Honestly, I think the push is due to the fact that He knows he doesn't have 8 years. I wish that other methods were tried first. How many states have 1 or 2 companies providing 70+% of the care. Yet we have hundreds of companies... I have private healthcare now, in 2 years I will be working as a teacher and will have care from work. All this does to me is take another cut out of my own pay. I just down want to pay for illegals and while I support abortion (before the third trimester) I don't think that nore stuff like viagra should be paid for by my taxes.
If it doesn't pas Barry won't have the second 4 years. I don't know. How many states are there? That is unless public health care reduces the cost of health care ..... has anyone stopped to think there is potential for a trade off and overall costs become a wash? It is amazing how some healthcare companies resist or refuse to provide birth control but will cover the making of a stiff dick.
Not all states have the 1-2 companies controlling half. I doubt the costs will become a wash. Why should I believe that the Government can suddenly run something effeciently and cost effectivly after decades of doing the opposite. I agree with this, I wouldn't doubt that they see pregnancy and childbirth and then raising the child as future profits... Honestly Wart, if this does work out and there is no huge tax hikes or massive debt I would love to eat my words. The best case scenario is that everything I think and feel about this administration comes out wrong.
I think anyone who at this moment feels any government takeover would = mass problems would be more than happy to find out it didn't happen that way. BUT (big BUT here) the gov has NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER done anything efficiently, corruption free, or anything that the private market couldn't do on it's own or with just a little oversight.
You don't believe in treating pulmonary hypertension? Viagra was created to treat hypertension. It was found to have other, rather unexpected side effects. Not wanting to pay for the treatment of ED, I can understand. I don't want to pay for that either.
All I'm going to add is that on top of over 30% of health care costs not going to the for-profit provider (which 30% is a huge savings right there), more people covered equals less bankruptcies, which we all end paying for with higher interest rates from banks and higher medical costs to pay for those who can't or wouldn't pay. Less/No denials in coverage can also be counted into that equation. Will it all be a wash? Time will tell. But the true cost of health care could eventually end up a savings. When my daughter was born with a heart condition, she lived 3 weeks before she passed away. I had 2 insurance companies. Both said the other should pay. You can imagine my shock when I opened up a bill for over $600k. No first of all, those costs are ridiculous. But more importantly, if I had no coverage, there's absolutely no way I could pay that if I spent the rest of my life working 2 jobs to try to do so, while still supporting my family. People every day without health care coverage receive bills like that. Whether it's for $20k, or $1M, it happens every day. They can't pay. Those costs get absorbed by us in one way or another. At least this way, health care costs, essentially, go down over 30% (because there isn't a for-profit company taking over 30% right off the top), and if health care providers don't get greedy, with cases like this basically disappearing, health care costs overall should go down in the long run.
It is always a possibility.... But call me a cynic...I don't think there is ANY way a Bill passed by Congress that is 1,900 pages long would end up NOT costing the taxpayers more.... There be a lot of pork, loopholes and kick backs that can be hidden in 1,900 pages.
Democratic congressmen, remember the assault weapons bill. The last time you voted for something against the public that placed you in your jobs, you got routed in record numbers. Enjoy 2010.
you are kidding right? this bill is loaded with mandates, new taxes and fees, as well as penalties, including jail time. it also regulates anything and everything that the liberals can think of, inclduing vending machines, guns, etc. this is the worst bill ever put in front of congress, and will be extremely expensive in the long run. it will also drive the private insurance companies out of business and force everyone to a government run health plan. just so you know, the government is far more likely to deny coverage for medications and tests, and other things than a private insurance company is. dont kid yourself that this bill will lower costs because it wont. it will have the opposite effect in fact, and in more ways than one.
