Healthcare Reform Thread II

[Guynemer]

but I think the consumer will always have major problems with having enough information to make an intelligent decision about their care and actually making calm, rational decisions in the midst of a medical problem.

Christ on a crutch, Arrian. Americans have major problems making calm, rational decisions in the midst of their morning commute, or drinking a cup of coffee, or reading the Sunday paper.

In the midst of a medical problem, Americans are ****ing bat**** howling at the moon insane.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

We're saved!

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-biden18-2009aug18,0,2588210.story

[Kidlicious]

Well, maybe not government doing it. But it needs to be mandated, like car insurance.

20 yearolds would 'risk it' and end up causing more inefficiency by not being covered overall.

JM

Just make it free and do away with insurance all together.

[DinoDoc]

There's no such thing as free, Kid.

[Kidlicious]

There's no such thing as free, Kid.

There is such a thing as not having to pay for some *******s to sit behind a desk and collect insurance money.

[Darius871]

Kiddie's back!

[Drake Tungsten]

WaPo

Bad-News Budget
Wanted: An Obama plan for fiscal sustainability.

NO ONE LIKES to be the bearer of bad news -- especially when it could threaten your multibillion-dollar health-care reform bill. And so the Obama administration did not exactly rush to publish yesterday's required mid-session update to its federal budget estimates of last February. Still, once the numbers finally emerged in the dog days of August, they retained the power to stun: Instead of a cumulative $7.1 trillion deficit over the next decade, the White House now projects a $9 trillion deficit. These figures imply average annual budget deficits greater than 4 percent of gross domestic product through fiscal 2019, a rate of debt accumulation faster than projected GDP growth. This is not a sustainable fiscal path.

The extra $1.9 trillion in red ink mainly reflects the Office of Management and Budget's adoption of more realistic -- that is, more pessimistic -- estimates of economic growth and unemployment. White House officials protest that their original, rosier numbers made sense at the time; actually, plenty of forecasters, including those at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, made more accurate calls. This situation was foreseeable and should have been acknowledged earlier.

The administration has a point when it argues, as budget director Peter Orszag did yesterday, that it inherited a terrible recession as well as a number of unpaid-for programs (prescription drugs, two wars) and tax cuts from the Bush administration. Mr. Orszag noted that more than half of the $9 trillion in projected borrowing reflects the impact of past policies. Almost two-thirds of the current fiscal year's $1.6 trillion deficit -- a postwar record 11.2 percent of GDP -- is attributable to the $700 billion financial sector bailout passed last October, and what has been spent so far under the $787 billion counter-recession stimulus package adopted in February. Both were unavoidable. Nor is this the time to slam fiscal policy into reverse; the economic recovery is too fragile.

Still, the Bush administration's irresponsibility notwithstanding, it is time to stop crying "we inherited it." The Obama administration needs its own clear, credible plan for restoring fiscal sustainability once the worst of the recession has run its course. Unless it can at least limit the growth in debt to the growth of the economy, investors will gradually lose faith in Treasury obligations, increasing the government's borrowing costs -- and turning a deficit crunch into a deficit spiral. In the worst case, unchecked debt could trigger a return to the double-digit inflation and interest rates of the late 1970s, only this time with massive U.S. obligations to foreign lenders such as China and Japan.

Mr. Orszag promised that next year's budget will include the proposed solutions that the administration has so far declined to articulate. Meanwhile, he said, it will continue pushing pay-as-you-go budget legislation. This is weak reassurance, since the administration's version of pay-go exempts the extension of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, patches for the alternative minimum tax and physician payment reforms under Medicare -- that is, most of the policies the administration complains about inheriting. The fact is that the administration supports the continuation of the prescription drug benefits -- which Democrats also advocated -- and continuation of the Bush tax cuts for 95 percent of taxpayers.

The new deficit numbers make it even more urgent that any health-care reform not only be fully paid for and certifiably budget-neutral in the eyes of independent analysts such as the CBO but also promise meaningful reductions in the cost growth of health care. So far, none of the plans under discussion measure up. The time is fast approaching for the president and Congress to face that reality, too.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/25/AR2009082502734.html

Time to scrap ObamaCare and work on a sane alternative.

[Drake Tungsten]

The administration's plan will impose mandates that employers provide coverage, mandates that individuals obtain coverage, and mandates about the form this coverage will have to take. These will remove the freedom to choose one's health-insurance plan, because government, in its effort to correct perceived inequities, will dictate which health-care services must be covered and which health-care providers must be used.

The proposed unprecedented intrusion of government into private markets will have adverse effects on people with insurance in both the short and the long run.

The mandates will lead to large increases in the cost of health insurance for everyone. Research studies have shown that as people become insured, especially under a health plan that offers broad coverage and low copayments, they consume more health-care services. The best estimates indicate that each newly insured person will approximately double his or her health spending.

