Public Option dead on Health Care, bill targets Baby boomers.

[Maple]

It sounds like they are dropping the age limit to 55 for medicare and still cutting medicare by 500 billion a year. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, Let me think about this for a minute. You dramatically increase the number of people on medicare but you cut the medicare program by about 500 billion. Sounds to me like they are attempting to kill off the baby boomers.

The death of the public option - THE WEEK

U.S. News & Opinion•Wednesday, December 9, 2009Comment Print Email
Harry Reid is denying that the public option is dead.
(EPA/Corbis/Matthew Cavanaugh)
Best opinion: Wash. Post, Power Line, Open Left

For months, the "public option"—a plan for a government-run health insurance program that would compete with private coverage—has been the most contentious point in the health care debate. Many observers have speculated it could sink health care reform altogether. But in a surprise turn yesterday, Senate majority leader Harry Reid announced a compromise plan put together by 10 Democrats — five liberal and five centrist — that reportedly swaps the out the full-blown public option in the health care bill for a basket of smaller changes, such as creating privately-run nonprofit insurance providers and lowering the age of the Medicare eligibility from 65 to 55. Have conservatives just won a big battle against Obamacare--or does the new plan make Democrats more likely to accomplish their healthcare goals?

 

[Zander]

It's the new math. Don't worry, it will cut the deficit. Don't worry, we'll spend our way out of the recession. Don't worry, just die.

 

[Claudette]

I heard that on the news yesterday Maple. Leave it to the Clowns in DC. I'll bet Reid gave the farm away in order to get the comprimise. If he even got it. Guys a smuck.

Gotta luv ya Zander. Your probably right.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Pol Pot and Mao implemented the same system

 

[PLYMCO_PILGRIM]

It sounds like they are dropping the age limit to 55 for medicare and still cutting medicare by 500 billion a year. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, Let me think about this for a minute. You dramatically increase the number of people on medicare but you cut the medicare program by about 500 billion. Sounds to me like they are attempting to kill off the baby boomers.

The death of the public option - THE WEEK

U.S. News & Opinion•Wednesday, December 9, 2009Comment Print Email
Harry Reid is denying that the public option is dead.
(EPA/Corbis/Matthew Cavanaugh)
Best opinion: Wash. Post, Power Line, Open Left

For months, the "public option"—a plan for a government-run health insurance program that would compete with private coverage—has been the most contentious point in the health care debate. Many observers have speculated it could sink health care reform altogether. But in a surprise turn yesterday, Senate majority leader Harry Reid announced a compromise plan put together by 10 Democrats — five liberal and five centrist — that reportedly swaps the out the full-blown public option in the health care bill for a basket of smaller changes, such as creating privately-run nonprofit insurance providers and lowering the age of the Medicare eligibility from 65 to 55. Have conservatives just won a big battle against Obamacare--or does the new plan make Democrats more likely to accomplish their healthcare goals?

Don't be fooled Maple, the public option is still there, now it only kicks in if the scheme they have set up for now fails.....its hard to describe it but they are playing a shell game with the funding for their plan that will fail within a few years.

Taking funds from medicare to help pay for the new health bill, then adding people to medicare, then taking the same funds that came from medicare out of the health bill to fund the additional people who they are putting on medicare.

Circles...its wild....just like what they are doing with the tarp.


Here watch the first 2 min of the crazy man explaining it

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muy9jBdRYPk[/ame]

 

[Navy1960]

I have an idea, how about, this, how about we actually take whats left over in that DIASTER of a stimulus bill and TARP which amounts to about 430 Billion and shore up MEDICARE. Theres and idea huh, actually trying to take a dept. that is in financial ruin and putting it in solid ground. Then once done, open Medicare up to those below the age limit to purcahse catastrophic coverage from Medicare, much like Life insurance. Then if those that want even more coverage i.e. on-going care let them purchase it anywhere in the nation the same way they can purchase a TV or pecans. Now let me see that took less than 1/4 of a page to write compared to 2000 plus.

