[cmb53208]

Meanwhile, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins ROCK. These are Republicans? They're actually making sense, listening to their constituents' concerns, and showing practicality alongside compassion. Who knew?

And since they're Republicans with a triple digit IQ they'll sadly lose a lot fo support.

[Huckleby]

I'll play devil's advocate.

The Republicans don't like the public option because they say the insurance companies can't compete.

If the public option were implemented as progessives originally intended to do, it surely would have driven insurance companies out of business.

Oh cry me a fucking river, the insurance companies haven't been competing in any way, shape, or form. They've been jacking up their rates, treating their customers like shit, and driving up the cost of health care with the costs of keeping up with the paperwork.

The insurance companies are not why health care costs have spiraled. Its true that they have higher paperwork costs, inefficiencies. But they also work to keep fraud and costs down a lot harder than does, say, medicare paymasters.

I don't give a flying frig whether the insurance companies get put out of business or not. Just as long as we have a plan for the future that will work.

The insurance companies are not important. they are just cogs in the machine. They are not villians, they are just badly under-regulated. The fight to control health care costs has little to do with whether the government or private companies are processing insurance claims.

I agree with all the bumper stickers. We need to emphasise people more than profits. But that doesn't mean killing private insurance is the answer. We want both private and public health care insurance and providers.

[jonnygothispen]

Isn't there something like 31% administrative costs and 11% to 16% profits using health Insurance companies, and 3.1% administrative, no profits for medicare? (Canada's system has 1.9% administrative costs)

Psst-That seems to be a very substantial difference that revolves primarily around the waste caused by Health insurers, who already have death panels, pick your care plans, and which clinics you can use, etc.

But when the head of the steering committee forming the bill, Max Baucus, has received $25 million in campaign donations from HMO's-#1(Orin Hatch is #2 at $17 million), real debate is off the table before it begins and it devolves into the asides we're watching now.

[Huckleby]

Isn't there something like 31% administrative costs and 11% to 16% profits using health Insurance companies, and 3.1% administrative, no profits for medicare?

I'm not sure exactly what the profit margns are for the health insurance companies. I know that health insurance is less profitable (over the past 20 years) than other types of insurance. The Health Insurance companies profit margins are in tension with rising health care costs.

You hear all kinds of claims about the administrative costs of private health insurance. But creditble estimates are 15% -> 18%. Medicare comes in somewhere under 5%.

The problem with Medicare is that the administrative costs are too low. They need to spend more money to detect fraud and over-presecribing.

The private insurers spend a ton on admin, but they also control expenses in the process. This is of course a double edged sword, one man's fraud is another man's necessary treatment.

The perception that replacing private insurers with government insurers will save money is false. IT is other changes that will save the money. The amount of profit that the private insurers suck out turns out to not be an important amount relative to the huge absolute dollars spent on health care.

We need heavily regulated private insurers and/or public insurance. The exact mix doesn't matter so much. Really.

[Ned Flanders]

It's nut cuttin' time. Time to look behind the curtain and call the Wizard's bluff: This "bill" from "Twinkie" Pelosi is a 2,000 page unconstitutional, incomprehensible joke. It is the personification of everything that is wrong with socialism. It is unaffordable, unmanageable and akin to treating a scratched finger with a body cast. It has nothing to do with health care and everything to do with leftists attempting a permanent power-grab.

Once the illegal aliens, young people and job switchers are stripped away, there are 12-15 million hard cases who need some sort of public health insurance assistance. The vast majority of Americans are happy with their current health insurance.

"In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics."

more...

"Even so, the House disguises hundreds of billions of dollars in additional costs with budget gimmicks. It "pays for" about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years. The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by 21.5% next year and deeper after that, "saving" about $250 billion. ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will grow more after that."

more...

"As Congress's balance sheet drowns in trillions of dollars in new obligations, the political system will have no choice but to start making cost-minded decisions about which treatments patients are allowed to receive. Democrats can't regulate their way out of the reality that we live in a world of finite resources and infinite wants. Once health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, medical rationing is inevitable—especially for the innovative high-cost technologies and drugs that are the future of medicine."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 40690.html

[pjbogart]

I tend to agree that the public option has become a runaway freight train that's going to increase the deficit and/or taxes, but that's because it's weak. Either give us a strong public option that everyone can buy into or give us no public option at all. A weak public option isn't actually a public option because it's not, well, public. In the end what's going to happen is that everyone with catastrophic health problems will end up on the dole and everyone who's relatively healthy will keep buying private insurance, which is good for private insurers but I suspect won't actually lower rates for the rest of us. They'll keep skimming off the top and we'll get left with the bill for the sickest amongst us. Insurance is about spreading risk, by definition. The current incarnation is about making money off of healthy people only.

Oh, and to the JS writer, I can think of 100 better ways to attack this bill than to tell the American people that it's an "unrepealable entitlement for the middle class." Assuming that most people still consider themselves middle class, that seems like an argument for the bill rather than against it.

[Huckleby]

Once the illegal aliens, young people and job switchers are stripped away, there are 12-15 million hard cases who need some sort of public health insurance assistance. The vast majority of Americans are happy with their current health insurance.

