Republicans using Healthcare as a political game.

President Obama is committed to working with Congress to pass comprehensive health reform this year in order to control rising health care costs, guarantee choice of doctor, and assure high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans. The Administration believes that comprehensive health reform should:

* Reduce long-term growth of health care costs for businesses and government
* Protect families from bankruptcy or debt because of health care costs
* Guarantee choice of doctors and health plans
* Invest in prevention and wellness
* Improve patient safety and quality of care
* Assure affordable, quality health coverage for all Americans
* Maintain coverage when you change or lose your job
* End barriers to coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions

And even worse than deciding where to spend our tax dollars is deciding to increase our debt. I'm all in favor of health reform, including providing reasonable/affordable insurance to all Americans but it cannot (and we must not allow our politicians to think it can) come at the cost of increasing the national debt.

I'm all in favor of health reform, including providing reasonable/affordable insurance to all Americans but it cannot (and we must not allow our politicians to think it can) come at the cost of increasing the national debt.

"Let me repeat: Health insurance reform cannot add to our deficit over the next decade and I mean it,"

I've yet to see any plan come out of any committee that tackles the problem of increasing costs.

Last week, governors revolted against a plan under consideration in the Senate Finance Committee. That proposal, according to an analysis prepared by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and shared by Rendell's office, would have called on the states to issue 30-year bonds and pay the cost of the Medicaid expansion from the proceeds. This would have been augmented by some share of promised Medicaid drug rebates.

The proposal smelled of an effort to offload some costs of the health-care package during the years that would be included under the Congressional Budget Office's period for "scoring" the budgetary implications of the plan. States were promised relief after 2019. Asking the states to issue bonds for the Medicaid expansion would have taken $180 billion off the budget, according to an estimate by an NGA official.

One congressional source described the measure as "subject to gimmick charge." A state official called it "creative financing." Rendell said it was "absolutely" an attempt by the Finance Committee to make the package look less costly during the years included in the CBO scoring window.

The proposal drew a swift rebuke from the governors

As the Senate's smartest health care wonk, Ron Wyden of Oregon, says: "A big part of the reform challenge is to look at how the culture of the American workforce has changed since the basic structure of American health care was put in place. Today's culture is all about flexibility."

The premise of Wyden's bipartisan bill is that we should move away from job-based insurance. It would do this by converting the tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance into a tax credit and requiring that individuals use it to buy insurance. Wyden's bill would achieve universal coverage, apply meaningful cost controls, and, according to the Congressional Budget Office, pay for itself within a few years. It's going nowhere. Instead, Democrats are poised to pass legislation that spends an additional $1 trillion, fails to restrain spending, and shores up an anachronistic employer-based system. I guess you could call it a uniquely American solution.

dear ms lettybetty, there is no Obama health care plan, there is whatever the house and senate come up with. the cost will be immense and will be borne by we the people.

"My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea." - Tommy Douglas 1961.

For more than 50 years, his staunch devotion to social causes, rousing powers of speech and pugnacious charm made Tommy C. Douglas an unstoppable political force. From his first foray into public office politics in 1934 to his post-retirement years in the 1970s, Canada's 'father of Medicare' stayed true to his socialist beliefs -- often at the cost of his own political fortune -- and earned himself the respect of millions of Canadians in the process .
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Tommy Douglas's legacy as a social policy innovator lives on. Social welfare, universal Medicare, old age pensions and mothers' allowances -- Douglas helped keep these ideas, and many more, watching as more established political parties eventually came to accept these once-radical ideas as their own.

Senator Jim DeMint (R) wrote:

If we're able to stop Obama on [reforming Health Care], it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.

If you disagree with Obama's health care proposal, fine. But to see failure to reform health care as part of a general campaign to attack the president...

What jerks.

If Republicans want to see keep 40 million people in America without health insurance just to score political points against Obama they're jerks.

If the Democrats want to see America lose the war in Iraq just to score political points against Bush, they're the true patriots.

JPB wrote:

I'm all in favor of health reform, including providing reasonable/affordable insurance to all Americans but it cannot (and we must not allow our politicians to think it can) come at the cost of increasing the national debt.

Obama wrote:

"Let me repeat: Health insurance reform cannot add to our deficit over the next decade and I mean it,"

The argument against the public option is funny; As a government program it will be bloated, wasteful and inefficient... and private insurance companies will be unable to compete with it.

And even worse than deciding where to spend our tax dollars is deciding to increase our debt. I'm all in favor of health reform, including providing reasonable/affordable insurance to all Americans but it cannot (and we must not allow our politicians to think it can) come at the cost of increasing the national debt.