Public To Politicians: Do Something On Health Care!

Originally posted by concernedcitizan
We're already knee-deep in an economic mess, and since money isn't free, someone has to fund this.

First off...forgive me for editing your lengthy post down to this one nugget, but it struck me as important and i wanted to respond specifically to this line of thinking...

Someone has to fund this...

What is "this"? Enormous ...and I mean unbelievable corporate profits in the insurance industry. That is what is currently being funded...by whom? The taxpayer...us citizens..you and I. The only difference between this and reform is that with reform we can put a check on continued unwarranted increases.

when Insurance companies raise the prices to insane levels like they have two things happen..

1. Individual policy holders just get screwed.
2. Business are forced to choose between scaling back benefits/passing on costs to employees...or not hiring employees because covering them is two expensive.

So right now...WE...You and I...one way or another..fund "this"

With government reform we still fund it, but their will be laws that work in our favor and mechanisms to put a cieling on how badly the insurance industry can screw us in rate increases and dropping policy holders.

Do nothing = equals a strong downward economic mechanism as insurers profoundly and consistently raise costs ...discouraging hiring and driving individual policy holders out. BOTH DEMS AND GOP KNOW THIS.

Do something...yes it will cost us, ...but we will be much, much better off as there are mechanisms to check the increasing costs.

Neither choice is great...I doubt Obama wanted to start his presidency with this issue...but it must be done if Americans are going to financially survive.

reply to post by maybereal11


What you seem to not understand is that when he says "this" part of what he means is providing healthcare for those who aren't insured. So "this" is going to add to the current cost.

Originally posted by JIMC5499
If you want to fix health care the best way to start is to get Government out of it. Everybody is whining about Medicare and Medicaid being broke. The reason why they are broke is that about only one dollar in six goes for actual health care, the other five dollars is spent in "administration". All around the country there are buildings full of government employees "administering" Medicare and Medicaid.

Show me links or stats for any of that..I prefer links to sites that at least pretend to be nuetral.

And then go tell your grandmother that Medicare sucks and you think it should be eliminated.

reply to post by Mr Sunchine


Really? Because I thought we were going to be "forced to buy our own insurance?" Trying to keep the rhetoric straight.

BTW - Insurance companies are for the mandate...becuase thye know what they lose by the US insuring everyone will be made up be the additional healthy policy holders a mandate would bring.

[edit on 23-2-2010 by maybereal11]

reply to post by maybereal11


The major flaw in all this - that despite rising income and sales taxes across the nation, our country is still broke and Medicare & Social Security Benefits - health care benefits, mind you - would be borrowed from in order to help fund this, the biggest irony of all?

reply to post by maybereal11


Well you might want to try harder to keep the rhetoric straight, because the most of the uninsured now would get SUBSIDIZED insurance and currently we are paying nothing for their insurance now because they do not have any.

reply to post by concernedcitizan


Social Security, Medicare etc. should never be borrowed from in good times or bad...that is our governments fault and both GOP and Dem administrations are equally guilty.

Originally posted by anon72
Again with this. LISTEN/READ

It isn't that folks are agaisnt Health Reform. They are against the way the Dems went and are still going about it. (without getting into all the details).

To most of us, if only 25-30 million are uninsured, then do a program like Medicare etc for them.

Where have you been? This was exactly the last healthcare plan, to extend medicare beyond seniors to those in need, but conservatives rallied against that as well. Basically anything the Democrats introduced, conservatives whined. The plan was single payer, could not get enough support, the plan then was public option, could not get enough support. The the plan went forward to extending medicare somehow, and this idea was even opposed with whiners like yourselves running into town halls.

It astounding how you can come up here and say this isnt against healthcare reform, because any push to even discuss reform with conservatives is met with opposition.

NOT CHANGE THE WHOLE Fn COUNTY AROUND.

How was he exactly going to change the whole country around? I think you have been made to be angry at the wrong things. You should really stay away from propaganda.

This has nothing to do about Health Care Reform. It has to do with seizing power.

The corporations including the healthcare corporations already hold the cards of power over you. Congress has a mission to seize any power away from them, especially considering some of the politicians get paid by these very same corporations.

