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Plus medical studies have shown that gums are a direct delivery system for plaque that clogs arteries. Let's also not forget common sense. Look at any skull. There are many direct openings to the brain. Constant infections can travel to the brain as well as the eyes, nasal cavities etc. It is not just about healthy teeth and cavities. Plus teeth and chewing is essential for proper digestion which is how (oversimplified) food is broken down for our bodies to retrieve its nutrients.
Me
well if the dentists want paid more for medicaid then they don't want this included in obamacare plan, they will be forced to take less money from more people, than they now do because more people will be forced into the obamacare plan.
Oral health is just as important as anything else.
Health care reform that pleases liberals and conservatives
By John M. Rothgeb, Jr
Tue Sep 22, 5:00 am ET
Oxford, Ohio – The US healthcare debate can be boiled down to two important issues. The first is cost containment. The second is the conflict between the conservative aversion for taxes and bureaucracy and the liberal belief that new government programs are essential to health coverage for all Americans.
One way to cut costs and break the conservative-liberal impasse is to adopt a national variation of the self-insurance now practiced by many large employers.
Discussion has focused on deals with healthcare providers on prices, end-of-life care, and rationing. Less attention, however, has centered on eliminating administrative waste and using payment requirements to lower demand, even though these issues could lead to substantial savings.
Over one-fourth of US health costs are for administrative overhead, which is the world's highest, according to a 2003 article in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Simplifying our system to cut administrative expenses could save 10 percent or more. Additionally, a RAND Corporation study showed that requiring people to pay the full cost of health services until a deductible is met reduced visits to health professionals without incurring serious consequences, even for at-risk patients.
Self-insured employers use private insurance companies to manage their health coverage plans and to negotiate with healthcare providers for discounts from their list prices. But the employer, not the insurance company, pays the bills for health services used by employees. Insurance companies make their profits from their fees as managers.
The value of self-insurance for healthcare reform is found in how its incentive structure differs from conventional insurance. Conventional insurance companies use the proceeds from premiums to pay for medical care for policy-holders and therefore attempt to avoid high-risk enrollees. With self-insurance, the insurance company has no such incentive because it acts only as manager. Instead, the employer bears the costs of medical treatments.
With national self-insurance, the government would assume the employer's role of shouldering the risks of expensive care. It would pay private insurance companies (now health management companies) management fees depending on how many people selected their plans.
To fund the system, all Americans would pay an income-based premium sufficient to care for those facing catastrophic problems. These premiums would be withheld from income and put in a national account to pay healthcare costs.
Additionally, individuals would pay for their own healthcare needs until the bill exceeded a deductible representing a specified percentage of their income. Since the premium and the deductible would be income-based, they could be reduced for the poor, abolished for special cases such as members of the military and their dependents, and capped to eliminate excessive fees for the rich.
All Americans who paid their premiums would be covered in a system run by private management companies much as what is already in place with the accounts of self-insured employers.
The role of the private management companies would include setting up networks of providers (basically the PPO, HMO, and POS plans that currently enroll over 80 percent of Americans with private insurance). Negotiating discounts with healthcare providers, and competing to enroll individuals in their coverage plans.
Since Americans could choose any private plan they wanted and would pay an income-based deductible, health management companies would have an incentive to negotiate the lowest possible prices with healthcare providers.
They'd also want to emphasize convenience and quality to attract more enrollees and garner greater profits.
For example, a healthy young construction worker might look for a company offering steep discounts on basic medical services. An accountant with a tight schedule might select a plan that included 24 hour stop-by clinics in shopping malls, and a teacher needing a hip replacement might seek a network with a trusted surgeon.
Emphasizing individual choice would make these and other options available. Hence, the envisioned system would help control prices while accommodating both the conservative desire for private sector participation and the liberal demand for universal coverage.
National self-insurance also makes it possible to streamline our current system.
First, since the new program is envisioned as universal, it would make existing government health plans such as Medicare and Medicaid redundant, and they could be phased out. The Congressional Business Office estimates direct government spending for healthcare is 7.5 percent of the economy, and Harvard University researchers suggest that indirect expenses push the total over 9 percent.
Canceling programs eliminates administrative overlap, saves money, and lowers taxes.
And, under the new system, employers would stop furnishing health insurance to workers and convert the value of that coverage to wages.
