H.R. 3200

[Dedman]

Read it and weep.

http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_1 ... /aahca.pdf

I received an email from a friend today that stated all of the bad things that would happen if this bill becomes law. It went point by point and even gave page and line numbers. I only got through the first 4 points. When compared to the bill, the points in the email were either misleading or just plain false.

I am dead set against the passage of government controlled health care. However, I really wish the debate was honest. I find it sad that both sides of this issue feel they have to resort to misinformation in order to \"win\".

[Duper]

gasp! should I report you to flag? (j/k)

thanks for the link!

[dissent]

some information then -
http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/bg2304.cfm

At the very least, the creation of a national health insurance exchange as a platform for a public plan to compete against private health insurance would cut short state innovation in health insurance market reform and accelerate the already rapidly growing federal domination of the financing and delivery of health care. Even more likely, it would ensure the eventual triumph of a single-payer system of national health insurance run by Washington. The national health insurance exchange combined with a public plan, falsely advertised as a mechanism to advance consumer choice and market competition, would be the institutional vehicle to guarantee the exact opposite.

Conclusion

President Obama and the congressional leadership are intent on creating a national health insurance exchange. In its various legislative forms, their version of the health insurance exchange is a powerful regulatory agency; it is not merely an administrative agency to facilitate enrollment and to promote choice and anything remotely approaching free-market competition.

In many respects, the national health insurance exchange resembles a solution in search of a problem. If the President or Congress wanted to create a national health insurance market, they would not need to create a national health insurance exchange--they would merely have to repeal existing federal barriers to insurers competing across state lines. If the President and Congress wanted to fix the inequities of the federal tax law, a key rationale for creating a health insurance exchange at the state level, all they would have to do is to reform the federal tax laws governing health insurance and end the practice of discriminating against those who cannot or do not get health insurance through their place of work.

If the objective of the President and Congress is to expand the role of the federal government in providing health insurance and determining the kind of health insurance that Americans will get, the national health insurance exchange is a convenient tool for that federal expansion and control. It would be tantamount to a national arena for the public plan to undercut private health plans and erode existing private health coverage.

There is little doubt that a national health insurance exchange, combined with a public plan, can achieve that policy objective. But there is also little doubt that such an objective is not what most Americans had in mind when they embraced the cause of comprehensive health reform.

At its heart, I simply do not trust Obama when he says he is doing this to level the playing field and make the private insurers honest. He is on the record as a single-payer advocate. Barney Frank has admitted (watch the video) that the Public Plan is effectively a prerequisite to single payer. And yet we keep getting all this BS song-and-dance about how "if you like your health care you can keep it" etc etc blah blah.

So where is this land of health care milk and honey anyways? Europe??
France Fights Universal Care's High Cost
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124958049241511735.html



I'm just not convinced.

[woodchip]

I'd be concerned as to how much access your medical records would be to anyone with a federal computor use code.
Also I am disturbed by Barack \"Angel of Death\" Obama's comment on if you are too old he'll just give you a pain pill instead of a operation to prolong your life.

[CUDA]

Logan's Run anyone?

[dissent]

Well, go here. You just have to

(a) read Ed Morrissey's post, and

(b) watch the MSNBC interview

Y'know, if Walter Cronkite cared a rat's *** about Lawrence O'Donnell, he might be spinning in his grave like a pulsar, but somehow I think not. Do I need any other reason not to watch BSNBC?

If this is the way the jack-booted thugs want to peddle their continuing desire to \"educate\" the American public through \"journalism\", I'm torn - do I continue to resist their chicanery, or do I just give in and buy shares of Unilever (who makes Vaseline)?



(these are rhetorical questions)

[woodchip]

Dissent, perhaps this is why the Fox News line up has ratings higher than all the others. People are tired of hearing the rah rah crap by media so fully invested in their soap opera President.

[dissent]

interesting situation.

The \"public Option\" is to have lower premiums, in an effort to lower health care \"costs\". Like Medicare and Medicaid, they can do this because they have lower reimbursement to doctors and hospitals than private health care insurance; indeed, lower than the cost to provide these services. The difference is made up by increasing the charges made to private health care plans.

Now if more people go onto the Public Option, then fewer people are going to be paying higher private plan costs, and the number of people paying below cost for services will also go up. This will further drive up the rates for private insurance, driving more people (and employers) to move to the public option, etc etc.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

again, the refrain of \"if you like your health care , you can keep it\" is at best profoundly ignorant of reality, and is at worst a deliberate cynical ploy. c'mon, 'fess up, you people!

[Spidey]

There you go with that logic crap again…

Oh, you will be able to keep the plan you have now, it will just cost a lot more due to what you pointed out, and the fact that they will probably start to tax insurance benefits.

Is the \"Public Plan\" on or off the plate this week?

[Birdseye]

Economically in a theoretical ideal I agree with government healthcare in the same way the government should be able to safely monopolize (or allow a monopoly to exist) the water and electricity (basic needs we all need).

