Centrist Dem Leader: Has Committee Votes To Block Health Bill

[Harry Dresden]

Ah if it were so simple. Let me explain something; to qualify for Medicaid, you must be under the poverty line. In other words, you need to be dirt poor. If you make $30,000 per year, but medical insurance and out of pocket costs amount to $20,000, you won't qualify for Medicare. So you go without.

bullshit....just being poor does not mean you qualify for Medicaid...something like 60% of the poor in this country are not on it...why?
and you qualify for Medicare just by being 65 ....my folkes had it and they made more than 30 a year with their retirement...and had their own private ins and AARP....but they still had it....

 

[Harry Dresden]

One thing Hillary said that I agree with completely. If you're going to insure everyone, then everyone needs to help foot the bill. That means anyone working must pay a percentage toward their own care because it can't be a free ride and it shouldn't be left to everyone else to pay for it. But make it affordable to everyone and help those who can't afford it. But to do that, you have to force everyone to pay into the system whether it is government run or privately run.

i agree with the concept if you take from the pile you must put something back in....so does this include people who dont contribute....and i dont mean the disabled...im talking if the payroll tax is what they are going to use lets say,then those who dont pay taxes when they get paid,should not be eligble...right?

 

[Oddball]

But you gotta love Dude's ideas. He thinks we shouldn't have insurance at all, just pay cash for your healthcare. Then those who can't afford it should be denied any treatment. Now that's a great plan, don't you think?

show us where Dude said this....i think YOU are saying this to make it seem like Dude wants this....you know a spin on what he said....

This is why I say it's pointless to come up with any honest alternatives.....You'll just get pigeon holed by the medical care fascists and moochers as a mean spirited, hard hearted, cat kicking, etcetera etcetera so-and-so.

Might as well try to be reasoning with a two year old child throwing a shit fit temper tantrum.

 

[Harry Dresden]

Again, I wanna throw this out there, just to see if anybody responds: In every developed country IN THE WORLD besides America there are health care plans; almost everybody is insured IN DEVELOPED COUNTRIES; LIKE THE US, you know, not shitty ass backwater shiteholes, I'm talking about Europe and East Asian economic giants throughout history. Almost universally; these countries manage to cover their entire population with even less money than the US; you know, like they insure EVERYBODY and each person's (per capita) health coverage is WAYYYY lower than in the US: So my question is, besides ideological jokes like "America is a rugged inidvidualist nation" can these things be reconciled?

I mean, the libertarians out there like to claim that either 1) the free market will cover everyone or that 2) well, health care is something you gotta work for, and if you didn't, you deserve to die or steal from the taxpayers, becuase you just don't deserve it, you didn't plan for the future. I personally think this is a silly thing to argue for: if everybody is covered that eliminates a huge hurdle for most people who simply can't afford it: whose ancestors won't be able to afford it either. If you cover everyone that elmiminates the continuum that if one is not insured the rest won't; and it allows everybody to follow their career choices without having to worry about whether it has health benefits or not; because everybody is covered.

I would also like to pre-empt the argument that without these non-national health insurances there is no competition to make new drugs. This is a complete distortion of the truth. The fact is that medicine-innovating companies have nothing to do with national health plans. Dozens of the most successful medical R&D firms are European, or Indian, or even Chinese, and from all over. Health R&D has nothing to do with private coverage; they are separate, and they actually BENEFIT from government-funded plans, linkages and connections between national and private univerisities and such; there is NO SUCH WAY TO LINK IT. EVEN in National Health Care Plans; i.e. Costa Rica's for example. the NHP [National Heath Plan] is constitutionally mandated to buy even the most expensive brand-name drugs to treat patients' illnesses. And these drugs are produced and bought from from any and every sort of company in the world. These are separate issues; and whoever tries to defend private health coverage through R&D justifications does not understand the issue.

The main problem left is really waiting lines; which are experienced in many countries with NHPs. I mean, in Costa Rica this is a gigantic problem; and in actually rich countries these are problems; but we have to remember that America is the RICHEST country. Per capita GDP [nominal] is 10 times what it is in Costa Rica; and there are tons of doctors [more than in Costa Rica, which I'm using because I'm from there and because it's an underdeveloped country with which I'm familiar with], how can you guys simply not afford to make an affordable plan with less waiting lines when it is SO much cheapre elsewhere? I know that Americans like to think of themselves as innovators and "mavericks" and "rugged individualists"; but surely there must be some things that you can learn from other places that work; like other places have learnt from America things that have worked, right?? That's not such a far-fetched idea.

