The CBO has admitted that they did not take into account large companies potentially opting out of paying for health care and taking the fine instead. Do you work for a public company? I do. And the minute that a competitor realizes that it's cheaper to take a fine than it is to insure employees, they will follow suit to increase their profits and look good to shareholders. [/QUOTE] what does this mean? a public option isn't radically different than medicare. you can administer it like that.[/QUOTE] This could potentially be huge. You have to hire thousands of qualified people to do this. Not gonna be easy [/QUOTE]perhaps this is a bit true. but medicare advantage for example wastes billions of dollars without quantitatively showing better care. clearly we have incentives to order too many tests. talk to any doctor, they'll tell you honestly that for a variety of reasons (they say litigation moreso...detractors would attribute it to many financial incentives to ordering tests) that they order tests/procedures that aren't necessary. the article a few months ago comparing el paso with mcallen, same demographics same health but mcallen spent almost double of el paso without appreciable quantitative benefits. those incentives certainly costs a lot. and yes they haven't been fully expounded on but there are several ideas that congress is debating and that are in the bills.[/QUOTE] Perhaps that is due to the fact that the valley in texas has by far the highest amount of medical litigation in the nation so the hospitals are covering their asses [/QUOTE]the union gripe is just random don't you think? why would you think unions could get something in this? and if you haven't read it, i don't think your in a position to throw out random accusations.[/QUOTE] No, I have an actual article talking about benefits to Unions in the proposal. Will dig it up later [/QUOTE]as far as a 1000 pages, well first of all that happens in every bill. so lets not take such umbrage when it happens in a bill we don't like. secondly, this is kind of a complicated issue. you yourself allege that congress hasn't dealt with many complex issues, yet when a bill is of sizable, you criticize that?[/QUOTE] this bill can end up costing trillions. in this situation, I would feel much more comfortable knowing all the details and what industries are going to benefit from the inevitable add-ons [/QUOTE]single payer would solve everything. but i think the way obama is getting around that is essentially forbidding certain companies from dropping coverage/taking the public option. also you can obviously make the penalties significant enough to counteract any concern. how hard is that??[/QUOTE] Will the penalties be significant enough? I don't know.... [/QUOTE]specialists salaries are way too high. the ideas proposed that you can easily read in major newspapers include one in which they lower salaries for specialists and raise them for primary care physicians. this would provide proper incentives. [/QUOTE] going to lunch. will continue after states are already doing tort reform. which has done nothing to lower insurance rates. see, e.g., texas. and i absolutely agree on drug companies. the premise is, we have too many people not properly (under or completely lacking) coverage and we spend too much for that inadequate coverage. how in hell is that premise speculative? as far as the bill, we've had 60 plus years to study this. we can study every other country. and sure there are a lot of compromises due to a variety of political calculations but that's just how government works. well then the premise isn't wrong. and secondly, what would be the answer? how do you extend coverage and reduce cost, without a complicated 1000 page bill, without fully being sure how many people will be covered, without 100% certainty on the cost and pass it without making compromises, whether its with the pharmaceutical lobby or the plaintiffs lobby?[/QUOTE]
The CBO has given estimates that are conservative, and that indicate private plan usage would increase not decrease. Speculative. I'm shocked. Please show me why you feel this way. This is, simply, not true. The CBO does not make numbers up, their whole objective is to put real numbers to use. Oh come on - you had legitimate (albeit speculative - again) concerns but had to spoil them with a union rant. sheesh. Major answered the others pretty well. One more point - I don't expect this to be utopia all at once. This is a huge plan and a huge change. Kinks will need to be worked out. That's just the way these things work.
Sorry, I don't agree with that. I know there are more than a few racist liberals. (They don't act like the tradition Southern Yahoo, but they do have prejudices they don't always recognize.) In fact, as others have said, I suspect we're all racist to some degree. I know I am, but I try to recognize it, confront it, and mitigate it. I try not to pass it on to my kids like my relatives did with me. However, I would agree with the notion that if you're a Republican, you are more likely to lack (sometimes intentionally) self-awareness and understanding of our culture to the point that one cannot or refuses to mitigate their impulses emanating from their prejudices. These folks deserve pity as well as opprobrium. The ones that don't are the ones that cynically exploit such folks or try to twist legitimate criticisms of society to justify the very wrongs being criticized.
