he only think to war against other countries .
he force us to Quit of nuclear energy " but he can't To prevent it .
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he only think to war against other countries .
he force us to Quit of nuclear energy " but he can't To prevent it .
Don't be baited, guys.
alireza - the topic is "obama care" ...
Forward this as fast as you can!
On Tuesday, the Senate health committee voted 12-11 in favor of a two-page amendment that would require all Congressional Members and their staffs to enroll in any new government-run health plan..
Three cheers for Congressman John Fleming of Louisiana !
Congressman John Fleming (Louisiana physician) has proposed an amendment that would require congressmen and senators to take the same healthcare plan they force on us (under proposed legislation they are curiously exempt... :hmmmm2: ).
Congressman Fleming is encouraging people to go on his Website and Sign
his petition (very simple - just email).
I have just done just that at:
http://fleming.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=55
Please urge as many people as you can to do the same!
If Congress forces this on the American people, then Congress should have to accept the same level of health care for themselves and their families. To do otherwise is the height of hypocrisy!
Please pass this on!!
ok , I'm sorry.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jolie Rouge
March 29, 2010
Children With Pre-Existing Conditions - Problem Solved!?!
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/mai...em-solved.html
That was easy! The WSJ reports that all the HHS had to do was ask nicely and the question of whether children with pre-existing conditions got relief under the new health reform bill was solved: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...463512126.html
That was easy!Quote:
Insurers said they would comply with regulations the government issues requiring them to cover children with pre-existing conditions, after a dispute with lawmakers over interpretation of the new health-care legislation.
The Obama administration has made near-immediate coverage for sick children a priority in its health-care overhaul. But shortly after the bill's passage last week, insurers contended that the law didn't require them to accept sick children until 2014.
The insurance industry's lobby, America's Health Insurance Plans, initially said the law meant only that they needed to cover treatments for sick children who already were customers.
Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, sent AHIP president Karen Ignagni a letter Monday pledging to issue new regulations in coming weeks to clarify that insurers must take applications from sick children starting in September. "Now is not the time to search for non-existent loopholes that preserve a broken system," Ms. Sebelius said.
AHIP said de-linking the requirement to insure sick children from the law's mandate that everyone buy health-insurance coverage, which goes into effect in 2014, could drive up prices in the meantime. But the group said it would do whatever HHS tells it to do.
It's worth remembering that, within reason, the insurance companies can play by any set of rules as long as they all play by the same rules. If some companies continue to deny coverage to families of children with pre-existing conditions, the firms that take them on will need to restructure as philanthropic enterprises.
And do keep in mind - since the insurers will be able to raise rates, they won't be paying for these kids (lib fantasies notwithstanding http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffre..._b_517316.html ); the rest of us who pay insurance premiums will.
In that sense, this preserves the Democratic Party role as the party of random wealth transfers. Just imagine that somewhere a self-employed software consultant pulling down several hundred thousand a year has been paying for his child's asthma treatment out of pocket because he can't get coverage. But now he can, thereby leading to an increase in the insurance premiums for everybody else, including Mailroom Mary, who is trying to get by on $25,000 a year. Such a victory for social justice!
How often will that be happening? No one knows! This new rule is not means tested as to beneficiaries and no one is yet eligible for premium subsidies, but Dems are thrilled anyway. Oh, well - they are thrilled with the individual mandate that forces the young and healthy to subsidize the older and less healthy http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100330/...re_age_matters (but often higher paid). Random wealth transfers.
If I had to guess I would imagine that, given the recent expansions in Medicaid and S-CHIP, the beneficiaries of this children fol-de-rol will not be low earners and may include a lot of successful self-employed people. Which is fine.
The WSJ includes this on coverage:
It's clearly a losing issue for them, although I do think they had a winning legal argument. http://justoneminute.typepad.com/mai...smackdown.html And I am still mystified as to how the HHS can write rules that turn the legislation sideways, but I try to learn something new everyday.Quote:
The number of children who would be affected by the broadest interpretation of the law could be relatively small. The Children's Health Insurance Program, a 1997 health-care plan for low-income children, is already credited with extending coverage to about eight million children who are not poor enough for Medicaid and includes rich benefits and low cost sharing.
