What Should We Do About A Lying Billionaire Who Dominates the Free Press?

I don't hate them for being conservative, I hate them for being duplicitous provocateurs. Healthcare, however watered down is a positive for the Average American, Financial Reform, however watered down, is a positive for the average American, Obama Tax Rates are a positive for the average American. The "conservative" policies promoted by Fox benefit the upper small percentage of Americans and yet are pawned off on the public as " good for the "United States Of America", like: calling yourself a conservative and running up a huge deficit, and then calling it fiscally irresponsible to extend benefits to people out of a job.

It's a Madison Avenue swticheroo, pure motivational speaking, convictionless advocacy. It's inconscionable.

 

This remains to be seen. The reform package requires insurers to cover a lot more things (which is great) but does nothing to contain premiums. If a self employed person is paying $500.00 a month for insurance with an exclusion or two and the premium jumps to $1,000.00 a month once exclusions are dropped and that person can no longer afford the insurance...is that average American better off?

 

So you would prefer a government run media, why do you hate the Constitution?

 

There are actually quite a few things in there to contain premiums, from new payment structures, efficiency improvements, and expenditure requirements to broadening the insured base, employee opt-out flexibility, transparency through the exchanges, etc. Then there is all the experimental stuff where they will be pilot-programming dozens of the most popular ideas from health care economists to see what does and doesn't work in practice.

This package is loaded with ideas to control premiums - the problem is that it's all experimental so none of the projections can really quantify the impact. Whether it has an impact - and how much - remains to be seen. But that would be the case for any reform.

 

So Rupert Murdoch owning some media companies in an age where we have more media competition than ever (thanks to the internet) is a problem, but Hugo Chavez silencing any dissent in Venezuelan media is ok?

Okaaay...

 

None of the things that you listed offer any real promise that insurance companies will not just jack up the premiums. The need for reform was based in the fact that insurance companies were doing bad things "because we can." I see nothing that will stop them from increasing premiums with people being forced to pay it under the pain of governmental fine.

 

Those companies can jack up premiums now too. Competition is what stops them, and that will continue to exist. It's not like the insurance company can jack up premiums and just reap profits. They have to spend a minimum % of their premiums on actual end-user health care.

That's only true in part. Insurers got the blame, but they were, to a large extent, increasing prices because the costs of health care were going up. While their profits were also increasing, they still had fairly small margins and it wasn't out of line with reasonable levels. The nature of the insurance regulations around the country prevent them from just raising rates "because they can" due to the % spending limits.

You may not see them, but those things are there - in bulk. They aren't regulating the insurance premiums - that's pointless and doesn't address the underlying issues. They are doing things to cut the cost of health care, which is what drives insurance premiums.

 

The NYTimes is the #1 newspaper website. should we regulate/censor it as well?

 

We will see what, if anything, the insurance company response will be. For now, we will say that I am not nearly as optimistic as you appear to be.

 

This is a debate that probably belongs in another thread but just to add. One of the things that might bring down premium costs is bringing many more people into the insurance pools.

As I've said before I have my doubts about the health care reform plan but clearly the status quo was so bad that it needed to be addressed.

 

Talk more about the lying so everything becomes more transparent....Fox lies about everything, or in the least, reports it in a way that only suits hardcore, red conservatives. There is no "middle" on that network.


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