With 30 million to 40 million newly insured persons under the administration's plan, aggregate health-care demand will increase significantly. But when demand expands prices increase. We estimate that the higher demand will increase health insurance premiums for the typical family plan by about 10%. Because an employer-sponsored family insurance plan cost $12,680 in 2008, this translates into an increase of about $1,200 in the typical annual premium.

The mandates will also have adverse additional longer-run consequences. According to provisions in both House and Senate bills, mandated plans must have low copayments and provide coverage of health-care services that is at least equal in scope to a typical, current employer-sponsored plan. But these are the very flaws that are responsible for high and rising health-care costs, flaws that stem directly from the misguided tax exclusion for and the extensive state regulation of health insurance. By locking in these flaws, the mandates will inhibit precisely the innovation needed to reform U.S. health care. Ultimately, as government seeks to rein in costs, it will curtail access to health-care services by erecting barriers between patient and health-care provider. ...

Comprehensive, low-deductible, low-copayment insurance has brought us to where we are today. The administration's plan to expand and lock-in this flawed paradigm will ultimately defeat the goal of making health services more affordable for everyone. Fortunately, there are other options, many of which have appeared on these pages. These include policies that encourage more cost-conscious health-care choices, greater competition among health insurers, and reduce the practice of defensive medicine.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204488304574426872264215790.html

We need smarter leaders.

[Kuciwalker]

The administration has a point when it argues, as budget director Peter Orszag did yesterday, that it inherited a terrible recession as well as a number of unpaid-for programs (prescription drugs, two wars) and tax cuts from the Bush administration. Mr. Orszag noted that more than half of the $9 trillion in projected borrowing reflects the impact of past policies.

Oh, so he's only increased the deficit by a little under 2x?

[SlowwHand]

Cash For Clunkers was a wild success. Let's let him oversee our health care. No, I'm joking.

[Drake Tungsten]

Senate panel rejects health ‘public option’

WASHINGTON - In a long-anticipated showdown, liberal Democrats twice failed on Tuesday to inject a government-run insurance option into sweeping health care legislation taking shape in the Senate, despite bipartisan agreement that private insurers must change their ways.

The two votes marked a victory for Montana Democrat Max Baucus, the Senate Finance Committee chairman, who is hoping to push his middle-of-the-road measure through the panel by week's end. It also kept alive the possibility that at least one Republican may yet swing behind the overhaul, a key goal of both Baucus and the White House.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33069014/ns/politics-health_care_reform/

Your move, Pelosi. Please stick to your guns.

[Drake Tungsten]

Second public option also vote fails

In today's Senate Finance Committee mark-up, the public option amendment introduced by Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer was defeated by a 10-13 vote.

Democratic Sens. Baucus, Conrad, and Lincoln voted no, joining all Republicans.

We don't expect any more public option votes in committee.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/09/29/2083042.aspx

[Imran Siddiqui]

[Drake Tungsten]

The public option just won't die...

Health care reform: Privately, Barack Obama strongly backs public option

Despite months of seeming ambivalence about creating a government health insurance plan, the Obama White House has launched an intensifying behind-the-scenes campaign to get divided Senate Democrats to take up some version of the idea in the weeks just ahead.

President Barack Obama has long advocated a so-called public option, while at the same time repeatedly expressing openness to other ways to offer consumers a potentially more affordable alternative to health plans sold by private insurers.

But now, senior administration officials are holding private meetings almost daily at the Capitol with senior Democratic staff to discuss ways to include a version of the public plan in the health care bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., plans to bring to the Senate floor later this month, according to senior Democratic congressional aides. ...

The White House initiative, unfolding largely out of public view, follows months in which the president appeared to defer to senior lawmakers on Capitol Hill as they labored to put together gargantuan health care bills.

It also marks a critical test of Obama's command of the inside game in Washington in which deals are struck behind closed doors and wavering lawmakers are cajoled and pressured into supporting major legislation.

"The challenge is to go to the (Senate) floor, hold the deal," said Steve Elmendorf, a lobbyist who was chief of staff to former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt. But "they are more involved than people think. They have a plan and a strategy, and they know what they want to get and they work with people to get it." ...

No issue has proved more divisive than the proposal to create a new national insurance plan operated by the federal government and offered to some consumers as an alternative to private insurance.

Though favored by liberals as the best protection for consumers from high premiums charged by commercial insurers, a government plan is still viewed warily by many conservative Democrats and nearly all Republicans.

Just recently, two proposals to create a national government plan were defeated in the Finance Committee when Republicans and conservative Democrats voted against them.

While those votes were viewed by some as the death knell of the public option, the White House and its congressional allies are under heavy pressure from the Democratic Party's liberal base to breathe life back into it.

That has Democratic leaders looking for ways to insert some form of the concept into a Senate bill without jeopardizing centrist support.

To that end, Obama is lavishing attention on moderate lawmakers while he continues to talk up the public option.

He has met repeatedly in private with Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, who has floated a proposal to allow states to set up government plans as a fallback if commercial insurers do not control premiums.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-tc-nw-healthcare-obama-1003-oct04,0,4247371,full.story

[DinoDoc]

The public option just won't die...

It's like night of the living dead.