Obama’s Health Care Push

George The President had the worst performance ever. You actually understood any of that?
>>>>It was clear last night that the president fully knows his stuff on health care >>>>> How did you come away with that? He did not have a direct answer for any question. He rambled for an hour. He was unfocused and made it sound like there wasnt even a BILL written. Where is the transparency HE PROMISED? He lied about cost and now is talking about a middle class tax INCREASE to pay for this. He actually let that slip in his twisted answers. WHY isnt that a headline?

He knows what he’s doing? He didn’t answer a single question coherently. He talked alot yes, answered questions? NO

I don’t know how anyone would expect him to field every curve-ball on topics completely off the subject like “transparency.” It is really sad when that is the best that the opposition can do. I guess they really need to hang onto the premise that “Barack is Bad” no matter what. Come on people, listen hard to both sides and make up your own minds based on the substance of the argument. As a moderate it is so tiring having to listen to “one liners” and catch phrases that the AM talk show hosts use repeated over and over instead of good healthy debate on the issue. It is going to take both sides of the political spectrum to solve this and I am not really encouraged so far by what I am seeing from the right. They are just trying to kill this deal for political reasons: “the American people be damned” as long as they jockey a good position for the 2010 election.
Ron
Louisville, KY

I don’t have health care and I live in Michigan with one of the worst economic climates to date. Recently I had to have a CT scan. The Dr.’s office (which is part of a major hospital ‘chain’) offered me a cash discount of 40%. OH BOY! The cost for the test was $1065.00 with the 40% discount, seriously. I couldn’t afford this at all. I called my niece who is a medical assistant and she gave me the number of a radiology company in her building. I called them and for the same exact test it was $395. This is what is breaking the health care system. The costs are out of control. As an American citizen in a country as great as ours and the leader in the free world we should be offering health care to all. We need to find a way to fix this and I agree you can’t do it in 6 or 8 months. Congress doesn’t have a clue what the normal everyday person has to deal with. They have great health care, and a great pension. The President wants to fix this and we should all be supportive and want him to succeed. No matter who the President is.

The purpose of a news conference should be to tell about something urgent or tell America about a new incidents such as invading Iraq and bombing Libya. Everything President Obama said has already been heard at meetings, one-hour special news interviews, and in the evening national news. I felt that the 8 p.m. news conference did not accomplish anything useful. What he should have done is push for specific items of a bill or wait till both Houses have a bill close to a vote. Telling people that the Senate has not come up with a bill was incredible. I thought, “Why are you, Mr. President, wasting our time?” I believe the next prime time press conference that he has, I will skip.
A final question. I heard that he went to Kenya. Are we trying to repair America’s relationship with Kenya?

If a pregnant lady goes into the hospital with false labor pains, does she go home saying I guess I wasn’t pregnant after all? If Obama misses an August date for healthcare reform is that an excuse to scrap the whole thing? This is way too important for you and the other news commentators to slacken the hands of the workers. Who are you defending? Who are you speaking for? There is no competition with healthcare. It’s all funneled down from the same place. The insurance companies have held this country hostage. They each play by the same greedy rules. With high premiums ($925 per month for two), high annual deductibles ($5000 to 10,000 a year), 75/25, until you reach an ungodly set price, they don’t shell out a dime per year to care for your health. And what do you get for $17,100 per year? In 2007 we had the opportunity to find out. When there were claims submitted by the Providers, Unicare tries to wear you down by automatically denying the claims so that you have to go through appeal after appeal. They use terms like “out-of-network”, “unnecessary procedure”, “unauthorized approval”, “waiver” and “excess” all in an attempt to pass the cost over to you. A small example: If you call 911, don’t be surprised to learn the Ambulance service is “out-of-network”. Don’t be surprised to learn the pulmonary group that puts your loved one on life support is “out-of-network” even though you’re in an “in-network” hospital. In the meantime they decide to raise your premiums every 6 months in order to force you or your employer out. They put waivers on pre-existing conditions and make you pay more for having the gall for once being sick. The truth… EVERYONE is one health crisis away from financial ruination. Don’t believe for one moment Big Insurance Companies won’t do it to you. It’s a false sense of security to believe your health is insured by forking over your premiums on time. If you become ill, your only option is bankruptcy. If Obama’s public option plan forces these crooks out of business, I would not shed one tear. Unicare and the other fat-cats have broken the backs of this country far too long.

