I like the insurance exchange. Personally, I would have just legalized insurance exchanges for anyone to set up, instead of having the Federal Government run it, but a government-run exchange is better than buying insurance on your own. Other than that, there is nothing in the bill that will improve healthcare or make it cheaper in any meaningful way. Put me down as a no.
I would point out that ehealthinsurance.com has existed for many years now. Can anyone tell me the major difference between these exchanges and that site? You type your zipcode and age, and it gives you estimated quotes from dozens of available plans, along with all the basic details about each plan. It also lets you apply online to those plans. I do like the bundled payments aspect - this is much overlooked and under-discussed. All the focus has been controlling the price of health insurance, but the reason I liked the public option was not that it controlled the price, but that it would give you a true market cost of health insurance. For all we know, health insurance prices are going up at crazy rates because the costs of providing the health care at the provider level is going up at crazy rates. In that scenario, it's not really the insurers fault. Payment bundling has the potential to partially address that at the provider level.
Continue war? check Bow down to insurance lobby? check Would there be any difference in voting for these guys? Obama got voted because he promised change. He needs to crack down the whip and keep the democrats in line. He is the face of the democrats. He had enormous popular support and political capital and I think he has squandered it.
I'll take it as is now, but I wanted more of what the aforementioned took away. This obstructionism will haunt the GOP once the newly insured start realizing the Christmas gift they are being given by Obama and the Democrats. He has the rest of this term and the next one to get it right. This is a start.
Obama's political agenda was wrecked by an economic crisis that he inherited. I will criciticize Obama for losing the message battle to republicans on health care reform. I think he's right to allow congress to work out details but he should have outlined the basic tenants and sold that to the people. bowing down to the insurance lobby, not quite sure what you mean but you can't force senators to vote a certain way who refuse to vote a certain way. there was not enough support for the public option. that's been made plain and clear, and we can sit here and use terms like "crack the whip" but there is a reality that has to be dealt with. and people who complain about him not ending the afghan war, well you just weren't paying that close of attention to the campaign
Agreed And as I've said before, I would not be surprised if a Public Option amendment was added to every appropriations and spending bill that hits the floor from now on until it's passed.
The waste in the US health care system is truly staggering, close to a $1 trillion per year. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/46/2/38980580.pdf Something needed to be done and this bill looks like a step in the right direction, but if you really want to do it right then you have to really mobilize and elect a comfortable majority of democrats next time so that Obama can do the job right. The American people did great by electing Obama this time, but now it’s on you to step it up further and give him the extra votes he needs to take health care reform to the next level.
Disappointing, I agree. However, the biggest reform to our healthcare system in over 40 years is now likely to pass and be signed into law. He is going to keep the promise that he made.
What seems to be the primary motivation for some of those opposed to the current health care reform is seeing the Obama administration and the Democratic party laying claim to one of the most historic legislative accomplishments of the last 40 years. Warts and all. SCOREBOARD
This is why I said back during the primaries I was more concerned about Obama supporters than Obama himself. Many people just latched on to the vague message of CHANGE without really understanding what that meant or how it would be delivered. At the same time many people embraced Obama because they believed he would change the tone of Washington. As I said back then if change was going to be a liberal utopia where you get a public option a rapid withdrawl out of Afghanistan and so forth while we see partisanship dissapear that wasn't going to happen because in many ways those are not compatible and the health care battle has been a perfect example. Republicans and conservative Democrats weren't just going to go along with Obama because he was popular. They have their own agendas and ideologies. If Obama wanted to get something passed that they fundamentally opposed he was going to have to crack down on the Democrats and demonize the opposition, basically what the last Admin. did to pass tax cuts. Obama didn't at first and pretty much played nice and left it to Congress to hammer out the bill through most of the health care debate. Its only fairly late in the game that he has taken a much harder stance and in the process pretty much ended the idea of reaching out to the other side, a pledge that wasn't very realistic to begin with since the other side never was interested to begin with. History has shown that most of the successful presidencies, in terms of getting legislation passed, were ones willing to engage in tough, frequently dirty, politics. Consider how someone like LBJ was able to get so much passed. Obama and particularly his supporters were loathe to embrace that and even campaigned against that idea and while this might make Obama an admirable person it isn't necessarily going to lead to getting revolutionary legislation. I agree this bill has flaws but frankly with the current makeup of the Congress this is the best bill you are going to get. For those of you liberals who are hoping for health care reform do you guys seriously believe that by killiing this bill there is a chance of something better getting passed? Personally I believe there is more chance of us withdrawing rapidly out of Afghanistan than a radically different, in the liberal direction, health care bill getting passed. Finally just to give some hope this bill isn't a done deal yet as there still is a conference committee so things could still change.