The illegal aliens are out of the picture so no need to mention them. Young people should actually begin paying more into the health care system, not drawing out. I don't know who these "job switchers" are that you refer to, but anybody who doesn't have health insurance for any reason is a deep problem. (Dishonest Republicans have pretended that a high churn-rate short uninsured period can somehow be ignored, just because any given individual has short term exposure. But of course its the aggregate that matters.)

So you believe that there are only 12 million people who need help. Then providing universal coverage ought to be a snap! Why do you suppose it turns out to be costly, despite efforts by the Senate Finance Committee to produce a lowball estimate?

If you want to believe in fairy tales, that is your option.

[Ned Flanders]

Why do you suppose it turns out to be costly, despite efforts by the Senate Finance Committee to produce a lowball estimate?

Demand is unlimited when things are "free".

[Huckleby]

I tend to agree that the public option has become a runaway freight train that's going to increase the deficit and/or taxes, but that's because it's weak. Either give us a strong public option that everyone can buy into or give us no public option at all. A weak public option isn't actually a public option because it's not, well, public.

What you're saying is you want to put the country on the fast track to single payer. But the country is not ready to make that commitment, and perhaps never will.

You have to work to make life better for people even if you don't get everything you want. Ted Kennedy said the worst mistake of his career was to not accept the health care proposals that Nixon put on the table back in the 1971. We would have had universal health care (in some shape) 20 years ago if Kennedy had been more open minded.

[Huckleby]

Why do you suppose it turns out to be costly, despite efforts by the Senate Finance Committee to produce a lowball estimate?

Demand is unlimited when things are "free".

What is this "free" that you talk about? There is no free ride in the health care bill, unless you are referring to the expansion of Medicaid. ( Medicaid had giant holes in it where poor people slipped through eligibility cracks. The Republicans agreed that those problems had to be corrected in their proposals too.)

[fisticuffs]

What is this "free" that you talk about?

Ned has no grasp of the facts on the issues of the day. Just what he reads in far right wing blogs where all of Mexico is going to be covered and death panels and mandatory abortions live in harmony with a Kenyan President who used a tiny little spec of a non-profit to steal the election from white people.

[rabble]

Why do you suppose it turns out to be costly, despite efforts by the Senate Finance Committee to produce a lowball estimate?

Demand is unlimited when things are "free".

If the water is "free" its demand is unlimited. Castro proved that when he made it free and people just let it run till he made it cost something. Only a couple pesos a month, but as soon as they had to pay something, they only used what they needed.

Health care is not the same thing. Canadians admit they might overuse the system because anytime they just don't feel right, they go to the doctor. Because it's "free." (I'm assuming when Ned puts quotes around "free" he means he knows taxes are involved and isn't counting that.)

But they don't spend all their time at the clinics. They only go when they feel out of sorts.

One could argue that this keeps Canadians healthier than Americans because more illnesses get caught while they're easily treatable, and is therefore cheaper but one cannot argue that "demand is unlimited" because even if there's no limit on how often they make use of the resource, they can't use it in an unlimited manner because then they wouldn't be able to do anything else.

[Huckleby]

http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/ ... alth-bill/

The Congressional Budget Office said on Wednesday that an alternative health care bill put forward by House Republicans would have little impact in extending health benefits to the roughly 30 million uninsured Americans, but would reduce average insurance premium costs for people who have coverage..... House Republicans, including their leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, have said that they did not intend for their legislation to expand insurance coverage, because they viewed that goal as unaffordable. Instead, they said the bill was tailored narrowly to reduce costs.


I don't think John Boehner speaks for all in his party, I have heard some Republicans recognize the need to expand coverage to all, one way or another.

On the whole, the Republican party is morally bankrupt when it comes to health care. Unfortunately they can have no role to play now. I say "unfortunately" because they do have good ideas to contribute. We have to establish as fact the priniciple of universal coverage before the Republicans can participate.

[cmb53208]

The insurance companies are not important. they are just cogs in the machine. They are not villians, they are just badly under-regulated. The fight to control health care costs has little to do with whether the government or private companies are processing insurance claims.

I agree with all the bumper stickers. We need to emphasise people more than profits. But that doesn't mean killing private insurance is the answer. We want both private and public health care insurance and providers.

Actually I do think they're villians: their actions have proven that. I understand that Germany and Switzerland have universalovergae through public/private partnerships, but I can't see our companies playing along.

[Huckleby]

Actually I do think they're villians: their actions have proven that.

If you had to manage a health insurance company, would you accept customers with pre-existing conditions? There is no way you could compete in a marketplace where your competitors are more ruthless.

I understand that Germany and Switzerland have universalovergae through public/private partnerships, but I can't see our companies playing along.

I don't know why American business would be any different from European business. Could the difference in perception just be that left wing media focuses on the the evil of American capitalism?

I don't believe that free enterprise can ever work to deliver health care. The government is going to have to intervene heavily to look out for people. There are many ways to get the job done, every country has chosen a different path. "Single payer" doesn't even mean anything, France & Canada both are considered "single payer", yet France gets much better results with their different mix of private market participation.