Health care bills from Reid, Pelosi are ‘sham’

Posted by MissIndependent (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 10:50 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Here is what I don't understand about the public option.

Even if we all agreed it was a great idea, how can we afford it with the deficit we have? I know the plan is to raise taxes on the very wealthy and you might think that sounds fine, they can afford it. But the definition of "wealthy" can suddenly change and before you know it the middle class is being taxed. Also, the goverment sets the rates for Medicare and Medicaid today. If they set the rates low, the providers and hospitals have to make the money up somehow. So how do they do it? Raise the cost of commercial insurance. End result? It passes on to all of us.

I am all for making changes to healthcare so that it is affordable and accessible to everyone. But I don't think you need a brand new public option to do it. Expand Medicaid or offer partial payment assistance to those who can't afford the full cost. Look for ways to reduce waste such as directing people to appropriate levels of care, spend more time on fraud investigations, etc. Cap settlements on lawsuits.

Point I am making is that I don't get how we can pay for this and really why we need it. Instead of re-inventing the wheel, can't we try to fix what we already have? And why the rush?

I am honestly looking for some constructive debate and dialog on this. Thanks.

Posted by cabinman (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 11:12 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Instead of always attacking things where is this guys idea?

Posted by MITCHRAPPGUY (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 12:28 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I don't look at this as an "attack" article, but more of a defense. When the wolves are at your door, it is not an "attack" to shoot them.

Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 12:30 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Republicans’ Common-Sense Reforms Will LOWER HEALTH CARE COSTS
Americans want a step-by-step, common-sense approach to health care reform, not Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s costly, 1,990-page government takeover of our nation’s health care system. Republicans’ alternative solution focuses on lowering health care premiums for families and small businesses, increasing access to affordable, high-quality care, and promoting healthier lifestyles – without adding to the crushing debt Washington has placed on our children and grandchildren. Following are the key elements of Republicans’ alternative plan:

• Lowering health care premiums. The GOP plan will lower health care premiums for American families and small businesses, addressing Americans’ number-one priority for health care reform.
• Establishing Universal Access Programs to guarantee access to affordable health care for those with pre-existing conditions. The GOP plan creates Universal Access Programs that expand and reform high-risk pools and reinsurance programs to guarantee that all Americans, regardless of pre-existing conditions or past illnesses, have access to affordable care – while lowering costs for all Americans.
• Ending junk lawsuits. The GOP plan would help end costly junk lawsuits and curb defensive medicine by enacting medical liability reforms modeled after the successful state laws of California and Texas.
• Prevents insurers from unjustly cancelling a policy. The GOP plan prohibits an insurer from cancelling a policy unless a person commits fraud or conceals material facts about a health condition.
• Encouraging Small Business Health Plans. The GOP plan gives small businesses the power to pool together and offer health care at lower prices, just as corporations and labor unions do.
• Encouraging innovative state programs. The GOP plan rewards innovation by providing incentive payments to states that reduce premiums and the number of uninsured.
• Allowing Americans to buy insurance across state lines. The GOP plan allows Americans to shop for coverage from coast to coast by allowing Americans living in one state to purchase insurance in another.
• Promoting healthier lifestyles. The GOP plan promotes prevention & wellness by giving employers greater flexibility to financially reward employees who adopt healthier lifestyles.
• Enhancing Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). The GOP plan creates new incentives to save for current and future health care needs by allowing qualified participants to use HSA funds to pay premiums for high deductible health insurance.
• Allowing dependents to remain on their parents’ policies. The GOP plan encourages coverage of young adults on their parents’ insurance through age 25.
http://www.gop.gov/solutions/healthcare

Posted by jeshuaerickson (Jeshua Erickson) on November 6, 2009 at 12:36 p.m. (Suggest removal)

@MissIndependent

Excellent questions. Great to see someone actually wanting to have constructive dialog.

I think what I'd like to know are the actual numbers for what percentage of our medical bills go to private insurers and what percentage go to the actual health care providers.

