What Health Care Bill is the media talking about?

Posted By: Average American
Posted on: Nov. 9, 2009 at 6:01 PM

21 Comments

3.0 / 5

Based on 4 ratings.

Email Friend

Add to Favorites Add to del.icio.us

del.icio.us

Digg It!

Slashdot It!

I have to be honest here, I have spent much of today and last night watching coverage of the House Health Scare Bill and I have no idea what bill the news organizations are covering.

Here's the situation if you watch the news... ABORTION.

That appears to be the only angle that is being covered by the Main Stream News Organizations.

But abortion is a small problem with this bill (don't think I am discounting its importance here; hang with me for a minute).

This bill as written will cost this nation 1.2 trillion dollars over ten years that we don't have. And of course we all know how accurate the Federal Government is at projecting costs into the future of every other program they run... It will leave 25 million without insurance when that was what they were supposedly trying to solve. It will limit your ability to make choices for your own income, whether to buy insurance or not because there are fines associated with not being a number in this system. The GOP has other alternatives that appear to have been brushed off the table and never even considered including less government regulation of the system (something I would take over more government involvement any day).

When your goal is to cover 30-45 million people (something they still can't agree on) with insurance that do not have it, don't you think you should ask them why they don't have it instead of assuming it is the cost? I didn't have insurance until I got married and that was because we planned on having kids and considering how accident prone kids are, it seemed like the prudent thing to do. But as a healthy single male, I was not interested in coverage because I had other things to "FREEly" spend my money on. (Free being the optimal word in that sentence, as in freedom)

And if full coverage of the population is your stated goal and you leave a majority of those targeted people still without coverage then why perform this exercise in mental masturbation to begin with? Is it really because the great Evolver in Chief, Obama, said he wanted it by year's end? Well big freaking deal, he wanted the soldiers out of Iraq by then too once upon a time so defeat is something he is not completely unfamiliar with.

I am just absolutely amazed that considering all the problems with the bill, the largest of those being that we ever attempted this idiotic concept of a government take over of 16% of the US economy in the first place, that it would be only the issue of federal funding of abortion that is now being touted as the major issue with this thing.

The long term side effects or as you all know I love to call them "UNINTENDED CIRCUMSTANCES" are off the chart. From the rationing of care which no matter how many times it is denied by the left has shown to be a fundamental and necessary shortcoming to making a system like this work even for the short term, to the long term issues of doctors who do, believe it or not, enter medicine both to help people and to make a lot of money. If I know I am entering a market that potentially has the as part of its eventual plan to limit my income, why on earth would I invest years of my time and amass huge debt in the form of student loans if there is the very real prospect of not being able to pay them back in a timely manner? And when that happens and it will, the rationing will happen even if it is not visible at the start.

Add to that the fact that government funded research has accounted for only 4% of all medical innovation in the last 100 years; who exactly is going to want to get in the R&D game knowing there is jack crap for return on any investment because Uncle Obama or some Czar will set the return on my investment; as if I am living high on the hog with my pathetic 2.2% ROI I enjoy now?

So we can now thank this Congress that we are looking down the barrel of an impotent bill that promises to not cover all those that they stated they would, will produce massive rationing of care, will discourage our best and brightest from investing in their own futures because they may not have one. We can say good bye to innovative drugs and techniques to lengthen our lives and the best part of the whole shebang is that we now get to explore that region below the lint in our pockets to find the money to finance this monstrosity.

That's right folks, on top of everything else the free health care isn't going to even be close to free. God help you if you have worked your butt off for the last 20 years to enjoy an income even slightly higher than the average American because in Washington's finance lottery you have just been chosen to put the bill for most of this mess.

It seems that if you make over $300,000 a year you get to enjoy not only paying for your own insurance but everyone else's as well. What's that; $300,000 is not "slightly" more than the average American makes? Well that's true, which is why those poor bastards who still can't afford this insurance will get to pay massive fines to teach them a lesson, not to mention the cost of health care over all will likely increase on every family in America. Of course it will be a proportional increase depending on your income. Pay no attention to the campaign promises of no tax increases for people making less than $250,000 a year, these are shared costs, co-pays and accessibility costs, not taxes specifically so Obama is holding true to his promise. SPIT.

But is appears that it is only the funding for abortion that tripped up any of those fine educated masters of industry that we elected to represent us. CNN, MSNBC and even my beloved FOX seem to be focusing on it as the only major issue that needs to be overcome to offer America the 21st equivalent of European health care.

