Health Care Reform Bill fiasco

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I'm not sure I understand the significance of this. There is no single-payer system being proposed. That was swept off the table months ago. The "public option" is not the same as "single payer." All I've seen lately is what looks like a deliberate attempt in the media to conflate the two, to fuel various make various straw-man arguments about the current non-single-payer-public-option(s) that are being proposed.

My cynical side tells me that using the stat for "single-payer" is an intentional fudge (not by you, I mean) -- hoping that people will assume "single-payer" means the same thing as a "public option" (which has 70% approval), and therefore assume it's a bad thing because it has such low approval.

[edited to fix typo]

Last edited by Apple_in_my_Eye on 10 Aug 2009, 4:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Wow, that’s a though one. Who to trust who to trust. Should I trust Corporate America such as:




















OR

This is looking like it may be the kind of thing they reference;
from
"Fast Facts about the Health Care Bill - H.R. 3200"

http://www.fairtaxkc.org/health_care_fast_facts.php
page shows screenshots of pdf of bill with these comments


I'll bet that's what they're referring to.

tossing in my comment on the trust thing - I'm leery of all parties involved in this thing - odds are they're all in it with "what's in it for ME" high on the list.

Apparently same holds true for the politicians mentioned in it too

Health Care Bill Says Sebelius Must Develop ‘Measurements of Gender;’ Sebelius Says She Has ‘No Idea’ What That Means
Monday, August 03, 2009
By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer




from
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=51873

Ok, what I'm reading on page 16 doesn't sound like that to me. It's defining what the term "grandfather" means, specifically, that if your policy was in effect before the bill takes effect then your policy is "grandfathered" in. IOW, you get to keep whatever private policy you've got under the same terms/conditions as when you bought it. (And it goes on to say that the insurance companies can't radically change your premiums or other policy conditons simply because HR3200 has gone into effect.)

So insurers can still write new policies after HR3200 goes into effect, it's just that those policies will be subject to new rules that the old policies won't. As to exactly what those new rules are I don't know yet, that looks like it'll take a lot more digging. (I've seen suggestions that the new rules are to prevent the insurnace companies from gaming the "new" system, though that's admittedly vague.)

I have to say though that whoever wrote that it outlaws insurance so that everyone will have to have a govt. plan made a really eggregious error there. It just doesn't say that.



Paragrah 1 of page 19 says that policies written after the date the bill goes into effect, and that don't abide by the new rules, cannot participate in the exchange-participation program. So the insurance companies can still sell it, it's just that to participate in the Health Insurance Exchange they have to meet certain requirements.

Paragraph 2 explictly says that nothing will prevent the offering of policies -- it's only that certain ones can participate in the Exchange.

Ok, an example of the "new rules" will be no exclusions allowed for pre-existing conditions (page 19). An insurance company can still exclude for pre-existing conditions, it just can't offer such policies in the Exchange program.

IOW, the govt. option won't allow exclusions for pre-existing conditions, so the insurance companies can't directly compete with that unless they do the same. Otherwise, the sickest most expensive people will all end up on the govt. option, while the insurance companies skim off the healthy low-cost folks.

Another new rule is that companies participating in the exchange can't drop someone's coverage just because they feel like it -- only fraud and non-payment of premiums (with a grace period to remedy that) can result in cancellation of a policy.

As it happens, that's kinda what I'm thinking about this bit:


"Fast {and loose} Facts about the Health Care Bill - H.R. 3200"

Yeah, it sure sounds that way. Besides failing a "sanity test" that claim is... seniors are just too powerful a voting block to mess with like that. No politician would try that, I'd think.

I'm too tired to look up the end-of-life counsilling part right now, but I've read other folks say it's basically for the doctor to ask, "if you end up in a coma, alive on machines, do you want us to keep you alive like that for years and years, or would you want us to pull the plug?" --That the bill says that the public option will pay for the office visit to make those wishes clear to the doctor. IOW living will stuff.

