DescentBB

Bet51987 wrote:

dissent wrote:...Then again, maybe if you spent a little time studying some of those conservative approaches to reform, they might just get you to thinkin' a bit.

I honestly try, but the main approach of the "conservative" group has been mudslinging, pastors praying for Obama to die, outright lies being spread by Sarah Palin, and a sky is falling mentality by most others. That's what I see...so far.

If you think that is the "main" approach of conservatives, then I can't believe that you've read any of the linked articles that I've made note of in this thread, beginning with the Atlantic article. There is plenty of information there if you wish to make a sincere effort to study it.

Bet51987 wrote:

Duper wrote:Bee, I've shown that this is going on ALREADY here in Oregon. What makes you think that the same thing won't happen when the budget starts getting tight? The same thing with procedure deferrals. It's happening and will happen under a government sponsored program.

My nursing link shows it's happening already right now but you have nothing to prove that it will happen under the Obama plan. To answer your question, I have more faith in Obama than you do.

You're joking right? Please tell me you're not THAT naive. If it's happening on a state level, it will happen on a federal level. It's happening in numerous countries around the world. Obama isn't that special and neither is our bureaucracy. If you have the time, go talk so some vets at the VA and ask them how well things are run. Running health care is NOT A FEDERAL POWER. It's not what the federal government was created to do. To say "we're the most powerful country on the planet and we deserve free health care is A-R-R-O-G-A-N-T!!! No one deserves free health care and there sure isn't any branch of government that has in execess of 32 Departments that WORK FOR FREE. The Supplies will not be free and medicine is not free. There is nothing FREE about it.
Financial decisions will be made for each person's case and some will be deemed to expensive and those treatments will be denied! THAT is what Palin meant by death panel. THAT is what is going on here in Oregon.

KATU wrote:SPRINGFIELD, Ore. - Barbara Wagner has one wish - for more time.

"I'm not ready, I'm not ready to die," the Springfield woman said. "I've got things I'd still like to do."

Her doctor offered hope in the new chemotherapy drug Tarceva, but the Oregon Health Plan sent her a letter telling her the cancer treatment was not approved.

Instead, the letter said, the plan would pay for comfort care, including "physician aid in dying," better known as assisted suicide.

"I told them, I said, 'Who do you guys think you are?' You know, to say that you'll pay for my dying, but you won't pay to help me possibly live longer?' " Wagner said.

An unfortunate interpretation?

Dr. Som Saha, chairman of the commission that sets policy for the Oregon Health Plan, said Wagner is making an "unfortunate interpretation" of the letter and that no one is telling her the health plan will only pay for her to die.

But one critic of assisted suicide calls the message disturbing nonetheless.

"People deserve relief of their suffering, not giving them an overdose," said Dr. William Toffler.

He said the state has a financial incentive to offer death instead of life: Chemotherapy drugs such as Tarceva cost $4,000 a month while drugs for assisted suicide cost less than $100.



Saha said state health officials do not consider whether it is cheaper for someone in the health plan to die than live. But he admitted they must consider the state's limited dollars when dealing with a case such as Wagner's.

"If we invest thousands and thousands of dollars in one person's days to weeks, we are taking away those dollars from someone," Saha said.

But the medical director at the cancer center where Wagner gets her care said some people may have incredible responses to treatment.

Health plan hasn't evolved?

The Oregon Health Plan simply hasn't kept up with dramatic changes in chemotherapy, said Dr. David Fryefield of the Willamette Valley Cancer Center.

Even for those with advanced cancer, new chemotherapy drugs can extend life.

Yet the Oregon Health Plan only offers coverage for chemo that cures cancer - not if it can prolong a patient's life.

"We are looking at today's ... 2008 treatment, but we're using 1993 standards," Fryefield said. "When the Oregon Health Plan was created, it was 15 years ago, and there were not all the chemotherapy drugs that there are today."

Patients like Wagner can appeal a decision if they are denied coverage. Wagner appealed twice but lost both times.

