IT'S TIME FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Medicare and -aid are no more rife with 'waste and fraud' than their private counterparts; and the rises in costs that people will see are no larger than what they are currently experiencing from private insurance. Cycloptichorn

Would you care to provide us with some of the 'facts" you prize so much to back up these remarkable assertions?

Since 1970 Medicare costs per beneficiary have risen at an annual rate of 8.8% " but insurance premiums have risen at an annual rate of 9.9%. The rise in Medicare costs is just part of the overall rise in health care spending. And in fact Medicare spending has lagged private spending: if insurance premiums had risen “only” as much as Medicare spending, they’d be 1/3 lower than they are.

I believe the truth is the criticisms so often levied against insurers stem mostly from their efforts to (1) protect the rate base of their current customers by excluding high cost/risk new entrants; and (2) enforcing the contractsd they sign - including the fine print, which I will acknowledge can be deceptive.

Government does neither . No fault there - indeed there are some possible social benefits involved. However government already has a piss poor track record managing its entitlement budgets and doubling the exposure could wreck the economy that supports us all with far worse consequences than those we wish to eliminate in our current health care system.

I didn't say we has a free market for health care - only "fairly free". A government plan would end that entirely, leaving us only with the misery that economic central planning has produced wherever it was tried.

At least today consumers can opt between Blue cross-type plans and lower cost HMOs or high deductable plans.

With a government option and the inevitable taxes on private options the government will have the power to distort the market anyway it chooses and to whatever degree it chooses.

As I recall your original prediction was for a plan with a public option, signed by the president before the end of October. I doubt seriously that will occur .
For myself, I haven't made any predictions, other than that yours won't likely occur.

I agree that the present system can and should be improved. However, I don't see what has been proposed so far in any of the Democrat draft legislation as a net improvement - and apparently a very large fraction, probably a majority, of the American people see it that way too.

georgeob1 wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Medicare and -aid are no more rife with 'waste and fraud' than their private counterparts; and the rises in costs that people will see are no larger than what they are currently experiencing from private insurance. Cycloptichorn

Would you care to provide us with some of the 'facts" you prize so much to back up these remarkable assertions?

Sure. I base my assertion on historical data:

http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/downloads/tables.pdf

Here's the Krug talking about it:

Quote:

Since 1970 Medicare costs per beneficiary have risen at an annual rate of 8.8% " but insurance premiums have risen at an annual rate of 9.9%. The rise in Medicare costs is just part of the overall rise in health care spending. And in fact Medicare spending has lagged private spending: if insurance premiums had risen “only” as much as Medicare spending, they’d be 1/3 lower than they are.

See how easy that is? Facts are fun!

If the government takes over the whole system there will be no alternative consumers to take up the slack and that is when the rtationing will begin. If the government establishes a "public option" to "compete" with the private sector it will simply do the same and thereby force all alternatives out of the market.

Are Americans dying too soon? The answer is yes. When it comes to "preventable deaths" " an array of illnesses and injuries that should not kill at an early age " the United States trails other industrialized nations and has been falling further behind over the past decade.

Well, OBO has made its judgement call on expense and coverage of the Backus plan. Bottom line it would cost $829B and cover 94% of the eligible population per the Associated Press

According to the same article, that failure to support 6% of the population means that by 2019 when plan is fully enacted, we'd still have 17M (or around 30M folks currently according to Obama) without coverage. So effectively, the plan is able to provide coverage for less than half (13M) of the current uncovered population at a cost of $829B?!! What's wrong with this picture?

Voters Back Obama Over Republicans on Health Care, Poll Finds

Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Months of Republican attacks on
President Barack Obama’s health-care proposals appear to have
hurt the party, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.

The survey found 64 percent of voters disapproving of the way
Republicans in Congress are doing their jobs, with 25 percent
approving. Also, 53 percent had an unfavorable opinion of the
party in general, while 25 percent rated it favorably.

The performance of Democratic lawmakers was disapproved of
by 56 percent, with 33 expressing approval. For the party in
general, 46 percent expressed disapproval, 38 percent approval.

Asked who they trusted to do a better job on the health-
care issue, 47 percent said Obama, 31 percent said the
Republicans. The president’s overall approval rating was 50
percent, unchanged from a similar survey in late July and early
August.

“President Barack Obama’s approval rating has held at 50
percent over the past two months of high-intensity debate on
health care and other issues,” said Peter Brown, assistant
director of the Hamden, Connecticut-based university’s polling
institute. “And while the spotlight is on the president,
Republicans are taking a public-opinion pounding.”