Roughly eight million children remain uninsured, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, but just 1% to 2%—or 80,000 to 160,000—have a health condition such as cystic fibrosis or cancer that would disqualify them from private insurance coverage, said Sara Rosenbaum, chairwoman of the health-policy department at George Washington University and a children's health-care expert. Many of those children's families were unaware they could qualify for Medicaid or CHIP assistance or enroll in an employer plan, she said.
"We're talking nationwide about a handful of children" who might benefit from expanded private coverage, Ms. Rosenbaum said. "I can't imagine why insurance companies are fighting this so hard."
FOR THE DEEPLY SKEPTICAL: An alternative explanation is that Team Obama did not want an extended discussion about their inability to draft legislation and insurers did not want an extended chat about their unwillingness to insure sick kids, so a tacit understanding was reached - the HHS will pretend to write something meaningful and insurers will pretend to play along; later, they will lapse back to business as usual and HHS will ignore it.
Health premiums could rise 17 % for young adults
Carla K. Johnson, Ap Medical Writer – Mon Mar 29, 8:47 pm ET
CHICAGO – Under the health care overhaul, young adults who buy their own insurance will carry a heavier burden of the medical costs of older Americans — a shift expected to raise insurance premiums for young people when the plan takes full effect.
Beginning in 2014, most Americans will be required to buy insurance or pay a tax penalty. That's when premiums for young adults seeking coverage on the individual market would likely climb by 17 percent on average, or roughly $42 a month, according to an analysis of the plan conducted for The Associated Press. The analysis did not factor in tax credits to help offset the increase.
The higher costs will pinch many people in their 20s and early 30s who are struggling to start or advance their careers with the highest unemployment rate in 26 years.
Consider 24-year-old Nils Higdon. The self-employed percussionist and part-time teacher in Chicago pays $140 each month for health insurance. But he's healthy and so far hasn't needed it.
The law relies on Higdon and other young adults to shoulder more of the financial load in new health insurance risk pools. So under the new system, Higdon could expect to pay $300 to $500 a year more. Depending on his income, he might also qualify for tax credits.
At issue is the insurance industry's practice of charging more for older customers, who are the costliest to insure. The new law restricts how much insurers can raise premium costs based on age alone.
Insurers typically charge six or seven times as much to older customers as to younger ones in states with no restrictions. The new law limits the ratio to 3-to-1, meaning a 50-year-old could be charged only three times as much as a 20-year-old.
The rest will be shouldered by young people in the form of higher premiums.
Higdon wonders how his peers, already scrambling to start careers during a recession, will react to paying more so older people can get cheaper coverage.
"I suppose it all depends on how much more people in my situation, who are already struggling for coverage, are expected to pay," Higdon says. He'd prefer a single-payer health care system and calls age-based premiums part of the "broken morality" of for-profit health care.
To be sure, there are benefits that balance some of the downsides for young people:
• In roughly six months, many young adults up to age 26 should be eligible for coverage under their parents' insurance — if their parents have insurance that provides dependent coverage.
• Tax credits will be available for individuals making up to four times the federal poverty level, $43,320 for a single person. The credits will vary based on income and premiums costs.
• Low-income singles without children will be covered for the first time by Medicaid, which some estimate will insure 9 million more young adults.
But on average, people younger than 35 who are buying their own insurance on the individual market would pay $42 a month more, according to an analysis by Rand Health, a research division of the nonpartisan Rand Corp.
The analysis, conducted for The Associated Press, examined the effect of the law's limits on age-based pricing, not other ways the legislation might affect premiums, said Elizabeth McGlynn of Rand Health.
Jim O'Connor, an actuary with the independent consulting firm Milliman Inc., came up with similar estimates of 10 to 30 percent increases for young males, averaging about 15 percent.
"Young males will be hit the hardest," O'Connor says, because they have lower health care costs than young females and older people who go to doctors more often and use more medical services.
Predicting exactly how much any individual's insurance premium would rise or fall is impossible, experts say, because so much is changing at once. But it is possible to isolate the effect of the law's limits on age-based pricing.
Some groups predict even higher increases in premiums for younger individuals — as much as 50 percent, says Landon Gibbs of ShoutAmerica, a Tennessee-based nonprofit aimed at mobilizing young people on health care issues, particularly rising costs.
Gibbs, 27, a former White House aide under President George W. Bush, founded the bipartisan group with former hospital chain executive Clayton McWhorter, now chairman of a private equity firm. McWhorter finances the organization. The group did not oppose health care reform, but stressed issues like how health care inflation threatens the future of Medicare.