However, her doctors contacted the pharmaceutical company, Genentech, which agreed to give her the medication without charging her. But doctors told us, that is unusual for a company to give away such an expensive medication

The article above is here:
http://www.katu.com/news/26119539.html

Please was the short Video linked at the top of the page. It's a java link or I'd post that link directly here. The things that the state rep says are very disturbing.

Duper, be of good cheer. Not all cancer patients would be treated like that. I suspect those officials who make the decisions that keep people like Ms. Wagner from receiving expensive treatment, will themselves get all the expensive treatment they need if they were to get the same disease.

The president said I am irresponsible, and shirking my duties! Well, I hereby withdraw any support from this clown.

I have never been in an ER in my entire life! Before I found a doctor I used the Clinic a few times. I have never failed to pay a medical bill! What I can’t afford I do without, like my cataract operation!

Who the F do these people think use the ER anyway, I do believe it’s people with EMERGENCIES, and the ones who abuse it, are the ones that will receive free care after reform anyway. (his loyal constituents) So the taxpayer or the insured will continue to pay the cost!

Was bad enuf when Hilary said “If you can’t provide health insurance, you don’t deserve to be in business”.

Screw this clown, and its party!!! I am now officially Anti Obama.

GASP did the President give us wrong info regarding helath care costs

well it seems even the ULTRA Liberal Oregonian thinks so.

OBAMA: \"I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits either now or in the future. Period.\"

THE FACTS: Though there's no final plan yet, the White House and congressional Democrats already have shown they're ready to skirt the no-new-deficits pledge.

House Democrats offered a bill that the Congressional Budget Office said would add $220 billion to the deficit over 10 years. But Democrats and Obama administration officials claimed the bill actually was deficit-neutral. They said they simply didn't have to count $245 billion of it -- the cost of adjusting Medicare reimbursement rates so physicians don't face big annual pay cuts.

Their reasoning was that they already had decided to exempt this \"doc fix\" from congressional rules that require new programs to be paid for. In other words, it doesn't have to be paid for because they decided it doesn't have to be paid for.

The administration also said that since Obama already had included the doctor payment in his 10-year budget proposal, it didn't have to be counted again.

That aside, the long-term prognosis for costs of the health care legislation has not been good.

CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf had this to say in July: \"We do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount.\"

OBAMA: \"Don't pay attention to those scary stories about how your benefits will be cut. ... That will never happen on my watch. I will protect Medicare.\"

THE FACTS: Obama and congressional Democrats want to pay for their health care plans in part by reducing Medicare payments to providers by more than $500 billion over 10 years. The cuts would largely hit hospitals and Medicare Advantage, the part of the Medicare program operated through private insurance companies.

Although wasteful spending in Medicare is widely acknowledged, many experts believe some seniors almost certainly would see reduced benefits from the cuts. That's particularly true for the 25 percent of Medicare users covered through Medicare Advantage.

Supporters contend that providers could absorb the cuts by improving how they operate and wouldn't have to reduce benefits or pass along costs. But there's certainly no guarantee they wouldn't.

woodchip wrote:Duper, be of good cheer. Not all cancer patients would be treated like that. I suspect those officials who make the decisions that keep people like Ms. Wagner from receiving expensive treatment, will themselves get all the expensive treatment they need if they were to get the same disease.

I know that this isn't the norm, but it does show that financial decisions are made in regards to people's health care. HMO do it all the time.
But to think that "Obama won't let this happen" is just ...silly. (I realize that was not an exact quote)

Spidey wrote:The president said I am irresponsible, and shirking my duties! Well, I hereby withdraw any support from this clown.

I have never been in an ER in my entire life! Before I found a doctor I used the Clinic a few times. I have never failed to pay a medical bill! What I can’t afford I do without, like my cataract operation!

Who the F do these people think use the ER anyway, I do believe it’s people with EMERGENCIES, and the ones who abuse it, are the ones that will receive free care after reform anyway. (his loyal constituents) So the taxpayer or the insured will continue to pay the cost!

Was bad enuf when Hilary said “If you can’t provide health insurance, you don’t deserve to be in business”.

