Here we go...Health Care 'Reform' passes

[Starving Steve]

Re: Here we go...Health Care 'Reform' passes

This system is nothing like those in other countries. If it was I'd be cheering along with everyone else.



This is a terrible bill. It doesn't serve the interests of healthcare providers or patients. It was authored, in part, by the very companies who stood the most to gain by it. The private insurance industry should have been removed from the system to save costs not given a blank check, and it does nothing to address the real reasons why health care is expensive. This bill isn't reform its more of the same but with better profit margins for the FIRE portion.


It isn't that popular now, but in 10 years when you have to wait months for medical services people probably won't even remember how it happened.



Does it also mandate corporate profiteering? I always thought democrats sided with the little guy. This bill is exactly the kind of thing they should have been rallying against not burning political equity to steam roll through congress just to show everyone who is in charge.

They could have introduced a bill with real reform and it wouldn't have cost them anything. I'm waiting for next year when I'll have to buy an F-150 or the IRS will just take that money and give it to ford anyway. We have to keep those lines rolling.

Starving Steve replies as follows:

I keep hearing this talk about so-called "waiting-times" for medical care in Canada under socialized-medicine, but I did NOT experience any unusual waiting times. My MRI by the Vancouver Island Health Authority was ready to be performed July 5, 2009, after it was ordered on June 5, 2009. That wasn't much of a wait.

My latest ultra-sound scan on my leg to see a blood clot was ordered on a Friday, and the scan was performed just hours later, on that week-end. A cardiac doctor performed that scan, and he spent a full forty-minutes with me in hospital doing it.

The Republicans can make-up all kinds of phoney stories about so-called "waiting-times" and socialized-medicine, but socialized-medicine works well, and it works well for everyone. There are no waiting times for serious matters. And in Canada, NO-ONE GETS A BILL FOR MEDICAL CARE.

America needs socialized-medicine, as soon as possible. This Obama Care will be the first step in moving in that direction. The Obama health reform is long over-due.

[cindykimlisa]

Re: Here we go...Health Care 'Reform' passes

Ask the rest of the developed world how much they hate their socialized medical care and they will tell you that you must be american.

This is not a perfect bill. But it is a start.

And it will be very popular.

And the racist/homophobic tea-baggers and GOP apologists will look like idiots, if anyone cares to recall their current hysteria in 5 years.

The mandate exists because it has to. That is the nature of insurance and risk pooling.

The subsidy exists so the poor can afford the mandate. Yes, it kind of sucks to give money to insurance companies. And it is moderated by profit caps and exchanges. But guess what, if it weren't for the blue-dogs and GOP pretending that they wanted to compromise, there would be a public option and no subsidy. You know who to thank for that.

I find it amusing that the GOP is campaigning on repeal. Shouting "socialist" and "nazi" and "death panels" does not seem like a very good strategy when the legislation goes into effect so soon, allowing middle-class Joe to realize, "Holy shit, I have health care now. Those GOP fuckers were lying to me."

Anyways. Continue. But this is no debate.

Some things you will start to notice pretty quickly. Campaign against them at your peril:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_508315.html

I completely agree

Cindy

[jiimbergin]

Re: FIRE Economy wins again

We refer to the new "Health Care Reform Bill" as the "No Health Insurance Company Left Behind" bill.

Ambrose Bierce on insurance from his Devil's Dictionary:

INSURANCE, n. An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.

INSURANCE AGENT: My dear sir, that is a fine house – pray let me insure it.

HOUSE OWNER: With pleasure. Please make the annual premium so low that by the time when, according to the tables of your actuary, it will probably be destroyed by fire I will have paid you considerably less than the face of the policy.

INSURANCE AGENT: O dear, no – we could not afford to do that. We must fix the premium so that you will have paid more.

HOUSE OWNER: How, then, can I afford that?

INSURANCE AGENT: Why, your house may burn down at any time. There was Smith's house, for example, which –

HOUSE OWNER: Spare me – there were Brown's house, on the contrary, and Jones's house, and Robinson's house, which –

INSURANCE AGENT: Spare me!

HOUSE OWNER: Let us understand each other. You want me to pay you money on the supposition that something will occur previously to the time set by yourself for its occurrence. In other words, you expect me to bet that my house will not last so long as you say that it will probably last.

