Oh the irony, if not for conservatives we'd have a public option and even perhaps a single payer system in this country. If the Republicans can win back the House they can continue working on that non-existent health reform plan they've had for the last 30 years. The one they've been vigorously perfecting under Reagan, Newt, and the Bush family leadership. I swear you guys have completely lost touch with the regular person in this country and what he faces on a day to day basis. Your platform consists of Joe the Plumber/Sarah Palin lies, paranoid talk radio rhetoric, and Faux News propaganda. It's really disturbing the effect that you are having on government and leadership in this country. No longer do the facts matter, just the smears and the lies that you perfect through your mediums to the public.
From Salon -- Fact-checking the GOP on healthcare reform Senate Dems adopted 161 amendments and key GOP planks while soft-pedaling the public option. That's not compromise? from the WaPo The six Republican ideas already in the health-care reform bill But one good way is to look at the GOP's "Solutions for America" homepage, which lays out its health-care plan in some detail. It has four planks. All of them -- yes, you read that right -- are in the Senate health-care bill.
That's irrelevant. You and I both know that Republicans only consider it a true compromise if the bill contains everything they want and nothing that they don't want.
Average out the cost of health insurance over the course of a person's life, not per month. The question comes down to who do you trust more? The insurance companies or the government. Either way. x dollars leaves your pocket over your lifetime. Currently, you have medicare, insurance premiums and SS deducted from your paycheck. Also, you pay your own deductibles. So over a lifetime in the current system, there is a finite number figure that you are paying into the current system. There is a gambling component to this. Suppose the average person spends $1 million on healthcare over a lifetime (I have no idea the real figure but it would be interesting to know). That's the AVERAGE. Which means you have a 50/50 shot of staying under the average. In your system, you are risking that if over the course of your lifetime you stay under that average, then you win the bet. Unfortunately, this system doesn't take into consideration of how to cover the cost for the other 50% ...as if there is no correlation of their cost to yours.
"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Major again." major is regulating in a couple of threads the last few days. keep up the good work, love the info.
I agree and if the Democrats fail to pass healthcare reform this Congress the blame is rightfully on them. A 60 vote majority in the Senate is a very rare thing and to have had one and failed to pass one of their main legislative priorities speaks to how dysfunctional the Democracts have been. I can't agree with this given the Republicans track record. In the last twenty years the Republicans have had signifigant majorities and also a Republican president but have made few attempts to reform health care outside of the Medicare drug reform. One that was resisted by many Republicans and passed with Democrat help. I think that any talk of Republicans seriously working on health care reform is empty rhetoric when given what they have done in the past.
I'm disappointed but I wouldn't call it dysfunctional. there are mistakes, starting with the whitehouse not setting priorities, but what healthcare showed is that the democrats are a party of multiple ideas. very liberal to very moderate.
Again you attempt to derail my point by drawing the comparison between auto and health insurance when both are two completely different policies and structured differently. The mandatory part in auto is LIABILITY which is designed to cover damages and injuries done to others. A health policy only affects the holder thus one should have the right to choose if they want to have a policy or not. In auto that is not an option because you affect other motorist with your actions. I never said healthy people would go unhealthy once they pay into the system. You know it very well that an insurance pool cannot work without healthy people who pay more and receive less. Today, a young, healthy person who wishes not to purchase a health policy does it because he doesn't want to subsidize someone else's benefits costs. that CHOICE is very important to him and a government mandate forces one to pay into something they would otherwise not choose to participate in. Again once you are FORCED to pay for something then you are going to look for something in return regardless of whether you are in excellent health. This is the same parallel as the wealthy drawing from Social Security even though they have no need for it. Why? Because they feel entitled to something in return after being forced to pay into the system for the better part of their life. The fact is that any government mandated system always requires one portion of the participants to pay for benefits they are never expected to receive. This dislocation of resources results in the breakdown of the entire model such as with SS where a safety net became a retirement cashout program. My bottom line is, leave it up to the people to decide whether they want to purchase a policy or not because a mandate only creates the sense of entitlement not an investment against a risk which health insurance should be in the first place. You buy insurance because you want to protect yourself against a future risk and not because you feel obligated to help evenly distribute the cost of the benefits. It's an insurance not your local Costco.
What did you mean when you said healthy people would start using the system to their benefit once they were forced into it? Well, that or he can't afford the amount it costs for the relatively low chance that he has a major medical problem. Very few people choose to not have health insurance - the vast majority want it but can't afford it. We saw that in Massachusetts where they have very small penalties for not signing up and yet basically everyone did. Except your lack of healthcare means everyone else has to subside your health care costs when you have a major problem and get emergency care that you can't pay for. A part of the cost of medical procedures that providers charge insurers in the US is to cover the cost of all the non-payments from the uninsured. So your decision not to have insurance does have costs to the rest of society - making it not just your decision because the insured subsidize the medical care of the uninsured.
LOL, what are you going to do if you're healthy and you have insurance and you want to "get back at the unhealthy" that's like arguing that a good driver will get into an accident on purpose people actually drive carefully to avoid their car insurance from going up, even though they have to share the road with hazardous drivers. edit: i do agree that the car insurance is mandated for other people's protection, still your above comment is a bit silly
Completely wrong. The uninsured costs everyone more. Where do they go when they need care? The emergency room where care costs more and more bills go unpaid. They don't have insurance so if they need an MRI or god forbid they sprain an ankle or break a bone there's a $5,000 bill. Most people don't have an extra $5k laying around so they don't pay the bill or declare bankruptcy. I don't think I need to remind everyone that healthcare bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy. The hospitals can't just keep giving out free care so they raise rates on services to make up the difference. They raise rates the insurance companies raise rates as well which ends up effecting all of us.
A really good OpEd in today's WaPo from Kathleen Sebelius on republican proposals already included in the healthcare bill. On bipartisan health care, a foundation for agreement That's why we think Republicans should find a lot to like in the proposal President Obama released on Monday. It contains several ideas taken directly from Republican bills, such as letting people save on their premiums if they participate in proven employer wellness programs, a proposal supported by Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.). Or giving states grants to evaluate medical liability models that can improve patient safety, reduce medical errors and bring down liability premiums, similar to a proposal Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) has supported. We know Republicans will support the measures to prevent health-care fraud, such as new background checks for Medicare suppliers and real-time reviews of claims, because they're the ones who wrote them. ad_icon The president's proposal also contains insurance reforms that Republicans have supported for years. For example, it would eliminate caps on benefits, a step that has been supported by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.). Republicans including Sens. Tom Coburn (Okla.) and Richard Burr (N.C.) have backed one of the proposal's key elements: state-based, health insurance marketplaces where families will be able to easily compare insurance policies to find the one that's best for them. The president's proposal would also ban discrimination based on preexisting conditions, a change that Coburn and Burr pushed for insurance plans in these new marketplaces. To help families afford these plans, the Obama proposal contains tax credits for middle-class families -- an expanded version of a policy that has been advocated by Enzi. It embraces the pooled purchasing options for small businesses championed by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine). It will allow Americans to buy insurance across state lines, a favorite idea of Republican House members including Paul Ryan (Wis.) and Mark Kirk (Ill.), while preserving consumer protections. And to provide immediate security for uninsured Americans who have preexisting conditions, the president's proposal creates a temporary high-risk insurance pool. That idea was proposed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during the 2008 presidential campaign and is now supported by leading Republicans such as House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio).
I am incredibly disappointed with the Senate Democratic leadership, but when your 60 vote "super" majority consists of guys like Lieberman who is not even a democrat and openly campaigns against them - it's kind of an exaggeration to even call it one.