Screw this clown, and its party!!! I am now officially Anti Obama.

Spidey, wonder of wonders, I agree with you 100 percent and am joining you! This mandate is just more theft of our money to line the pockets of the insurance industry. They can just go screw their mandate idea! It's not even getting to the bottom of the problem and worse, all it's doing is punishing uninsured poor people for using the emergency room because they didn't plan ahead with some unfortunate accident. Bullcrap! That's the most twisted logic I've ever heard, penalize the very people who can least afford it! Insurance isn't the solution, It's part of the problem!

After listening to Obama's speech, I don't think we're going to get ANY health care relief from this spineless President and his roll over butt-kissing party. If even half of this crap of a bill passes, we'll have an even worse mess. All his ideas are just bandaids to cover over a national artery wound. Everything he's come up with is catering to the big insurance and pharma companies or just hollow promises he can't possibly keep. Even some of the liberal radio talking heads are choking on it.

I'd have more respect if Obama would get some balls and stand up to big insurance and pharma, but all we're getting is more of the same insider Washington political crap! Republicans need to quit the petty lying and screaming and come up with constructive solutions. I heard some of their ideas during the Republican response. Those were all junk as well, especially the part about taking personal responsibilty in caring for ourselves to stay healthy. More bullcrap! Shame on that Senator! He's a doctor and should know better! If he was even remotely serious about that one, he would be advocating a ban on cigarettes, alcohol and fatty, sugary foods that are the biggest contributor to most Amercican's health problems. Oh, that's right, they're part of the bought-off Washington political machine too, so we're all screwed!

tunnelcat wrote:...Republicans need to quit the petty lying and screaming and come up with constructive solutions. I heard some of their ideas during the Republican response. Those were all junk as well, especially the part about taking personal responsibilty in caring for ourselves to stay healthy. More bullcrap! Shame on that Senator! He's a doctor and should know better! If he was even remotely serious about that one, he would be advocating a ban on cigarettes, alcohol and fatty, sugary foods that are the biggest contributor to most Amercican's health problems....

I just have to wonder at the logic behind this statement!?!?
Personal responsibility isn't demanding the government ban substances so people won't hurt themselves with them! Being personally responsible would be demanding people pay their own way if they choose to damage themselves by abusing substances.

Not that he offered much in the way of solutions but damn TC you scare me with your idea of what being personally responsible means.

I wonder how many people would shirk their responsibility to buy insurance, if their employer didn’t pay for some or all of it.

So with GovtCare, now if you even can't afford health care you still will have to pay 3800.00 or you will get a call from big brother. Where did the term \"Free health care\" ever get coined?

It was coined by people in a county that will remain unnamed, who pay out of their butts in taxes to get that “free health care”.

Look! I can't AFFORD insurance, and I can't PAY the fine, so SUE me!

I had to quit a job a number of years ago because half my wages were going to pay health insurance. I literally could not afford to work there. It was like I had gone out and bought a private plan. .. i would have spent something like 20 dollars more to do it.

Woody, I wondered the same thing when I tossed it out in a post a few posts back in this thread. I remember hearing during the campaign a lot. But originally, I'm willing to bet it cropped up in the 70's when Kennedy first tried to push the idea.

a couple of interesting posts over at Greg Mankiw's blog -

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/09/wheres-beef.html

At first, it sounds like the President is threatening to veto the bills being considered in Congress because, according to CBO, they will add significantly to deficits in the out years. If true, that would be a big story. But the provision he mentions in the next sentence seems to suggest he is just passing the buck.

Translation: "I promise to fix the problem. And if I do not fix the problem now, I will fix it later, or some future president will, after I am long gone. I promise he will. Absolutely, positively, I am committed to that future president fixing the problem. You can count on it. Would I lie to you?"

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/09/ ... eform.html

Jeffrey S. Flier wrote:....This employer-based system arose not by thoughtful design but as an unforeseen result of price controls during World War II and subsequent tax policy. How this developed and persisted despite its unfairness and maladaptive consequences is a powerful illustration of the law of unintended consequences and the fact that government can take six decades or more to fix its obvious mistakes....

