Does anyone like Obama's health care plan?

[Simplicio]

@elfkin477

@gaffa

And it is exactly what the most liberal members of Congress proposed.

They wanted to extend it to everyone, or just lower it to 55? They didn’t do enough PR if it’s the former.

The plan was just to lower it to 55. It was a compromise that only had a few days of life before Joe Liebermann squashed it (despite it being part of his platform during one of his Presidential runs) so it didn’t really have a long enough lifespan as a viable suggestion to attract any PR.

@elfkin477

@janeslogin

Are you calling the legislatures compromise plan “Obama’s plan”?

Why not? Ask people what Obama has accomplished and “passed universial health care” is always in the top 2 or 3 items of their lists. If people are going to give him credit for that, they must think of it as “his” plan.

I think calling it Obama’s plan is fair in anycase. He had 13 points he asked the Congress to put into the Healthcare Bill which defined the general structure of the Bill if not the specifics, and twelve of them made it into the final compromise, so at least in the broad outline the Healthcare Bill is the one Obama asked for.

[Cyberhwk]

@magellan01

There is one potentially HUGE problem that could lead to either the whole thing going south or it being much more expensive, to the point of being unworkable. Some states have brought suit agains the government claiming that the feds have no authority to mandate that people buy a product. Whatever you think of Obama’s plan, it hinges on everyone buying insurance. If they don’t, none of the number work at all.

At which point it would necessitate a revisiting of the Health Care issue. At which point all the things Republicans were successful in defeating will be back on the table. Medicare buy-ins, Public Options, etc. Maybe it’s just me, but from the way I’ve seen it, it seems likely that Dems designed the bill to succeed; though if it failed, it failed in a convenient direction. If the loss of the Individual Mandate does in fact risk a Death Spiral, sounds to me like they’ve got some fertile ground for some GENUINE compromise when the subject is revisited.

For the record, I like it. I buy insurance individually and will likely be paying more (possibly as much as double). However for the first time in my life, because of the subsidy, the higher price will mean a far more robust plan.

HSAs are garbage. I had one. Now there’s not a single local bank that will do them for less than a $2000 deposit. That’s FAR to rich for the exact people they say they will help.

[Mozart1220]

I liked it better before congress raped it. The single payer option would have been nice. But as for what’s left over, I like that people with pre existing conditions, especially children, can’t be refused, and people who get sick and actually want to use what they paid for can’t be dumped.

Unlike most people, I don’t freak out when I don’t get everything I want.

[Claverhouse]

As an outsider I can’t say too much about the US Health System ( or about ours since we live in fear of NHS Death Panels ), other than the whole affair seemed absurdly amusing with right-wingers screaming about liberty and socialised medicine — whilst the seeming only tangible result of poor old Obama’s effort was to compel the poor to buy insurance from the companies in charge of the present mess — and back in April 2009 Tony Brock, a seriously poor 72-yr-old Englishman who founded the Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corps brought his mission of giving vital free medical care to the USA in **Knoxville TN*and Los Angeles CA and did it again last April…

• *Some are elderly. Some have teeth chattering and are aching so badly that they can barely stand. Most have slept in their cars. The man before them is about to call out numbers. He will provide assistance. He will end their suffering.

“Okay, folks,” he shouts, his breath visible in the frigid air, “we’re going to bring in the first 50.”

He stands bone-straight, hands clasped behind him. A British voice, sonorous and genial, silences the crowd. He begins calling out numbers. One by one they step forward. Through the open gate, up the small paved hill and into the building. They move at different paces. A few are limping, others are skipping, and one woman in her twenties and wearing flannel pyjama bottoms and bootee slippers is jumping for joy as she races indoors. They have not won something. Nor are they the first to arrive for a concert or a state fair. They are excited because soon they will have the chance to see a doctor, a dentist or an ophthalmologist. All they have been given is the opportunity to have their basic healthcare needs met. No payment necessary. No questions asked.
*
** *The LA Forum, the arena that once hosted sell-out Madonna concerts, has been transformed – for eight days only – into a vast field hospital. In America, the offer of free healthcare is so rare, that news of the magical medical kingdom spread rapidly and long lines of prospective patients snaked around the venue for the chance of getting everyday treatments that many British people take for granted.

