asking Al Gore to run in 2008!
The Health Care Thread: Why is Medical Care so Expensive?
Posted July 17th, 2009 by BLACK CELL
Mises Daily by Hans F. Sennholz | Posted on 8/22/2006 12:00:00 AM
Medical expenses are rising faster than the costs of any other service. They are climbing at rates that exceed not only those of inflation and dollar depreciation but even the Federal government itself. In fact, they are consuming an ever larger share of personal and national incomes.
Some 40 years ago American medical spending was estimated at 5 percent of national income; today it is calculated at some 16.5 percent and rising continually. Several reform proposals in Congress would boost the share ever higher.
Many observers offer lucid explanations of the medical-spending explosion. Some are convinced that the present generation of Americans, which enjoys a level of income and living standard higher than that of its forebears, is more mindful of health and wholesome living and, therefore, is spending a larger share of income on health care.
But critics prefer to point to the ever growing number of Americans who are overweight or even obese, which may breed physical disorders and afflictions and finally acquire medical attention. Other observers hold the endless stream of medical innovations responsible for rapidly rising health-care costs, such as new drugs and delicate tools for microsurgery. They lay most of the expense explosion at the feet of technology. But these writers never explain why new drugs and new tools should raise medical costs threefold and consume an ever larger share of national income. Technical innovations usually lower the costs of production.
A few writers believe that the primary reason for rapidly rising costs of health care is a massive expansion of medical insurance which foots doctors and hospital bills. They like to use an inordinate terminology that diverts the reader from the actual causes. They broaden the concept of insurance to encompass Medicare and Medicaid, which are government programs providing medical care for the aged and needy, and then hint at insurance as the driving cost factor.
In reality, the number of Americans with health insurance actually is declining; rising health-care costs and a declining number of employer-sponsored benefits are steadily reducing the number of insured Americans. At the present, some 47 million Americans are bereft of any coverage.
Few observers dare to state that spiraling health-care costs are the inevitable consequence of a 1965 Social Security amendment molding Medicare and Medicaid. It provided a basic welfare program that covers most persons aged 65 and older as well as all needy individuals. Soon after its passage some four million patients rushed to seek treatment and some 18 million Americans registered to have 80 percent of doctor and surgeon bills paid by the new system.
By now, in 2006, Medicare provides health benefits for 41 million elderly and disabled persons, and Medicaid, a joint federal-state program, serves some 50 million poor beneficiaries. It is the fastest-growing item in most state budgets and accounts for some 20 percent of total state spending.
The program undoubtedly has saved lives as it has enabled elderly and poor people to receive medical treatment they were not able to afford on their own. It has raised the quality of living for many. But its sponsors completely ignore some undesirable consequences such as the soaring costs and the rising number of people who therefore choose to forego any health insurance coverage.
Surely, it has saved some lives but also may have cost some. It has doubled, tripled, and quadrupled many phases of the health-care industry but also kept other service industries smaller than they would have been in a free service economy. It has helped administrators of hospitals and extended-care facilities to embark upon substantial expansion and has stimulated development of many home-care services. But there cannot be any doubt that the massive injection of political funds and the growing role of legislators and regulators have radically changed the very nature and structure of the health-care industry.
Medicare and Medicaid are political handiwork forged by legislators and regulators, fashioned by politicians who recast it in every national election. It is a very popular political issue passed and argued about without ever being settled. Politicians representing the beneficiaries are demanding ever more outlays, others speaking and acting for the people who are forced to cover the deficits are opposing the charges. Facing ever rising costs, some want to reduce the cost-of living increases in benefits, others plan to increase the wage subject to payroll taxation. In 2005 the benefit-politicians raised the maximum earnings subject to Social Security tax exactions to $90,000 with the tax rate at 12.4 percent, borne equally by employer and employee. In 2006 they raised the maximum to $94,200; in coming years they will boost it to $100,000 and more.
Medicare and Medicaid stand in the center of attention in every national election as both parties may seek to outbid each other in promising more benefits. In 2003 Congress was persuaded to add prescription drug coverage to Medicare, starting in 2006. Most of its costs, estimated at some $700 billion over the next 10 years, are to be paid by taxpayers. But soaring costs are the least portentous consequences of the transformation of the health-care industry.
Why people can't get work: $22
This academic observer is dismayed and disheartened by the role played by politics in such an important industry. In a free and unhampered economy businessmen always seek to adjust their production to anticipated consumer demand; the wishes and choices of consumers are paramount. When government takes special interest in an industry, political judgments and motives take preference to the people's choices.
When government on all its levels enters health care, the industry has to adjust to every dollar spent and every order given. Surely, there are pains of readjustment but no particular economic crises. People readily accommodate. While they are not free to choose in the market place, they may plead and supplicate in the halls of politics.
Some courageous observers may even point to needless expenditures and waste as every health-care administrator may want to expand and improve his facilities. After all, they no longer are limited by market orders but only by political considerations and favors.
Politics is likely to shape the future of medical care as far as the eye can see. It builds upon popular political ideas, on old habits and predispositions, even resentment and envy. It inflicts pain without end.
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Be part of the Draft Gore '08 campaign!
Frank Luntz: Americans Are "Mad As Hell" (VIDEO)
According to those on the Right, the American people want us to do more to get our country out of Bu$h's / our financial crisis & not spend any money doing it.
Lets not forget that most of, if not all, of the conservatives marketed & promoted many of the reasons why we are in an economic mess.
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=9027682
Here's one: By marmalade
How do you pull down a democratic state like the U.S. that is too big, with too much power to overthrow.
1. Make ideas of freedom, authoritarian, and authoritarianism into freedom: Done by neocons and wingslingers and Rushpublicans.
2. Demonize your opponent as all the evil rolled into one: Done
3. Disrupt the democratic process so as to make citizens irritated that nothing gets done: Done
4. Have manipulable nothings running for office, like Palin and Huckabee. Giving power to neocons
5. Delegitimize the President and others of the opposite party: Doing
6. Argue that only the national security state run by torturers and war criminals can save us: done
7. Mix and brew the contemptuous stew and fact free world, never use facts as they are refutable and run that on Pox News. Done
8. Elect the intellectually infantile and let them carry on in childish way, for if this is democracy who would want it: Done, (see Republican Party last night in Congress).
At some point, the Republican Party coup attempt will become blatant if they succeed with their mendacity.
_____________________________
Black Cell:The Repugs will always use some form of mythical patriotism to masquerade their blatancy until we take those tools away from them.
This is my favorite
Tea Party Spin Reflects Fractures Within Republican Party
Tea Party Conservatives Looking for Lockstep, Not Compromise -- How American is That?
By saul relative
In the ridiculousness that has become the post 2008 national election morass within the Republican Party, the extremists (read: Tea Party neoconservatives) are entrenched (they're always entrenched). They're serious (they're always serious). They're angry (they're always angry). And they're claiming victory (they're always claiming victory in their little spin-world) in the only major election on November 3, New York's 23rd Congressional District, that they lost. Why? Because it was the only one that actually counts when talking about a "mandate" that shows disapproval of the 10-month-old presidency of Barack Obama, that mandate that people like Bill Kristol, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and other mouthpieces of the neoconservative contingent of the GOP assured America was going to happen. And it is the only election that matters when dealing with President Obama because the seat directly effects legislation. And their candidate, Doug Hoffman, lost. So how have they managed to find victory in defeat?
Spin, spin, spin...
Extremists like Michelle Malkin are saying that getting Republican Dede Scozzafava to withdraw from the race so that a "real" conservative (read: Republican) like Hoffman could run was the victory. Getting a "real" conservative like Hoffman, who may be the most platitude-espousing automaton to present themselves to the public since Sarah Palin, to run in Scozzafava's place constitutes a "victory" for the Tea Partiers and their "my way or the highway" ideology. They are hellbent on fracturing the Republican Party and making it so ideologically based that they are leaving no room for moderates. It is a "join us or leave" ideology that brooks no compromise, takes no prisoners, and suggests that anything slightly left of their predominantly unyielding positions are unpatriotic, detrimental to America's future, and fundamentally immoral. This includes members of their own party, those they call fake, faux, or phony Republicans. Like Dede Scozzafava.
Dede Scozzafava has become one of the first casualties of the extreme right's move to take over the GOP, even to wrest the Party from its established Beltway hierarchy. Somewhat populist, the movement is calling for a resurrecting of core Republican values which are seen as conservative. The idea is to provide a united front against anything that they deem in opposition to their principles.
The problem is that in doing so, they lose the more independent, less ideologically steadfast members of their party. Unwilling to compromise, they present a voting block (something that the Republicans in Congress are already presenting to anything presented by the administration of President Barack Obama). Sadly, in politics, where give-and-take, wheeling-and-dealing, and compromise are how things get done, the regimented lockstep of a constantly oppositional grouping does not work very well unless it is the dominant party. Of course, that is the ultimate goal of a party, to gain control, but the extreme sect, the Tea Party faction, of the GOP are perfectly willing to fracture their party, producing a party within a party to achieve their ultimate goals.
And it is that lockstep value that they do not quite understand relegates their way of doing things as authoritarian, undemocratic, and "un-American" (to use their own oft-used phrase). Why not offer Doug Hoffman in addition to Dede Scozzafava in the election? If what they were truly attempting to do was to show that they were breaking with the Beltway Republicans, then they could have done so by offering Doug Hoffman as an alternative Republican candidate and allowing the people of New York's 23rd District to vote for or against the three candidates? Forcing Dede Hoffman to withdraw only made the Tea Party contingent look like a bunch of strong-arm goons pressuring to get what they want and, instead of offering a true alternative, simply offered a replacement for the GOP's candidate, just one more in concert (read: lockstep) with their way of thinking.
But, in the end, Doug Hoffman's defeat was a defeat. There is no victory in losing. The spin doctors are crowing that it was an ideological victory, a victory for the Tea Partiers, a blow against the fake Republican establishment that wants to make political deals with the Democratic Party (and, to some, no different than the Democrats). Some even point to the fact that if Dede Scozzafava's votes (she received over 7,000) were added to Doug Hoffman's, he would have won. But would he have? Those people voted for Dede Scozzafava when given the choice between two running candidates and one that had withdrawn.
One of those compromisers that seem to annoy the Tea Party conservatives immensely, a man attempting to make the GOP a little more inclusive (as opposed to exclusive), Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, said during a press conference, "I don't see a victory in losing seats. I'm in the business of multiplication and addition. I want more Republicans. I don't buy that we somehow find victory in defeat."
Steele also said that it was a mistake to think a smaller, more ideologically correct group was victorious simply due to the fact that they were successful in fielding their candidate.
And he is correct. Already a shrinking entity, the GOP has attempted to broaden its base beyond its stereotypical aging white blue-collar center in the past couple years, but the Tea Party movement has provided pushback, demanding that Republicans return to their core values and stop compromising.
But compromise is how things get done, like it or not, not just on Capitol Hill but in everyday life. And unwillingness to compromise, that others must do that which is dictated by the group, is anathema to the independent American values to which the Tea Party members pay lip service. But there is no room for compromise in the world of political and moral absolutists. Enter the Tea Party conservatives.
What the Tea Party contingent and the neoconservatives achieved was tantamount to a verbal coup via the ministrations of the likes of people like Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin. Three days before the election, Dede Scozzafava withdrew from the race. The next day, Scozzafava endorsed Bill Owens, the Democratic candidate, fiving the conservatives more ammunition but telling her supporters to vote for the candidate they felt best qualified.
Not being conservative enough, it seems, has become detrimental to one's political health within the more extreme ranks of the GOP. It is also where a defeat becomes a victory. Bill Owens is the first Democratic candidate to win the 23rd District since 1872. He defeated Doug Hoffman by nearly 4% of the vote. Sarah Palin wrote in Facebook of the loss, "The race for New York's 23rd District is not over, just postponed until 2010."
As is the usual concerning Sarah Palin, she is incorrect. The race is over. The conservative candidate lost. And even though the New York 23rd Congressional District's election was a "special election" (to replace Republican John M. McHugh, who became U. S. Secretary to the Army in September), Bill Owens is the new member elected to the House of Representatives. That is not postponed.
That Bill Owens might be replaced by a member of the GOP in 2010 remains to be seen. It also remains to be seen how much the more flexible and progressive-thinking Republicans are going to allow a small extreme contingent within their party to dictate the direction of their party. It cost them a Congressional seat for a year.
Somehow, that does not seem to equate to either a victory (of any sort) or a public mandate against the 10-month governance of President Barack Obama, no matter how hard the spin. Neither does the wins in Republican dominant Virginia and the poorly run state of New Jersey (a clear mandate that the Democratic dominant state was tired of incumbent John Corzine).
A clear mandate against President Obama will come if he loses the national election in 2012 -- which would be, in Sarah Palin's benighted reality, a "postponed" Republican presidency.
Sometime during the interim between now and upcoming elections, the Tea Party conservatives would do well to make at least one compromise -- with the truth.
