Page 3 of 13

Re: Obama's Health Plan

Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 10:52 am
by Jac3510
cslewislover wrote:
Jac3510 wrote:You left out "the more rational among us." Besides that, how do people know what's "right?" Often, or more often, it's what's from their heart, not just their head (rationality).
By "the more rational," I was referring to those of us who can get past the emotional talk of "Oh but look at all the poor people we have to help!!!" Everyone agrees with that. Liberals, however, don't think with their heads. They aren't rational. Their decisions are emotionally driven. We all want to help the poor. The rational among us, however, refuse to do it in a way that's going to destroy them, and us, in the end.
Kaiser does some of what you say; they are very big on prevention and early detection (but they don't cover everyone with pre-existing conditions). It's good, but for what's going on in our country, it's not near enough (this doesn't have much to do with emergency rooms and peoples' ability to pay, including illegal immigrants). Unless they all become non-profits! Lol. Yay! By the way, my HMO dental coverage is really really really horrible. For a long time it's been this way. It'd be better if there was no such thing. To me, it looks like this is what happens when business or corp.s get involved with personal health.
Then I suggest you strongly oppose Obama's plan, because your dental program will be what all government health is like. HMO's are a bad idea from the get go. They're little socialist systems. I'm sure you don't like it. I don't either. I suggest telling the government to get out of the way and let the private sector build a good system. As of now, it's the government that is making it so that the private sector can't take care of people like AoK. The irony, of course, is that those same people want the government to fix it . . .

How much do you love going to the DMV? Just imagine if every doc's office was like that, because that's exactly what you are looking at with gov't run care. Want real solutions? Get the gov't out of it. Get lawyers out of it. Force them to let you and your doctor work things out yourself. Freedom is the solution, CSLL. FREEDOM.

Re: Obama's Health Plan

Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 11:07 am
by cslewislover
Believe me, I've felt like a cow going to HMO offices. Kaiser is SOOO much better. When I was hospitalized a year ago, the difference between being in Kaiser and being in an HMO hospital was night and day. It was so nice and amazing being with Kaiser! (And it cost less per month!)

I'm not sure about the freedom part. It's an idea that you want to place on a system that has developed for over 200 years in the freest country in the world (or near so). People like freedom in this country, yet it has developed the way it has. Why? One needs to look at that. From what I know, it's been a response to greed. People who are free also need to be caring and responsible. From the history that I know, this has been the problem.

Re: Obama's Health Plan

Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 11:24 am
by Jac3510
No offense, CSLL, but it's a rather scary thing to me when people are "not sure" about freedom.

Re: Obama's Health Plan

Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 11:34 am
by cslewislover
Jac3510 wrote:No offense, CSLL, but it's a rather scary thing to me when people are "not sure" about freedom.
Then you're not getting what I'm saying. Look at the history of our country, the reality of it. I'm not talking about whether freedom is good or bad. I think you should know that too. I bet any money that you don't really think people should be totally free to do what they want. When people around here have super loud block parties, I can call the police and they'll do something about it (when they get a break from Winchel's). Those people aren't really free to disturb everyone else any way they want, and I'm not really free to blow them away with my rocket launcher. Both of those things are good.

And I feel as though I shouldn't have been required to explain this. Your "fear" is unfounded.

Re: Obama's Health Plan

Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 12:27 pm
by zoegirl
natrev wrote:Never mind that in the bills as now written, nothing would actually happen for more than three years
http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/? ... MyOGYzNTI=

Notice the essentials:
Severe limits on the purchase of private insurance. The House Democratic bill would make it illegal for Americans to buy health insurance from a company outside of the new structure. It's the government-approved system or nothing.

Government-controlled market access. In the bill approved by Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, states would have the authority to limit the number of insurance offerings provided to consumers in “exchanges,” which are the government-run agencies that oversee consumer enrollment in insurance plans. Qualified insurers seeking to offer coverage to “exchange” participants may or may not get to do so. It would be up to government bureaucrats, who could deny market entry to an insurer for apparently any reason. It's entirely predictable that this broad authority will be abused to benefit politically connected providers — at the expense of consumers.