Since wages grow more slowly than health-insurance premiums, and employers can control wages more easily than healthcare costs, this is a deal most firms would embrace. For many workers, this wage increase would cover their income-based health premium.
Liberals might argue that it would deprive seniors of Medicare. But since government health programs would be phased out over a long period of time, current Medicare enrollees would be unaffected.
Conservatives might object that the proposed plan would put the government in charge of our healthcare system. But the government would only play the role of premium collector. The government would not manage the system, set prices, or decide upon treatments.
Healthcare professionals working with the private management companies would do these things.
Adopting national self-insurance cuts costs, creates a public-private partnership that bridges political differences, and sets the foundation for lasting reform.
John M. Rothgeb Jr. is a professor of political science at Miami University in Ohio.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090922/cm_csm/yrothgeb
http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/2009/...yone/#more-641
»OBAMACARE: TAXES FOR EVERYONEBy Dick Morris 09.23.2009 Published on TheHill.com September 22, 2009
Now that the various healthcare plans are being reduced to print, the financial details are emerging and with them a fundamental conclusion is becoming evident: The Obama plan is a giant tax increase for much of the American people (not just the rich).
Start with the mandate that falls on those whose welfare is the supposed object of the entire program — the uninsured. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the average uninsured person or family will have to pay between 15 and 20 percent of his or their total income on health insurance (counting premiums, deductibles and co-payments) before any of the subsidy in the Baucus bill kicks in. Even in the more generous House bill, the tab that the uninsured must pay is very, very high.
Most uninsured would likely be quite happy to avoid paying this much of their income for health insurance. But they will be forced to shell out the money under the program. Others would want catastrophic coverage (which for the young would likely not be too costly) but the Obama program requires comprehensive insurance that is costly to satisfy the government requirement.
Having spent the entire campaign speaking about “affordable” coverage, it turns out the program is not at all affordable, but a massive new tax on the average uninsured American.
Then there is the tax on health insurance premiums that is to finance about a quarter of the subsidy for the uninsured. This tax, billed as only to be levied on “gold-plated” policies, will, in fact, reach down to the average American. The Baucus bill specifies that the tax of 35 percent would be put on all premiums over $8,000 for an individual and on proportionately higher premiums for families. Current estimates are that about one-tenth of the current health insurance policies would be taxable. But the $8,000 premium level that will trigger coverage is not indexed for inflation, let alone for medical inflation, which typically runs twice as high. ObamaCare will take effect in 2013. By then, the percentage of Americans subject to the tax will doubtless expand dramatically. Indeed, this trigger is a new Alternative Minimum Tax waiting to happen. As inflation pushes more and more Americans into tax eligibility, it will become a universal health insurance excise tax of 35 percent. While the tax will be imposed on health insurers and employers, it will, obviously, be passed along to the policyholders.
So if you are insured, you will increasingly have to pay 35 percent more for the privilege. And if you are uninsured, you will have to pay one-fifth of your income in premiums, deductibles and co-payments before any subsidy kicks in.
And then there is the final piece of the puzzle — the $500 billion cut in Medicare that will pay for the bulk of the subsidy under the bill. We are literally slicing services to the elderly in order to transfer healthcare to others. Obama’s claim that only “waste and inefficiency” in Medicare will be cut is, at best, disingenuous. Most of the cuts will be in reimbursement for doctors and hospitals. That will lead to less care, shorter office visits, fewer tests, fewer surgeries and less care. And it will lead to fewer doctors. As a result, a survey by the Investor’s Business Daily indicates that 45 percent of all doctors would “consider retiring or closing their practices” if the Obama bill passes. The result will be a greater scarcity of medical services, even as the patient load expands by at least 30 million people.
Each of these fiscal pieces is movable. The left will pressure Obama to increase the subsidy to the uninsured. But that will necessitate raising the Medicare cut borne by the elderly or increasing the tax on health insurance policies — or adding to the deficit. Any of these options will alienate moderate senators. Balancing these competing priorities only works if the taxpayers don’t know what is going on.
If the average middle-income American family realizes that it will have to pay one-third more for health insurance or the uninsured learn that they will have to pay a fifth of their income to get insurance, they will make their dissatisfaction felt by their Democratic senators.