In the first two days, more than 1,500 men, women and children received free treatments worth $503,000 (£304,000). Thirty dentists pulled 471 teeth; 320 people were given standard issue spectacles; 80 had mammograms; dozens more had acupuncture, or saw kidney specialists. By the time the makeshift medical centre leaves town on Tuesday, staff expect to have dispensed $2m worth of treatments to 10,000 patients.

Christine Smith arrived at 3am in the hope of seeing a dentist for the first time since she turned 18. That was almost eight years ago. Her need is obvious and pressing: 17 of her teeth are rotten; some have large visible holes in them. She is living in constant pain and has been unable to eat solid food for several years.

“I had a gastric bypass in 2002, but it went wrong, and stomach acid began rotting my teeth. I’ve had several jobs since, but none with medical insurance, so I’ve not been able to see a dentist to get it fixed,” she told The Independent. “I’ve not been able to chew food for as long as I can remember. I’ve been living on soup, and noodles, and blending meals in a food mixer. I’m in constant pain. Normally, it would cost $5,000 to fix it. So if I have to wait a week to get treated for free, I’ll do it. This will change my life.”

Along the hall, Liz Cruise was one of scores of people waiting for a free eye exam. She works for a major supermarket chain but can’t afford the $200 a month that would be deducted from her salary for insurance. “It’s a simple choice: pay my rent, or pay my healthcare. What am I supposed to do?” she asked. “I’m one of the working poor: people who do work but can’t afford healthcare and are ineligible for any free healthcare or assistance. I can’t remember the last time I saw a doctor.” *

To the disgust and revulsion of libertarians everywhere, who certainly have no trouble with it being given as charity — and relying on charity to substitute for welfare is much like relying on your swimming pool to be filled by chance rainwater in an Arizona drought.: you may get lucky. Or not — over here we kinda expect the government to take care of this stuff for everyone. If people don’t want it as a basic service they can go private and no-one cares. But we, nor the French, nor the Germans, don’t fill stadia with people clamouring for relief from long-standing pain.

[septimus]

@Mijin

Why exactly should obama do the bidding of the insurance companies?
Please, complete the theory for me.

The U.S. Government pretty much does the bidding of Big Business these days. You didn’t know that? :dubious:

I’m not claiming Obama himself is a stooge or hypocrite. He’s doing the best he can.

At this point, it might be no exaggeration to say we’d get better governance by disenfranchising all humans, and letting corporations vote in proportion to stockholder wealth. We’d get the same economic policies without all the right-wing anti-social nonsense used to appeal to redneck voters.

Writing this, I’m sure some Dopers will think septimus is a radical leftie. No. To paraphrase Norma Desmond (in Sunset Boulevard), I’m still a centrist. It’s the country that’s gone barking mad.

[septimus]

By the way, the new health insurance plan is less liberal than Nixon’s plan 36 years ago! And that plan, apparently, was killed by liberals !

But then, according to a 1974 political almanac published by Congressional Quarterly, the AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers lobbied successfully to kill the plan. Unions hoped to get a better deal after the next elections.

The rest was, as they say, history.

So now, a plan less liberal than the one killed as not-liberal-enough 36 years ago, passes Congress with very few Republican votes. No, septimus isn’t wrong. It is the country that’s gone barking mad.

Even the otherwise-intelligent SDMB has joined in. I’m unable to participate in some polls which ask me to label myself as “leftist” (which means right-wing) or “rightist” (which means barking mad).

@Blalron

I only had one job that offered me health insurance (but gave me the pink flip about a week before I was eligible to get it).

Was the week-before pink slip just a “coincidence”? I have a similar story.

@Blalron

However, my backup plan if I need an expensive lifesaving medical procedure before that date is to commit a (relatively minor and victimless) crime specifically so I would go to jail, and the government would have to give me health care, and I’d call up all the newspapers and media outlets and tell them the lack of UHC in this country is what drove me to do it.

If you can afford it, flying to someplace like India and paying out-of-pocket for hospital services is probably a better bet than jail.

Expecting newspapers to print another lack-of-UHC problem is like asking them to write up “Dog bites man.”