Unfortunately our government will mostly lie, pilfer, and still from the taxes of its constituents. Therfore, I am opposed, but not no the technical grounds of the idea. Our american system is just too broken to allow the government to swell in such a way. The new agencies brought by Bush are already too much.

[Birdseye]

some information then -
http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/bg2304.cfm

At the very least, the creation of a national health insurance exchange as a platform for a public plan to compete against private health insurance would cut short state innovation in health insurance market reform and accelerate the already rapidly growing federal domination of the financing and delivery of health care. Even more likely, it would ensure the eventual triumph of a single-payer system of national health insurance run by Washington. The national health insurance exchange combined with a public plan, falsely advertised as a mechanism to advance consumer choice and market competition, would be the institutional vehicle to guarantee the exact opposite.

Conclusion

President Obama and the congressional leadership are intent on creating a national health insurance exchange. In its various legislative forms, their version of the health insurance exchange is a powerful regulatory agency; it is not merely an administrative agency to facilitate enrollment and to promote choice and anything remotely approaching free-market competition.

In many respects, the national health insurance exchange resembles a solution in search of a problem. If the President or Congress wanted to create a national health insurance market, they would not need to create a national health insurance exchange--they would merely have to repeal existing federal barriers to insurers competing across state lines. If the President and Congress wanted to fix the inequities of the federal tax law, a key rationale for creating a health insurance exchange at the state level, all they would have to do is to reform the federal tax laws governing health insurance and end the practice of discriminating against those who cannot or do not get health insurance through their place of work.

If the objective of the President and Congress is to expand the role of the federal government in providing health insurance and determining the kind of health insurance that Americans will get, the national health insurance exchange is a convenient tool for that federal expansion and control. It would be tantamount to a national arena for the public plan to undercut private health plans and erode existing private health coverage.

There is little doubt that a national health insurance exchange, combined with a public plan, can achieve that policy objective. But there is also little doubt that such an objective is not what most Americans had in mind when they embraced the cause of comprehensive health reform.

At its heart, I simply do not trust Obama when he says he is doing this to level the playing field and make the private insurers honest. He is on the record as a single-payer advocate. Barney Frank has admitted (watch the video) that the Public Plan is effectively a prerequisite to single payer. And yet we keep getting all this BS song-and-dance about how "if you like your health care you can keep it" etc etc blah blah.

So where is this land of health care milk and honey anyways? Europe??
France Fights Universal Care's High Cost
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124958049241511735.html



I'm just not convinced.

Dude. You posted a link from heritage.org, a site totally biased against anything a democrat does. Did you think you'd be reading or posting unbiased information at any point? Honestly I didn't even bother reading the content because it doesn't matter. Such polarized sources are terrible sources for personal belief.

[Insurrectionist]

So the whole idea is to allow the Government to run a public option is to promote competition to lower cost. So why are there so many Insurance companies out there?

Seems like every time the government wants to promote competition they bankrupt America. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae for example. How soon do we bailout the power companies? Will there be a government option for that too?

[dissent]

Dude. You posted a link from heritage.org, a site totally biased against anything a democrat does. Did you think you'd be reading or posting unbiased information at any point? Honestly I didn't even bother reading the content because it doesn't matter. Such polarized sources are terrible sources for personal belief.

"... against anything a big government liberal does ....." (fixed it for ya)
[NB - not "liberal" in the classical political sense, but in the current fashion of we-know-better-than-youism that dominates the American Left]

LOL. So please point me to your mythical land of detailed unbiased analysis. Of course you didn't read it, because you're not biased.

You could, of course, just dispute any set of contentions in the article, instead of knee-jerk rejecting it based on the source. But then, you'd have to read it.

[Spidey]

“So please point me to your mythical land of detailed unbiased analysis.”


Yea, and while you are there…could you grab me a unicorn.

[dissent]

Greg Mankiw linked to three interesting articles

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/08/ ... olicy.html


Krauthammer debunks the "prevention" myth

Prevention, they assure us, will not just make us healthier, it also "will save money."

Obama followed suit in his Tuesday New Hampshire town hall, touting prevention as amazingly dual-purpose: "It saves lives. It also saves money."

Reform proponents repeat this like a mantra. Because it seems so intuitive, it has become conventional wisdom. But like most conventional wisdom, it is wrong. Overall, preventive care increases medical costs.

This inconvenient truth comes, once again, from the CBO. In an Aug. 7 letter to Rep. Nathan Deal, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf writes: "Researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness. ...

... This doesn't mean we shouldn't be preventing illness. Of course we should. But in medicine, as in life, there is no free lunch. The idea that prevention is somehow intrinsically economically different from treatment -- that treatment increases costs and prevention lowers them -- is simply nonsense. Prevention is a wondrous good, but in the aggregate it costs society money. ...

... However, prevention is not, as so widely advertised, healing on the cheap. It is not the magic bullet for health-care costs. ...

I hadn't thought of it that way. Read all three likned articles - thought provoking.

