Obama's Health Care Speech

Agreed and repped.

 

efficiency, a more competitive market place, reduced emphasis on corporate profit and more preventative and wellness medicine.

Is that clear enough?

 

I don't see the big deal in that guy shouting out "Liar!".

The purpose of the Congress is to represent the people. There needed to be someone in there to represent to lowest common denominator.

 

Right now, here are my areas of contention:

1) "Not a dime added to the deficit"- I don't see how this is possible, and if memory serves me correctly, neither does the CBO

2) The idea that we are just going to cut out all this inefficient waste to save all this money. That is a wonderful theory, but everyone always talks about cutting out waste and then it turns out to be a lot harder to do. His ideas about what he wants to cut will have to pass through Congress, and I just don't see the greedy little Congressmen allowing a bill to go through that just cuts all of this wasteful spending. That wasteful spending got their for a reason.

 

This wasn't a townhall meeting, it was a Presidential address to Congress. There is supposed to be some level of respect given.

Though with that said, the women who protested Wilson during his State of the Union showed no respect and are looked upon favorably by feminists.

 

I am clear on what he is saying, not sure I believe that it can work the way he wants.

 

I really want to see how this gets done without adding "a dime" to the deficit.

 

You have to remember to take into account the unecessary amount of money the current system wastes. Here's a really interesting article from The Economist: LINK

 

Keep in mind that adding to the deficit is not equal to cost zero. If you pay for it with higher taxes or other cuts, then it's certainly possible. $90B per year is not all that much in the grand scheme of things.

I tend to agree. I think some stuff like the insurer medicare subsidies are clear-cut savings that are easy to see and estimate. But other more generic "waste and abuse" is little more sketchy. However, I thought his comment that if the savings aren't realized, other *spending cuts* would have to be made was interesting. I'm not sure if that was just a theory or he was talking about requiring that in the bill - if it's the latter, I'd be really interested to see the wording there. By mentioning spending cuts specifically, it means that they wouldn't just raise taxes to generate revenues and it would potentially force Congress to cut spending somewhere. The devil is in the details though.

 

I'd like to add, I'm glad to see an actual thread on the policy issues regarding health care rather than some of the usual stuff we see here. To all the conservatives in this thread, I hope you all post more on all the various topics here. It's nice to drown out the basso's of the world with legitimate discussions between the left and the right and the middle.

 

Consider the government costs now for the medical care we are providing the uninsured. What is the cost of sending people to the emergency room for the flu? Or providing indigent care for late stage undetected diseases or even those that are preventable.

How much could the government save if it were allowed to negotiate drug prices for Medicare?

Did you know that the uninsured pay up to three times as much for the same services as the insured that have negotiated rates?

 

http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13899647

 

I admit I have not kept up with this issue, I certainly have been concerned with how health care is funded and how effective any plan would be.

I want to bring up a few things I haven't seen in the debate that I have thought of:

1. I have seen numbers that about 47 million people are without insurance. The number I really care about is exactly how many people are denied medical care, especially at emergency rooms. It is tragic to me when people are denied care and I would like to know how that is being addressed.

2. I would like to see a great increase in charity hospitals and charity medical opportunities, especially in urban areas, how is this being promoted. Are doctors and medical personnel encouraged to donate time? My brother is a surgeon and he doesn't turn anyone away and he does alot of volunteer work.

3. Is there a doctor driven task force working on the issue? My brother (the Dr.) feels that his voice is not heard. Is anyone in the government holding serious dialogue with Dr's on the community level? This would be insightful to me.


Any sincere help from either side would be appreciated.

 

This is the kind of response I expected.

 

My question is this...and let me preface it by stating that I think that something needs to be done about the Health Care System, though I do not think this proposal is the correct solution.

Why would an employer, who pays almost $20k per year per employee for private health insurance, continue to offer the option when the employee can just use government health care and it will save the company a ton of money?

This leads to a lot more people using the government option, driving up costs. Also, the same people who have pretty much destroyed Medicare/Medicaid are going to be running this program?

Also, Medicare does not cover doctors or hospital's fixed costs (That's MINUS salaries). That is why they only take a certain % of Medicare patients...the government will not pay enough to cover expenses. So, if the majority end up on the government plans, doctors and hospitals cannot even break even...so why would anyone want to sacrifice 10+ years of their life under constant stress and overwork, get into a couple of hundred thousand dollars of debt, just to get paid the same amount of money they could make just getting a BA in something?

My other major concern is just how damned inefficient the government is. This is the same government where costs are always a lot higher than they tell us and where fiscal inefficiency is the standard, not the exception. This is the same people who pay $300 per SCREW on projects that are only uncovered when audited.

We are already in big trouble with our debt. I just don't see how this isn't going to make it even worse. And as far as president's telling us that agendas will only cost a certain amount of money, well, see: Bush, GW and Iraq.

Also, some of the proposals to "cut out some fat" involve getting rid of Health Care Insurance Brokers because they charge a 10% commission. The problem with doing this is that the brokers actually force the carriers to compete and give broader coverage (because the buyers are usually HR people who know little about the intricacies of health care cost and coverage), which lowers prices (keeping the insurers more honest) and gets the plan recipients better coverage. If you just let the carriers market to the companies directly, premiums will not lower and the only people who will be hurt are the employees who are covered.

My last concern is how insurance carriers have been made to look like the devil. While I agree that they are for-profit companies and will certainly take advantage if they can, these companies employ hundreds of thousands of people who will lose their jobs if we end up with a majority government plan.

Solution? Not sure. I hate that 40mm people do not have health care (well, that technically isn't true bc anyone can walk into an ER and they get treated) and think something needs to be done to make sure that health care costs stay under control and sick people get the care they need.

But to have the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, who if anything have always shown that fiscal responsibility is the least of their concerns and who overcomplicate things to the 1000th power and who is strife with inefficiencies galore(see FEMA new orleans for example), run something THIS important and potentially expensive makes me shudder at night.

I say this not as a Republican or a Democrat, but as a truly concerned American citizen.

 

For the same reason he gives his top managers million dollar bonuses.

lot more people using the government option, driving up costs

no, if you have a large cross section of people the benefit/payout ratio stays the same when you get bigger.

My other major concern is just how damned inefficient the government is.

It may be but it's inefficiency is more than matched by being non-profit.

 

Not to mention you'll have a lot of unemployed people.

 

or an experienced set of people ready to run the government program.

It could be a zero sum game.

Again, Mr. Obama said he expects only about 5% of the people to take the public option.

 

But Kay Bailey and John Cornyn were not the swing votes he's interested in. Neither of them have ever shown any signs of working with the Dems on this issue.