Are you Watching What They are Doing to Health Care?

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Can't keep track on the latest with health care? ( except to know when it comes to getting rid of those for profit bottom feeders driving up costs you're guaranteed to save their profits first and actual sick people will come last or maybe you are aware of all of the lobbyists pouring money on Congress as well as ads on your TV trying convince you to guarantee their profits)

You're in luck. The New York Times is running an online spreadsheet with the latest proposals. It's a matrix.

It's just unbelievable. Not only are they refusing to really deal with costs, which are greedy profits and beyond belief bureaucracies, but now the taxes to pay for it all look regressive, including an additional payroll tax. Remember bi-partisan is just another term for written by corporate lobbyists.

Meanwhile, Senator Bernie Sanders has started a petition for real health care reform (don't get lost in the Matrix!)

 

Our current private health insurance system is the most costly, wasteful, complicated and bureaucratic in the world. Today, 46 million people have no health insurance. Even more are underinsured with high deductibles and co-payments. Close to 20,000 Americans die each year because they don’t have regular access to a doctor. "The time is now for our nation to address the most profound moral and economic issue we face. The time is now for our country to join the rest of the industrialized world and provide cost-effective, comprehensive quality health care to every man, woman and child in our country. The time is now to take on the powerful special interests in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and pass a single-payer national health care program."

Please sign Senator Sanders Petition. Come on, let's get the money out of this debate and get something that actually works.

 

Here are some facts Sanders has on his website:
 

  • The United States spends $2.3 trillion each year on health care, 16 percent of its Gross Domestic Product;
  • Americans spend $7,129 per person on health care, 50 percent more than other industrialized countries, including those with universal care;
  • The U.S. does not get what it pays for.  We rank among the lowest in the health outcome rankings of developed countries, and on several major indices rank below some third-world nations;
  • The number of health insurance industry bureaucrats has grown at 25 times the growth of physicians in the past 30 years;
  • In 2006, the six largest insurance companies made $11 billion in profits even after paying for direct health care costs, administrative costs and marketing costs.

And, whereas:

  • Medicare has administrative costs far lower than any private health insurance plan;
  • The potential savings on health insurance paperwork, more than $350 billion per year, is enough to provide comprehensive coverage to every uninsured American;
  • Only a single-payer Medicare-for-all plan can realize these enormous savings and provide comprehensive and affordable health care to every citizen.

 

Private Insurance Power & Health Care Cost Bloat

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This better not be true Mr. President

Prof. Krugman is making the point that Pres. Obama may have already abandoned the public insurance option:

There he goes again, gratuitously making a big gift to the other side.

My big fear about Obama has always been not that he doesn’t understand the issues, but that his urge to compromise — his vision of himself as a politician who transcends the old partisan divisions — will lead him to negotiate with himself, and give away far too much. He did that on the stimulus bill, where he offered an inadequate plan in order to win bipartisan support, then got nothing in return — and was forced to reduce the plan further so that Susan Collins could claim her pound of flesh.

And now he’s done it on a key component of health care reform. What was the point of signaling, right at this crucial moment, that he’s willing to give away the public plan? Let alone doing it at the very moment that he was making such a good case for it?

Then there was this Bloomberg article:

Obama is signaling that he’s willing to compromise, and yesterday White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel carried the message to lawmakers that the president is “open to alternatives,” Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota said.

There is a lot of game playing going on because a lot is at stake. But if any of this is true - look out because Mr. President you may lose your base support.

RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

seems like the House

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is fighting on this more, yes, this is turning into Medicare prescription drug benefit (where it costs a ton and the pharmaceutical companies made out like bandits).

I was not present to watch the Hillary Health care fight in 1993, but it seems that they stood their ground much longer than what is going on right now...

Am I missing something?

It seems that the Obama Administration's proposals always start-off with compromises. Then after Congress get a hold of it is compromised even more to the point of ineffectiveness.

RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

Denial

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Seriously. I just don't know how else to say it. I mean come on, Obama put Larry Summers in charge of his economic advisers, he put Geithner, who was part of the NY Fed., this is where the entire crisis was brewing and he didn't do anything and he was part of the TARP original plan.

Obama's health care plan, long ago was deemed inferior to Hillary's and the list goes on and on (and I am not fan of Hillary, she too will do the corporate bidding way over what is in the best interests of America)...

While McCain was so bad it was almost laughable, going to Michigan and claiming NAFTA, WTO etc. is good for the economy...complete joke considering not only the massive job losses but also the actual trade deficit..

But Obama in policy wasn't much better frankly. So, I don't know why any of this is a big surprise?

There are a few good reps. in Congress and I don't see anything really happening unless Congress really steps up to the plate, and also the American people themselves flood the faxes, phones and also physically show up to offices, etc. demand bills be passed, watchdog like mad on what is in the actual bills.

This is one of the main reasons EP exists, to try to bring to light what is really in the details and maybe get some focus on it.

So many of the blogs are noise, nonsense, they don't really amplify what is in legislation, what are the real economic numbers, what policy has x,y,z effect.