[RTFirefly]

[quote=“jayjay, post:30, topic:555026”]

@RickJay

Your buddy can thank the Republicans (and Holy Joe Lieberman) for that not happening. It WAS brought up when the whole reform thing was being debated. The Republicans voted en bloc to filibuster and “Independent” Lieberman joined them, effectively killing it.

ETA: Actually, universal Medicare was not. Lowering Medicare elibigility to age 55 was. And, as noted, was filibustered to death. Does your friend really think Medicare for ALL would have made it through?

This basically sums up what happened over a few days back in December.

One little detail: people in the 55-64 age range would have had to ‘buy into’ Medicare; they wouldn’t have been covered for Part A and Part B, which is what you’d think of as Medicare proper, more or less automatically like you are at 65. But still, everyone in the lefty blogosphere loved the idea - even better than the late, lamented public option, in the opinion of most lefty bloggers following the debate.

(Once you let 55-64 year olds, the most expensive age group not currently covered by Medicare, buy in, there’s really no reason not to keep on extending the option to younger age groups. Because of that, passing this probably would have led to Medicare for all after a decade or two.)

But like you say, Lieberman and a united Senate GOP filibustered it, and the latter fact pretty much tells you how much love this idea would have gotten from the right side of the spectrum. If everyone from ‘moderates’ Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn is against it, that pretty much covers the waterfront.

And one has to wonder if Lieberman was against it simply because the lefties that derailed his Senate nomination back in 2006 thought it was a great idea. Since then, he seems to have adopted ‘pissing off the left’ as a significant fraction of his political raison d’etre.

[Mijin]

@septimus

The U.S. Government pretty much does the bidding of Big Business these days. You didn’t know that? :dubious:

Yes but MOIDALIZE was putting the blame squarely on obama’s shoulders.

I find it difficult to believe that obama would disregard public opinion and what might be better for the country, for the sake of making a quick buck from the insurance companies.
There were reasons to think Bush might be too close to the oil companies – his employment history for one. There isn’t the same for obama.

It’s a much more plausible theory that this plan was a compromise solution designed to be a.) passed and b.) a step on the way to cheaper healthcare.

[Le_Jacquelope]

@RickJay

I have a conservative buddy who keeps saying “Look, why didn’t they just take Medicare and apply it to everyone? Then it’d be sort of like Canada, which works okay. The system is in place, right? Just make it start at zero years old instead of 65.” It’s a good question.

Alan Grayson proposed something quite close to that.

Public health insurance option

[foolsguinea]

I have summaries of it saved on my computer I haven’t read. But from what I know of it, it was a bunch of necessary fixes to save the present system. I am in favor of reforming Medicare so it won’t bankrupt the country. I am in favor of prohibiting private health insurance from dirty tricks, like selling health insurance then refusing to recognize their customers once they need treatment. I am absolutely in favor of expanding Medicaid access to account for rising medical prices. It tried to do these things; it remains to be seen how successfully, but it tried.

It’s has a lot of good things, & some necessary things. So I think it’s a good bill. I expect it’s not everything we need, & I would favor continuing to work on the issue, but it’s for the good.

[gonzomax]

Even the Repubs are conceding they would support keeping some provisions in place, and they work for the health industry. Many provisions are inarguably better than what health care corporations have jammed down our throats. But health care corps are afraid of the rule that says they have to spend 85 percent of the premiums on health care. Their rejection of that should tell even the craziest righty that they are taking a lot more.

[Tabithina]

I’m not entirely happy with it because it could have gone further, but since I am a mom of kids with preexisting medical conditions, I’m relieved that it passed. We were often paying out of pocket for our kids care, even though we have family coverage that we pay a lot of $$ for. Our kids have been healthy this year, but now if they have the same types of problems again, the company must cover them.

Incrementally, I’m hoping we will work our way to something better. I would not vote for anyone who campaigns on working toward a repeal.

[RTFirefly]

@DSeid

I see it as a tremendous improvement over the status quo so I like it. A lot.

That’s pretty much where I’m coming from. Sure, it could have been better: Medicare buy-in for those of us over 55 would have been great, as would a robust public option (which would also save tens of billions of dollars).

