Ditto to that! As the saying goes, "unless I can feel your pain, I don't feel ya"

This makes sense!
 

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Like most posters here, I have not read either the Senate or House Health Care Bill – and I’m not sure I could decipher it if I did.

On the other hand, Ronald Brownstein has written an excellent and optimistic analysis of what is actually on the drawing board. And I do take that as good news!

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I haven't read it either, but my method of judging how good it will be is to pay attention to insurance industry lobbying against it. The more they scream and lie, the better it will be. They're doing a fair amount of both right now, so I'm feeling a little optimistic.

Americans bleeding and dying for an unviable system
 

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Two things are for sure:

• American health care costs as a percentage of the GDP must come down. There is no viable reason why the USA should use 16% of its GDP (and increasing!), compared to the UK’s 8.4%.
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• No "civilized" country can continue to accept a situation where 18,000 people die every year (recently revised to 44,000 in a Yale University study), because

a) patients lack funds/insurance to pay for life-saving medical procedures or
b) the "death panel" at their insurance company refuses/delays coverage.

That’s a "health care" system more lethal that the Irag and Afghanistan wars together!

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One more thing that is for sure:

• Somebody's making a lot of money off of that 16%, and they're spending some of that money to keep it going.

As for a "civilized" country allowing people to die, corporations (and they do run the country) routinely allow people to die if it means profits for them. We only occasionally hear about some companies getting caught doing it.

My daughter was in an auto accident her senior year of high school and sustained a brain injury. She is quadriplegic, non-verbal, legally blind, tube fed, etc., etc..... globally disabled. She can move her right thumb and eyes and pretty much nothing else. Her accident was 25 years ago. She lives at home with us. She left for school that morning a talented and gifted student. An hour later she was mentally retarded.

I can tell several thousand stories (literally) about just how really, really screwed up our system is. Of all the criteria used by insurance companies and the medical professionals, doing the right thing is just not one of them. Cost effective is the only criteria for treatment..... that translates to when the insurance runs out, you are out of treatment. I learned two things early on that I will pass along for others who might someday find themselves in a similar situation.

1. If you don't have a family willing to fight for you, you are dead.

2. Lawyers are cheaper than doctors.

My major complaint about the proposed health care reforms is they retain too much of what is wrong with the current one!

Here's another one I just don't understand. Why in the world would we want to add a tax on people just because they have an expensive health insurance policy? If we can't have great insurance, you shouldn't either. Huh?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091210/..._care_overhaul

Anybody know what a Cadillac plan is ? What do they get the rest of us don't? Surgeons who wash their hands first? Cute nurses or something?

The reason you want a tax on a Cadillac plan is that as the rich get richer and the middle class gets poorer, you end up with cheap plans that don't cover very much or very well for most people and more expensive plans that offer good coverage for the wealthy. There are only two possible solutions for this:

• Heavily regulate the industry.
  
• Tax the Cadillac plan to make it more expensive and less profitable to divide the market this way while subsidizing government expenses incurred from underinsured and uninsured middle class people who end up in emergency rooms for basic care.

Well, the Democrats are getting closer to passing a bill and I for one am happy they are getting close. Some coverage is better than no coverage at all. But on the other hand, what isn't covered is what will be exploited by the industry. They will turn this into something that should be desired. This is why there should be some other source for getting what you need outside of private health insurance.

I think the conservatives have a lot to fear from this kind of thinking. Obama promised up front that if you like what you have you can keep it.... but of course we're going to tax the daylights out of it until your employer cancels that great policy and, maybe, dumps you into a public plan that is far inferior (because it will be underfunded).

If you like your Medicare, you can keep it, but we're going to suck $400 BILLION out of this already underfunded, projected bankrupt, program to pay for reforms elsewhere.

I'm all for reforming the system, but gosh I wish MY party would have a little more integrity in the matter. Of course taxes are going to go up and so will the deficit unless we find a way to raise more in taxes than we spend on health care. Of course many are going to lose coverage if a public plan is included.... employers will indeed dump their more expensive coverage when a taxpayer funded option is out there.... they did with Medicare, right? Of course cutting Medicare by $400B will have a detrimental effect on that program.

A little common sense from the Democrats, PLEASE.

The Senate bill seems the most likely one to pass. Guess what... that bill allows for annual and lifetime caps on medical care if the insurer wants to do that, and I think some of them just might because they already do.

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news...nate.Loophole/

No annual or lifetime caps in the House bill, but no support in the Senate for passage, either.

Pardon me for a momentary rant, but I really get sick of this kind of reasoning. If I were to put this argument in full context, what it says it something like:

"It is acceptable to commit the American people to practically any level of expenditure so long as that expenditure focuses on the welfare of large corporations or the destruction of foreign nationals, but not where that expenditure might aide a less wealthy US citizen."

It is a selfish, short-sighted and pugnacious attitude, one that screams "this is what's mine, and I'm going to f@ck up anyone that tries to scr%w with it". The damned conservatives have spent so long pushing the fear button (something like 20 years now that they've been doing it in earnest) that a large section of the US population has no response to political issues except panicked, clingy possessiveness or paranoid belligerence. It's disgusting.

So let's be clear: if we had not committed ourselves to taxing citizens for trillions of dollars to wage two more-or-less pointless wars against relatively impoverished middle eastern nations, and had not committed ourselves to taxing citizens for a trillion or two more to bail out corporations whose greedy, overly-aggressive business practices caused a world-wide economic collapse, then we might (might!) have the moral high ground to say we cannot justify taxing citizens a few hundred billions to ensure everyone has basic health care. But we did do the first and we did do the second, and so all I can say to the latter argument is: Suck it up! If y'all want to get petty, get petty over hurting people, not over helping them.