******
GOP Comeback: Not So Fast
By Bob Benenson, Senior Elections Analyst, CQ Staff
Republicans have been working overtime for days now trying to come up with newer and bolder ways of describing the 2009 election as an unmitigated triumph — and a crystal clear sign their party will score a historic comeback in next year’s congressional races.
Not satisfied to simply proclaim the dawn of a GOP “renaissance” one day after the voting, party chairman Michael Steele the following day warned House and Senate candidates not to put themselves “in a position where you’re crossing that line on conservative principles, fiscal principles, because we’ll come after you.”
Beyond that, GOP officials from Steele to the most local grass-roots activists say the returns foretell a widespread spurning of the economic and social policies of President Obama and congressional Democratic leaders — and toward the small-government, socially conservative views at the current core of modern Republicanism.
But there’s a significant amount of countervailing evidence, not only in the relative handful of election returns from last week but also in the current polling about the national political environment and in the race-by-race assessments of the midterm campaigns for Congress, which by history’s guide will inevitably turn on voter views of the first two years of this presidency.
Although polls show widespread voter anxiety, especially about the economy, Obama is holding on to a base of support roughly equivalent to his 53 percent share of the popular vote a year ago. The Republican Party “brand,” badly damaged during George W. Bush ’s tumultuous second term, looks about as weak as it did then. And the GOP’s ability to seize the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey was mostly about the strong GOP candidates and flawed Democratic candidates in both places.
Beyond that, the predictive power of off-year elections is shaky at best. Although GOP wins in 1993 and Democratic gains in 2005 accurately presaged big gains for those parties a year later, the most recent odd-year contests, in 2007, were a partisan wash that didn’t hint at all of the historic 2008 triumphs in store for Democrats.
Moreover, it was in the 2001 election that the Democrats took both the New Jersey and Virginia governorships, and did so despite Bush’s astronomical post-Sept. 11 poll numbers. Those wins were followed a year later by losses for the party on both sides of the Capitol.
“These tea leaves can’t bear that much weight,” said John J. Pitney Jr., a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College, about the GOP’s analysis. “It’s way too early to talk about rubble-bouncing Republican gains.”
Paul S. Herrnson, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for American Politics and Citizenship, said simply: “I don’t think the election is a sign that the national tide is shifting in favor of the Republicans.”
Fight to Keep, Not Just Gain, Seats
It’s also the case that the Nov. 3 results were decidedly mixed. After the gubernatorial contests, the most closely watched race was for a far-upstate New York House seat that had been an unbreachable Republican stronghold for more than a century. And, in the outcome with the most direct bearing on federal policy making, the Democrat won. Capitalizing on an intense GOP ideological feud, attorney Bill Owens prevailed by 4 percentage points — suggesting that Obama’s carrying the district a year ago, by 5 points, may not have been a fluke.
Picking up that seat, and holding a solidly Democratic California district in last week’s other special election, put the number of Democrats in the House at 258 — fully 40 more than the minimum needed to claim the majority. Only once in the past 43 years has the minority picked up that many House seats: the 1994 Republican landslide, when a 52-seat gain gave the GOP a majority.
There is time, with a full year before the next Election Day, for the Republicans to build momentum toward another such surge. But as of now, they have a very long way to go. A Republican is now the favorite in only one district currently held by a Democrat, while nine more of the party’s take-away campaigns are tossups, and in another 19 districts the defending Democrats appear to be only tenuously ahead. But even a GOP sweep of all those races would leave the party short of its ultimate congressional goal of reclaiming the Speaker’s gavel.
And that’s if the Republicans can pull off the rare feat of keeping all the seats they now hold. At the moment, that seems unlikely: Democrats have become favorites in three districts the GOP now holds, the Republicans are defending one tossup, and they’re only slightly ahead in 10 more such contests.
But a GOP House takeover appears comparatively plausible compared with the outlook in the Senate, where the party holds just 40 seats. Although Republicans are staging competitive bids for seven Democratic seats, the Democrats are staging competitive bids of their own for six Republican seats.
Poll Positions
It is undeniable that Republicans decisively won governorships in two states that went for Obama a year ago, with former state Attorney General Bob McDonnell trouncing state Sen. Creigh Deeds in Virginia and former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie denying incumbent Jon Corzine a second term in New Jersey.
But both GOP winners ran campaigns that emphasized kitchen-table economic issues during a deep recession and played down their own conservative views on social issues. And so the usefulness of their victories in gauging the mood on national issues is limited — an assessment reflected by the voters themselves.
Exit polls found that about three in five people said their gubernatorial decisions had nothing to do with their views of the president. Only one in four voters in Virginia, and one in five in New Jersey, characterized their ballot choices as driven by antipathy toward Obama.
The exit pollsters also found support has stabilized for the president in both states — even as his party’s top candidates were being rebuffed. While Obama’s job approval of 48 percent in Virginia was a palpable, if hardly irredeemable, 5-point slip from his share of the vote there a year ago, his 57 percent approval in New Jersey precisely matched his 2008 showing.
And that echoes several national polls that show Obama’s support base having returned this fall to about the percentage of the popular vote he got on the day he won the White House: 54 percent in a CNN/Opinion Research survey the weekend before the election, 51 percent in an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, 57 percent in an ABC News-Washington Post survey a week before that and 56 percent in a CBS News poll in the first week of last month.
These same polls suggest the GOP’s potential for growth in 2010 may also be held back by the fact that its image hasn’t recovered from the end of the Bush years.
Fully 46 percent of respondents to the NBC-Journal poll said they had a negative view of the Republican Party and just 25 percent professed a positive view — down 7 points from a poll taken two weeks before the 2008 election. The Democrats’ October 2009 numbers — 42 percent positive, 36 percent negative and 20 percent neutral — don’t exactly rock the house, but they are considerably better than the Republicans’ statistics.
Democrats Not Shoo-Ins Next Year
All is far from rosy for the Democrats, and public concerns about the president’s handling of specific issues could give the GOP material to work with. That NBC-Journal poll found a virtual tie in the public’s view of Obama’s economic stewardship and showed that respondents disapproved of his handling of health care, 48 percent to 43 percent.
With the jobless rate surpassing 10 percent, the Virginia and New Jersey exit polls showed a high degree of concern over the economy.
“Economic anger and anxiety drove most of the election results,” asserted Darrell M. West, vice president and director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. “Republicans are correct in pointing out that people are worried, but they are wrong to assume that their candidates won because voters agree with them on all the issues. ... There was no ideological mandate that came out of these campaigns.”
The GOP is taking a big gamble, too, with its confrontational approach to every marquee item on Obama’s domestic agenda. If the economy is seen as being in recovery by next November — and especially if there is evidence of job growth — Democrats will have a strong case to make that deriding the stimulus package proved to be a mistake.
While Republican leaders are fond of telling Democrats they now own all the big issues and can no longer blame Bush for all national ills, it would require a horrendous political collapse by Obama to make that anything but wishful thinking. Democrats for 40 years made political hay by invoking the name of Herbert Hoover, the GOP president when the Great Depression hit, and more than a few Republicans resort to dropping the name Jimmy Carter when they’ve run out of other arguments against the Democrats.
“Right now things aren’t looking as bad as they could be for Democrats,” said Bruce Larson, an associate professor of political science at Gettysburg College. n
Something
Hello Black Cell
Congratulations to the US House of Representatives for passing the most importance health care reform in our lifetimes.
More than something
It took lots of hard work & shows that both political parties are filled with far too many politicians who are bought & paid for by some sort of entity that has more power over them than the majority of the voters who really elected them into office; I guess it is easier to communicate with a few money people & spin masters (Consultants) than thousands of voters.
The intersection of ignorance and indifference
By Jaime O'Neill
Posted: 10/24/2009 01:37:42 AM PDT
There's been so much misinformation floating around about health care reform that the nation has gone a little nuts on the subject.
The health insurance companies have been spending billions to make sure the gravy train keeps offloading big bundles of cash at their doorsteps. The misinformation specialists at Fox News and on talk radio have been pumping fog 24/7, working as paid servants of private greed over public good, cynical and corrupt men, like Beck and Limbaugh, who work ceaselessly on the principle of "I've got mine; screw you."
Guys like them will spread any lie in service to their corporate masters, and they don't have much conscience about supporting a system that kicks sick people out even after they've paid premiums for years, and that bankrupts thousands of hard working Americans each month. Rush and Glenn don't care about people who can't afford health insurance, don't care about children whose health gets stunted from infancy because their parents can't afford preventive health care, don't care about the thousands who die each year because they are denied lifesaving procedures by insurance companies.
And people like the entire Republican contingent in the House and the Senate don't care about insurance company gouging that makes the U.S. less and less competitive with the rest of the world.
Rush and Beck don't care that the will of the people is being subverted by lobbyists and lies precisely because the insurance industry accounts for more
than a third of what we spend on health care in this country, and the cash flowing into those coffers is so abundant that even after the CEOs have gorged themselves with billions in bonuses, there's still billions left to buy politicians, like the Blue Dog Democrats who have shown themselves to be operatives of the corporate criminals who have put American health care far below the standards of countries like Costa Rica and Morocco. We rank 37th in the quality of the care we receive, but we remain number 1 in what we pay for it.
But, so long as the propagandists at Fox can scare people with words like "socialism" and "fascism," far too many Americans are willing to support the status quo because their media masters have convinced them that early death and lots of uncertainty sure beats "socialism," however they might define it.
These people meet for their little ginned up protests, replete with moronic speakers, insurance company shills, and illiterate hand lettered signs that express bewilderment about where Barack Obama was born, They meet at the intersection of Ignorance St. and Indifference Blvd.
If they've got Medicare, however, they don't want younger fellow citizens to share the benefits they get. They are indifferent to the anxieties and the pain borne by all those people working two and sometimes three jobs, none of which provide medical benefits.
Here's an example of callousness from Indifference Blvd., the words of a preacher out in Biggs, a guy named Tony Albiston, who recently told the Chico Enterprise-Record: "We have Medicare and I purchase a supplement. My wife has retirement heath insurance from the state of Nevada. We like it I had back surgery a few years ago and Medicare paid most of and the supplement paid the balance. Don't change anything."
It's hard to find much Christian spirit in that pastor's comments. So long as he's ok, he doesn't want anything to change. I guess he assumes that the 45 million uninsured Americans can just count on church charity to meet their health care needs, though he's not counting on those tender mercies for himself.
Albiston and people like him represent indifference, but those morally indifferent people are joined by people on Ignorance St., like the woman who called herself a "stay-at-home mom" in that same E-R opinion sampling. Here's what she had to say on the subject: "I have health insurance, but I'm not happy with it. It sucks. The insurance company indicated that speech therapy for my son was ok, and he started treatment. The insurance company kept giving us the run-around. They said it was just a coding problem. So we kept taking him. Then six months later, the company decided it was not a necessity and refused to pay.
The insurance paperwork even said speech therapy was necessary. We're paying off $4,000 and have stopped treatments. But I'm not for nationwide coverage where we pay for it. How much worse could it get? They don't even pay now."
This woman really seems confused about who is paying, and who is not. She seems murky on the difference between private and public entities, rather like those people who spoke out on Wally Herger's recent telephone town halls, men and women who were utterly clueless about the difference between state and federal governments, and had no idea where ol' Wally works.
But they knew they were against Obamacare, and they sure as hell were against socialized medicine, and they weren't too keen on the government killing their grandmothers, though some of them did find the old lady to be getting pretty irritating in her old age. Still, so long as someone was willing to pay to keep her on life support, it was a matter of fierce determination that Obama not be allowed to carry out his nefarious plan to expunge her from the planet.
And incidentally, if you want to put a number on the amount of ignorance that's out there, a recent survey showed that 39 percent of Americans think the government should "stay out of Medicare." That's as dumb as you can get since Medicare has been, since its inception, a government program, and a pretty good one, at that.
These people live at the intersection of Ignorance and Indifference, and the desperately needed reform of our health care system may be getting run over at those cross streets.
House Republicans on Democratic Leadership Health Care Bill
Thursday
House Republicans and others voiced opposition to health care legislation set to hit the House floor this weekend. The measure, crafted by the House Democratic leadership, is expected to get a vote before the Congress adjourns next week.
Washington, DC : 1 hr. 46 min.
http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2009/11/05/HP/A/25536/House+Republican...
ObamaCare: Losing everyone
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Last Updated: 8:59 AM, September 21, 2009
Posted: 2:05 AM, September 21, 2009
THE elderly were the first group to turn against President Obama's health-care pro posals, alienated by the plans to cut $500 billion cut from Medicare. The young and the uninsured may be the next to jump ship -- out of worry over about the huge premiums they'd have to pay.
Requiring everyone to buy insurance will impose a massive tax on all who now are uninsured. The Congressional Budget Office projects that it would force the middle-income uninsured to pay on average more than 15 percent of their income.