If they really wanted us to have proper health care, they would give us the same they got

Oh you mean socialized healthcare where the government looks after you? The kind that introduced in the first place but then conservatives like yourself here came out crying the end of america. So it had to be modified, because people like you opposed it. Now you come here to tell us 'if they really wanted to'. Are conservatives confused as to what they want and what they are angry at? Or is this just a hate Democrat thing?

As of today FORTY FOUR states have or are working on legislation that will outlaw Federally mandated insurance

Thats good, I oppose that. ederal mandated insurance unfortunately was not the healthcare proposal introduced to the start. It was a modification added in the efforts to get more moderate support, and it turned out to be a disaster. The current healthcare proposal is not what this nation wants, from both sides. It didnt help though that the real reform from the start met such opposition.

reply to post by maybereal11


Medicare and Medicaid will both eventually have to be phased out over time. They are both nearly insolvent and they are unsustainable for a country that is 14 trillion dollars in debt. If you add in the nearly 100 trillion in unfunded liablilities like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security then there is no way to fund them going forward. We cannot just keep printing funny money forever while being a hundred trillion dollars in debt, eventually the rest of the world will get wise to our little tricks.

It won't be a choice to end Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. It will be a desperate act of survival for the nation.

reply to post by Mr Sunchine


And that additional cost is more than offset through requiring that everyone be insured...

That is one reason that the GOP ORIGINALLY CAME UP WITH THE MANDATE!!

Here is an article that sums it up..

"Congress has never crossed the line between regulating what people choose to do and ordering them to do it," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). "The difference between regulating and requiring is liberty."

But Hatch's opposition is ironic, or some would say, politically motivated. The last time Congress debated a health overhaul, when Bill Clinton was president, Hatch and several other senators who now oppose the so-called individual mandate actually supported a bill that would have required it.

In fact, says Len Nichols of the New America Foundation, the individual mandate was originally a Republican idea. "It was invented by Mark Pauly to give to George Bush Sr. back in the day, as a competition to the employer mandate focus of the Democrats at the time."

THE FREE RIDER EFFECT

The 'Free-Rider Effect'

Pauly, a conservative health economist at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, says it wasn't just his idea. Back in the late 1980s — when Democrats were pushing not just a requirement for employers to provide insurance, but also the possibility of a government-sponsored single-payer system — "a group of economists and health policy people, market-oriented, sat down and said, 'Let's see if we can come up with a health reform proposal that would preserve a role for markets but would also achieve universal coverage.' "

The idea of the individual mandate was about the only logical way to get there, Pauly says. That's because even with the most generous subsidies or enticements, "there would always be some Evel Knievels of health insurance, who would decline coverage even if the subsidies were very generous, and even if they could afford it, quote unquote, so if you really wanted to close the gap, that's the step you'd have to take."

One reason the individual mandate appealed to conservatives is because it called for individual responsibility to address what economists call the "free-rider effect." That's the fact that if a person is in an accident or comes down with a dread disease, that person is going to get medical care, and someone is going to pay for it.

"We called this responsible national health insurance," says Pauly. "There was a kind of an ethical and moral support for the notion that people shouldn't be allowed to free-ride on the charity of fellow citizens."

www.npr.org...

Without reading through the posts already on here, I bet I can sum up the general postmakers..

Far right = Polls are slanted, people hate congress and healthcare

Far left = duh, told you so

middle = Sh$# or get off the pot...will be nice to have but going nuts with the back and forth on it

Europeans = Lets make more popcorn, Americans are eating themselves once again...good comedy.

Me = Meh...its about to pass in the next couple days...no more reason to read through partisan bullocks by armchair congressmen...simply put, the people wanted it and it will pass finally...deal with it...What I know about the bill is simple...fairly soon I may be able to afford healthcare...whoot. my healthcare for the past 6 years has been a bottle of motrin and some band aids.