This is, quite frankly, the smallest technically feasible plan to cover everybody, or close to it. Let’s look at our fundamental elements again:

1. You can’t refuse to insure people due to pre-existing conditions (or, equivalently, increase their premiums into the stratosphere).

But if you mandate that and nothing else, then people could just wait until they came down with a major illness or injury to get insured. You’d eventually wind up with only the seriously ill paying for insurance, which negates the whole point of insurance. So:

2. Everyone’s required to buy insurance.

But a hell of a lot of people can’t afford insurance, so:

3. We subsidize the cost for a hell of a lot of people, which is the part that involves your tax dollars. So:

4. The bill has funding mechanisms - partly through taxes, and partly through bringing the Bush-era subsidies to Medicare Advantage providers to an end. (MA, also officially known as Medicare Part C, is a program by which private insurers were allowed to compete with Medicare, but were given huge subsidies to do so.) After all, if it’s a Democratic program, it’s got to be funded.

The only major aspect of the bill that doesn’t follow directly from #1 above is:

5. A whole bunch of programs aimed at bending the medical cost curve over time. In the long run, we’ll need to do more to bring medical costs under control in the U.S., since after all, the cost of Federally-funded health care rises with medical costs generally. But assuming the GOP doesn’t gut the PPACA, this is a promising start.

[RTFirefly]

@Tabithina

I’m not entirely happy with it because it could have gone further, but since I am a mom of kids with preexisting medical conditions, I’m relieved that it passed. We were often paying out of pocket for our kids care, even though we have family coverage that we pay a lot of $$ for. Our kids have been healthy this year, but now if they have the same types of problems again, the company must cover them.

The preexisting-conditions situation right now is kinda weird - it’s mostly but not entirely taken care of. If your health insurance is through your employer, your kids can’t be denied coverage due to pre-existing conditions anymore. And the same holds true if you buy a new policy on the individual market.

But if I understand things correctly, if someone has an existing policy that they bought on the individual market, their kids can still be denied coverage; for some reason, those policies were grandfathered in, and can remain as they’ve been.

[Mozart1220]

@Mijin

@septimus

The U.S. Government pretty much does the bidding of Big Business these days. You didn’t know that? :dubious:

Yes but MOIDALIZE was putting the blame squarely on obama’s shoulders.

I find it difficult to believe that obama would disregard public opinion and what might be better for the country, for the sake of making a quick buck from the insurance companies.
There were reasons to think Bush might be too close to the oil companies – his employment history for one. There isn’t the same for obama.

It’s a much more plausible theory that this plan was a compromise solution designed to be a.) passed and b.) a step on the way to cheaper healthcare.

I don’t think it was Obama disregarding the people as much as it was congress. Like a good quarterback, he takes what the defense gives him instead of betting the whole game on a miracle play.

[UltraVires]

Thanks for the replies. What about the cynical argument that this will make health insurance so expensive and fail so horribly that people will be demanding single payer health care?

[Simplicio]

@jtgain

Thanks for the replies. What about the cynical argument that this will make health insurance so expensive and fail so horribly that people will be demanding single payer health care?

Healthcare expenses are already growing at rates far outstripping GDP growth. If there was some sinister plot to have things get too expensive for people to afford so that they demand single payer, the thing to do would be to just sit back and wait, not pass a bunch of legislation to try and limit that growth in expenses.

The “cynical argument” is a silly conspiracy theory that makes no sense.

[Mozart1220]

The funny thing is, it JUST went into effect. We have no idea what is going to be good or bad about it yet. Also remeber that the big insurance and drug companies WANT this to fail, and they have all the power.

[elucidator]

Oh, yeah? Well, you just wait until your negotiations with your health insurance are conducted according to sharia law. Rheumatism? Cut off your hand. Tinnitus? Cut off your ear. STD? You don’t want to know that.

[Mozart1220]

@elucidator

Oh, yeah? Well, you just wait until your negotiations with your health insurance are conducted according to sharia law. Rheumatism? Cut off your hand. Tinnitus? Cut off your ear. STD? You don’t want to know that.

Jeez…another one…:smack: :rolleyes: