Someone making 30K would possibly qualify for Medicaid. I'm not saying anything, I'm quoting from H.R. 2, the Schip bill.
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Someone making 30K would possibly qualify for Medicaid. I'm not saying anything, I'm quoting from H.R. 2, the Schip bill.
Here’s a glimpse of our future health care system…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31210909...h-health_care/
I’m stunned this is on MSNBC…but health care is rationed. just like in Canada or britain. when are people going to understand that they must take care of themselves…and the government cannot take care of them??? social security, medicare, war on poverty…all colossal failures…ponzi schmes.Quote:
On some reservations, the oft-quoted refrain is “don’t get sick after June,” when the federal dollars run out. It’s a sick joke, and a sad one, because it’s sometimes true, especially on the poorest reservations where residents cannot afford health insurance. Officials say they have about half of what they need to operate, and patients know they must be dying or about to lose a limb to get serious care.
this is what happens when you give yourself over to being a ward of the government…Quote:
American Indians have an infant death rate that is 40 percent higher than the rate for whites. They are twice as likely to die from diabetes, 60 percent more likely to have a stroke, 30 percent more likely to have high blood pressure and 20 percent more likely to have heart disease.
American Indians have disproportionately high death rates from unintentional injuries and suicide, and a high prevalence of risk factors for obesity, substance abuse, sudden infant death syndrome, teenage pregnancy, liver disease and hepatitis.
So rather than fixing the serious problems in many federal programs due to lack of funding such as this…it’s best to create a MASSIVE new program so everyone is equally miserable.
There is suppose to be a HELP bill (a Healthcare outline) that was submitted last Tuesday to Congress. It's a 4 page PDF and (as with the rest of transparency and this admin), it's no where to be found.
I'd like to read it. If you stumble across it, let me know. I want to see the outline. Much of the info regarding this bill is being kept under lock and key.
Next week, Congress is suppose to start submitting the suggested tax increases. Big week coming up. Lots of reading to do if they release the documents.
Obama Touts Public Plan at Health Care Town Hall
Michael A. Fletcher - The Washington Post
Green Bay, Wisconsin - President Obama today reiterated his call for a government-run insurance option as part of his a plan to remake the nation's health care system, saying that a public plan will provide the competition needed to keep private insurance companies "honest and keep prices down."
Creation of a publicly run health care plan to compete with private insurers has emerged as one of the largest hurdle as Congress moves closer to a full blown debate on restructuring the nation's health care system in the coming weeks. Many Republicans oppose the option, saying it would eventually squeeze private insurers out of business.
Obama said that his administration is working on a health insurance exchange that would allow people to "one-stop shop" for a health care plan by allowing consumers to compare benefits and prices between the private and public health care plans. "One of the options in the exchange should be a public insurance option -- because if the private insurance companies have to compete with a public option, it will keep them honest and help keep prices down," Obama said.
Speaking at a town hall-style meeting in a high school gymnasium, Obama also restated his support for limiting itemized deductions for families earning more than $250,000 a year. He said the revenue from that change is needed to help raise the more than $1 trillion it is expected to cost over the next decade to extend health care coverage for the 46 million uninsured Americans.
The proposal has run into strong opposition from interest groups ranging from mortgage bankers to charities, and some congressional Democrats have pronounced it politically unfeasible. Instead, a Senate plan to overhaul health care is likely to include a new tax on employer-provided health care plans that exceed the value of the basic plan offered to federal employees, about $13,000 a year for a family of four.
The president's appearance here is part of the administration's effort to generate a political consensus for remaking the nation's health care system, which he calls his top domestic priority. Obama wants to extend coverage to those who lack it, while slowing the spiraling costs that are pushing increasing numbers of families and businesses to the economic brink. "Every day in this country, more and more Americans are forced to worry not simply about getting well, but whether they can afford to get well," Obama said. "Millions more wonder if they can afford the routine care necessary to stay well."
Obama was introduced at the meeting by Laura Klitzka, a 35-year-old, married mother of two who suffers from stage three breast cancer, who Obama pointed to as a living example of the need for health care reform.
Going through through several rounds of chemotherapy, surgery and radiation treatments has left her "overwhelmed by medical bills." Her husband has health insurance but faces high deductibles and growing premiums, which have left the family with $12,000 in unpaid medical bills.
