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-- Opinions on Obama health care initiatives
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| Originally posted by MisterOpus1 I've also heard similar testimony's from doctors and surgeons. In our PT practice we have liability insurance as well, but thankfully has never been used in the 11 years we've been open (knock on wood). I don't deny that there are certain cases that involve high costs with malpractice insurance, and I'd surmise that there could be a wide range of annual premiums depending on the type of practice. But in general the statistics simply don't bear it out as being a primary factor regarding overall costs: http://www.citizen.org/congress/civ...les.cfm?ID=9125 |
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| The accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers says about 10% of the cost of medical service is attributable to medical malpractice lawsuits. Roughly 2% is caused by direct costs of the lawsuits; an additional 5% to 9% is due to expenses run up by defensive medicine. |
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| Originally posted by Shakka A difficult question I ponder... For those that are pro-evolution (and I certainly am)...do you not subscribe to Darwinian theory? We spend all of this money and valuable resources to support people and populations (foreign aid included) that would unquestionably die out because we are a sympathetic culture...yet we quibble about running out of resources and providing "free" healthcare to support and sustain the weakest among us... Wouldn't a true proponent of evolution support the survival of the fittest and the elimination of the weakest? Is there any internal conflict for any of you on this issue? I may not have explained it well enough, but bottom line, if you support things like universal healthcare, aren't you being the slightest bit dishonest with yourself? I mean, it's easily explainable for a charitable, God fearing citizen to sacrifice himself/herself and act altruistically for the benefit of his neighbor...but if you're a true evolutionist...isn't there an element of hypocrisy in some of these liberal viewpoints? Objectively speaking, wouldn't we all be better off in the long run if we didn't pour our limited resources and energy into taking care of the weak? Aren't some of these healthcare initiatives (NOT ALL OF THEM) out of sync with some of the more basic tenets that you believe in? |
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| Originally posted by Shakka A difficult question I ponder... For those that are pro-evolution (and I certainly am)...do you not subscribe to Darwinian theory? We spend all of this money and valuable resources to support people and populations (foreign aid included) that would unquestionably die out because we are a sympathetic culture...yet we quibble about running out of resources and providing "free" healthcare to support and sustain the weakest among us... Wouldn't a true proponent of evolution support the survival of the fittest and the elimination of the weakest? Is there any internal conflict for any of you on this issue? |
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| Originally posted by Arbiter You are certainly asking some of the right questions. However it is important to look at these issues within their broader contexts. First of all, providing support to the "weaker" or, more appropriately, "struggling" does not only affect those to whom the aid is given, but the entire "ecosystem" within which they operate. This is true at every point from the level of the individual to the level of a vast region. Those who are struggling may have effects on other parts of their "ecosystem" whether they are given help or not, and any sound approach to aid--or the lack thereof--must take account of what these collateral effects will be. It may be the case, for instance, that sustaining a particular group of people is not a valuable goal per se, but that a failure to do so would create costs elsewhere far greater than the cost of sustaining them. Whether or not the prey deserves to survive, over-predation is not in the interest of the predator. It's also important to recognize that it is populations of organisms that evolve. Individual organisms may be weak and unable to sustain themselves, but their survival may still benefit the population as a whole. In these cases, the population which supports its weak members will out-compete the population that does not. Whether in view of all these complexities any particular health care measure will do more harm than good is a question that I suspect no human will ever be able to answer with any confidence. Limited as we are by our subjective points of view, we can only make crude guesses at what approach will best situate us. If we want to see humans evolve then I suggest not reasoning about who is more or less fit for survival; rather, I suggest we simply increase the selective pressure of our environment and let nature give us her more objective point of view... |
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| Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN honestly, what a load of contrived bollocks. what the fuck is "pro evolution" meant to mean anyhow? is science a football team or something, that im meant to be rooting for? |
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| who gives a shit about evolution as it pertains to policy? if you hadn't already realised, modern society made most biological evolution issues completely moot. why do i care how strong our society might become in 10,000 years? |
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| just because i happen to believe in the scientific validity of evolution doesn't mean i think we need to throw away all modern aids that make survival of the fittest less relevant than it was 500 years ago. |
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| this is probably the most partisan, disingenuous pile of bollocks ive ever seen you post adolf, i mean shakka. i could sit here all day and list the things that must be removed in order for our society to be truly on the path of evolution. i hope you won't mind when me and my buddies come round and take all of your stuff, because might makes right in this wonderfully ficticious society you seem to be so fond of. |