A pound of sugar mixed with a ton of manure: disaster. This bill will drive prices up, not the intended purpose. Seniors will suffer; money is shifted from the elderly who are critically ill, an ugly secret in the bill. I am actually for health care reform, but this a "political" bill, a facade. It will not survive reconciliation, be repealed, or will be seriously amended. It is such a mess, I don't think it can actually be implemented. The Democrats should have tried harder to get some bi-partisan participation. They are smiling now, but they won't be when protesters are are standing in their driveways. This is may be the mother of all political disasters.
Interesting - as much as I've followed this debate, I never knew this. (I don't know if that's due to my own stupidity or bad communications from the part of the people pushing the bill.) But regardless, that would definitely be a very good thing. Do you know if it would effectively eliminate individual insurance? For example, if person A is 20 and healthy, they could probably get a better rate with individual insurance than pooling the risk. But the risk pooling only works if you mix healthy people in it, I would think, so it doesn't seem like it would work well if people could still get separate individual plans.
I am a bit disapointed but not surprised. This is the way I would like to see healthcare done in this country and feel free to flame away if I missed something obvious that would cause this not to work. Number one abolish group health plans and advertising by pharmaceutical companies. Number two mandatory coverage. Number three insurance companies cannot deny you for preexisting conditions or drop you. Number four set up a national exchange. You pick your plan from any provider the providers now have a nationwide risk pool to lower costs, however they cannot just pick and choose the lower risk candidates. If they want to participate they must accept everyone just like they do for group health insurance now. If their rates are good and stay good then more customers will join their plan. If they start jacking up rates there is a whole nationwide list of providers to drop them for. Number five (this may be unpopular but WTH), set up a national medical information database and make mandatory the use of electronic health records. No more call Dr. X to send your records to Dr. Y and filling out health and family history. You go to a new Doc the doc with your permission can log into this database and have your entire health record to review. Electronic health records saves time, money as well as many many errors. Okay so why do this, number one since everyone is buying their insurance individually there is no longer a need to burden companies with a HUGE expense like healthcare benefits. Small businesses everywhere will be able to compete for labor, no longer will people put off retirement because they need their insurance at their job. This should trickle down into higher salaries, lower costs of goods, and more hiring since businesses no longer have this cost. Number two COBRA (which no one can afford anyway) goes away. You don't lose your coverage when you change jobs because you don't get your insurance through your job. Saves the government money here as well. I would also look into scrapping Medicare and Medicaid and see if its possible to move these people to the exchange. Medicare part C and some Medicaid plans already utilize HMOs for operations. You want the government out of it then let's take them out of it, should please the GOP right? Now the key is do all of these cost savings, electronic health records, nationwide risk pool, abolition of COBRA, grouphealth, Medicaid/Medicare, add up to enough to put the burden that was once on the backs of companies onto the people? Maybe not, you're probably going to need some sort of government subsidy. Maybe redirect what we pay for Medicare into this pool. Once you hit 65 you can now access this money like it's a health savings account and drive down the cost of your coverage. If someone had the math about what an average premium would look with all healthcare costs in one risk pool split among all insurance companies with the caveat that the largest $ users the 65+ have their lifelong healthsavings account to utilize. Flame away.
Since we obviously are not going to have a public option, I have to say that this sounds pretty good to me.
I understand your frustration, but you are not being logical. Insurance companies are blood suckers only concerned with profits, not health care. The problem is that this bill keeps their hands in health care and does not allow the government to run it more humanely and rationally. What's more the insurance companies have a parade of lobbyists spreading money, funding ersatz citizens' groups etc. which led to this poor attempt at reform. The bill does help some extremely poor folks without insurance as they c an now get Medicaid, and keeps insurance companies from flat out denying the sick with pre-existing conditions, though they can charge so much that they probably won't be able to afford it ( a pre-tend remedy). Eventually it will have to be changed again as costs go up for the rest of us.