And yet even with the focus on that part of the issue, Barbara Boxer today said that that is the hill she is willing to die on so that women are not "singled out" as a group. Well Ma'am (you know how she loves that word considering how "hard I worked for this position") you may just be the one person who derails this entire thing because of your liberal activism on behalf of women everywhere who don't care about abortion to begin with. You go ahead and strive for the golden ring, Abortion on demand on the tax payer’s dime, and maybe, just maybe, enough of your own party will sharpen their pitch forks and storm the walls of your gated community in hopes of getting reelected in 2010 and hand you a major loss.

Pelosi has obviously come to terms with her pending defeat in 2012 as I suspect Harry Reid is now searching his soul for some snippet of consolation for his own defeat at the hands of Nevada voters who really don't need another reason to hate his representation of us.

Of all the stupid ideas I have ever heard, abortion funding being the major issue has to be the most stupid. It is as big an issue as every other point I made in this article, and while it may weigh heavier on the hearts of some, it is not the sole problem with it.

But what would I know; I'm just an Average American.

Tags: Obama sucks.

Click here to view more articles by Average American

Rate This Article | Create Account

Anonymous commenting has been disabled, you must login to comment on articles.

Signup for an account

Comments:

1 2 3 Next »

adam

Nov. 10, 2009 at 09:08:47 AM

View Profile

Abortion funding is the DISTRACTION....

It distracts people from the sucking sound of tax payer dollars going to GUARANTEE that this broken health care, broken by HMO and by HIPAA,

You know Health Maintenance Organizations and
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

Let's face it, the primary Organization tool from HMO's is how to separate fools from their money at the beheast of GOVERNMENT....and deny them MEDICAL COVERAGE....

and Health Insurace Portability?

And Accountability?

These are the FUNDAMENTAL REASONS health care reform is needed, GOVERNMENT ALREADY screw it up in favor of the CORPORATISTS....

If ANYONE out there thinks adding two thousand pages of exceptions and deviations to our current crisis pile of SAME OLD s*** is going to SIMPLIFY things.......then they TRUELY have not learned from Corporatisms history.....

This "INSURANCE" only insures MORE of the SAME OLD s*** Corporatism, that is the CAUSE of the PROBLEM...

link:[www.informationclearinghouse.info]

Report Abuse

nic

Nov. 10, 2009 at 11:53:50 AM

View Profile

Wow, still buying into all that teabaggery.

Didn't see the CBO scoring?

Oh that's right, you're with that crowd that is hell bent in blindly stopping anything this administration might do that would get them re-ELECTED in 2012. Now that's civics 2009 for ya kiddies!

Thought you were smarter.

Report Abuse

adam

Nov. 10, 2009 at 11:59:15 AM

View Profile

[This is a reply to comment by nic on Nov. 10, 2009 at 11:53:50 AM]

nic
Nov. 10, 2009 at 11:53:50 AM

Wow, still buying into all that teabaggery.
Didn't see the CBO scoring?
Oh that's right, you're with that crowd that is hell bent in blindly stopping anything this administration might do that would get them re-ELECTED in 2012. Now...

View this Comment

That's alright nic,

I KNOW you are NOT smarter......

Published on Monday, November 9, 2009 by Huffington Post

Is the House Health Care Bill Better than Nothing?

by Marcia Angell

Well, the House health reform bill -- known to Republicans as the Government Takeover -- finally passed after one of Congress's longer, less enlightening debates. Two stalwarts of the single-payer movement split their votes; John Conyers voted for it; Dennis Kucinich against. Kucinich was right.

Conservative rhetoric notwithstanding, the House bill is not a "government takeover." I wish it were. Instead, it enshrines and subsidizes the "takeover" by the investor-owned insurance industry that occurred after the failure of the Clinton reform effort in 1994. To be sure, the bill has a few good provisions (expansion of Medicaid, for example), but they are marginal. It also provides for some regulation of the industry (no denial of coverage because of pre-existing conditions, for example), but since it doesn't regulate premiums, the industry can respond to any regulation that threatens its profits by simply raising its rates. The bill also does very little to curb the perverse incentives that lead doctors to over-treat the well-insured. And quite apart from its content, the bill is so complicated and convoluted that it would take a staggering apparatus to administer it and try to enforce its regulations.

What does the insurance industry get out of it? Tens of millions of new customers, courtesy of the mandate and taxpayer subsidies. And not just any kind of customer, but the youngest, healthiest customers -- those least likely to use their insurance. The bill permits insurers to charge twice as much for older people as for younger ones. So older under-65's will be more likely to go without insurance, even if they have to pay fines. That's OK with the industry, since these would be among their sickest customers. (Shouldn't age be considered a pre-existing condition?)

