Health Care Debate

[littlelolligagged]

http://apps.facebook.com/vote_no_obamacare/

The outrage is all so very disturbing. And so many of the people screaming don't even understand what they are against, just that their talk radio masters said that it is bad.

[GGT]

And it's got Ronnie's picture with a quote about SSSocialized medicine! Guess they don't count Medicare, huh.

[Nessus]

Whatever happened to the idea that illegal immigrants should allowed to purchase insurance in the US? Or will this ramp up into an immigration reform frenzy?

I've read some transcripts from radio commentators etc who insinuate this was good for illegal immigrants and conversely bad for tax-paying legal WASP citizens; Jesus from Mehico is for this, Jesus from Nasareth isn't, and so it goes

[Being]

I prefer to direct my rage at the fact that these people have better access to healthcare than I do.

[Illusions]

The outrage is all so very disturbing. And so many of the people screaming don't even understand what they are against, just that their talk radio masters said that it is bad.

The problem is we can't tell who is trolling and who is serious...its pretty sad that some of these people have to be serious though.

Edit: NVM, realized something worse, and they're going to vote based on their ignorance too! Yay!

[Flixy]

Just so I don't get accused of being biased. The other side's argument. Try to keep a straight face.

http://www.thefoxnation.com/sarah-pa...o-love-america

I like the dramatic opening!

[Being]

Here's a little anti-rage sentiment...

How do you think the legislation will affect Americans living abroad? If you’re an expat, how do you think the legislation may affect you?

Dan
Brazil
March 23rd, 2010
8:48 am
It means that I may be able to afford to move back to the States some day. At present, having to give up coverage in my current country and look for an individual policy in the U.S. is one of the things keeping me an expatriate.

[ar81]

Email bulletin from White House.

What Happens Next

Since the House of Representatives voted to pass health reform legislation on Sunday night, the legislative process and its political impact have been the focus of all the newspapers and cable TV pundits.

Outside of DC, however, many Americans are trying to cut through the chatter and get to the substance of reform with a simple question: "What does health insurance reform actually mean for me?" To help, we've put together some of the key benefits from health insurance reform.

Let's start with how health insurance reform will expand and strengthen coverage:

• This year, children with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied health insurance coverage. Once the new health insurance exchanges begin in the coming years, pre-existing condition discrimination will become a thing of the past for everyone.
• This year, health care plans will allow young people to remain on their parents' insurance policy up until their 26th birthday.
• This year, insurance companies will be banned from dropping people from coverage when they get sick, and they will be banned from implementing lifetime caps on coverage. This year, restrictive annual limits on coverage will be banned for certain plans. Under health insurance reform, Americans will be ensured access to the care they need.
• This year, adults who are uninsured because of pre-existing conditions will have access to affordable insurance through a temporary subsidized high-risk pool.
• In the next fiscal year, the bill increases funding for community health centers, so they can treat nearly double the number of patients over the next five years.
• This year, we'll also establish an independent commission to advise on how best to build the health care workforce and increase the number of nurses, doctors and other professionals to meet our country's needs. Going forward, we will provide $1.5 billion in funding to support the next generation of doctors, nurses and other primary care practitioners -- on top of a $500 million investment from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Health insurance reform will also curb some of the worst insurance industry practices and strengthen consumer protections:

• This year, this bill creates a new, independent appeals process that ensures consumers in new private plans have access to an effective process to appeal decisions made by their insurer.
• This year, discrimination based on salary will be outlawed. New group health plans will be prohibited from establishing any eligibility rules for health care coverage that discriminate in favor of higher-wage employees.
• Beginning this fiscal year, this bill provides funding to states to help establish offices of health insurance consumer assistance in order to help individuals in the process of filing complaints or appeals against insurance companies.
• Starting January 1, 2011, insurers in the individual and small group market will be required to spend 80 percent of their premium dollars on medical services. Insurers in the large group market will be required to spend 85 percent of their premium dollars on medical services. Any insurers who don't meet those thresholds will be required to provide rebates to their policyholders.
• Starting in 2011, this bill helps states require insurance companies to submit justification for requested premium increases. Any company with excessive or unjustified premium increases may not be able to participate in the new health insurance exchanges.

Reform immediately begins to lower health care costs for American families and small businesses:

• This year, small businesses that choose to offer coverage will begin to receive tax credits of up to 35 percent of premiums to help make employee coverage more affordable.
• This year, new private plans will be required to provide free preventive care: no co-payments and no deductibles for preventive services. And beginning January 1, 2011, Medicare will do the same.
• This year, this bill will provide help for early retirees by creating a temporary re-insurance program to help offset the costs of expensive premiums for employers and retirees age 55-64.
• This year, this bill starts to close the Medicare Part D 'donut hole' by providing a $250 rebate to Medicare beneficiaries who hit the gap in prescription drug coverage. And beginning in 2011, the bill institutes a 50% discount on prescription drugs in the 'donut hole.'