The “commissioner.” House Democrats would hand over vast powers to a new “Health Choices Commissioner,” the head of the new bureaucracy charged with regulating basically all health insurance offered in America. The commissioner would become the choke point for all major health-care-policy decisions, such as what constitutes qualified insurance or employer compliance with the federal mandate to offer coverage. States would even be required to enter into agreements with the commissioner regarding the operation of their Medicaid programs. Vast power and little accountability: It's a recipe for unresponsive bureaucracy, arbitrary rulemaking, meddling, and even more paperwork.

Penalizing work. In both the House and the Senate HELP bills, full-time work is heavily penalized. For the most part, the unemployed and part-timers are entitled to subsidized insurance. But full-time workers get no such subsidy. Their employers must offer them coverage or face severe penalties, and the workers have no choice but to take it, because otherwise they would face severe penalties themselves. This burden will be especially hard on low- to middle-income Americans who don't sign up for job-based insurance today because they can't afford it.

Funding abortion and abortion providers. Both the Senate HELP and House Democratic bills fail to exclude abortion from the services that constitute “qualified” insurance — which means, as a practical matter, abortion would be a required “covered benefit.” Thus, federal taxpayers would be forced to pay for abortions, and everyone would be forbidden to get insurance that does not cover abortion, even if he is spending only his own money.

Raising premiums with taxes on health benefits. The House bill creates something called a Health Care Comparative Effectiveness Research Trust Fund (CERTF), which would be funded by fees on insurance providers. But insurers won't pay these fees themselves; they will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums. President Obama pilloried Senator McCain for proposing “for the first time in history . . . taxing people's health-care benefits,” yet that is essentially what House Democrats are looking to do in their bill.

Deep Medicare cuts for beneficiaries living in low-cost areas. House Democrats are determined to force seniors out of the private-insurance program of Medicare, called Medicare Advantage (MA). According to the Congressional Budget Office, their bill is likely to work as planned: Some 5 million MA enrollees would get pushed back into the traditional government-run program, with its lower benefits and higher cost-sharing. This would happen because the House bill bases MA payment rates on the estimated regional cost of covering someone in the traditional program; those living in lower-cost areas would see their payment rates drop, making the traditional program look more attractive.

This approach worsens the unfair regional disparities that exist today. For instance, this year, the MA payment rate in Portland is only $819 per month, while Miami's is $1,238 per month. The House bill would widen this gap by cutting Portland's MA payments by 26 percent, since Portland is a low-cost region with a culture of judicious use of health services. Meanwhile, Miami, which is rife with Medicare fraud and abuse, would get only a 2 percent cut in its MA payment rate. Medicare beneficiaries in Salt Lake City, Sacramento, Albuquerque, and other low-cost cities would get hit almost as hard as Portland's beneficiaries. This runs precisely counter to the notion, popularized by Atul Gawande in The New Yorker and heartily embraced by the Obama administration, that we should try to replicate, or at least reward, areas that provide more efficient health care.

Undermining entitlement reform. Section 1901 of the House bill would repeal a trigger intended to alert Congress and the broader public to the financing problems in the Medicare program. Under current law, the HHS secretary must propose Medicare program adjustments to eliminate projected funding shortfalls when the Medicare trustees forecast excessive program reliance on subsidies from the Treasury. Repealing this provision is one more indication that Democrats are not serious about addressing the explosion of entitlement spending, which will push U.S. fiscal policy off a cliff in relatively short order.

More government-run health care. So much attention has been focused on President Obama's push for a new government-run insurance plan that many people do not realize that the Democrats are also seeking the largest expansion of Medicaid in the program's history. Medicaid spending is already on track, along with Medicare, to push federal finances to the brink. Between 2009 and 2035, the CBO expects combined spending for these two programs to increase from 5.3 to 10 percent of GDP. But that's apparently not enough: The House bill would add 11 million more enrollees to Medicaid, bringing total enrollment to about 71 million and adding more than $80 billion in new spending to the budget in 2019 — on top of the $426 billion that the program will already cost under current law.

