Preference on healthcare reform issue

[Riot]

Pick one of the above

[timmgirvan]

Libs...always with the instructions!

[joeydb]

Public Option + Time = Single Payer

[dellinger63]

Single Payer = Medicaid/Medicare (abuse/waste) X a million

[hoovesupsideyourhead]

cut out the 1/3 of fraud..

[timmgirvan]

Originally Posted by hoovesupsideyourhead

cut out the 1/3 of fraud..

Public hangings would work!

[joeydb]

Can you add an option to the poll that is something like "I am sick and tired of hearing about health care reform. 17 years of this issue is enough."

[SOREHOOF]

None of the above.

[AeWingnut]

of course I voted to not change anything because the people that would be doing the "change" are not our friends.

but the things I would like changed are:

paying for people that are here illegally
tort reform and
I would like to keep the gubment from taxing the heck out of my healthcare benefits.

again - look who is in office now
I guess that is why they are in a hurry to make a change before the people vote. However, the majority of 2008 registered voters are dems (probably some dead ones and other illegals) so I don't know if it will make too much of a difference.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by joeydb

Public Option + Time = Single Payer

We can only hope.

[Riot]

of course I voted to not change anything because the people that would be doing the "change" are not our friends.

What do you think "they" are? Enemies? Who is "our"?

but the things I would like changed are:
paying for people that are here illegally
tort reform and
I would like to keep the gubment from taxing the heck out of my healthcare benefits.

Done.
Done.
Done.
If the Senate bill is the basis for reconciliation.

Aren't you happy now?

What do you think about your health insurance premium costs going up 10-25% within this next year? You can afford that easy, right?

again - look who is in office now
I guess that is why they are in a hurry to make a change before the people vote. However, the majority of 2008 registered voters are dems (probably some dead ones and other illegals) so I don't know if it will make too much of a difference.

I like who is in office now. Voted for him.

Your vague accusation of fraud in the 2008 election is interesting. Although completely unsubstantiable. Got anything factual on that? And tell me what you thought of 2000?

The people do get to vote in 2012. Can't wait. Hopefully they will be Americans with excellent healthcare, and there will be 30 million less uninsured Americans voting than we are paying for now.

Oh, yeah, BTW, this is funny (although about financial reform): www.funnyordie.com the Presidents

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by Riot

What do you think "they" are? Enemies? Who is "our"?



Done.
Done.
Done.
If the Senate bill is the basis for reconciliation.

Aren't you happy now?

What do you think about your health insurance premium costs going up 10-25% within this next year? You can afford that easy, right?



I like who is in office now. Voted for him.

Your vague accusation of fraud in the 2008 election is interesting. Although completely unsubstantiable. Got anything factual on that? And tell me what you thought of 2000?

The people do get to vote in 2012. Can't wait. Hopefully they will be Americans with excellent healthcare, and there will be 30 million less uninsured Americans voting than we are paying for now.

Oh, yeah, BTW, this is funny (although about financial reform): www.funnyordie.com the Presidents

i'm thinking aewing meant before voting this fall, when the dems may lose their majority.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Danzig

i'm thinking aewing meant before voting this fall, when the dems may lose their majority.

I am sorta expecting a last, hysterical flailing at healthcare reform by the GOP, but McConnell has been saying for 2 days that the GOP will jump to basing the 2010 campaign on "they voted for healthcare reform gasp!"

This is interesting about the GOP's planned tactics this fall (I'm sure the Dems have their own version):

http://www.politico.com/

[2MinsToPost]

walgreens and cvs on every street corner

[AeWingnut]

Originally Posted by Riot

What do you think "they" are? Enemies? Who is "our"?

Yes, the dems are the enemy of the American people whether the American people realize it yet or not.

Originally Posted by Riot

Done.
Done.
Done.
If the Senate bill is the basis for reconciliation.

Aren't you happy now?

< paying for people here illegally will be changed alright. They will make it legal for them to be here and still bleed us dry
< tort reform is in the bill? not from what NPR has reported.
< ? I won't have any health insurance or I won't be taxed to pay for dead beats?

happy? we'll see

Originally Posted by Riot

What do you think about your health insurance premium costs going up 10-25% within this next year? You can afford that easy, right?

I know the taxes on my health insurance is going to be between $4 to 5k more when they allow the Bush tax cuts to expire.

Originally Posted by Riot

I like who is in office now. Voted for him.

yeah but you liked Carter.