I think we mix up the issue of health care and insurance.
I also think as a citizen of this Republic, I have a right to pursue my own health care insurance, at my own level of coverage. I do not have a right to the insurance any more than I have a right to any other kind of insurance. I should not be taxed if I choose not to have coverage, nor should the person I choose to work for be taxed.
It seems to have escaped the notice of the “fair-sharers” and those feeling “entitled” to a free ride courtesy of the government that your income – and everyone’s income – is their property, not the government’s property. It is something that each of the taxpayers has earned, by work or investment, in the marketplace by producing things of value or providing services of value to other people. This makes earnings the property of the earner, not the gift or reward of the government, to be granted or withheld by the whim of the majority of the voters or their elected representatives at any level of government. Many people have apparently lost sight of what freedom means and how it is supposed to work. Perhaps those people also believe that our political rights are a gift of a benevolent government? They are not – they included in the Constitution. Remember that document?
Until 50-70 years ago, there was no health insurance. People paid for their health care from their own pockets. Charity was abundant for those who lacked. When someone died it was a tragedy but not a moral imperative that the government (ie, fellow citizens) should provide unlimited resources to provide for everyone’s health care. What has changed in the last 70 years that my health care is suddenly your business or that of my government? What has changed is people’s lack of personal responsibility.

So Congress gets to take vacation while most of Americans cant find a job Lets all remember this when we vote for Senators again

C Johnson | Jul 23, 2009 1:31:28 PM….I believe the majority of them (in both parties) need to be replaced.

Maybe the healthcare bill should include a provision that says “all Federal government employees coverage will be included with everyone elses”.

Jim says, “I think we mix up the issue of health care and insurance.”
Health care and insurance are intricately tied together. The Big Insurance Companies deny health care all the time.
For example: We were paying $925 per month in premiums. In 2007 my husband was admitted into the hospital for Cardiomyopathy. A virus had attacked and weakened his heart. After 9 days in the hospital, the tending Physicians wanted to release him into a rehab facility where he could be properly monitored. His heart only had a 15% ejection fraction. Unicare (Welpoint) refused saying it was “medically unnecessary”. The Rehab center refused to take my husband without insurance. I brought him home. Shortly after bringing him home his health took a turn for the worse. He was back into the hospital on life support after going into cardiac arrest due to the drug Coreg. Unicare has yet to pay for his second hospitalization ($171,168.96). It took over a year before we could force them to pay for the first hospitalization. At first they argued we didn’t have “preauthorization” to enter into the hospital. After the hospital proved they received “preauthorization” to admit my husband, Unicare argued that he had a waiver on “hypertension” so they would not pay. But my husband never had a waiver on a virus that attacked his heart. He never had a waiver on the drug Coreg that dropped his blood pressure so LOW he went into cardiac arrest. If he had been properly monitored at the Rehab Center the second hospitalization would not have occurred. Our bills are well over a half million dollars now.
This is a small sampling of what we are living through. There is so much more these crooks have done.
Now we had no choice but to enroll my husband in the state run Texas Risk Pool (thank God we happen to live in a State that has a Risk Pool), which is subsidized by hard working taxpayers. We were ‘responsible people’. We thought we were covered. We paid our dues every month. For years Unicare gladly took our money and then played around with my husbands’ life when he needed it. After he became ill, they kept increasing our premiums by hundreds of dollars every six months until we could no longer afford it.
Just wait until something happens to you or your loved one. If you think you are insulated from health and financial ruin by taking out a health insurance policy, think again. Now is the time!!! Obama needs to bring these crooks to their knees.

All these crooks need to be brought to their knees. The rich had it made for a long long time, now it is our turn.

Where in this turmoil is there a party that represents the interests of ordinary responsible working people? God knows it isn’t the Democrat demagogues, the passive Republicans or the elites of coporate greed.

greta, why should the rich pay? Because they worked hard? Such nonsence! You are probably rich to someone, how about you give them some of your money? Thought not!