My understanding is that there isn't anything keeping private insurers from charging whatever they want. After all, it is what the market will bear and we as consumers we don't have a lot of choices (especially if we get our health insurance through our employer).

The GOP has a plan which would allow folks to find cheaper plans across state lines, thus creating more competition and lowering prices. Maybe that would solve the problem; I cannot authoritatively say it would or it wouldn't.

http://www.gop.gov/solutions/healthcare

My understanding is that a public option would potentially motivate private insurers to do less price gouging. Folks assume that insurers simply increase their premiums when medical costs go up. Do we know that there is a direct relationship between how much we pay for our premiums and the cost of health care? Well, many of us assume as much, but who is holding private insurers accountable for their pricing?

One of the reasons why the writer of this column is against the public option is that he says many jobs will be lost as a result. I'm not in favor of anyone losing their job, but how many of these jobs are administrative jobs we provide the salaries for through our premiums?

We always assume that the private sector is far more efficient than the public sector, but I'd like to see some hard numbers before simply making that assumption. After all, United Health can afford to help Albert Lea by funding our AARP/Blue Zones Vitality Project. I thank them for their commitment to the health of Albert Leans, but I wonder where that extra sponsorship money comes from.

Like MissIndependent, I'm open to constructive dialog on this issue. What do other folks think? Do private insurers charge more than they should or is the real problem elsewhere?

Posted by jeshuaerickson (Jeshua Erickson) on November 6, 2009 at 12:40 p.m. (Suggest removal)

FYI, I didn't see NoDFL's post until I finished mine. He's posted a link to the same site. I'm not being intentionally redundant. (smile)

Posted by jeshuaerickson (Jeshua Erickson) on November 6, 2009 at 12:42 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Of course, I don't know whether NoDFL is a he or a she. I don't mean to assume either way. NoDFL, do tell.

Posted by cabinman (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 1:09 p.m. (Suggest removal)

DFL, I thank you for the post. How is this bill going to achieve all of these bullet points?

Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 1:33 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I think a better question would be how does insurance be it employer based or government run effect the cost of healthcare. What has happen is the consumer has become disconnected from the cost. When the insurance company (or government) is covering the cost we the consumer lose our incentive to control cost. We fail to ask the hard questions. Like why do I need this test? We all tend to run to the doctor for every little scratch or sniffle. Why because if I have insurance it is covered ( or I have a small co-pay). No though is given to the real cost because it is hid from us and the medical professionals. Next time you go in for a visit ask what it cost. You will get a lot of blank looks. I believe that this push for government run healthcare is not about helping. It is about power and control. For if it was about helping than we would be responsible for our own health insurance (just like car insurance) and we could chose any plan (like car insurance). We could get rewards for saving money (like car insurance no accidents than your premiums are less). Make the consumer a partner in controlling cost. Think of it this way if the government made every car insurance company pay for anything and everything that could go wrong with your car no matter how well or how bad you took care of it what do you think would happen? I think if you never had to worry about cost of any repair because any repair to your car is $10 than how many times would you send the car to the shop? 100 or more. I do know we would need more car repair shops. But at what cost and who would pick up the tab. This is what we have done to healthcare. Now the government wants to cover everyone for everything. The consumer has not to worry about cost and they will receive all the benefit. Can’t work there will be rationing and shortages. The government wants to control 1/6 of the US economy and once the camel’s nose is under the tent it will only get worse. So if you are not one of the insured you suffer from the government interference in the healthcare market. It is the government’s fault that cost are out of control and that you don’t have insurance not the insurance company.

Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 1:35 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Cabin,
Which bill the one they are going to vote on or the one proposed by the GOP. I will try and find that out for you.

Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 1:39 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Here is the text of the GOP bill. I will try and highlight the key points but please feel free to read it yourself. I will try to always copy and/or sight the part so you can find it. That way we are on the same page.

http://rules-republicans.house.gov/Media...

Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 1:44 p.m. (Suggest removal)

DIVISION A—MAKING HEALTH
2 CARE COVERAGE AFFORD3
ABLE FOR EVERY AMERICAN
4 TITLE I—ENSURING COVERAGE
5 FOR INDIVIDUALS WITH PRE6
EXISTING CONDITIONS AND
7 MULTIPLE HEALTH CARE
8 NEEDS
9 SEC. 101. ESTABLISH UNIVERSAL ACCESS PROGRAMS TO
10 IMPROVE HIGH RISK POOLS AND REINSUR11
ANCE MARKETS.
12 (a) STATE REQUIREMENT.—
13 (1) IN GENERAL.—Not later than January 1,
14 2010, each State shall—
15 (A) subject to paragraph (3), operate—
16 (i) a qualified State reinsurance pro17
gram described in subsection (b); or
18 (ii) qualifying State high risk pool de19
scribed in subsection (c)(1); and
20 (B) subject to paragraph (3), apply to the
21 operation of such a program from State funds
22 an amount equivalent to the portion of State
23 funds derived from State premium assessments
24 (as defined by the Secretary) that are not otherwise used on State health care programs.

I think what this is saying is that all states will create a program where people who are at high risk can group to gether to get insurance that is under written by the state and paid for by funds already sent to the states from the federal government.

Posted by ErnieGann (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 1:55 p.m. (Suggest removal)

NoDFL--EXCELLENT analogy between "single payer" auto repair and health care!

We need LEGAL reform, not "health care" reform. Any bill that does not address the most important issue in the cost of health care is only a sham.

The GOP bill addresses legal reform--the Pelosi bill does not.

Let's take the time to do it right. Implement test bills in any willing "Blue" states--after all, the "Universal Health Care" in Massachussetts and California aren't working out too well, are they? Let's learn from their mistakes, and not make the same mistakes nationwide!

Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 2:39 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I have another question why are they planning on voting on this in the house at midnight on Saturday? My understanding is they do not have the votes. It is time to slow this train wreak down. 2200+ pages is not something that should be passed in the middle of the night.

Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 2:57 p.m. (Suggest removal)

By JOHN SHADEGG

It is true that many Americans cannot find affordable health coverage. However, it is the government-imposed barriers that make coverage expensive, especially for the working poor in America. Fixing these problems would cost the taxpayer absolutely nothing, yet congressional Democrats refuse to consider these no-cost solutions.

The already high cost of insurance is often increased by excessive state regulations. States have passed more than 1,800 benefit mandates, requiring insurance companies to cover services from hair prostheses (wigs) to infertility treatments to acupuncturists to massage therapists. These state mandates raise the cost of insurance, which, in turn, increases the number of Americans who are priced out of the health-insurance market.

You may be thinking, what if I don't need a hair prosthesis or infertility treatments? Tough luck. Instead of having a choice in coverage you do need, you'll likely be paying for health insurance at an exorbitant cost to cover things you may never use or desire.

The solution: Allow American families to purchase health coverage across state lines. According to a study by the University of Minnesota, 12 million more Americans would be able to buy coverage if this simple solution were enacted into law.

Another no-cost solution? Give Americans the option to take the cash their employer uses to purchase health care and let them buy a plan on their own. If they are happy with their current plan, let them keep it. If not, let them take their business elsewhere and buy their own health coverage. This would force the insurance industry to innovate and control costs, or face losing business to companies that do.

Americans should also be able to purchase their health insurance on the same tax-advantaged basis as their employers. If your employer purchased health insurance on your behalf today, he would be able to do so with pre-tax dollars. However, in today's market, if you go it alone, you won't get any tax incentive to purchase your own health care. This would be a simple remedy to our still antiquated tax code, which favors big government and punishes individuals.

Allowing insurance portability and fixing the tax code is just a cost-savings start. How about enacting restrictions on runaway medical malpractice litigation such as pre-litigation review panels and loser-pay provisions for frivolous suits? Making any one of these changes to our health-care system wouldn't cost taxpayers a single cent and could save us billions over the long term.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...

