For some reason I'm very seriously doubting there will be a Healthcare Bill passed
in 2009. I just don't see it happening before the end of the year! It's become a
political ping-pong game.
Agree? Disagree?
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May you always have..Love to Share, Health to Spare, and Friends that Care!
But why is the question. I think they are afraid... afraid of total economic collapse and they don't want to be blamed for it.... but its going to come anyway, health reform or not.
My son broke his wrist a couple of weeks ago. 21 and no insurance. He was freaked about the medical costs. First they said about 3,000. After all was said and done he didn't even get the cast they thought was needed just a splint in the ER. Turns out not really needed at all. The whole deal cost him about $200. If they could have they would have taken him for much much more and told him it was necessary.
His friend went to the hospital after someone socked him in the mouth and he required stitches, about 6 or 8. $2000 until the found out he had no money. Then for the suturing, $50.... about what it was worth.
The whole systems stinks...
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�God is the basis of life, life is the basis of energy, energy is the basis of matter.�... Carey Reams
Visit: www.HealthSalon.org
I continue to believe that medical care should be a
market comodity--just like food, for example.
The insurance idea has been sold to us over many
decades. That so many think that way today just
confirms the power of advertizing
I recall about 40 years back: A few weeks after I
quit my job and lost the insurance that it had
provided as part payment for my services, my wife
finds a lump in her breast. I immediately took her
to a hospital where they started talking about
exploratory surgery for the next day. That night
the doctors on staff learned of our lack of insurance
so they did a simple procedure that revealed her
problem to be a simple cyst-- a couple hundred bucks
and an end to the problem.
Catestrophic insurance is probably warented in some
cases, but current thoughts are overblown. Besides,
in the present situation I believe that the politicians
are just tryiny to increase their power over our lives.
They simply want us weak and dependent.
__________________ Imagined knowledge kills learning . . . The cure for boredom is curiosity...there is no cure for curiosity..
Sounds like anyone who has medical insurance now, should wear a shirt
with Goldie Hawn's famous saying,"Sock It To Me" on the front of it! LOL!
I think there are probably many stories like these here. Charging high prices
for anyone With Insurance is a ticket to steal in many instances, esp. in
Hospital Emergency Rooms.
It certainly won't happen they way the Republicans are acting.
Quote:
Are Republicans Serious About Fixing Health Care?
No, and here's the proof.
By Jacob Weisberg
Posted Saturday, Dec. 12, 2009, at 6:44 AM ET
GOP Sens. Charles Grassley and Orrin Hatch Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate finance committee, has emerged as one of the harshest critics of what the right likes to call "Obamacare." After spending the first half of the year working with Democrats to find a bipartisan compromise, Grassley has spent the second half trying to prevent one. He attacks the bill now being debated on the Senate floor as an indefensible new entitlement. He complains that it expands the deficit, threatens Medicare, and does too little to restrain health care inflation. At a town hall meeting in August, the 76-year-old Iowan played the age card. "There is some fear, because in the House bill, there is counseling for end of life. And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear," he told an audience in John Wayne's hometown of Winterset.
One might credit the sincerity, if not the validity, of such concerns were it not for an inconvenient bit of history. Not so long ago, when Republicans controlled the Senate, Grassley was the chief architect of a bill that actually did most of the bad things he now accuses the Democrats of wanting. As chairman of the finance committee, Grassley championed the legislation that created a prescription-drug benefit under Medicare. The contrast between what he and his colleagues said during that debate in 2003 and what they're saying in 2009 exposes the disingenuousness of their current complaints.
Today the Medicare prescription-drug debate is remembered mainly for the political shenanigans Republicans used to get their bill through. Bush officials lied about the numbers and threatened to fire Medicare's chief actuary if he shared honest cost estimates with Congress. House Republicans cut off C-SPAN and kept the roll call open for three hours�as opposed to the requisite 15 minutes�while cajoling the last few votes they needed for passage. Former Majority Leader Tom DeLay was admonished by the House ethics committee for winning the eleventh-hour support of Nick Smith, a Michigan Republican, by threatening to vaporize Smith's son in an upcoming election. It's worth remembering these moments when Republicans criticize Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid for his hardball tactics.
The real significance of that episode, however, is not their bad manners, but what Republicans ordered the last time health care was on the menu. Their bill, which stands as the biggest expansion of government's role in health care since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, created an entitlement for seniors to purchase low-cost drug coverage. Grassleycare, also known as Medicare Part D, employs a complicated structure of deductibles, co-pays, and coverage limits. Thanks to something called the "doughnut hole," drug coverage disappears when out-of-pocket costs reach $2,400, returning only when they hit $3,850. Simply stated, the bill cost a fortune, wasn't paid for, is complicated as hell, and doesn't do all that much�though it does include coverage for end-of life-counseling, or what Grassley now calls "pulling the plug on grandma."
