Impeding changes to our Health Care system

[sugarpop]

bwahahahahahahahahaaa

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by case

I will not be presented by any experts and I don't need anybody to decide whether I am valid, thank you very MUCH! :p

Well that's just to damn bad because we've already validated you, so live with it. :p

[Griff]

Originally Posted by BrianR

The answer to Medicaid et al is simple, as I see it. Government doctors. Government hospitals. they can have their "free" managed care for those who wan it and private doctors for those who don't.

The doctors can be paid a flat salary , perhaps with some enticement such as tuition reimbursement thrown in to sweeten the deal.

As long as there is a choice for the person in question, I fail to see the problem.

[breaks no politics rule]
Well said Brian, this is a sensible solution. A lot of people would be happy to pay cash or use cheaper insurance for their regular gp visits if they knew there was a parallel system for the bad times. What we can't afford is a system that makes private medicine illegal or continues to subsidize paper pushing over health care. [/to acknowlege common sense over politics]

[DanaC]

Most of our private doctors also do NHS work. It's the same personnel. Sometimes using the same facilities. Many semi-decent jobs will include membership of the company's BUPA scheme at a subsidised rate as one of the percs. I was offered it in my last formal job.

[kerosene]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Well that's just to damn bad because we've already validated you, so live with it. :p

Wha, so now I'm a parking ticket? Is that it?

[xoxoxoBruce]

No, you've been validated as resident artist and heartthrob.

[kerosene]

Sweet! Does that mean I get a free parking pass?

[TheMercenary]

The Dems' Disharmony

By George Will
Reconciliation: The action of bringing to agreement, concord, or harmony.
— Oxford English Dictionary

But under Senate rules, "reconciliation" can be a means for coping with disharmony by deepening it. The tactic truncates Senate debate and curtails minority rights. The threat to use it to speed enactment of health-care reform has coincided with talk about possible prosecutions relating to the previous administration's interrogation policies. Harmony is becoming more elusive.


Under "reconciliation," debate on a bill can be limited to 20 hours, enabling passage by a simple majority (51 senators, or 50 with the vice president breaking a tie) rather than requiring 60 votes to terminate debate and vote on final passage. The president and Senate Democrats have decided to use reconciliation by Oct. 15, unless Republicans negotiate compliantly regarding health care. But the threat of reconciliation mocks negotiations.


The reconciliation process was created in 1974 to facilitate adjustments of existing spending programs. Former senator John Sununu, a New Hampshire Republican, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says using reconciliation to ram through health-care reform would "circumvent the normal and customary workings of American democracy." But those workings have changed markedly.

The most important alteration of the legislative process in recent decades has been the increasingly promiscuous use of filibusters to impose a de facto supermajority requirement for important legislation. And "important" has become a very elastic term.


It should be difficult for government to act precipitously. "Great innovations," said Jefferson, "should not be forced on slender majorities." Revamping health care — 17 percent of the economy — qualifies as a great innovation. This is especially so because the administration and its allies, without being candid about what is afoot, are trying to put the nation on a glide path to a "single-payer" — entirely government-run — system. They would do this by creating a government health insurance plan to compete with private insurers. It would be able to — indeed, would be intended to — push private insurers out of business.


But when Republicans ran the Senate, they, too, occasionally made dubious use of reconciliation. And Republicans' merely situational commitment to legislative due process was displayed in 2003 when they held open a House vote for three hours until they could pressure enough reluctant Republicans to pass the prescription drug entitlement.


As Washington becomes increasingly opaque to normal Americans, its quarrels come to seem increasingly trivial, even when they are momentous. The reconciliation tactic is unknown to most Americans, and so, too, is the institution at the center of the controversy about torture — the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. From it came the so-called "torture memos" arguing the legality of certain "enhanced interrogation" techniques.


The OLC provides opinions about what is and is not lawful government behavior. By not quickly quashing talk about prosecutions of the authors of the memos — or, by inference, higher officials who acted on the basis of those memos — the president has compromised the OLC's usefulness: If its judgments can be criminalized by the next administration, the OLC can no longer be considered a bulwark of the rule of law.


On the other hand, four things are clear. First, torture is illegal. Second, if an enemy used some of the "enhanced interrogation" techniques against any American, most Americans would call that torture. Third, that does not mean that the memos defending the legality of those techniques were indefensible, let alone criminal, because: Fourth, the president might be mistaken in saying that there is no difficult choice because coercive interrogation techniques are ineffective.


A congressional panel, or one akin to the Sept. 11 commission, should discover what former CIA director George Tenet meant when he said: "I know that this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots." And what former national intelligence director Mike McConnell meant when he said: "We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened."


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was frequently briefed as a member of the intelligence committee, could usefully answer the question: What did you know and when did you know it? She regularly conquered reticence about her disapproval of the Bush administration. Why not about the interrogation methods?


Furthermore, four of the president's 15 Cabinet members are former members of Congress, as are the president, vice president and White House chief of staff. So seven of the administration's 18 most senior figures might usefully answer those questions, and this one: What did you do about what you knew?

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/col...inter_friendly

[TGRR]

HAW HAW!

[classicman]

It should be difficult for government to act precipitously. "Great innovations," said Jefferson, "should not be forced on slender majorities." Revamping health care — 17 percent of the economy — qualifies as a great innovation. This is especially so because the administration and its allies, without being candid about what is afoot, are trying to put the nation on a glide path to a "single-payer" — entirely government-run — system. They would do this by creating a government health insurance plan to compete with private insurers. It would be able to — indeed, would be intended to — push private insurers out of business.

Bold mine.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by classicman

Bold mine.

Good. Insurance companies are uniformly thieves and contract breakers.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by classicman

Bold mine.

Imagine that.

This is especially so because the administration and its allies, without being candid about what is afoot, are trying to put the nation on a glide path to a "single-payer" — entirely government-run — system. They would do this by creating a government health insurance plan to compete with private insurers. It would be able to — indeed, would be intended to — push private insurers out of business.

Imagine.....George Will, a conservative columnist, who thinks the govt should do nothing more than it did in 1787, misrepresenting Obama's health plan with the scare of a "government-run" health care system...and freezing out the private sector.

Instead, imagine the truth.....a plan that allows/encourages workers with employer-provided coverage to keep that plan if they so choose but provides more choices, in the same manner as the govt employee plan with options provided by numerous private insurers

And a plan that would allow small business to create health pools to have that same option of choosing from among a plan administered by the govt but providing choices from private insurers.

Merc and Classic.....do you guys ever take the time to look for the facts or just jump on the first editorial opinion that supports your pre-conceived position.

Dont bother answering....your posts speak for themselves.

***

The best throw away line of Will's editorial, re: interrogation/torture techniques:

Furthermore, four of the president's 15 Cabinet members are former members of Congress, as are the president, vice president and White House chief of staff. So seven of the administration's 18 most senior figures might usefully answer those questions, and this one: What did you do about what you knew

Imagine the truth...that neither Obama nor any of those cabinet members or senior officials, were chairs or ranking members of the Intel Committees, so none received classified briefings on the torture memos.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

Instead, imagine the {My Opinion}truth.....

I fixed that for you.

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

I fixed that for you.

Merc...what would you do w/o your editorials? You certainly never speak for yourself.

Sadly, you are a sucker for every conservative talking point you can find....regardless of the facts.

Please cite anything from any Obama health policy docs that supports George Will's claim.