INSURANCE AGENT: But if your house burns without insurance it will be a total loss.

HOUSE OWNER: Beg your pardon – by your own actuary's tables I shall probably have saved, when it burns, all the premiums I would otherwise have paid to you – amounting to more than the face of the policy they would have bought. But suppose it to burn, uninsured, before the time upon which your figures are based. If I could not afford that, how could you if it were insured?

INSURANCE AGENT: O, we should make ourselves whole from our luckier ventures with other clients. Virtually, they pay your loss.

HOUSE OWNER: And virtually, then, don't I help to pay their losses? Are not their houses as likely as mine to burn before they have paid you as much as you must pay them? The case stands this way: you expect to take more money from your clients than you pay to them, do you not?

INSURANCE AGENT: Certainly; if we did not –

HOUSE OWNER: I would not trust you with my money. Very well then. If it is certain, with reference to the whole body of your clients, that they lose money on you it is probable, with reference to any one of them, that he will. It is these individual probabilities that make the aggregate certainty.

INSURANCE AGENT: I will not deny it – but look at the figures in this pamph –

HOUSE OWNER: Heaven forbid!

INSURANCE AGENT: You spoke of saving the premiums which you would otherwise pay to me. Will you not be more likely to squander them? We offer you an incentive to thrift.

HOUSE OWNER: The willingness of A to take care of B's money is not peculiar to insurance, but as a charitable institution you command esteem. Deign to accept its expression from a Deserving Object.

Now this is just silly. I pay $586 annually for a $300,000 home. Insurance does have its place. Health insurance, other than catastrophic, probably does not.

[Ghent12]

Re: Here we go...Health Care 'Reform' passes

You're just upset because you're old and I said old people were at fault. Relax, I was speaking in aggregate, collectivist terms. Irony, get it?

Old people can be healthy, and young people sick. Consider for example the dramatic increase of obesity, ADHD and autism in children.

Does ADHD even exist? If so, why did it only start existing last century? If I had to guess, I would say that the ADHD phenomenon is almost entirely a product of too many pills chasing too few patients. If there were a pill for uncontrollable conspiracism, would you take it?

Sure, diet and obesity play a part. Often a large part. But I think it was last week when the first official baby boomer started to receive her first social security paycheck. That's not that old, but that is substantial-increase-in-healthcare-needs old. In aggregate, of course.

[Ghent12]

Re: FIRE Economy wins again

Now this is just silly. I pay $586 annually for a $300,000 home. Insurance does have its place. Health insurance, other than catastrophic, probably does not.

But you need health insurance!!! How else are you going to cover unexpected illnesses like an annual physical check-up or a cold?

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: FIRE Economy wins again

Now this is just silly. I pay $586 annually for a $300,000 home. Insurance does have its place. Health insurance, other than catastrophic, probably does not.

Insurance has its place if the possible outcomes are sufficiently asymmetric that you're willing to pay someone else an actuarial profit in order to smooth out your possible outcomes. There are few other (honest) circumstances in which insurance is worthwhile.

In other words, ask yourself if you're prefer to live predictably poorer in order to reduce a small risk of a much larger loss.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Here we go...Health Care 'Reform' passes

You're just upset because you're old and I said old people were at fault.

Isn't that a right that people earn when they get old - the right to be crotchety for no dang good reason, or at least none they can remember, whenever they feel like it ?

If I had to guess, I would say that the ADHD phenomenon is almost entirely a product of too many pills chasing too few patients.

I partially agree. In addition, the stupid schooling indoctrination we inflict on our youth, the diet we feed our young (and most everyone else) and the vaccines we give our young aggravate some of the symptoms diagnosed as ADHD.

If there were a pill for uncontrollable conspiracism, would you take it?

There are ... several (though not usually in pill form):

• the Main Stream Media
• water fluoridation
• high fructose corn syrup
• vaccines
• etc, etc.

I don't take them.

They're all part of a grand conspiracy to destroy my mind :eek:.

But I think it was last week when the first official baby boomer started to receive her first social security paycheck. That's not that old, but that is substantial-increase-in-healthcare-needs old. In aggregate, of course.

