On Health Care, A Closely Divided Nation

“In Other News: Rielle Hunter, Without Pants”

And from the same WSJ.com site, the poll that says 48% say the bill is bad, and 36% say good.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704688604575125992538227492.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_us
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The other fact that remains is this bill has been floated and debated for over a year now. No change over the fact that for this year+, the majority of the people polled have consistently said “it’s bad”.
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Even today, Nancy Pelosi does not have the votes and why she is considering not a nuclear option, but a thermo-nuclear “rule” to pass this unwanted bill.
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Either way in my mind the Democrats lose. They lose if it passes, and they lose if it fails to pass. People simply do not want this bad bill. Even in hopes that this bill will eventually move more towards a public that will accept this bill based on pre-existing conditions that 80% of the current insurers do not need to worry about anyways will be over-ridden by the fact that the monthly cost of the bill on average due to passing this bill will increase the cost of healthcare insurance by 40%. Add the new taxes, and people will quickly hate Obama and Obama-care.

yep. it’s in my post. see above.

Read Scherer’s post prior to commenting, Rustyblog.

Jesus, Rustyblog, I’m strongly opposed to this bill’s passage, but this:

the fact that the monthly cost of the bill on average due to passing this bill will increase the cost of healthcare insurance by 40%

is just ridiculous.
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Is there anything you won’t say to scare people, Rustyblog?
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Premiums up by 40%? 40%?
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Which kind of premiums? For which kind of plans? Group? Individual?
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By when? Do you mean by 2025?
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To what “fact” are you referring, Rustyblog?
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(links and quotes to sources, please)

I am one of those that thinks the bill is a “bad idea”, in that things like single payer are “good ideas”, but we need to pass the bill and then improve on it (like enacting Grayson’s Medicare buy-in bill).

Michael

Maybe it is Time to consult Mark Twain. See:

http://ikejakson.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/a-sad-day-for-america/

The best I can say for it is that having the federal government spend the money they steal from me on saving someone’s life is better than 99% of the other evil crap they waste it on.
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As I said in response to Karen’s post a few days ago, at the very least this should be fought out on the State level… once the feds stop stealing so much money and wasting it.

The country is very divided.. and to just do something to do something is NOT acceptable.. do it right once.. let all the people agree on it.. and let the president quit telling lies and touting out people who are ALREADY getting taken care of like that woman in Ohio who is in the hospital and was being treated for FREE and was in NO danger of losing her home..or the man who had his insurance canceled he too was treated lived 2 more years before he died.. MY sister had insurance and she died.. just because one has insurance doesn’t mean they live.. all the people he used as exampled WERE treated.. it’s as stupid as when he said doctors were taking out tonsils to make money and cutting off limbs for the same reason.. Obama is a over dramatic whack jack..using fear mongering to pass a agenda the people don’t want..

Just a note on a survey on this topic that doesn’t involve average Americans:

According the the New England Journal of Medicice today: 46.3% of doctors will or are considering leaving the medial profession if “Obamacare” passes. 63% of doctors say reform should be more gradual. And for people like Dennis Kucinich who support the public option: 72% of doctors surveyed say that a “public option” would hurt American medical services.

Personally, I tend to trust professionals or people who work day to day on a given topic. I don’t ask salesman how to fix my engine, I ask mechanics. I don’t ask an artist how to run my restaurant, I ask the bussers/waiters/hosts and managers what we can do better. I don’t ask actors how to balance my check book or what loan to get, I ask bankers and accountants. I don’t ask a bus driver what my investment strategy should be, I ask brokers.

So why would I care what politicians have to say about medicine?

Shouldn’t we be asking the people who work in the system and see the problems every day how to fix them? Why not ask doctors,nurses, nurse practitioners, specialists, lab techs etc. where THEY see problems and what they recommend be done to fix them?

We already don’t have enough nurses in the country, we certainly can’t afford to lose even 20% of the doctors as well.

Then again I’m sure doctors and nurses are just fat cats out to make a buck on the backs of hard working people…

I tend to trust professionals as well, which is why I look to scientists who have spent their whole adult lives studying climate change for information about global warming, or evolutionary biologists for the origin of human life. It is odd how after decades of decrying “elitists” for THIS particular topic the right cares what the experts say.

