Here Comes Health Care Rationing

Sure, they try to spin it, but health care reform will be all about rationing care in the end. It's the only way they will be able to afford to take it over as they plan. We're losing the auto industry and health care under this guy Obama. Stop trying to tell me there's anything traditionally "American" about him. That's bs. He's a freaking socialist through and through.

Obama Will Ration Health Care

Comments

[Palooza]

But... it is already rationed by private insurers.... ALL. THE. TIME. How don't you get that.

[syn]

My dearest friend and most excellent doorman, Candido (who escaped Cuba in 1979, joined the military-active 10 years then join National Guard and has thought me so much the difference between America's exceptionalism and the rest of the world's Statist nightmare) is hearing increased disappointment from those apolitical who voted for Obama; they thought they were voting for a moderate candidate.

I would say Obamacare is ruining Obama's magnificient image.

[Nishner]

First, most Americans SUPPORT health care legislation.

When you can't get health care because it's too expensive or you have a pre-existing condition, when health providers deny you coverage when you get sick, when you can't get drugs because you've exceeded your annual $ limit on prescription drugs, when some bureaucrat in an insurers office denies you coverage to save the company money, THAT'S rationing.

[Mo]

Palooza,
How is it that YOU don't get that there is a world of difference between the 'rationing" of private insurers and the rationing we would have under a government health care plan? A government health plan would drive out private insurers, which could not compete on cost with the mandates placed on them by government regulations, and with the unlimited power of taxation at the government's disposal. Even with the flaws of the current employer-based health insurance system, there are a variety of insurance plans to choose from, if payment is denied, the insured can challenge the decision; and one is always free to pay for whatever their insurance doesn't cover. What recourse will we have when the government is the sole "decider" of what health care we receive?

The rationing of the Canadian government health care system is far more draconian than the "rationing" of our current system. It would be unsustainable were it not for the "escape valve" provided by American health services available just across their border. Where will we (and they) go when our care is rationed by government? We need more and better private insurance options that are not tied to employment.

[MarkJ]

Hey Palooza,

Since you think ObamaCare is so swell, I'm sure you'll immediately volunteer to be the guy who tells people's families, "Sorry, President Obama says Granny is too old for that pacemaker. Costs too much y'know. Here's a free ObamaPill--take her home."

I've got a sawbuck that says if you take that job, you're going to need some emergency ObamaCare yourself in short order.

[Nishner]

Tough to challenge when you're broke or dead.

Obama's not proposing a Canadian style system and has nothing to do with what's under discussion. That, and you're completely wrong about it.

No, in most states there aren't a variety of health care providers to choose from - there's one or two and that's it. You're basically at their mercy.

"Always free to pay for what their insurance doesn't cover." You do realize that the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US is medical expenses?

[Dan Riehl]

"there's one or two and that's it"

Yes, because the market isn't actually "open! Duh. It's regulated in ways that prevent more competition within states.

[IslamoLlama]

"-- But... it is already rationed by private insurers.... ALL. THE. TIME. How don't you get that. --"

Nonsense. Under the current system, you can have as much as you can pay for. Only the undeserving poor don't get adequate medical treatment. And if they're poor, they probably weren't worth the care anyway, amirite?

"-- How is it that YOU don't get that there is a world of difference between the 'rationing" of private insurers and the rationing we would have under a government health care plan? --"

For instance, in case A, a private insurance adjuster denies you a kidney transplant because his boss's boss wants a bigger year end bonus. In case B, government is evil. QED. I'll take the private for-profit insurance any day over the low-overhead non-profit public option.

"-- Even with the flaws of the current employer-based health insurance system, there are a variety of insurance plans to choose from, if payment is denied, the insured can challenge the decision; and one is always free to pay for whatever their insurance doesn't cover. --"

Just five short years in expensive legal battles with your insurance company and you can pay for all the chemo you need for that "pre-existing condition". And if you don't think you'll win, don't worry. Just put your hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills on a credit card.

Hell, why have insurance at all? Just pay for everything yourself. I like to pay up front in cash. Or with the giant gold bricks I keep in the truck of my car.

"-- What recourse will we have when the government is the sole "decider" of what health care we receive? --"

Indeed. In this wholly fictitious scenario, not currently proposed by any legislation being written, what recourse will we have? It'll be like Medicaid and Medicare, but a thousand times worse!