Frankly, it might be a good thing if people did lose their nice, cushy health care plans. The fear of losing it blinds people; the shock of losing it might open their eyes.

And yeah, I know someone's going to complain that this is a thread about health care not about the wars or the economic collapse, but frankly that's bull. This is a thread about money - what we should and shouldn't tax, and how we should or shouldn't distribute the taxes - and put in that context the whole issue stinks of bourgeois self-righteousness (e.g. someone who'll regularly drop a hundred bucks to buy his friends liquor but won't give twenty to a bum because the bum might spend it badly). I don't think that the poorest segment of the population should be asked to make sacrifices (with their health) because of the drunken excesses of hawk politicians and greedy CEOs, and I question the moral standards of anyone who makes that argument.

Ugh. Excuse me while I wander off to mutter some more...

Nice rant, TW. I just wish you'd go ahead and say what you really think.

I'm calling for a little honesty from the liberals because that is my party. That's all. Both the House and Senate versions of health care leave gaping holes in the system and run up the costs by leaving the insurance companies in charge of health care. Are we too stupid to see what we're doing?

As I've posted before, I would fully support a Canadian, British, French type system or any other single payer system, but that is not on the table. Of course the rich are going to have to pay more than the poor for such a system.

(For the record, I am on Medicare. I have no Cadillac policy. I am not rich, but I don't hate those who are.)

yeah, it sucks being inhibited...

I'm sorry, but I'm tired of watching the 'fiscal conservative' arguments get used solely and exclusively on social welfare policy. I have no problem with fiscal conservatism, but being a fiscal conservative doesn't mean you cut back on fresh vegetables so you can buy gas for your Hummer. Reign in the war expenditures, cut back on corporate entitlements, and worry about health care provider problems when the amount of money involved is no longer comparatively trivial. I say make the most expansive, pro-social health care package possible, pass it, and get back to worrying about serious economic issues. all of this hooforah over health care is just a petty distraction.

Sometimes it sucks being a capitalist on this forum, too. (Capitalist = anyone who doesn't blame all the world's ills on corporations.:))

Far too many people are thinking if we can get something passed, we can make it better over time. Wrong. The insurance companies (like AARP) and other special interests will just slowly shove us back into our place.

The solutions to our health care problems really are extremely simple if just fixing the problems is what we want to achieve. Simply let anybody who wants to buy into a Medicare policy at the average patient cost to Medicare. Let anybody who wants to buy into their state Medicaid program with a premium based on family income. No life time caps, no pre-existing conditions, no cancellations for illness, etc., in either of those programs.

With the Medicaid buy in you instantly get access to health care coverage for anybody who wants it through a system that is HUGELY more efficient than the private insurance programs. Sure, taxpayers would have to chip in for the Medicaid option; I'm willing to do that. Not exactly single payer or socialized medicine, but everybody would have an option they could afford.... and the unions can keep what they have, too.

What's being proposed, however, is to continue the existing system where you pay through the nose for health insurance only to find yourself bankrupt if you ever have a health crisis. We've got an open artery and they are throwing us band aids.

We're jumping through all these hoops on health care reform just to make sure insurance companies stay in business and stay profitable. That's what my party is proposing, and I don't understand why they (we) want to protect insurance companies because we all know they don't provide any health care, right?

You misunderstand me. I'm not anti-capitalist, and I think your suggestion has merits (though I wonder a bit what would happen to those people who can't 'buy into' anything, for one reason or another), and I don't blame all of the world's ills on corporations. My point is that I'm sick to death of people 'nickel-n-dime'-ing prosocial efforts while they support shoveling gobs of money down the gullet of the military and industries. if you want to say things like:
well then you'd better damned well point out that we sucked 700+ billion out of the system as a gift to stupidly run corporations (that's just out of pocket at one shot, and to no real economic effect by most measures), and we sucked several trillions out of the system to pay for wars that did absolutely nothing to increase our domestic and international security.

I'm tired of dealing with this health care issue as though it lived in its own little fishbowl. maybe if we can expand the discussion to its proper perspective some of our representatives would be embarrassed enough to do the right thing (doubtful, though - they're not too prone to embarrassment).

Conservatives, or those who call themselves conservative, fear anything that brings about meaningful change. It's why they're not to be trusted.
Don't you mean chicken-hawk politicians?
Hah!
Why should anyone blame the people who run things when things go wrong?

I'm kind of puzzled about the phrase, "that if you like your health care you can keep it." Well, I like my health care which is provided through the company I work for but will it be possible for the company to usurp my benefits with something I would rather not have? If so, then this phrase has little meaning, particularly if companies get to decide whether you keep it or not.

On another note, I may not be able to afford it in the long run since the premiums have increased about 7-10% a year ever since I been at the company. Sounds like what people are saying here is that health care reform will do nothing to keep my premiums from rising faster than my salary.

Well, as TW used to say.... so much to say, so little internet.

I'd be happy to shut down every corporation in the world first thing Monday morning if somebody could tell me what we would replace them with that would provide the same function. Only one entity out there big enough to take that on and that is the government. Anyone for turning Apple, Inc. over to Uncle Sam? Thought so.

Of course, TW, you are right about it being about money and how it is distributed. There is one reason only that reform will not involve a Medicare or Medicaid buy-in as the solution. Both programs reimburse at rates below the private insurance companies.... you'd lose the support of the American Medical Association, all health care providers, insurance companies, and on and on. It's the right thing to do, but it can't, politically, be done. Too many people fear they would lose their cash cow.

@TW
Point taken. Of course we can afford national health care as well the band aids that are being offered. We lack the will to make the change even though absolutely nobody, including the evil forked tongue conservatives, will say what we have now is the best we can do.

Clinton tried and failed. My gut says Obama will fail, too, to pass anything that comes close to what we need. It is going to take a voter revolt to move this off dead center.