Dems Agree to Drop Government-Run Insurance Option

Not a huge fan of the bill anymore, but this type of rhetoric rings hollow.

 

So.... I'm reading more about this bill this morning and I have to say:

What a huge flaming pile of fail. Utter and complete failure to accomplish anything of substance.

Health care reform? Please.

 

All I can say is "LOL".

The House bill was bad enough. Consumers lose, insurance company wins huge and the democrats get to hail "health care reform". Im sick of Obama and the liberal congress shoveling everything they possible can through the system. They throw up bills with good intentions but full of flaws, let their own party poach all the positive things out of the bill, and pass it anyways.

Democrats, your OWN party screwed this bill up. Ive said that any further HCR will be many many years to come, but I think with this atrocious bill, we will be forced to deal with the flaws sooner than later.

 

They will pass the bill and every appropriations and spending bill that comes to the floor from now on will have a PO amendment attached too it until it passes.

Bank it

 

Space Ghost - what is your proposed solution, you claim over and over again that we need "HCR" yet every single option you say is terrible. Given your previous history of posting, I'd like to hear your assessment. Single-payer? Exchanges/Cooperatives? Public Option? You must have a viewpoint, no doubt a studied one.

 

It's not funny. Although I do admit that this bill places me firmly in the Space Ghost camp with respect to not believing that this is actually worth beans in terms of reform. I don't buy in to your constantly goalpost-shiftin' hard line stances on what constitutes reform, but I certainly agree that this bill accomplishes nothing of note.

And just yesterday my wife got denied coverage through the state of texas (her employer) so I get to pony up $200 more dollars a month to cover her under my plan. Hoo-****ing-ray for insurance.

 

He changes it every three posts or so. I don't know what the heck he wants, other than to continue as he is now - uninsured.

 

what i want will never happen and what i propose will be shot down through the "experts".

I want insurance to be what insurance is suppose to be. I shouldn't use insurance to visit the doctor for the flu or a checkup. I should pay $50 or so for an office visit and be done with it. If I break a leg or come down with a serious disease, then let insurance cover that. A big reason why insurance is going up is because the insured (medicare/private/defaults) doesn't care what medicine costs, all they care about is if they are covered. Nobody line items medical receipts ...they know its going to be paid. If you put the auditing back in the consumers hands, then prices will drop.

When I become employeed with a business who offers insurance, I still do not have a say so. There is no competition in the private sector. Allow competition to prevail. Through whatever means, allow more insurance companies to compete.

If you're poor, then allow earned income credit for medical bills or allow them to be covered by medicare or whatever social agenda needs to be created.

I dont have the solutions, all i can do is point out the flaws. Right now, we have a oligopoly in medicine and these huge companies have all the interest in our government. Our first and foremost step is to dismantle this oligopoly instead of continue to feed it. The public option watered it down a bit, but w/out it and medicare extentions, they are now stronger than ever.

 

What about preventative care such as mammograms and colonoscopies? Those aren't $50, and many people cannot afford it out-of-pocket. I think we can agree with preventative tests are necessary, so should insurance pay for those, too? It's not an acute symptom or disease or injury, as you were suggesting insurance cover, but a test.

There's a lot more dimensions to healthcare than just a doctor visit or acute problem.

 

Wrong. I can't afford paying 4000-5000 a year in insurance just in case i should come down with some disease. Roughly, that would be 50,000 i would have paid in the last 10 years, considering i've only been to the doctor a small few times for checkups and flu symptoms.

So according to rhad's school of thought, i should get a second job, wearing and stressing myself out further, to be covered.

Time to be flamed: I take care of myself to reduce the chances of something happening to me. I do not support a system that encourage Americans to continue in reckless behavior in regards to their health. If you continue to shovel big macs in your gut day in and day out, becoming so obese that you must drive an SUV or feel the need to indulge in addictive behaviors, then that is your choice. But the rest of us shouldn't have to bail you out. If you are negligent to your health, then it is your problem.

 

I understand they are not cheap, but the costs of them are certainly inflated to cover losses.

Im not opposed to government assistance (ideally yes, i am, but I understand that it will be needed) Having checkup clinics that are partially subsidized by the government would help. I fully support preventative measures. Further, expensive-must-need equipment could be subsidized by the government also....basically removing any excuses that drive up costs.