...Now that a vote on health care reform will not occur until at least the fall, we should seize this opportunity by stepping back, making the right diagnosis, and then applying therapies that address the underlying disease. Here are a few ideas, ...

...First, make the tax shelter for health insurance, currently limited to employers, independent of employment. This single, and morally imperative, step would enable the uninsured to use tax-sheltered money to buy health insurance for themselves while permitting insured employees, who are currently limited to a few employer-selected health insurance choices, to become more central in decision making.

Second, identify and eliminate the many barriers to entry and innovation in the health care and insurance marketplace. Eliminating what are often hidden barriers to competition will encourage entrepreneurs to offer lower-cost ways of financing and delivering health care, approaches that will deliver greater health care value for the dollars spent.

Third, make a serious effort, despite the context of widespread political demagoguery, toward deeply reforming Medicare and Medicaid. As one of many possible examples, try giving some Medicare and Medicaid enrollees earned income credits so they can make cost-conscious decisions among competing health plans. The sicker and less affluent should receive larger transfers, so they can buy adequate coverage. Among other benefits, such an experiment could break the logjam in payment reform and reliance on fee for service and centralized price controls.

Reducing rather than increasing the role of politics in health care decisions, while providing assistance for those in need, these pilot therapies would have the salutary effect of placing patients and innovators in a more central role as we determine the future of health care in America. And we would then, at last, be able to align the treatment with the disease, a fundamental principle of responsible medicine.

One problem is that this bill will but a good many small businesses out of business. They won't be able to afford health insurance,(or their employees) and they won't be able to pay continuous fines by the Feds at the tune of some $3K per person per whatever time period they slap on there. We tried this here in Oregon a few years back and it was a really bad idea.

Jobs are highly overrated.

As is life...

Will Robinson wrote:I just have to wonder at the logic behind this statement!?!?
Personal responsibility isn't demanding the government ban substances so people won't hurt themselves with them! Being personally responsible would be demanding people pay their own way if they choose to damage themselves by abusing substances.

Not that he offered much in the way of solutions but damn TC you scare me with your idea of what being personally responsible means.

OK Will, how would you get people to be personally responsible for their health so that others don't have to pay for it? You know how people are at controlling their impulses, so how do you curb obesity, smoking and excessive drinking? Those habits cost ALL of society with very expensive health problems and I don't see people stopping their bad habits to bring down the costs of health care for everyone.

Also, what about sports injuries? A lot of young males fall into the category of not having health insurance and sometimes they end up in emergency rooms without any way to pay for the care. Do we tell them to be 'more careful' in the future or maybe 'charge a premium' for special sports activity insurance or even ban sports altogether? I could just say "I'm tired of paying for guys that go out and hurt themselves rough housing around just having fun, invariably getting injured and then going to the emergency room on my dime, so they can just stuff it."

You suggested that \"a ban on cigarettes, alcohol and fatty, sugary foods that are the biggest contributor to most Amercican's health problems\" would be advocating personal responsibility. I think that relieves people of even the choice to be responsible for their health. You want strict government control of our diet and social activity to limit the cost we as a society bear. We tried banning alcohol before...how did that work out? How much did the 'War on Booze' cost us?

Since the majority of the costs we incur is actually for medicines and the many treatments required for elderly people I think it is silly to use the sugar and beer and high school football as the scapegoat so you can empower the government to do what?!? Ban basic foods, football and sugars? AND then also have the government run health care?!? How much do you think all that will cost us?

You aren't making sense! You identify the problem all right and then run on emotion blindly face first into a wall instead of realizing we all are going to pay for it one way or the other!
Why in the world would you want to change the system to include the worlds worst business manager as the new administrator of the system?!?

I said it before, here it goes again: If it is cost you want the government to reduce they can do that with a combination of regulations and subsidies. It would cost less than the plans congress has offered and less than the mythical, ever changing, plan Obama tells us he has.

It's way past time to recognize what they are really selling you.