 

[Meister]

People who are 55 can buy into Medicare. When it passes, it's 55. Maybe 6 years later it will be 52. Maybe in 9 years after that it will be 50. See where I'm going here? They get a foot in the door, and that's all it takes to end up with a public option...without it being a public option right now. No wonder this was laid into place behind closed doors, without any republicans in the room.
Smoke and Mirrors.

 

[PLYMCO_PILGRIM]

People who are 55 can buy into Medicare. When it passes, it's 55. Maybe 6 years later it will be 52. Maybe in 9 years after that it will be 50. See where I'm going here? They get a foot in the door, and that's all it takes to end up with a public option...without it being a public option right now. No wonder this was laid into place behind closed doors, without any republicans in the room.
Smoke and Mirrors.

Since they are CUTTING medicare to help free up money for the health care bill how are we affording the additional 30+ million who will be added?

we take the money from medicare, put it into the health bill, then take it from the health bill and put it back into medicare.....that is what you call a shell game and if you did this in private business you would go to jail.

It is in effect using your visa(medicare) to pay your mastercard(Health Care Bill) bill so you can use that mastercard(HCB) to pay your visa(M)....eventually it catches up and both the mastercard(HCB) and visa(m) "fail" to issue you more credit and your stuck with 2 bills you can't afford. NOw you have to cut up those 2 cards and get a loan (PUBLIC OPTION) to pay them both off

Stupid Washington People.

 

[Oddball]

Public Option dead on Health Care

Don't you believe it.

 

[saveliberty]

Unions pressure Democrats on health insurance tax - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON – Union leaders, among the most passionate backers of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, pressed Democratic senators Thursday to drop a tax on high-value insurance plans to pay for remaking the nation's system.

Members of several labor unions denounced the proposed tax on so-called "Cadillac plans," arguing it wouldn't just hit CEOs but also middle-class Americans who did without salary increases to negotiate better health benefits.

"I support health care reform but I can't afford this tax," Valerie Castle Stanley, an AT&T call center worker and member of the Communications Workers of America, said at a news conference outside the Capitol. "For families like mine that are on a budget, the results will be devastating."

If you ain't paying, your not supporting. Hey you have options, just pay the fine.

 

[GHook93]

The Public Option will not die! It will be in an final Reid or Pelosi bill. Its a means to an end.

The end is Universal Healthcare the means is the public option. The Democrats know they can't start a bill with UHC without getting creamed. Therefore they make a bill with a public option, knowing right off the bat many will join it. Then they will make it cost prohibitive for small businesses to remain in the private sector, so small business workers go into the public option. Eventually, so many people will be reliant on the government for healthcare, the switch to UHC will be simple, politically.

 

[Zoom-boing]

People who are 55 can buy into Medicare. When it passes, it's 55. Maybe 6 years later it will be 52. Maybe in 9 years after that it will be 50. See where I'm going here? They get a foot in the door, and that's all it takes to end up with a public option...without it being a public option right now. No wonder this was laid into place behind closed doors, without any republicans in the room.
Smoke and Mirrors.

Yup. Just a horse of a different color.

 

[Zoom-boing]

Public option and abortion are the two big debates I mostly hear about. What aren't we focusing on?

Before Thanksgiving, the Senate voted to opening debate on President Obama's health-care bill, and that debate has begun in earnest this week.

Well, if they want a debate, let's let them have it. But let's not get distracted by the sideshows Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has planned for us.

Forget about abortion. Of course the left will accept restrictions on funding for abortion, because they want to keep moderate Democrats on board for the goal they know is really important: giving the government a dominant role in health care. Everything else is just details, and funding for abortions is an issue to which the left can return at leisure later on-once government is firmly in charge of everything.

And don't bother debating the "public option," either, because it's already dead; enough Democratic senators have come out against it. But Harry Reid is all too happy to have a debate over the public option so he can make a show of "compromising" and giving it up. And while we're having that fake debate, he's hoping that we won't be challenging everything else in the bill.

So let's get straight what the real essentials of the bill are-and how disastrous they are.

Three provisions constitute the vicious heart of the Democrats' health-care overhaul.