It was a year or two ago that the first boomers started collecting Social Security: roughly 1946 (start of boomer births) plus 62 (earliest year to collect Social Security) ==> 2008.

That's not that old, but that is substantial-increase-in-healthcare-needs old. In aggregate, of course.

I'm sure glad you put that qualifier "in the aggregate" in there . I collected my first Social Security check last month, and I have no plans for a substantial increase in healthcare needs.

Joking aside, I will agree that older people do require more medical care than younger people (past the first few years of age, perhaps.)

However I don't think that the demographic shift to an older population is the primary reason that health care costs are rising so rapidly in America. There are other bigger (er, eh fatter) causes.

[Godozo]

Re: Here we go...Health Care 'Reform' passes

How about fascism? The government is mandating that I purchase a service offered by a private company.

I prefer the term "Feudalism." As in privatized government.

As I read the law, the health insurance companies have been handed the right to declare who's a citizen (the insured) and who's an illegal (the uninsured). While theoretically they can't refuse anyone, they can probably set prices so that things are too costly for anyone with "pre-existing conditions" to actually sign up (add in a one-year full-in for new enrollees, and watch the sick gamble worse than they do now). In short, they have powers given to them by the government – that the government doesn't have.

Now watch as the insurance companies become able to refuse coverage...as hospitals suddenly get the right to refuse treatment to the uninsured...as the 2% IRS fee for not being insured becomes 10% (or more) per person...as that 5 year jail term proposed by Pelosi gets snuck in by a Republicans unable to break fillerbusters (and allowed by Democrats because they'll be threatened by absolute revocation, and they'll be too proud of their invention to see that it needs to go...or better yet, replaced by single payer and the taxes to pay for it – I am a progressive, so take that comment as my opinion)...and Medicare/Medicaid privatized and gutted to insure 25% profit for Anthem/Aetna/Humana Health "Insurance."

(And...as a bone, watch Pot and other drugs legalized. Now that they won't need a drug war to fill the jails with the poor and middle classes, they'll let you dose up for cheap.)

[chr5648]

Re: FIRE Economy wins again

We refer to the new "Health Care Reform Bill" as the "No Health Insurance Company Left Behind" bill.

If you want to understand it, watch this presentation created by a man who used to work in the health insurance industry, Dan Roam.

Healthcare Napkins All

Ambrose Bierce on insurance from his Devil's Dictionary:

INSURANCE, n. An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.

INSURANCE AGENT: My dear sir, that is a fine house – pray let me insure it.

HOUSE OWNER: With pleasure. Please make the annual premium so low that by the time when, according to the tables of your actuary, it will probably be destroyed by fire I will have paid you considerably less than the face of the policy.

INSURANCE AGENT: O dear, no – we could not afford to do that. We must fix the premium so that you will have paid more.

HOUSE OWNER: How, then, can I afford that?

INSURANCE AGENT: Why, your house may burn down at any time. There was Smith's house, for example, which –

HOUSE OWNER: Spare me – there were Brown's house, on the contrary, and Jones's house, and Robinson's house, which –

INSURANCE AGENT: Spare me!

HOUSE OWNER: Let us understand each other. You want me to pay you money on the supposition that something will occur previously to the time set by yourself for its occurrence. In other words, you expect me to bet that my house will not last so long as you say that it will probably last.

INSURANCE AGENT: But if your house burns without insurance it will be a total loss.

HOUSE OWNER: Beg your pardon – by your own actuary's tables I shall probably have saved, when it burns, all the premiums I would otherwise have paid to you – amounting to more than the face of the policy they would have bought. But suppose it to burn, uninsured, before the time upon which your figures are based. If I could not afford that, how could you if it were insured?

INSURANCE AGENT: O, we should make ourselves whole from our luckier ventures with other clients. Virtually, they pay your loss.

HOUSE OWNER: And virtually, then, don't I help to pay their losses? Are not their houses as likely as mine to burn before they have paid you as much as you must pay them? The case stands this way: you expect to take more money from your clients than you pay to them, do you not?

