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Sat 6 Mar, 2010 08:33 am
With apologies for cutting and pasting:
Bzzz. That's just wrong, on Health Care Reform
The invented Republican/ Foxy News talking point du jour is that the Democrats intend to 'ram health care reform down our throats' even though 'the American people don't want it.'
Bzzz. That's just wrong! First of all, when there is a landslide triumph for a party as there was in November, 2008, for the victor to actually govern and legislate is not 'ramming' anything down anyone's 'throat.' It is doing what the people asked you to do. Obama campaigned on this issue, and presumably that fact had not escaped the electorate's notice.
Just so we don't forget, if we sized the lower 48 states according to their population, this is what the Democratic victory looked like, according to cartophilia:
So it is that little tiny red thing that is talking about 'ramming' down 'throats.'
Second, 80 percent of Americans in a recent ABC/Post poll want to prohibit limits on pre-existing conditions, and 72 percent want to impose an employer mandate. Some 63 percent favor some form of public health care reform. The same proportion, 63%, want president Obama to keep trying to pass a reform. A majority, 56%, want everyone to be covered. The allegation that the 'public doesn't want it' is an artificial creation of millions of dollars in disinformation money purveyed by the pharmaceutical companies through the US Chamber of Commerce and their bought-and-paid-for congressmen and senators. If a pollster explains to a member of the public what is actually in the bill, Americans like most of the provisions, as Ezra Klein says.
Besides, all the Democrats want to implement (not ram) is the same thing every other advanced industrial society has, which is health care for all citizens. As it is, we pay more than the Netherlands or Germany or Sweden, but our health statistics are much worse than any of theirs.
As for ramming things down people's throats, here is what the Republicans rammed down our throats during Cheney-Bush:
1. War on Iraq, costing over 4,000 American service lives, 31,000 wounded bad enough to go to hospital, many of them maimed for life, and costing over our lifetimes $3 trillion (which we don't have). All based on outright lies.
2. Torture.
3. Warrantless wiretaps.
4. 'Protest zones' and arbitrary arrest of people peacefully assembled.
5. Further gutting of financial regulation, pushing the country's economy off a cliff
6. Deep tax cuts for the superwealthy and de facto tax increases for the middle classes, passed by reconciliation
7. Unfunded programs, including wars, tax cuts and medicare changes, that created most of the current budget deficit and much of our current public debt, much of it passed by reconciliaton.
8. Virtual abandonment of our troops in Afghanistan for a concentration on Iraq, and slacking off on capturing the top al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership.
9. The gutting of environmental regulation and the surrender of the public to corporate polluters.
10. Bush's 'victory' itself in 2000.
So suck it up, GOP. You really screwed us all over and messed up the country big time. All we want to do is have people's children be able to see a doctor without it bankrupting the family. That's your big complaint?
@plainoldme,
plainoldme wrote:
With apologies for cutting and pasting:......All we want to do is have people's children be able to see a doctor without it bankrupting the family. ...
Any apologies you make should be addressed to Juan Cole, who (unlike you) knows better than to make fraudulent claims: ALL children are covered by Federal programs IN ADDITION to Medicaid and Medicare. "Bankrupting the family" from children's medical bills is impossible - but what's very possible is that any more Obama-planned unfunded mandates will very likely BANKRUPT THE NATION. Try to educate yourself on (bipartisan) S-Chip:
Quote: The new law boosts total SCHIP funding to approximately $60 billion. ...."This is a day worthy of celebration. There can be no greater cause ... than protecting the well-being of our nation's children," .... the legislation's primary House author, said shortly before the bill's final passage on a 290-135 vote.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/04/schip.vote/index.html
@High Seas,
Note: I actually looked up the link to the Juan Cole article >
http://www.juancole.com/2010/03/bzzz-thats-just-wrong-on-health-care.html
> and found out that he REALLY is making the fraudulent claim you posted - so you can skip apologizing to him. He owes an apology to his readers.