The real solutions don't bail out Insurance Companies and reduce the Treasury debt, that's why they are pushing this stupidity so hard. Tort reform would take money out of the lawyers pockets. Interstate competition would end up reducing the Insurance Companies' profit. The Government wouldn't benefit from either. With this plan, the mandatory insurance would create $15,000/yr for each family plan purchased from the Insurance Companies. The taxes collected will aid in reducing the deficit. The lawyers still make out because frivilous lawsuits can still be filed and Insurance Companies will maintain their profits by maintaining their monopolies in each state. Everybody makes out....except those of us who pay the premiums, the increases to offset the cost of fighting the frivilous lawsuits, and all the direct and passed on taxes.

[edit on 23-2-2010 by mrbarber]

Originally posted by Mr Sunchine
reply to post by maybereal11

 

Medicare and Medicaid will both eventually have to be phased out over time. They are both nearly insolvent and they are unsustainable for a country that is 14 trillion dollars in debt. If you add in the nearly 100 trillion in unfunded liablilities like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security then there is no way to fund them going forward. We cannot just keep printing funny money forever while being a hundred trillion dollars in debt, eventually the rest of the world will get wise to our little tricks.

It won't be a choice to end Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. It will be a desperate act of survival for the nation.

Or we can simply cut down on military spending...do we really need to spend such ungodly amounts of cash year after year on the military?

What needs to happen overall is spending some real money on scientific breakthroughs for cures verses treatments of illnesses. Pharma's make far more cash for endless treatments and so there is no desire to cut expenses...quite the opposite, its their interest to treat things. Perhaps a bit of government intervention can be a good thing where curing and preventing things is the main focus. Incentives to keep em coming back is not a good starting point.

reply to post by SaturnFX


Thanks for your input and pointng out my flaw. The thing is we will be forced to drastically reduce miltary spending for our nations survival as well. So things like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and huge military budgets will all eventually have to go out the window just for our countries economic survival. If we are lucky, that might save us, if not the SHTF.

Now mind you this won't be our government making this choice and pitching it as a good thing. It will be our government getting rid of these things in the dark of night as the last ditch effort to save the nation.

They are just trying to delay the inevitable for now, with things like this healthcare bill, but one day in the next 10 or so years (if we make it that long) this house of cards will all come crashing down around us.

If you do not believe me just study the numbers and it will become clear to you that we are past the point of be able to do anything but this.

[edit on 23-2-2010 by Mr Sunchine]

Originally posted by Mr Sunchine
reply to post by maybereal11

 

Medicare and Medicaid will both eventually have to be phased out over time.

Well we can start by eliminating fraud...not all things the government does are bad...some even save us money.

Miami Serves As Model In Medicare Fraud Crackdown
by Greg Allen

February 23, 2010

February 23, 2010 When it comes to health care fraud, schemes that target Medicare are among the most common and lucrative. That's because the $400 billion federal program is a fat and easy target.

The Obama administration, which has otherwise proposed a spending freeze on many federal programs, has requested an increase for an effort to crack down on Medicare fraud.

The government's effort to root out scams has proven successful in the Miami area, which leads the nation in Medicare fraud and in Medicare fraud prosecutions.

In December, federal authorities broke up a $40 million Medicare fraud scheme involving home health care services. Among those arrested was a family doctor who is charged with referring more than 1,200 Medicare recipients for home health services they didn't need. It was big even by Miami standards.

Eric Bustillo, head of the economic crimes section at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami, says last year alone, his lawyers prosecuted nearly $1 billion in fraudulent Medicare claims.

www.npr.org...

[edit on 23-2-2010 by maybereal11]

I say leave it like it is,I DO NOT want socialized medicine! I do not want to have to wait months if I have to have certain procedures done.

Let's give ourselves some perspective by considering a few relevant facts:

Most European and North American countries have a private healthcare sector in addition to their national service. Without government regulation, competition between medical professionals tends to increase the size of the private sector – although many doctors will accept both privately and publicly funded patients. Persons who are denied a desired treatment will often (a) turn to the private sector or (b) go to another country where they will receive public treatment.

Private American hospitals do not deny emergency services to patients without insurance. Although in serious cases the uninsured patient may be dragged irretrievably into debt, hospitals often take a loss for the cost of treatment when the patient fails to pay. Public hospitals do exist in the U.S. but are notorious for providing an inferior quality of care.