Just to inform you that in the past several weeks I have contacted my Congressional representatives several times about the healthcare bill and received to response. I have also used Obama’s site, which is supposed to be a public input forum for his so called open government. Here to, even though I checked the box ‘response requested’ I have heard nothing. We are asked to express our opinions to our members of Congress and the president, but in an email earlier in the year to one of my members of Congress which addressed many issues, I received a reply that addressed not one thing I had written about.

Dear President Obama, please start working from the bottom! —
Health Care Solution… —-
Provide basic health care for all U.S. citizens… —-
Health care solutions —-
All citizens should have access to AFFORDABLE, or FREE,
basic medical care in order to reduce the development and
frequency of costly and avoidable problems. —-
Necessary Parts —-
a. Accessible facilities with certified staff. —-
b. No ability to sue. —-
c. No unnecessary tests. —-
Thank you, —-

My email to my representatives in Congress.
IF I RECEIVE NO OTHER SPECIFIC RESPONSE TO AN ISSUE, I WANT AN ANSWER TO WHY CONGRESS THINKS THEY ARE BETTER THAN WE ARE AND EXCLUDES THEMSELVES FROM THE PRESENT, AND ANY FINAL, VERSION OF A POSSIBLE HEALTHCARE BILL.
I have too many issues with H.R.3200 to even list them. Congress would too if they were to consider the bill knowing that they too are included and subject to all of the provisions. There is no possible way they would vote for it unless they have TOTALLY lost their minds. I listened to the interviews with Betsy McGaughey and checked some of her concerns in the bill. One provision is, if we leave our present plan we must find an equal one or go where the government chooses. This provision alone could lead to gradually taking current insurance companies out of the equation and leaving everyone except congress at big brothers mercy. How long would private insurance be able to stay in business? UNACCEPTABLE. Unless any national healthcare plan includes every member of Congress and the president when he leaves office, the restrictions on the rest of us are deplorable. Some of the provisions remind me of Hitler’s tactics. WHY IS CONGRESS EXCLUDING THEMSELVES? I WANT AN ANSWER TO THIS. I will support no national healthcare unless Congress is put into the same pot as the rest of us and all provisions apply to them too. If this is enacted as is and Ted Kennedy and I were both diagnosed with brain cancer, I am expendable but he can, unrestricted, get the best care and treatment available if that is what he desires. WHAT POSSIBLE JUSTIFICATION DO YOU HAVE FOR PUTTING CONGRESS ABOVE THE REST OF US? You are our employees and one way or another we are paying for your “Great Medical Care” (Obama quote). The costs of including illegals in the bill not only raises the cost, but lowers the treatment that the rest of us will get. They came here knowing full well that they could be sent back, but because our great government turned their back on laws regarding this, the rest of us and our families will have to pay for it for God knows how long. Congress passed 2 bailouts with little or no checks and balances or accountability, allows ‘bridges to nowhere’ to be tacked onto legitimate legislation and caves in to the lobbyists. I was not that happy with Mr. Bush, but much of what happened during his administration had it’s seeds planted decades ago and unfortunately for him all came to a head in his administration. Congress passes the legislation not the president. His sole powers are few. Iraq was not Pearl Harbor, there was ample time to look deeply into what was really going on over there, but Bush gets all of the blame. HEALTHCARE FOR THE SMALL PERCENTAGE OF LEGAL CITIZENS WHO ARE UNINSURED COULD MORE THAN BE TAKEN CARE OF BY REMOVING THE WASTE AND CORRUPTION IN OUR GOVERNMENT.
Neither I nor the big majority of my friends support what has been done so far, but we all understand why so many are for it. They have lost there jobs and health insurance or have never had insurance and are mainly looking at something to help them, but this plan in the long run is not the answer and they are not fully understanding what is in it. The people that I know who are in favor of it do not even want to listen to the details, they just want insurance. You can’t be listening to all of your constituents. The reported percentages of people for and against indicate more against than for. Thank God I will not be in this world much longer, but my family will and I am so sad at what we are leaving them. The country that I so dearly loved is no longer there for them.