[Nightshade]

Speaking of polarizing, who is Noam Chomsky?

[snoopy]

I find it sad that both sides of this issue feel they have to resort to misinformation in order to "win".

Whoever wins, we lose

[Insurrectionist]

I find it sad that both sides of this issue feel they have to resort to misinformation in order to "win".

Whoever wins, we lose

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /2004/posters/alien_vs_predator_ver4.jpg on this server.

[Spidey]

Try refreshing the page.

[Will Robinson]

Speaking of polarizing, who is Noam Chomsky?

Lol! Good point. Just because someone is a scholar doesn't mean he doesn't come at the problem from an angle.
My guess is the Heritage group has plenty of people coming from a conservative angle but that doesn't mean they aren't making legitimate arguments.

[Birdseye]

Dude. You posted a link from heritage.org, a site totally biased against anything a democrat does. Did you think you'd be reading or posting unbiased information at any point? Honestly I didn't even bother reading the content because it doesn't matter. Such polarized sources are terrible sources for personal belief.

"... against anything a big government liberal does ....." (fixed it for ya)
[NB - not "liberal" in the classical political sense, but in the current fashion of we-know-better-than-youism that dominates the American Left]

LOL. So please point me to your mythical land of detailed unbiased analysis. Of course you didn't read it, because you're not biased.

You could, of course, just dispute any set of contentions in the article, instead of knee-jerk rejecting it based on the source. But then, you'd have to read it.

I did read it. I implore you to postulate which particular ideas you prefer instead of just posting a link from heritage.org

no there is no one unbiased source, we need a bunch of sources! So read a number and post us a reply that hammers out your beliefs. Don't just post a heritage link with 'i agree with this, this is a great article'

[dissent]

From the more-often-than-not interesting Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post :

Let's see if we can have a reasoned discussion about end-of-life counseling.

We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I've got nothing against her. She's a remarkable political talent. But there are no \"death panels\" in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate.

We also have to tell the defenders of the notorious Section 1233 of H.R. 3200 that it is not quite as benign as they pretend. To offer government reimbursement to any doctor who gives end-of-life counseling -- whether or not the patient asked for it -- is to create an incentive for such a chat. ...

...Except for the demented orphan, the living will is quite beside the point. The one time it really is essential is if you think your fractious family will be only too happy to hasten your demise to get your money. That's what the law is good at -- protecting you from murder and theft. But that is a far cry from assuring a peaceful and willed death, which is what most people imagine living wills are about.

So why get Medicare to pay the doctor to do the counseling? Because we know that if this white-coated authority whose chosen vocation is curing and healing is the one opening your mind to hospice and palliative care, we've nudged you ever so slightly toward letting go.

It's not an outrage. It's surely not a death panel. But it is subtle pressure applied by society through your doctor. And when you include it in a health-care reform whose major objective is to bend the cost curve downward, you have to be a fool or a knave to deny that it's intended to gently point the patient in a certain direction, toward the corner of the sickroom where stands a ghostly figure, scythe in hand, offering release.

This is one of the main problems that I see with the way the Democrats have been directing this. The rush to passage and then all of the name calling has just exacerbated it - and that is that most people simply don't trust politicians (especially this motley crew)
to be able to do a good job of this. When push comes to shove, the only way to make a significant impact to reduce costs is to spend less, either by reducing availability of services (rationing) or reducing the number of people who are requesting access to the promised services.

[AlphaDoG]

Want to know the SCARIEST thing concerning this and any other unread bill that is passed?

The "Office of the Law Revision Counsel"

The Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the United States House of Representatives prepares and publishes the United States Code, which is a consolidation and codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States.

The counsel is appointed by the Speaker of the House and must

prepare, and submit to the Committee on the Judiciary one title at a time, a complete compilation, restatement, and revision of the general and permanent laws of the United States which conforms to the understood policy, intent, and purpose of the Congress in the original enactments, with such amendments and corrections as will remove ambiguities, contradictions, and other imperfections both of substance and of form, separately stated, with a view to the enactment of each title as positive law."[1]

In other words, the counsel takes the Act of Congress that generally cover more than one subject, and makes the revisions indicated to each title of the United States Code.

[AlphaDoG]

Want to know the SCARIEST thing concerning this and any other unread bill that is passed?

The "Office of the Law Revision Counsel"

The Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the United States House of Representatives prepares and publishes the United States Code, which is a consolidation and codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States.

The counsel is appointed by the Speaker of the House and must

prepare, and submit to the Committee on the Judiciary one title at a time, a complete compilation, restatement, and revision of the general and permanent laws of the United States which conforms to the understood policy, intent, and purpose of the Congress in the original enactments, with such amendments and corrections as will remove ambiguities, contradictions, and other imperfections both of substance and of form, separately stated, with a view to the enactment of each title as positive law."[1]

In other words, the counsel takes the Act of Congress that generally cover more than one subject, and makes the revisions indicated to each title of the United States Code.

Want to know the 2nd scariest thing about this? Notice the lack of response since I posted this!