Even accepting your claim at face value, we also need to consider the current state of GOP political power. It’s quite low. Just look at this whining from house members:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090716/ap_on_go_co/us_muzzled_republicans_5
Does that sound like the talk of a group that has any chance of killing health care reform?
I suspect that if it works out Obama and the Dem’s will take credit. If it’s a huge flop then it will all be the Republicans fault. These things seem to always work out that way.
Because reality set in, and the plan given during the election, which sounded great, was (perhaps) unworkable. So…they will do it another way, if they can. As ElvisL1ves implied earlier, the ends justifies the means, as long as it’s in a worthy cause. And what could be more worthy than getting ‘free’ healthcare to the masses, yearning to be healthy?
Of course, another trite saying that springs to mind is, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Another aspect seems to be that Obama and the house Dems don’t, perhaps, see eye to eye on everything. As always, the Executive and Legislative branches have divergent goals and pressures, and also derive varied benefits (and costs) for any kind of new or existing program. I suspect that even if Obama’s plan was feasible (and I have my doubts), the Dems might still push for their own version, as it does them more good (and also throws more blame on Obama if it becomes unpopular…never underestimate the amount a politician is willing to divert blame to someone else, even if they are in the same party). Also, I suspect that this way there is a clear demarcation between the Dems and the Pubs, which, if this all works out well, will make the Dems shine and make the Pubs look bad. If it all goes tits up there is STILL the possibility that the Dems will be able to divert attention and blame to the Pubs, who may be portrayed as undercutting the plan. With Obama’s plan though…well, revenue neutral programs and cost cutting are more difficult to oppose I think, especially from the supposed Pubs perspective (they are SUPPOSED to be all for this kind of thing).
-XT
Oh, crap! Shodan’s site is a tighty-righty cootie bomb! They’re everywhere! My monitor is suddenly black and white, my whoopity whoopity Intel processor is a Motorola 8086, I gotta go buy some kerosene to power the modem (1 kb/hr upload). Software? Something called WordStar. I get online, I get Reagan-rolled.
A “partisan cootie” warning would have been nice, guy. Now I gotta find a Trotskyist rabbi for an exorcism.
I am interested in hearing the answer to this as well. So, if I work for McDonalds, work for minimum wage with no bennies, and have to pay for health insurance out of pocket, then I pay tax on it.
If I am a CEO of a global conglomerate who makes $100 million per year with paid health care through the company, I pay no tax on it.
I want to hear why this is “progressive”.
Your cite mentions that the case was sent back to Judge Lamberth for reconsideration.
But of course
Cite. So, indeed they did violate the law.
Regards,
Shodan
That’s a statement without meaning. One could just as easily put it the other way: reports from White House economics experts contradict claims of the CBO. But even more than that, this doesn’t qualify as a “contradiction”. It’s just a difference in speculation about everything from costs to economic recovery.
Given the nature of the White House vs the CBO, I’ll take the CBO at face value.
The Judge made an accusation, while we can discuss the merits of it the result was still the same. No prosecution came of it.
The reality is that even if the Justice Department refused to do anything the Republicans could just had added another item for the independent prosecutor to follow.
I have to say that even the Republicans concluded that that dog would not hunt, it is silly to continue to say that there was a violation of the law.
And, it has to be mentioned that the site **Shodan **produced originally continues to lie by omission.
Where the hell did you get *that *idea?
:dubious:
It’s not outside of the realm of possibility.
On one side you have the costs of treating uninsured people in the emergency room expensively as possible, when preventative care would’ve saved a lot of money. Economic harm caused by job immobility - people getting locked into a job where their skills may not be put best to good use, reduced productivity due to people suffering from treatable problems. People being bankrupted by finding out that their insurance policy wasn’t as good as they thought, etc.
On the other side, you have the cost of insuring tens of millions of new people, paying for a government program to oversee it, and the economic cost of treating people with chronic conditions that would’ve otherwise died.
I don’t think it’s accurate to say that “nobody seriously believes” that it’s possible that the benefits outweigh the cost. It’s just a matter of crunching the numbers - what are the costs, what are the proposed benefits, etc.
Part of the deal is that it’s supposed to come with comprehensive reform that reduces the cost of healthcare in general - government mandated changes in administrative infrastructure that will have upfront costs but lower overall costs, perhaps reforms that help the cost of defensive medicine and malpractice insurance, etc.
Of course, this is the ideal scenario requested by Obama. It appears that the House democrats don’t give a shit about the costs and benefits, but merely enacting another entitlement. Obama is speaking out about this - but he should be more forceful against the fuckups that decide the congressional democratic policy. It’s turned into something that might actually work, if given an honest attempt - reducing costs enough to be more inclusive - and turning into a clusterfuck added entitlement with no associated cost reduction.