[Rolling my eyes in Chesapeake]

If Obama's a socialist, so are half the people in this "freaking" country. Sounds like *you're* the anachronism.

[Nishner]

"there's one or two and that's it"

Yes, because the market isn't actually "open! Duh. It's regulated in ways that prevent more competition within states.

That's largely due to the power of the insurers who are then able to dictate rates and conditions to their customers / hostages.

[North Dallas Thirty]

But... it is already rationed by private insurers.... ALL. THE. TIME. How don't you get that.

Which liberals adamantly oppose, it seems.

So why is it any better when it's rationed by the Federal government?

"President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care.

In a nationally televised event at the White House, Obama said families need better information so they don't unthinkingly approve "additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."

He added: "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.""

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-health25-2009jun25,0,1978875.story

Again, if a private company told someone they wouldn't pay for surgery, Nishner, Islamo, and the remaining trolls would be apopoleptic. Yet Obama stands up and says exactly the same thing and they applaud like trained seals.

[Nishner]

Nice try, but that's BS.

These are the kinds of actions by insurers that piss me off and why there's needs to be a real public option.

An investigation by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations showed that health insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, allowing the companies to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims over a five-year period.

It also found that policyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for rescission and that employees were praised in performance reviews for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses

A Texas nurse said she lost her coverage, after she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, for failing to disclose a visit to a dermatologist for acne.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-rescind17-2009jun17,0,3508020,full.story

[North Dallas Thirty]

"It also found that policyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for rescission and that employees were praised in performance reviews for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses"

Again, I repeat what Barack Obama said above:

"President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care."

So why is the Federal government allowed to deny care to people with critical illnesses with your full support, Nishner? Why aren't you criticizing Barack Obama for his belief that people with deadly diseases shouldn't receive expensive treatment?

Oh, that's right, I forgot; you're not capable of criticizing Barack Obama.

Really, Nishner, you're demonstrating the hypocrisy of this entire debate. You don't care about denial of care or anything -- as long as the Federal government is doing it.

And what's the recourse when the Feds deny you care, Nishner? Please, say "you can pay for it yourself".

[Nishner]

Obama's statement is a hypothetical, and there's lots of evidence that doctors do over-prescribe drugs and procedures without improving the patient's health.

Insurers, on the other hand, have been repeatedly fined for denying care to sick people they'd insured, promised coveage to, took their money, then turned around and denied them coverage due to some BS corporate bureaucat. If Wellpoint, UnitedHealth or Assurant were a person instead of a corporation killing people, you'd be railing to execute them. But since they're a corporation, being the corporate shill you are, they're behavior is fine. Attack Obama for a hypothetical, ignore the killers.

More real world examples of the great health care you can expect when you actually get sick.

"Health Net of California agreed to pay about $1.95 million to settle claims relating to the rescission of patient’s insurance policies.

The settlement was negotiated on behalf of the California Hospital Association, and involved about 200 hospitals. The class action lawsuit stems from Health Net’s decision to revoke patients' coverage between February 2004 and October 2007."

In a separate agreement made last year with the California Department of Insurance, Health Net agreed to offer coverage to 926 former members whose policies were revoked after they incurred medical bills, and pay $25 million in fines.

http://www.sfvbj.com/article.asp?aID=03703358.474667.1787370.14659102.91917802.479&aID2=137481

[North Dallas Thirty]

"Attack Obama for a hypothetical, ignore the killers."

The funny part is again, Nishner, you're absolutely refusing to criticize your Messiah for stating that people who have deadly illnesses should be denied care in order to keep costs down.

What's even funnier is that you are screaming about people allegedly not getting the health care for which they paid while openly stating that you support doctors denying patients care for which THEY paid if you think it's "over-prescribing".

Again, you demonstrate my point. This is not about providing better care; it is about a government takeover, pure and simple. Your disgusting attempt to use other peoples' illnesses to criticize behavior that both you and Barack Obama have made clear that you have every intention of doing yourself demonstrates your complete lack of honesty.

State publicly, Nishner, that you FULLY support government denying care to the sick and arbitrarily deciding that certain treatments or prescriptions are unnecessary. And while you're at it, please state who is to pay for care that the government denies as you've already been asked to do.