The first is "guaranteed issue" and "community rating." This is the requirement that insurance companies have to offer coverage to people who are already sick, and that they be limited in their ability to charge higher rates for customer who pose a higher risk. The extra expense to the insurance companies of covering people with pre-existing conditions will get passed on to existing customers in the form of higher premiums. But why spend years paying these inflated premiums for insurance you're not using, when you can get exactly the same benefits by waiting until you actually fall ill? The obvious result is that million of people, especially healthy young people, will quickly realize that there is no reason to buy health insurance until they get sick.

Rather than increasing the number of insured by making health insurance more affordable, this bill makes health insurance more expensive and increases the incentive to simply drop your insurance until you need someone to pay for your medical bills. It is an attempt to turn health insurance into what the left really wants: another welfare program in which everyone is entitled to free benefits, mandated by the government. But this would wreck private health insurance, making the whole industrial financially unsustainable.

Following the usual pattern of government intervention, the health-care bill offers another intervention as the solution for the problem created by the first. The "individual mandate" requires everyone to buy health insurance and subjects us to a tax if we fail to do so. But this is an especially onerous new tax, the first tax not tied to any kind of income or activity. It's not a tax on stock-market profits, say, or a tax on buying cigarettes. It's just a tax for existing.

So fearing a public backlash, Congress didn't have the guts to make this new tax very large-only $750. Yet actual insurance can cost more than $3,000 per year-and as we shall see, this legislation goes out of its way to drive up those rates by mandating more lavish coverage. So we end up getting the worst of both worlds. This provision won't actually drive anyone to buy health insurance and prop up the risk pools for those who are insured. All it will accomplish is to create a brand new form of tax.

But the biggest power-grab in the bill is the government takeover of the entire market for health insurance. The bill requires all new policies to be sold on a government-controlled exchange run by a commissioner who is empowered to dictate what kinds of insurance policies can be offered, what they must cover, and what they can charge.

Right now, your best option for reducing the cost of your health insurance is to buy a policy with a high deductible, which leaves you to pay for routine checkups and minor injuries (preferably from savings held in a tax-free Health Savings Account) but which covers your needs in catastrophic circumstances-a bad car accident, say, or expensive treatment for cancer. This is the kind of coverage I have.

But the health-insurance exchange is intended to eliminate precisely this kind of low-cost catastrophic coverage. Its purpose is to force health-insurance companies to offer comprehensive coverage that pays for all of your routine bills-which in turn comes at a higher price. So under the guise of making health insurance more affordable, this bill will restrict your menu of choices to include only the most expensive options.

So there we have the real essence of this bill. It restricts our choice of which insurance to buy and pushes us into more expensive plans. At the same time, it destroys the economic incentive to purchase insurance in the first place and replaces insurance with a free-floating tax on one's very existence.

By all means, let's debate some of that in the Senate.

When you understand what this bill does, you can see why the Democrats would be happy to compromise and drop the public option-for now. This bill so comprehensively wrecks private health insurance that pretty soon a "public option" will seem like the only alternative, and they will already have put into place one of the new taxes needed to pay for it. If the left's goal is to impose socialized medicine in America, this bill does it in the most callous and destructive way possible. It smashes private health care-then leaves us stranded in the rubble, at which point we will be expected to come crawling back to the same people who caused the disaster and ask them to save us.

More:

RealClearPolitics - You Will Lose Your Private Health Insurance

 

[Maple]

It sounds like they are dropping the age limit to 55 for medicare and still cutting medicare by 500 billion a year. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, Let me think about this for a minute. You dramatically increase the number of people on medicare but you cut the medicare program by about 500 billion. Sounds to me like they are attempting to kill off the baby boomers.

The death of the public option - THE WEEK

U.S. News & Opinion•Wednesday, December 9, 2009Comment Print Email
Harry Reid is denying that the public option is dead.
(EPA/Corbis/Matthew Cavanaugh)
Best opinion: Wash. Post, Power Line, Open Left

For months, the "public option"—a plan for a government-run health insurance program that would compete with private coverage—has been the most contentious point in the health care debate. Many observers have speculated it could sink health care reform altogether. But in a surprise turn yesterday, Senate majority leader Harry Reid announced a compromise plan put together by 10 Democrats — five liberal and five centrist — that reportedly swaps the out the full-blown public option in the health care bill for a basket of smaller changes, such as creating privately-run nonprofit insurance providers and lowering the age of the Medicare eligibility from 65 to 55. Have conservatives just won a big battle against Obamacare--or does the new plan make Democrats more likely to accomplish their healthcare goals?

