Health Care Odds Top 75 percent: WH Happy (For Now)

It took them enough tries to whittle it down to this deficit neutral (actually deficit reducing) point. Now the real question is if they’ve thrown the baby out with the bath water. If there is nothing in their to address the lack of real competition in the health insurance market, then it is going to end up another corporate giveaway like the Republican’s prescription drug benefit.

This doesn’t square with the polls of American citizens who are actually happy with their own current health care (80%). Competition is good and market choices are good and this is what we have today; however, Obama is quoted as being in favor of a single payer system. Government takeover of health care is the ultimate aim of this administration – period. These are Obama’s words not mine. If this bill is the first step to get him there Obama is fine with that as long as it gets us to Government health care in his opinion.

The Republican Party will not support any initiatives from the Obama Administration. Why? Their duty to serve is greatly overshadowed by their contempt for the Administration and President Obama himself.
The racism in the GOP, particularly from the South, is so glaringly obvious.
How sad for a group of alleged adult professionals to ignore the needs of the populous. How about putting aside bias and self-serving attitudes, and thinking about our country for a change?

This will pass as long as there is nothing resembling a public option. Co-ops are the same thing. Funny the dems could have won this debate had they included tort reform in the package and probably been able to get a public option. Since this bill will do so little to reform the system, it should pass. Each side will claim victory while essentially accomplishing nothing. The dems protected the drug companies and the attorneys and the Republicans protected the insurance company. Nothing changed at all but at least we can now move on to the economy and the 2 wars.

As has been pointed out, this will do nothing to actually reduce the actual costs of health care or keep them from going up. Spreadng the costs out will still have the taxpayer carrying the costs of those who can’t or won’t pay for it. In a year people will see that except for the added costs of more government pocket-picking this was all much ado about nothing.

So how does this keep health costs down?
It does not. It adds people on the rolls
at the expense of everyone else. The
penalties and fees on the insurance
companies and drug companies will be
passed onto the consumer. They keep
saying that the republicans don’t add
any good suggestions. How about tort
reform and setting up the natural way
of competition thru opening up the
ability to shop for coverage ?? Its
quickly dismissed without any consideration. How this all has been
done is a disgrace and those in office
who go along with this trash will pay
the price in the next election.

unless it includes a viable public option it’s pretty meaningless.

justsane — The “public option” will NOT accomplish “competition”, just the opposite — So why do YOU think we need it????

Again they are jamming something down our throats for their own political reasons…won’t even let us read the bill…folks the dictators need to be thrown out of office now…they are not goood for you and me or the country

Who ever signs that bill had better be looking for work come 2010. It’ll be time to clean house. You heard it here first.

“The “Medical Device Tax” that would add 3 percent to the costs of most medical equipment, which will increase costs to US!!”
MidwestValues | Oct 8, 2009 11:02:23 AM
Sure, because the current ‘system’ of treating all the uninsured at hospital ERs is completely free to everyone involved, Right?

“We already pay more than the rest of the world for mediocre care– do you really think it’ll improve in cost or quality once the jokers in Washington have their way with it? Ignore the news– read your history and use common sense.”
h5mind | Oct 8, 2009 12:27:39 PM
Back in reality, every other first world nation has some form of government intervention in the health care market. On average, they are FAR CHEAPER. Their people spend less and LIVE LONGER. Their businesses do not have the burden of health care weighing on them.
But h5mind and the rest of the far right are too wrapped up in waving their “America is incompetent and corrupt” banner to accept reality. The US government can do as good (better in my opinion) a job of health care options as the French, or Swiss, or even Italians for goodness sake.
America is the most prosperous free nation the world has ever seen because of the government the Founding Fathers created, not in spite of it as the Right wing America haters are ranting.

midwest: we have competition and what has it gotten us? higher medical costs than any nation, and larger numbers of people without healthcare of any sort other than emergency rooms. emergency room care is far more expensive than any other form of treatment. so the public option allows us to treat everyone on the “front end”, through check-ups, preventative treatments, innoculations, etc. any kind of illness is easier and cheaper to treat if it’s caught early.

I agree; a Health bill seems very likely.
We could tell that the Dems thought they had the votes finally, for at least nonprofits, when 1) the senators came on the media to support it.
This impression was confirmed 2) when the rumor went out that the public option was back on the table. Looks like the Party feels the votes are solid for a weaker bill. And so, with small gains locked in, it decided to go back to try the harder deal again: plugging a stronger bill, with a public option.