“in my mind the Democrats lose.” – Rusty Blog.
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Just suggesting, are you sure you haven’t lost your mind instead ? With due respect, your fact-free Beckitopian rants indicate that this is the most likely scenario to most of us who think for themselves.
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Watching Beck for 2 minutes, forget 2 hours, everyday would turn anyone’s brain into a nice mushy pulp.

humallor-

Since I’m not from the right, your statement doesn’t apply to me.

Further, global warming/climate change was well on the way to seeing serious legislation until the people at East Anglia were accused of manipulating data of their own and others.

I am not about to condemn them in the court of public opinion as they are currently being investigated.

However the charges leveled at them are startling. According to Chemical and Engineering News (C&E): the allegations include tampering with data, ignoring data that didn’t support their thesis, destroying data at a Russian climate research facility, destroying their own data and using political force within the scientific community to have editors of journals removed if they published any papers that contradicted research done at East Anglia or Duke. It’s alledged that this did indeed occur and that some publications like Nature hired editors who flat out rejected perfectly good research papers on the topic because they didn’t completely back up research from EA or Duke.

Further, people from Duke are accused of threatening editors of US journals with being fired via political means if they allowed the publishing of the type of papers published above.

In short, they are accused of manipulating and destroying data so what they did have would show what they wanted it to and preventing any other opinions from seeing the light of day to be peer reviewed.

I’m not saying that any of this is true, as I said they are ALLEGATIONS, but if they are true then research on global warming/climate change pretty much has to start over, because the whole thing was pretty much rigged. It can’t be truly said that “peer review was fair” if people with contradictory data were not allowed to publish it for review. That’s manufacturing a consensus. Which by the way is crap anyway, science isn’t done by consensus.

@sasquatch08-
I see now why you didn’t provide a link. You may or may not be ‘of the right’, but you’re so full of sh!t it’s not even funny. I could find no survey in the NEJM today (March 16, 2010). There was a survey published on September 14, 2009 (link). In that survey, 72.5% of the doctors said that there should be a public option for expanding health coverage, either as the sole means or combined with private coverage (further, 58% favored an expansion of medicare). I note that 72.5% is almost the mirror image of the number you made up for doctors who didn’t support the public option in your own post. Glad to hear you ask:

Shouldn’t we be asking the people who work in the system and see the problems every day how to fix them?

However, I’d be a lot more inclined to listen to you if you didn’t lie about what those very professionals had to say about this topic. In the future, kindly refrain from making sh!t up (aka lying) in order to try and prove a point. Thanks for the consideration.

Icky: You do realize people do not get free health care. If they do not have health insurance, they are billed for their treatment. This is one reason so many homes are in foreclosure. If they can’t pay, then you, the insured pay by increases in your premium. Do you get it?

“From What You Have Heard” is the big kicker. I guarantee you that 90% plus of Americans have no idea about the details of the bill, both positive to them and negative to them.
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When asked about individual components of the bill, the approval rates are much higher.
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You might as well ask, “Based on how Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have explained the intricate details of this bill, do you agree with it”?

Is there anything you won’t say to scare people, Rustyblog?
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Premiums up by 40%? 40%?
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Which kind of premiums? For which kind of plans? Group? Individual?
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So many questions about numbers that seem more probable and realistic than Obama’s claim premiums would drop 3000% which went unchallenged.

Common sense will tell you if you add 40 million uninsured, those with pre-existing conditions, illegal immigrants,those who have exceeded policy limits that unless you raise enormous amounts of taxes, cut services reduce payments to providers which will reduce providers and innovation (New England Journal of Medicine survey says 1/3 of doctors will leave with new bill becoming law) or force private insurance out of business (government takeover) all the things Democrats, the WH and liberals here have argued is untrue and a lie. Yet they provide no evidence that anything to the contrary will occur other than slanderous claims against opponents

Which is precisely how we got our tax code that even the Chair of that committee and the Treasury head (who runs the IRS) seem to have difficulty understanding

Or based on liberals who believe health care is a right that should be paid for by someone else but you are you in favor of the bill?

Yes there are loons are loons on the left. Hard to believe if all you read is the NYT or TIME or listen to Olbermann, Schultz or Maddow

I truly do love it when Mr Zilchman questions my numbers.
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“􀁸 There are four provisions included in the Senate Finance Committee proposal that could
increase private health insurance premiums above the levels projected under current law:
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o Insurance market reforms coupled with a weak coverage requirement,
o A new tax on high-cost health care plans,
o Cost-shifting as a result of cuts to Medicare, and
o New taxes on several health care sectors.
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􀁸 The overall impact of these provisions will be to increase the cost of private insurance coverage for individuals, families, and businesses above what these costs would be in the absence of reform.
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􀁸 On average, the cost of private health insurance coverage will increase:
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o 26 percent between 2009 and 2013 under the current system and by 40 percent during this same period if these four provisions are implemented.
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o 50 percent between 2009 and 2016 under the current system and by 73 percent during this same period if these four provisions are implemented.
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o 79 percent between 2009 and 2019 under the current system and by 111 percent
during this same period if these four provisions are implemented.
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http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/pwc_report_on_Costs_final_101109.pdf
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I know Mr Zilchman, you do not like the Price Waterhouse Study because it was funded by AHIP.
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But we also have this FactCheck.Org summary which also sheds multiple reasons why Obama and the Democrats have lied about not only “savings”, but also how it increases the National debt many many times over. This is where the House, Nancy Pelosi is struggling to make the “bill” fit the requirements so that they can use reconciliation as a method to pass this bill.
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http://www.factcheck.org/2009/07/obamas-health-care-news-conference/

“From what you have heard about Barack Obama’s health care plan…”
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THAT is the key phrase in the poll, IMO. Given all the misinformation that’s been purposely spread, who knows that the people in the poll have heard and whether it was accurate. When people have been told exactly what is in the plan and whether or not they favor it, polling numbers are much higher.
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SO, I don’t give a lot of credence to this poll. It’s not so much that people don’t want *THIS* bill, it’s that they don’t want what they think it is.

Oh, right.
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The AHIP ransom note…I mean, “study.”
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Thanks for identifying your sources, Rustyblog!
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Carry on!

Then so be it. The only plan that the Republicans would start with massive deregulation of the insurance industry and medical malpractice reform. Deregulation would give the insurance industry a freer hand to treat the public as they have been and malpractice reform wouldn’t dent the rising price of insurance significantly. If we have to pass a base bill and then improvement packages to get anything accomplished, so be it. Would that result in something that looks like our tax code? Possibly, but so be it. That too can be corrected in time if that’s the results. Since the Republican have no real desire to fix things and are hell bent on stopping any reasonable option that’s being proposed, if we have to move the ball down field 10 yards at a time, so be it.

@freeinpa
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“Or based on liberals who believe health care is a right that should be paid for by someone else but you are you in favor of the bill?”
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I’ve got news for you: if you have insurance, someone else is already paying for part of your health care. That’s the whole idea behind insurance. Sometimes you’re subsidizing someone else, sometimes you’re the one being subsidized.
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Liberals aren’t arguing that someone else should pay for your health care, they’re arguing that we should all have access to health care and it shouldn’t bankrupt you in process. It’s not a very radical idea. Much of the rest of the world believes it too, we’re just way behind the curve.

anon76-

Before you call me a liar maybe you should do some real research. If you actually take a minute and look you will find the NEJM is a PAY FOR SERVICE publication. It’s not free until 9 months after it’s published.

Try the library. Sorry for not posting a link, it’s called watching CNN.

sasquatch08,
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Dont make a laughing stock out of yourself..
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http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201003170047
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And I am posting a link, it’s called watching Fox, which everyone knows, is fair and balanced

Glen Beck meets Jon Stewart
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/03/jon_stewart_takes_down_glenn_b.html

Icky: Just to explain further. If the hospital cannot get full payment for their services, they pass that cost on. That increased cost makes insurance premiums higher.
Not a good analogy but, if someone shoplifts the cost is passed on to other customers