Don't be fooled Maple, the public option is still there, now it only kicks in if the scheme they have set up for now fails.....its hard to describe it but they are playing a shell game with the funding for their plan that will fail within a few years.

Taking funds from medicare to help pay for the new health bill, then adding people to medicare, then taking the same funds that came from medicare out of the health bill to fund the additional people who they are putting on medicare.

Circles...its wild....just like what they are doing with the tarp.


Here watch the first 2 min of the crazy man explaining it

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muy9jBdRYPk[/ame]

I don't believe it. They are going to try to get this passed in the senate, then it goes to conference where they will slip the public option in back in there, hoping that no one will notice. Then they pass it back to the congress so they can slip in coverage on illegals and coverage for abortions, then we have Obama sign it. Whoppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. The games they play that we get to pay for.

 

[Maple]

People who are 55 can buy into Medicare. When it passes, it's 55. Maybe 6 years later it will be 52. Maybe in 9 years after that it will be 50. See where I'm going here? They get a foot in the door, and that's all it takes to end up with a public option...without it being a public option right now. No wonder this was laid into place behind closed doors, without any republicans in the room.
Smoke and Mirrors.

Since they are CUTTING medicare to help free up money for the health care bill how are we affording the additional 30+ million who will be added?

we take the money from medicare, put it into the health bill, then take it from the health bill and put it back into medicare.....that is what you call a shell game and if you did this in private business you would go to jail.

It is in effect using your visa(medicare) to pay your mastercard(Health Care Bill) bill so you can use that mastercard(HCB) to pay your visa(M)....eventually it catches up and both the mastercard(HCB) and visa(m) "fail" to issue you more credit and your stuck with 2 bills you can't afford. NOw you have to cut up those 2 cards and get a loan (PUBLIC OPTION) to pay them both off

Stupid Washington People.

The headlines

Berny Madeoff released from Prison early to go to Washington to help write the Health care reform bill.

 

[ScreamingEagle]

It sounds like they are dropping the age limit to 55 for medicare and still cutting medicare by 500 billion a year. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, Let me think about this for a minute. You dramatically increase the number of people on medicare but you cut the medicare program by about 500 billion. Sounds to me like they are attempting to kill off the baby boomers.

The death of the public option - THE WEEK

U.S. News & Opinion•Wednesday, December 9, 2009Comment Print Email
Harry Reid is denying that the public option is dead.
(EPA/Corbis/Matthew Cavanaugh)
Best opinion: Wash. Post, Power Line, Open Left

For months, the "public option"—a plan for a government-run health insurance program that would compete with private coverage—has been the most contentious point in the health care debate. Many observers have speculated it could sink health care reform altogether. But in a surprise turn yesterday, Senate majority leader Harry Reid announced a compromise plan put together by 10 Democrats — five liberal and five centrist — that reportedly swaps the out the full-blown public option in the health care bill for a basket of smaller changes, such as creating privately-run nonprofit insurance providers and lowering the age of the Medicare eligibility from 65 to 55. Have conservatives just won a big battle against Obamacare--or does the new plan make Democrats more likely to accomplish their healthcare goals?

Let's see.....about 30 million uninsured put on Medicaid and another 78 million baby boomers put into Medicare at 55......that quickly puts over 100 million new people people into the government health care system....

...seems to me that they are quickly putting the "public option" into play....same game....different name...

 

[Maple]

Yes, same game, just different name.

 

[Claudette]

You got it and we taxpayers are going to get it!!

Hell. Not even a little foreplay. We're all going to get fucked.

 

[PLYMCO_PILGRIM]

You got it and we taxpayers are going to get it!!

Hell. Not even a little foreplay. We're all going to get fucked.

At least the republicans pretend to care about us over dinner then give us a kiss before they F us in the A....the democrats don't even give us any foreplay they just get right down to F-ing us in the A without trying to make us like it.