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| Originally posted by Shakka Honestly, I almost expected you'd respond and respond like this and I don't know why! I don't know much about you. |
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| Originally posted by Shakka Anyway, why should you be so arrogant? Why is it "contrived bollocks?" |
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| Originally posted by Shakka So you admit that humans are different? Well what makes us so different? |
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| Originally posted by Shakka Exactly. So how do you reconcile that with what you know about the past and what you know about the future given what you surely must believe about the future of our planet and its resources? |
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| Originally posted by Shakka Chill out, dude. I asked a philosophy question and you call me Hitler? Who answers questions like that? Don't be so close-minded that you can't entertain real debate. I don't advocate genocide, particularly via a filter of race vs. a natural filter of natural selection over time? That must be billions in potential savings as we debate possible healthcare legislation. Why shouldn't this be a part of the discussion? Because it's dark and ugly? |
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| Originally posted by Shakka So you're saying there's a moral imperative? Or is it a big rationalization? Why do you say all of those things about "populations of organisms" when human beings are the only genus that engages in any activity in the same behaviors that our politicians debate. There is no control group for human beings...unless Bubbles has been secretly designing and building a robotic surgery device... |
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| Do you believe in God? From my limited time here and brief observations of you, my guess would be no. But aren't you leaving a lot to fate if you agree with a lot of the stuff above? I guess it comes down to a science vs. religion article...I just find the contradictions that I brought up are somewhat at odds and don't ever hear anyone talk about them. |
What a fucking asshole. I'm sure Peter Schiff will gladly come back on your show for a balanced debate.
Another well-dressed Nazi covert operative at work:
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=8292819
Peggy Noonan had a good piece over the weekend as well.
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�You Are Terrifying Us� Voters send a message to Washington, and get an ugly response. By PEGGY NOONAN We have entered uncharted territory in the fight over national health care. There�s a new tone in the debate, and it�s ugly. At the moment the Democrats are looking like something they haven�t looked like in years, and that is: desperate. They must know at this point they should not have pushed a national health-care plan. A Democratic operative the other day called it �Hillary�s revenge.� When Mrs. Clinton started losing to Barack Obama in the primaries 18 months ago, she began to give new and sharper emphasis to her health-care plan. Mr. Obama responded by talking about his health-care vision. He won. Now he would push what he had been forced to highlight: Health care would be a priority initiative. The net result is falling support for his leadership on the issue, falling personal polls, and the angry town-hall meetings that have electrified YouTube. In his first five months in office, Mr. Obama had racked up big wins�the stimulus, children�s health insurance, House approval of cap-and-trade. But he stayed too long at the hot table. All the Democrats in Washington did. They overinterpreted the meaning of the 2008 election, and didn�t fully take into account how the great recession changed the national mood and atmosphere. And so the shock on the faces of Congressmen who�ve faced the grillings back home. And really, their shock is the first thing you see in the videos. They had no idea how people were feeling. Their 2008 win left them thinking an election that had been shaped by anti-Bush, anti-Republican, and pro-change feeling was really a mandate without context; they thought that in the middle of a historic recession featuring horrific deficits, they could assume support for the invention of a huge new entitlement carrying huge new costs. The passions of the protesters, on the other hand, are not a surprise. They hired a man to represent them in Washington. They give him a big office, a huge staff and the power to tell people what to do. They give him a car and a driver, sometimes a security detail, and a special pin showing he�s a congressman. And all they ask in return is that he see to their interests and not terrify them too much. Really, that�s all people ask. Expectations are very low. What the protesters are saying is, �You are terrifying us.� More Peggy Noonan Read Peggy Noonan�s previous columns. And click here to order her new book, Patriotic Grace. What has been most unsettling is not the congressmen�s surprise but a hard new tone that emerged this week. The leftosphere and the liberal commentariat charged that the town hall meetings weren�t authentic, the crowds were ginned up by insurance companies, lobbyists and the Republican National Committee. But you can�t get people to leave their homes and go to a meeting with a congressman (of all people) unless they are engaged to the point of passion. And what tends to agitate people most is the idea of loss�loss of money hard earned, loss of autonomy, loss of the few things that work in a great sweeping away of those that don�t. People are not automatons. They show up only if they care. What the town-hall meetings represent is a feeling of rebellion, an uprising against change they do not believe in. And the Democratic response has been stunningly crude and aggressive. It has been to attack. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, accused the people at the meetings of �carrying swastikas and symbols like that.� (Apparently one protester held a hand-lettered sign with a �no� slash over a swastika.) But they are not Nazis, they�re Americans. Some of them looked like they�d actually spent some time fighting Nazis. Then came the Democratic Party charge that the people at the meetings were suspiciously well-dressed, in jackets and ties from Brooks Brothers. They must be Republican rent-a-mobs. Sen. Barbara Boxer said on MSNBC�s �Hardball� that people are �storming these town hall meetings,� that they were �well dressed,� that �this is all organized,� �all planned,� to �hurt our president.� Here she was projecting. For normal people, it�s not all about Barack Obama. The Democratic National Committee chimed in with an incendiary Web video whose script reads, �The right wing extremist Republican base is back.� DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse issued a statement that said the Republicans �are inciting angry mobs of . . . right wing extremists� who are �not reflective of where the American people are.� But most damagingly to political civility, and even our political tradition, was the new White House email address to which citizens are asked to report instances of �disinformation� in the health-care debate: If you receive an email or see something on the Web about health-care reform that seems �fishy,� you can send it to [email protected]. The White House said it was merely trying to fight �intentionally misleading� information. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas on Wednesday wrote to the president saying he feared that citizens� engagement could be �chilled� by the effort. He�s right, it could. He also accused the White House of compiling an �enemies list.� If so, they�re being awfully public about it, but as Byron York at the Washington Examiner pointed, the emails collected could become a �dissident database.� All of this is unnecessarily and unhelpfully divisive and provocative. They are mocking and menacing concerned citizens. This only makes a hot situation hotter. Is this what the president wants? It couldn�t be. But then in an odd way he sometimes seems not to have fully absorbed the awesome stature of his office. You really, if you�re president, can�t call an individual American stupid, if for no other reason than that you�re too big. You cannot allow your allies to call people protesting a health-care plan �extremists� and �right wing,� or bought, or Nazi-like, either. They�re citizens. They�re concerned. They deserve respect. The Democrats should not be attacking, they should be attempting to persuade, to argue for their case. After all, they have the big mic. Which is what the presidency is, the big mic. And frankly they ought to think about backing off. The president should call in his troops and his Congress and announce a rethinking. There are too many different bills, they�re all a thousand pages long, no one has time to read them, no one knows what�s going to be in the final one, the public is agitated, the nation�s in crisis, the timing is wrong, we�ll turn to it again�but not now. We�ll take a little longer, ponder every aspect, and make clear every complication. You know what would happen if he did this? His numbers would go up. Even Congress�s would. Because they�d look responsive, deliberative and even wise. Discretion is the better part of valor. Absent that, and let�s assume that won�t happen, the health-care protesters have to make sure they don�t get too hot, or get out of hand. They haven�t so far, they�ve been burly and full of debate, with plenty of booing. This is democracy�s great barbaric yawp. But every day the meetings seem just a little angrier, and people who are afraid�who have been made afraid, and left to be afraid�can get swept up. As this column is written, there comes word that John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO has announced he�ll be sending in union members to the meetings to counter health care�s critics. Somehow that doesn�t sound like a peace initiative. It�s going to be a long August, isn�t it? Let�s hope the uncharted territory we�re in doesn�t turn dark. |
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| Originally posted by Shakka I assume you paid for your house yourself, and you paid your taxes which provide for those services. I hope you're not implying that I should foot the bill for your house. |
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| Because adults should be exactly that...adults who can responsibly take care of themselves (yes, there are exceptions, but I don't subscribe to 40 million people simply are victims of the man when so many of them voluntarily choose to risk it an not have insurance and then expect a bailout like so many others when things don't go their way, or the millions of illegal immigrants who we would also be asked to subsidize despite their non-tax payor status). Children are different. |
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| It has been estimated that nearly one fifth of the uninsured population is able to afford insurance, almost one quarter is eligible for public coverage, and the remaining 56% need financial assistance (8.9% of all Americans) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health...e_United_States source: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/EMTALA/ |
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| To enforce rights, not to provide them or to subsidize them at the cost of others. |
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| Basic, perhaps, but don't tell me that a person who doesn't pay for their coverage is somehow entitled to all of the bells and whistles of premium care that I pay thousands of dollars for. Maybe we pay too much for our healthcare here (and I don't dispute that), however you get what you pay for. |
I don't consider myself a socialist by any means, but I saw this and thought it was appropriate for the topic (I am for some sort of universal health plan). It's basically an "in your face" for all those crying "socialism" and how we need to keep the USA devoid of it's evil influences.
