Bipartisan Health Reform Negotiations on Life Support

mary… i have to aqgree with you. we need lower health care costs however and the most significant change which should occur is tort reform.in my experience at least and probably more than 10% of every doctors bottom line goes to malpractice insurance. reform that and you will see rates go down as every doctor will not feel compelled to test for every disease known and unknown to man in order to not get sued by somebody who likely didnt pay for the service in the first place.

Certainly we will know who backs those who oppose reform.

here is an AP article….”The wife of a senator playing a lead role on a national health care overhaul sits on the boards of four health care companies, one of several examples of lawmakers with ties to the medical industry. Jackie Clegg Dodd, wife of Sen. Chris Dodd, serves on the boards of Javelin Pharmaceuticals Inc., Cardiome Pharma Corp., Brookdale Senior Living, and Pear Tree Pharmaceuticals, a financial disclosure report the senator released Friday shows.”

Yes, if you are for this proposal and your elected official votes against it. Let’s hold them accountable. I think it’s a slap in the face they have Gov’t healthcare or whatever but, we can’t get it.

What great bipartisan alternative on health care does McCain have? That’s right; he wanted to tax health benefits…

I have friends and customers in both Canada and England, who are very entrenched in government run healthcare programs. I have personally talked with people you have waited close to a year for an MRI. If you have been watching the news, you would see that Canada has a shortage of doctors. Ask yourself why. Who wants to go to school for ten years and then have the government tell you how much you are going to make and how you are going to treat your patients. My guess is that they either got out of medicine or emigrated to the U.S. Has anyone mentioned that the Canadians and Europeans also have a 50% tax rate to pay for these services.
If you do not think that will eventually happen to us here in the U.S., you are the king or queen of fantasy land.
This administration is pushing government into almost every area of our lives. If this is allowed to continue, you will not recognize this country in ten years. This is the biggest power grab I have seen in my lifetime. If you think that government is here to take care of you, then I am sure you are pleased with what is happening. I am not.
Mary Lynn

“Has anyone mentioned that the Canadians and Europeans also have a 50% tax rate to pay for these services.” – The tax rate pays for a host of services and health care is just one of them. In the U.S. we pay pay twice as much per capita than Canadians or Europeans do and medical related debt is the second leading cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. What do we get for all this expense? On average the Canadians and the Europeans have longer life expectancies and lower infant death rates than we do. Both stats correlate with quality, affordable primary care. We need to change our system now – its killing us.

47 million americans with out insurance policy maybe you mast take look the canadian healthcare we canadians love it and we have doctors do not let the propaganda of insurance companies to fool you

It’s so sad and pathetic that “supporters” keep nattering the party line about “Republicans + Big Business.” Both sides are so entrenched in Big Business they don’t sneeze without permission from a CEO. The Democrats are just as motivated by the smell of power, prestige and status. And who created Big Insurance? Edward Kennedy, 1973 Health Maintenance Organization Act. Gave them power by law, reinforced in 1978. So keep nattering, the Dems are just as much to blame…

Hey Georgie…. what a lousy article… why are YOU still blaming it on Republicans… The Demons have FULL control of BOTH houses……. the Demons can do what they want…. but we all KNOW they are SCARED to do it because the Demons will have to take FULL responsibilty for what ever piece of crap law they pass…… cant wait for the 2010 elections….. heheheheh

Wow if the government can keep cigarettes and alcohol legal and tax them to pay for whatever why cant they make weed legal and tax marijuana to pay for their bloated healthcare and stimulus bills? I was just wondering out loud…

Hey Greg at least you got to pick which doctor took her tonsils out and she didnt have to wait 6 months for doctor beaureucrat to have them removed. Not only that but if there are complications or a problem later on you still get to sue the doctor too! Be glad your taxes arent 50% of your paycheck too while youre at it. $4000 divided by 12 months is $333 a month you have to pay. Do you want to pay half your paycheck for someone elses kids tonsils?

Hey Georgie why dont you do a REAL article… Why dont you find out what BO promised the Drug companies during his “SECRET” negotiations with them, that they making a big deal about last week……. ?

I would love for everyone to have health care– and I think it’s a travesty that families go bankrupt from medical expenses.
However, my wife is a Doctor at an Indian Health Service (Controlled by the United States government) clinic. She CANNOT prescribe the best medicine available because it costs too much. It is rationed health care. It is sub standard care.
Look at the Veterans Administration hospitals if you want to see what your health care will look like if this reform passes.
What we need is a simple bill- simple reform–
1. Insurance companies must have one price for their plans- you get that if you are an individual or a big company. 2. You cannot be dropped EVER. If you get sick you cannot be dropped when you are “better” and your prices cannot go up.
3. I actually like the idea that everyone must buy health insurance– it works for Auto insurance and would bring more money to the table.
4. Make doctors and hospitals publish their prices like a restaurant menu. you can see who has the best prices and go there (what we have now IS NOT a free market system.)
What we need is a reform of the rules– it could be a 100 page bill. Can you imagine what is stuffed into these 1000 page bills? People– this will be very bad for the country- we simply cannot afford it. Remember that Canada has a population of 33 million people– 1/10th the size of the USA…and it is still slow.
National Health Care sounds like a good idea in principle… but it WILL limit choices, it WILL raise taxes, it WILL hurt R&D in healthcare, it WILL hurt charitable health care efforts. What will it help? I’m not sure.