The poor will still have Medicaid. But for those earning more, the required premiums will be worse than any tax increase. For example, CBO estimates that when the program is fully implemented -- by 2016 -- an individual earning $32,400 a year would have to pay $4,100 in premiums before getting any subsidy. With deductibles and co-payments, he'd have to shell out $5,600 a year, or 17.3 percent of his income. A family of four, making $80,000 a year, would have to pay about $10,500 in premiums alone -- with deductibles and co-payments, up to $15,000 or just under 20 percent of income.
And if they don't buy insurance, they'll face federal fines that begin to approach these same premium levels. They won't be able to buy what they truly need -- catastrophic-only coverage at a lower premium -- that won't satisfy ObamaCare's "minimum insurance" mandate.
The young and uninsured will catch on: This bill is designed to force healthy people who don't have health insurance -- and may neither need nor want it -- to buy it anyway, in order to raise the money to subsidize those who do need it.
Obama has pledged only to increase taxes on the rich. But his program essentially taxes the core of the middle class (those making $30,000 to $80,000). It will make them overpay in order to pick up the slack for others who need the extra coverage.
In other words, health-care "reform" is a health-care tax dressed up as a program to cover the uninsured.
No matter how Democrats get the money to cover those who need insurance, they offend supporters that they need to pass the bill:
* If they get the money from more Medicare cuts, they alienate the elderly still further.
* If they get it from raising the deficit, they lose moderates.
* If they hike taxes to do it, they lose the "Blue Dog" Democrats who've gone on record as opposing such increases.
* If they don't increase the subsidies, they lose the uninsured themselves.
The latest data from Scott Rasmussen's poll of those who lack health insurance indicates that they're starting to turn skeptical about the Obama plan. It's supposed to help them, yet they back it by only 58 percent to 35 percent -- and only 30 percent support it strongly.
More to the point, only 35 percent feel it will improve the quality of their health care -- and, by 41-26, they feel the cost of their care will go up, not down, under the plan.
Having the uninsured -- the stated object of Obama's compassion -- turn against his reform would be the most lethal cut of all.
NEW YORK POST is a registered trade
Set the agenda
Republicans are not civil to us a lot of the time. But, how should we treat them? Perhaps, our president really does have an insight in insisting that he will behave in a civil manner because that's what he believes in. As president he should set the agenda, not react to what others do. It's clearly a fine line to balance between not taking any crap and not throwing out any crap.
Thanks BC and Wayne
I took your advice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aitvFZTOrp4
Political Chess
Now that we have the bull (Ru$H) by the horn, we should use more than one example to keep his defenders playing the identity poli-trick defense =) while attempt to tear down the Washington Republicans propaganda machine on issues concerning healthcare; this battle that will only one in D.C., “The Conservative Think Tanks are wear the wasp nests are, “Let’s keep them playing defense in D.C. as well.
Their noses are bloody, & an eye has been busted …wide open … “Yeah”, wide open. “We are in the theater of some seriously entertaining & narcissistic ways right now.”
Here are some tips:
Play Race Poli-tricks, By Continuously Showing & Giving Examples Of Conservative Radical Race Bating Tactics by.
- Push more to define the conservatives as radicals. We are finally forcing them to play defense & attacking their scorched earth / Southern strategy.
- Use the permission slip to market to black viewers/readers, because it is the best example….
- Connect the Tea Party characters to the people who bought into the rhetoric that where being used by Sarah Palin as the VP candidate, on the behalf of John McCain to get more radical Right-wingers during their campaign for President.
- Lump Glen Beck & Ru$h Limbaugh into the same boat.
- The most important is to tear down & discredit the myths by Right-wing/D.C think tanks by confronting them.
There’s more:
Winning the battle in D.C. should consist of accomplishing these goals.
- Controlling the debate within the opinion section of the news papers.
- Force think tankers to defend all the lies they have used to scare old folks.
- Continue to tell the horrific stories to keep the right winger supporting heath care reform.
- Discredit Fuax news by remembering their recent misinformation campaigns concerning health care.
- Define the Right by lumping the radical think tanks & the Tea Party protester talking points into one category, the loons’ category or something to that extinct.
The most valuable commodity I know of is information, wouldn't you agree?
Michael Douglas
http://thepoliticoinsider.blogspot.com/
What's Hot
Black Cell: Howard Fineman is playing Smsh Mouth Football
Tea party turns into anti-Obama rally
Sept. 14: Newsweek's Howard Fineman gives his analysis of why the Republican Party continues to encourage anti-Obama sentiments in the form of tea parties and other rallies.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/32849407#32849407
Black Cell: The antidote to rally rage Sen. Bernie Sanders points the blame on Wall Street & The Bu$h administration.
Sept. 14: Rachel Maddow shares video of the witty tea party counterprotests by Billionaires for Wealthcare and then is joined by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, to talk about how progress is being made on the health care reform bill.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/32850414#32850414
Black Cell: CNN & MSNBC showed the presidents speech what happened Faux News.
Obama reprimands Wall Street
Sept. 14: One year after the country's financial collapse, President Barack Obama addressed Wall Street, telling them no more bailouts or reckless behavior. Bloomberg News' Margaret Carlson discusses.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/32849822#32849822
Black Cell: Don't forget to use the polls to our advantage.
Leaving the GOP behind on health care
Sept. 14: Huffington Post publisher Arianna Huffington discusses whether President Barack Obama will forego support from the Republican Party on his health care reform plan and pass it anyway.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/32849632#32849632
The most valuable commodity I know of is information, wouldn't you agree?
Michael Douglas
http://thepoliticoinsider.blogspot.com/
Public Tantrum
Could it be that some Republican kids are still mad about what America told them when we voted last November? Perhaps they could use a couple more lessons in .. ahem.. .. maturity.
http://i297.photobucket.com/albums/mm206/WayneinWAState/tantrum-child-71...
Help!
My family is trying to smother me with right wing christian wacko philosophy. My father, a member of that afore mentioned group, thinks the Democrats are spreading a lot of misinformation and why is there no provision to assure women are not getting abortions with tax payers money. Then he tells me my sister is marching in Washington (she missed alot during her growing years). My sister is a teacher---her healthcare is being paid for by taxpayers! Her son had a serious brain condition that was covered, thank God, by Medicaid! Someone please try to help me understand what the hell they are thinking!!!!! I watched some of the news cast from Washington this evening and I am sure there are some genuinely concerned fairly rational people there--but the majority are plum off their rockers! Oh sanity and empathy where are you? Wayne--you do post the best pics!
They may be a lost causes
Here are a few tips
The thing is to not allow their virus to spread to the rest of your family members. You do that by looking at your political conversations with those family members as a performance. You should have at least 5 great talking points that they can't defend & practically force them to defend them so they don't seem intelligent to others.
Make sure you have fun by using political satire to taunt your right-wing conservative family members.
GAILWIND: "Her son had a serious brain condition that was covered, thank God, by Medicaid! Someone please try to help me understand what the hell they are thinking.
It is a serious issue, but loosen up & point out the absurdity of a person using a social program to save a child's life & then smear it. Using humor in ways that makes others feel embarrassed may not work for the right-winger but those who are paying attention are buying it. They will also enjoy watching you rip a whole in the right-wingers talking points.
Might I add, control the conversation by not defending what can't be defended like Acorn, then go back to YOUR talking points.
Finally, you have to enjoy getting into their skin & heads, or they will enjoy getting into yours. When you notice when you accomplished that goal, drive it like a stake into a vampire, because not many people want to be on the team of players where the joke will be on them.
Here's another one. I thought conservatism was based on logic... "What happened?"
Try these things & tell me how they worked =)
The most valuable commodity I know of is information, wouldn't you agree?
Michael Douglas
http://thepoliticoinsider.blogspot.com/
A small challenge
Gail, all I can do is wish you a nearly infinite amount patience to deal with some in your family. I can tell you, you are not alone. All those tea-baggers and Palinite placarders must be a member of somebodies family. You know you love your family and wish them all the best, but maybe you do need to tell them that you just don't agree with their politics, and if they don't try and convert you then you won't try and convert them and would they please drop the subject. Perhaps you can state your views if you ever find them receptive to ask you why you understand things in your way. If that ever happens.. probably not this month :-}
Political Chess
If you want to win this battle you have to play total offense & force many of the conservatives & their organizations to play defense.
Here is a list of things to help you force the Repugs into playing defense. This list is in any order.
1) Live up to your promise to call out the politicians who are spreading lies.
2) Point out the lies in the major political ads that come on Fuax news like the one that they showed after the presidents speech.
3) Force the Republicans who did the Republican response to defend his birther comments.
4) Talk about the Presidents attempts to meet the Republicans half way & ask the conservatives why they aren't compromising like the liberals.
5) I have been watching a lot of Cspan & I have been noticing members of right wing think tanks trying their best to misinform people. Our media outlets should be interviewing them & controlling the debate by forcing them to defend only the misinformation, so we can point out their lies. It will force them to play defense & stop using the misinformation.
6) Continue painting our side as the defenders of the middle class & the Republicans as the defenders of status quo & big business.
7) Force the conservatives to attack the CBO with the info that President Obama used in his speech.
8) Compare the price of the health care bill to the cost of the war in Iraq & Afghanistan; attack the Republicans for wanting to do more to help Iraqis than Americans.
9) Allow people to tell their health care nightmares.
10) Talk about how health care reform will bring down the deficit.
The most valuable commodity I know of is information, wouldn't you agree?
Michael Douglas
http://thepoliticoinsider.blogspot.com/
Damn Foreigners
Check this out
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/618fb6cbf2/gus-porter-american-legend-w...
ROTFLMAO
It is great to know your wife is doing better.
On the other hand, the right-wingers are crazy people who know they are full of ....
The same can be true about the right wingers who collect SSI, they hate socialism but is it is paying there bills.
Concerning Liberality And Meanness
by Nicolo Machiavelli
COMMENCING then with the first of the above-named characteristics, I say that it would be well to be reputed liberal. Nevertheless, liberality exercised in a way that does not bring you the reputation for it, injures you; for if one exercises it honestly and as it should be exercised, it may not become known, and you will not avoid the reproach of its opposite. Therefore, any one wishing to maintain among men the name of liberal is obliged to avoid no attribute of magnificence; so that a prince thus inclined will consume in such acts all his property, and will be compelled in the end, if he wish to maintain the name of liberal, to unduly weigh down his people, and tax them, and do everything he can to get money. This will soon make him odious to his subjects, and becoming poor he will be little valued by any one; thus, with his liberality, having offended many and rewarded few, he is affected by the very first trouble and imperilled by whatever may be the first danger; recognizing this himself, and wishing to draw back from it, he runs at once into the reproach of being miserly.
Therefore, a prince, not being able to exercise this virtue of liberality in such a way that it is recognized, except to his cost, if he is wise he ought not to fear the reputation of being mean, for in time he will come to be more considered than if liberal, seeing that with his economy his revenues are enough, that he can defend himself against all attacks, and is able to engage in enterprises without burdening his people; thus it comes to pass that he exercises liberality towards all from whom he does not take, who are numberless, and meanness towards those to whom he does not give, who are few.
We have not seen great things done in our time except by those who have been considered mean; the rest have failed. Pope Julius the Second was assisted in reaching the papacy by a reputation for liberality, yet he did not strive afterwards to keep it up, when he made war on the King of France; and he made many wars without imposing any extraordinary tax on his subjects, for he supplied his additional expenses out of his long thriftiness. The present King of Spain would not have undertaken or conquered in so many enterprises if he had been reputed liberal. A prince, therefore, provided that he has not to rob his subjects, that he can defend himself, that he does not become poor and abject, that he is not forced to become rapacious, ought to hold of little account a reputation for being mean, for it is one of those vices which will enable him to govern.
And if any one should say: Caesar obtained empire by liberality, and many others have reached the highest positions by having been liberal, and by being considered so, I answer: Either you are a prince in fact, or in a way to become one. In the first case this liberality is dangerous, in the second it is very necessary to be considered liberal; and Caesar was one of those who wished to become pre-eminent in Rome; but if he had survived after becoming so, and had not moderated his expenses, he would have destroyed his government. And if any one should reply: Many have been princes, and have done great things with armies, who have been considered very liberal, I reply: Either a prince spends that which is his own or his subjects' or else that of others. In the first case he ought to be sparing, in the second he ought not to neglect any opportunity for liberality. And to the price who goes forth with his army, supporting it by pillage, sack, and extortion, handling that which belongs to others, this liberality is necessary, otherwise he would not be followed by soldiers. And of that which is neither yours nor your subjects' you can be a ready giver, as were Cyrus, Caesar, and Alexander; because it does not take away your reputation if you squander that of others, but adds to it; it is only squandering your own that injures you.