In their 2009 report to Congress, the Medicare trustees estimate the 10-year cost of Medicare D as high as $1.2 trillion. That figure�just for prescription-drug coverage that people over 65 still have to pay a lot of money for�dwarfs the $848 billion cost of the Senate bill. The Medicare D price tag continues to escalate because the bill explicitly bars the government from using its market power to negotiate drug prices with manufacturers or establishing a formulary with approved medications.
And unlike the Democratic bills, which won't add to the deficit, the bill George W. Bush signed was financed entirely through deficit spending. While Grassley and his colleagues accuse Democrats of harming Medicare through cost cuts, it is their bill that has done the most to hasten Medicare's coming insolvency. Between now and 2083, Medicare D's unfunded obligations amount to $7.2 trillion according to the trustees. Numbers like these prompted former Comptroller General David M. Walker to call it "... probably the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s."
Grassley is not alone in his incoherence. Of 28 current Republican senators who were in the Senate back in 2003, 24 voted for the Medicare prescription-drug benefit. Of 122 Republicans still in the House, 108 voted for it. There is not space here to fully review this hall of shame, which includes Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, and Orrin Hatch of Utah, among many others. Here is Kansas Republican Sam Brownback in 2003: "The passage of the Medicare bill fulfills a promise that we made to my parents' generation and keeps a promise to my kids' generation." Here is Brownback in 2009: "This hugely expensive bill will not lower costs and will not cover all uninsured." Here is Jon Kyl of Arizona: "As a member of the bipartisan team that crafted the Part D legislation, I am committed to ensuring its successful implementation. I will fight attempts to erode Part D coverage."* Kyl now calls Harry Reid's legislation: "a trillion-dollar bill that raises premiums, increases taxes, and raids Medicare."
The explanation for this vast collective flip-flop is�have you guessed?�politics. Medicare recipients are much more likely to vote Republican than the uninsured who would benefit most from the Democratic bills. In 2003, Karl Rove was pushing the traditional liberal tactic of solidifying senior support with a big new federal benefit, don't worry about how to pay for it. Today, GOP incumbents are more worried about fending off primary challenges from the right, like the one Grassley may face in 2010, or being called traitors by Rush Limbaugh. But what happened the last time they were in charge gives the lie to their claim that they object to expanding government. They only object to expanding government in a way that doesn't help them get re-elected. https://www.slate.com/default.aspx?id=2238098
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- Jim
Life is just one damned thing after another - Elbert Hubbard
OooooooPs - maybe we were wrong on the passage of this HCare bill? They
seem a bit closer. Of course, it still has to have a Final vote and pass both
Senate AND Congress. Hmmmmmmm?
So, is today the day the Health Care Bill/Obama Care Finally gets a "Yes" vote?
I'm still Not holding my breath on this one. I think I heard that 2 pm is the
witching hour/time the voting begins!
Hang on Sloopy!
Yes, when necessary! It took the whole day though before voting actually took
place. The one positive as I see it is that with jobs so hard to find, new and recent
Grads are still covered by parents policies.
I wonder how this will help Jim/jfh who's been paying enormous costs for his health
care? Those who haven't retired yet - those in the Adults catagory, as I understand
it aren't covered until 4 years in the future?
I am hoping now that I will not have to go to prison as I will not allow any government to force me to purchase anything and I will do it! Since the details on this bill are shrouded in mystery to me we shall see what we shall see as time goes by.
Gosh Arrow, Its scary when you and I are on the same line of thinking!!!! But, I totally agree with you, that fact that it is so shrouded is scary... The fact that they arent showing us everything, and all the backroom deals... and they take one thing out, with a promise that it will be put back in later.... Its just not setting right!!! I agree with you, why should i pay for something that i dont want!!! Its going to be an interesting couple of years
__________________ God is and all is well
~John Greenleaf Whittier~
Seems the states (Idaho, Texas, Virginia and likely more) are going to gang up on the Federal Government and sue over this for infrigement on states rights... This could take years as they duke it out in court. Some states have laws that say no one is to be forced to purchase health insurance.
But there is currently a bill somewhere that would erase the states ability to sue the Feds and with the conservative supreme court that has been pushing the NWO forward they don't stand a chance....the march to NWO goes on.
Seems the states (Idaho, Texas, Virginia and likely more) are going to gang up on the Federal Government and sue over this for infrigement on states rights...
I'm 3 years from Medicare. It would be just my luck if the Supreme Court agrees with these States, giving them the pleasure of removing Medicare, an example of another big gov insurance benefit. I hate to wish my life away; but I can't wait until I can get Medicare so I can ditch Blue Cross, who sent me a letter that my insurance will go up next month. The insurance companies have been spending so much money lobbying (bribing/campaigning), that they need more of my money.
No Healthcare Bill in '09?
NEW HEALTHCARE BILL!
Health Care Bill!
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