Originally Posted by Riot

Your vague accusation of fraud in the 2008 election is interesting. Although completely unsubstantiable. Got anything factual on that? And tell me what you thought of 2000?

my accusation of fraud is based on the people ACORN registered and there are other examples but we only report voter fraud if a republican wins.

as far as my take on what happened in 2000, I assume you mean the Florida thing. Despite an attempt to stuff the ballot box they fouled it up completely and still lost. Voting machines are designed for 1 ballot at a time. you get dimpled and hanging chads when you try to run more than 1 through the machine or whatever they used. and when that failed they tried to change the rules then accused the court of selecting Bush when all they did was refuse a rule change.

But i didn't vote for Bush - he was too liberal

Originally Posted by Riot

The people do get to vote in 2012. Can't wait. Hopefully they will be Americans with excellent healthcare, and there will be 30 million less uninsured Americans voting than we are paying for now.

The people get to vote every year. I want the dems to lose the majority.

100% of the people I work with are against reform and 75% are against it nation wide. You think it is expensive now - wait until it is free.
are all those people that didn't choose to buy health insurance going to like paying for it instead of driving a new car or going on trips every vacation?

yeah there are all kinds of reasons but I don't feel like addressing portability etc


I don't see how they can get this reform past the supreme court <-- btw this is all FDR's fault. If he didn't tax the crap out of people companies wouldn't have to offer health insurance as an incentive to work for them and prices would have been controlled through the free market

Originally Posted by Riot

Oh, yeah, BTW, this is funny (although about financial reform): www.funnyordie.com the Presidents

maybe later. I've already spent too much time talking to people that don't care to listen.

[joeydb]

Originally Posted by Riot

We can only hope.

Are you kidding? Who the hell would want that? To have the crappy health care of Canada and the U.K.? And their mortality rates from cancer?

No way. The Kool Aid drinkers on the left need to wise up. You guys are so in love with the idea of governmental control of every aspect of our lives that you are dismissing the real impact of your ill-conceived policies.

[Rileyoriley]

The Daily Caller
March 4, 2010



Massachusetts health program, model for Obama’s reform, strains state budget
By Peter Suderman 01/10/10 at 8:00 PM
Email This Article
Print This Article
Bookmark and Share

In 2006, the state of Massachusetts passed a sweeping overhaul of the state’s health-care system. The system, which influenced the Obama administration’s plans for national reform, has since faced unexpected and unchecked growth in costs, both to the government and individuals, forcing the government to cut benefits and raise taxes. Now analysts say that without significant policy changes, the program’s long-term viability is in doubt.

State officials have successfully increased health insurance coverage in the state: With only 2.6 percent of the population now lacking health insurance, its insurance rate is the highest in the nation. But high coverage levels have been achieved at a substantial price, and one that is expected to increase over time.

For the state’s policymakers, rapidly rising health-care costs are the central problem with the plan. Since 2006, the cost of the state’s insurance program has increased by 42 percent, or almost $600 million. According to an analysis by the Rand Corporation, “in the absence of policy change, health care spending in Massachusetts is projected to nearly double to $123 billion in 2020, increasing 8 percent faster than the state’s gross domestic product (GDP).”

Meanwhile, the cost of insurance premiums in the state is the highest in the nation, and double-digit rate hikes are expected again in 2010.

The worry, shared across the political spectrum, is that the state’s health-care spending will overwhelm the state’s budget. Already, it has forced service cuts that have irked those on both sides of the aisle.

Physicians for a National Health Plan, a doctor’s group that supports a fully socialized, single-payer health-care system, warned in a February 2009 report that the new system had failed to reduce medical spending, and has subsequently drawn funding away from crucial health resources such as emergency room care.

Michael Tanner, a health policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute notes that huge deficits and skyrocketing public expenses already have resulted an increased cigarette tax of $1 a pack, as well as $89 million in new fees on the health-care industry.

And in summer 2009, the state announced plans to drop coverage for 30,000 legal immigrants with a goal of cutting $130 million in health-care expenses.

One problem the state has faced is that it failed to accurately anticipate the true cost of the program. At the time the program was signed into law, estimates indicated that the cost of Commonwealth Care, which is responsible for the program’s biggest single cost, its health insurance subsidies, would be about $725 million per year. But by 2008, those projections had been revised. New estimates indicated that the plan was to cost $869 million in 2009 and $880 million 2010, an upwards increase of nearly 20 percent.