These bills are a massive overreach by the Democrats, who see this year as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to have something like a New Deal or Great Society moment. Most Democrats believe strongly in total governmental control of health care, and they are determined to try to achieve it now, regardless of the fiscal and political consequences. So they press on, even as every day brings new revelations of the incoherence, hubris, and excesses of their plan.

Re: Obama's Health Plan

Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 12:48 pm
by Jac3510
cslewislover wrote:
Jac3510 wrote:No offense, CSLL, but it's a rather scary thing to me when people are "not sure" about freedom.
Then you're not getting what I'm saying. Look at the history of our country, the reality of it. I'm not talking about whether freedom is good or bad. I think you should know that too. I bet any money that you don't really think people should be totally free to do what they want. When people around here have super loud block parties, I can call the police and they'll do something about it (when they get a break from Winchel's). Those people aren't really free to disturb everyone else any way they want, and I'm not really free to blow them away with my rocket launcher. Both of those things are good.

And I feel as though I shouldn't have been required to explain this. Your "fear" is unfounded.
The lack of "freedom" you are talking about is that which is expressly illegal. No, I'm not free to murder someone, but that's not what anyone means when they say they love freedom, and I think everyone knows that. When I say the answer to healthcare is in freedom, I don't mean anarchy. I mean in getting the government OUT of the business except so far as it's normal role goes of enforcing contracts.

I didn't think I should've been required to explain this. ;)

In any case, I go back to my unfounded point. When people think that freedom (not anarchy) is a bad idea, I get deeply concerned, especially when they say that here in the USA.

Re: Obama's Health Plan

Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 4:27 pm
by ageofknowledge
Jac3510 wrote:
cslewislover wrote:
Jac3510 wrote:You left out "the more rational among us." Besides that, how do people know what's "right?" Often, or more often, it's what's from their heart, not just their head (rationality).
By "the more rational," I was referring to those of us who can get past the emotional talk of "Oh but look at all the poor people we have to help!!!" Everyone agrees with that. Liberals, however, don't think with their heads. They aren't rational. Their decisions are emotionally driven. We all want to help the poor. The rational among us, however, refuse to do it in a way that's going to destroy them, and us, in the end.
Kaiser does some of what you say; they are very big on prevention and early detection (but they don't cover everyone with pre-existing conditions). It's good, but for what's going on in our country, it's not near enough (this doesn't have much to do with emergency rooms and peoples' ability to pay, including illegal immigrants). Unless they all become non-profits! Lol. Yay! By the way, my HMO dental coverage is really really really horrible. For a long time it's been this way. It'd be better if there was no such thing. To me, it looks like this is what happens when business or corp.s get involved with personal health.
Then I suggest you strongly oppose Obama's plan, because your dental program will be what all government health is like. HMO's are a bad idea from the get go. They're little socialist systems. I'm sure you don't like it. I don't either. I suggest telling the government to get out of the way and let the private sector build a good system. As of now, it's the government that is making it so that the private sector can't take care of people like AoK. The irony, of course, is that those same people want the government to fix it . . .

How much do you love going to the DMV? Just imagine if every doc's office was like that, because that's exactly what you are looking at with gov't run care. Want real solutions? Get the gov't out of it. Get lawyers out of it. Force them to let you and your doctor work things out yourself. Freedom is the solution, CSLL. FREEDOM.
The private sector is never going to build a good health care system that meets the needs of all Americans materially speaking. They are always going to build a system that allows them to maximize profits. If that means even more Americans go untreated than are now with government intervention then that is fine with them if they can get away with it. Y=mc2 supply and demand governs free enterprise and an uncontrolled private sector paradigm and that's about the only thing that controls it in this post-Christian corporate age despite libertarian rhetoric. Changing tort will have a minimal effect because while it removes liability barriers for doctors to treat Americans without getting sued it doesn't do anything to cause them to reduce their profits so as to accomplish that. There might be a feel good benefit, depending on the provider's outlook on life, but there would be no economic incentive to pursue it. And most medical providers, like any good business, feels best when monetary profit goes up. As a result, penetration of medical care into the untreated population would not occur in a meaningful way statistically speaking. Medical providers, doctors included, are not going to begin servicing patients who can't afford to pay enmasse because you remove tort and get government out of the way. That is a false assertion. What that paradigm leads to are greater numbers of untreated Americans not more.