Thank you,
Nancy-Ann DeParle
Director, White House Office of Health Reform

[Being]

NYT has a really good synopsis of the bill as is alongside expected changes.

Proposed Changes in the Final Health Care Bill

Note the navigation menu on the left.

[GGT]

Q: Why are American Indians exempt?

[ar81]

Q: Why are American Indians exempt?

Indians were killed by Americans.
Their property was reposessed by Americans.
Their buffalos which is what they used to make a living, were killed by Americans.

[Dreadnaught]

http://apps.facebook.com/vote_no_obamacare/

The outrage is all so very disturbing. And so many of the people screaming don't even understand what they are against, just that their talk radio masters said that it is bad.

Stupid comments are stupid, but it's really unwise and arrogant to treat this as a "ignorant racist evil masses" kind of situation.

Health reform had broad support, and poll after poll shows that support evaporated on the contents of this bill, the narrow partisan majority used to pass it and the methods of passing it.

Sorry if I sound testy, I just have a lot of friends in person who are taking an attitude that people who opposed this are somehow stupid Klansmen.

[Ominous Gamer]

Stupid comments are stupid, but it's really unwise and arrogant to treat this as a "ignorant racist evil masses" kind of situation.

This is at least the 2nd time you've used this remark to brush off the way these people are acting. Instead of bitching about the group image, after the fact, you guys should probably considering retaking your party.

[littlelolligagged]

Stupid comments are stupid, but it's really unwise and arrogant to treat this as a "ignorant racist evil masses" kind of situation.

Who here said a word about racist?

[Dreadnaught]

This is at least the 2nd time you've used this remark to brush off the way these people are acting. Instead of bitching about the group image, after the fact, you guys should probably considering retaking your party.

I said the same thing in 2003 when people ridiculed some anti-war protesters for hurling insults at various leaders. I may have thought their ideas were wrong, even sometimes moronic, but I didn't use moronic behavior to distract from the poll numbers about how people felt on the issue.

Also, it's not my party, I'm not a Republican.

Who here said a word about racist?

I was projecting, sorry. Once again, I was using what you said to highlight something I've seen personally. It gets frustrating to be around people who think this is an awesome idea, don't understand anything about the bill but thinks anyone who disagrees with it is a brainwashed idiot who might just hate Obama because he's half black.

[Nessus]

I was projecting, sorry. Once again, I was using what you said to highlight something I've seen personally. It gets frustrating to be around people who think this is an awesome idea, don't understand anything about the bill but thinks anyone who disagrees with it is a brainwashed idiot who might just hate Obama because he's half black.

Which is admittedly dumb! But when the official response of the Pubbies is http://www.gop.com/firepelosi/ ,well

Both sides seem to consist of straw-manning morons!

I read a nice thought elsewhere, about how this bill will be a lot like the Iraq war in the public opinion

Massively unpopular just before, and gaining wide-scale support right after. Now personally I would expect that people for the most part would require more direct and visible results to feel good about before deciding hey maybe this is what the bald eagle was talking about, but I realize I am very cynical and openly misanthropic.

[Dreadnaught]

Political grandstanding aside, I think it does speak to how fracked up it is to ram this kind of thing through with a slim partisan vote.

I do agree this will likely become more popular, mainly because the bill doesn't darken the skies and open the volcanoes of debt overnight. And there will of course be a media push in a few months/one year to highlight a couple of people who have benefited from their unaffordable subsidies.

[Nessus]

And there will of course be a media push in a few months/one year to highlight a couple of people who have benefited from their unaffordable subsidies.

Well, medical bills are the number one cause for personal bankruptcy in the United States, so it shouldn't be very hard to find people who benefit from this somehow! At least compared with how they would have fared previously. Would you say 'the media' does this high-lighting due to their left-wing slant, rather than trying to report facts?

(fraked)

[Hazir]

Well Dread, the problem is that the opponents of the law have not entered into a constructive debate about a much needed health care reform and instead resorted to scare tactics. It also whipped up the more stupid part of the populace into a frenzy over it and then tried to coopt the 'organisation' that sprang from it. It makes it hard to not feel that the GOP's resistance had very little more to it than demonisation and nothing else.

And yes, this was pretty big legislation, relevant to a lot of Americans, so doesn't it make you wonder why not a single Republican has voted in favour of it? If you want to blame anybody for the razorsharp victory of this flawed bill, maybe you should look at the other side.