All of which begs the fundamental question: How willing are Democratic congressmen to commit political suicide? Are they willing to lose the elderly and to antagonize the uninsured as the health insurance cops chase them around the block? When does JFK’s comment kick in: “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much”?
Friday, September 25, 2009
Lying About The Public Option With Polls
The supporters of a government-run "public option" are touting a CBS/NY Times poll which purportedly shows that 65% of people support a public option. But examine how the question is framed, and it is clear that the question is intended to elicit a favorable response:
What if the question were worded differently, such as:Quote:
"Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan -- something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get -- that would compete with private insurance plans?"
I doubt that questions which included the negative aspects of a public option would result in such positive responses. The question is framed to elicit a misleading answer which then can be used by supporters of the public option to overstate public support.Quote:
"President Obama has said that the current Medicare cost structure is unsustainable. Would you favor or oppose the government offering a similar plan to everyone?"
"Would you be in favor of the government offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan -- something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get -- even if it meant that private insurers could not compete with the government?"
"Would you be in favor of the government offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan -- something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get -- even if it meant that some employers would drop their private coverage for employees?"
Indeed, Mark Kleiman was surprised to see CBS/NY Times polling such a formatted question. Kleiman argues that supporters of the public option should try tying the "public option" to the popular Medicare program to gain more support. This pro-public option strategy is exactly how the CBS/NY Times pollsters framed the question, i.e., in the most favorable light for the public option without any hint of the problems facing Medicare or the negative fallout from a public option.
Here's a question I bet would elicit an even more positive response:
"Would you be in favor of a free lunch?"
Yes, indeed, the poll results will show that people overwhelmingly support a free lunch, so there must be such a thing as a free lunch. Let's restructure our government and economy around providing free lunches to everyone!
The polls says it has support, so it must be good.
http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.co...ith-polls.html
even more misleading when you consider the skewed sample they used, noted by Ed Morissey here:
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/09/2...e-afghanistan/
don't miss : "New crime in HopeandChange Era? Failure to insure"
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/09/2...ure-to-insure/
Top Ten Health Care Questions
Plus: Enter Organizing for America’s contest
Our friends in the Tea Party movement have launched a new project inviting all Americans to help develop a list of top ten unanswered health care questions for President Obama.
http://toptenhealthcarequestions.com/poll.php
Here's a good one : Considering the bill will not go into effect until 2013, how much time will you allow for debate and public understanding of the bill before trying to vote on it?
It was harder than I thought. A lot of those questions needed to be asked, not just 10 of them.
Of course, some of the questions we already know the answer to, and I don’t expect the politicians to be honest with their answers, IF they even pays attention to this at all. And that’s a very big IF....
Why can’t we buy health insurance the same way we purchase life insurance? Why must the employer be the one who chooses the plan then passes the cost on to the employee? The employee should be able to get better choices, not a one size fits all plan. Why should anyone be forced to purchase health insurance? Doesn’t that violate the Constitution? What is actually wrong with the health insurance plans? Do any of the bills actually solve those problems? If the answer is no, (which I think it is), then what is the government actually trying to do here?
Related: Reader J.T. e-mails that nutroots Obama campaign arm Organizing for America is promoting a new contest for a 30 second video pushing health care reform. She notes: “This seems to me to be an excellent opportunity for conservative creative minds to flood the contest with videos reflecting how we feel about ObamaCare. What a fun way to protest — almost as much fun as submitting ideas for the Rush billboard contest the brilliant administration ran last spring.” http://www.democrats.org/rushbillboard http://michellemalkin.com/2009/03/05...ded-billboard/
Indeed. Go here to submit your entry .... http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hrvchome/
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/09/27...are-questions/
Here is my question....
Would it not be easier and less complicated to offer us taxpayers the same insurance we pay for our elected officals in Washington?
Me
wouldn't it be even nicer if they would let the American people vote on things like this, I mean after all, it is affecting US the people, our lives, our taxes, our health....
ITA, but heaven forbid the govt actually do something that would make sense. Besides they know best :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by jasmine
Yes it would. But as someone from this very website has said, they dont want poor people having the same kind of care as they do. They make more money so they are worth more.Quote:
Originally Posted by hblueeyes
I am serious, someone on here has actually said this, this is what they really do believe and this is exactly the mentality that the elected officials have.
It is disgusting and appalling.