in total. That adds about $50 per person per month to the health care premiums.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200909/health-care

I don't want to demonize health insurers or anyone else, but I do want to see a lot of people become unemployed, with the savings going (1) to provide better basic care to the Medicaid population (their high end needs are met),(2) a safety net for employed workers (especially low paid workers) (3) an affordable option for the self-employed (and low paid workers), and (4) Mandatory catastrophic coverage for all. There is a LOT of mispent money and mispent tax breaks (subsidies) that can be redirected to accomplish this.

Good luck to us on Wednesday.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: pdq
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 12:16 PM

"... the industry gets a lot more money to no sensible end."

I don't see how one can come to that conclusion.

I don't think we spend too much on health care. We spend too little.

In 1993 with HillaryCare being pushed, it was said that 1/7 of the US economy was health care.

This year when ObamaCare is being pushed, it is suppose to be up to 1/6.

I look foreward to being 1/5 or more.

What is more important to the health of our people? Marijuana? Pornography? Rap noise CDs? Various effluent from our "entertainment industry"?

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 11:58 AM

Me too, but a guy in the NYT pointed out yesterday that it's not just his Presidency on the line if he is dramatic, but the potential loss of 20+ Democratic seats in the House of Representatives next year (and the loss of their majority.) He may not be able to bring them along for this one fight.

I can tolerate incrementalism and experimentation towards a productive goal, but not plain old give the consumers lots of free shit so that they are happy, we get credit, and the industry gets a lot more money to no sensible end. I fully expect that he will NOT go that route.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Amos
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 11:44 AM

I hope he addresses the fundamental mishmash instead of just trying to do something incremental. He'll have a fight on his hands, but at least it will be a worthwhile fight.


A\

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 11:39 AM

We're on hiatus until Wednesday night. He could very well have planned it this way - let people have their free speech scream fest for a while. Yesterday the White House said the contents of his speech were fully determined a while ago.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Riginslinger
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 07:41 AM

Maybe Obama will put forward a plan of his own when he addresses Congress.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: Riginslinger
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 10:09 PM

I suppose, pdq, if Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan took 57% of the federal budget, it would make sense to stop funding those adventures. The percentage doesn't ring true to me, but whatever it costs, I think the administration ought to quit funding those adventures, and I wonder why it doesn't.

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: pdq
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 12:11 PM

"...does anyone figure into the cost of public health care that of Afghanistan/Iraq/Pakinstan? 57% of the national budget..."

Can somebody explain what that statement applies to? Does it have something to do with the US?

Subject: RE: BS: US Health Care Reform
From: heric
Date: 02 Sep 09 - 11:57 AM

So they let us suffer through all that screaming about The Plan That Never Was, and now Obama is going to step out in the stage and say something coherent and sensible. He is going to hit the re-set button, no doubt about it.