(I am convinced that 'fraked' wouldn't sound like 'fracked')

[Dreadnaught]

Well, medical bills are the number one cause for personal bankruptcy in the United States, so it shouldn't be very hard to find people who benefit from this somehow! At least compared with how they would have fared previously. Would you say 'the media' does this high-lighting due to their left-wing slant, rather than trying to report facts?

(fraked)

Well Dread, the problem is that the opponents of the law have not entered into a constructive debate about a much needed health care reform and instead resorted to scare tactics. It also whipped up the more stupid part of the populace into a frenzy over it and then tried to coopt the 'organisation' that sprang from it. It makes it hard to not feel that the GOP's resistance had very little more to it than demonisation and nothing else.

And yes, this was pretty big legislation, relevant to a lot of Americans, so doesn't it make you wonder why not a single Republican has voted in favour of it? If you want to blame anybody for the razorsharp victory of this flawed bill, maybe you should look at the other side.

(I am convinced that 'fraked' wouldn't sound like 'fracked')

I will address both quickly to say that there is part media slant here, and part Republican inability to coalesce around alternatives. But on the media front I can't begin to tell you how many reporters, who have their own industry headaches, want a bailout of their industry. But health insurance will do as well.

Still, Hazir I think you are misinterpreting the fact that no Republicans voted for. This is a sign of the majority party not compromising, not the Republicans being obstructionist.

Our system works by generally making it easy for any member (regardless of party) to propose amendments to bills, instead of sit on the sidelines as "shadow" ministers, legislators, etc. After weeks of negotiations it became clear that the Democrat's idea of "bipartisanship" meant trying to shave off a few Republicans to the bill and then leaving it at that. When the contents of the bill became a financial and regulatory boondogle for Republicans, they weren't able to unite around the various Republican counterproposals. And they sure as hell couldn't introduce them because they were the minority party -- they don't set the agenda.

But there have been a number of solid proposals from Republians, with a lot of thought put into it by Congressman Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin. Not exactly a foaming at the mouth conservative state, mind you. http://www.house.gov/ryan/PCA/

[GGT]

It doesn't help the GOP when they announce things like, "FREEDOM DIED TODAY".

(R) ideas were incorporated into the bill; interstate exchanges, keeping kids on parents' policies until age 26.




edit: C-sections were mentioned in another thread, thought I'd bring it up here as an example of our fubar system of "care". Along with the insurance reform, we should have had tort reform in the bill. And why are physician standards of practice still set at the CYA bar....?

The Caesarean section rate in the United States reached 32 percent in 2007, the country’s highest rate ever, health officials are reporting.

The rate has been climbing steadily since 1996, setting records year after year, and Caesarean section has become the most common operation in American hospitals. About 1.4 million Caesareans were performed in 2007, the latest year for which figures are available.

How crazy is that, one in three women 'have to have' a C-section? Multiple births and older mothers can't explain the entire trend. We've been birthin' babies for thousands of years, but now 1/3 need the knife? No wonder we're losing obstetricians.

The most common surgery in US hospitals, because it generates revenue, and helps offset the losses in other fields like emergency medicine?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/he...birth.html?hpw

[Illusions]

Still, Hazir I think you are misinterpreting the fact that no Republicans voted for. This is a sign of the majority party not compromising, not the Republicans being obstructionist.

How do you compromise with someone who isn't looking for it?

[GGT]

How do you compromise with someone who isn't looking for it?

That is the politics, in our face. Between political maneuvering and ideology, we can almost SEE how one side refuses to move forward. They'd rather be dragged into the future, kicking and screaming, proud to be reluctant and rebellious, than actually address reality.

Now it's almost not about the issue of health care, but drawing lines in the sand. Name calling, tea partying, twittering, talk radio, pick a side, demonize and dramatize. At least the demonstrations of Hell No We Won't Go was about an unpopular war with an unpopular military draft....

Everyone knows our current system is unsustainable. Everyone. The election results are in place. We HAVE to change, the question is how, not if. I may not like the means but I do like the trajectory forward.

If the Republicans had come up with good sound ideas, they'd have gotten the votes. It was no longer sufficient to say Let the Free Market Decide, and the trickle down Reagonomics will work, if we just give it MORE time.

[Ominous Gamer]

it's not my party

whatever you call yourself this time around, I still find your comment stance a little hilarious. You'll rant and rave, even when it doesn't pertain to the conversation, about people bitching about people bitching about being allowed to be bitchy towards other people. Instead of, I don't know, ignoring the comments that don't pertain towards your political stance; which I can only assume is what you what the people bitching about people bitching about their ability to be bitchy, to do.