You’ve swayed me in an earlier thread on the subject that we should be focusing more on getting medical costs and insurance to respond better to free market mechanisms. I’d rather see them work on that - detaching employment from insurance by removing the tax incentives that make that pretty much mandatory, reducing the information imbalance between insurance companies and individuals, giving people a better idea of how much they actually spend on insurance, and more understanding of what their policy entails, etc.
But as it is, we seem to be getting the worst of both worlds - the house democrats are uninterested in changes that improve and streamline the system to save costs, or in changes to the system that allow the market to better price medical costs. Instead we’re just going to have another entitlement to bankrupt us.
This is one reason I think the U.S. is uniquely unsuited to large programs like this.
Canada can control costs somewhat because we’re a parliamentary democracy, and as such our parties have strong discipline and members are expected to vote the party line. This has some drawbacks in that it weakens local representation, but in the case of large programs like health care, it has a large benefit - individual politicians are shielded from criticism when their districts are disproportionately hurt by a change in structure.
In the U.S., if a politician votes for a program that would have the effect of shutting down a local hospital, his constituents will fire him. In Canada, the party decides, and the politicians vote with the party. So their constituents don’t hold it against them.
The other side effect of this is that lobbying is much less effective in Canada. In the states, where every politician has a free vote on every issue, lobbyists can focus on individual politicians and convince them to change their vote. In Canada they can’t do that.
Here’s a perfect example from my own province just this week: Our Conservative government is trying to get our health care costs under control, so they adopted a restructuring plan to cancel some projects and scale back some salaries and such. One of those conservative politicians lost a seniors health center in his riding as a result of the restructuring, and decided to go against the government and rally his constituents against the plan. The result? He’s been kicked out of the caucus, and will now sit as an independent. That takes him out of the power structure, removes any chance of being appointed to a committee where he can do anything, and it will cut him off from party funds in the next election. Harsh punishment for a disagreement on policy, but that’s what parliamentary democracies tend to do when their members step out of line.
The U.S. has no such system, and as a result every major piece of legislation turns into a giant basket of payoffs, trade-offs, and compromises.
The Democrats’ House plan is focused on maximizing coverage while doing very little of that cost control that the Dems talked about. “The increasing cost of healthcare” is now a reason to OPPOSE this plan.
And preventative care? Notgonna save you money:
Before you start in with the snark and incredulity, you might want to wait until you find out if I actually know what I’m talking about.
From this Pew Survey:
Support is still high for reforming health care, but it’s not as high as it was in 1993, when it failed the last time.
And buried in those numbers are some disturbing signs that support is fairly fickle. It’s easy to say yes to a general question like, “do you support health care for everyone?” But notice when people were specifically asked to choose between universal care and lowering costs, support dropped from 75% to 56%.
Data from other polls show that if you get even more specific, support goes down even further. For example, when asked if they would be willing to give up their own health care plan for the sake of a new universal health care system, the majority of people say no.
Not only that, but support is falling fast, so the numbers in the Pew poll are probably already out of date. For example, Politico reports that in last week’s Rasmussen poll, support for the current health care plan has dropped below 50%. Not only that, but there’s more negative intensity than positive, with only 22% strongly favoring it, while 38% are strongly opposed.
These are not good omens for a plan that is going to sit for a month or more while opponents continue to pick at it and more details come out about how badly botched it is.
Could you have said anything more misleading? This healthcare reform plan may be in serious trouble, but healthcare reform in general certainly isn’t.
There’s some validity to that, but US pharmaceutical companies actually turn higher profits in most single-payor systems because the cost of doing business is lower. Direct advertising of prescription drugs is generally illegal, for example, so drug makers lobby doctors instead, who are obviously much easier (ie., cheaper) to target.
Health care spending figures only include payors which file US tax returns or government entities. Non-nationals who come to the US for care do not file, and are not included in CBO or GAO spending figures.
Canada, the UK and US all have roughly equivalent numbers of physicians per capita, however - 2.1 per 1,000, 2.2, and 2.3. Of note is the fact that both Canada and the UK (among others) directly subsidize the cost of hiring physicians in the US because doctors from both countries emigrate to the US to take advantage of significantly higher compensation.
ETA: For the record, I’m against the House plan, but only because it doesn’t fix any of the things that will need to be fixed whether we get universal coverage or not.
If it’s more cost effective to do it that way, why wouldn’t they do that here too? It’s not illegal to lobby doctors directly, right? Every notepad, pen, etc in a doctor’s office with Cialis or Lipitor on it seems to say it’s not.
The point is that they don’t have to spend the money on direct-to-[del]consumer[/del] patient advertising - ie., TV and large-circulation print, which is really expensive. Printing up a couple thousand pens isn’t.
ETA: It’s not more cost-effective, it’s just cheaper. DTC is expensive, but if your competitor is doing it, you have to do it too.