"Having cancer will totally change a person's life," she said. But also having to also deal with the financial issues that come with the illness is "devastating," she said.
ObamaCare: The bad, and the ugly
Posted by: Sister Toldjah on June 15, 2009 at 8:27 pm
http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/20...-and-the-ugly/
I didn’t include “the good” in the post title because, as Carol Platt Leibau explains well here, there is no “good” part to Obama’s “public option” healthcare plan: http://townhall.com/Columnists/Carol...sick?page=full
Make sure to read the whole thing.Quote:
But if Obama succeeds in imposing a “government option” on America, the privately insured will be forced to pay even more to compensate for the government-created cost/payment shortfall as the rolls of those in the government plan expand. As a result, the cost of private insurance will ultimately become untenable. And then – there will be only government-administered health care for all.
Without privately insured Americans subsidizing Medicare and Medicaid, there will have to be another way to close the deficit between the cost of treatments and the below-market payments government offers for them. The answer, of course, will be health care rationing. Rather than the free market – or health care consumers’ economic and personal choices – driving the distribution of health care, the government will do it.
This prospect doesn’t seem to bother President Obama or many other Democrats – which makes sense, from their perspective. For powerful government officials, the plan would work well. Their political influence will guarantee that they (and their friends) will receive the finest treatment available under a government-run system.
For other Americans, however – including regular people without “pull,” who have nonetheless worked hard to have the means to buy good private coverage – the prospect should be profoundly frightening. A government bureaucracy controlling your medical care is likely to combine the efficiency of the post office with the compassion of the IRS. Imagine a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles – but to secure lifesaving treatment for yourself, a spouse or child, rather than simply to obtain a driver’s license. What a nightmare.
Related to all this, our President met with the AMA today and received boos http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...show_article=1 during portions of his speech http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...ech-text_N.htm which must have come as quite a shock to a man who is used to people fainting in his presence.
He cautioned against believing the “scare tactics” the opposition was allegedly using, yet didn’t have any trouble using the tactic himself: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009...-ticking-bomb/
Anyway, the AMA made it clear last week that it did not support ObamaCare in its current form. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/us...alth.html?_r=1 No surprise there, as the AMA have long opposed government-run healthcare for the reasons Carol mentioned in her article, and more. They are not opposed to reforming the system in and of itself - just the kind that would affect the quality and accessibility of healthcare, cause prices to skyrocket, increase waiting lines at doctors offices, and stifle competition. http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/news...1may2009.shtml http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/legi...m-reform.shtmlQuote:
CHICAGO — President Barack Obama pushed hard Monday for a health care overhaul, saying the system is “a ticking bomb” for the budget that could force America to “go the way of GM” without a legislative fix.
Obama went before the American Medical Association in Chicago to declare anew that the existing system leaves too many uninsured and forces “excessive defensive medicine” by doctors worried about malpractice suits. He also declared once again that he does not favor socialized medicine and cautioned people to beware of “scare tactics and fear-mongering” by critics who make this claim.
[...]
“A big part of what led General Motors and Chrysler into trouble,” he said, “were the huge costs they racked up providing health care for their workers — costs that made them less profitable and less competitive with automakers around the world.”
“If we do not fix our health care system,” Obama said, “America may go the way of GM — paying more, getting less, and going broke.”
Nevertheless, he will continue to push the issue, not just because he himself is a big supporter of government-run healthcare, but because his chief opponent last year in the primaries - Hillary Clinton, who has made single-payer healthcare her mission in life - no doubt demanded that he make it a top priority his first year as a condition of her running the State Dept. Not only that, but the “Lion of the Senate” and favorite Democrat of all Cap Hill Dems - including Obama, Ted Kennedy, has also long been proponent of big government having control over our nation’s healthcare.
Oh, and anyone who tells you that these Democrats don’t support using the various healthcare plans they are floating around as a stepping stone to single-payer healthcare? Show them this video of Democrats admitting that very thing, including our own President - before he became President. http://blog.heritage.org/2009/06/15/...t-health-care/ Deception is the name of the game.
As they say, you can put a new coat of paint on an old barn, but in the end it will still be an old barn …
Here's something I don't understand. If they propose taxing our health benefits we get from our employer, shouldn't the government plan be taxed, too.
In that, since it's paid on a sliding scale, those folks should be taxed on the ACTUAL value of the plan.