The majority of personal bankruptcies in the US today are from people, MOSTLY PEOPLE WHO HAVE HEALTHCARE INSURANCE, who cannot pay the extreme cost of treatment. And the percentage of such bankruptcies has risen rapidly.
"Using a conservative definition, 62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92% of these
medical debtors had medical debts over $5000, or 10% of pretax family income. The rest met criteria for
medical bankruptcy because they had lost significant income due to illness or mortgaged a home to pay medical
bills. Most medical debtors were well educated, owned homes, and had middle-class occupations. Three
quarters had health insurance"
http://www.pnhp.org/new_bankruptcy_study/Bankruptcy-2009.pdf
@MontereyJack,
Please explain how bankruptcies are related to the topic here - which you never bothered to read, so here's a re-posting:
Quote:All we want to do is have people's children be able to see a doctor without it bankrupting the family.
You're not normally quite this thick, High Seas. SCHIP covers children of low income parents who don't have health insurance. It doesn't cover families with health insurance. Families WITH health insurance are going bankrupt from uncovered medical expenses, and odds are a significant percentage have kids with those medical bills. Coles may or may not be right about families with children specifically--I suspect he is right when you in fact look at the total picture, but the point that medical bills are enough to sink millions of families with private health plans is certainly relevant. I'm surprised at you.
@MontereyJack,
MontereyJack wrote:
..... Coles may or may not be right about families with children specifically...
Thank you - Cole is wrong on the specific topic of medical bills of children, and children cannot declare bankruptcy That was the point.
This study from Harvard might cast a light on High Seas' contentions:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/bankruptcy_study.html
Again, cutting and pasting: The study estimates that medical bankruptcies affect about 2 million Americans annually -- counting debtors and their dependents, including about 700,000 children.
@High Seas,
Wow! I am not apologizing TO him or FOR him but to the readers here for cutting and pasting rather than rewriting.
bush/gop being wrong does not excuse Obama/dems being wrong.
The take home is that all of Washington is a fucked up mess, and needs to be fixed.
As I drove home from work the other day, I heard a report on NPR about vaccinating during a flu epidemic. Traditionally, the oldest citizens were vaccinated first. However, it is now thought that the youngest should be vaccinated first as they have more group contact and carry diseases home.
Also, I have attended many benefits for people who have worked diligently for years but never had health insurance. As they reached their 40s , 50s and 60s, devastating diseases like cancer began to catch up with these people, leaving them . . . or their legatees. . . with considerable debt.
Finally, I guess High Seas refused to consider the list of ways the bush administration affected the economy and that the current depression began on bush's (the first president to hold an MBA!) watch.
Is it worth investing in the health of society as a whole?
@plainoldme,
Quote: Is it worth investing in the health of society as a whole?
ya, but so are a whole lot of other things that we are not doing. The truth is that we are financially unable to invest, we are broke. Healthcare should be fixed, but the bottom line cost must also be reduced. We need to do more with less, for at least the next 30 years.
It seems to me that the only 'cost' to reforming health care is cost to the insurance industry which is guilty of all the outrageous things that are being said about the discussions in Congress vis a vis health care, particularly the death panels.
Consider that doctors today will often elect to proscribe the potion that a health insurer will pay for and not what a doctor knows to be best for the patient.
In other words, someone with an MBA is trumping someone with an MD when it comes to medical decisions.
Perhaps we could save a couple of bucks if we dident try to be the world policeman. Lets spend our money on health care, infastructure and jobs instead of tanks and guns. If we have enough military to guard our borders that should be sufficent and a hell of a lot cheaper!
@rabel22,
I agree. We also shouldn't send jobs overseas.
When the news . . . let me repeat, NEWS . . . of the economy finally began reaching the public (who knew things were bad for years), I heard a man I know to be 61 who is a social worker talking to acquaintances on the street.
He said that the factories will re-open and we will begin making steel and will return to a diversified economy.
Sounded like the Ghost Dance Religion to me.
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