Re: Obama's Health Plan

Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 5:12 pm
by Jac3510
AoK, like I told Harry, I don't do political debates anymore. We've come to our fundamental disagreement, and I vehemently disagree with you. So far as the philosophy and morality about it goes, what bothers me is the fact that you are willing to STEAL from my child to get something for your own self.

That's the fundamental problem with liberalism and socialism of all stripes. It's theft. You can justify it however you like. It's theft. I seem to recall God talking about that somewhere . . .

Re: Obama's Health Plan

Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 9:47 pm
by ageofknowledge
Jac3510 wrote:I don't do political debates anymore
How convenient. Building an effective health care model for America makes sense http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/H ... llPlan.pdf

What doesn't make sense is to call everyone a criminal thief that participates in its construction or benefits from its existence. I'd be happy to argue against that position. We can start with little orphan crippled children and why we don't call them thieves for using medical resources they never paid for; why indigent disabled people aren't thieves; why you aren't a thief for driving on another state's road you never paid for; etc... etc... etc.... Just say when you're ready to have that debate and we'll get right to it. Until then recommended reading includes Oliver Twist and The Jungle. :ebiggrin:

Re: Obama's Health Plan

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 5:37 am
by nd925
We can start with little orphan crippled children and why we don't call them thieves for using medical resources they never paid for
That is nonsense. How many little orphan crippled children do you see? I live near an orphanage and while I feel horrible that they are orphans, they do get medical care, unlike Oliver Twist. Which by the way took place in England and an excellent example of a failed government run health care system. I don't have a problem with my tax dollars going to help others. I have a problem with being taxed excessively for more government run programs that are destined to fail and cause hardships for myself, my family, and the majority of the country now and in the future, for the sake of a few.
You know who gets medical care and doesn't have to pay for? The illegals in the country. Is that fair to you, my parents, and every other tax paying American (paying now or before retirement or disability) that can't afford medical insurance or don't qualify for a government medical plan and gets stuck with a hospital bill?
Which brings me to my next point, I think we can all agree that our current government run health care system is a failure and does not work. What confidence do we have that the government can effectively run a health care system for the entire country when they can't get it right on the limited scale that is in place now? I think a survey should be taken to find out what the satisfactory rating is between people on our government run health care and people insured via the private sector. I'd be curious to know.
No doubt the current health care system in this country needs to be improved, but ObamaCare is not the solution. It might be, though I have my doubts, a quick fix or rather a quick help to those that need it, but in the not so long run it will be a detriment to our country, to us, and future generations.

Re: Obama's Health Plan

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 6:21 am
by Jac3510
Who says I believe taxes should be used to pave roads or that there should be (or that I take advantage of) public medical care? I believe all roads should be paid for with toll dollars, and I reject the notion of public health care at all. I reject social security. There are some things that we, as a society, have to pay for, but those are limited to things that we are not capable of doing for ouselves--as a society. National defense is one such example; police and firefighters are another; but things like public education, welfare, etc. . . . no, sir. It's nothing more than people stealing from others.

In short, you have no right putting a gun to my head and taking money from me to meet your needs, which is exactly what you are doing when you insist a law is passed that pays for your services by my tax dollars. That's theft. Plain and simple. Taxes go to services that benefit ALL, not a few. If we were to get back to that simple system, then everyone would have FAR more--including you--to take care of themselves and the people we love. But so long as greedy people insist on using the power of government to steal my children's money, we're forever be a society that is build on basic theft, which is why, as I already said, the game is over for us. We're done. THIS is why we are bankrupt--not because the greed of Madoof, but because of the greed of the kindly old man next door who insists I pay for his heart medicine.

Sounds like a nice cause. There are lots of nice causes. That doesn't give you the right pick someone's pocket if they don't agree.

Re: Obama's Health Plan

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 10:32 am
by Jac3510
For those who are interested:

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Politics/Defa ... ?id=616402
A health economist warns that President Obama's government-run healthcare plan may result in denying care to a significant number of Americans, especially senior citizens.