Massachusetts would not be the first state to face a budget crisis due to unexpected cost spikes after instituting policies designed to increase insurance coverage. In 1994, Tennessee launched TennCare. The program successfully cut the state’s uninsured rate to about 6 percent. But in 2005, the state was forced to scale back significantly, slashing 170,000 people from the rolls after the program’s rapidly increasing costs threatened to send the state into bankruptcy.

Some of the program’s critics have argued that the state’s $5 billion budget deficit is a result of health care costs. Defenders of the Massachusetts system note that the deficit is a result of decreasing tax revenues and long-term effects of policy changes in the 1990s. The state would likely be facing budget deficits even without the 2006 program.

Others say budgetary concerns have been blown out of proportion. A November 2009 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, for example, notes that the cost to the state’s general fund has not been unmanageable.

But should costs continue to rise apace, they could easily dip further into the general fund in the future. And the report’s authors agree that the “high cost of care in Massachusetts is causing major strains,” and that now, “tackling costs has risen to the top of the agenda.”

Peter Suderman is an associate editor at Reason magazine.
Tags: Cato Institute, Health care system, Health Insurance, Healthcare in the United States, healthcare reform, Healthcare reform in the United States, Massachusetts, Massachusetts health care reform, Obama administration, peter suderman, Physicians for a New Health Plan, rand corporation, Reason magazine, the New England Journal of Medicine, United States, Universal healthcare


* The best and worst health care reform ideas
* Washington-knows-best the wrong approach to health care reform
* Obama’s Proposed Medicaid Expansion: Lessons from TennCare

[Rileyoriley]

Campaign Desk — January 22, 2010 01:06 PM
Re-examining Massachusetts Health Care

Post-election comments from the MSM miss the boat

By Trudy Lieberman



Wednesday on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, Richard Parker, who lectures at Harvard’s Kennedy School, talked about his son’s hockey coach, a third-generation Cambridge fireman who voted for Obama in 2008 but went for Brown this time. The fireman, like most public sector workers, has very good insurance—a so-called Cadillac plan with good benefits that the Washington health care cognoscenti want to tax into oblivion. “They’ll screw my system if we don’t stop them,” the coach told Parker. The anecdote raised an important question—how affordable will insurance be when national reform is fully enacted? Parker said that people in the state perceive national reform as all about expanding coverage, not affordability, which he called “the poison pill at the heart of the bill.”

My own reporting over the past year shows that people in Massachusetts are concerned about affordability. One fifty-four-year-old woman, who lives in a small town south of Boston, told me she is an independent who voted for Brown because he could make a difference in Washington. That difference: stopping the health plan. “I know the plan is all wrong,” she said. What exactly was wrong? It was just like the one in Massachusetts, which makes people buy unaffordable insurance, she explained. “The Connector [the state’s shopping service] wants to determine your affordability. They don’t care if you have past loans or alimony to pay,” she said. Her daughter makes $32,000 working two jobs and can’t afford coverage; she pays the penalty for not having it.

In their post-mortems on Tuesday’s vote, many in the MSM ignored concerns like these and clung to the master narrative that all was well with health care in the Bay State. Massachusetts provided the national model for reform, and the state’s vote may be its undoing. How ironic! A Washington Post story proclaimed: “Brown’s victory in Mass. Senate race hardly a repudiation of health reform.” The Post tried to make its case, saying that the law has covered “all but 3 percent of Massachusetts residents” and “retains majority backing” of people in the state. As proof, it cited a Boston Globe poll showing that 59 percent of state voters supported the law. The paper acknowledged that 69 percent had supported the law last year, but found a silver lining—only 11 percent of those polled wanted the law repealed. “Divining voters’ motivation is difficult,” the Post concluded.

What the Post didn’t report was that this year’s poll did not ask people who were directly affected by the law whether they supported it. A year ago, Harvard pollster Robert Blendon and his colleagues asked that question, and found that only 37 percent of residents in that group supported the law while 56 percent opposed it. Blendon told Campaign Desk that the earlier poll was funded by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation; this year Blue Cross wasn’t interested in funding that particular poll. Blendon’s shoestring budget didn’t allow for asking that relevant question, even though he said he would have loved to do that.

