Healthcare Reform Thread II

[Kidlicious]

Who's "throwing them off," BC? I merely advocate that any attempts to help them be made with real money and not Uncle Wu's Friendly Loans. The moment we cure our current fiscal dysentery, I'll be all for it. If we don't...I've said something like this before, I know, but what's the quality of health care in Zimbabwe?

You should know how it works in America. As soon as we balance the budget the republicans take over and cut taxes for the rich. The deficit is reality.

[Kidlicious]

The problem with this bill is it leaves intact the problem with American health care, private insurance companies. One of the main reasons American manufacturing (which is still quite considerable) has largely taken a hike out of the country is that it cannot afford to pay health insurance. One sector of the capitalist class is bleeding the rest of the class dry, and the Feds just made it mandatory.

Actually the insurance companies maybe the only ones required to make sacrifices. You don't hear the other special interests complaining do you?

[HalfLotus]

Actually the insurance companies maybe the only ones required to make sacrifices.

Insurance companies wrote this bill, you clown.

[Hauldren Collider]

err...

I doubt that...

[Hauldren Collider]

You should know how it works in America. As soon as we balance the budget the republicans take over and cut taxes for the rich. The deficit is reality.

Um...
So...
In terms of balancing the budget, what do you call this and the stimulus packages?

[MrFun]

Isn't one of the concerns with this unhealth care bill is that insurance companies will BENEFIT from this at the expense of their customers?

[Hauldren Collider]

Oh no, no one thinks anyone might benefit from this.

[Elok]

You should know how it works in America. As soon as we balance the budget the republicans take over and cut taxes for the rich. The deficit is reality.

Let me get this right: are you saying, in effect, "even if we fixed the problem somebody else would wreck it again, so let's not fix the problem?" Is that the shape of it?

[Drake Tungsten]

With health bill, Obama has sown the seeds of a budget crisis

We are so ****ed.

[Solomwi]

I love that Christian Kid is every bit as entertaining as Commie Kid.

[Drake Tungsten]

Health premiums could rise 17 pct for young adults

By CARLA K. JOHNSON (AP) – 19 hours ago

CHICAGO — Under the health care overhaul, young adults who buy their own insurance will carry a heavier burden of the medical costs of older Americans — a shift expected to raise insurance premiums for young people when the plan takes full effect.

Beginning in 2014, most Americans will be required to buy insurance or pay a tax penalty. That's when premiums for young adults seeking coverage on the individual market would likely climb by 17 percent on average, or roughly $42 a month, according to an analysis of the plan conducted for The Associated Press. The analysis did not factor in tax credits to help offset the increase.

The higher costs will pinch many people in their 20s and early 30s who are struggling to start or advance their careers with the highest unemployment rate in 26 years.

Consider 24-year-old Nils Higdon. The self-employed percussionist and part-time teacher in Chicago pays $140 each month for health insurance. But he's healthy and so far hasn't needed it.

The law relies on Higdon and other young adults to shoulder more of the financial load in new health insurance risk pools. So under the new system, Higdon could expect to pay $300 to $500 a year more. Depending on his income, he might also qualify for tax credits.

At issue is the insurance industry's practice of charging more for older customers, who are the costliest to insure. The new law restricts how much insurers can raise premium costs based on age alone.

Insurers typically charge six or seven times as much to older customers as to younger ones in states with no restrictions. The new law limits the ratio to 3-to-1, meaning a 50-year-old could be charged only three times as much as a 20-year-old.

The rest will be shouldered by young people in the form of higher premiums.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hLAMW_KTqY_JVMQF-gNn3O0_uUcQD9EOIBQO0

God, I really despise my moronic peers.

[Drake Tungsten]

The Numbers Don't Lie
Howard Fineman

A Democratic senator I can't name, who reluctantly voted for the health-care bill out of loyalty to his party and his admiration for Barack Obama, privately complained to me that the measure was political folly, in part because of the way it goes into effect: some taxes first, most benefits later, and rate hikes by insurance companies in between.

Besides that, this Democrat said, people who already have coverage will feel threatened and resentful about helping to cover the uninsured—an emotion they will sanitize for the polltakers into a concern about federal spending and debt.

On the day the president signed into law the "fix-it" addendum to the massive health-care measure, two new polls show just how fearful and skeptical Americans are about the entire enterprise. If the numbers stay where they are—and it's not clear why they will change much between now and November—then the Democrats really are in danger of colossal losses at the polls.
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I say this even though I was one of those who always said that Obama would get a bill passed—and that, politically, he personally had no choice but to get it done if he wanted to have a successful presidency. But his reputation as a can-do guy was purchased at a very high political cost.

The first week of salesmanship by the Democrats and the president hasn't done any good. According to the new Rasmussen poll, only 41 percent of Americans think the law is "good for the country," compared with 50 percent who see it as "bad for the country." Last week the ratio was 41–49 percent. Sixty percent think the measure is "likely to increase the deficit"—also a figure unchanged from last week.

Some polling experts suggest Rasmussen's "house effect" tilts slightly conservative. But if you don't want to take Scott Rasmussen's word for it, you're not going to get much solace from Gallup, still the biggest brand in the business.

In Gallup's new poll, Americans by narrow margins agree that the new health-care law will improve coverage (44–40 percent) and the "overall health of Americans" (40–35 percent). In a way, it's astonishing that sizable minorities could disagree with those two statements, since everyone agrees the law will provide medical coverage to 32 million more Americans.

But that's where support, however ambivalent, ends. Americans think the law will harm the U.S. economy (44–34 percent), the overall quality of health care in the U.S. (55–29 percent), and the federal balance sheet (61–23 percent).

It's almost as bad when you ask voters how the law will affect them personally. There is lots of doubt and some considerable belief (or hope) that the new law won't affect them at all. But respondents who said the measure would affect them generally fear what that change would be. They think the measure would adversely affect "the health-care coverage you and your family receive" (34–24 percent); "the quality of health care you and your family receive" (35–21 percent); and the "costs you and your family pay for health care: (50–21 percent).

I know that the president and his advisers want to "pivot" to other topics—economic development, jobs, energy, and foreign policy. They're content, for now, to focus on solidifying their Democratic base. I'm sure that Obama, who plays a deep and patient game, figures that the country—including independents, who won it for him in 2008—will eventually come back, at least by 2012.

But he's dug himself a partisan hole with this big bill, and it'll be interesting to see him try to dig his way out.

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2010/03/30/the-numbers-don-t-lie.aspx

[Dinner]

Health care premiums are going to keep rising. Even without the health care reform bill premiums were rising 40% per year in many states and without a public option it will keep going up. The biggest fault of the bill is it does not create any new competition and leaves us at the mercy of the **** bag insurance companies who literally have little to no competition in 40% of the country. No competition = no market pressure and you can thank a **** bag Republican when costs shoot up at the same 40% per year.

[Hauldren Collider]

Republicans suggested the idea of buying insurance across state lines...

[Drake Tungsten]

you can thank a **** bag Republican when costs shoot up at the same 40% per year.

The Republicans had nothing to do with this piece of **** reform. None of them voted for it.