Conservative opponents of President Obama's healthcare plan have been arguing that a government takeover of healthcare will allow Washington bureaucrats to use "comparative effectiveness research" to dictate to doctors which treatments they should prescribe and how much those treatments should cost. Critics say this will lead to rationing of care.

In the medical journal The Lancet (January 2009 [PDF]) Obama's special health policy advisor Ezekiel Emanuel wrote that if healthcare has to be rationed, he prefers the "complete lives system," which "discriminates against older people."

Dr. Devon Herrick, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, says Emanuel believes young adults should be given preferential care over seniors because they have more years of their life ahead of them.

"I guess the implication of that is if you're older, you will be assumed to have lived a complete life; whereas if you're younger, you'd have yet to live a complete life," Herrick suggests. "So in a way I kind of see it as a method to ration care to the elderly, but trying to use an ethicist's view to justify it."

In an article written more than a decade ago [PDF] for the Hastings Center Report, Dr. Emanuel suggested that health services should not be guaranteed to "individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens." He said "an obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia."

'Obamacare' targets young, healthy, wealthy
A Florida congresswoman says the healthcare legislation being pushed by President Obama sends a blunt message to senior citizens: "drop dead."

On Monday, President Obama said that "the single biggest threat to our fiscal stability" and "the single thing that could drive us into long-term staggering and difficult debt" is Medicare and Medicaid.

Obama told Jim Lehrer of PBS that he wants to "stop providing $177 billion worth of subsidies to the insurance companies for a Medicare Advantage program that offers no additional benefits to seniors, compared to regular old Medicare."

Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Florida) says the House healthcare bill essentially tells senior citizens to "drop dead." (Listen to audio report)

"Despite their promise to care for our seniors, Democrats have decided that it's too expensive to care for my senior constituents and everyone else's constituents," she contends. "This bill would cut an additional $156 billion from the Medicare Advantage program in order to pay for the government expansion of healthcare for the young, the healthy, and the wealthy."

Brown-Waite argues the cut in Medicare Advantage is not the first attack on senior citizens this year. She notes that in March the Obama administration announced that Social Security recipients would not receive a cost-of-living increase.

Re: Obama's Health Plan

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 10:56 am
by Byblos
Here's a new article on the Freedoms that many people stand to loose if the proposed health care reform is passed (and that Obama doesn't want you to know):
5 Freedoms You'd Lose in Health Care Reform.

To summarize them:
1. Freedom to choose what's in your plan
2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs
3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage
4. Freedom to keep your existing plan
5. Freedom to choose your doctors

Re: Obama's Health Plan

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 11:42 am
by ageofknowledge
nd925 wrote:
We can start with little orphan crippled children and why we don't call them thieves for using medical resources they never paid for
That is nonsense. How many little orphan crippled children do you see? I live near an orphanage and while I feel horrible that they are orphans, they do get medical care, unlike Oliver Twist. Which by the way took place in England and an excellent example of a failed government run health care system. I don't have a problem with my tax dollars going to help others. I have a problem with being taxed excessively for more government run programs that are destined to fail and cause hardships for myself, my family, and the majority of the country now and in the future, for the sake of a few.
You know who gets medical care and doesn't have to pay for? The illegals in the country. Is that fair to you, my parents, and every other tax paying American (paying now or before retirement or disability) that can't afford medical insurance or don't qualify for a government medical plan and gets stuck with a hospital bill?
Which brings me to my next point, I think we can all agree that our current government run health care system is a failure and does not work. What confidence do we have that the government can effectively run a health care system for the entire country when they can't get it right on the limited scale that is in place now? I think a survey should be taken to find out what the satisfactory rating is between people on our government run health care and people insured via the private sector. I'd be curious to know.
No doubt the current health care system in this country needs to be improved, but ObamaCare is not the solution. It might be, though I have my doubts, a quick fix or rather a quick help to those that need it, but in the not so long run it will be a detriment to our country, to us, and future generations.
I saw a number of them in the orphanage I was once in. They were dumped there by their families. Yes they get medical care now and I'm glad to see that you agree that is a good thing and they aren't thieves(the original argument I was addressing friend) because they do. And it was Christian Anglicans that ran the parish system responsible for the environment that birthed Oliver Twist. The government of Victorian England did not protect English men, women, and children from the personal economic disaster created by unemployment. Unlike citizens of modern industrialized nations, the Victorian who lost his or her job did not receive any help from government. Anglican Christians stepped into this free enterprise environment but their idea of health care reform was to pass the Poor Law that stating that poor people should work in workhouses/poorhouses, child labour is fine, and the recruitment of children who get into trouble as criminals is a daisy too. It surely wasn't the Obama plan. It was well.. your plan. The free enterprise Christian conservative plan which celebrated non-government intervention and relied on the goodness of Christians to form a parish system to maintain workhouses, orphanages, and baby farms which were reprehensible. Dickens thought that the whole system was inhumane and he was right.