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| I AM AN AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SHITHEEL This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US department of energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the national weather service of the national oceanographic and atmospheric administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the national aeronautics and space administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US department of agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the food and drug administration. At the appropriate time as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the national institute of standards and technology and the US naval observatory, I get into my national highway traffic safety administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the environmental protection agency, using legal tender issed by the federal reserve bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US postal service and drop the kids off at the public school. After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the department of labor and the occupational safety and health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all it's valuables thanks to the local police department. I then log on to the internet which was developed by the defense advanced research projects administration and post on freerepublic.com and fox news forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right. |
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| Originally posted by MisterOpus1 I'm not implying anything, I'm directly stating it. Does your taxes that you pay for firefighters only go exclusively to YOUR house if it burns down, or does it foot the bill for others as well? What exactly are you implying here yourself? |
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| You do realize that most of these adults choose not to have health care not because they're choosing to risk it and "expect a bailout" when things go bad. They choose not to have insurance because it would literally eat up their entire paycheck and they'd have little left for, you know, food, rent/mortgage, electricity, and other vital necessities: |
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| I think we can both agree that the cost of insurance premiums flat out suck and are getting worse every year. What's worse, co-insurance and deductibles are only going up, thus shifting the burden on the consumer more and more. As I've said before, the current system simply is not sustainable, and I see no reason why Conservatives who love to shout "FREE MARKETS!!" and "CAPITALISM!!" want to run to the hills when we have the government as another competitor in their capitalistic utopia. |
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| Guess we need to privatize the firefighters then, huh. |
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| Besides, are we even talking about everyone paying for public insurance right now? Because based on what I've seen from the preliminary estimates, we'd be saving money. The CBO estimates we'd be saving $150 billion: http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_...-it-s-good.aspx Commonwealth has us saving $250 billion: http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/new...ml?id=259000012 And the CBO looks at the current bill in the House giving us a $6 billion surplus: http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=1872 |
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ObamaCare�s Real Price Tag The funding gap is a canyon by year 10. As ObamaCare sinks in the polls, Democrats are complaining that the critics are distorting their proposals. But the truth is that the closer one inspects the actual details, the worse it all looks. Today�s example is the vast debt canyon that would open just beyond the 10-year window under which the bill is officially �scored� for cost purposes. The press corps has noticed the Congressional Budget Office�s estimate that the House health bill increases the deficit by $239 billion over the next decade. But government-run health care won�t turn into a pumpkin after a decade. The underreported news is the new spending that will continue to increase well beyond the 10-year period that CBO examines, and that this blowout will overwhelm even the House Democrats� huge tax increases, Medicare spending cuts and other �pay fors.� In a July 26 letter, CBO director Douglas Elmendorf notes that the net costs of new spending will increase at more than 8% per year between 2019 and 2029, while new revenue would only grow at about 5%. �In sum,� he writes, �relative to current law, the proposal would probably generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits during the decade beyond the current 10-year budget window.� (The House bill has changed somewhat in the meantime, but not enough to alter these numbers much.) The nearby chart shows this Grand Canyon between spending and revenue, including CBO�s long-term predictions. While these are obviously very coarse estimates, there�s also a projection of a $65 billion deficit in the 10th year�and �deficit neutrality in the 10th year is . . . the best proxy for what will happen in the second decade.� That�s not our outlook. That�s what White House budget director Peter Orszag told the House Budget Committee in June. He added that �If you�re not falling off a cliff at the end of your projection window, that is your best assurance that the long-term trajectory is also stable.