Another Bad Week For The Republicans/Democrats

You are not making any sense Buffalo Roam. If you are trying to say that healthcare costs are out of control...absoutely they are indeed. That is the whole point of healthcare reform to get healthcare costs under control.

The process of controlling healthcare costs includes training more healthcare providers...which was the point of my recent posts. I take it then you are supporting such initiatives...more competition within the healthcare industry as I have previously suggested? Are you now supporting healthcare reform as outlined by the Democrats who are pushing for more competition with in the industry?

 

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It's under Division C ("Public Health and Workforce Development), Title II ("Workforce"), Subtitle A ("Primary Care Workforce") in H.R. 3200.

In addition to a number of new carrots for primary care providers (including better benefits for participants in the National Health Service Corps, a new Frontline Health Providers Loan Repayment Program, and modifications to make existing primary care student loan programs more attractive), this section of the bill includes a directive for the HHS Secretary to "establish a primary care training and capacity building program" (i.e. make grants to medical schools to build academic capacity in primary care), creates a program to develop training programs for medical residents in community-based settings, and provides additional funding for training programs for general, pediatric, and public health dentists and dental hygienists.

 

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Supporting what competition in the industry? It is the Government who stifles competition, and this monstrosity of a health care bill will be more of the same.

Due to the Federal Government both DNC/RNC, we have lost the majority of our drug manufacturing industry, the majority of the Industry is now based overseas, restricted the numbers of students who can attend Medical School, a large (and that segment is growing larger) segment of our Doctors are coming from overseas, and many of our medical student are now going over to overseas schools to get their degrees.

If the Democrats want to move more students into the field, just open more schools, they don't need to take over the Health Care system to do that.

Again the prime examples of Medicare and Medicaid, all they have done is stifle the market because the government rules and regulation.

The programs don't pay the cost of treatment, and that unpaid cost is passed on to Consumers who can pay, with their insurance, and the insurance industry who need to make up that extra cost being passed on to them raises their rates, because the Government passes along the unpaid cost of illegal aliens and the uninsured, add to that the fact that government to make up the bankrupt MC & MC programs, which should have failed already because they are broke, just keeps raising taxes to pay for a bankrupt system, and passes that cost to the taxpayer, who is hit from both ends, and the middle, Rising Cost of Health care, Rising cost of Insurance, and Rising Taxes to pay for broken Government Health care Systems.

The Government doesn't need to show a profit, it has the ability to pass on every loss by raising taxes until we are broke, and guess what, We are Broke, the Goose is Dead, no more Golden Eggs.

Another broken governmental program is not what is needed, what is needed is for the Government to get out of Heath Care, completely, let the free market forces take over again.

What the Government needs to do is make sure that the Insurance Industry delivers on their product, that is what the Government needs to do, and stream line the process for getting new procedures and drugs online.

We had the best Health Care System in the world until LBJ and His Great Society, since then Government Regulations have restricted access to Medical Schools, Medicines, passed cost on to the Tax Payers, and have generally screwed up the systems.

Again name one government program that isn't going broke, and you want to let the Federal Government move even further into controlling Health Care?

The Democrats have run our industries off shore, our medical training programs off shore, our energy production overseas, built deficits that are unimaginable to the common man, and yes the Republicans have their fair share of the blame coming to, but Washington is the Problem not the Solution, and that was foreseen by our Founding Fathers which is why the Constitution was Constructed in the Manner it was, as a Strict Limit on the Power of the Federal Government granted only by restrictive enumerated powers.

Give me a Break.

Wake up and smell the shit pile we now have to deal with from both the Republicans and Democrats.

 

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Really, and since when, the Senate Bill hasn't been written yet, or even passed, and that provision isn't in any of the Senate Bills being bandied about, plus the fact that the Bills will have to go to conference to reconcile the differences, and then be voted on again, and just exactly where is this provision going to be?

And even then, how is it going to be implemented?

Look at the implementation of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, how many other access to Medical School Bills have been passed? There have been others, and where has it gotten us?

Do you realize the Federal Government is the party who placed us in this pile of dog shit in the First Place?

Get the Government out of Providing Health Care, at the most they should only be involved in making sure that the system is safe and delivers proper care and treatment.

It is the Federal Government who passed all of the regulations that have restricted the access to medical schools by regulating the number of slots, requirements, and tax breaks.

 

One Senate bill has been passed out of committee (the Senate HELP Committee's bill); the Finance Committee's bill is still in the works. But the HELP bill absolutely addresses workforce issues. See: Title IV ("Health Care Workforce"), particularly Subtitle C ("Increasing the supply of of the health care workforce") and Subtitle D ("Enhancing health care workforce education and training").

I'm not sure what this means. Scrap the idea of noncatastrophic health insurance and rely mostly on out-of-pocket payments? Or retain the health insurance system but remove all regulations so that insurers are free to insure only healthy pools, leaving anyone else out in the cold?

Not exactly. State-level boards of licensure generally require accreditation by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, a body sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the American Medical Association. So in part the profession itself (in collusion with state governments) restricts the supply of doctors. That said, I would support efforts to increase the number of slots and M.D.-granting schools to expand the supply of doctors.

 

E. coli for the soul?

I think it's possible to have this discussion if health care reform goes well enough to begin with. Quality control, raising and preserving standards, is simply as important as it gets in the context of healthcare. After all, it's not like returning a faulty power pack to Frye's.

It works in other countries. I don't contest. But two potential affecting factors in those outcomes would be how close the government is to the system, or whether socioeconomic conditions make that level of care the only real choice.

