Dems Agree to Drop Government-Run Insurance Option

Agreed. Thankfully, we have only had to use our insurance for the normal (kids get sick, need a skin tag removed, physicals, strep throat) things, I can't imagine having to fight with the insurance company while either I or a member of my family is fighting for their life.

 

Just anecdotally. I work in engineering and I'm in Canada often on business (including in Calgary right now). For retailers and consumer-based companies, the US seems to have a far, far higher percentage of independent businesses. On the other hand, when we hire contract engineers in the US, we go through staffing firms that pay the corporate income taxes and for their benefits. When we hire contract engineers in Canada, they typically set up their own business, pay for their own benefits and corporate taxes. A couple of Canadian contractors tried to do the same in the US, but the corporate taxes were too high to justify it. (They didn't say anything about health insurance, but I think they can get pretty cheap travelers-type health insurance.)

 

Let the Repubs keeps obstructing. I heard a poll on spanish TV that 86% of Hispanics support Obama on the health care issue. The poor Repubs will be down to just the miseducated (though often college grad) libertarians and the rural South/Appalachia if they keep this up.

Too bad the Dems don't just blow off the Blue Dogs and pass a good bill with 50 votes. That would make the Repubs toast for a generation.

 

You get TV channels from Spain?

I heard on Mexican TV that 100% of illegal aliens support free health care in America.

 

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Get with it Shovel Face!

Per our newest Supreme Court member, Ms Sotomayor, the new term is "undocumented immigrant."

 

I don't see how any of what you posted shows that Reid is lying in regard to the statement that you accused him of lying about.

[rquoter]I asked Senators Schumer and Pryor to work with some of the most moderate and most progressive members of our diverse caucus, and tonight they have come to a consensus.

It is a consensus that includes a public option and will help ensure the American people win in two ways: one, insurance companies will face more competition, and two, the American people will have more choices.

I know not all 10 Senators in the room agree on every single detail of this, nor will all 60 members of my caucus. But I know we all appreciate the hard work that these progressives and moderates have done to move this historic debate forward.

I want to thank Senators Schumer, Pryor, Brown, Carper, Feingold, Harkin, Landrieu, Lincoln, Nelson and Rockefeller for working together for the greater good and never losing sight of our shared goal: making it possible for every American to afford to live a healthy life.

As is long-standing practice, we do not disclose details of any proposal before the Congressional Budget Office has a chance to evaluate it. We will wait for that to happen, but in the meantime, tonight we are confident." [/rquoter]

 

Because they couldn't stop a filibuster with 50 votes.

 

She also used the term "undocumented worker". I guess a "undocumented immigrant" is a "undocumented worker" without a job.

 

I fully agree with this part of your sentiments. Sometimes I play the devil's advocate because I do not fear the insults incurred if getting at the truth is enhanced. Whereas I am apprehensive over a public option or it's cousin Trigger (for example, loss of control to the government by the citizenry and the millions of insurance jobs lost which further damages the economy), I am distressed that the insurance companies now gets the pudding and the public gets an empty plate if the Medicare age is lowered to 55.

In other words, with the lowered age requirement, the insurance companies cherry pick the best insurance risks while the government pays for even more senior citizens (like me) -- the very population segment requiring the most care and the most expensive care. I was, and still am, hopeful that we can pass meaningful, stricter regulations on the insurance industry so they are unable to abuse private citizens in all the ways enumerated.

I am very much for health care reform, but I still believe the only way to achieve it is through spreading the risk (the original concept of insurance) so that each breathing person pays the same whether that person is an infant or a centenarian -- with no boons or bains for gender or pre-existing conditions.

Northside Storm, that is why I agree with your sentiments. I wish both Democrats and Republicans would quit trying to gore each other and finally realize that the horns they are using belong to the same ox -- and that the bleeding left and right sides of that ox is us.

 

While there may be other ways for the industry to pick and choose, the most common ways of deflecting risk - preexisting conditions and denying care based on that type of stuff - is not allowed in either bill. I agree that cherry-picking the "best" clients is a major problem, but I'm not sure if insurers will be able to do that going forward.