� The House bill falls off a cliff. And the CBO score almost surely understates this deficit chasm because CBO uses static revenue analysis�assuming that higher taxes won�t change behavior. But long experience shows that higher rates rarely yield the revenues that they project. As for the spending, when has a new entitlement ever come in under budget? True, the 2003 prescription drug benefit has, but those surprise savings derived from the private insurance design and competition that Democrats opposed and now want to kill. The better model for ObamaCare is the original estimate for Medicare spending when it was passed in 1965, and what has happened since. That year, Congressional actuaries (CBO wasn�t around then) expected Medicare to cost $3.1 billion in 1970. In 1969, that estimate was pushed to $5 billion, and it really came in at $6.8 billion. House Ways and Means analysts estimated in 1967 that Medicare would cost $12 billion in 1990. They were off by a factor of 10�actual spending was $110 billion�even as its benefits coverage failed to keep pace with standards in the private market. Medicare spending in the first nine months of this fiscal year is $314 billion and growing by 10%. Some of this historical error is due to 1970s-era inflation, as well as advancements in care and technology. But Democrats also clearly underestimated�or lowballed�the public�s appetite for �free� health care.  ObamaCare�s deficit hole will eventually have to be filled one way or another�along with Medicare�s unfunded liability of some $37 trillion. That means either reaching ever-deeper into middle-class pockets with taxes, probably with a European-style value-added tax that will depress economic growth. Or with the very restrictions on care and reimbursement that have been imposed on Medicare itself as costs exploded. On the latter point, the 1965 Medicare statute explicitly stated that �Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize any Federal official or employee to exercise any supervision or control over the practice of medicine or the manner in which medical services are provided.� Yet now such government management of doctors and hospitals is so pervasive in Medicare that Mr. Obama can casually wonder in a recent interview with Time magazine how anyone could oppose the �benign changes� that he supports, such as �how the delivery system works.� Oh, is that all? Democrats will return in the fall with various budget tweaks that will claim to make ObamaCare �deficit neutral� over 10 years. But that won�t begin to account for the budget abyss it will create in the decades to come. |
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| Yeah, it's probable that you get squadoosh when the shit hits the fan no matter what you pay with the current system. Better pray that recission problems don't hit you or your family, because you could pay premiums on time your entire life and when life-threatening times occur, you could get dropped just as easily as the cheapskate buying cheaper insurance: |
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| And, IMO, we don't get shit for what we pay for, especially with $1500-3000 deductibles, $35-50 co-pays being the norm now with rising premiums through the roof. Not to mention the fact that $14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day: |
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| This current system is brokeN. The public option offers a vital safety-net to everyone SHOULD THEY SO CHOOSE TO HAVE IT. Of course if you love your high-ass premiums and shitty coverage, and love the fact that your insurance company (who's spending a $1,000,000/day to kill the public option, BTW) can drop you like a bad habit on irrelevant technicalities any time they so choose, then by all means keep it. Knock yourself out. Just don't deny others having the option to choose something better. |
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| Originally posted by MisterOpus1 love the fact that your insurance company (who's spending a $1,000,000/day to kill the public option, BTW) can drop you like a bad habit on irrelevant technicalities any time they so choose, then by all means keep it. Knock yourself out. Just don't deny others having the option to choose something better. |
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| Originally posted by Capitalizt When the "something better" involves government pointing a gun to his head and confiscating more of his property to satisfy those people, he has every right to try and deny it. |
It might be rhetoric, but it is what the expansion of every government program ultimately boils down to. Government is violence. If you disagree, stop paying taxes for a few years then try defending your property when the I.R.S. comes to seize it. Bang bang buddy.
My 2 neighbors are doctors (one is an endocrinologist and one is an ophthalmologist). I have had some interesting conversations with the endocrinologist on this topic before, and he has come down with interesting stances on several aspects of the issue. However, one of my main takeaways from him, that I happen to agree with, is:
Is the role of the government in all of this to be an active participant, or a referee? It seems like the current track of legislation is going to attempt to make the government an active player. Anyone with an ounce of common sense will tell you that you cannot compete with the federal government--that is a large part of why resistance from the private market players is so fierce and why you hear them say that they will be driven out of business--it is a legitimate concern.
On the other hand, with a government that acts as a referee, we'd have a non-active, non-partisan participant who would ensure "fairness." That pricing is not overly egregious, that people cannot be denied coverage due to pre-existing condition (but that government itself would not step in to provide said coverage for instance).
For me, that is a large part of how it comes down. Yes, maybe there is a role for government to play here, but I do not subscribe to the view that it's role is one of being an active participant in the industry.