Maybe the current health bill isn't the answer; but Americans have to realize that it will take money and it will take some sacrifices; but that at the same time 1/6 (50 million) of their people can't afford HEALTH CARE; which is a RIGHT in most DEVELOPED [read: not 'socialist' backwarer shitholes, but THE happiest, most advanced, equal, and tolerant societies in the world] countries. There is such a wide menu and ways to do it, you guys have to find a way to reconcile these different ways and adapt it to your own: it's the only way to truly take advantage of that huge chunk that remains less-than-productive and less-than-healthy than what should be the NORM in developed countries such as your own.

i understand what your saying ED...but here there are 300 million people to deal with....you have 4 million in your country....my problem is the pro NHC people seem to give me the impression that once Obama signs the accord...BINGO...the next morning we have UHC and everythings fine....this is a friggin major undertaking...look at the countries of the world that have pop. in line with the US and tell me how great their MED systems are....

 

[toomuchtime_]

Not really sure who or if it really even is but I think it's wrong to deny the sick medical care. I think that we as a society should be able to come up with a way to ensure all those who need care get it. How that can be accomplished efficiently is something I don't have the answer to but I would like to see that goal reached. Your attitude seems to be somewhere along the lines of "fuck 'em."

All those who need medical care can get it now even if they don't have medical insurance. For routine care and testing, there are free and sliding scale clinics available from the US Health Service, most teaching hospitals and a variety of non profits in virtually every city and every rural area, and for treatment of more serious illnesses, anyone can qualify for Medicaid once they spend down their income and assets. The whole focus of the House bill and the Kennedy-Dodd bill is to shift the cost of care for uninsured people from them to other taxpayers, not to provide health care that is already available.

Ah if it were so simple. Let me explain something; to qualify for Medicaid, you must be under the poverty line. In other words, you need to be dirt poor. If you make $30,000 per year, but medical insurance and out of pocket costs amount to $20,000, you won't qualify for Medicare. So you go without.

In the meantime, you can get most of your outpatient services, including most medications, for free or on a sliding scale basis depending on your income. Check out these resources:

HRSA - Find a Health Center - Search Page

free clinic toledo - Google Search

It is true that as long as you are earning above the poverty line for your area you will not be able to get Medicaid, but if you avail yourself of these free or inexpensive medical services, you may be able to save some of the money you are now spending against extraordinary expenses that may arise in the future or to put against supplemental catastrophic health insurance, the cheapest kind, that will only cover extraordinary expenses.

If people like yourself used the free medical care already available to them and the government offered sliding scale subsidies only for catastrophic coverage, everyone would have fully comprehensive health care available to them at hundreds of billions less than Obama & Co. are now proposing.

 

[PoliticalChic]

I'm happy with my healthcare but I'm fortunate enough to have a decent job with benefits. I'm more concerned with helping those in need and eliminating waste.

You are in the vast majority. Over 85% are happy with their health care, and the number goes even higher when we poll those who have recently had serious procedures.

“…while the numbers clearly show that people are happier with their own health care than with the system as a whole, there is no dimension with which their happier than the quality of care they personally receive…a mere 15 percent complain about the quality of care they receive.”.(New England Journal of Medicine)
Health Beat: The Quality Question

And, of course, the 47 million figure of those uninsured is bogus, and is, in actuallity, closer to 15 million, 4.8 % of the population.

Which leads to the question as to why the Democrats are so hot to throw out a working system.

 

[JimH52]

So, with the help of a few democrats, the Party of NO may win again.

 

[elvis]

So, with the help of a few democrats, the Party of NO may win again.

I hope so.

 

[Oddball]

If we're lucky.

Of course, they weren't "the party of no" when they were spending and expanding bureaucracy at a rate that would make LBJ blush.

But hey, when all you have is party man hack-in-the-box talking points......

 

[Bfgrn]

I'm happy with my healthcare but I'm fortunate enough to have a decent job with benefits. I'm more concerned with helping those in need and eliminating waste.

You are in the vast majority. Over 85% are happy with their health care, and the number goes even higher when we poll those who have recently had serious procedures.

“…while the numbers clearly show that people are happier with their own health care than with the system as a whole, there is no dimension with which their happier than the quality of care they personally receive…a mere 15 percent complain about the quality of care they receive.”.(New England Journal of Medicine)
Health Beat: The Quality Question

And, of course, the 47 million figure of those uninsured is bogus, and is, in actuallity, closer to 15 million, 4.8 % of the population.

Which leads to the question as to why the Democrats are so hot to throw out a working system.

It's a good thing you didn't read any further PC; you weren't looking for TRUTH, you were looking for something that would support your dogma...

You picked the wrong article, organization and study...LOL!

The Quality Question

No doubt one of the reasons that quality doesn’t make it into the health care discussions as readily as coverage or cost is because of this very satisfaction: if people are happy, then there’s no problem—so why pick a fight where there need not be conflict? Health care reform is already hard enough.