 

look i am completely in favor of subsidizing healthcare for the economic/health disadvantaged. but essentially this raises rates on healthy young people. with an undisclosed amount of that going to insurance companies.

this whole notion of mandating that they cover pre-existing conditions, dont raise premiums for women, etc., means now health insurance companies can double my rate, WITH the cover that they have to do this due to this legislation.

I COMPLETELY support this, if there are checks and balances, e.g. someone is running it that i trust somewhat. e.g. the government. but when its private companies....thanks.

while its undebatable that covering 30ish million of the 50 million uncovered right now is great, the fact is that regardless of whether we get a neutered immpotent public option, or just subsidies, the health insurance companies win.

democrats cater to the right. republicans cater to the right. the norms of western civilized society get sacrificed.

 

I'm not defending the bill because we really don't know the details, but on CNBC, they said there were pretty strict regulations on the insurers, including a requirement that 90% of premiums go to health coverage (10% for administrative and profits). So there are a lot of moving parts here that impact different pieces of this directly - we'll have to see what the final bill looks like.

Howard Dean has pretty much been a hardcore public option guy in this debate. Here's his comments on this:


"It opens up Medicare and gives people a real choice," he said. "And secondly it does something that should have been done the whole way along: instead of creating a new bureaucracy it just uses the one we already have."

And while the public option for insurance coverage seemed, essentially, dropped from the legislative language, Dean had a positive take on the Senate's alternative approach.

"I'm not a fan of the private market, as you know. However, the private market does work in two countries, Switzerland and the Netherlands, and the way it works is by substantial regulation... If, in fact, this is basically going to be run as if it were the federally employee benefit plan, than this can work. The [Office of Personnel Management] knows how to run this plan and I've almost never heard anything bad of the federal employee benefit program."

"There doesn't have to be a public option in the bill because I'm some sort of ideological socialist," he said of his support for a government-run insurance provider. "There had to be a public option because the private sector doesn't work. And if they can make it work [without a public option], then let's see."


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/09/dean-senate-bill-real-ref_n_385543.html

 

We're some of the "few" relatively happy with our insurance that have had far too many reasons to use it. It used to be a bit better and less expensive, but the insurance state employees (and retired state employees that quailfy for it) have is still aces. The majority of Texans, of course, don't have insurance that is as good, or else pay through the nose to obtain it. Far too many aren't insured at all. We lead the nation (or are near the top) in the number of uninsured... young, old, handicapped... you name it, and we have them struggling without insurance in huge numbers.

Something else to consider is what has to be an enormous number of folks staying with a job they dislike out of fear of being unable to get insurance, due to those pre-existing conditions. Someone could (and someone probably has) write a doctoral thesis on the stress of staying with a job you could leave if it wasn't for the current near impossibility of getting covered for a pre-existing condition, either for yourself or for a family member. Trapped, like an indentured servant. I'd bet a lot of people feel that way.

 

thank you for using the [rquoter] tag. basso approves. much easier to read.

that is all.

 

Per the section you bolded:
[rquoter]In place of that, the senators embraced a more limited proposal that would empower the government's Office of Personnel Management to put in place a new low-cost national health plan, congressional aides said.[/rquoter]

Right there it says that a public option is included in the proposed compromise bill. Yes it doesn't start immediately but the fact that there is a mechanism in the bill that would trigger a public options shows that it is included.

Whether you think it will fall apart or not doesn't prove that Reid is lying. You can't use your own speculation about future events to accuse someone of lying in the present.

 

Why would this be true? If they leave that job for one that offers healthcare there would be no pre-x.

 

If there is a public option those jobs might not be lost as it will take people to administer the public option. Anyway until we get the details of a public option its not sure what impact that will have on jobs. Its quite possible that providing low cost health insurance available to everyone that will reduce the cost of business and lead to more jobs overall.

Except that insurance companies can do that already and if not for a government program, Medicare, many seniors would be without health insurance.

Also as Major noted the Health Care Bills currently have new regulations on the insurance industry to prevent them from cherry picking customers.

By increasing the amount of those insured through either private insurance or public you are spreading the risk. As Insane Man notes yes as a healthy individual his rates might very well go up under the current health care reform but that is what happens when you spread the risk.

 

Not supporting health care reform to make some Facebook bucks? Weird.

http://www.businessinsider.com/heal...ters-to-congress-opposing-reform-bill-2009-12