I did get to choose the doctor I paid $4000.00 to and also got to pay my $1400.00 premium. And as for those other kids, we are both paying for them right now. What would have happened if I couldn’t pay for this surgery, wouldn’t I have to wait till she was in so much pain that I would have taken her to the hospital. Wouldn’t someone have had to pay for it then, and how is it that I can get medecine over seas for $20.00 that would have cost me $320.00 with insurance or $1200.00 without. At least I could have picked the doctor that wrote the script.

Bipartisan? The dumocrats idea of bipartisan is the Republicans caving in. This administration is the most partisan I have ever seen. Get off the liberal networks like ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, etc and you will see clear cut ideas the republicans have been offering on EVERY issue. As a health care provider I can guarantee you that just as with welfare, food stamps, housing, etc. IF YOU DON’T WORK OR CONTRIBUTE TO SOMETHING YOU DON’T CARE! You all are so zero’d in on controlling everyone and everything it makes me sick. Give me Torte reform (so Dr’s don’t pay $200,000 + in malpractice insurance). Stabilize illegals and send them to the borders!(63 illegals received organ transplants in CA last year. Did 63 US citizens die? This is life long care and immuno suppressing drugs, people. WAKE UP!!!!

Health Care Reform. That in itself is an oxymoron. I agree that bills from hospitals for procedures are on the first look absurd. I just had an ultrasound and the hospital charged $350+ for the procedure (15 minutes) and the Doctor charged $175 for reading the ultrasound (5 minutes). Now, take into account it was a brand new ultrasound machine, cutting edge, brand new building for these Radiology Services, new employees for the new building, etc.etc. etc. Health care is not just the service but all the underlying staff that supports the “company”. It is also all the new technology which benefits the patients. It is also the cost of insurance not only for the doctors but also for the hospital. This is a sue happy country and we all pay for this. My husbanad is self employed and our insurance is very costly. Our taxes are unreal. If this health care bill is not truly thought through and pushed through there will be alot of people hurting. Where can we work on our health care options now? Medicaid and Medicare are broken but not unfixable. Should we continue to pay for people who choose to not work and run up the cost of health care for those that do work? One of the reasons to work is to have health care. What incentives can be used as a way to create a work force that can actually live on “minimum pay”. That is another item that is not talked about. Why has the minimum pay not kept up with the economy? What happens is that it pays more to not work than to work. Surely this can be handled. With the baby boomers turning 50-65, the burden Medicare/Medicaid will bear will be too great. Let’s fix this. The program is in place, why can’t we find ways to make it better? Why do we have to reinvent the proverbial wheel. Personally, I don’t want to end up with a system like Canada or Europe. I want to choose my own doctor, have procedures in a timely manner and have a choice of treatments.
Has government ever been able to provide services without mucking it up with politics? constituants? party privledge? How soon we forget the $300 hammers that the Navy was buying.
Don’t expect the government to FIX anything, let’s all fix it together. Remember….WE THE PEOPLE. I don’t know about you but I want our voice and vote. What happened to the people voting on these issues. Don’t try to make “immediate” decisions, they usually end up being less thought out and UNREAD!!!!!

greg,
the fundamental question is was the $4000 cost appropriate. Your right when you say you could have waited, gone to the ER…and just let the “system” absorb your uninsured cost.
When you listen, really listen to the rhetoric that gets bantered around in this debate (from both sides), notice how no one has looked a bill like your daughters and said. this line item is part of the problem. Here is “x” costing $1000 dollars and ther eis no reason why is it should cost that much.
The debate is formed around grandieous ideas and theories how we “save” billions or “move” dollars around. ALL of that yack is complete garbage! Nothing will change when it comes to costs unless the gov’t rations it via cost per procedure or by not covering certain treatemtns under certain circumstances.
How can they “control” the cost, when they can’t even provide an example such as your daughter and then tell us which line items on that bill will be cut and how much they will be cut.
Look at the BS that is now being piled into that “Healthcare” bill now.
—
Tucked within is a provision that could provide billions of dollars for walking paths, streetlights, jungle gyms, and even farmers’ markets,” The Boston Globe’s Michael Kranish reports. “The add-ons – characterized as part of a broad effort to improve the nation’s health ‘infrastructure’ — appear in House and Senate versions of the bill.”
—
Yeah, they are REALY going to “control” something with the direction they going, but the last thing it will be is the cost of healthcare!
Another fun tidbit, Bumbling Barney Frank is back at it again. Now the least happy man in America wants to take TARP pay back money and feed it back out again. to what you ask….strange …but Barney is back at it again…playing in the housing markets! I guess help to create this great economic crisis in the first place was not enough for him!
Obama says they have turned a profit on what has been paid back do far.
+++
Last month, the General Accountability Office (GAO) reported that, through June 12, 2009, the government had received $6.2 billion in dividend payments. The original TARP legislation required that money made from the program “shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt.”
+++
what’s the matter Barney? Following the Law is not good enough for you?
So, Bumbling Barney sees a buck…he needs to spend it plus 2 more he doesn’t have! Hey moron, do you think that just maybe we can just follow the Law?
He is without question the biggiest hypocrite alive!