INSURANCE AGENT: Certainly; if we did not –

HOUSE OWNER: I would not trust you with my money. Very well then. If it is certain, with reference to the whole body of your clients, that they lose money on you it is probable, with reference to any one of them, that he will. It is these individual probabilities that make the aggregate certainty.

INSURANCE AGENT: I will not deny it – but look at the figures in this pamph –

HOUSE OWNER: Heaven forbid!

INSURANCE AGENT: You spoke of saving the premiums which you would otherwise pay to me. Will you not be more likely to squander them? We offer you an incentive to thrift.

HOUSE OWNER: The willingness of A to take care of B's money is not peculiar to insurance, but as a charitable institution you command esteem. Deign to accept its expression from a Deserving Object.

I call BS on this, I'm not old enough to have been around back in the day, but from my conversations and research, BACK IN THE DAY people were able to go to a doctor or hospital and:

1) pay cash
2) pay an amount that was fair and did not put an excessive burden on them
3) get the quality care relative to the methods of that time period
4) doctor was compensated fairly (meaning he got paid what a doctor deserves to get paid)

Most people can't do that now, this whole healthcare quagmire is just a kabuki theater of BS to keep the peasantry occupied. Healthcare is just another thing to add to the Bread and Circuses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses) The real problems have not been solved and they won't be solved. These stupid threads, presentations, commentators are doing exactly what they are taught to do and that is to make this a left-right thing and not focus on the real problems.

PS. #3 above is the only variable minus inflation that should have lead to increased healthcare costs, obviously when you compare the medical technology of BACK IN THE DAY to TODAY there is a material difference.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: FIRE Economy wins again

These stupid threads, presentations, commentators are doing exactly what they are taught to do and that is to make this a left-right thing and not focus on the real problems.

Well, I can only give you partial credit for tact , but I mostly agree with what you say.

I remember back in the day, and it was as you say.

Actually, it still is. I pay cash for what medical services I or my dependents require. The prices are a little stiff, but then again I used to own a fine German sports sedan, and my mechanics fees were a bit stiff then.

One time a few years back I had a minor bit of out-patient surgery done. It took the doctor, working alone in his office, about 20 minutes to perform. There was a bit of confusion as to who was paying, and he billed what he thought was my insurance company $500. When he figured out I was paying cash, the bill suddenly changed to $90 without me even asking. I paid it, that was it.

Usually it's quite straight forward. The admin asks for your insurance information, you reply in a no-nonsense voice that you're paying cash, she shifts gears, and it's a direct pay for services business.

But those details aside, yeah, it's generally a mess unless you know just what you looking for and how you're willing to do business. And yes, as you note, the present "health care" folderol is a circus act, not even a decent circus act.

[jiimbergin]

Re: FIRE Economy wins again

Insurance has its place if the possible outcomes are sufficiently asymmetric that you're willing to pay someone else an actuarial profit in order to smooth out your possible outcomes. There are few other (honest) circumstances in which insurance is worthwhile.

In other words, ask yourself if you're prefer to live predictably poorer in order to reduce a small risk of a much larger loss.

Since I am a retired actuary I used to hope you would give me my actuarial profit, however, I have never felt that what we call health insurance was insurance. Catastrophic health insurance is insurance. The part of the premium needed to cover everyday health needs is far too great compared to the 'risk' premium.

[Marek]

Re: Here we go...Health Care 'Reform' passes

No, but it was designed to eventually lead to socialism. ......... A brilliant political move by Obama if you believe Socialism is his ultimate goal.

"Designed" is a bold word. I see no evidence of strategic intent in either the corporate or government arm of our ruling class. This is all tactical opportunism.

Compare Candidate Obama with President Obama. The former spoke strategically. The later acts tactically.

And all evidence says this is not just a function of Obama. Its a systemic problem. Obama just sits at the sharp end of the dagger.

[D-Mack]

Re: Here we go...Health Care 'Reform' passes

Is this personality cult stuff usual for the US ?