You're going to get taxed either way it goes because you voted for Bush Jr. and the fiscal conservatives and they doubled the deficit, oversaw the sell out and displacement of American manufacturing and innovation to foreign countries, encouraged illegal immigration and immigration enmasse, leaned on bubbles as if that was sustainable, and when they popped suspended free enterprise and passed their mess off to the next guy. Good job :clap:

I think it's very fair to have a nationalized health care system in place. It makes financial sense to have a nation of healthy people that can work and pay taxes rather than millions and millions of people like me that worked and paid taxes for years and then got laid off and then when all our savings, 401ks, and insurance were gone and we were most vulnerable to a medical problem got hit with a crippling illness and left to twist in the wind. I'll end up on SSDI someday and you'll get stuck with the bill for the rest of my life. And it's all unnecessary because with medical treatment I could have been restored and returned to the workforce to pay even more taxes. I realize you think it's "fair" to push us out into the street and leave us to die. After all we're no concern of yours. But we think Jesus would see things differently and recognize the wisdom of having a system in place to retool hard working taxpayers that fall through the cracks and take care of the disabled and elderly.

And yes we need immigration reform in this country. Instead of working with people from other countries in their own countries to make their countries places they could be proud of through ambassadorship, missionary efforts, foreign aid, education, etc... we put the interests of illegals above citizens in many cases and encouraged illegal migration enmasse. Imagine if we had kept our border in place and taken the opportunity to humanley treat and educate each illegal for 12 weeks before deporting them back home with a program that encouraged them to change their own countries and make them places they could be proud of. Today we either do nothing about them or throw them in prison and then dump them back. I hear Christians talk about putting troops on the border and shooting them down after a scripture reading and prayer of course. There's all sorts of things we could do and should have done. This issue could have been turned into a great positive for our country and the continent but we never even bothered to use our brains on the matter. Missed opportunities gone bad.

But back to the subject. Obama's plan is a good one and I'm reading a lot of misinformation and hyperbole in these right wing articles being posted.

Re: Obama's Health Plan

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 1:23 pm
by Jac3510
More resources:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 86752.html

No reason to guess or argue about what will happen. ObamaCare has been running in Mass. since '06. Romney instituted a universal healthcare policy there that has been touted by the Obama Administration as a good model of their own. Just look at the effects there.

Excerpt:
Gigot: All right, James, let me ask you about this--the public option. Because the president says, Look, all this is, is going to compete with the private plans, keep them honest. The insurers are making a lot of money right now. We need to keep them honest.

Freeman: Right, and I think the beauty of this is we don't need to guess or estimate or just posit what might happen, because the people of Massachusetts since 2006 have been running the experiment for all of us, and we can go to school on it.

Gigot: Thanks to Mitt Romney, former Republican governor.

Freeman: That's right.

Gigot: Or no thanks to Mitt Romney.

Freeman: And it's very clear what happens. Private insurance goes away, more people go on the public plan, costs explode, more costs go onto small business, and people lose their jobs or they get salary freezes.

McCaughey: That's a very important point that more and more people are losing their jobs in Massachusetts. I was reading about an employer just today, who had to close up part of her business, close one office, sell a couple of trucks, and lay off an employee in order to meet the government requirement to pay for health insurance.