Later in the story, the Post moved into he said/she said mode, giving the edge to the positive spinners. Princeton professor Paul Starr said that the Massachusetts reforms were “sufficiently popular” enough that Scott Brown didn’t repudiate them. That popularity, he continued, “should encourage people that if it’s done at the national level, that it would work as policy and that it would be popular.” Wow! What a leap, in view of what residents told us. Starr was counterbalanced by a conservative analyst, the Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon, who said that “things are not as hunky-dory as people have been saying;” that the law has cost residents and businesses more than supporters say; and that fewer people are covered than state data suggest.

We’re not sure what Cannon had in mind about fewer residents being covered. But Campaign Desk has noted that, according to the latest Census Bureau figures, 5.5 percent of the state’s population did not have coverage in 2008, up from the 2.6 percent who didn’t soon after reform took effect. The Post and other outlets still use the old figure. Is this another part of the “all-is-fine” narrative?

The New York Times also seemed conflicted by what to make of the health care messages. The paper said it was “difficult to gauge” success or failure of the health care bill as a potent issue for voters. Said the Times:

Massachusetts already has near-universal health coverage, thanks to a law passed when Mitt Romney, a Republican, was governor.

It concluded that the national bill would have little effect on how many of its residents got coverage, “making it an unlikely place for a referendum on the health care bill.” As for the point Richard Parker was making, well, the Times missed it.

The PBS NewsHour didn’t stray far off the reservation either. It assembled a panel of its usual experts, The Washington Post’s Ceci Connolly and National Journal’s Amy Walter, and added Jennifer Nassour, chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party. Much of what they explored was predictable—are people angry; is Massachusetts as blue as everyone thought; what about those independents?

Massour did give some reasons for voter frustration, but no one connected any dots. She said that “Democrats in the [Massachusetts] House and the Senate decided that right now is a great time to increase our sales tax by 25 percent during a recession.” It’s reasonable to assume that people are unhappy about the tax, but the NewsHour show did not mention the reason for the hike: the state needed the money to pay for health reform. Massachusetts has no dedicated funding source for the subsidies it pays people to buy insurance, and the cost of those subsidies goes up because medical costs keep going up. It’s a shame the NewsHour didn’t link the tax increase to the lack of cost control in the Massachusetts law and the federal bill. How far that would have gone toward public understanding.

About the Author

Trudy Lieberman directs the health and medical reporting program in the graduate school of journalism at City University of New York, and is a longtime contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review. A complete archive of her Campaign Desk articles can be found here.
Also by Trudy Lieberman

* On the Social Security Battlefront Wed 17 Feb 2010
* The Devil in the Details, Part VI Mon 15 Feb 2010
* Regulating Health Care, Part II Fri 12 Feb 2010

© Copyright 2009 Columbia Journalism Review. Design: Point Five, NY

[Rileyoriley]

Tuesday, March 17, 2009
More Problems In Massachusetts
By Paul Hsieh, MD @ 12:05 AM PermaLink

The March 16, 2009 New York Times article "Massachusetts Faces Costs of Big Health Care Plan" discusses the new controls that Massachusetts state government will impose on doctors, hospitals, and insurers in order to salvage their failing "universal health care system".

Costs are continuing to skyrocket out of control despite a round of new taxes. Hence, the article notes:

The very stakeholders who were coaxed into the tent -- doctors, hospitals, insurers and consumer groups -- would probably have been driven into opposition by efforts to reduce their revenues and constrain their medical practices, they said.

"Constraining" how doctors practice basically means the government overriding a doctor's judgment as to how to treat his patients. It interposes the bureaucrat into the doctor-patient relationship in order to save costs.

The end of this road will be government rationing, just as in the UK where the government explicitly says that it won't pay for treatments if it costs too much.

Advocates of universal health care often criticize free market medicine on the grounds that we "can't put a price on human life". But it is the government-controlled medical systems that actually do put a price on life. In such systems, patients can only hope that their government doesn't consider their own lives too expensive to save.

The answer to skyrocketing costs is not a government takeover of health care, but rather the free market. As we've seen with cellphones and computers, the free market drives down costs and improves quality.

Similarly, the sectors of medicine such as LASIK eye surgery which are the most free (i.e., least controlled by the government) show the same pattern of falling costs and rising quality over time. This can and should be the norm in all of medicine.

(For more on the problems with Massachusetts' system of universal health care, see the DC Examiner piece "Universal coverage? First, look at the disaster in Massachusetts" and my Objective Standard piece, "Mandatory Health Insurance: Wrong for Massachusetts, Wrong for America".)

Labels: MA, States

[sham]

Riley-you might have killed this thread. It is difficult to argue into those kinds of revelations about the reality of government controlled healthcare.