So, already the gov plan would have an edge, it's not taxed like income. That's NOT what I call competition in the market. It's punishing people for not choosing a government option!!
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Health Insurance Fraud Exposed
The Congressional Budget Office has released its preliminary assessment of draft legislation to reform health insurance, and the picture is ugly. http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=293 CBO Health Reform Analysis - 06-15-HealthChoicesAct
Contrary to the claims by the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats that the reform will provide coverage for all Americans without busting the budget, the CBO estimates that only a net of 16-17 million people will obtain coverage, after factoring in those people who lose coverage because of the reforms. At the same time, the cost will exceed $1 trillion, which likely is a gross understatement because the current analysis does not take into account expanded Medicaid coverage:
Given the CBO's dire predictions, the rush to complete health care reform in the next few weeks is irresponsible in the extreme. We cannot afford another blind vote, as happened with the stimulus package in February, where neither the Congress nor the public had a chance to understand both the printed provisions and the implications of those provisions.Quote:
According to our preliminary assessment, enacting the proposal would result in a net increase in federal budget deficits of about $1.0 trillion over the 2010-2019 period. When fully implemented, about 39 million individuals would obtain coverage through the new insurance exchanges. At the same time, the number of people who had coverage through an employer would decline by about 15 million (or roughly 10 percent), and coverage from other sources would fall by about 8 million, so the net decrease in the number of people uninsured would be about 16 million or 17 million.
These new figures do not represent a formal or complete cost estimate for the draft legislation, for several reasons. The estimates provided do not address the entire bill—only the major provisions related to health insurance coverage. Some details have not been estimated yet, and the draft legislation has not been fully reviewed. Also, because expanded eligibility for the Medicaid program may be added at a later date, those figures are not likely to represent the impact that more comprehensive proposals—which might include a significant expansion of Medicaid or other options for subsidizing coverage for those with income below 150 percent of the federal poverty level—would have both on the federal budget and on the extent of insurance coverage.
Added: Even though the proposal evaluated by the CBO is not a final draft, the fact that a proposal by a leading Democrat (Ted Kennedy) has been shown to have unintended consequences should give everyone pause. As with the stimulus plan, these massive legislative efforts must be addressed carefully and with adequate time, and not rushed through based on assumptions and promises which lack basis in fact.
http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.co...d-exposed.html
Obamacare bogus statistic of the day: http://www.pointoflaw.com/archives/2...-hundred-t.php
Here’s a less convenient Slate article published today. It’s no wonder no one on the right wants to talk about it. http://www.slate.com/id/2220296
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Deception and Tyranny Key To Health Care Reform
David Brooks has a piece in today's NY Times in which he explains how Barack Obama will pass health care reform. The solution can be summed up in two words: Deception and Tyranny.
After allowing the political process (and all those messy bad special interest groups) to put forth their ideas, a large health care reform package will be proposed in a rush to the finish line:
Notice not a hint of concern on Brooks' part about deception being the key to passage of sweeping health care reform. We've been there, and done that, as in the February 2009 stimulus package. How quaint is the concept of people actually knowing what they are getting in legislation.Quote:
This brings you to the final stage, the scrum. This is the set of all-night meetings at the end of the Congressional summer session when all the different pieces actually get put together.
You want the scrum to be quick so that the bill is passed before some of the interests groups realize that they’ve been decapitated. You want the scrum to be frantic so you can tell your allies that their reservations might destroy the whole effort (this is how you are going to get the liberals to water down the public plan and the moderates to loosen their fiscal rectitude).
Brooks attitude about "experts" making health care decisions smacks of elitism; an unelected, unimpeachable panel will deprive you of the right to treatment not because the treatment will not help you, but because the treatment is too expensive for the system of government health insurance. If empowering individuals and doctors to make these decisions is politicizing health care, then call me political.Quote:
After the deception, will come the tyranny, in the form of MedPac, the unaccountable commission which will make life and death decisions for the nation as to which surgical or medical procedures, services and medications are cost effective for the nation.
As in Britain and elsewhere, these decisions will have life and death consequences for patients, who will have no redress against this supposedly benign health care dictator:
But you won’t be able to honestly address the toughest issues and still hold your coalition. You won’t get the kind of structural change that will bring down costs long-term. In the scrum, Congress will embrace the easy stuff and bury the hard stuff.
