NOW you want to talk…
Apparently, Mr Obama would now like to talk to to Republicans about health care. The man is really a laugh riot. After trying to ram a highly divisive, partisan health bill through the senate and failing, Mr. Obama would like a televised bipartisan summit for half a day to break the impasse.
I suspect you are going to need more than half a day, Mr. President.
I also suspect that you should have held bipartisan talks right up front instead of using your majority to ram through a health bill that is clearly unpalatable to virtually all republicans. You might have come up with something most people could have lived with. Instead you have nothing except a plan for a bit more showmanship.
Unfortunately, Mr. Obama, life is somewhat more complex than television appearances, isn’t it?
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Feb 9 10 2:22 pm
I saw a stunning video about HR3200 recently, at,
http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=9346
I had to read the video against the bill itself because I didn’t believe what the narrator was saying. Turns out the narrator merely paraphrases the actual bill itself. It is basically the most scary bill you could imagine and really represents a fundamental re-ordering of the health profession and US society.
Some highlights are:
- The government will audit the books of ALL employers who self-insure.
- US individuals are limited to $5000 care per year, families to $10000 per year.
- The healthcare commissioner will decide each citizen’s allowed healthcare benefits for them- there is no private choice.
- The health service will have full access to all US citizen’s financial records, and the authority to make elective payments towards any individual’s healthcare related costs from their own bank accounts.
- Employers will be required to pay for the healthcare plans of all their employees, AND their employee’s entire families.
- All private insurers will have their policies pooled under a US health exchange, with the government deciding on all the benefits that these can offer, and how much each target demographic can access these benefits via healthcare rationing.
Does anyone really think that the government could possibly negotiate a sensible middle-ground with any right thinking adult in the country let alone republican congressmen? This bill is insanity. It is like fixing a blown distributor with a car crusher. The US private healthcare insurance industry will be eliminated in all but name.
Do you think the vid is a fair reading of the bill MacDoc?
Feb 9 10 7:16 pm
Some of it is somewhat paranoid but the gist is quite accurate. Americans will not initially lose the right to private health care but the odds are all stacked in the government’s favour. Private health care will rapidly become unaffordable except to the very wealthy.
The middle-class elderly and the very sick will be the ones hardest hit. In order to afford all the non-contributing members (the indigent and nonresidents), medicare will have no option but to reduce resources (i.e. ration)
The Republicans would probably have agreed to an expansion of the lower end of medicaid to the uninsured. It is not possible for them to agree to this socialist health manifesto.
Obamacare does not represent an improvement in healthcare except to those at the very bottom of society, at the expense of everyone else. What it does represent is an exercise in state power.
Feb 9 10 8:08 pm
What do you think about the limiting of state care per individual to $5000, and per family to $10000?
This suggests to me that US families that require any form of modern 1st world medical testing or procedures will essentially hit their rationed limit in the first couple of weeks, and may not have the option to purchase more testing or operations from the state due to the perceived unfairness of that.
For those in the middle classes I imagine this would be a very significant step down from the level of medical treatment they could provide for themselves under their own steam or under private health insurance. This cap on healthcare per individual is in fact one of the most dehumanizing aspects of the bill, and has no place in a compassionate society.
Did you see that under the bill GPs and specialists would be paid one flat salary rate, and both could only charge out at the government’s set rate? Perhaps one of the dumbest ideas in US history. What possible rationale could there be for these measures? Do you think that there will be many doctors in the US 5 years after this bill passes, or will most of them move here to NZ, Canada, Auz, etc?
Feb 9 10 8:59 pm
$5,000/10,000 is the proposed maximum benefit. You can then spend as much as you like of your own money after that. This is how Obama plans to keep Obamacare affordable – by making the benefits practically worthless (but better than nothing – which is what most will be paying for it)
You can still have private health care, but Mr. Obama will be taxing you and your company extra for the privilege, effectively forcing all small business across to medicaid.
The flat rate is a flat FFS rate for all specialists, not specialists and GPs. What this means is that there is one fee specified for a procedure, regardless of your skill-set. You may be the best heart surgeon in the world, but you will still be paid the same as all the other cardiac surgeons.
The simple upshot of this is that the best specialists will only be available for non-medicaid patients. Pretty much the way it is now really. Very few specialists with good reputations take medicaid. Why would they?
Feb 13 10 9:51 pm
Thanks. I can see the interactions between the health reforms and the US population are far more complex then is made out in the video.
I have also recently read an interesting article on the American Thinker blog stating that Mr Obama is in fact quite interested in completing the unfinished work of the civil rights movement as spearheaded by Martin Luther King, and so will in no way ever drop his attempts to push through his health reforms. The post argues that on the economic front, MLK was quite the fan of income redistribution from rich to poor minorities, regardless of the effects on commerce.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/why_obama_cant_drop_healthcare_1.html