And there is nothing wastes so rapidly as liberality, for even whilst you exercise it you lose the power to do so, and so become either poor or despised, or else, in avoiding poverty, rapacious and hated. And a prince should guard himself, above all things, against being despised and hated; and liberality leads you to both. Therefore it is wiser to have a reputation for meanness which brings reproach without hatred, than to be compelled through seeking a reputation for liberality to incur a name for rapacity which begets reproach with hatred.
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The most valuable commodity I know of is information, wouldn't you agree?
Michael Douglas
http://thepoliticoinsider.blogspot.com/
The Health Care Debate
Boxing Tribute - Thrilla in Manila - Ali vs Frazier
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkOQW-Y-PYA
Fight Democrats FIGGGHHHTTT!!
Wake up Obama: Beckism is Winning!
by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse
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Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 07:25:54 PM PDT
Obama and Democrats need to wake up. The GOP mob rule thuggery machine, led by the likes of crybabies Beck and Limbaugh, does not care about the validity of their outrageous, racist claims that are simply the means to political ends. GOP lawmakers have done their best to validate the Beckist lies, fully knowing they are lies but refusing to back down until someone, like Mike Stark, or some reporter paint them into a corner. What the birthers, deathers, teabaggers, right-wing extremists are doing is tossing as much mud at Democrats, Obama and our policy initiatives as they can in order to draw the big picture of negative perceptions associated with Democratic policies and Democrats so they can win the midterms. Beckism is not about even winning a round, whether it is Van Jones, health care or climate change. Actually winning is gravy for Beckism's goal is GOP midterm success. This is the same "angry white man" strategy used against Clinton and it yielded one of the two times that the GOP creamed the Democrats in the midterms over the past 6 decades.
* Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse's diary :: ::
*
During the past 60 years, the GOP had "huge gains in the congressional midterms" only twice. It is not coincidence that one of the "strategies" used to achieve election success is the same as this putrid mud tossing fest now used against Obama. In GOP Welcomes Return Of The Angry White Male, Ron Elving described the GOP surge in 1994:
The Republican charge in 1994 added 52 seats net in the House and a dozen in the Senate. It was led by Southerners such as Newt Gingrich of Georgia, Dick Armey and Tom DeLay of Texas and Trent Lott of Mississippi. A longstanding dam of Democratic sentiment had given way in Dixie.
On a single day in November 1994,the GOP won its first majority of Southern governorships, Senate seats and House seats since Reconstruction. It has held those majorities since.
The fire that fed the GOP resurgence in 1994 was a "deep-seated animosity against" President Clinton. The birthers, deathers and teabaggers don't even try to hide their racist hostility and anger against President Obama.
One tactic used in 1994 was to make the first couple years of Clinton's presidency a "rocky affair" by conservatives openly challenging "his right to be president." The dittoheads and Beckists have made the same challenges with Obama, both expressly via their unfounded birther claims and implicitly, with their slander and libel that he is a socialist, fascist, communist and thus not qualified to be president of a democracy.
Does this sound familiar? The primary tool used by the nuts against Clinton was rumor and speculation of anyone and anything:
Rumors linked Clinton to various marital infidelities and more. He was not just a draft dodger but a Soviet collaborator, not just related to a cocaine dealer (his brother Roger) but linked to the traffic of the drug -- and a murder suspect as well. Even without today's World Wide Web, these tall tales were widely told and often believed -- undermining Clinton's legitimacy years before his impeachment by Republicans in the House.
In under a year, the manufactured bullshit about Obama has been even more despicable than that used against Clinton:
* Rev. Wright * Obama's a secret Muslim * Obama pals around with terrorists * Obama wasn't born here * Obama wants to kill grandma * Obama is a socialist * Obama is a Nazi/Hitler * Obama is a facist * Obama wants to suck your childrens' brains dry
There is an insidious method to the right-wing madness.
First, the allegations against Obama are based on political faith that preemptively nukes the typical Democratic response of stating the facts to debunk the lies. The problem is that logic, reality, truth and facts do not matter. The right-wing nuts spewing these lies have faith in the memes much like some people have faith in religious doctrine. After all, faith means a "firm belief in something for which there is no proof." Thus, there is nothing that Obama or we can say to change the minds of the Beck adherents, whether they are civilians or lawmakers. Think about this. How can Obama negotiate in a bipartisan manner when facts are irrelevant to some GOP lawmakers either because they believe the claims made or don’t want to tangle with a conservative base needed to maintain their power?
Second, Beck and his nut followers do not care about winning an individual battle. Take the case of Van Jones. It is irrelevant to Beck if Van Jones resigned or not. What matters is that more mud has been tossed at Obama and the Democrats. It is the collective pile of mud that accumulates over Obama's first term that will create a "perception" that he is not fit to be president that will be used to win the midterms. The fact that Van Jones resigned is gravy that will reinforce and fuel the perception and assumption that the nuts actually had presented valid reasons that forced Jones to resign.
Third, Democrats need to stop viewing the attacks, speculations, conspiracy theories and rumors in isolation as individual events and look at the cumulative picture and interrelationship of the lying memes. Beck and his stupid, mindless followers knew beforehand that papa and son Bush both talked to school children about issues that fall within the umbrella of policy. They also knew that the meme that Obama was not fit or safe to talk with school children would take hold because many now believe a prior lying meme that Obama is a socialist determined to "indoctrinate America's children to his socialist agenda."
91% of the GOP conservative base believe Obama is a socialist, Marxist, Communist or Fascist. Online polls from Newsmax andU.S. News and World Report show 85% believe Obama is a socialist or that he has socialist policies, respectively.
It is not just the base:
The poll results come amidst official efforts by the Republican National Committee to label Democrats as the "Democrat Socialist Party."
How can the GOP lawmakers practice bi-partisanship or agree to compromises if they seek to win the next election with votes from their nutty base? Some GOP lawmakers have been duplicitous in the Beckism crap, refusing to clearly set the record straight on any of the speculations and rumors when asked because they know they need their base to win next time, and their cowardly duplicity provides more "evidence" that the lies are true. The beauty for Beck is that the very need for the megamedia to ask if Obama is a socialist, Muslim, US citizen etc creates the doubt that Beck and his progeny will milk as "evidence" in the perception game.
Fourth, Democrats need to respond based on our values rather than focus primarily on defending the substantive issue raised by the nuts. Remember, the Beckists don't care about the "issue" that they raise other than as a means to a desired end goal of destroying Obama as a credible, effective President.
For example, when Meteor Blades posted the announcement that Van Jones had resigned, some Kossacks responded along the lines of how can we defend Van Jones when his truther beliefs violated the rules of Daily Kos? The answer is that we defend Van Jones because he is a Democrat who did not violate any laws. Daily Kos rules about truther bannings does not regulate the real world where people have a constitutional right to free speech. We defend Van Jones because the attacks against him were part of the right-wing machine to win in the midterms and this site is about electing more and better Democrats.
The GOP mudfest, both the intimidation and mob rule thuggery at town hall meetings and the attacks against Obama, his team, and his policies are designed to be bullet proof against defenses because the lies are contrary to the facts, which are not relevant to people acting on political faith, or the lies would require Obama to prove a negative, such as that he is not a socialist, he is not a communist, he is not a fascist.
Instead of caving to the GOP nuts, we need to stick to our guns on principles supported not just by Democrats but also most Americans. Forget precompromise, forget bipartisanship. Even Obama recognized this fact that we should stick to our core principles:
Our goal should be to stick to our guns on those core values that make this country great, show a spirit of flexibility and sustained attention that can achieve those goals, and try to create the sort of serious, adult, consensus around our problems that can admit Democrats, Republicans and Independents of good will.
These nuts, and their GOP Congressional enablers, don't have "good will," so screw them and move on.
In fact, Obama stated during the campaign that he has a set of core principles and if any politician, Democrat or Republican, opposed those principles, then Obama promised to "go after them with everything that I’ve got."
Well, President Obama, if there was any doubt before, the Beckism record is clear now. Please heed Bill Moyer's advice:
No more Mr. Nice Guy, Mr. President. We need a fighter.
BILL MOYERS JOURNAL | Bill Moyers on Health Care | PBS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8IeZHZRwC4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8IeZHZRwC4
Concerning Cruelty And Clemency.
And Whether It Is Better To Be Loved Than Feared
by Nicolo Machiavelli
COMING now to the other qualities mentioned above, I say that every prince ought to desire to be considered clement and not cruel. Nevertheless he ought to take care not to misuse this clemency. Cesare Borgia was considered cruel; notwithstanding, his cruelty reconciled the Romagna, unified it, and restored it to peace and loyalty. And if this be rightly considered, he will be seen to have been much more merciful than the Florentine people, who, to avoid a reputation for cruelty, permitted Pistoia to be destroyed. Therefore a prince, so long as he keeps his subjects united and loyal, ought not to mind the reproach of cruelty; because with a few examples he will be more merciful than those who, through too much mercy, allow disorders to arise, from which follow murders or robberies; for these are wont to injure the whole people, whilst those executions which originate with a prince offend the individual only.
And of all princes, it is impossible for the new prince to avoid the imputation of cruelty, owing to new states being full of dangers. Hence Virgil, through the mouth of Dido, excuses the inhumanity of her reign owing to its being new, saying:
Res dura, et regni novitas me talia cogunt
Moliri, et late fines custode tueri. 1
Nevertheless he ought to be slow to believe and to act, nor should he himself show fear, but proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence may not make him incautious and too much distrust render him intolerable.
Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you. And that prince who, relying entirely on their promises, has neglected other precautions, is ruined; because friendships that are obtained by payments, and not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be earned, but they are not secured, and in time of need cannot be relied upon; and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.
Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated, which will always be as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their women. But when it is necessary for him to proceed against the life of someone, he must do it on proper justification and for manifest cause, but above all things he must keep his hands off the property of others, because men more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony. Besides, pretexts for taking away the property are never wanting; for he who has once begun to live by robbery will always find pretexts for seizing what belongs to others; but reasons for taking life, on the contrary, are more difficult to find and sooner lapse. But when a prince is with his army, and has under control a multitude of soldiers, then it is quite necessary for him to disregard the reputation of cruelty, for without it he would never hold his army united or disposed to its duties.
Among the wonderful deeds of Hannibal this one is enumerated: that having led an enormous army, composed of many various races of men, to fight in foreign lands, no dissensions arose either among them or against the prince, whether in his bad or in his good fortune. This arose from nothing else than his inhuman cruelty, which, with his boundless valour, made him revered and terrible in the sight of his soldiers, but without that cruelty, his other virtues were not sufficient to produce this effect. And shortsighted writers admire his deeds from one point of view and from another condemn the principal cause of them. That it is true his other virtues would not have been sufficient for him may be proved by the case of Scipio, that most excellent man, not of his own times but within the memory of man, against whom, nevertheless, his army rebelled in Spain; this arose from nothing but his too great forbearance, which gave his soldiers more licence than is consistent with military discipline. For this he was upbraided in the Senate by Fabius Maximus, and called the corrupter of the Roman soldiery. The Locrians were laid waste by a legate of Scipio, yet they were not avenged by him, nor was the insolence of the legate punished, owing entirely to his easy nature. Insomuch that someone in the Senate, wishing to excuse him, said there were many men who knew much better how not to err than to correct the errors of others. This disposition, if he had been continued in the command, would have destroyed in time the fame and glory of Scipio; but, he being under the control of the Senate, this injurious characteristic not only concealed itself, but contributed to his glory.
Returning to the question of being feared or loved, I come to the conclusion that, men loving according to their own will and fearing according to that of the prince, a wise prince should establish himself on that which is in his own control and not in that of others; he must endeavour only to avoid hatred, as is noted.
The most valuable commodity I know of is information, wouldn't you agree?
Michael Douglas
http://thepoliticoinsider.blogspot.com/
White House Weighing Public Health Care Option
The price of health care will continue to rise if there is no public option because the insurance industry will be forced insure those with with preexisting conditions who cost more to serve.
*******************************************
September 7, 2009
White House Weighing Public Health Care Option
By JOSEPH BERGER
Three days before President Obama is to address a joint session of Congress about overhauling the health care system, administration officials on Sunday continued to characterize a new government program for the nation’s 50 million uninsured as worthwhile but not essential to legislation.
David Axelrod, a White House senior adviser, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Mr. Obama “believes the public option is a good tool.” But Mr. Axelrod added: “It shouldn’t define the whole health-care debate.”
The White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, who appeared on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” sidestepped questions on whether Mr. Obama still regarded the so-called public option as a necessity for any bill he would back.
“We’re trying to provide choice and competition for individuals and small business owners,” Mr. Gibbs said when asked if the public option was “essential.”
“The president strongly believes we need to provide choice and competition,” he said. Pressed on whether Mr. Obama would demand that a government insurance program be included in legislation, Mr. Gibbs said that it could be a “valuable component” of any health plan. And asked whether the president would reject a plan that did not include government insurance, Mr. Gibbs responded: “We are not going to prejudge where the process will be.”