First of all, I agree that 'banning' things would not work, as the past has shown us. But a doctor knows that most people have no impulse control, so if he had a 'conscience' and even a modicum of ethics, he would be at least 'advocating' for 'banning bad things' to further the betterment of society, whether unattainable or not, just out of principle. Ohhhhh right, if society stopped bad habits, doctors might lose some business.

By the way, MOST of the diseases and disorders IN elderly people are a DIRECT result of the bad habits they did in when they were younger, namely smoking, obesity, drinking AND yes, sports injuries. Smoking causes most the deadly cancer in elderly people. A lot of breast cancer, it turns out, was iatrogenically caused by doctors when they prescribed equine-based hormones for menopausal women throughout the late 1970's on up to the 2000's. Who pays for that one?

You didn't answer my question. You just blamed most of it on the elderly and expensive medicines. How do you get people to take personal responsibility for their health if we are to have any hope of solving the health care cost problem? Fining and taxation don't work either.

TC, I never said we could or should make people take personal responsibility for their health! I was just pointing out that your idea of \"personal responsibility\" is almost completely opposite of the definition of the phrase. I also pointed out that \"we\" will pay for it one way or the other why take on the government as an extra middleman? You need a pimp?

See…there’s one of your basic problems with socialism…all this “sharing the risk” ends up sharing everyone’s bad behaviors as well. Then the solution becomes controlling everyone’s behavior for the good of others…(I know how that sounds, we aren’t talking about murder here)

Sorry…not buying it.

I'm not disagreeing with your opinions concerning people taking personal responsibility. But that little important element IS at the core of our health care debate (ie., screaming at town halls) because people in this country don't want to pay for the extravagance of others when it causes expensive illness. All I'm asking is HOW do we get people to take personal responsibility for their actions in the first place? No ideas? Health insurance, the usual free-market risk spreading method sure isn't working out now, because it's bankrupting too many people.

Will, the big Health Insurance company CEO's ARE essentially 'pimps' (I like your analogy, it fits here too) for their policy holders right now. They're skimming 30% off the top of our health care dollar that's NOT going to actual health care! I'd rather my money went to my actual health care, not some fat CEO pimp!

NOTICE TO MR. BAUCUS, WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM! Mandating that people have to PAY these pimps for their overpriced insurance or else you get fined and/or put in jail, isn't going make people suddenly take, EEEEEEEK, personal responsibility for their health care.

tunnelcat wrote:Health insurance, the usual free-market risk spreading method

... isn't operating under anything remotely resembling "free market" principles. Nor is it generally operating as "insurance" to handle "risk"; the majority of payments are for primary, predictable care.

There are all sorts of mandates and regulations and tax incentives that combine to turn health insurance (and medicare/medicaid) into an ugly mess. Insurers can't offer good, low-cost, risk-spreading catastrophic insurance because they're required BY LAW to cover certain things in certain ways.

Insurance company CEOs aren't skimming 30% off the top. Just as an example, Aetna's CEO raked in $19 million last year on revenues of $31 billion -- that puts him at about 0.07%. 40 cents of every dollar spent on primary care get eaten up by administrative costs, not because the CEOs are greedy bastards, but simply because there's so damn much paperwork involved -- and all to "insure" something that shouldn't require "insurance" in the first place.

My wife and I have "top of the line" medical insurance from Aetna via Boeing -- I think the company spends $14,000 per year on it. Yet we have just recently opted to spend our own money to get primary care through Qliance -- $54/month for one person to get unlimited, same-or-next-day access to a physician, because we've found that our insurance-provided physicians are rushed and buried in paperwork and simply can't take the time to give us good care. Qliance is a wonderful economic model for primary care (the doctors have every incentive to make sure we're healthy, so we don't have to keep coming in.) Why can't everyone get that sort of care? Because in other states, Qliance would fall under the legal category of "insurance" and would therefore fall under the bad regulations I've been talking about here for the last month or so -- regulations that drive up costs and add nothing of value.

