The first 100 days of the Obama administration will be and have been consumed with the economy and the budget; the second 100 days will feature, among other things, a significant and detailed negotiation with Congress on health care reform. To start the process, the White House has two major options. Either they could push for a significant expansion of government-run programs, or they could ask Congress to use money from the health care reserve fund to pay for the premiums of Americans who don't currently have insurance. The former would represent a departure from the employer-based system; the latter, which would include significant new restrictions on the insurance industry, would preserve, for the time being, the system's status quo. Politically, the target is moderate Democrats and independents. Legislatively, the goal is to get insurance companies and business lobbies on board, early.
Thursday, in response to a question about health care, President Obama outlined the principles first developed during his presidential campaign. But then he said this (emphasis is my own.)
Obama's plan will ultimately contain both elements. But my sense is that Obama has decided to start slowly.The problem is, is that we have what's called a legacy, a set of institutions that aren't that easily transformed. Let me just see a show of hands: How many people here have health insurance through your employer? Okay, so the majority of Americans, sort of -- partly for historical accident. I won't go into -- FDR had imposed wage controls during war time in World War II. People were -- companies were trying to figure out how to attract workers. And they said, well, maybe we'll provide health care as a benefit.
And so what evolved in America was an employer-based system. It may not be the best system if we were designing it from scratch. But that's what everybody is accustomed to. That's what everybody is used to. It works for a lot of Americans. And so I don't think the best way to fix our health care system is to suddenly completely scrap what everybody is accustomed to and the vast majority of people already have. Rather, what I think we should do is to build on the system that we have and fill some of these gaps
Don't you love the way a politician's majority grows from "sort of" to "vast" in a few short sentences?
We should not be bringing the insurance companies on board, but we should be getting the insurance companies out of the way and out of our pockets. With single payer universal health care we will no longer need insurance companies to smother US in paperwork, deny people benefits, and drive up costs for health care, and stop health care caused bankruptcies, like in the rest of the industrialized world. Health care, like education and public roads should be a right..
No, I guess we are going to let the government do that choclosteve. Have you ever been to a VA hospital...do you know anyone on Medicare? And you still want the government in charge? There is a reason why those who can afford it leave those industrialized nations and come to the US for health care.
Business can do it far more effectively and far less expensively than the government. Give them an incentive to do things well and watch them go.
Here is one idea I would like to see....
I used to work for a state agency. On an annual basis we would get a catalog that showed all of the HMOs and health plans that had submitted proposals to the state. The state set a base cost that they would pay to these plans for us employees. If a plan cost more that came out of our pocket.
If the government insists that they are going to provide some type of universal care open programs like this up to businesses and individuals. Also give the right to businesses to negotiate a separate but comparable plan directly with insurance companies if they can drive the cost down.
The government become facilitator not provider and people still have choice.
choclosteve said:
"With single payer universal health care we will no longer need insurance companies to smother US in paperwork, deny people benefits, and drive up costs for health care, and stop health care caused bankruptcies, like in the rest of the industrialized world."
Hmmm.
So injecting more government into health care will reduce government mandated paperwork. Right.
Nationalizing health care in the US will eliminate denial of benefits, despite the need for rationing health services in every single national health plan, anywhere on the planet, ever- oh, indeed that is logical.
Introducing government into health care will not result in a cost increase, because everyone knows the government makes everything more efficient- most definitely, government "reform" always works.
Putting the government in control will stop health care caused bankruptcies- well, companies will no longer go bankrupt- that's true. It will just be the country that goes bankrupt- even preznit karaoke admits that health care is bankrupting us. So a complete takeover of health care will just finish the job. Capital idea, steve!
Your ability to reason is outstanding, choclosteve ... can you get to work on a thesis denying the effects of gravity now?
Excellent feedback. Instead of shredding people, why don't you offer your ideas for how to manage healthcare and make it available?
Please help us put pressure on Congress to pass single payer health care by joining our voting bloc at http://www.votingbloc.org/Health_Bloc.php
It might sound insane, but why isn't eliminating all forms of health insurance not an option?
Just consider this, if there was no health insurance then doctors & hospitals could only expect payments of what individuals could reasonably afford. Health insurance masks that true price.
Or what about, health insurance actually assessing an individuals true health risk based upon his/her's lifestyle choices - smoker/non-smoker; skier/non-skier; lots of junk food/healthy food choices; doesn't exercise/ does exercise; drinker/not a drinker; etc.
Removing personal responsibility adds costs, promotes unhealthy choices and penalizes who do the right thing.
Insurance is the middleman in the health industry providing no added value and draining off most of the costs. The only value they provide is negative values: denying coverage, denying treatments, providing costly red tape, and errors. It should be on the top of any sensible proposal to reform the medical system is simply to eliminate the middlemen and the waste. 35% to 50% of all medical expenses go to "overhead" and wasteful form processing. Meanwhile, people are actually dying from lack of medical care. Insurance companies supposedly pool the premiums to pay out to those who need the money. But in reality, they take that money and invest in the stock market. When they lose, they simply raise their premiums. They don't deserve nor should they have a seat at the table for the redesign of the system. The only way the system can get better is to eliminate them altogether from the system not to bargain with them or appease them.
Health care should a right of all citizens as it is in all civilized countries. Just as we have come to expect fire protection, police protection, roads, and education as a right of all citizens regardless of wealth, so we should expect health care.
The insurance companies and the medical establishment will fight any change because it will hurt their bottom line. THey have brainwashed the American public to think "socialism" when anyone suggests a national health system. We need to fight them head on. Any country with a national health care system experiences 100% coverage, better health, longer life - at a fraction of the cost that we pay. We pay the most for the least because the lion's share goes to the middleman - the insurance companies - those that maximize the cost and minimize the care in order to suck up as much of the money as we will tolerate. Enough, already.
If you would like to help pressure Congress to pass single payer health care please join our voting bloc at votingbloc.org/Health_Bloc.php
One of the qualities that makes Obama so successful as a politician is his ability to wrap grand designs in what appear to be modest steps. The banking crisis is an archetypal example. Despite huge pressure from various constituencies he didn't go with the grand overarching design of bank nationalizations or new capital injections. These would have been dangerous, irrevocable and controversial. No he opted for a series of bandaids that the treasury and Fed working together could apply. If one failed it could be torn off and replaced with another. He's going to do the same with healthcare. It's simply too complicated and controversial to throw out the existing system and replace it with something new. He's also being very careful not to scare away any members of the coalition of interests it's going to be necessary to encourage or placate to get this past. The Brits have a phrase "softly, softly catchee monkey" which sums it up perfectly. For example, he wants the insurance industry aboard his plan both because they are integral to getting it to work but also powerful enemies. They like universal insurance because it creates more customers but hate a public option because they see it as a trojan horse for single payer. As the process moves forward there's going to be a public option but by then the insurance industry is going to be so committed and public expectation so high there will be no way they can back out at the last minute. Obama has a very clearly understanding of the fact that in politics the shortest distance between two points in not necessarily a straight line.
Obama is a socialest and wants to control every aspect of our lives.
That said, he will control WHO gets medicial attention and who will not.
Seniors who are unable to produce will be at the bottom of his priorty list and of no use to his corprate agenda.
They have allowed Illegal immigrants access to social security and medicare benifits for the sole purpose of bankrupting those systems and driveing concerned citizens toward Socialized Medicial care which has failed every where it has been tried.
He also understands that if he can create a smoke screen(AGI BONUSES)he can cover up his actions in other areas like the GIVE ACT.
This man has an agenda and that is to control the people of this Republic and turn it into a third world nation where he is the dictator.
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