They're doing these area health fairs now in the U.S. Apparently they've done them around the world before, but in the states they're renting out fairgrounds for, say, a long weekend. And anyone who they can reasonably and safely manage to get inside that complex gets free health care. People are having twenty-year dental needs attended to. They're screening cancers, catching heart murmurs. They're getting kids shots. I have to admit that oral surgery in the back of a truck, or a proctological exam in a horse stall would be a bit of a bizarre and even discomforting experience, but these were real doctors and nurses from real practices around the country. I know it's a leap from one to the other, but I know you've seen the crews that put together the rides at the fair. And yet we still get on the damn ferris wheel. Or the Scrambler. Or some roller coaster they've bolted together every year since we were, like, seven.

The practical question is what needs to be done in order to develop and implement reasonable standards for something like what you propose. My concern about the way things stand today would be that our commercial priorities would create such competition that cost-cutting would eventually tap some vital aspect of the service. You know, that whole capitalism and exploitation cycle that plays out over and over, leading to things like mine collapses, airplane crashes, and scorching diarrhea?

 

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll

Tuesday, September 01, 2009
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 30% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -11 (see trends).

Most voters now expect that the situation in Afghanistan will get worse over the next six months. That’s up fourteen points over the past month. At the same time, the number worried about a terrorist attack in the United States has declined.

 

And why do you assume it is the fearmongering? Why not take the more likely case that the American people do not like using a broadsword where a scalpel would more easily to the job. The public does not like this plan. It's time to make a new one.

 

Perhaps, though polls show that a significant chunk of people believe falsities spread by opponents of the bill. As David Broder noted last month:

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll taken last week found its sample split 41 percent approving and 46 percent disapproving of Obama's efforts on health-care reform. The numbers are almost identical to Bill Clinton's scores on the same question in June 1994, the month his effort failed.

The same survey offered a preview of the debate that now awaits us. When voters were asked to rate Obama's health-care plan, 36 percent said it was a good idea and 42 percent called it a bad one. But later in the poll, when the interviewer read an accurate, neutrally phrased description of the main features of the plan that Obama supports, it commanded strong support -- winning approval 56 to 38 percent. ​

People don't like the straw man version of the bill advertised by opponents (which, obviously, is their intent). They do like what's actually in the bill (regulation on the practices and products of insurance companies, mandates if financial assistance is provided up to a certain income level, a public option, etc).

Apologies but since my post count apparently isn't high enough to allow me to post links I'm unable to post the sources.

 

No, what people don;t like is the whole ball of wax. They like some portions of the bill and not others. I've read the bill and yes some of the regulation is good, however the existance of a public option cripples whatever was good in the bill. Everything else becomes moot as regulation won't mean a damn thing when the governments is the ONLY Health insurance company. Don't think it will happen? Watch how cheap the population is.

Eliminate the Public option, tighten the regulation a bit more, get rid of insurance adjusters, make bonuses paid to doctors by insurance companies illegal and we'll start seeing some actual Health care.

 

The government won't be the only insurance company if the public option is passed. First of all, the employer mandate encourages employers who currently provide health care to employees to continue to do so and it encourages those that do not to start doing so (the CBO estimates that in 7 years, the reforms would actually get a net 3 million more people on employer-based coverage than would be the case under current law). Further, the House bill contains a firewall to discourage workers who have an offer of employer-based coverage from opting out and going into the individual insurance markets: full-time employees who have an offer for health care from their employers are ineligible to receive subsidies in the individual markets (where the public option lies). Other factors come into play as well: for example, some health care providers will choose not to participate in the public option, a factor that will keep certain shoppers in the individual markets from choosing it.

All told, even assuming the public option has premiums that are 10% cheaper than average, the CBO estimates that 11-12 million people (or about a third of the individual insurance market) will be in the public option over the next decade. Everyone else will have either a private plan obtained in the individual market or an employer-based group plan.

However, I'm curious about your logic. Assuming the public option adheres to the ground rules set up for it (i.e. financing itself entirely through premiums), if it offers a superior product more cheaply (the only way the argument that the public option will become the only plan in the individual market becomes plausible) then what is the rationale for maintaining profit-based insurance companies? Force of habit? Masochism?

 

This whole "another bad week for" amounts to "I hate the other party". There are no unique issues being discussed here and both threads amount to trolling. I've merged both the Republican/Democrat "bad week" threads and moved them to the cesspool.

 

I am glad to see some honest and good discussion on healthcare reform in this thread.

 

Where do you want the break?

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It is good to see we do have points of agreement. We agree that government in conjunction with the industry have served to limit supply of healthcare products and services which have caused the healthcare demand supply curve remain distorted in favor of industry interests.

If healthcare reform was just more of the same, why would the industry be so opposed to the reform? One has to ask if it is more of the same, why is industry spending millions of dollars each day to defeat healthcare reform. I think the reason is because this is not more of the same.

The other issue that is not being addressed is that we cannot get to a pure market state overnight. There are a lot of folks dependent on government programs. If you eliminated Medicare, Medicaid you would throw a lot of people on the streets without healthcare.

The other thing to keep in mind is that healthcare is something that all of us need to pay for as we are all consumers. In the current model, there are a good number of folks who do not pay their fair share of the heatlhcare expense. So the rest of us pick up the tab, and that is not fair either. We all bear a healthcare risk,therefore we should all pay our share of that cost/risk. And we should pay for that risk according to our ability to pay for that risk. As the old saying goes, you cannot squeeze blood out of a turnip applies.

Then we get back to that old issue of lobbying and the influence of money on congress and our legislation. Unless you can get anti-corruption reform in congress and into the consitituion, the only way to combat corruption is through visibility, visibillity which will be provided by a public option.

 

Joe American is deeply impressed by the rapid pace of the recovery:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkId_c86jGs

 

I would be very embarrased if I could not decimate one of targets of his aggression on the first hit.

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