IT'S TIME FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

Thomas wrote:

Quote:

"...it'll cost between $90-150 billion a year over the next 10 years."

If that's been shared, then I missed it. Excuse me for missing that very important information that's been part of the issues brought up by the conservatives. If this information was based on tea leaves like the projected cost of the Iraq war, then I still have questions.

If the fiscal implications for sustaining existing coverage look unaffordable - current projections suggest spending increases of 4-12 per cent of GDP would be required to sustain Medicare and Medicaid alone - those for extending care to the 50 million uninsured are downright catastrophic.

raising the income tax bracket for those who make over $X a year,

I don't read many blogs, but I do read the newspaper almost every day.

Quote:

If the fiscal implications for sustaining existing coverage look unaffordable - current projections suggest spending increases of 4-12 per cent of GDP would be required to sustain Medicare and Medicaid alone - those for extending care to the 50 million uninsured are downright catastrophic.

Measured relative to GDP, almost all of the projected growth in federal spending other than interest payments on the debt stems from the three largest entitlement programs"Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. For decades, spending on Medicare and Medicaid has been growing faster than the economy. CBO projects that if current laws do not change, federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid combined will grow from roughly 5 percent of GDP today to almost 10 percent by 2035. By 2080, the government would be spending almost as much, as a share of the economy, on just its two major health care programs as it has spent on all of its programs and services in recent years.

In CBO’s estimates, the increase in spending for Medicare and Medicaid will account for 80 percent of spending increases for the three entitlement programs between now and 2035 and 90 percent of spending growth between now and 2080. Thus, reducing overall government spending relative to what would occur under current fiscal policy would require fundamental changes in the trajectory of federal health spending. Slowing the growth rate of outlays for Medicare and Medicaid is the central long-term challenge for fiscal policy.

I don't know of any economic projections that goes into ten years to be accurate. Do you?

As U.S. health row rages, many seek care in Mexico

13 Aug 2009 16:57:25 GMT

* Americans heading to Mexico for lower-priced healthcare
* Even those with insurance find savings in Mexico

By Tim Gaynor

NACO, Mexico, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Retired police officer Bob Ritz has health insurance that covers his medical and dental care in the United States.

But every few months he drives from his home in Tombstone, Arizona, to this small town in northern Mexico to avoid the healthcare costs that aren't paid by insurance.

"I pay $400 a month for my health insurance, and it's still cheaper to come to Mexico," says Ritz, 60, as he stood outside a sun-bleached pharmacy in Naco, a few hours drive southeast of Phoenix.

President Barack Obama is locked in a bitter fight to overhaul U.S. healthcare, as he seeks to increase the number of Americans getting coverage and drive down costs of around $2.5 trillion a year.

Republican critics charge that Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are seeking a government takeover of healthcare that will drive up the budget deficit.

With Washington bickering over how to reform the system and contain its spiraling costs, many Americans like Ritz simply head to Mexico to get care they can afford.

The total number making the trip is unclear. But a recent study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research estimated that nearly 1 million people from California alone seek medical, dental or prescription services in Mexico each year.

Some making the trek have little or no medical coverage. Others like Ritz are on fixed incomes and want to avoid so-called co-pays and deductibles charged by U.S. insurers on top of policies that routinely cost from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand each month.

"The very wealthy can afford whatever they want, the very poor get it through aid, but the working and the middle-class have to struggle to pay insurance," said Ritz, who worked as a police officer in Chicago for 28 years.
"I'm very lucky to live near enough to Mexico to get good healthcare at a reasonable price," he added.

BROKEN BONES AND BRONCHITIS

Healthcare reform is the flagship domestic policy drive of Obama's first year in office.

He wants coverage for around 46 million uninsured Americans and to rein in rising medical costs, and regulate insurers that already provide care to millions more.

Republican opponents say Obama's plan amounts to socialism by stealth and argue that its trillion-dollar price tag will hurt the economy as the United States remains mired in the worst recession in decades.

While the bitter row continues to rage at town hall meetings across the
United States, signs of the U.S. system's failings are visible in Mexican border cities, where cut-price pharmacies, dental clinics and doctors' surgeries vie for business from Americans who can't afford treatment at home.

In Tijuana, where medical tourism from neighboring San Diego is big business, clinics offer operations ranging from cut-rate cosmetic procedures to hysterectomies and bariatric surgery to curb obesity.

"I waste up to four hours coming to an appointment, but it's worth it as we'll save thousands of dollars," said Beatriz Iturriaga, a 26-year-old mother of two from Eastlake, south of San Diego, who paid $6,500 for bariatric surgery at a Tijuana clinic that would cost up to $40,000 stateside.

At the other end of the cost spectrum in Naco, Mexican physician Sixto de la Pena Cortes charges the 15 or so Americans that trek to his clinic-cum-pharmacy each week $20 for a check-up -- the cost of an average co-pay in the United States.

"Most common (ailments) are bronchitis, pneumonia and stomach problems," said de la Pena Cortes, 62, who said he has also set broken bones and arranged for an appendix to be removed at a hospital in nearby Agua Prieta at a cost of around $2,000.

(Additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Tijuana and Julian Cardona in Ciudad Juarez; editing by Eric Beech)

Of course it's been shared with the American People! Depending on the particular bill you're talking about, it'll cost between $90-150 billion a year over the next 10 years. It will be paid by letting the Bush tax cuts expire, and by raising the income tax bracket for those who make over $X a year, where X could be anywhere between 200,000 and 500,000. The tax rate in that bracket would be somewhere around 45%.

Granted -- because there is no final bill, the plan's financial details aren't available for the Democrats to share yet. But the general outline is clear, and has been shared since long before the election. Just search the fücking Web!

Of course it's been shared with the American People! Depending on the particular bill you're talking about, it'll cost between $90-150 billion a year over the next 10 years. It will be paid by letting the Bush tax cuts expire, and by raising the income tax bracket for those who make over $X a year, where X could be anywhere between 200,000 and 500,000. The tax rate in that bracket would be somewhere around 45%.

In these circumstances, can there be any surprise that thinking people have become very skeptical?

oh please....

i though the right wingers thought it was okay to go bull in the china shop to express your constitutional right to free speech.

and acorn again... i have seen no proof that they are doing anything. just like freedomworks, right?

so what's different here, boss ?

hat Obama is trying to do here is to create so much negativity