What President Obama Didn't Say

By Dennis Kucinich

The meeting that took place on Air Force One was the fourth in a series of meetings that I had attended with the president in the last few months. There was a meeting on March 4 where the president called nine members to the Roosevelt Room at the White House, and eight of the members had voted for the bill when it passed the House last fall. I was the only one who voted against the bill. I thanked the president for inviting me even though I was a "no" vote. And in the more than hour-long meeting, the president covered a lot of territory about what he thought was important to consider. I sat quietly and listened carefully and took some notes. And at the end of the meeting, you know, we thanked each other, and I left.
When I arrived home that evening — March 4 — I still had this deep sense of compassion for the president for what he was struggling with in trying to pass the bill. And it was very clear to me that there was a lot on the line here — that he didn't say. I was just thinking about the scope of American history, and here's a president who's trying to do something, even if I don't agree with him. I told my wife, "You know I kinda feel bad about the situation he's in here. This is really a tough situation — his presidency is on the line." And I had a sense of sadness about what I saw him grappling with. I still maintained my position, still went forward in debates, arguing in meetings, arguing against the bill because it didn't have a public option, didn't have an opening for the states to pursue single-payer in a free manner. But at the same time I kinda remember the feeling that I had about watching him as he was dealing with this and, you know, trying to do what he felt was best for the nation.

So I was really looking at Barack Obama the man, and thinking about his presidency

...
My decision came last Tuesday morning. There's a place where I go in the Capitol, just to kind of reflect — before I have to make very important decisions. It's in the rotunda — right next to Lincoln's statue. It's just a bench. And I went over there early Tuesday morning, about seven in the morning when the sun was just coming up, and no one else was around — there wasn't a sound in the Capitol at that moment in the morning. And I just sat down there in a quiet place and thought about this decision. And that's literally where I made up my mind that, notwithstanding how much there was in the bill that I didn't like, that I had a higher responsibility to my constituents, to the nation, to my president and his presidency,

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/the-side/qa/d...#ixzz0jE0USTU8

Dennis Kucinich sends out his first appeal for DCCC, Biden solicits for DSCC


By Garance Franke-Ruta
In the wake of his momentum-building announcement last week that he would vote for the health-care overhaul bill before the House, despite his doubts, liberal Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) has moved even further into the center of the Democratic Party fold, sending out what an aide said was his first-ever fundraising appeal for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.


...

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/....html?wprss=44

[c1ue]

Re: Here we go...Health Care 'Reform' passes

The only thing I've learned from the health care reform bill passing is that the Democrat Party + Obama is scarier than the mafia. After all, DK didn't back down for one but did for the other.

Either that or Kucinich is mellowing in his old age.

http://www.freetimes.com/stories/15/...ennis-kucinich

The meeting went down at Burke Lakefront Airport in 1978. A small prop-engine plane owned by the Maryland State Police was parked on the tarmac. Inside was a sergeant from Maryland and "The Old Man," a professional hitman-turned-rat who was working with Maryland police in sting operations. Cleveland Police detective Ed Kovacic climbed into the plane and sat next to The Old Man.
Kovacic showed him a photo spread of suspects. The Old Man pointed to number four, Thomas Sinito. "This is Tommy," he said.
"Is that the man who hired you to hit Dennis Kucinich?" the Maryland officer asked.
"Yes."
"How much was he going to pay you?"
"Twenty-five thousand."
Kovacic knew Tommy Sinito well. The man was a rising star in the Cleveland faction of La Cosa Nostra, and was already connected to the attempted murder of local housing official Robert Doggett, though there hadn't been enough evidence to charge him in that case. Surely only Sinito was brazen enough to hire a professional hitman to take out Cleveland's mayor.
"Let's get out of here, right now," The Old Man said to the Maryland cop. His skin had gone pale. And for good reason. The Old Man recognized the other mugs Kovacic had placed in the photo spread. They were the highest-ranking members of the Cleveland mafia. And if they were involved in a plot to kill a big-city mayor, why would they hesitate to kill a dirty snitch like him?

[reallife]

Re: Here we go...Health Care 'Reform' passes

.... In addition, the stupid schooling indoctrination we inflict on our youth, the diet we feed our young (and most everyone else) and the vaccines we give our young aggravate some of the symptoms diagnosed as ADHD..

I agree with many that ADHD is a 'diagnosis' that borders on nonsense I disagree that vaccines have anything to do with ADHD, or with autism for that matter. There is simply no credible evidence linking vaccine administration as a cause of ADHD.