IT'S TIME FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

I said... *other* than for glaucoma. What use does it have for which there isn't already a cheap medication?

Who said anything about Glaucoma? I certainly didn't.

Cycloptichorn

Anyone receive emails from The Pen? Not certain what sort of group it is but I thought it had some connection to a progressive magazine. Wow! Did they circulate a scorching letter about Obama, health care and both parties.

HEALTH CARE -- CATHOLIC NUNS BREAK WITH BISHOPS AND URGE PASSAGE OF HEALTH CARE REFORM: Yesterday, "60 leaders of religious orders representing 59,000 Catholic nuns" sent a letter to federal lawmakers urging them to pass the Senate health care legislation. They decried the "false" information floating around about abortion provisions and said the bill's "historic new investments" for pregnant women are the "REAL pro-life stance." The nuns' letter was a significant and unusual break with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which continues to denounce the legislation. The nuns are joined by the Catholic Health Association and 25 "pro-life Catholic theologians and Evangelical leaders" who have all come out to support passing health care reform. "We agreed to support it because we believe it meets the test of no federal funding for abortion," Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, told the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne. "Perhaps the language is not the way I would write it, but it meets the test," said Keehan. "I can't walk away from extending coverage to more than 30 million people." Anti-choice Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), who has threatened to lead a bloc of Democrats in voting against the Senate bill over the abortion language, dismissed the nuns, saying that he listens only to male religious figures and far-right religious organizations. "When I'm drafting right to life language, I don't call up the nuns," said Stupak, adding that he instead confers with "leading bishops, Focus on the Family, and The National Right to Life Committee."

--americanprogressaction.org

On my way into work today I was thinking about this 'deem and pass' method of getting the HC bill passed through the house. A few thoughts.

1) House Democrats will not be able to hide from this vote. People will understand that they are voting for the healthcare bill, even if they don't 'actually' vote for the HC bill. Obama said as much in a recent interview (I think on Fox).

2) I really don't object to the 'deem and pass' method of getting a bill through, or reconciliation for that matter. I really only care about acheiving results (legally, if they break the law then I will care). I think the majority of the country agrees with me or has no opinion on the matter.

3) By using the 'deem/pass' method on something as large as this trillion dollard HC bill, the Democrats are blowing the doors open on letting this happen in the future. They will have lost any ground to intelligently argue agains the Republicans doing something similar when they take power. It won't stop them from arguing against it, but their arguments will be very shallow.

4) This bill is deeply, deeply flawed. And the nation should prepare for higher taxes and higher HC premiums regardless of what this bill or the CBO says. This will cost more than 1 Trillion dollars; taxes will go up on the middle class, HC premiums will rise.

You're totally correct on 1 and 2, and I don't think that the Dems really are trying to hide their vote using deem-and-pass. Hell, they already voted on the bill!

3 doesn't matter, the Dems learned in court that they couldn't stop such maneuvers a few years ago. ANY arguments against this process have pretty much been slapped down by the court.

The arguments the Republicans are currently employing are, as you say, equally shallow.

4, I don't know if I agree with your projections. The CBO projects considerable savings over the 20-year period. Addition of a public option or a medicare expansion would increase these savings, which is something the Dems are going to continue to try to do. Even if the CBO is way off, the bill is still likely to be deficit neutral.

Cycloptichorn

Health care passes the House!

Cycloptichorn

Well, I hope you are happy when the Republicans sweep the next election cycle.

Haha, I would caution you once again: don't put the cart before the horse. There's a long time till the elections.

And even if they do - the reforms aint' going nowhere. You know that as well as I do. This is just the same bullshit you guys have spouted about SS, Medicare, and pretty much everything the Dems have done for the last several decades. Yet those programs are all still here; because people like them.