The standard of living for the homeless in European and North American countries doesn't even come close to the level of poverty experienced in many third-world countries. In other words: the existing healthcare systems in America and Europe, flawed as they may be, are top-of-the-line.
So what is wrong with healthcare as it is?

Critics of nationalized healthcare services are quick to point out that they are, like many government programs, costly, provide poorer care, and get easily dragged into a financial whirlpool of bureaucracy.

There is nothing unique about health care when it comes to egalitarianism. Certainly, food is needed more than is health care. Imagine if the government were to declare food free and agree to pay the bill. Initially, this might seem like a great idea, but costs would soon rise, along with demand. Eventually the government would claim that it had no choice but to enslave the food providers. In the long run the food supply would decline, and quality would deteriorate.

In other words, whenever the government provides a fully public service, you get the "Free stuff!" syndrome, which causes people to take advantage of services they would not ordinarily use if they had to pay for them. But medical costs are, of course, not actually free. You pay in taxes, and you pay in waiting times and limited service. .

reply to post by maybereal11


You can eliminate fraud until you have every last cent of it and it unfortunately will not be enough to make Medicair and Medicaid sustainable in the long run.

Plus, these programs have been around for 30 or 40 years and nobody ever stopped to think about dealing with fraud until now? That doesn't bode well for any form of government run healthcare in my opinion.

reply to post by concernedcitizan


With your widely scoping "free food" analogy perhaps it would be good to examine what civilization actually means? Why people gathered together in tribes, villages and eventually nations in the first place.

Specialization of labor is one part of the equation...it allowed people to focus on what they did best, thus benefiting everyone.

An extraordinary spear maker could focus and improve on his craft while the athletic hunters could bring home more meat with the well balanced spear.

Women could focus on gathering fruits, nuts and vegatables improving everyones nutrition. Each relying on the others for the remainder of thier needs.

Etc. etc.

Not everyone was responsible for hunting or gathering there own food....and it works well that way. Each does their part.

And you can ban together when threatened by another tribe..everyone benefits from the security of the tribe.

and when you are ill or grow elderly ...you are taken care of by the tribe. No one looks down at you and says if you can't hunt or gather anymore then you are meant to wither and die by the trail-side.

This is the pact that humans all over the world have made with eachother for millennia...in villages, cities and nations. It has served us well thus far on this planet and it is the reason that nations with "socialized" medicine think we are a barbaric place.

Becoming sick...getting cancer...growing old...these things happen to everyone without economic distinction. Kids get cancer. It has nothing to do with how hard you work for the tribe. It has no place (no correllation) in the capitalistic equation.

The most "primitive" people on earth all get it. It is one of the central pacts of joining a tribe. Care for your sick and honor your elders.

Most capitalistic democracies get it...why don't we?...Corporate greed and political influence...we are the world champs in that department.

Just my 2 cents.

[edit on 23-2-2010 by maybereal11]

reply to post by maybereal11


For the category of reasons we cannot fix our problems, there is really only one leader: we threw out God, culture, religion, aristocracy and common sense so that each one of us could be an autonomous king. We hate the thought that someone might know better and tell us what to do. We hate even more that people might be rising above us.

In a crafty revenge, we as a species have created a prison for ourselves: we demand autonomy of the individual, or equality, and an end to hierarchy so we have as few authorities above us as possible. Since most people then pick what is convenient for them, and fight back against what inconveniences them, we have a problem. Any change we want to make is going to inconvenience or otherwise offend someone, and someone might lose, which is a sure sign of fascism.

Our frustration grows because we cannot fix our problems because we've tied one hand behind our backs. We did it with good intentions, so we hope in our stupor that the world will see we're nice guys and try to help us out. But as anyone who has struggled to get a fire going on a cold night camping can tell you, nature doesn't care whether we're nice democratic friendly guys, or vicious bastards. Nature just cares what works. And since we're paying attention to being nice guys and ignoring what works, nature has a world of frustration to serve us.