But quality is a problem. Just because Americans are happy with their care, doesn’t mean that they are getting the best care—or even recommended levels of care, as determined through medical consensus.

In 2003, Elizabeth McGlynn, the associate director of RAND’s health care program, led the first national, comprehensive study on the quality of care for adults. (Read that sentence again: we didn’t have a major nation-wide study on quality until just five years ago. The Institute of Medicine did focus on medical errors in its 1999 report, “To Err is Human"; but the RAND study looked at whether doctors were following “best practice.”) Quality has clearly been an overlooked issue in health care assessments.

Maggie has touched on McGlynn's study in a previous post, but it’s worth discussing again here. Using telephone interviews and two-year medical records, McGlynn’s team assessed whether or not 13,275 participants in 12 metropolitan regions received the level of care that doctors recommend for their specific ailments (25 conditions in all, including congestive heart failure, hypertension, breast cancer, diabetes, asthma, coronary artery disease, STDs, headaches, and alcohol dependence). What they found was that, on average, patients receive just 55 percent of recommended care for their conditions. (“Recommended care” was determined by (1) poring over national guidelines and medical literature to come up with key indicators and (2) subjecting these indicators to four nine-person, multi-specialty panels, who nixed or okayed the metrics).

This proportion was remarkably consistent across different kinds of care. The authors found “little difference among the proportion of recommended preventive care provided (54.9 percent), the proportion of recommended acute care provided (53.5 percent), and the proportion of recommended care provided for chronic conditions (56.1 percent).”

In testimony before the Senate Finance Committee last month, McGlynn nicely summed up the implications of these numbers: “we spend nearly $2 trillion annually on health care and we get it right about half the time.”

 

[Oddball]

And if it's one thing that Big Daddy Big Gubbament is known for, it's quality!!

 

[xsited1]

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- U.S. Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., a leader of fiscally conservative House Democrats, said Wednesday a House plan to overhaul the U.S. health-care system is losing support and will be stuck in committee without changes.

"Last time I checked, it takes seven Democrats to stop a bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee," Ross told reporters after a House vote. "We had seven against it last Friday; we have 10 today."
...

Mike Ross is one of the few Democrats who deserves to be reelected. He graduated from the same High School as Mike Huckabee. Both have similar political views, although Huckabee couldn't remain a Democrat because of the DNC's views on abortion. There is only one member of Congress from Arkansas who is a Republican.

 

[WillowTree]

So, with the help of a few democrats, the Party of NO may win again.

The party of KNOW, votes NO cause we KNOW you cannot pay for it and it stinks.

 

[Oscar Wao]

If we're lucky, we may BARELY pull a '93-'94.

And I'm not speaking as a Republican, either.

 

[Bfgrn]

Big corporate Insurance and Pharma are spending 1.4 million dollars per DAY to lobby for NO change, and right wing pea brains FEEL these corporations are looking out for them...

morons...

"Eighty percent of Republicans are just Democrats that don't know what's going on"
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

 

[Oddball]

Lying out your ass again, I see.

Nobody here who is against medical fascism has, or likely ever will be, an apologist for insurance companies who try to bail on their contractual obligations

 

[Oscar Wao]

Big corporate Insurance and Pharma are spending 1.4 million dollars per DAY to lobby for NO change, and right wing pea brains FEEL these corporations are looking out for them...

morons...

"Eighty percent of Republicans are just Democrats that don't know what's going on"
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

As a "right-wing pea-brain" who KNOWS FIRST HAND what sumbitches insurance companies can be, I find your post to be outright condescending, offensive, and dishonest.

 

[Harry Dresden]

Big corporate Insurance and Pharma are spending 1.4 million dollars per DAY to lobby for NO change, and right wing pea brains FEEL these corporations are looking out for them...

morons...

"Eighty percent of Republicans are just Democrats that don't know what's going on"
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

and so you put a quote from one of the biggest Hypocrites in the country in there....way to go....

 

[Bfgrn]

Big corporate Insurance and Pharma are spending 1.4 million dollars per DAY to lobby for NO change, and right wing pea brains FEEL these corporations are looking out for them...

morons...

"Eighty percent of Republicans are just Democrats that don't know what's going on"
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

As a "right-wing pea-brain" who KNOWS FIRST HAND what sumbitches insurance companies can be, I find your post to be outright condescending, offensive, and dishonest.

Good... I'm glad you know your place...

 

[Bfgrn]

Big corporate Insurance and Pharma are spending 1.4 million dollars per DAY to lobby for NO change, and right wing pea brains FEEL these corporations are looking out for them...

morons...

"Eighty percent of Republicans are just Democrats that don't know what's going on"
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

and so you put a quote from one of the biggest Hypocrites in the country in there....way to go....

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is one of the smartest people in the country...