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| Originally posted by Capitalizt It might be rhetoric, but it is what the expansion of every government program ultimately boils down to. Government is violence. If you disagree, stop paying taxes for a few years then try defending your property when the I.R.S. comes to seize it. Bang bang buddy. |
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| Originally posted by Krypton So you are an anarchist. Glad we got that out of the way. |
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| Originally posted by Capitalizt Just pointing out what you fans of big government programs are really advocating in the end. UHC and other socialistic plans of direct confiscation and redistribution are little better than slavery. Truth hurts. |
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| Originally posted by Krypton Public schools, roads, police, firefighters, military, justice, etc are all socialism enslaving the masses right? |
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| Originally posted by Capitalizt Everyone pays for the military, the court system, roads, police, etc. Society must have institutions in place to settle disputes and protect citizens from theft and violence. Those are legitimate functions the government provides to everyone. There is a vast difference between those "programs" and those that confiscate wealth from one class of people to directly redistribute it to others. Sorry krypt, there's just no getting around the fact that the welfare state is much more akin to slavery than anything else. The fact that "the rich" don't elicit much sympathy from the masses doesn't make taxing the shit out of them and giving their money to those who didn't earn it (via welfare payments, "free" healthcare, etc) any more moral. |
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| Originally posted by Krypton Hey just saying...having a military redistributes wealth for defense contractors. Having a justice system redistributes wealth to private prisons. Road construction redistributes wealth to construction companies. Police redistribute wealth to Ford Motors and weapons manufacturers. The entire government is made up of redistributed wealth. Additionally, healthcare won't be "free". People will still have to pay into the public option. |
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| Originally posted by Shakka Yes, I pay taxes that help to fund those services. I expect that everyone that owns a home pays their property taxes (at least generally speaking). Is locally provided fire insurance in the same league as nationally subsidized healthcare? I see what you're trying to get at but I don't think it's a very good comparison. |
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| So does that mean that the default conclusion is that it MUST be provided by the government on somebody else's dime? |
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| I don't mean to sound callous, but I hate the argument that if something is broken, it is the responsibility of government to fix it (with massive deficit spending at the expense of those who are already paying for it). |
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| Surely there are more innovative solutions than what is being proposed in 1,000 page bills that nobody has time to read?? |
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| Yes they do suck. Healthcare is expensive as fuck, and probably needlessly so. But I'd prefer to stick with the tactics that go after the cause of high premiums instead of band-aid fixes that only add up to more and more debt for future generations. Making something "more affordable" by subsidizing it (making it more expensive for the guy who now pays for his own insurance as well as yours) is not a solution. More government and higher taxes are not a long-term solution to any real problems, imo. |
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| Who knows. Maybe it would be a good idea, maybe it wouldn't. I don't really see that as a relevant tangent at this point. |
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| We must be reading different stories. Maybe the $6B surplus you're talking about comes from massive tax increases, not savings. |
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| The entire $1 trillion cost of the plan is only 4% of the estimated total healthcare spending over the 10 year period. That means you got the other 96% of costs to find cost savings, even if it is entirely not paid for. Or if the funding gap is, as the editorial says $188 bn, that is less than 1% of total healthcare spending over the next 10 years, which then gives you 99% of the costs to find savings as an offset. Seems very doable and manageale to me. |
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| The provisions that would result in the largest savings include: � Permanent reductions in the annual updates to Medicare�s payment rates for most services in the fee-for-service sector (other than physicians� services), yielding budgetary savings of $196 billion over 10 years (excluding interactions�namely, the effects of those changes on payments to Medicare Advantage plans and collections of Part B premiums); � Setting payment rates in the Medicare Advantage program based on per capita Medicare spending in the fee-for-service sector, providing savings of $156 billion (before interactions) over the 2010-2019 period; and � Changes to the Medicare Part D program that would establish a new prescription drug rebate program for some people who are eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare, while expanding drug coverage to beneficiaries that are currently subject to a gap in coverage (often referred to as the Part D �doughnut hole�), saving $30 billion over the 2010-2019 period. The provision that would result in the largest increase in Medicare spending would change payment rates for physicians� services to replace the 21 percent reduction in payment rates scheduled for January 2010, under the existing �sustainable growth rate� formula, with an inflation-based update. In subsequent years, rates would reflect separate updates for �evaluation and management� services and for all other services. CBO estimates that those changes would cost $228 billion over the 2010-2019 period (before taking into account interactions). Including those interactions, the net cost of the changes in physicians� payment rates would total $245 billion. Page 4 on: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/104xx/doc10464/hr3200.pdf |
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| But hey, I guess in 10 years, Obama will be out so it'll actually be the fault of the next administration when suddenly the deficit goes hyperbolic. |
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| I have said in this thread that there are certain changes in the current system that I'd gladly support. However a single-payor system that does nothing to address the problems and only creates more federal expenses and higher taxes is definitely not one of them. |
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| Surely we can come up with more innovative solutions to tackle the real problems without resorting to trying to cram through 1,000 page bills that nobody has read in record time without fully vetting the potential consequences. |
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| It's no wonder so many Americans are incensed and this platform is quickly losing steam. |
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| Firstly, I don't know that I fully agree with the constant assertation that the system is "broken" just because Obama says so. |
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