[Nishner]

Again, you're full of BS. You've once again twisted Obama's words. He simply suggested families should get better info before agreeing to "additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."

But in your paranoia, you manage to turn a fairly thoughtful response into some sort of government mandate that, in your own words, "people who have deadly illnesses should be denied care in order to keep costs down."

Too bad you're never appalled at anything insurance companies do. You are one major league shill.

[North Dallas Thirty]

"Too bad you're never appalled at anything insurance companies do. You are one major league shill."

Silly Nishner; if you yourself were truly appalled at denial of healthcare for which people paid, you wouldn't be endorsing and supporting government plans to do it, nor would you be going on about how people should arbitrarily be denied treatments for which they paid if, in your opinion, it was "over-prescribing".

Again, you're not fixing the system; you're simply trying to repeat those behaviors you criticize with government coffers getting the dollars. Nor are you willing to state who should pay for procedures that are denied by the government.

[Nishner]

Why can't you simply condemn the actions of these corporations?My guess is you're just too much of a shill.

You either distort or play the game of making the perfect the enemy of the good. Listen to you and we can never fix anything since nothing's ever going to be perfect.

This time, you're going to lose. There will be real health care reform with a real public plan.

More real world Health Care abuse:

Wendell Potter says he is finished defending the insurance industry, which he says is "beholden to Wall Street."

At a hearing last week before the Senate Commerce Committee, the former vice president of corporate communications at the insurance giant Cigna testified, "I know from personal experience that members of Congress and the public have good reason to question the honesty and trustworthiness of the insurance industry."

In his testimony and during an interview with CNN, Potter described how underwriters at his former company would drive small businesses with expensive insurance claims to dump their Cigna policies. Industry executives refer to the practice as "purging," Potter said.

"When that business comes up for renewal, the underwriters jack the rates up so much, the employer has no choice but to drop insurance," Potter said.

[Sam the Plumber]

Yeah, what is your argument North Dallas? We can't improve on the system if we don't cover everything under the sun? Boneheaded.

When did Republicans turn into such wimps? First it was the pants-wetting after 9/11 (funny how those liberal New Yorkers went on with their lives while the GOP panicked). Now it's Latina women keeping the white men down. And now they are crying over hypothetical sob stories of poor Grandmas.

For a public plan to work, there's going to have to be some treatments that aren't covered due to expense. Not paying for these treatments will help others get healthcare that could potentially save their lives. Now some 20-year-old with a headache that's really an aneurysm will go to the doctor instead of staying home and dying because she doesn't have health insurance. It is a give and take.

Plus, all of the private insurers are perfectly able to pay for Grandma. What the hell's stopping them anyway? The public plan is just too cheap and too good?

If your argument is that the public plan isn't any good, THEN PEOPLE WON'T BUY INTO IT. Tell your employer you don't want it. For god's sake, nobody is making you buy this public plan. If it sucks, you can still go with Cigna. May the best man win.

I thought you guys were cold realists. You're just a bunch of complaining, whiny losers now. Party of Lindsey Graham.

[anony mouse]

Obama will never actually take on higher costs since he already said tort reform is off the table, and lawsuits are one of the prime reasons that health care costs have gone up. Another reason is that medicaire doesn't pay hospitals enough for the care that is given which drives up the cost of private care because somebody has to pay the bills, and govt doesn't seem to want to. Not to mention Medicaire is going bust.

Also, the dems advocates on getting a public plan passed have been touting that in fact their public plan will ration health care. It's not a bug but a feature (ie it will drive down costs). So if health care is being rationed, then by necessity there will be denial of service.

Also nishner if Obama said "that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care." I don't see how that is advocating anything but a denial of service.

[mark l.]

this whole healthcare thing is an absolute loser for dems, long term.

eventually, people will be denied service, largely diagnostic, and the govt will be 'held responsible' for people dying trying to shave costs. There is a very precarious line between working via a healthcare network, and letting them take the fall, versus taking over, and lifting any of their guilt.

the funny thing about this is the trial lawyers get screwed. instead of suing an hmo, they have to face off against the govt. wouldn't it be a travesty to see these lawyers get paid like medicare...60 cents on the dollar.

[mark l.]

"that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care."

where would you put stem cell therapy in the obama plan?
what about the person who requests a second, or worse, a third opinion?

the irony of the stem cell issue?
obama and the dems believe in its future applications, but haven't designed a system that can afford such care. govt healthcare? the only ones who get stem cell therapy are going to be the ones who pay out of pocket.