Which is why you have MedPAC. That’s the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission that you want to turn into a health care Federal Reserve Board — an aloof technocratic body of experts that will make tough decisions beyond the reach of politics. You can take every thorny issue, throw it to MedPac and consider it solved.
Conservatives will claim you’re giving enormous power to an unelected bunch of wonks. They’ll say that health care is too complicated to be run by experts from Washington. But you’ll say that you are rising above politics. You’ll have your (partial) health care victory.
While I disagree with Brooks' attitude, I fear he is correct in the ultimate point. The only way the Obama administration and Democrats can force through the types of changes they envision for the health care system is through deception and tyranny. Honesty and freedom have no place in a system of national health care.
http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.co...to-health.html
Obamacare bogus statistic of the day, Pt. 2
You know how the White House/CBO are now telling us that Obamacare will cost $1 trillion over 10 years?
Try $4 trillion over 10 years. And probably higher.
Philip Klein at The American Spectator un-fuzzifies the math. http://spectator.org/blog/2009/06/16...ill-would-actu
:banghead:Quote:
Report: Kennedy Bill Would Actually Cost $4 Trillion
By Philip Klein on 6.16.09 @ 3:40PM
Yesterday, the CBO estimated that the current Democratic Senate health care bill would increase the defict by $1 trillion over 10 years while leaving 30 million uninsured, forcing the White House to distance itself from the legislation. While liberals have tried to emphasize that the CBO provided only a partial analysis of the draft legislation from Ted Kennedy's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, a more comprehensive analysis of the legislation will only serve to drive the bill's ultimate cost higher. For instance, because it was only working with a draft of the bill that had holes in it, the CBO did not estimate the costs associated with increasing Medicaid elgibility to 150 percent of the poverty level, or the full cost of providing subsidies to individuals with incomes at up to 500 percent of the poverty level to purchase insurance through state-run exchanges. Once this is taken into account, liberals are right that the final CBO estimate will reflect more people being insured, but the cost of the legislation will go up as well.
Health Systems Innovations Network, a consulting group, went ahead and estimated the full cost of a bill that included the subsidies and Medicaid expansion, and reduced the number of uninsured by 99 percent. With these assumptions, they estimated (pdf) the cost at a staggering $4 trillion over 10 years, resulting in the shift of 79 million Americans to government-run health care. The report does not include possible tax increases or spending offsets, but notes that, "this would be a challenging proposal to finance with budget neutrality."
President Obama, in a speech to the American Medical Association on Monday, declared of the price tag of health care legislation: "it is a cost that will not – I repeat, not – add to our deficits."
UPDATE: I just spoke with Steve Parente, principal at HSI, who explained that the main reason why the group's estimate is so much higher than the CBO is that it assumes more people will buy coverage with government help. "We see a lot of people taking advantage of that subsidy, because it goes so far up the income threshold," Parente said. To be clear, 500 percent of the poverty level translates into income of $110,000 for a family of four. He also said HSI would revise the estimate if a new version of the legislation proposed new cost savings. However, he said it's difficult to estimate savings from the adoption of information technology and increased prevention. IT, for instance, could turn into an "unfunded mandate" on doctors and hospitals, while not all forms of prevention are created equal. Flu shots, for instance, are relatively cheap, but providing mammograms to some age groups can be quite costly.
They just keep pulling numbers out of their hat … and other places.
White House throws Kennedy under the bus?
posted at 3:15 pm on June 16, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
This time, it’s Ted Kennedy’s turn to go under the Obama bus. After the CBO reported that the health-care plan circulating in the Senate would cost at least $1,000,000,000,000 (a trillion) over ten years, Jake Tapper reports that the White House has hit full retreat, complete with backup beepers. Despite having President Obama on the road just yesterday in an effort to build support for the reform efforts wending their way through Congress, suddenly no one in the West Wing has ever heard of them:
Both statements are true, though it’s not clear who, if anyone, had been saying that the legislation drafted by the powerful chairman of the Senate Health Education Labor and Pension Committee constituted President Obama’s bill. Kennedy is but one of several legislators taking a crack and drafting legislation that will proceed through the legislative meat grinder and result in a bill that President Obama will sign. In reality, there is no actual “Administration” bill.Quote:
“This is not the Administration’s bill,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement following the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s health care reform legislation, “and it’s not even the final Senate Committee bill.”