"We don't want to make this a generational war, but we want to make sure young adults are informed," Gibbs says.
Young people who supported Barack Obama in 2008 may come to resent how health care reform will affect them, Gibbs and others say. Recent polls show support among young voters eroding since they helped elect Obama president.
Jim Schreiber, 24, was once an Obama supporter but now isn't so sure. The Chicagoan works in a law firm and has his own tea importing business.
He pays $120 a month for health insurance, "probably pure profit for my insurance company," he says. Without a powerhouse lobbying group, like AARP for older adults, young adults' voices have been muted, he says. He's been discouraged by the health care debate.
"It has made me disillusioned with the Democrats," he said.
Ari Matusiak, 33, a Georgetown University law student, founded Young Invincibles with other Obama campaign volunteers to rally youth support for health care overhaul.
Age rating fails as a wedge issue because the pluses of the new law outweigh the minuses for young adults, Matusiak says.
"And we're not going to be 26, 27, 33 forever," Matusiak says. "Guess what? We're going to be in a different demographic soon enough."
Nationally representative surveys for the Kaiser Family Foundation have consistently found that young adults are more likely than senior citizens to say they would be willing to pay more so that more Americans could be insured. But whether that generosity will endure isn't clear.
"The government approach of — we'll just make someone get health care and pay for someone else — definitely NOT what I want," says Melissa Kaupke, 28, who is uninsured and works from her Nashville home.
In Chicago, Higdon says he supports the principles of the health care overhaul, even if it means he will pay more as a young man to smooth out premium costs for everyone.
"Hopefully I'll be old someday, barring some catastrophic event. And the likelihood of me being old is less if I don't have a good health plan."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100330/...FsdGhwcmVtaXU-
Quote:
Health insurers' collective profit-margin is less than one-eighth that of drug companies and less than one-seventh that of companies that sell medical products or equipment. It's also less than that of medical facilities. Yet when was the last time you heard President Obama rail against greedy hospitals?
The combined profits of America's ten largest health insurers are $8.3 billion. That's less than two-thirds of the profits of Wal-Mart alone, less than half of the profits of General Electric alone, and less than one-seventh of what Medicare loses each year to fraud. Health insurers collectively have one-eighth the profit-margin of McDonald's or Coke, one-ninth that of eBay, and one-fifteenth that of Merck.
:rofl: :rolling :rofl:Quote:
Originally Posted by Jolie Rouge
Did they think that Obama was going to make money fall from the sky?
Obama signs final healthcare changes, defends law
Alister Bull And Patricia Zengerle – 37 mins ago
ALEXANDRIA, Va./WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama made another push to sell his healthcare overhaul to a skeptical public on Tuesday, calling it a victory over special interests that will help the middle-class and defending the "courage" of legislators who backed it.
"This day affirms our ability to overcome the challenges of our politics and meet the challenges of our time," Obama told a college audience outside Washington, as he signed into law the final changes to the sweeping plan approved by lawmakers last week, along with reforms in college student loan programs.
The signing capped a year-long struggle between Obama's Democrats and the Republicans, who have vowed to repeal the healthcare bill, that has set the stage for a bitter campaign for control of Congress in November.
Democrats have a majority in Congress, but Republicans are hoping to make gains later this year and have vowed to make the healthcare bill the centerpiece of the election battle.
Obama defended lawmakers who voted for the bill, the most sweeping shift in U.S. social policy in decades, and took aim at what he said were misleading attacks.
"Courage is an essential ingredient in any landmark legislation, particularly when the attacks are as fierce and unrelenting and inaccurate as they have been over the past year. I just want to commend members of Congress who had the courage to do what's right," he said.
Opinion polls show Obama and his Democrats will have to work hard to promote the 10-year, $940 billion overhaul.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans say the plan costs too much and expands the government's role too far into a private industry, according to a USA Today/Gallup survey published on Tuesday.
An insurance industry trade group said the law also does too little to address rising costs.
"The access expansions are a significant step forward, but this legislation will exacerbate the health care costs crisis facing many working families and small businesses," Karen Ignagni, president of the America's Health Insurance Plans group, said in a statement.
AHIP had also said on Monday that it would fully comply with regulations under the new law that banned excluding children from coverage if they had pre-existing health conditions. The New York Times had reported that insurers were arguing that at least for now they did not have to comply with that provision of the law.