Jon F
Exactly…but they have this blind spot that can’t let them see the words. Truly. Eye to brain disconnect on the HMO Act of 1973, authored by Edward Kennedy. Yes, I’m repeating, but maybe some synapse will link or something.
Nah. Just wishful thinking.

I just want to comment on the English health care system, the family and I lived in England for over three years and there health care sucks. Our landlord had been waiting on a hip replacement surgery for six years, he was in getting around with a walker and in terrible pain. I had checked on a vacsectomy and was informed there was a three year waiting list. Is this the so called system that we want.

The government are the same people who are spending $18M on the “stimulus transparency” website. $18M on a website?!!!
All the politicians have the reform part of the equation correct. If only they can leave government out of the health care business do we have a prayer at succeeding.
Or will they run that as a division of General Motors?
It is really simple – legislate the reform and throw in some assistance fot those who cannot pay. Beyond that we are going to have to wait until all the stimuluses are over and we are dug out of this financial hole.
The biggest thing that scares me about Obama is that he seems to have no idea of the reality of things. He doesn’t seem to get that government has never and will never administer health care correctly. He has no idea of when we are way spent out and will be for 20 years to come. He is totally an idealist with a big credit card. Well, that credit card is at the max and he hasn’t a clue as to the reality of it.

It might just be me, but I don’t want all my medical records on a big brother type government computer. Can you imagine the abuse? What happened to personal privacy?

I can’t help but notice that no one in the media was worried by centrism or bipartisanship when the republicans were in power.
Strawman, stalking horse, delusion. Whatever you want to call it, this is a false issue that has been dreamed up by some unknown people and embraced by Obama and the media.
It allows the republicans to maintain the status quo till they can get back in office and continue to push the country even further to the right.

Anyone who can prove that the Canadians have longer life spans then we do in America without the factor of inner-city violence in play then please do so. To the contrary, they actually have shorter life spans because under single-payer healthcare you basically get no treatment once you reach a certain age, whichever age the bureaucrat see’s fit for you.

A draft of the House Democrat health care bill is out, and it’s been leaked to ATR staff. There are several major tax increases in here, most of which violate the Taxpayer Protection Pledge. They include:
a tax on individuals failing to sign up for health care equal to the lesser of 2.5% of adjusted gross income (AGI) or the average individual premium amount
a tax on employers for not providing a health care plan equal to 8% of payroll. This becomes 0, 4, or 6 percent of payroll as payday totals dip below $400,000 annually
a new and undetermined excise tax on health insurance plans
codification of the “economic substance doctrine,” whereby businesses would not be able to engage in legal tax avoidance techniques without demonstrating a bona fide business purpose
delay of worldwide interest allocation, a baby step toward the full double-taxation of corporate profits earned overseas
the big one–a new “surtax” on the AGI of small businesses and other high income earners. Here’s the details:
1% on AGI of $350,000 to $500,000
1.5% on AGI of $500,000 to $1,000,000
5.4% on AGI of over $1,000,000
Those brackets are 50% if you’re Married Filing Separately, and 80% if you’re Single or Head of Household
This will result in a top rate of 45%, and a capital gains rate of over 25%. It’s more than that when you factor in that this surtax is NOT on taxable income, but on adjusted gross income (AGI). Factoring that plus state income tax in means that the top rate will exceed 50%, and the capital gains rate will exceed 30%.
And it actually gets a lot worse. Employers would also be mandated to provide health insurance under the bill, and the cost of health insurance would likely skyrocket because of new regulations called guaranteed issue and community rating. The only alternative, which many companies would either be forced into by cost considerations or choose for simplicity, would be to pay a payroll tax of as much as 8 percent. That’s on top of the existing 15.3 percent payroll tax for Social Security and Medicare, creating a new total payroll tax of 23.3 percent.

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