Tunnelcat, I totally agree with you when you say you want affordable health care and you don't want huge amounts of health care money to go to not-health-care. The major difference between us is that I recognize that a lot of the waste in the system comes from the bad regulations that made "health insurance" into what it is today, while you keep blaming it on a "free market" that isn't remotely free.

Tunnelcat wrote: All I'm asking is HOW do we get people to take personal responsibility for their actions in the first place? No ideas? Health insurance, the usual free-market risk spreading method sure isn't working out now, because it's bankrupting too many people.

Insurance works to manage risk. The health insurance system we have now just doesn't do it.

When I went to buy a car, I talked to my auto insurer about it. She offered us a discount on car insurance -- about $10 a month, if I remember correctly -- if we bought a car with antilock brakes. I hadn't been going to, but that changed my mind. In general, the cost of auto insurance goes up and down based on your behavior and demographic, and we're all entirely used to this and it greatly affects our behavior. A habit of bad driving counts against you, and it should. Even being from a high-risk demographic, while not specifically your fault, counts against you. And it should.

Health insurance should work the same way. If I get a car insurance discount for buying anti-lock brakes, I should get a health insurance discount for maintaining an ideal weight. Except that the incentive would be useless, since I don't buy my own insurance . . . but that's a different problem.

But to answer the question fully, nobody should be responsible for risks incurred by anyone else's irresponsible behavior, and in a properly written and managed insurance policy, nobody would be. Folks should be able to live their lives however they want, and should incur all the costs of their own decisions via whatever risk management vehicle is appropriate.

Nor do I think pre-existing conditions are an insoluble problem for a free market in insurance. We have now insurance contracts that pay service by service, so if one develops a chronic condition, the insurance company has every incentive to try to get rid of you and no other company wants to take you. But I think the correct way to write the contract would be to do so while you're young and healthy, and for it to say, "If you develop this condition, we are on the hook to provide you payment vouchers high enough to cover this level of care in perpetuity." Then the company thereafter has no incentive to get rid of you, nor does any other company have an incentive to avoid you. As soon as the condition is discovered, the entity that has to pay for it is decided forever.

Moreover, if you're uninsured and develop a chronic condition and go looking for insurance then, there's no reason the prices can't reflect that. They'll be a lot higher than the other premiums, since the risk we're managing is not "Will I get diabetes?" but "How bad is mine going to be?" and maybe "How well are we going to treat it?" But beyond that, you're no worse a risk than anyone else. In effect, you've chosen to self-insure against that condition, and if you develop it, can only pool risks with others who also have it.

If you develop a terrible condition and you're uninsured, and you can't afford the average cost of treatment via insurance, including via taking out loans on the proposition you survive . . . well, I'd consider you to have made a fatal mistake. The options at that point are several flavors of charity (friends and family, public clinics, charity foundations, benevolent hospitals). Depending on the muscularity of the charities and the difficulty of the condition, you may just be SOL. Some folks would advocate a government solution there, but I don't think I would. I guess I wouldn't mind a cheap and universal insurance against the extremely catastrophic and rare, available below a certain income. But beyond that, my instincts say SOL is right answer. I'd expect that to be a pretty rare occurance, though, and I'd expect one sort of charity or another would generally come through for you.

Drakona wrote:.... But I think the correct way to write the contract would be to do so while you're young and healthy, and for it to say, "If you develop this condition, we are on the hook to provide you payment vouchers high enough to cover this level of care in perpetuity." Then the company thereafter has no incentive to get rid of you, nor does any other company have an incentive to avoid you. As soon as the condition is discovered, the entity that has to pay for it is decided forever....

I think if that was the way it was then "we" would still end up paying for it because the company would have to factor in for a certain percentage of it's customers becoming an extra burden and it would be included in the cost of their product.
But that is OK with me.

In fact, maybe we should consider letting the companies alone, get rid of silly mandates etc. but simply mandate they offer to sell coverage everyone for catastrophic care regardless of pre-condition, mandate portability and cover people under a certain level of income at no charge as a condition of their license agreement to operate within a State's borders.