There IS NO REFORM without a public option – period!

Below, is a reprint what is found in the health care reform bill. As you read this, keep in mind that some of these translations are a bit loose with the interpretations, but have been spot-checked, and they are indeed all contained in the bill in one form or another (shrouded in Doublespeak language, of course). This is 1,018 page bill so there is more that could have been missed. I find pages 29,30,42,50,59,84,95,124,127 disturbing well I find the entire bill disturbing.
• Page 16: States that if you have insurance at the time of the bill becoming law and change, you will be required to take a similar plan. If that is not available, you will be required to take the government option!
• Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!
• Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed!
• Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)
• Page 42: The “Health Choices Commissioner” will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.
• Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.
• Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.
• Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.
• Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (example: SEIU, UAW and ACORN)
• Page 72: All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules to participate in a Healthcare Exchange.
• Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)
• Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens
• Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan.
• Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter.
• Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No “judicial review” is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed.
• Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages.
• Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives

If this present bill passes and all proposed medicare cuts take place… You will see seniors just receiving morphine for heart attacks instead of a cardiac cath/coronary stent. Expect rationed care (i.e. waiting 6 -12 weeks for coronary bypass surgery) in patients lucky enough to get a cardiac cath. Expect delays in seeing specialists. Expect physcians to close private practices or retire early.

Marks: we do not have competition, because we are not free to buy health insurance across state lines. If the government were to allow insurance companies to compete across state lines, simple laws of supply and demand would lead to lower costs for all. Couple this with simple tort reform, and we can all get the insurance we want at affordable rates!

Is someone going to deal with Tort reform? It isn’t just the multimillion dollar judgments and the thousands and thousands of “sealed” settlements that add to the cost of care (with the vast majority of that money going to lawyers and not to victims), it is also the cost of “defensive” medicine that is practiced, double or triple the number and complexity of tests doctors order to cover their rear ends, “just in case”. Add that to the expensive new technology out there that does not improve health care outcomes, but can be used (at a very high price) to defend doctors and hospitals from lawsuits and the increase is not linear, but exponential. There is no health reform without tort reform, and these bills will not change that. America pays its health premiums to make a very few attorneys very rich.

The health care “reform” is itself an abortion. Get real…. we simply cannot afford what the left wants and there is no one on the right that anyone is listening to.
Independents see the folly… they threw out the Republicans for spending too much and failing to deliver on their promises; now we will throw out the Democrats.
We will keep stabbing at both parties until they are weak enough to allow a 3td party, or they are both so weak as to finally start listening to the people out here who are paying the bills… the middle class that gets stomped on from both the left and the right!
Want to control costs? …improve quality? …increase options? …get the bureaucrats, lawyers, politicians, labor and big business bosses out of they way?
Take all the money to be spent on healthcare AFTER this reform and give it to the CITIZENS to spend on healthcare. …WE should be picking the health coverage we want for our family. Not our employers, not the politicians or bureaucrats.
Simply do away with every law that prevents a competitive market forming in health insurance; setup a division of Health and Human Services to provide a list of acceptable plans based on objective criteria, then let us CONSUMERS at the task of evaluating, selecting and buying the insurance we want.
Worried about those who will refuse to act? …randomly pick a minimal plan for them from a list of providers offering the “minimum approved” health plan and send them a tax bill for that cost.
Worried about the poor? You are already paying for them through the emmergency rooms… they will receive a “refundable credit” under this plan which corresponds to the cost of the minimal plan. …so they can afford it, and as described above, they will be forced into an approved plan at random if they fail to act.
You know our employers are paying for the plan they “give” us with money we earned and they, with the help of the government, diverted from our pay check before the “salary” number was writen down on the W-2.
It is all a shell game… get our employers and the government to quit the deception… give us the money and let us decide which providers serve us best. In a year or two, real competition for our business will do the same magic competition did to cell phones, PCs, TVs, and cars (until the government started over regulating and then bailing out the auto industry.)
Power to the people! Give us the money we actually earned, and then let us spend it on what is important to us! …not what is important to our bosses or our politicians or some bureaucrat on the take!
plan for each at random and

George – seriously? Casting Rove’s comments as “Even Karl Rove seems to concede the case in this morning’s WSJ by pointing out how he thinks passing health care will hurt Democrats.” is a bit of a stretch even for you.
If you read his article, titled “The GOP Is Winning the Health-Care Debate Gallup says independents now favor Republicans by nine points.” I find it hard to see where he is conceding anything of the sort. But you are the spin master.