 

OK, a few problems with this:

I shouldn't use insurance to visit the doctor for the flu or a checkup. I should pay $50 or so for an office visit and be done with it. If I break a leg or come down with a serious disease, then let insurance cover that

If I'm not mistaken, emergent care is a lot less efficient than preventive care, not to mention a LOT more expensive, so as a cost measure, this is pretty impractical and would probably have the effect of making insurance more expensive.

A big reason why insurance is going up is because the insured (medicare/private/defaults) doesn't care what medicine costs, all they care about is if they are covered

Do you have any evidence of this? IIRC, the biggest predictor on insurance rate rises is not this, nor anythign remotely related, but instead is correlated very strongly with the insurers ability to deliver returns in the financial markets when investing the premiums.

Nobody line items medical receipts ...they know its going to be paid. If you put the auditing back in the consumers hands, then prices will drop

Really? I'm pretty sure an insurance company has an equal, or more compelling reason ($profit$) to audit/deny coverage to people. I mean they have public shareholders and everything. Which is why they deny coverage all the time. I don't disagree that the fee-for-service model is broken, but allowing consumers to allocate it sounds like an even worse idea.

 

Most of your objections appear to be opposed to insurance entirely - not just health insurance, but the very concept of allocating risks in exchange for a premium. As flawed as it may be in specific instances, the concept of insurance has been with us for thousands of years ever since we advanced past the hunter-gatherer phase.

 

And how much good is taking care of yourself going to do you when you get hit by that big mac shoveling, SUV driving slob and you have to spend weeks in the hospital?

 

Your own personal example is meaningless. Utterly meaningless. In the post before this you argue that insurance should cover only the big-ticket items, yet here you are proclaiming that insurance would be waste for you since you have not yet experienced any of those big ticket medical issues. Well that's bloody silly, isn't it! According to my school of thought you'd be forced to either get insurance, or pay a tax to help offset the costs of people like you (the uninsured) who do experience serious emergencies that require expensive care.

Yeah yeah yeah. I've heard you give this spiel before, and for the most part I agree in principle. I think in practice segregating the "willfully unhealthy" would be next to impossible though.

 

Do I REALLY need to spell it out for you? I WOULD pay $100 a month or so for major illness coverage and pay out of pocket for minor issues, all my life. I simply can not afford or justify another job to pay 4x that.

If you get major illness coverage within a reasonable range, say $100 a month, then you would pay that your whole life, thus negating the whole "pre-existing" argument.

 

Unless you are born with a pre-existing condition - then what do you do?

Also, you do realize that under this approach, old people are siphoning off the young - are you ok with this?

 

Then the tax is what you want...right?

 

Actually, there's been some good reporting showing that a number of $100/mo policies, in the super-tiny print, are automatically re-evaluated monthly, with no input from the patient/client. That way, if you get a major illness/injury, you're good for one month, after which your condition becomes "pre-existing," and you're out on your butt. Brilliant business plan, actually, but of course very cold also.

So be careful with that and read everything you can stomach.

 

Paterson and Bloomberg are health care haters

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Governor Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg both criticized the Senate health care reform bill yesterday, because they say the bill gives goodies and funding to states that currently offer weak assistance to poor sick people, while penalizing New York. "We are in a sense being punished for our own charity," Paterson told reporters. The Governor is reportedly upset that states like Massachusetts and Vermont got last-minute deals that erase their extra costs, and other states whose senators were holdouts got cash incentives. Nebraska, for instance, will have 100% of its Medicaid costs covered by the Senate bill, while New York will continue to cover half on its own.
Bloomberg believes the Senate bill would cost the city $540 million. "It would require us to close all of the 100 health clinics and a bunch of the ambulatory care things that we provide, overnight, cause the money would disappear," Hizzoner told reporters. "It will be very devastating to health care in this city. It's really a disgrace... What's different about New York is we go and we provide a level of care . . . that is unparalleled in this country, and I believe this bill basically penalizes us for doing so...Those places that have never taken care of their people, they get money."

New York House members are scrambling to get more for the state if and when the Senate bill is reconciled with the House bill. A spokesman for Senator Chuck Schumer admitted that "the Senate bill is good for New York in ways that the House bill isn't." And Patersons aides say the House bill would actually save the state roughly $4 billion a year.