Insurers also won't have to cover those younger people most likely to get sick, because they will tend to use the public option (which is not an "option" at all, but a program projected to cover only 6 million uninsured Americans). So instead of the public option providing competition for the insurance industry, as originally envisioned, it's been turned into a dumping ground for a small number of people whom private insurers would rather not have to cover anyway.

If a similar bill emerges from the Senate and the reconciliation process, and is ultimately passed, what will happen?

First, health costs will continue to skyrocket, even faster than they are now, as taxpayer dollars are pumped into the private sector. The response of payers -- government and employers -- will be to shrink benefits and increase deductibles and co-payments. Yes, more people will have insurance, but it will cover less and less, and be more expensive to use.

But, you say, the Congressional Budget Office has said the House bill will be a little better than budget-neutral over ten years. That may be, although the assumptions are arguable. Note, though, that the CBO is not concerned with total health costs, only with costs to the government. And it is particularly concerned with Medicare, the biggest contributor to federal deficits. The House bill would take money out of Medicare, and divert it to the private sector and, to some extent, to Medicaid. The remaining costs of the legislation would be paid for by taxes on the wealthy. But although the bill might pay for itself, it does nothing to solve the problem of runaway inflation in the system as a whole. It's a shell game in which money is moved from one part of our fragmented system to another.

Here is my program for real reform:

Recommendation #1: Drop the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 55. This should be an expansion of traditional Medicare, not a new program. Gradually, over several years, drop the age decade by decade, until everyone is covered by Medicare. Costs: Obviously, this would increase Medicare costs, but it would help decrease costs to the health system as a whole, because Medicare is so much more efficient (overhead of about 3% vs. 20% for private insurance). And it's a better program, because it ensures that everyone has access to a uniform package of benefits.

Recommendation #2: Increase Medicare fees for primary care doctors and reduce them for procedure-oriented specialists. Specialists such as cardiologists and gastroenterologists are now excessively rewarded for doing tests and procedures, many of which, in the opinion of experts, are not medically indicated. Not surprisingly, we have too many specialists, and they perform too many tests and procedures. Costs: This would greatly reduce costs to Medicare, and the reform would almost certainly be adopted throughout the wider health system.

Recommendation #3: Medicare should monitor doctors' practice patterns for evidence of excess, and gradually reduce fees of doctors who habitually order significantly more tests and procedures than the average for the specialty. Costs: Again, this would greatly reduce costs, and probably be widely adopted.

Recommendation #4: Provide generous subsidies to medical students entering primary care, with higher subsidies for those who practice in underserved areas of the country for at least two years. Costs: This initial, rather modest investment in ending our shortage of primary care doctors would have long-term benefits, in terms of both costs and quality of care.

Recommendation #5: Repeal the provision of the Medicare drug benefit that prohibits Medicare from negotiating with drug companies for lower prices. (The House bill calls for this.) That prohibition has been a bonanza for the pharmaceutical industry. For negotiations to be meaningful, there must be a list (formulary) of drugs deemed cost-effective. This is how the Veterans Affairs System obtains some of the lowest drug prices of any insurer in the country. Costs: If Medicare paid the same prices as the Veterans Affairs System, its expenditures on brand-name drugs would be a small fraction of what they are now.

Is the House bill better than nothing? I don't think so. It simply throws more money into a dysfunctional and unsustainable system, with only a few improvements at the edges, and it augments the central role of the investor-owned insurance industry. The danger is that as costs continue to rise and coverage becomes less comprehensive, people will conclude that we've tried health reform and it didn't work. But the real problem will be that we didn't really try it. I would rather see us do nothing now, and have a better chance of trying again later and then doing it right.

Marcia Angell, M. D., is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She stepped down as Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine on June 30, 2000.

Read more at: link:[www.huffingtonpost.com]

Report Abuse

adam

Nov. 10, 2009 at 12:01:13 PM

View Profile

Why I Voted NO

By Dennis Kucinich

November 08, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money not providing health care. We cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem. When health insurance companies deny care or raise premiums, co-pays and deductibles they are simply trying to make a profit. That is our system.

Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. They are driving up the cost of health care. Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills. The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%. It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care. Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when you get sick.

But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care. In H.R. 3962, the government is requiring at least 21 million Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that causes costs to be so high, which will result in at least $70 billion in new annual revenue, much of which is coming from taxpayers. This inevitably will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance companies - a bailout under a blue cross.