[GGT]

As far as Dread goes, maybe he's living an Existential crisis, so we can cut him some slack there? A couple of years ago he was quite ready to downplay and criticize the Ron Paul "Revolution", by claiming he was a right wing wing nut with no credibility, let alone having some power within the Republican party politics.

But now it seems some of those values are being incorporated, and less off-track than on-point, and it's the tea partiers or Palin who are the extremists that don't 'belong'. It's like Bloomberg, Spector and Lieberman switching party affiliation. It IS difficult to put all things into party politics, in a two party system, when they have so many interconnected principles.

Ergo, health care's future does not belong to one party or the other, it belongs to the whole nation, so we'd do well to remember that.

[Hazir]

I will address both quickly to say that there is part media slant here, and part Republican inability to coalesce around alternatives. But on the media front I can't begin to tell you how many reporters, who have their own industry headaches, want a bailout of their industry. But health insurance will do as well.

Still, Hazir I think you are misinterpreting the fact that no Republicans voted for. This is a sign of the majority party not compromising, not the Republicans being obstructionist.

Our system works by generally making it easy for any member (regardless of party) to propose amendments to bills, instead of sit on the sidelines as "shadow" ministers, legislators, etc. After weeks of negotiations it became clear that the Democrat's idea of "bipartisanship" meant trying to shave off a few Republicans to the bill and then leaving it at that. When the contents of the bill became a financial and regulatory boondogle for Republicans, they weren't able to unite around the various Republican counterproposals. And they sure as hell couldn't introduce them because they were the minority party -- they don't set the agenda.

But there have been a number of solid proposals from Republians, with a lot of thought put into it by Congressman Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin. Not exactly a foaming at the mouth conservative state, mind you. http://www.house.gov/ryan/PCA/

Sorry Dread, but this 'explanation' does not explain why not even a single Republican thought it was time to give millions of uninsured Americans coverage. With all the shortcomings of this law (even a lot of Democrats who voted for it don't think it's a great law) that underlying message should have had some allure to a Republican willing to listen to reason.

I mean, it wouldn't be the first time a Republican voted for something that was fiscally frivolous.

[littlelolligagged]

Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker will not file a lawsuit against the federal government challenging the new health care reform legislation signed into law Monday.

Baker said there was not a viable legal claim that his office could pursue in filing such a lawsuit.

A statement from Baker's office, released Wednesday, said in part, Given that this proposed litigation "is likely to fail and will consume significant amounts of taxpayers' hard-earned money in the process," Baker informed the Governor's office by letter that he would not be instituting litigation against the United States of America over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Baker, a Democrat, is a candidate for Georgia Governor.

Guess some other state is going to get all the "glory" (or ridicule, whichever is appropriate).

[LittleFuzzy]

Well Dread, the problem is that the opponents of the law have not entered into a constructive debate about a much needed health care reform and instead resorted to scare tactics.

They did what they knew how to do. The GOP was in power too long, Congressionally, it left them with a coherence problem. Umbrella parties work because even if all the factions within the party don't share the same values on everything, they generally don't violently object to any of the other faction's values. This has ceased to be the case for both Dems and Republicans, and the only thing that holds them together anymore is a decent interval out of power, forcing them to focus on some core issues and pressure everyone into going along with them because "hey, we can't accomplish anything until we can replace the Democratic majority."

[Hazir]

They did what they knew how to do. The GOP was in power too long, Congressionally, it left them with a coherence problem. Umbrella parties work because even if all the factions within the party don't share the same values on everything, they generally don't violently object to any of the other faction's values. This has ceased to be the case for both Dems and Republicans, and the only thing that holds them together anymore is a decent interval out of power, forcing them to focus on some core issues and pressure everyone into going along with them because "hey, we can't accomplish anything until we can replace the Democratic majority."

Maybe so, but it's not an American tradition, this party discipline. And you can't really afford to have a system that combines the radical swings in policy makers that we know from the British system with the legislative roadblocks the Congressional system has put in place. That is; you can't if you want a semblance of effective government. You can of course if you want the US to be just a bigger version of California.

[EyeKhan]

Health reform had broad support, and poll after poll shows that support evaporated on the contents of this bill, the narrow partisan majority used to pass it and the methods of passing it.

No, support eroded because of a concerted effort to confuse and mislead them by the conservative mean machine.

Sorry if I sound testy, I just have a lot of friends in person who are taking an attitude that people who opposed this are somehow stupid Klansmen.

Maybe not Klansmen. Maybe not stupid. But definitely ignorant, and mostly taken for a ride.

<snip> I am very cynical and openly misanthropic.

But are you privately misanthropic too?