Republicans have argued that the existence of a government insurance plan would spur employers who now finance their employees’ insurance to steer their workers to a government plan. Some senators have argued that a bill containing a government-run health program will not pass the Senate Finance Committee and have urged alternatives like consumer-owned, non-profit health care cooperatives. The co-ops would be offered as one of several choices for uninsured Americans signing up along with employer-sponsored plans and private insurance plans.
But Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, has said that a bill that did not contain a government program for the uninsured would not pass the House of Representatives.
And The Associated Press reported that on a call with prominent liberal House members Friday, Mr. Obama refused to be pinned down.
In his talk-show appearance, Mr. Gibbs said, however, that Mr. Obama will clarify his position in his address to Congress and is considering broadly outlining his own legislation instead of letting Congress set the terms.
“People will leave that speech knowing where he stands,” he said.
One avenue broached by some Republicans is a five-year deadline for private insurance companies to change their ways of doing business or face the automatic “trigger” of a public option. Appearing on a follow-up panel discussion on “This Week,” Bob Dole, the former Senate majority leader, said Republicans would be open to a public option after five years “if insurance companies haven’t cleaned up their act.”
Representative Maxine Waters, the California Democrat, said she was opposed to such an idea because “I’m not for five more years of the health insurance companies ripping off the public” with what she called multimillion-dollar salaries for executives and excessive co-payments and deductibles. She accused the Republicans of working to block any “robust” health care legislation, an indication, she said, that attempts to patch together a bipartisan bill were futile.
In an effort to force a decision, Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, will soon present the committee with a detailed blueprint for a health-care bill. If Republicans do not support it, Mr. Baucus would presumably try to win approval in the Senate without them.
The Baucus plan does not include a new government plan for the uninsured, but Medicaid would be expanded to cover Americans with incomes less than 133 percent of the poverty level ($29,327 for a family of four) and tax credits would be made available to Americans earning up to 300 percent of the poverty level ($66,150).
The Baucus plan would thus require more Americans to have health insurance, either from their employer or from a health insurance exchange. One option that would be included would be the consumer-owned, nonprofit insurance cooperatives, which would compete with private insurers. Some advocates have pictured this idea as a kind of public option that Mr. Obama could celebrate if a true government-run program fails.
The most valuable commodity I know of is information, wouldn't you agree?
Michael Douglas
http://thepoliticoinsider.blogspot.com/
This is how it should be done.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) held a town hall meeting on health care reform for residents of the Fifth Congressional District of Maryland at North Point High School in Waldorf, MD.
Waldorf, MD : 2 hr. 12 min.
http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2009/09/01/HP/A/22720/House+Maj+Leader...
The most valuable commodity I know of is information, wouldn't you agree?
Michael Douglas
http://thepoliticoinsider.blogspot.com/
The Future Costs for Health Insurance
This is an extremely tough battle, but we are starting to get the momentum. I believe if we change our tactic & debate why the U.S. need health care reform we can take full control of the debate.
It is already clear that the potential voters are in control of this debate, so once the American people start realizing why it is important to figure out ways to lower cost, then a public option or the extension of Medicare & Medicaid will prevail.
Remember, we know that the radical right ( Tea Party types) don't want any type of health care reform, but we can force them to accept many forms of our perspective if we engage the public will logical reasons to reform health care, & it all starts with marketing the fact of how much we will be forced to pay for health care in the future without any reform; like it was done in the 1990s with the notion that social security will go broke by ....
The Repubs are now giving weak solutions for reform, all we have to do is not accept their phony excuses for why their solutions aren't being heard. The reality is that their solutions are not prevailing because their minions spend to much time trying to kill health care reform, & their ideas are so weak that it doesn't inspire their base, yet many in their base. They also know that the insurance that we have today should be changed or the costs will continue to sky rocket.
Who wants to pay more for less services? They don't, yet they know that it is inevitable if we don't reform the system.
Just stay vigalent & we will win the verbal war.
The most valuable commodity I know of is information, wouldn't you agree?
Michael Douglas
http://thepoliticoinsider.blogspot.com/
Health Care Betrayal from Both Sides?
As Congress prepares to pick up its heated health care debate next month, it appears dealmakers on both sides of the aisle may be double-crossing their negotiating partners.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), one of the few Republicans supposedly working on a bipartisan compromise for health care reform, upped the threshold this week for what he would consider a bill worth voting for.
by Stephanie Condon
At a town hall meeting Wednesday in Le Mars, Iowa, the Senate Finance Committee member said the soaring federal budget deficit "puts a stake in the heart" of the costly health care reform package Congress is considering, Bloomberg reports. Grassley reportedly said health care reform legislation will have to be scaled back if it is to pass in the current economic climate. He also said he may not vote for the bill unless he is guaranteed Iowa's hospitals will not be harmed by an agreement hospitals made with the Obama administration to lower their costs.
Grassley is one of six committee members (called the "gang of six") attempting to write a version of health care reform legislation that could garner some Republican support. He has, however, become increasingly critical of the reform proposals on the table. He and fellow gang of six Republican Sen. Mike Enzi have said they will not vote for a bill unless it wins the support of a number of Republicans -- which is very unlikely to happen.
Grassley recently told citizens they "have every right to fear" health care reform, which he said would allow the government to "pull the plug" on grandmas. After delivering an angry Twitter message to the president about health care reform, Grassley explained his message and told CBS News that "this administration is scaring the people." Grassley has also said he would not vote for an "imperfect bill."
Democrats also appear to be pulling back from commitments to compromise.
Two senior House Democrats say a compromise reached with the moderate Blue Dogs over health care reform may be changed before the bill goes to the House floor for a vote, the Wall Street Journal reports.
In July, Democrats agreed to a Blue Dog request to require any government-run health insurance plan (or "public option") to negotiate its own payment rates to doctors and other medical providers, rather than paying rates based on Medicare.
Democrats have in recent weeks discussed the option of a passing a strictly partisan bill, though as the Los Angeles Times points out, Republicans and Democrats agree on a number of health reform elements, such as prohibiting insurance companies from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions, cutting insurance coverage off when a policyholder gets sick and imposing a lifetime cap on benefits.
The most valuable commodity I know of is information, wouldn't you agree?
Michael Douglas
http://thepoliticoinsider.blogspot.com/
Health care debate? Still fevered
Sentiments and opinions ran hot during a health care town hall hosted by Rep. Michele Bachmann in Lake Elmo.
By PAT DOYLE, Star Tribune
Last update: August 28, 2009 - 12:13 PM
With deafening cheers and a few jeers, hundreds of people packed a health care town hall meeting Thursday held by U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, some targeting the Republican with the kind of anger previously directed at Democrats.
"Why do you persist on distorting the president's plan?" asked Ilya Gorodisher, 46, of the Stillwater area, accusing Bachmann of "stretching the truth to the point of lies."
Bachmann, who represents the Sixth District, defended her claim that President Obama's plan would crowd out existing private insurers, and suggested Democratic plans were big gambles.
"Washington, D.C., is telling the American people, 'Trust us,'" she said.
Before the meeting began at a junior high in Lake Elmo, a moderator admonished the crowd to allow all speakers to be heard. But it didn't take long for people packed in the school's auditorium to interrupt each other.
When Irene Boone of Stillwater spoke up for single-payer health insurance, similar to Medicare,
Watch the video:
http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/house/55421247.html?elr=KAr...
The Rope-a-Dope
Once we get all sides engaging in the solutions debate, the President should put together a plan with the best ideas, then he can take credit for comprehensive health care reform.
******************************************
4 hidden costs of health care
If you're going to fix the system, start with the problems that make it so expensive in the first place.
By Shawn Tully, editor at large
Last Updated: August 27, 2009: 2:58 PM ET
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- This is the fourth installment in a series of health-care columns by Fortune's Shawn Tully.
Health care is by far the most cartelized, anti-competitive big business in America. The market is crippled by a web of quotas, entry barriers, monopolistic licensing laws, and discount limits that wouldn't be tolerated in any other industry.
There is a rationale for this maze of restrictions. It holds that the supply of virtually everything in medicine must be strongly constrained or costs will explode. But really, tightly regulating the system inflates prices and enriches insurers, drugmakers, and other providers.
Yet none of the health-care "reform" bills on the table today address the restrictions that magnify costs today and could bring rationing tomorrow. Before the Obama administration can craft a plan to get insurance to the masses, it needs to remove some key obstructions.
So let's examine the Big Four supply-side barriers in medicine:
Health insurance: Low-dose competition
In most cities or regions, the health insurance market is dominated by one or two giant carriers, the biggest being the Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans. A recent study by the American Medical Association found that in 56% of America's 314 urban areas, a single insurer held over half the market.
The prices these gigantic players charge are soaring: A General Accounting Office study found that over the past ten years, premiums have risen 120%, compared with inflation of 44% and wage growth of 29%. "Profits in the industry are as high as we've ever seen," says John Sheils of the Lewin Group, a health care consulting and research firm.
So why does the health insurance industry offer consumers few choices and slack price competition? The reason is two-fold. First, a law dating from World War II bars insurers in one state from offering the same plans in another state. The law was set up to give states more control over insurers, but now it essentially protects the companies from inter-state competition. A Pennsylvania insurer may offer plans in New York, but that would be too expensive, since they must include vastly different services.
"It also takes two to three years for an out-of-state insurer to get a plan approved in another state," says Chandler Rapson, CEO of FSAI, a benefits administrator for health plans in Florida. Hence, insurers can't generate the economies of scale in marketing and back office operations available in any other business, and consumers pay the price in higher premiums.
Second, the Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans that dominate most markets are strongly entrenched. In the 1960s, they received all kinds of special treatment from state governments, which frequently waived policy tax and loss reserve requirements. The Blues built giant networks, and in most states, Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans merged. Their market shares are immense: They write 60% of policies in New Jersey, 66% in Washington, 70% in Massachusetts, and 90% in Kentucky.
How do the Blues manage to remain so powerful? Each Blue typically agrees not to cross state lines to challenge another Blue. They're also masters at requiring contracts that ward off small and large invaders alike.
The shield that protects their market share, and pricing, is their standard contract with hospitals. "Those contracts mean that competitors often can't make a dent in the Blues' business," says Ted Frech, professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. The Blues, and other dominant insurers, demand that hospitals agree to what's known in the trade as "most favored nation" clauses.
Say a new insurer pledges to steer 1000 new patients a year to a hospital in exchange for a deep discount. That sounds great for the hospital and lowering patients' premiums. But then the new insurer runs into the "most favored nation" clause.
If the insurer's discount is bigger than what the Blue gets, the hospital has to match it. The rub is that the cost of getting the new patients just rose dramatically, and the hospital now has to give the Blue a bigger discount without the promise of any more patients. The hospital is forced to turn down the new insurer's offer, and premiums stay high.
The best solution is the simplest: Allow insurers to sell their policies across state lines. That would greatly reduce the giant price differences across states. Today, a healthy 30 year old pays $960 a year in Kentucky versus $5,860 in New Jersey for full coverage.
Big associations of restaurants and other small employers could buy inexpensive policies nationwide, greatly lowering costs to employees. Strong anti-trust scrutiny of "most favored nation" is also needed to ensure that the new out-of-state competitors can win deep discounts for consumers.
Certificate of need laws: Rationing goods and services
One of the most damaging and obsolete -- but stubbornly pervasive -- restrictions on the supply of medical goods and services is the Certificate of Need Law.
The regulations under its umbrella require hospitals, clinics and physician groups to obtain permission from state planning boards if they want to add new facilities from hospital beds to a new ambulatory surgical center. The rules were originally set up to control supply in the hopes of eliminating duplication and waste.
The federal government required all states to enact these laws in 1974. But in the mid-80s under President Reagan, the CONs were made voluntary. Many states including California and Pennsylvania have dropped the laws, but they're still extremely powerful in 36 other states, including New York and New Jersey.
The laws make it impossible for the numbers of hospitals and diagnostic centers to grow naturally with rising patient demand. Instead, they create artificial shortages as entrenched providers lobby state governments tirelessly to prevent competitors from entering their markets with sorely needed state-of-the art equipment.
"The laws are meant to restrict competition, and that's exactly what they do," says Thomas Barry, an investment banker in the hospital industry at the firm Cain Brothers.
Compare the shortages in Michigan, a strong CON state, with the robust expansion in Ohio, which junked the law. In Detroit, patients wait 7 weeks for a PET scan for cancer or lung problems, and then often get scheduled for 1 or 3 a.m.
By contrast, Ohio reaped a multi-billion dollar investment boom after eliminating its CON in the late 1990s. Since then, it's added 71 dialysis centers, and 202 MRIs -- about 50% more MRIs per capita than Michigan. Tired of waiting weeks, Michigan residents are flooding across the border to get their diagnostic tests in Toledo's fast-growing medical corridor.
Another simple solution: Get rid of CON laws across the nation.