Will Robinson wrote:I think if that was the way it was then "we" would still end up paying for it because the company would have to factor in for a certain percentage of it's customers becoming an extra burden and it would be included in the cost of their product

Exactly. That's the point of risk aggregation!

The company factors in a certain percentage of customers within a certain risk category to develop expensive conditions. They charge people within that risk category an appropriately-calculated premium.

At least, that's how it would be if "insurers" could actually write INSURANCE contracts, with appropriate risk management, instead of the "health care coverage" they currently provide with all its bad regulation that leads to low-risk people subsidizing those at higher risk.

Right-wing healthcare rallies spoofed! Billionaires for Wealthcare.

Class warfare at it’s best…errrr worst.

Making fun of people…now that’s high class!

Wow, they sorta got a few people to agree with them, the majority of people there, were looking at those people like they were nutz.

Say what you want…but the status quo is better than what the government has planned. That being a single payer system, after they destroy the current system, instead of fixing it.

Just wait and see the result of what they have planned, just wait and see what happens after they start taxing the insurance offered by employers, require that there be no selecting of people they insure, and remove the caps on lifetime costs. Just wait and see what happens when people who are going to be required to buy insurance out of pocket, when everyone else has it subsidized, realize what is going on. Just wait and see what happens after companies stop offering insurance “perks” because they can’t afford it anymore…and “everyone” has to buy it out of pocket. Wait till the rationing begins, because if they force me to buy insurance, I will sure as hell go to the more expensive medications, instead of the cheap crap I buy now, and I sure as hell will go in and get those CAT Scans my doctor prescribed, but I can’t afford, and I sure as hell will get a full blood workup twice a year, and sure as the wind blows, I will get that 10,000 dollar eye operation, and those orthotic inserts I should be using…Etc…Etc!

Here is an article from Chuck Colson
In brief, it talks about the commercials \"if you've taken such and such medication and had this or that happen because of it, call us\". While this is a Christian site, there isn't any religious content in the article. It's another shinning example of what happens when the supreme court gets rid of safe guards that were put in place by someone had some forethought of consequences otherwise.

Please take the time to read it. The article isn't that long. There is an audio clip if you rather that.

Tort reform may not be the holy grail of health care reform as people think. Remember, it's only about 2% chunk of our total health care costs, insurance premiums far exceed it at a whopping 30% of the total health care costs.

http://makethemaccountable.com/myth/Ris ... urance.htm

Several states, including Texas, have enacted tort reform, but there seem to be some mixed results....

http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/1412046.html

http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/so ... /85495.htm

More on tort reform.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/co ... 880703.htm

I just got sent this little bit of political agitprop from my insurance company. They had to spend money to send me a pointed letter in order to notify me about a 1% increase in my premiums that was the result of a recently passed Democratically sponsored health bill. Smells a little to me.

Don’t worry…if you like your current health insurance, you will be able to keep it.

Spidey wrote:Don’t worry…if you like your current health insurance, you will be able to keep it.

ROFLOL

You realize people that this little 1% tax demonstrates that we're going to get socialized medicine spoon fed to us by incrementalism. I mean, who's going to argue against children getting good health care, whether their parents can afford for it or not.

tunnelcat wrote: Will, the big Health Insurance company CEO's ARE essentially 'pimps' (I like your analogy, it fits here too) for their policy holders right now. They're skimming 30% off the top of our health care dollar that's NOT going to actual health care! I'd rather my money went to my actual health care, not some fat CEO pimp!

Sorry, just not buying it. This is the myth with all the CEO's-compared to the total earning's of the buisness, they make very, very little.

Share holders might be more accurate. At where I work, CEO's while they \"run\" the place, bow to the scwak of share holders.

TC, you should be happy as that 1% surcharge will also cover the illegal immigrant children. Oh and while we are at it I understand at least one version of Govtcare will allow illegals to buy into national health care. Someone care to explain to me that once the illegal signs up there will not be a ICE agent knocking on his door?
Better yet, if a illegal gets hired by a company, doesn't the employer get into trouble? If so why would not a health provider get into trouble for issuing a policy to said illegal?