At the same time, voters disapproved of the way Obama was
handling health care, 51 percent to 41 percent. His health-care
plan was opposed by 47 percent, supported by 40 percent.

Public Option

The poll found voters support a government-run plan to
compete with private insurers 61 percent to 34 percent. Obama
backs creating such a program, which has been the focus of much
of the health-care debate in Congress. House and Senate Democrats
are divided over the proposal, known as the public option, while
most Republicans oppose it.

The survey of 2,630 voters was conducted Sept. 29-Oct. 5 and
has an error margin of plus-or-minus 1.9 percentage points.

The intensity of the health-care debate was illustrated
during Obama’s Sept. 9 speech to a joint session of Congress on
the subject when Representative Joe Wilson, a South Carolina
Republican, interrupted him with a call of “you lie.” Some
Republicans also have accused Obama of proposing “death panels”
to force senior citizens to end their lives sooner, a claim that
the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Factcheck.org called
“simply not true.”

The survey found voters support having businesses pay for
employee health insurance, 73 percent to 23 percent. The poll
respondents were more closely divided on whether Americans should
be required to buy health insurance, as Obama wants. The proposal
was backed by 50 percent, opposed by 45 percent.

Obama has said he won’t sign a health-care bill if it is
projected to add to the federal budget deficit. In the poll, 71
percent said they expect any measure that emerges from Congress
would increase the deficit, while 19 percent said they believe it
wouldn’t.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated
yesterday that the Senate Finance Committee’s version of health-
care legislation would reduce the deficit by $81 billion over 10
years.

-- Editors: Don Frederick, Dave McCombs

Not that you should worry about it, because that isn't the bill that is going to be passed, at all. It will be merged with other bills in the Senate - ALL of which contain public options - and then reconciled with the House bill.

Cyclo wrote:

Not that you should worry about it, because that isn't the bill that is going to be passed, at all. It will be merged with other bills in the Senate - ALL of which contain public options - and then reconciled with the House bill.

And the public option will doom the bill...

Right now, as written by Backus it stands a chance...but I sure wouldn't bet on it if Pelosi gets her way and a public option is thrown into it.

Got no idea where you're coming from except listening to partisan sources. Clearly no Republicans will support a bill with public option to include Olympia Snowe, the only Repub who's indicated she might support the Backus bill as written.

Both Backus and Reid concede that the public option won't pass the Senate source

Over to you to prove your point....

Is Harry Reid Planning a Public Option Bait-and-Switch on Healthcare?
October 07, 2009 11:49 AM ET | Peter Roff | Permanent Link | Print

By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Last week, members of the Senate Finance Committee voted down two attempts to add a public option to the healthcare bill they were writing. That, in turn, set up a scenario for healthcare gridlock: the Senate unable to pass a bill that included a public option and the House unwilling to pass a bill without it.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, may have come up with a way to thread that needle.

Recognizing that there are not 60 Senate votes for a public option"but that there are almost surely more than 50"writes Susan Ferrechio today in the Washington Examiner, Reid may be planning to move the bill forward without it as a way to secure the 60 votes needed to shut off Republican efforts to filibuster and begin the debate.

Once the bill was on the floor, Reid would then pull a "bait and switch" by offering a public option as an amendment on the Senate floor. Senate experts point out that Reid would still need 60 votes to block attempts to filibuster the amendment"and that a filibuster could still be used to prevent a modified bill that includes a public option from getting a vote on final passage"but getting the bill to the floor changes the nature of the battle. It moves it out of the policy arena and makes it an exercise in raw political power.

Reid, House Republican Study Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Price said today, should be taken at his word that he will push forward with a public option and that he remains committed to passing a bill that includes it out of the Senate.

Well, I find plenty of resources (within the past 3 weeks) that indicate discontent and pessimism that the public option is feasible in the Senate. I must confess I'm surprised you used a relatively conservative newspaper (Washington Examiner) to prove your point. In other contexts, you'd probably use this as an example of fear-mongering to stir up the conservative faithful.

Nevertheless, Reid could be attempting some adroit administrative judo move like this to get the option into the bill. Blackmail against other Democrats seems kind of crass, but I wouldn't put it past Reid either. I'd almost welcome these dirty tactics on the part of the Dems...because if it doesn't bite them now, it will most certainly during the 2010 elections.

I'd still bet against a public option surviving into a final bill.