Acute pain: America's doctor shortage
The essential raw material needed to treat the tens of millions of new patients is our supply of physicians. Today, America is suffering from a painful doctor shortage that is another legacy of poor regulation. And it will get worse. The population of new doctors who go into practice each year is governed by the number of residency slots in America's teaching hospitals. Incredibly, those positions have been frozen for 25 years at around 25,000 as demand has soared.
The reason the residency positions haven't grown with the market is that they're funded by Medicare, which has decided it's good public policy to keep the supply of new doctors essentially fixed. The theory is that adding to their numbers would increase costs, since more doctors artificially increase demand by ordering more tests and procedures.
That policy has clearly failed. Only around 6,000 generalists, otherwise known as family doctors, enter the workforce each year -- half the number of the late 90s. And don't blame the old adage that America has created a surplus of specialists. Merritt Hawkins, a leading medical recruitment firm, is flooded with assignments to find gastroenterologists, urologists, general surgeons and specialists in geriatrics.
"We do have a shortage and it will become more acute," says Dr. Toby Cosgrove, chief of the Cleveland Clinic. "We've never trained enough physicians, even including doctors from abroad. And the shortages aren't just in primary care, but many specialties."
One solution is to rapidly increase the number of residency positions, which is not part of the Obama plan. To be sure, it takes many years to build new medical schools, so the additional positions should be filled with foreign graduates. That would require a much-needed increase in immigration quotas.
Another way to increase supply is to loosen licensing and supervision laws for non-physician providers such as Nurse Practitioners. Allowing the NPs to operate their own clinics, a practice banned in many states, would greatly relieve the pressure.
The Medicaid 'best price' policy: Putting a floor on discounts
Working Americans are often paying too much for pharmaceuticals because of still another wrongheaded regulation. It's called the Medicaid "Best Price" policy.
It dates from the early 1990s, when HMOs and hospitals were putting tremendous pressure on drugmakers for steep discounts. These big purchasers would shift almost all of their patients to a Merck or Pfizer drug in exchange for a big price reduction, often exceeding 30%. The buyers were effectively trading big volumes to whoever provided the lowest prices.
The new power of managed care and pharmacy benefit providers terrified the drug industry. So Merck and other manufacturers pushed Congress to pass the "best price" rule. It sounded like a great deal. Medicaid, the program for the poor, would receive a guaranteed discount of around 16%.
But here's the catch: If an HMO or another private buyer got a bigger break, the manufacturer had to extend the same discount to all the Medicaid programs in the fifty states. Suddenly, it became extremely expensive to give deep discounts to pharmacy benefits managers or drugstore chains. The additional business didn't come close to paying for the lost revenue from Medicaid. In a short time, the rule put a floor under discounts of -- you guessed it -- 16%.
The rule is still in effect. The CBO has determined that since manufacturers regularly raise the prices the discount is based on, that Medicaid banks puny savings, and that the rule is a major barrier to getting the best prices for consumers.
Another simple solution: Strike down the "best price" rule.
--In one of our coming columns, we'll look at the how specific cases of how much more middle class Americans will pay for health care under Obamacare.
Read Shawn Tully's other installments in this series:
You May Need a Score Card for Health Care Reform
By Scott Lilly
If you want to understand the extraordinary events taking place in the fight over health care reform, you should take Deep Throat's advice to Bob Woodward many years ago during Woodward's coverage of the Watergate story: follow the money. Massive amounts of cash are flowing into all types of activities aimed at influencing the final outcome. The stakes are high for doctors, hospitals, drug companies, nursing homes, and a host of other industries. But no industry has as much to gain or lose as private, for-profit health insurance companies.
It's impossible to fashion a health care system that does not have doctors, medications, and hospitals -- but it is quite easy to imagine a system without private insurers. In fact, private insurers play little if any role in the health care systems of most countries in the world, including many that enjoy strong and prosperous free enterprise economies.
On the other hand it is entirely possible that the United States could move to a system in which private health insurance companies could become even more profitable than they are today. If doctors and hospitals are forced to make concessions on the amounts they charge patients and the government succeeds in extending coverage to a substantial portion of the currently uninsured 47 million Americans, insurers could be in the cat bird seat. They could gain a huge new customer base and simultaneously cut their costs while maintaining high premiums.
It's not clear which direction Congress will take. But it is clear that Wall Street is watching the legislative maneuvering with great interest. The equity analysts at Credit Suisse, an international financial services group, are very upbeat on the prospects for insurers and in particular the largest among them, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group:
Recent events in Washington reinforce our view that health care reform will include a substantial expansion of the Medicaid program and the creation of an insurance exchange with either no public plan option or a fallback public plan option. We believe UNH is best positioned to capitalize on the growth opportunities that will emerge through reform.
Specifically, we conservatively estimate that Medicaid expansion can add $0.05 to annualized earnings per share and that the creation of an exchange and/or increased employer-based coverage would add $0.25 in annualized EPS.
Independent equity research firm Argus Research Group has a decidedly more pessimistic view on UnitedHealth Group:
Moreover, we take a cautious stance on the managed care sector in general as we wait to see what form the final legislation on universal coverage will take. One proposal, a government-run public plan, would pose serious risk and competition to commercial plans currently offered by private insurers such as UnitedHealth.
Standard and Poor's Stock Report offered a similar assessment:
...We think investors see health care reform, currently being addressed by President [Barack] Obama and Congress, as helping to reduce medical cost trends... But we suggest investors remain cautious, on our view that the idea of a public plan is still alive.
Shareholders have a lot at stake. If the cloud of health care reform is lifted and earnings rise even marginally the value of these stocks could soar. The 1.1 billion shares of UnitedHealth Group are divided amongst 14,000 institutional and individual shareholders. Credit Suisse projects the shares to rise from near $27 a share level where they have traded at for most of the summer to $33 in the reasonably near future. Analysts for Morningstar see potential appreciation in the shares of 66 percent, or to about $48. But even at $33 the total increase in the value of UnitedHealth Group shares will increase by nearly $7 billion.
But the personal financial implications for many insurance executives are much greater. Because of the widespread use of stock options in compensating executives in this industry, even slight changes in the stock's value can have a massive impact on the executives' personal net worth. If, for instance, an executive receives an option to buy 20,000 shares of his company at the current share price of say, $30, and he later exercises the option when the stock reaches $31 he will make $20,000. If, however, it reaches $32 his take will be $40,000 and if it rises by $10 to $40 the same options would yield $200,000.
In practice, the option packages awarded by the health insurance industry are far more generous. Stephen J. Hemsley joined UnitedHealth Group in 1997 and has been the company's chief executive officer since 2006. As CEO of UnitedHealth he receives an annual salary of $1.3 million and "incentive pay" worth about another $2 million a year.
But his real compensation is in stock options, as evidenced by a report the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this past February. Hemsley exercised options that were nearing their 10-year expiration date (options that he was awarded in 1999 when he was still chief financial officer and had been with the company only two years). The options allowed him to purchase 4.9 million shares of the company for $42 million or at an average share price of $8.72. He sold 2.9 million of those shares for $84 million or almost $29 a share and kept almost 2 million shares worth about $56 million. His net gain on the deal was in excess of $98 million.
Options are a sore subject at UNH. A shareholder suit brought against the company and Hemsley's predecessor, William McGuire, for backdating option grants -- granting a stock option dated prior to the date that the company actually granted the option -- resulted not only in McGuire's resignation but his repayment to shareholders of an estimated $468 million in ill gotten profits. Bloomberg News estimated that the profits McGuire retained from the option after the settlement exceeded $800 million.
While the backdating of options at UNH may have ceased, the practice of awarding them is still thriving. Forms filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission within the past week indicate that company executives were granted options to buy more than 14.5 million shares in just the past quarter. Previous reports indicate that the company maintains that pace throughout the year providing its executives with options to buy about 60 million shares a year. These reports also indicate that company officials now hold options to buy more than 140 million shares of the corporation.
How can insurance companies afford such lavish compensation packages? An analysis of their revenues and expenses provides a good deal of insight. A key measure used by investors to determine the worth of a health insurance company is known as the medical cost ratio or sometimes the medical loss ratio. This ratio is basically the portion of insurance premiums collected by the company that must be used to pay the medical bills of policy holders.
In the early 1990s insurance companies paid health care providers about 90 to 95 percent of the amount they collected in premiums. By the middle of this decade the average had dropped to a little above 80 percent. In 2007, for instance, UnitedHealth Group collected $69 billion in premiums and $6 billion for other fees and services but paid only $55 billion in medical bills. Of the nearly $14 billion in premium receipts that did not go to pay medical bills about 57 percent went for operating costs, which included among other things executive compensation, leaving around 43 percent for profits. Before-tax profits from premiums, services, and products totaled more than $7.8 billion and operating costs totaled $10.5 billion.
Assuming that UNH's use of its revenue is fairly typical of the industry at large (UNH actually pays slightly a higher portion of its premiums back for the medical care of its customers than most other large health insurers) a family that paid insurance premiums of $8,000 to a private insurance company in 2007 could expect that about $6,400 would have gone to cover medical bills, $900 for insurance company operations and compensation, and $700 to profits.
One perspective on the reasonableness of the "operations" or administrative costs charged by private insurers such as UNH is to compare them with the administrative costs of the Medicare program. In 2007, Medicare paid out $434 billion in benefits or nearly eight times the amount paid by UNH. But according to the budget justification that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS sent to the Congress in 2008, the cost to the government of processing the claims, determining the appropriateness of the billings, and administering the reimbursements in 2007 was less than $2.3 billion. In other words, Medicare was covering nearly eight times as much medical care for less than a quarter of the administrative cost. In addition, Medicare's administrative costs in 2007 equaled less than a third of UNH's before-tax profits.
Nationwide there are 4,400 government employees who work for CMS (including those who work to administer the federal share of the Medicaid program). Their annual salaries totaled $383 million in 2007. The profits that Stephen Hemsley reaped from the exercise of one year's worth of stock options this past February would not only pay the salary of the administrator of CMS but of every employee in the agency for more than three months.
Last month Wendell Potter, a former executive with Cigna Insurance Company, explained how investors keep pressure on the insurance industry to lower the medical loss ratio.
...Investors want that to keep shrinking. And if they see that an insurance company has not done what they think meets their expectations with the medical loss ratio, they'll punish them... I've seen a company stock price fall 20 percent in a single day, when it did not meet Wall Street's expectations with this medical loss ratio. They think that this company has not done a good job of managing medical expenses. It has not denied enough claims. It has not kicked enough people off the rolls.
The 10 largest private publically traded insurance companies had combined revenues last year of about $280 billion, of which more than $50 billion went to executive compensation, other operation expenses, and profits, leaving less than $230 billion for paying medical bills. That means that expenses other than paying medical bills equal about 23 percent of the amount that is paid in medical bills.
By comparison Medicare operational costs equal 0.5 percent of benefits paid. If only the 10 largest private insurers could cut their operational costs (administration and profits) to just 5.0 percent of the benefits they pay (the level that they were at in 1993 and 10 times the administrative overhead of Medicare) it would produce a 10-year savings of nearly half a trillion dollars or about half the amount needed to finance health care reform. If they were able to hold those expenses to 10 percent of the amount they pay in benefits the savings for just the top 10 for-profit insurers would total a quarter of a trillion over 10 years.
The allegations that have been launched against health care reform often border on the bizarre. Allies of the health insurance industry have charged that legislation now pending would establish "death panels" that would be empowered to terminate patients whose care had become too expensive. Others have said that individuals such as Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) would not receive appropriate care because of the terminal nature of his illness.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has asserted that 100 million Americans would be forced to give up their current insurance policies. Conservative economist and hedge fund consultant Arthur Laffer has argued that the legislation will create a huge bureaucracy making a visit to a doctor similar to visiting the DMV. And Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has argued that the price of health reform will be paid by senior citizens as the result of cuts that will be made in Medicare benefits.
All of these allegations are patently false but they have had a remarkable shelf life because of the vast sums that have been pumped into free and paid media, mailings, online communications, and grassroots organizing. No one knows how much of this has been funded directly by the insurance industry and how much by other opponents of reform, but as the preceding discussion makes clear the insurance industry does not want this to become a debate about the facts.
It is impossible to justify a reform proposal that demands sacrifices from all components of the health care delivery system and simultaneously allows the kinds of excesses that have become commonplace in the insurance industry to continue. If the United States wishes to gain control over the rampant inflation in health care costs that is destroying businesses, bankrupting individuals, and wrecking havoc with state and federal budgets, it cannot leave an industry that has contributed so much to the escalation of health care costs in an even stronger position to expand margins at the expense of health care providers, employers, and individuals. That is currently the goal of the health insurance industry and they have made remarkable progress toward that goal given the quality of the case they have to argue.
If Congress cannot agree on a public option they must find some other method of protecting American consumers and employers from the costly and predatory practices of the health insurance industry. One would be a cap on the medical loss ratio.