Posted by MissIndependent (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 5:59 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Consumer choice creates competition which creates better products. It could be applied to health care. I like the idea of letting consumers pick their coverage.

The people that need to be helped are those that are facing catastrophic illness (i.e. cancer) and face running through their lifetime max. We also need to help the working poor get affordable coverage. And I would like to see help for those facing pre-existing condition discrimination.

But I think you can take care of it without a public option. And even if a public option was a good idea, how can we afford it??? There are a lot of things I think would be helpful or a good idea in my life, like a daily maid service. Well I can't afford it right now so I don't have it. It would help me have more "down time" to relax, work out, etc. and I might even be healthier for it. But I can't afford it so I don't buy it!

Posted by jeshuaerickson (Jeshua Erickson) on November 6, 2009 at 8:20 p.m. (Suggest removal)

The director of the Congressional Budget Office says that health care legislation currently pending in the House, HR3962, would yield a net reduction in federal budget deficits of 109 billion over a ten year period. http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=421

Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 9:22 p.m. (Suggest removal)

This is from that far right wing network CBS News. It will be several parts (sorry)

(CBS) One of the central selling points used by President Obama to push the Democrats' health care plan is the notion that a comprehensive overhaul of the health care system will reduce costs. But costs to who, and how? Let's step back a minute and try to figure out how Obama's cost-cutting argument could possibly be so.

First, a quick reminder of two reasons why cost-cutting is such an important selling point.

Number one, the core of what the Democratic base, in particular, wants from health care "reform" is universal coverage. You often hear statistics thrown around about there being 30 or 35 or, last I heard, 47 million people without health insurance, and the implication that these people are receiving zero or negligible healthcare. Debunking those statistics and assumptions is itself a cottage industry, but let's leave that aside for the moment, because the fact of the matter is that in a country of 300 million people, when you strip out the people who (1) already have health insurance and expect to continue having it, (2) don't especially want to buy health insurance, (3) are only briefly without health insurance and not worried about it, or (4) don't or can't vote, what you end up with is a very small slice of the electorate that would benefit from getting health insurance they currently lack or fear lacking. Now, voters don't only vote their own self-interests on any issue - but the fewer people who benefit directly from legislation, the harder it is to drum up public support for a bill that may threaten the self-interest of others. So, it becomes politically necessary, if the bill is to be as sweeping and ambitious as most of the versions circulated have been, to sell it to the public on the basis of some argument above and beyond insuring the uninsured. That's doubly so because if your goal was solely to insure the uninsured, much of what is in the various bills would be unnecessary.

Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 9:25 p.m. (Suggest removal)

part 2
Second, specific to the issue of saving money for the federal government, the Obama Administration and the Democrats have already severely tried the electorate's appetite for massive expansions of federal spending, especially deficit spending. The explosion of new spending, most notably the pork-laden "stimulus" bill, makes prior complaints about spending under Bush look like complaints about the deck chairs on the Titanic and flatly contradicts Obama's read-my-lips pledge during two of last October's debates that his proposals would result in a net reduction of federal spending. The voters have noticed that they're not getting anything resembling what they were promised. Thus, Obama has repeatedly pledged, with the same assurance as his campaign pledge on spending, that the health care bill would be "deficit neutral." The Congressional Budget Office, typically a liberal redoubt, has repeatedly thrown cold water on the claim that any of the proposals on the table would be deficit-neutral. Clearly, to get there, cost savings would need to be found somewhere to completely offset outlays.

How's that gonna work?

Let's review the options. The Democrats' main argument is that restructuring the entire health care sector will reduce the nation's total (public and private) outlay for health care. When you boil it down, though, there are only three variables you can cut: reduce the amount of medical care provided; reduce what providers of medical care earn for their products and services; and reduce intermediary costs. All are problematic.