A couple things to bear in mind is they probably won't include things covered by medicare because it'd both be from the government, so if you have something that qualifies they'll probably make you get and use that. Also, it's safe to ignore the exact statements from ANY news organization trying to summarize this bill because EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM is a PARTISAN POLITICAL ENTITY. Be it democrat or republican, each network has it's own spin that it will require each of their anchors to generally adhere to. This isn't from seeing or hearing them say this, but by observing behaviour of anchors and show hosts and noting when they start getting out of line that they also seem to disappear off the network.

These mitigating things said, I think it's a glorious waste of money to go too far with a public plan like this. They won't be able to keep the costs contained and the national debt is already a global embarrassment, and a strategic weakness. I may have voted for Obama, but it sure seemed like every last major candidate was exactly the same on healthcare. So I didn't get a choice other than not voting which is not entirely acceptable to me. This is one thing I never agreed with Obama on and won't. But if folks want to oppose it they should at least read the bill. At a minimum, read the stated parts they quote on to make sure it's accurate before repeating.

Edit: That gender identification stuff is probably some discriminatory measure inserted in against transgendered individuals and left vague so it can slip through. Then if passed, the teeth would show.

This kind of stuff really blows the poster's credibility

http://sarahs-accomplishments.blogspot. ... mment-form

Re:"Who is Obama that this woman should have to ask him if he would consider her mother's joy and spirit in his decision as to whether she can be given health care?"
Who is this woman that she's asking a President about a decision that Presidents don't make - and was made in the patient's favor Five Years Ago by those who are knowledgeable and responsible for such decisions.

Re: "His response was that some people may be better off if they just take a pill!"
They might.
Maybe you should.

Re: "The government has no right to make these kinds of decisions."
You writing the check, you make the decisions.

Re: "Some were outraged when Sarah Palin had the courage to call the proposed "death panel" by its true name: "evil.""
I looked at the HR 3200 bill pages someone associated with Fair Tax quoted as an example supporting that idea - they don't support that claim as I understand what I read.

Re: "The words "God, bless America" are taking on a whole new meaning for us. It's no longer just a little phrase we utter out of habit. Now it's becoming the prayer it always should have been, rising up from the depths of our collective souls. God, please bless America. "
You right wingers don't seem to want the Left Wingers bringing their LACK of religion into these things - just a bit of a double standard as I see this.
Screw resarch, facts, and data, THIS is a religious crusade!

Re Obama: "... was as a culture and a society starting to make better decisions within our own families and for ourselves .. . "
True. We do.

Other comments on what Obama said:

Yeah, there is waste in the system and there are unnecessary tests which are not making anybody's mom better.

The evidence does show there are times adding additional tests and drugs doens't improve care.

There are things that aren't going to help.

Re Obama: "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery but taking the painkiller" and associated.

1. True, there are times a given surgery is too risky for a given patient.

2. Huh? The mother referenced had pacemaker implanted, it controls heart rhythm via electrical impulses - how is a painkiller relevant to that function?

3. Taking Obama's comments at face value, he sounds clueless about what the mom's surgery was.

4. Reading things into his words, maybe he is in favor of not having approved that surgery for that patient. One needs to know what else Obama has said and written about the matter.

in that clip, Obama never did answer the lady's question.

Why are you lying like this? Did someone put you up to it, or did you decide on your own to spread lies about this topic?

This is a diagram of how the health insurance bureucracy would be arranged...and they want to give us another trillion dollars in national debt for it.
Sorry about the picture size.


(image removed by ed for being oversized. From Wrong Planet rules:
* Ensure that links and pictures in posts fit the page format
* Posts which disrupt the page format may be edited or deleted by the Moderators.)

Looks like your health care will be as convoluted as your tax forms.

Actually it's a mislabeled diagram for an interstellar FTL space ship drive.

Damnit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a star ship engineer!

why cant those goddamm stubborn proud patriotic americans be more like us brits and give the nhs to everyone, it works wonders