In an interview that aired on Tuesday, Obama acknowledged that adjustments will be needed in the law to reduce costs.
"I think it is a critical first step in making a healthcare system that works for all Americans," Obama said in an interview on NBC's "Today" show. "It is not going to be the only thing. We are still going to have adjustments that have to be made to further reduce costs.
U.S. companies have started to tally up the financial hit they say they will take because of the law.
The government still pays subsidies to large firms to help pay for prescription drug benefits for their retirees, but the new law does not allow the corporations to also deduct the amount of the subsidies from their taxable income.
Corporate America calls the change a tax increase, but the White House says it merely closes a tax loophole.
John Boehner, who leads Republicans in the House of Representatives, said Obama signed "job-killing government takeovers."
"Employers across the country are continuing to reveal the costly fallout from 'ObamaCare' - including new tax hikes and mandates that make it harder to hire new workers, and put health care benefits promised to workers and retirees in jeopardy," he said in a statement.
Obama is to travel to Maine later this week for another event to tout the healthcare plan.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100330/...usa_healthcare
"If you voted for Obama … seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years."
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/...,5593120.story
Doctor tells Obama supporters: Go elsewhere for health care
MOUNT DORA — A doctor who considers the national health-care overhaul to be bad medicine for the country posted a sign on his office door telling patients who voted for President Barack Obama to seek care "elsewhere."
"I'm not turning anybody away — that would be unethical," Dr. Jack Cassell, 56, a Mount Dora urologist and a registered Republican opposed to the health plan, told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday. "But if they read the sign and turn the other way, so be it."
The sign reads: "If you voted for Obama … seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years."
Estella Chatman, 67, of Eustis, whose daughter snapped a photo of the typewritten sign, sent the picture to U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, the Orlando Democrat who riled Republicans last year when he characterized the GOP's idea of health care as, "If you get sick, America … Die quickly."
Chatman said she heard about the sign from a friend referred to Cassell after his physician recently died. She said her friend did not want to speak to a reporter but was dismayed by Cassell's sign.
"He's going to find another doctor," she said.
Cassell may be walking a thin line between his right to free speech and his professional obligation, said William Allen, professor of bioethics, law and medical professionalism at the University of Florida's College of Medicine.
Allen said doctors cannot refuse patients on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or disability, but political preference is not one of the legally protected categories specified in civil-rights law. By insisting he does not quiz his patients about their politics and has not turned away patients based on their vote, the doctor is "trying to hold onto the nub of his ethical obligation," Allen said.
"But this is pushing the limit," he said.
Cassell, who has practiced medicine in GOP-dominated Lake County since 1988, said he doesn't quiz his patients about their politics, but he also won't hide his disdain for the bill Obama signed and the lawmakers who passed it.
In his waiting room, Cassell also has provided his patients with photocopies of a health-care timeline produced by Republican leaders that outlines "major provisions" in the health-care package. The doctor put a sign above the stack of copies that reads: "This is what the morons in Washington have done to your health care. Take one, read it and vote out anyone who voted for it."
Cassell, whose lawyer wife, Leslie Campione, has declared herself a Republican candidate for Lake County commissioner, said three patients have complained, but most have been "overwhelmingly supportive" of his position.
"They know it's not good for them," he said.
Cassell, who previously served as chief of surgery at Florida Hospital Waterman in Tavares, said a patient's politics would not affect his care for them, although he said he would prefer not to treat people who support the president.
"I can at least make a point," he said.
The notice on Cassell's office door could cause some patients to question his judgment or fret about the care they might receive if they don't share his political views, Allen said. He said doctors are wise to avoid public expressions that can affect the physician-patient relationship.
Erin VanSickle, spokeswoman for the Florida Medical Association, would not comment specifically.
But she noted in an e-mail to the Sentinel that "physicians are extended the same rights to free speech as every other citizen in the United States."
The outspoken Grayson described Cassell's sign as "ridiculous."
"I'm disgusted," he said. "Maybe he thinks the Hippocratic Oath says, ‘Do no good.' If this is the face of the right wing in America, it's the face of cruelty. … Why don't they change the name of the Republican Party to the Sore Loser Party?"
Hmm, if it were a Dem holding a position the Repubs dont like, he'd have a brick thrown through his office window.