Impeding changes to our Health Care system

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

Feel better now?

Or perhaps you need to rant about Pelosi...the one you like to compare to Nazis as well...who brilliantly forged the consensus on this landmark bill.

She is a nazi. Someone needs to take her out of Congress in a big way. Brilliant cunt.

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

She is a nazi. Someone needs to take her out of Congress in a big way. Brilliant cunt.

Very classy

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

Very classy

Why thank you. Thank you very much.

[TheMercenary]

Dems ask Pelosi for autographs
There's no way to predict what the final vote on the health care bill will be, but the body language of Democrats in the chamber today suggests they are, for whatever reasons, breathing a little easier.

During a series of procedural votes earlier today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), wearing a tomato-red dress and a relaxed smile, was drifting from member to member -- even sharing a laugh with Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), who forced a vote on abortion over Pelosi's objections.

At some point, people began unwrapping copies of bill and handing it to the speaker for her autograph.

The first member I saw ask was Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY). Pelosi seemed stunned but obliged, resting one of the two four-inch thick volumes on the back of a bench and inscribing it with a Sharpie. Several other members approached her with copies as she made the rounds, like high school seniors on Yearbook Day.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-Rhode Island) approached House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who sat down next to him and wrote a long inscription.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/

The most gratifying vote for the House bill was the lone Republican - Anh "Joseph" Cao.

Cao is the first Vietnamese immigrant in Congress, conservative to the core, having grown up in an anti-communist family in Saigon during the Viet Nam war.

He was elected in 08 and represents a heavily Democratic district in New Orleans, but has towed the Republican line on nearly every vote.

When he was elected, John Boehner proclaimed..."The future (of the Republican party) is Cao"

"The Cao victory is a symbol of our future....with new faces like Joseph Cao and...the rest of the incoming GOP freshman class in our ranks, by presenting principled, superior solutions to the challenges facing our country..."

More Cao's please!

[classicman]

Originally Posted by Redux

Feel better now?

Or perhaps you need to rant about Pelosi as well...the one you like to compare to Nazis...who brilliantly forged the consensus on this landmark bill.

Did you seriously just use Pelosi and brilliant in the same sentence?

Originally Posted by classicman

Did you seriously just use Pelosi and brilliant in the same sentence?

Originally Posted by classicman

Did you seriously just use Pelosi and brilliant in the same sentence?

Yep.

Getting those 220 votes was not easy as you may think and not a done deal til hours before the vote.

Unlike the Republicans in the House, where you can pick any one of them out of the hat and they all sound the same, with virtually no ideological differences, the Democrats have a much more diverse caucus, making it much more difficult to achieve consensus on an issue like this.

There were Democrats with hard core positions on both sides of the public option, both sides of the surtax, both sides of the abortion issue, etc.

Pelosi had a very challenging balancing act that IMO was handled pretty damn well.

But what is more amusing is that you question my characterization of Pelosi's handling of the bill...but have nothing to say about the characterization of her as a "Nazi cunt".

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

But what is more amusing is that you question my characterization of Pelosi's handling of the bill...but have nothing to say about the characterization of her as a "Nazi cunt".

Oooo, Oooo I do, I do!

[TheMercenary]

In the coming weeks, a crucial debate surrounds health care reform: Will the process resemble that of the economic stimulus bill, a $787 billion measure passed in February with no Republican support? Or will it more closely resemble the push to pass climate change legislation, another overhaul effort (estimated price tag: $864 billion over 10 years) the House passed in June with just eight Republican votes, and which has an uncertain fate in the Senate?

These three very different legislative efforts, all priorities of the Obama administration, are more similar than it might appear. On their own, each of the measures cost more than the entire $455 billion federal deficit for fiscal year 2008, a record until Uncle Sam went $1.4 trillion in the red during FY2009.

Their effectiveness is also questionable. It's not clear whether health care reform will actually curb rising health care costs; in fact, it's largely paid for by raising taxes. The stimulus bill seems to have contributed to overall economic output, but the 10.2% national unemployment rate shows that it's not having the fully desired effect. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), climate change legislation could dampen families' purchasing power an average of $455 each year between 2012 and 2050. What that means is uncertain, but it doesn't sound promising.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/07/hea...ton-house.html

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

She is a nazi. Someone needs to take her out of Congress in a big way. Brilliant cunt.

You're an idiot to say that Pelosi is a nazi. And you're wrong. Look up the definition of nazi.

Merc, you say you are in favor of reform, then you degrade every suggestion made by anyone. You don't have initiate any ideas, either. Whaaaat Theeeee Fuuuuuuck?

[TheMercenary]

Read the last 87 pages for my "ideas". I have posted many of them. As I have said many times I am not against Healthcare Reform, just the ones being passed by this Congress which will not fix the problems in the industry. Look at Mass HC reform as an example of how this may fail.

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Read the last 87 pages for my "ideas". I have posted many of them. As I have said many times I am not against Healthcare Reform, just the ones being passed by this Congress which will not fix the problems in the industry. Look at Mass HC reform as an example of how this may fail.

I recall your ONE idea.

A regressive VAT (or national sales) tax and totally eliminating insurance companies from having any role in providing health insurance....thus throwing the current insurance coverage for 200+ million Americans into disarray and bringing complete chaos to the system.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Read the last 87 pages for my "ideas". I have posted many of them. As I have said many times I am not against Healthcare Reform, just the ones being passed by this Congress which will not fix the problems in the industry. Look at Mass HC reform as an example of how this may fail.

You mean all those quoted passages were your ideas? I'll be right back.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

You mean all those quoted passages were your ideas? I'll be right back.

Nope, but ok, I don't think I'll hold my breath.

[TheMercenary]

Another cautionary tale. As in Mass, now as in Maine.

BAR HARBOR, Me. — When his car repair shop’s health insurance premiums doubled between 2000 and 2002, David White saw the problem as akin to a sputtering engine. So he got under the hood of the state’s health system and tried to fix it.

Seven years later, Mr. White is on seven health advocacy and improvement boards, has helped devise the state’s public insurance plan and has a library of health care books and research papers. He spent so much time on the issue that his business suffered. But he still has no health insurance for himself or his lone remaining mechanic, an experience that is emblematic of his state’s.

Maine is the Charlie Brown of health care. The state’s legislators have tried for decades to fix its system, but their efforts have always fallen short: health insurance premiums are still among the least affordable in the nation, health care spending per person is among the highest and hospital emergency rooms are among the most crowded. Indeed, many overhauls to the system have done little more than squeeze a balloon — solving one problem while worsening another.

But like the Peanuts character, the state keeps trying. Indeed, Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Maine’s senior United States senator and so far one of only two Republicans in Congress to vote for an overhaul, spent two years in the late 1970s as chairwoman of the State Legislature’s joint Health and Human Services Committee pushing small reform efforts. “That’s where I garnered an enormous deference to the issue of health care and its complexities,” Ms. Snowe said in an interview.

Maine’s history is a cautionary tale for national health reform. The state could never figure out how to slow the spiraling increase in medical costs, hobbling its efforts to offer more people insurance coverage. Many on Capitol Hill have criticized national reform legislation for similarly doing little to tame costs.

To Ms. Snowe, Maine’s past shows that change, while needed, should be incremental because mistakes are common. This is among the reasons she opposes an immediate public insurance option. “I mentioned to the president that people can’t digest everything at once,” she said in an interview.

To conservatives, Maine proves that government efforts to strictly regulate the nation’s health insurance market are doomed. Many of the reform proposals circulating on Capitol Hill have already been tried in Maine.

But a state-sponsored insurance plan has been capped at fewer than 9,000 because of financing problems, and the most common choice of those buying new plans in the state requires them to spend at least $15,000 a year before the insurer pays anything — leading many to avoid important medical visits.

Russ Sargent, 50, the owner of Yes Books in downtown Portland, has a shock of frizzy hair and a $10,000 annual deductible. He pays doctors in cash and recently scheduled a colonoscopy for which he agreed to pay $900 up-front. He is not confident that his insurer would pay if he ever got truly sick.

“I have friends in the same situation as me, and we all go through life with our fingers crossed hoping we never get sick,” Mr. Sargent said. “If I got cancer or needed a kidney, I’d go bankrupt. We all would.”

To help people like Mr. Sargent, the state is one of 17 that limit how much insurers can charge people for being older, and it does not allow exclusions for previous illnesses — both policies that are part of national reform proposals.

But one result is that premiums for younger people are relatively high. Although national proposals would require that nearly everyone get coverage or pay a penalty, Maine’s Legislature rejected such a mandate so many young people do not or cannot buy insurance — further skewing the insured pool to sicker and older people and making premiums that much higher.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/he...maine.html?hpw