Maybe this is the pragmatic engineer in me, but even though I think the public option could be good, I still favor a methodical approach to health care reform. In the current set up, a public option can end up costing everyone to pay more if they have insurance through a private company because of cost shifting. This could technically cause everyone to end up on the public option, which is not how the current public option is designed. This problem could be fixed if each state does a price fix on each hospital. Price fixing by itself will cause some private insurance rates to go up while some to go down. Price fixing resolves the problem of cost shifting. Cost shifting is where one insurance company pays a fairly low price in the given market because they provide a lot of people, say 50,000, to the hospital. The hospital needs the 50,000 people who are covered by this one insurance company to survive which gives the insurance company a significant amount of leverage. To make up for the low cost in the contract with the insurance company providing 50,000 people, the hospital shifts the overhead costs onto the smaller insurance companies that provide 500 people. For example, Well Point here in California will $1,500 for an appendectomy at one hospital but $13,000 at another. This is essentially what happened to Aetna when they dropped 8 million people (yes, million) in 2001 when they had to cost cuts or go under (causing all 21 million people to lose coverage). In 2001 Aetna was losing around $1 million per day. Aetna simply couldn't complete in the given markets, so they pulled out. The public option, even tort reform and state restrictions (allowing you to buy insurance from any company in America) might end up doing nothing at all. What we need is an all payer system like in Maryland. A state commission sets the prices for all procedures at all hospitals regardless of if you have private insurance, government insurance, or no insurance. If the whole country had this, Aetna might not have had to drop 8 million people. At the moment, I would like to see an all payer system first with the removal of state restrictions. Once we see how this effects the markets (both availability and cost), we can move forward with more reform. Pre-existing conditions needs to be resolved, but first we need to see how exactly an all payer system does.
Maybe it is the Pragmatic Engineer in me who has spent the majority of my engineering career working on Gov't contracts that is screaming.."THE GOV'T ONLY MAKES THINGS WORSE AND MORE COMPLICATED" I've spent too much of my career dealing with Gov't bureaucracy, mandates, regulation and oversight. It does nothing more than drag out schedule, balloon costs and stifle innovation and change. For example, If I need a Stainless Steel fastener on a project that is Gov't Funded...I have to ensure that the screw is manufactured with American Made stainless steel. Good on it's face, but the implications are severe. The screw needs to be purchased from a American Supplier. The Supplier has to be on the approved vendor list. The screw needs to be bought in lots that have certification...BACK TO THE INGOT. So, I end up having to spend a week picking out a Stainless Steel screw, have to wait another 2 weeks to GET the screw on hand, and have to pay $4 a screw....when a $0.35 stainless screw from Ace down the street would work fine. At the end of the day, that simple fastener ends up costing us far more than $2 each......you have to include the cost of the people having to work so hard to find, approve and order from the vendor...you have to include the costs of maintaining the documentation for the certifications......that $2 screw very easily becomes $4-$5 a piece when factoring all costs. That's a simple example of how Gov't regulation impacts me on a daily basis. I can not believe in good faith that the over-sight and regulation of the healthcare field that will come tagged with a public option won't result in similar environment to the one I've experienced for the past decade. Your not implying that buying across state lines is "Tort Reform" are you? Tort reform is the attempt to reform "Tort" Law, which is used to define legal injury. Tort reform is aimed at reigning in excessive punitive lawsuits for medical mistakes, oversight and accidents. Tort law has nothing to do with restrictions of selling insurance over state lines.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Please god, can we have some tort reform? Unfortunately, AFIK, there is no tort reform in 0bamacare. I guess we get to keep seeing John Edwards channeling unborn newborn babies in court. Funny how he never channels unborn babies in the case of abortion.
I agree with your overall thinking, but, I'm pretty sure the bill doesn't eliminate the for profit private stuff. What it does do is require everyone get medical coverage. This will hopefully reduce costs by getting more stuff caught earlier and reducing the number of treated uninsured persons. At least that's how I understand it.
Sounds like a nice bonus for the insurance companies to me. I mean you force a bunch of younger healthy non claim filling kids to get insurance and who comes out ahead? Kind of like being forced to get car insurance. Awsome deal there or homeowner insurance, how much have you paid over the years on both. I don't even like to think about how much I've spent and never filed a claim.
