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Health Care Hell-Scare - Die-agnosis: Mur-DR
How a Bill is Made - Cap & Trade
Goldman Sachs to Jobless Jack
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Sack, Star Tribune
Health Care is the Matrix
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Joel Pett, Lexington Herald-Leader
Comments
I was almost convinced that the incremental approach
to health care was going to work this time. But I have since come to my senses. It is not. I believe now that the current "reforms" being discussed in Washington will do nothing to address the most important problem: controlling cost.
I am convinced more than ever that the only way to go is single payer health care. Right now there are several pieces of legislation in Congress that have not been "scored" by the CBO. It is time to do so. Sen. Sanders has S. 703 (American Health Security Act) and Rep. Conyers has proposed H.R. 676. They are not companion bills because they take slightly different approaches to doing the same thing: universal coverage and single payer.
H.R. 676 has over 50 sponsors in the House but S. 703 has no sponsors in the senate.
It is time to that the CBO score these bills!
S. 703 is based on the late Sen. Wellstone's bill S. 491.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
E pluribus single payer
Right you are, buckaroo!
Here is a most outstanding analysis from the best group around on single payer - and these guys should know.
Unfortunately, everything by President Obama to date has pretty much be a ruse, very reminiscent of the Clinton Administration, which recalls why so many dems turned away from them during the following congressional elections (although they always claim it was the voters' fault - perhaps, but I doubt it! Used to be a dem - now a Green!).
That tobacco bill - a farce. The cap-and-trade, yet another way to continue securitization and the CDS/credit derivatives scam (just research the ownership of Climate Exchange, PLC - holding company owner of all those climate exchanges here in North America, in Europe, and China - as well as ownership of ICE, ICE US Trust, Markit Group and DTCC), and this public option yet another ruse.
An interesting side note, the prez mentioned that "Skip" Gates (Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) was a close friend. Dr. Gates is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee, along with a number of Obama Administration appointed people such as Diana Farrell, Laura Tyson, Richard Holbrooke and so forth. Bretton Woods Committee is considered to be the most anti-worker, anti-union organization on the planet; plus it is the lobby group for the ultra-rich.
They won't kick out the lobbyists, the insurance companies
There is the fundamental problem. They won't simply enact a new system based on what objective experts are saying and instead are letting the insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies try to run the show.
I haven't watched the latest but it looks like another bad bill, like the prescription drug benefit is bound to emerge.
So, it's no wonder to me, with the for profit insurance companies in the mix their bill would be scored at $1 trillion dollars.
Then, it's clear there are many bought and paid for Senators, especially who will block legislation. Those people should be exposed.
The Republicans are insane. Oooo, scary socialism!
Have you noticed the rhetoric is on maximum and no one is talking about what is in these actual bills?
I haven't bothered to analyze what's going on because it's clearly something they will change at the last minute, per the request of lobbyists and also being driven by lobbyists at this point.
This is an incredible quote from a 1991 CBO report:
Link
I found it from this article Single Payer System Cost?
What it comes down to is profit? If we had a single payer system that would mean less profits and a much smaller private health insurance industry, big pharma industry and doctors particularly specialists would not be making big money. We rather keep those industries and doctors happy instead of providing health care, which would be much cheaper than our current system, to millions and millions of Americans.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
I think they should
just plain leave the entire system of private alone,let it exist, as is. Then pass H.R. 676 intact and let the two systems exist side by side. In other words, simply build the universal single payer system and completely ignore the private one, say sure thing, go right ahead but this is what we're doing and do it right.
Then about the only thing I can see in terms of regulation after that is require all MDs, hospitals, etc. to accept universal single payer patients, by law and they cannot discriminate against accepting patients if they are on Medicaid, Medicare, single payer.
Every study I've read what you're saying is true, the health sector is determined to keep their profits going and if anyone at all invests or monitors quarterly earnings, we all know how this entire sector has been touted as the great money maker going forward and you're right, they are determined to keep that going when it's clearly fundamentally flawed to make capitalistic profits off of sick people. That's the bottom line, it's immoral to make absurd profits off of sick people, plus it destroys an economy in the long run, they are literally like vampires.
Rebel, legislative analysis/cost post requests
one thing and frankly I have not done it because it's clear health care is such a mess, reading and writing about a 1000 page bill where those clauses, provisions will probably be struck out is such an exercise in adding to confusion...
but as this starts to gel, we might want to start analyzing bills. So, for example, one could do a post on all of the great bills that are completely ignored and post cost analysis, features, bullet points on those.
Then, as the legislation starts geling one might do an analysis of the legislation via thomas.gov.
It's a real job to do this, I have done it on immigration bills and others so we can help dig around.
But the rhetoric vs. what is in a bill so often are completely opposite as it was in the Stimulus bill. I actually went through the actual bill text (as I will and we need to get more people to read these actual bills, esp. because Congress does not) anyway, there were a host of clauses in the Stimulus that were clearly not Keynesian and it was by analyzing the actual bill text could one see that...if one relied on reporters, just shit, it was and still is distortion city. You had GOP talking about Pelosi's pet mouse and others pretending the bill was Keynesian or some other distortion per their political agendas.
So, at some point I think we need to get the focus on what is actually being passed in Congress to cut through the noise. (at on health care, the noise is at 140db!) and I find that requires reading the legislation text as well as pointing to others reviewing the actual legislation text and most of all, pointing the public to the Congressional record instead of yet another pundit.
Certainly, I can help out in this regard.
Feel free to suggest any pieces of legislation you would like reviewed. There is a lot of stuff out there so more eyes the better.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
first up
I would do all of the bills that are being ignored and I believe you just listed them, HR 676, Sanders, I think Wyden's is being ignored, although to me Wyden is a classic corporate Dem with that liberal lemon twist so I don't know what's in his bill.
But these are statistic for now because of course they are not being considered, so making people aware they exist, their cost estimates, their limitations, their problems or their advantages as well as why they are not being considered should be a stable post.
Whereas if you write up on legislation right now, you know it will dramatically change which will mislead people trying to find out what is in the latest bill (because they will read something out of date unless you update that exact blog post - which you can do on EP, you can update posts, create revisions and change the time stamp so they are visible again).
Baseline Scenario gets flooded on health insurance
Baseline scenario was picked up as a front page link post by HuffPo on health care horror stories and he notes he's gotten 40k reads in a matter of hours (could we be so lucky some day!).
More to the point, he took advantage of the reads and updated his post on some overviews on health care in Health insurance "innovation".
A most deserving blog to be pushed to the top of the pile by HuffPo frankly.