The CBO made that same point about the lack of finality. That’s why the report only prices those elements within the incomplete draft, which did not initially include a “public plan”. The cost for that — which the Obama administration demands as part of the final version — will likely push the final number much higher.
Gibbs’ response demonstrates that, yet again, the White House has deferred the entirety of policy creation to Congress. Just as Obama did with his stimulus plan, the administration hasn’t offered any leadership on the issue.
Instead, Obama makes himself into the Campaigner in Chief on policy speeches supporting legislation to which he remains oblivious until the CBO puts a pricetag on it. Don’t get me wrong: that’s great work if you can find it, traveling on Air Force One in the middle of a severe recession explaining how the President plans to spend ever-increasing shares of money none of us have. And it does fit nicely into his previous work experience, none of which required him to show any leadership or do any actual work outside stump speeches.
A plan that costs trillions of dollars won’t add to our deficit? Really? And adding a public plan on top of that won’t create an entitlement commitment on top of the collapsing entitlements of Medicare and Social Security, either.Quote:
Apparently responding to the CBO’s numbers and the ensuing criticism of the Kennedy bill, Gibbs continued, saying “what is clear is what will happen if we let political posturing stand in the way of reform again: exploding deficits, lob loss, dwindling benefits, and millions more Americans joining the ranks of the uninsured. That’s unacceptable, and that’s why stakeholders from across the spectrum are joining with President Obama to enact health care reform that finally gets costs under control and expands coverage - without adding to our deficit.”
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/06/1...under-the-bus/
Why Scrap A Health Care System That 250 Million Americans Like?
By Larry Elder
Posted 06:35 PM ET
06/17/09
About 45 million Americans lack health care insurance.
Or do they?
A pro-"universal health care" television host recently cited this widely accepted "fact." The number is bogus. Here's the skinny.
Start with the math. We have 300 million Americans. Subtract the 45 million — 15% of us — with no health insurance. That leaves 255 million Americans, or 85%, with it.
And the insurance is lousy, right? Not according to a 2006 ABC News-Kaiser Family Foundation-USA Today survey. It found that 89% of Americans were satisfied with the quality of their own health care.
Nearly half of the 45 million fall in the category of my 26-year-old nephew. He smokes cigarettes, dates, eats out, goes to movies and, like all young people, lives through his cell phone.
With a slight change in priorities, he could afford health insurance, the cost of which at his age and health starts at about $100 a month. Take a look at a Reason Foundation video (available at http://reason.tv/video/show/560.html) of interviews with a bunch of non-health-insured 20-somethings.
These Gen Xers copped to dropping money on clothes, booze, nightlife, the latest tech gizmos and other things of interest to them. With a change in priorities, these young folks — far more representative of those without insurance than the forlorn husband and wife sitting on a porch swing — could both afford and qualify for health insurance. They just consider it a low priority.
Millions more can access health care through SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program), Medicaid or other government programs. But for whatever reason, 11 million people simply refuse to take advantage of them.
Several million other Americans who want insurance do, indeed, go without it — for a time. Many are, however, between jobs, and most — at some point — will find employment that either offers health insurance or pays enough so that they can buy it.
Millions more work at companies that offer health insurance, and for a few dollars out of every paycheck, they could add family members. They choose not to.
What about criminals without insurance? More than 2 million Americans — with access to health care, by the way — use jail, prison or penitentiary mailing addresses. And for every one behind bars, how many live among us who survive by theft, drug dealing, prostitution or some similar career path? Taxpayer health insurance for them, too?
So now we're down to the Americans without health insurance on a persistent, long-term basis. This is approximately 10 million to 15 million, a big number to be sure. But does this warrant a government takeover of the entire health care system?
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnal...aspx?id=479964
Oh how dare you suggest that people give up their Mc Nasty's and their IPODs to pay for their own health care. FOR SHAME. :rolling:rolling
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jolie Rouge
I have some employees that do not have insurance simply because they choose not to pay for their portion of it and they DO make enough to afford it. So I def. think the taxpayers should not be paying for their coverage at all. Also, I know of many people esp. younger singles that choose not to purchase coverage even though they have the means to do so. Instead they drive an expensive car, buy the latest gadgets whatever. I guess they still feel invincible. It's their choice but I don't want to pay for it.