By incurring only a new requirement to cover pre-existing conditions, a weakened public option, and a few other important but limited concessions, the health insurance companies are getting quite a deal. The Center for American Progress' blog, Think Progress, states, 'since the President signaled that he is backing away from the public option, health insurance stocks have been on the rise.' Similarly, healthcare stocks rallied when Senator Max Baucus introduced a bill without a public option. Bloomberg reports that Curtis Lane, a prominent health industry investor, predicted a few weeks ago that 'money will start flowing in again' to health insurance stocks after passage of the legislation. Investors.com last month reported that pharmacy benefit managers share prices are hitting all-time highs, with the only industry worry that the Administration would reverse its decision not to negotiate Medicare Part D drug prices, leaving in place a Bush Administration policy.

During the debate, when the interests of insurance companies would have been effectively challenged, that challenge was turned back. The 'robust public option' which would have offered a modicum of competition to a monopolistic industry was whittled down from an initial potential enrollment of 129 million Americans to 6 million. An amendment which would have protected the rights of states to pursue single-payer health care was stripped from the bill at the request of the Administration. Looking ahead, we cringe at the prospect of even greater favors for insurance companies.

Recent rises in unemployment indicate a widening separation between the finance economy and the real economy. The finance economy considers the health of Wall Street, rising corporate profits, and banks' hoarding of cash, much of it from taxpayers, as sign of an economic recovery. However in the real economy - in which most Americans live - the recession is not over. Rising unemployment, business failures, bankruptcies and foreclosures are still hammering Main Street.

This health care bill continues the redistribution of wealth to Wall Street at the expense of America's manufacturing and service economies which suffer from costs other countries do not have to bear, especially the cost of health care. America continues to stand out among all industrialized nations for its privatized health care system. As a result, we are less competitive in steel, automotive, aerospace and shipping while other countries subsidize their exports in these areas through socializing the cost of health care.

Notwithstanding the fate of H.R. 3962, America will someday come to recognize the broad social and economic benefits of a not-for-profit, single-payer health care system, which is good for the American people and good for America's businesses, with of course the notable exceptions being insurance and pharmaceuticals.

Then again, nic,

YOU only oppose Trickle Down Economics when Red TEAMers do it, YOU LOVE IT when YOUR TEAM does it....

Report Abuse

adam

Nov. 10, 2009 at 12:40:47 PM

View Profile

[This is a reply to comment by nic on Nov. 10, 2009 at 11:53:50 AM]

I would ACTUALLY LOVE to see them enact REAL reform in Health Care, but even Dennis knows this is just MORE OF THE SAME OLD s*** that CAUSED the Problem....

AGAIN, you are ONLY interested in winning the Red TEAM/Blue TEAM game....

You are WILLING to sacrafice EVERYTHING to win the game......
including accepting defeat of the goals to claim victory in the 'game'.....

You still fail to see EXACTLY what Larry Summers and Tim Geithner did to help facilitate the BIGGEST BANK HEIST IN HISTORY.....

that you will fail to see what Obama and DeParle have done to facility the biggest INSURANCE scam in history....

Let's hope old Aunt Maude doesnt REALLY need a ventalator or REAL health care....
She WILL have the DeParle/Obama INSURANCE....

Report Abuse

Average American

Nov. 10, 2009 at 09:55:32 PM

View Profile

[This is a reply to comment by nic on Nov. 10, 2009 at 11:53:50 AM]

You trust the CBO scoring of a bill that is miles away from it's final draft. What a fool to believe the government can guess at any costs right considering their stellar track record so far.

Report Abuse

AZRWinger

Nov. 11, 2009 at 04:47:08 AM

View Profile

[This is a reply to comment by nic on Nov. 10, 2009 at 11:53:50 AM]

The CBO scoring for this bill is like ODummy's jobs "saved" number, no basis in reality. The CBO analysis assumes a 20% cut in provider payments, extracting $400 billion from Medicare, transfers billions in cost to the states in the form of an unfunded mandate, and calculates benefits on a 10-year basis even though the bill delivers benefits for only 6. The CBO analysis doesn't include the drag on the economy caused by the higher premiums this bill mandates.

It is amusing how Progryssves tout "expert" advice as unimpeachable when it supports their political agenda all the while claiming to be driven by rational analysis.

Report Abuse

nic

Nov. 11, 2009 at 06:30:44 AM

View Profile

[This is a reply to comment by Average American on Nov. 10, 2009 at 09:55:32 PM]

Average American
Nov. 10, 2009 at 09:55:32 PM

You trust the CBO scoring of a bill that is miles away from it's final draft. What a fool to believe the government can guess at any costs right considering their stellar track record so...

View this Comment

No, it is YOU that said you believe CBO reports.

Want me to dig up your post that says so?