Comparing Health Reform Bills: Democrats and Republicans 2009, Republicans 1993

Fascinated stuff man. I can't believe the media never brought this up. I've followed everything really closely over the last year and I never realized that Republicans proposed a bill that was that similar to the Democrats plan in 09. I was only 6 in 1993.

 

whoops i meant fascinating stuff. i'm kind of out've it. Another thing; it's a damn shame that the CBO did not analyze the Republican bill in 1993. I haven't been able to find who would have qualified for subsidies in the Republican bill as well as the size of the subsidies.

 

Republicans have moved far right from 1993. I'd say they've even moved away from the McCain plan during the campaign which featured a $5,000 tax credit to allow families to afford health coverage.

 

Compare the cost of healthcare circa 1993 to 2010.

 

And you don't think a big part of the rise in costs is due to not passing some type of reform in 1993 or earlier? If we didn't pass something now, prices would just continue to rise and in another 17 years when nobody can afford insurance, it would be even worse.

 

So Obama's not a Nazi, just a........Time Traveling Republican

 

What causes medical inflation?

 

Insurance companies with monopolies, that can drop people when they actually get sick, and the companies can place yearly and lifetime caps.

 

giddy, is that really all you have to say? Your own party in 1993 offered an alternative to the Clinton healthcare plan that varies little, in the main, from the Obama plan of today. Yet your own party has had an extreme reaction to the Obama plan. You see nothing hypocritical about that? You see nothing hypocritical, and dishonest, about your party's attempt to ignore that little bit of history that is on the public record? The bizarre spectacle the Republican Party has gone to such lengths to produce assaulting the Obama plan, while their own plan in 1993 was astonishiingly similar, has had no impact on you other than to say, "Compare the cost of healthcare circa 1993 to 2010?" With all due respect, that is completely nonsensical. It makes no sense. A better question, an obvious question for you to ask would be what the cost of healthcare now might be if your own party's plan in 1993 had been adopted. How much suffering endured by tens of millions of Americans might have been ameliorated if it had been made the law of the land back then. How many tens of billions of dollars might have been saved. One could go on, yet that is all you can say? And you expect to be taken seriously?

 

I'm in favor of healthcare reform. I have a 23 YO daughter with a congenital but corrected heart defects. She can buy NO private insurance of any sort.

The simplistic criticism is that if it was desirable in 1993, why not now? I assert it is the cost and who can ever forget those starter home analogies offered by Obama... so there is a political angle coming from both sides.

This is a very complex problem. I can assure you that removing caps and eliminating preX and outright declines is not going to reduce the cost of healthcare.

Greater participation (mandatory or not) will offset. Who can really do that math?

Neil Boortz said that when Medicare was passed in 1965, the projected cost 25 years out would be $9 Billion-- instead it was $100 Billion plus.

 

He could be both (?)... if his time travel is strong.

 

Where is the monopoly? If companies want to exit the market, can you make them stay?

How is a company supposed to price an open-ended product? Does a ticket to a Rocket game cost the same as a partial season package or a full season package?

Legally, individuals can't be dropped when the get sick. Yes, the insurance companies do unethical things to discourage and frustrate them. A gal in Colorado, I think, won a $37 Million judgment against a carrier that tried to drop her for a non-disclosed but unrelated health issue on her recent application for coverage. The tried to deny her catastropic claim that was due to an accident by trying to invalidate her application over a trivial detail. It cost them a $37 Million judgment.

 

freedom to exit the market isn't what makes a monopoly. Insurance companies do it all the time. I'm glad someone won a suit. That hadn't changed the practice. We also have limits and caps on coverage etc.

 

How do you price it fairly without limits? There are a few unlimited plans but they are also the pricier ones.

What insurance company has a monopoly? Name one.

 

Hospitals dont help either though. Not sure if you've ever looked at or dealt with hospital billing, but they literally make up a number and insurance companies end up fighting with them to negotiate a lower price. There's no basis by which anyone can define what some of this stuff costs. Hell a pair of crutches from a hospital will cost you 10 times what CVS will charge you. (and that's after the insurance company argued to lower the price)

 

So you what you are pretty much saying is that since health care costs are greater now than in 1993 its better we do even less than what was proposed in 1993 to address the healthcare crisis.

 

All I'm saying is that it perhaps explains a reluctance to just burden the government with it. What has the government been good with when it comes to controlling costs? I'm explaining the why not the because...