[mark l.]

on the stem cell theme...

what if you can cure 1 in 10 with a treatment?

the ONLY consideration that can be used is cost, otherwise you would want everyone to have such a treatment, and a chance.

so tell me nishner, how much would you pay for a treatment that only saves 10% of its recipients? what's its value?

[North Dallas Thirty]

"Why can't you simply condemn the actions of these corporations? My guess is you're just too much of a shill."

What, exactly, am I to condemn, Nishner?

Barack Obama and Sam the Plumber say it's OK to deny care to people if it would be too expensive. You claim it's perfectly OK to prevent people from getting care for which they paid premiums and taxes if, in your opinion, it's "over-prescribing".

Again, I wish you'd establish what your principles are. Is it wrong to deny people care because it would be too expensive? Is it wrong to prevent people from getting care for which they paid premiums if, in someone else's opinion, it's unnecessary or "over-prescribing"?

"You either distort or play the game of making the perfect the enemy of the good. Listen to you and we can never fix anything since nothing's ever going to be perfect."

Here's the thing, Nishner; you seemingly have no problem pointing out the imperfections of private health insurance, but then get yourself into a tizzy when someone dares criticize the Obama Party nationalization solution, insisting that just because a plan is not perfect is not a reason to get rid of it.

And by the way, you make it too obvious how you Axelrod puppets are just repeating talking points when you make virtually the same accusations in different threads.

Anon and fellow defeatists apparently think that if all issues related to healthcare cannot be solved in one fell swoop, that it's better to just give up.

Posted by: Bob | Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 01:13 PM

[North Dallas Thirty]

And finally, I challenge all the leftist liberals here like Nishner and Sam the Plumber.

You claim that you can operate a health insurance plan with only 2% administrative overhead, without any denial of coverage, with affordable premiums, and without any restrictions based on pre-existing conditions.

Prove it. Establish your own plan. Create competition for the for-profit health insurance companies. Take the billions of dollars controlled by the liberals like Buffett, Soros, Pelosi, Kerry, Kennedy, Dodd, and others, and establish your own health plan.

That way, everybody wins. You provide health insurance to all the people you say are being denied it and you avoid imposing any new taxes on working Americans or businesses. You're funding it totally from rich people and it would meet your goal of making affordable coverage available to all Americans. Even better, it would cost taxpayers nothing, and it would impose no additional expensive mandates.

So why don't you do that? Prove your leftist theories to be true. Put your money where your mouth is.

And if you can't do that, explain why not. Go on, we'll wait.

[Nishner]

"Why can't you simply condemn the actions of these corporations? My guess is you're just too much of a shill."

What, exactly, am I to condemn, Nishner?

You could start by saying recission is wrong when used by insurers to deny expensive treatments to sick people who've paid their premiums in good faith.

If you don't find that morally reprehensible, you should check your self for pulse.

[North Dallas Thirty]

"You could start by saying recission is wrong when used by insurers to deny expensive treatments to sick people who've paid their premiums in good faith."

But you see, Nishner, not even you agree with that statement.

"For a public plan to work, there's going to have to be some treatments that aren't covered due to expense."

Posted by: Sam the Plumber | Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 10:21 PM

Or:

"President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care.

In a nationally televised event at the White House, Obama said families need better information so they don't unthinkingly approve "additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."

He added: "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.""

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-health25-2009jun25,0,1978875.story

Both of those clearly state that people who have paid their premiums in good faith can be denied treatment if it's too expensive.

Indeed, you yourself have stated that treatment should be denied if it's what you or the plan administrator define as "over-prescribing".

Maybe you should check your own pulse first. Or is it OK to deny care when it's the public plan doing it? Why not be honest and state, as I asked you to do above, that you FULLY support government and/or the "public plan" denying care to the sick and arbitrarily deciding that certain treatments or prescriptions are unnecessary. And while you're at it, please state who is to pay for care that the government denies.

Remeber, Nishner, these sort of things are the reason you want private plans curtailed and abolished. Why should we do that when the replacement government plan is just going to do the same thing?