If your a criminial...you're most likely a Democrat. c'mon man, you know thats not real. Unfortunately, I've met plenty of outwardly Racists people that vote democrat. Most of them are blue collar types working in petroleum plants, factories, etc. You can't honestly make those kinds of generalizations about people.
I guess I'd better qualify this by saying...ITS SARCASM...before people begin quoting me as saying (and believing) that statement.
Disagree entirely. Perhaps if you are of a particular kind of racist this may be true, but there is plenty, PLENTY, of racism in the North East where liberalism reigns supreme. Take Boston for example, a city that black baseball players loathed for decades because of the racism that was shown there. Liberal racism is often expressed differently. They cling to liberal ideas about social justice and helping the minorities not because they think they are their equals, but rather out of pity. This can be traced all the way back to the Civil War and before when there were plenty of people who didn't believe they should own slaves or that people should be slaves at all, but still didn't believe that a black man should be allowed to sit at a table with him.
Also good point. Lots of people who vote democrat are doing it based on economic reasons (minimum wage hikes, support for unions, etc.) and are still racist. What I was referring to was the "elite".
If you used that logic the Democrats are at 61% thinking the opposition is due to racism. What an amazing way to discount there being 3 options rather than just two. You can only compare the 3 groups with the one stat given for all three and that is the percentage that believes racism plays no part in the opposition. 88% Republican, 78% Independent, 39% Democrat.
100% minus the 39% of Democrats that believed that Racism had nothing to do with the opposition. The same Logic that Glynch used to equate Independents were the same as Democrats in this poll.
Baucus unveiled a new plan yesterday. If I were in Congress, I would not vote for it. It is absolute lunacy to me to suggest that we essentially fine people ($950 for individuals and $3800 per family) for not buying insurance. They say that there would be an exception for those who cannot afford it, but that is a very elusive definition. You will inevitably end up with people who cannot afford health insurance and face a stiff penalty. How on earth does that help anybody, let alone the people we are the most concerned with helping? Congress is getting dumber by the day.
The problem here is that is the only way to eliminate pre-existing conditions and insurance coverage denial. If you get rid of pre-existing conditions, but don't require people to have insurance, no one would carry insurance until they had a problem, and then they'd go sign up to get it covered. I think all the plans, regardless of public option or not, are based on the premise of subsidizing insurance for those who can't afford it, while requiring people to have insurance.
This is probably better discussed in another thread but even in Rhad's link note that even the conservative numbers of CBO show a likelihood of the health care program adding $239 Billion to the deficit. Now in an age where we have seen Trillion dollar programs that might not seem like much but that still is substantial. If we are going to consider rational criticisms towards the health care reform plans being discussed I certainly think whether this can be done in a deficit neutral way is very rational.
Good response. We're all required to carry car insurance too. And there is a financial penalty for failing to do that also. That burden also falls almost entirely on the poor. The difference here is that the poorest would be subsidized (unlike car insurance) and would not suffer under the law.
That's over 10 years, so you're looking at 24 billion a year which works out to be roughly 5% of the 2010 discretionary budget, which is 17% of the total budget. So, in the worst case scenario, it is manageable and further savings can be found, either in the discretionary, military, or entitlements parts of the budget. This article makes some good points...
I meant nowadays. Everyone was racist back then going back to the Native Americans....It's idiotic to say that all Republicans are racist. That's just not true....but if you're a racist, chances are you vote Republican. I'll stand by it. I think liberals are about helping the middle-class and poor people. The average Americans who happen to be the majority of Americans. The middle class and poor people happen to be minorities. The Republican party is for the rich, and have never pretended otherwise.
Nope. It's still true for a lot of liberals. I think it's only really true in the South that racism lends itself to being Republican. In the Northeast and out west there are racists pretty evenly on both sides.