Cycloptichorn

Well done, Democrats! I will never make nasty Obama comments agin.

re McG. Don;t count on a sweep. If there is one, it won't be because of health care. Keep remembering that close to 80% of Americans think health care is a right. Look at those surveys which asked whether Americans supported the Obama healthcare proposals (and found a few percentage points more disapproved). But then, without identifying whose points they were, asked if people approved of a series of health care questions. By decent majorities, people approved, They then re-asked people, If we told you those were the positions of the Obama plan (which they were), would you approve of that plan, and the balance tipped in favor. Now the Republicnas are by and large going to lose their pulpit, since the major points have been voted on and decided, so the heat will die down and the truth will start to come out, that in fact people do support the provisions of the bill. It's gonna be clear it is what it is, good for America and steadfastly opposed by what has once again proved to be the Party of No (and incidentally far more people in the polls thought the Republicanwere being obstructionist than thought they weren't).

And I thought Nebraska sold itself cheaply.

I get medicare and I have health insurance from the company I retired from. I wonder what will change.

I agree that the CBO says that; but in order to acheive the CBO numbers the congress pushed a number of tough decisions down the road (taxing Union healthcare plans, making Medicare cuts, etc).

I don't think they'll end up doing either of those things (depending on who in charge when the choice needs to be made).

I mean there's a Medicare 'fix' that gets voted on every year to make sure medicare ISN'T cut.

There is more work to be done. Here is what is wrong with Obamacare.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/22/2853179.htm?site=thedrum

Nancy carries a big gavel!

http://www.aolnews.com/healthcare/article/health-care-reform-is-moment-for-speaker-pelosi/19408228?icid=main|htmlws-main-n|dl1|link6|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolnews.com%2Fhealthcare%2Farticle%2Fhealth-care-reform-is-moment-for-speaker-pelosi%2F19408228

From what I read a lot of Reps will be in trouble should the HC reform prove popular. I think it will for the many reasons covered ad nauseam.

How is it fearmongering to describe what insurance companies are actually doing? How is it fearmongering to cite a court's finding that this is happening under deliberate company policies, as opposed to a few individual rotten apples? And how is it fearmongering to conclude that deliberate company policies like this can affect anyone?

I don't think this is fearmongering at all. It's the reality of America's current system.

a view from north of the border

http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/03/21/the-u-s-congress-is-now-a-parliament-get-used-to-it/

with a link to David Frum ("axis of evil" speechwriter)'s recent post

http://www.frumforum.com/waterloo


(it's a bit busy there right now, so you might need to take more than one crack at getting in)

Well, my forecast has proved wrong. The Democrats did pass their health care bill. It took a few more payoffs to do it; extra Medicaid money for Tennessee; additional Medicare paymernts for several states; new water allocations for the California Central Valley, and a rather meaningless Presidential Executive order on abortion.

I'm sure the Democrats are betting on a large drop in the public outrage between now and November. That is possible, though not at all certain.

What will this bill do? The biggest "potential" change would affect senior citizens, since the Medicare reimbursement cuts provided for in the bill would, if ever implemented, cause many more doctors than already do to refuse to see Medicare patients. These Medicare reimbursement cuts, however, will never be implemented. Projected Medicare cuts were necessary only to fool people into thinking that the bill would not blow up the federal budget (these "cuts" pay for the new expenditures). The Democrats have no real intention of seeing millions of senior citizens turn against them. They'll just waive the cuts and raise taxes further when the time comes.

It will be very interesting to see what happens when the public discovers what this bill actually does and didn't do. It makes no changes to the health care delivery system - the supply of doctors, specialists and treatment facilities is not increased at all. A poor person cannot walk up to a doctor and say "treat me" any more after its passage than before. What the bill actually says to poor people is "you must now go buy health insurance from a private health insurer." The government will subsidize part of the premium, but not all of it. Conversely, the law says to businesses and the upper middle class "you shall pay for the subsidy we provide to poor people." What the bill says to health insurers is "you shall cover everything we tell you to cover, and we want you to cover everything." So it sets up a spiral. Health insurance premiums will go up and up. Taxes on business and the upper middle classes will go up and up. The subsidy paid to poor people relative to the cost of the mandatory insurance policy will go down and down. The whole thing will then collapse. The Democrats, of course, know that it will collapse. They think that when it does collapse they will be able to blame the insurance companies and doctors and then do what they really wanted to do all along -- take over the hospitals and doctors.

This bill is just a ruse to mask the eventual creation of a national health service like the ones in England and Canada. Then your quality of care will plummet.