[ET]

Nisher,

Based on your comments, I am certain that you will move yourself and your family to the public option on the very day it becomes available. Any govt program that promises to be cheaper than the private option with no decrease in access or quality of care is obviously the best choice, especially for a principled individual who practices what he preaches, like you.

It would strengthen your position if you would publicly declare that fact here in the riehlworld. Perhaps you have already done so, I may have missed it. If so, I apologize.

If you do not intend to move to the govt plan, then I will count you among the typical liberal hypocrite...and, lacking any credibility on the issue, you should STFU.

[Nishner]

Surprise, surprise. You can't even bring yourself to condemn law-braking insurers whose actions lead to the deaths of who know how many of their customers. You're sstill a shill.

The Public Plan is not going to offer unending Cadillac coveage - if you want that, you can go to the private insurer. It's the same way private insurers work now, they have limits on coverage, deductibles, etc. which are spelled out in your policy.

That's different than what the insurers did, which is change the rules AFTER their customers got sick and purged them using trumped up recission. They broke the law.

They entered into a contract with their customer to provide a service - health care, and accepted money from customers who paid in good faith expecting the insurance companies meet their commitment. When the customers actually got sick attempted to collect on that agreement which they'd paid for, the insurance companies reneged and used recission to purge customers. That's why they paid those huge fines.

You're a shill, you always, always, always come down on the side of the corporation.

[Sam the Plumber]

North Dallas, this is typical false equivalency often found on the right. When a person who has paid their premiums if arbitrarily tossed off the books by an insurance company because of no other reason than it's too expensive to pay for their care, that is wrong. This often occurs to young, ordinarily healthy people that have run into serious health issues.

When the public plan states that certain very costly procedures that produce little long-term benefit will be denied for the benefit of others, this is far different than the arbitrary, sleazy nature of today's private insurers, who don't even look to see what benefit the procedure may actually have. To them, only cost and the bottom line matter.

Motive is important. The insurance company's only goal is to avoid paying costly claims and basically keep the status quo. The public plan's motives are to ensure near-universal coverage and the best, most necessary care possible.

Insurance companies: denying _legitimate_ care to save money. Public plan: curbing _unnecessary, inefficient care_ to insure others. It's a no-brainer.

But it is really more important to maintain that "rationing" talking point, isn't it?

[Palooza]

To whoever made the point that private business rationing is different than government rationing, you are right: businesses have a profit incentive and duty to their shareholders to ration. That's right, the more insurers deprive people of coverage, especially for expensive treatments, the more money they make. They literally have entire departments dedicated to figure out ways to screw their insureds. They all do it. In local markets it is basically a monopoly. I have my own policy and have been out in that market. It is not pretty.

[ET]

Palooza,

I don't dispute your point, but how do we solve the problem? I can't believe that things will get better by turning everything over to the feds..in a rush, by the way, and accelerated by a self-serving congress determined to exploit (or create) any crisis they can to grab power.

We better step back and slow down before our currency (literally and figuratively) is destroyed.

We can fix healthcare incrementally and keep the individual at the forefront of personal medical decisions.

Step back and slow down. Divide the problem into manageable parts..just we do in the real world.

[jr565]

Heres an article from the Times about how we MUST ration health care:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

Now Sam says "who has paid their premiums if arbitrarily tossed off the books by an insurance company because of no other reason than it's too expensive to pay for their care, that is wrong." Ok, how is this different?

From the article:
National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence gave a preliminary recommendation that the National Health Service should not offer Sutent for advanced kidney cancer. The institute, generally known as NICE, is a government-financed but independently run organization set up to provide national guidance on promoting good health and treating illness. The decision on Sutent did not, at first glance, appear difficult. NICE had set a general limit of £30,000, or about $49,000, on the cost of extending life for a year. Sutent, when used for advanced kidney cancer, cost more than that, and research suggested it offered only about six months extra life. But the British media leapt on the theme of penny-pinching bureaucrats sentencing sick people to death. The issue was then picked up by the U.S. news media and by those lobbying against health care reform in the United States. An article in The New York Times last December featured Bruce Hardy, a kidney-cancer patient whose wife, Joy, said, “It’s hard to know that there is something out there that could help but they’re saying you can’t have it because of cost.” Then she asked the classic question: “What price is life?”