I. Less Medical Care

The most obvious way to cut spending on medical care is to buy less of it. That's at the crux of the public's worry about "death panels" cutting off care, about rationing; it's why so many of the people showing up agitated at town halls are senior citizens worried about getting less medical care.

Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 9:26 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Part 3
The "death panel" phrase was shorthand, of course, but it neatly captured the core of the problem: government already rations care, albeit not very efficienctly, in programs like Medicare and Medicaid (see, e.g., here - then again, the failure to do more rationing explains those programs' exploding, budget-busting costs) and the end-of-life consulting procedures criticized by Palin and subsequently dropped by chastened Democrats are not the only way in which government incentives could or would be brought to bear on physicians to push patients from consuming health care to preparing for death or assisted suicide. More here, among many other places. But you don't have to be looking at the end-stage to see that any plan premised upon cost-cutting by reducing the amount of care provided would, well, reduce the amount of care provided. And if the costs being cut are taxpayer costs, the power to do so would end up being vested in some sort of governmental entity, likely a panel of government-appointed "experts," as Mickey Kaus notes was alluded to by President Obama himself back in April:

THE PRESIDENT: So that's where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that's also a huge driver of cost, right?

I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.

LEONHARDT: So how do you - how do we deal with it?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that's part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It's not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance.

One argument advanced by proponents of the various plans is that costs would be reduced by providing more care, because preventative care would prevent more expensive care from being needed. Even leaving aside the grim fact of human mortality (i.e., preventing heart disease at one age can just leave you to die slowly of cancer or suffer prolonged dementia later), Charles Krauthammer notes that studies in reputable medical journals have concluded that the need to offer preventative care to so many people to make sure you catch health problems early means that more widespread preventative care is more, not less expensive:

Think of it this way. Assume that a screening test for disease X costs $500 and finding it early averts $10,000 of costly treatment at a later stage. Are you saving money? Well, if one in 10 of those who are screened tests positive, society is saving $5,000. But if only one in 100 would get that disease, society is shelling out $40,000 more than it would without the preventive care.

Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 9:28 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Part 4
That's a hypothetical case. What's the real-life actuality? In Obamaworld, as explained by the president in his Tuesday town hall, if we pour money into primary care for diabetics instead of giving surgeons "$30,000, $40,000, $50,000″ for a later amputation - a whopper that misrepresents the surgeon's fee by a factor of at least 30 - "that will save us money." Back on Earth, a rigorous study in the journal Circulation found that for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, "if all the recommended prevention activities were applied with 100 percent success," the prevention would cost almost 10 times as much as the savings, increasing the country's total medical bill by 162 percent. That's because prevention applied to large populations is very expensive, as shown by another report Elmendorf cites, a definitive review in the New England Journal of Medicine of hundreds of studies that found that more than 80 percent of preventive measures added to medical costs.

Whatever else can be said for more preventative care, it is likely to offer no great cost savings.

Moreover, reducing the total amount of care provided contradicts one of the central premises of the entire project, which is that it will result in providing more care to tens of millions of people not presently receiving it. As Bob Hahn notes, if this is the case, it won't just drive up costs but will create shortages:

If we added 47 million more people to the health care system, there would be lines. We wouldn't even know how to send 47 million more people to McDonald's without causing lines.

I'm unfamiliar with the details, but apparently there is some provision in Obama's plan that expands the number of doctors, nurses, hospital beds, etc., to instantly accommodate 47 million more people. It usually takes eight to ten years to school a new doctor, so whatever the Democrats are doing here is a major advance.

The Democrats can't have it both ways. One way or another, they either need to sell the public on the idea of sharply curtailing the amount of medical care provided, or stop claiming cost savings that can only come from less care.

Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 9:31 p.m. (Suggest removal)

part 5
II. Medical Care For Less Cost

The issue of shortages brings us to the problem with the second option: rather than reducing the amount of care provided, reduce the amount paid to the people who provide it: doctors, nurses, and pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Certainly on the Left there is a fair amount of sentiment for making it less profitable to provide care. But there is really no getting around the basics of supply and demand: if we make it less profitable to become a doctor, we will end up with fewer doctors. If we skimp on salaries for nurses, home health aides, and less-skilled care providers (e.g., people who work in nursing homes), we will exacerbate the existing shortage of nurses and other providers, which is likely to become more acute in years to come as the population ages. And if labor responds to financial incentives, capital is even more sensitive: slash the profit margins of drug companies and medical device manufacturers, and inevitably there will be less investor capital for those companies and less coming out of the pipeline in terms of drugs and devices that save or improve lives. The net effect will be the same as rationing care directly: cost savings will come only by reducing the quantity and quality of medical care.

III. Cutting Out The Middleman

With open advocacy of government rationing of care largely politically infeasible and reducing the profitability of health care providers economically impractical, the debate logically falls upon the middlemen, mainly insurance companies. Pretty much everybody hates insurance companies, whose business model by nature involves collecting more money than they lay out. And there's empirical data to support the idea that we're spending proportionally more of our health care dollars on insurance, rather than care, than we used to spend. To shift the discussion away from rationing care, Democrats are desperately trying to paint the insurers as somehow siphoning off more money to enrich themselves than they "should," an effort that's now leading to an especially vindictive crackdown by panicked Congressional liberals:

If we can cut a half-trillion dollars from Medicare and Medicaid to pay for health insurance reform but if, as looks to be the case, healthcare reform won't pass, why not just cut a half-trillion dollars from Medicare and Medicaid anyway?

The fact that it hasn't happened and won't happen should remind us that replacing a competitive private marketplace with a colossal, Washington-run bureaucracy is a bad bet to produce savings. The conservative answer in this situation is not to throw out the entire existing system on the hope that things will work out better than they ever have before.

Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 9:33 p.m. (Suggest removal)

part 6
The elephant in the waiting room is the other big cost driver of intermediaries besides the scope of coverage and the cost of having shareholders and executives: lawsuits. Precise figures are again a subject of intense dispute, but a goodly chunk of what drives the amount of `unnecessary' care provided, the cost of providing services and the cost of intermediaries is the need to protect against and pay for the cost of medical malpractice and denial of coverage litigation. None of the Democratic proposals, however, seek to make any practical inroads against this source of costs. Replacing a private system with a public one could arguably do so if the trial bar is effectively precluded from bringing against the government many of the kinds of lawsuits now used against private insurers - but aren't liberals in favor of keeping those kinds of suits viable? And how likely is it that in the long run they won't provide other mechanisms to keep one of their vital constituencies in business?

We have pretty much exhausted the options for cost-cutting: less care (at a steep political price, at the cost of giving frightening power to the government, and at odds with the goal of providing care where none is now given); less money to caregivers, which would amount to the same thing; less use of intermediaries (which is likewise contrary to the whole thrust of the project); or less cost in using intermediaries (which is impractical and unlikely to pan out).

There will be no cost savings. There's no sense in pretending otherwise.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/2...

Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 6, 2009 at 9:43 p.m. (Suggest removal)

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitol...

The cheaper version would rely heavily on a more dramatic expansion of Medicaid, the government health plan for the poor that is funded partly by the states -- meaning already-strapped governors would have to pick up more of the cost of reform.

Under the version favored by liberals, compensation rates for medical providers in the government-run insurance plan would be based on Medicare rates, which are significantly lower than private rates. That idea, which Senate liberals also support, would hold down costs for the government, according to the CBO, but it would create a problem for providers in rural areas where Medicare rates tend to run much lower than the national average.

In addition, the proposal would shift millions more people onto Medicaid instead of offering them federal subsidies to buy private insurance. Those who purchased insurance would also get slightly less generous coverage

Posted by gone (anonymous) on November 7, 2009 at midnight (Suggest removal)

Should we get rid of Medicare and Social Security, too?

Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 7, 2009 at 5:58 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Maybe the question you should ask gone is why won't congress sign up for their own plan? This was true when they created Medicare and Social Security. Congress has always been able to op out. (That has now been changed for Social Security).

Let's keep this on the subject at hand. If it is such a great plan every congressman and woman should be made to sign up on the first day. Even better if it is so great every government employee (and union) should be forced onto the plan. They will never do this because they know what a turkey this plan is.

Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 7, 2009 at 6:14 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Ok someone needs to explain these 2 sections of the health care bill. Becuse it looks to me if you don't buy (or can't afford) health care the government is going to fine and jail you.

Section 7203 " misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year"

Section 7201 "felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years"

Tell me again that we are not in danger of losing our freedom under this bill.

Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 7, 2009 at 10:35 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Gone,

Think about this and share your thoughts.

The American Founders were the first to carefully structure what might be described as America’s Three-headed Eagle. The central head was the law-making or legislative function with two eyes, the house and senate and these both must see eye to eye on any piece of legislation before it can become law. A second head is the administrative or executive department with all authority centered in a single, strong President, operating within a clearly defined framework of limited power. The third head is the judiciary, which was assigned the task of acting as guardian of the Constitution and the interpretation of its principles as originally designed by the Founders.

The genius of this three-headed eagle was not only the separation of powers but the fact that all three heads operated through a single neck. By this means the Founders carefully integrated these three departments so that each one was coordinated with the others and could not function independently of them. It was an ingeniously structured pattern of political power which might be described as “coordination without consolidation.”

The Founder’s view of their new form of government can be further demonstrated by using the symbol of the eagle and referring to its two wings: Wing #1 of the eagle might be referred to as the problem solving wing or the wing of compassion. Those who function through this dimension of the system are sensitive to the unfulfilled needs of the people. They dream of elaborate plans to solve these problems.

Wing #2 has the responsibility of conserving the nation’s resources and the people’s freedom. Its function is to analyze the programs of wing #1 with two questions. First, can we afford it? Secondly, what will it do to the rights and individual freedom of the people?

Now, if both of these wings fulfill their assigned function, the American eagle will fly straighter and higher than any civilization in the history of the world. But if either of these wings goes to sleep on the job, the American eagle will drift toward anarchy or tyranny. For example, if wing #1 becomes infatuated with the idea of solving all the problems of the nation regardless of the cost, and wing #2 fails to bring its power into play to sober the problem solvers with a more realistic approach, the eagle will spin off toward the left, which is tyranny. (Dr. W. Cleon Skousen The 5000 Year Leap)

I think this is where we are at with the health care debate. We are so worried about wing #1 and have forgot about wing # 2 and we are heading at a high rate of speed toward tyranny.

Posted by conserned (anonymous) on November 9, 2009 at 5:12 p.m. (Suggest removal)

A lot of words about nothing. The publlic option is an attempt to make the health care businesses cut out their extravegant way of soaking the public. Not all get soaked because millions do not have health care. The health care organizations have their own method of increasing costs to subscribers each year. They call it their "cost of living" increases or "medical inflation rate." I can remember when the the inflation rate was 3% and B.X/BS raised rates 14%. When I stood up in a crowd of 300+ and asked why we were told "that's the way it is.' "Take it or leave it." So we did. It is the same old Republican scam as the long arm of big business. It's the same thing that Bush pushed with SS and the housing market that got the country into a huge mess that Obama is trying to dig us out of. This is an attempt to stifel huge rate increases that yearly haunt us. My medical insurance is going up 87% and we either take it or leave it while the CEOs are getting huge raises. Look at what the credit card companies are doing before they get styfelled by the new law. Some are raising their rates to as high as 35%+ before the new law takes effect. The Rep. wanted the provision in the law that it wouldn't go into effect until the companies "had a chance to work out the details." What they really meant was until we get a chance to raise the rates to ungodly %. The public option is a must.