Scott Lilly is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. He previously served as clerk and staff director of the House Appropriations Committee and executive director of the Joint Economic Committee.
This article first appeared at AmericanProgress.org.
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.
Problem
Speaking of health care, we are having a scary situation. My wife was having chest pains and weakness in her left arm and is being hospitalized in Portland now. We afraid she's at risk of having a heart attack so I am probably not going to write much here for the next week or so.
Hi Wayne
I am sure your wife will get better.
Fixing Health Care Is Good for Business
How many aspiring entrepreneurs are stuck in dead-end jobs because of health concerns?
By GARY LOCKE
You have probably heard the horror stories about President Barack Obama's health-care proposals leading to rationed care and bankrupt businesses and governments. Those claims are flat wrong. The real horror story is not what health-care reform will bring. It's what's already happening.
There has been a lot of talk about the 47 million Americans who do not have health insurance. But health-care reform is just as important to the majority of Americans who have health insurance now. Absent reform, the price of an average family's insurance will nearly double over the next decade—to $25,000 from $13,000.
No less troubling are the stories I hear from CEOs, entrepreneurs and workers. Rising health-care costs are crushing American companies—particularly small businesses that are the source of much of our economic vitality.
In 1960, U.S. firms spent 1.2% of their payroll on health insurance. In 2006, they spent 9.9%. Costs rising at this rate are unsustainable and put U.S. firms at a competitive disadvantage to foreign companies that almost universally have lighter health-care burdens. It also destroys U.S. jobs.
Last month, the nonpartisan Rand Corporation released a study that looked at 37 industries from 1987 to 2005 and concluded that excess health-care costs were causing significant job losses as well as revenue and output losses for many American industries. After controlling for other factors, sectors with the highest percentage of employer-sponsored health care (such as the automotive industry) had worse performances than industries in which employer health coverage is uncommon.
These escalating costs have been passed on to the middle class in the form of higher prices and flat wages. Money that would have gone to raises has instead been spent on health-care premiums that have doubled over the past nine years.
The cost pressure is particularly acute for small businesses, which, on average, pay 18% more per worker than large firms for the same health-insurance policies. They pay more because they have a smaller risk pool and have to absorb higher broker fees and administrative costs per worker. As a result, many small businesses don't offer health coverage. Just 49% of firms with three to nine workers and 78% of firms with 10 to 24 workers offered health plans in 2008, while 99% of firms with over 200 workers did.
It's hard to know how much health-care costs affect small businesses. But it is clear that rising costs don't help them. In the third quarter of 2008, half of all private-sector job losses occurred in companies with fewer than 20 employees.
The pernicious price of runaway health-care costs also has a dampening effect on entrepreneurship.
How many aspiring owners of businesses are locked in jobs they don't like for fear that striking out on their own would cause them to lose their health insurance? The Small Business Majority, a national advocacy group, estimates there are as many as 1.6 million.
In the short term, health-care costs pose a major problem for companies and their employees. In the medium and long-term, these costs pose serious challenges to our economy. This year, health-care expenditures are expected to account for about 18% of our GDP. Without reform, that share is projected to rise to 28% in 2030 and to 34% in 2040. When one out of every three dollars is spent on health care, we will face a situation in which companies can no longer provide insurance. At the same time, if we don't address rising federal health-care costs, we will likely face either much higher taxes or unsustainable deficits that could spike interest rates and threaten capital formation.
Neither option is a future any of us wants to contemplate.
It is clear that demographic and structural trends are leading us toward worse health care and higher costs for employers, workers and governments. But America has a chance to avoid that fate. President Obama has articulated three broad criteria for reform. Reduce costs, protect Americans' choice of doctors and insurance plans, and assure quality and affordable health care for any American who wants it.
The bills working through Congress are moving in the right direction, and despite some setbacks, this nation is closer to fundamental health-care reform than we have ever been.
We must keep moving forward. We are in a twilight period, that precious moment before a problem becomes a crisis. What we do in the coming months will play a big role in determining America's competitiveness and prosperity for decades to come. There is a path toward a more sustainable and prosperous future for America. It's imperative that we take it. The alternative is frightening.
Mr. Locke is U.S. secretary of Commerce.
The most valuable commodity I know of is information, wouldn't you agree?
Michael Douglas
http://thepoliticoinsider.blogspot.com/
Here's One
The elderly who are on Medicare will receive rationed health care if we do not figure out how to lower the cost of health care.
Ecclesiastes 5:18-19
18 Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot.
19 Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is the gift of God.
The most valuable commodity I know of is information, wouldn't you agree?
Michael Douglas
http://thepoliticoinsider.blogspot.com/
LOL
This is a classic case of, "Who are you going to believe the lying Democrat who tell you the truth or the truth telling Repugblican who is telling you a lie."
**********************************************
Betsy McCaughey's Ideas Called "Hyperbolic... Dangerous" By Jon Stewart (VIDEO)
Part one
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-20-2009/betsy-mccaughey-pt-...
Part two
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-17-2009/exclusive---betsy-m...
Part three
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-17-2009/exclusive---betsy-m...
The most valuable commodity I know of is information, wouldn't you agree?
Michael Douglas
Wow!!
I can't believe that we are trying to figure out what Obama did wrong on this health care debate... what a way to sink your own ship.
Another straw man
Can you imagine a doctor trying to convince grandma who is paying his bills every time she come to the doctor to die off.
Do the math for the doctor. Grandma goes to the doctor six times a month & a youngster sees the doctor every once in a while, which person would the doctor make more money from? Grand ma or the youngster?
If there were death panels, what makes you think a doctor would do the inhuman thing & talk grandma into cutting his income? I am sure there are better ways to lower costs than convincing grandma to drop dead.
*********************************************
Let's Be Honest About Death Counseling
by Charles Krauthammer (more by this author)
Posted 08/21/2009 ET
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.
What do you think such a chat would be like? Do you think the doctor will go on and on about the fantastic new million-dollar high-tech gizmo that can prolong the patient's otherwise hopeless condition for another six months? Or do you think he's going to talk about -- as the bill specifically spells out -- hospice care and palliative care and other ways of letting go of life?
No, say the defenders. It's just that we want the doctors to talk to you about putting in place a living will and other such instruments. Really? Then consider the actual efficacy of a living will. When you are old, infirm and lying in the ICU with pseudomonas pneumonia and deciding whether to (a) go through the long antibiotic treatment or (b) allow what used to be called "the old man's friend" to take you away, the doctor will ask you at that time what you want for yourself -- no matter what piece of paper you signed five years ago.
You are told constantly how very important it is to write your living will years in advance. But the relevant question is what you desire at the end -- when facing death -- not what you felt sometime in the past when you were hale and hearty and sitting in your lawyer's office barely able to contemplate a life of pain and diminishment.
Well, as pain and diminishment enter your life as you age, your calculations change and your tolerance for suffering increases. In the ICU, you might have a new way of looking at things.
My own living will, which I have always considered more a literary than legal document, basically says: "I've had some good innings, thank you. If I have anything so much as a hangnail, pull the plug." I've never taken it terribly seriously because unless I'm comatose or demented, they're going to ask me at the time whether or not I want to be resuscitated if I go into cardiac arrest. The paper I signed years ago will mean nothing.
And if I'm totally out of it, my family will decide, with little or no reference to my living will. Why? I'll give you an example. When my father was dying, my mother and brother and I had to decide how much treatment to pursue. What was a better way to ascertain my father's wishes: What he checked off on a form one fine summer's day years before being stricken; or what we, who had known him intimately for decades, thought he would want? The answer is obvious.
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 you in a certain direction, toward the corner of the sick room where stands a ghostly figure, scythe in hand, offering release.
Dupes Are Us?
Personally, I'm happy with the government staying out of areas where they don't have to be involved in or keeping a low profile if that's practical. However, when we're talking about health care, it's an entirely different type of service than regular business transactions. Normal conditions of supply and demand and price elasticity just don't exist when your parents are diagnosed with cancer or your kids get into a bad car accident. It truly is a matter of life and death and we will pay. Good quality health care is worth paying for, I don't have a problem with that.
There are those who want too much government and admire Cuba, and then there are those who seem to believe that whatever the problem, less government and regulation is always the answer and if we could just do away with government altogether, we could create a Libertarian utopia. Between these extremes is the practical reality most of us deal with. Wherever there are human beings and society there is some type of social organization. That's not a problem it's a reality. A democratic republic is as good a system as anyone has devised. We are always going to have to balance the twin goals of protecting individual liberty and also promoting the general welfare and common good of the people. These goals are not enemies. They are more like our two legs and when we use them together we can best move forward.
The people have chosen to have the state involved in medicine from the ground up. We don't just let anyone call themselves an MD and practice medicine like we let anyone call themselves a pastor and practice religion. We require physicians to go to accredited medical schools and obtain certification from the state to be in the field. Each state has a medical board that has the power to regulate physicians and pull their license if necessary. We only allow accredited doctors the authority to prescribe and administer regulated prescription medicines. The approval of prescription medicines and the protection of their patents is also regulated by the government through the Food and Drug Administration. This is all reasonable and justified. People want to trust that the care their family receives and the the medicines they consume are safe and effective. Without regulations it's just a fact that snake oil salesmen and quack doctors abound. However, if the goal of the people is to lower medical costs and increase the supply of health care goods and services, maybe we have gone too far and allowed MD's a bit more of a monopoly than is reasonable. There are probably a lot of procedures that could be safely performed by registered nurses at lower costs than physicians. I think there are many routine prescriptions that could be filled by RN's at a lower cost as well. The AMA and the doctors lobby jealously guard against this cost savings. The FDA and their big corporate pharmacy partners also have gone too far in restricting supply and keeping costs excessively high for consumers. There is no reason, other than to protect these corporations from the pressure of lower cost choices for consumers, to prohibit the importation of medicines from Canada or the European Union. They have a monopoly and naturally they want to defend it. The fact that Americans have allowed themselves to be financial dupes to this monopoly speaks to the drastically unwarranted influence the medical-pharmaceutical complex has been able to exercise over our Congress. Most opponents of health care reform are mindlessly falling for their propaganda at our own expense.
I hope that we can do a better job as consumers. As consumers of medicine we cannot expect the people taking our money to make sure we get a fair deal. Have you watched TV lately and seen the glut of advertisements for prescriptions meds? I tell you, they aren't paying for those ads out of concern for what's best for us! As citizens in a democracy we cannot expect our representatives to look out for our best interest if their re-election campaign is being funded by the medical-pharmacy-insurance lobby. This nonsense about generating fear of a 'government takeover' of health care is simply the voice of those currently gaming the system and taking more than they deserve who want to make sure there's no referee on the horizon who might limit their take. We have an intelligent and sincere president now who is working to take at least some steps to move our system into balance and have something in place that looks out for us as Americans. He deserves our support.
The Death Book for Veterans
By JIM TOWEY
If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.
Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated "Your Life, Your Choices."
Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.
"Your Life, Your Choices" presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political "push poll." For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be "not worth living."
The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to "shake the blues." There is a section which provocatively asks, "Have you ever heard anyone say, 'If I'm a vegetable, pull the plug'?" There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as "I can no longer contribute to my family's well being," "I am a severe financial burden on my family" and that the vet's situation "causes severe emotional burden for my family."
When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?
One can only imagine a soldier surviving the war in Iraq and returning without all of his limbs only to encounter a veteran's health-care system that seems intent on his surrender.
I was not surprised to learn that the VA panel of experts that sought to update "Your Life, Your Choices" between 2007-2008 did not include any representatives of faith groups or disability rights advocates. And as you might guess, only one organization was listed in the new version as a resource on advance directives: the Hemlock Society (now euphemistically known as "Compassion and Choices").
This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable. Worse, a July 2009 VA directive instructs its primary care physicians to raise advance care planning with all VA patients and to refer them to "Your Life, Your Choices." Not just those of advanced age and debilitated condition—all patients. America's 24 million veterans deserve better.
Many years ago I created an advance care planning document called "Five Wishes" that is today the most widely used living will in America, with 13 million copies in national circulation. Unlike the VA's document, this one does not contain the standard bias to withdraw or withhold medical care. It meets the legal requirements of at least 43 states, and it runs exactly 12 pages.
After a decade of observing end-of-life discussions, I can attest to the great fear that many patients have, particularly those with few family members and financial resources. I lived and worked in an AIDS home in the mid-1980s and saw first-hand how the dying wanted more than health care—they wanted someone to care.
If President Obama is sincere in stating that he is not trying to cut costs by pressuring the disabled to forgo critical care, one good way to show that commitment is to walk two blocks from the Oval Office and pull the plug on "Your Life, Your Choices." He should make sure in the future that VA decisions are guided by values that treat the lives of our veterans as gifts, not burdens.
—Mr. Towey, president of Saint Vincent College, was director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives (2002-2006) and founder of the nonprofit Aging with Dignity.
Let's play compare lies
Black Cell:The Repubs are finally trying to use factcheck.org as a source.