By limiting the use of Sutent NICE in fact sentenced sick people to death and made the exact cost benefit analysis that you find so objectionable when made by the insurance company. THey said it wasn't worth giving people another 6months to a year of life and cut them off. I'm sure this kind of decision is made all the time there, not just for advanced kidney cancer but for all maladies. The people at NICE simply don't see the need. You may want another year of life, but you don't rate sadly.

Also, its kind of funny hearing all this talk about rationing and how necessary it is when previously we were hearing all this talk about how people were going bankrupt due to their medical bills and that the current health care was so wrong and backwards because presumably people should have gotten the care and not had to have gone into bankruptcy to get said care. But wouldn't the rationing of health care then shift the blame onto the consumer? And wouldn't the solution be that the consumer would not need to go into bankruptcy because the person would never get the care to begin with? Because it's too costly. Because some bureacrat somewhere would have cut the customer off prior to him ever going into debt and simply said this care is too expensive therefore it wont be provided. Maybe the standard would be People might save on their finances but these same people might also be dead.
Or would those bills be paid by Obama's care? In which case, where is the actual cost savings? Obama said something along the lines of people might have to forgo the expensive surgeries and opt for pain killers instead (paraphrasing). Oh really?
Democrats also said that the senate has great health care and some suggested that all americans should receive the same health care. If they can get that and keep the costs down thats great. but thats not where they're going now that they actulaly have to come up with an actual program. Because something tells me that when Senators get sick they don't get rationed health care, the way it's being prescribed here for everyday americans. If Robert Byrd needs a heart bypass I doubt his doctors are saying "Well you know Robert, you are hitting 90. Maybe instead of the expensive surgery you should instead take some aspirin and resign yourself to death." When Ted Kennedy was having his brain surgery that might give him a few more years at best I doubt his insurance said "Well Ted, the odds of you coming out of this are slim, and you are pretty old. So why not just die gracefully?". Funny, unless I'm mistaken, he did go through with the VERY EXPENSIVE surgery. Why was he being applauded instead of condemned for driving up our health costs by the dems proposing this now? He's old! He has cancer! His treatment is expensive!

In England, noone over 59 years of age can have bypass surgery because its not covered. They're too old you see. And Tom Dashle said something along the lines of ""Health-care reform will not be pain free; seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them." Fair enough. So then, how about senators start relying on this same insurance and health care rationing?

[anon]

The health care debate has become boring.

It is obviously going to pass in one form or another.

People who pay attention and understand the numbers, including President Obama, already know that the predicted savings will never occur; just like they knew that the 'stimulus' would never live up to its billing, and knew that GM was going to go bankrupt no matter what...

It doesn't matter, society is so far out of control that there is no stopping it, all a person can do now is do their best to shelter their own income and deal with all the taxes.

When health care reform fails to 1) improve health via prevention, 2) reduce ER costs, 3) reduce overall costs, 4) help businesses compete...nothing will happen. There will be another host of excuses and phony numbers and phony fixes and it will simply go on the same downward trajectory as everything else in this country.

Ayn Rand here we come, baby.

[North Dallas Thirty]

Indeed. Even the vaunted CBO that Bob, Nishner, Sam the Plumber, and the other Axelrod astroturfers were citing yesterday has become their enemy.

"The health care overhauls released to date would increase, not reduce, the burgeoning long-term health costs facing the government, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf said Thursday."

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000003168293#

[North Dallas Thirty]

Oh, and that whole thing about how the Obama Party would let you choose?

Bull.

"When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:

"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers."

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?secid=1501&status=article&id=332548165656854

[Lala]

NDH I see you read the same editorial as I did. I have my daughter covered by a private health policy. She's a free-lancer now and according to IBD she'll either have to continue with this policy or go to the govt. Either way I don't like it.

[Anon]

Dodd complained that CBO refuses to assume that government savings will occur from an increased focus on wellness and preventive health care.

-----------------------

This is my favorite part of the article, Dodd is complaining because CBO refused to add in any dollar figures for wholly imaginary, unproven savings that he alleges will result from 'wellness and prevention'

The scary thing is that anyone who reads these numbers would actually believe this thing is going to pay for itself, it is idealogy divorced from all sense of reality.

But, I must say, this is exactly the same kind of crazy thinking and dodgy numbers that went on in Republican circles over the Iraq War and that to a degree, still goes on with attempts to justify what is unjustifiable.

We are truly doomed as a society, and at this point, rightly so.