Keep Your Insurance? Not Everyone.
Obama's claim depends on what employers would likely do under several legislative scenarios
http://factcheck.org/2009/08/keep-your-insurance-not-everyone/
Black Cell: I guess they are hoping their supporters miss the Seven Falsehood link at fact check.
Seven Falsehoods About Health Care
Big myths about the current debate
August 14, 2009
http://factcheck.org/2009/08/seven-falsehoods-about-health-care/
No Quarter
Compromising with Republicans on health care is like compromising with the Klan on civil rights
I know
We are whipping on those repugnant conservatives. I can tell by Ru$h Limbaugh's response to Obama's mild injection of religion.
I have had an agenda since I first came to this site, & that is to defeat the double talking conservatives, & we are now on the verge of doing that.
I can testify to the fact that life isn't easy. The same is true about defeating those who want to dismantle our federal government. They have already built a straw man for us with their lies; all we have to do is play defense by using our strong points with redundancy, & playing offense by encouraging the right leaders, such as religious leaders on the right & the left to get involved with this debate. What it does is neutralize the potty mouth malcontents on the right.
Our tent is getting larger, because the extremely radical conservatives like Rush Limbaugh are in control of the Republican Party, & he is trying to rule them with an iron fist.
The Democratic Party is becoming a more diverse party, while the Republic.. Party is becoming a more like third world republic with their malcontent for any other logic but conservatism.
No one wants to join a party that is filled with people who think one way, American are too diverse & independent to accept one ideology.
The Repugs claim that the Democrats can beat them in a debate over the issue, yet the pit bulls don't allow nothing but poodles in their arena's to make that points while they cry liberal bias because they get their asses kicked in the real arena of ideas.
They are going to be totally demoralized after we defeat them on this health care debate, & it should be our agenda to blame their leaders for creating those beautiful straw men to help us tear them down.
What's Hot
We have opened a verbal wound around the eye of our opponent, It is now time to use redundancy to verbally knock out the right wing.
Fighting Dems also have to make sure they speak with clarity, because most of what we are trying to convey can easily be confusing.
Is health care reform a moral obligation?
Aug. 19: Playbook: Rev. Jim Wallis discusses whether portraying health care reform as a moral issue may encourage more people to accept President Barack Obama's reform plans.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/32483605#32483605
Reading the fine print on 'grassroots' groups
Aug. 19: Rachel Maddow reviews astroturf efforts to combat changes in health care and energy policy. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, talks about the latest in the health care reform fight.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/32484876#32484876
Black Cell:This story should be told to as many Americans who is willing to listen.
Anti-healthcare lobbyists duped us, say Katie Brickell and Kate Spall
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6795466.ece
Free-Market Death Panels
August 18, 2009
By Froma Harrop
"Death panels"? I'll tell you about death panels. My husband faced one some years ago, and it didn't involve any government bureaucrat. It was run by our private insurer, the sort of corporate entity that foes of health care reform say will give you anything you want.
My husband was diagnosed with liver cancer. We were "insured" by United Healthcare. The deal was as follows: You had to use doctors on its list, but if you needed specialized care outside the network, United's health-maintenance organization would pay for it. Fair enough.
A liver expert within the network said point blank that for my husband's case, there was but one place to go, a specialized chemotherapy program at Deaconess Hospital in Boston. Fortunately, it was only 50 minutes away.
But United Healthcare refused to pay for it. Instead, it directed us to a small, local hospital unequipped to deal with this kind of cancer. Our liver specialist warned, "Don't waste your time."
We naively tried to go through United Healthcare's appeals process. We would call the number and speak to a handler who said our case would be reconsidered. Days later, a one-sentence letter would arrive by slow mail saying that we were being denied, but call this number to challenge the verdict.
Around and around we went. We could never speak to anyone making the decisions. No one would even talk to our doctor, who at one point whispered to us, "Mortgage the house."
I became convinced that the insurance company was trying to run out the clock on my husband's life. Had it issued an outright "no," we would have gone to Deaconess, paid for the care ourselves and fought the insurer later. But it always pretended that a possible "yes" could be around the corner.
Having already lost precious time confronting this cancer, we simply rushed to Deaconess. On hearing the story, the head of the chemo program told us: "HMOs don't care whether you live or die. They just want to save money."
My husband underwent the arduous chemo. Meanwhile, powerful people were pulling strings for us with the insurer. Upon learning we had "connections," United Healthcare finally said it would pay.
The cancer came back. This treatment was never a sure thing, but I often wonder how much the delay affected the outcome.
An ex-Marine, my husband was a tough customer. Toward the end, he said to me, "You know, fighting the insurance company was worse than fighting the cancer."
A year after my husband died, I was still receiving medical bills for some of the treatment that United Healthcare had agreed to cover. Oh, they eventually paid. The game is to break you down.
An economic note: In 2006, William "Dollar Bill" McGuire, CEO of parent-company UnitedHealth Group, walked off with a $1.1 billion golden parachute (on top of the $500 million he had already raked in) -- though he had to return some of it in an options backdating scandal.
What we wouldn't have done to have traded Dollar Bill's minions for a government bureaucrat. The bureaucrat would have given a simple "yes" or "no" based on official guidelines. He or she would have had no personal stake in denying you care.
By the way, a government-run program doesn't tell you what treatments you may or may not have. It tells you what the taxpayers will subsidize. You are free to go out with your own money and buy whatever you want. We would have been prepared to do that. Instead, we got tied up in a private insurer's web of tricks.
Believe me, "death panels" already exist, and they have nothing to do with the government.
checkTextResizerCookie('article_body');
fharrop@projo.com
Copyright 2009, Creators Syndicate Inc.
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/08/18/free-market_death_p... at August 20, 2009 - 05:51:23 PM CD
ROTFLMAO!!
August 19, 2009
Democrats Seem Set to Go It Alone on a Health Bill
By CARL HULSE and JEFF ZELENY
BOOM!!
Time to get down and boogie just for a moment before we plunge into the fray.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl9IoIY7ghY
by AntonBursch
The Power of God
The religious leaders from the right & the left would put an end to the potty mouth, double talking Dixiecrats.
What's Hot
Black Cell: This one should be played with redundancy on the top of the hour news on Repug talk radio.
Barney Frank to Protester: "On what planet do you spend most of your time?"
http://www.politico.com/singletitlevideo.html?bcpid=1155201977&bctid=345...
Black: Faux allows them to tell lie after lie, We have to keep hammering away at them & we will eventually have a break through; this is still a battle for independents & moderate Republicans.
Republicans Roy Blunt and Mark Kirk Mislead on Health Care
digg stumble reddit del.ico.us
Read More: 2010 Senate, Health Care Reform, Il-Sen, Mark Kirk, Mo-Sen, Republican Lies, Roy Blunt, Politics News
{Originally posted at my blog Senate Guru.}
There are two current Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives who are presently running for seats in the U.S. Senate, Missouri's Roy Blunt and Illinois' Mark Kirk. Both have been telling easy-to-debunk lies in the health care debate.
First, friend of all corporate lobbyists Roy Blunt tries to personalize the debate:
"I'm 59," Mr. Blunt said last week during a meeting with Post-Dispatch reporters and editors. "In either Canada or Great Britain, if I broke my hip, I couldn't get it replaced."
Bill Maher on the GOP 'miniverse'
Aug. 18: HBO's "Real Time" host Bill Maher joins Rachel Maddow to discuss new poll results: Republicans really believe health care reform myths, and that the disagreements actually start with the facts.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/32469231#32469231
This is what we are up against
Faux News', Greta Van Susteren playing a cat vs. a dog, a rooster vs. a hen, or a disabled midget in a fight with a tall man. Did she use to be a Democrat? Yea, but she can't survive on Faux without kissing the Repug ring.
http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=011008&streamingFormat=...
Marc Lamont plays a poodle in a fight with the pit bull Bill O'Silly.
http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=011008&streamingFormat=...
I use to get used like a pawn like Lamont did when I began debating Repugs on talk radio. But, when I focused on researching & preparing for the debate by knowing what to expect I began to win, & they started unofficially banning me from their shows.
It is almost foolish to attempt to debate race with Repugs when the racism is subtle.
Not only that, they are using our bashing of Bu$h to excuse their lies.The Bu$h administration was a disaster, he gave us this recession, repugs supported running up the deficit for the Iraqi people, while they smear the same logic for the American people, we still haven't found the WMD's.
Redneck Rampage
Do these teabagging, town hall disrupting rednecks with five teeth really believe they're going to be better off buying their own private health insurance or obtaining it through their high-skilled jobs? We are trying to do something to help the middle class and the working poor and many of them are so conditioned by Fox News and right wing radio they start slobbering when Rush rings a bell.
Editor's note: Uwe Reinhardt is James Madison professor of political economy at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. From 1986 to 1995 he served as a commissioner on the Physician Payment Review Committee, established in 1986 by Congress to advise it on issues related to the payment of physicians.
Uwe Reinhardt says health costs are rising at unsustainable pace, gobbling up middle-class incomes.
Uwe Reinhardt says health costs are rising at unsustainable pace, gobbling up middle-class incomes.
(CNN) -- Watching the angry outbursts at town hall meetings on health reform and the continuing public ambivalence about current efforts to reform our health system almost makes me wish that the reform effort fails.
Perhaps Americans need to be taught a basic lesson on the economics of employment-based health insurance before they will feel as smugly secure with it as they do now and before they will stop nitpicking health-reform efforts to death over this or that detail.
And America's currently insured middle class will be increasingly desperate if health reform fails. Millions more such families will see their take-home pay shrink. Millions will lose their employment-based insurance, especially in medium and small-sized firms. And millions will find themselves inexorably priced out of health care as we know it.
Milliman Inc., an employee benefits consulting firm, publishes annually its Milliman Medical Index on the total health spending by or for a typical American family of four with private health insurance. The index totals the family's out-of-pocket spending for health care plus the contribution employers and employees make to that family's job-related health insurance coverage.
The Milliman Medical Index stood at $8,414 in 2001. It had risen to $16,700 by 2009. It is likely to rise to $18,000 by next year. That is more than a doubling of costs in the span of a decade!
Since 2005, the index has grown at an average annual compound rate of 8.4 percent. Suppose we make it 8 percent for the coming decade. Then today's $16,700 will have grown to slightly over $36,000 by 2019.
Economists are convinced that this $36,000 would come virtually all out of the financial hides of employees, even if the employer pretended to be paying, say, 80 percent of the employment-based health insurance premiums. In the succinct words of the late United Automobile Worker Union leader Douglas Fraser:
"Before you start weeping for the auto companies and all they pay for medical insurance, let me tell you how the system works. All company bargainers worth their salt keep their eye on the total labor unit cost, and when they pay an admittedly horrendous amount for health care, that's money that can't be spent for higher [cash] wages or higher pensions or other fringe benefits. So we directly, the union and its members, feel the costs of the health care system." ("A National Health Policy Debate," Dartmouth Medical School Alumni Magazine, Summer 1989: 30)
Unfortunately, very few rank-and-file workers appreciate this fact. Aside from their still modest out-of-pocket payments and contributions to employment-based insurance premiums, most employees seem sincerely to believe that the bulk of their family's health care is basically paid for by "the company," which is why so few members of the middle class have ever been much interested in controlling health spending in this country.
The price for that indifference will be high. If efforts at better cost containment fail once again, and health care costs rise to $36,000 on average for a typical American family of four under age 65 -- as almost surely it would -- that $36,000 will be borne entirely by the family. That family's disposable income would be much higher if the growth of future health spending was better controlled. And, as noted, many smaller firms will stop altogether providing job-based health insurance.
It would be a major problem for families with an income of less than $100,000 a year. In 2007, only about 25 percent of American families had a money income of $100,000 or more. Close to 60 percent had family incomes of less than $75,000.
Here it must be remembered that the wages and salaries of the solid American middle class have been relatively stagnant in recent years and are likely to remain so for the next decade. Unemployment is not likely to fall significantly soon, regardless of what stock prices do on Wall Street. Indeed, often stock prices rise as firms lay off workers to drive up profits through leaner payrolls.
This prospect -- relatively stagnant family incomes combined with family health-care costs that double every decade -- is what America's middle class should contemplate as it thinks about the imperative of health reform.
It is a pity that this central issue seems to have been shoved aside by mendacious distortions from Sarah Palin, Betsy McCaughey, Rush Limbaugh and other extremist commentators seeking to frighten Americans with their prattle about "death panels" and "pulling plugs on granny" that no bill before Congress even remotely envisions.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/18/rei...tion/index.html
http://www.bartcop.com/tom-tea-party.jpg
The Political Circus : Triple Play
Guano Apes - You Can't stop me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfxlzq2Nfno
Selina Herrero- You Can´t Stop Me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzA3MPjioaA
Jada Kiss "Can't Stop Me"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SL4hkvVTwk
... Repugs!!
=)