Did you know that if someone doesn’t pay for their own health insurance, they won’t exercise personal responsibility? S’true. Just ask John McCain. Probably why he called for SCHIP to be defeated — those damn kids would instantly turn into insurance cheats.
And then there’s the blather about his $5000 tax rebate — for a policy that will cost about $12,680 for a family of four.
Inspirational.
The New York Times had a comparison of the Obama and McCain health care plans today, and had this to say:
Despite all the Republican warnings about high-spending Democrats, McCain’s plan could be a lot more expensive than Mr. Obama’s, at least in the early years, and possibly in the long term. This is because the generous tax credits would drain federal revenues faster than the tax on employer policies would replenish them.
The Tax Policy Center estimates that the McCain plan would cost the federal government $1.3 trillion over 10 years, and the Obama plan $1.6 trillion. Using different assumptions, the Lewin Group, a consulting firm, estimates that the McCain plan would increase federal spending by $2.05 trillion over 10 years, compared with $1.17 trillion for the Obama package.
You have to try hard to be that wrong.
(video by Health Care For America)
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More aspirational than operational.
Watching the end of McCain’s campaign is like
watching Homer Simpson slowly disappear into
a blackhole in that old Halloween episode of The Simpsons.
Ahhh Jane, I hate it when you mince words
Well, if McCain knows about anything, it would be about not having to pay for his own healthcare. He’s had government paid healthcare his entire life.
oh please,let this be over soon so America can win again,8 long years in the darkness
be sides flying planes poorly,what does John excel at? gambling?
People who excel at gambling don’t play craps…
You got that right.
Less health care, please!
I hear that everywhere, don’t you? Apparently, John McCain does.
What an idiotic, mean, and petty man he is.
Right on! As a devoted ‘Parrot Head’ I’m ecstatic to see Jimmy headlining a FLA concert for Obama…!
what a jerk mccain is. yeah, i know – not news.
but wouldn’t obama’s plan be a lot more expensive (and cover less people) than some kind of single payer?
bad and worse?
i’m tired of seeing mccain’s face and hearing his voice. i want him to go away
(bows) Konnichiwa, sadlyyes
He does confused fairly well.
I’m not so sure that little Johnny isn’t a natural when it comes to being wrong.
Anything but single payer is just rearranging the deck chairs. The insurance companies get richer and we get the shaft.
Does he doing anything else well…?
(bows) Konnichiwa, Wobbs
Yeah, all us idiots out there who don’t have health care insurance (like me – been blackballed for pre-existing condition since the early 1980’s) are irresponsible. I wouldn’t be able to buy insurance even if I was as rich as John & Cindy McCain.
So….guess what? I am a vet – so I’m getting the government to take care of me. I hate it. I feel like the money they are spending on me should go to one of the current wounded soldiers. But I am eligible, and I really have no other choice.
And by the way, the VA is ‘SOCIALIZED MEDICINE’. The medicine part of it works great. It’s just the stupid (Republican-dictated) bureaucracy that is putting up all the roadblocks to soldiers getting care.
so we’ve got to be prepared to fight like hell for single payer – tell obama to scrap his bs plan and none of this hcan shit.
ola SD
Craps relies entirely on dumb luck, or the lack thereof, as opposed to games like poker which hinge somewhat on calculated risk. His gambling resembles his piloting.
Read your diary. Good piece.
Tell yer Congress critters. Make them make Obama.
We could repeal the Medicare prohibition from negotiating drug prices with Big Pharma… That would be one positive step in the right direction…!
Oh yeah – the crowd will be half a million and the Rethugs will say they were only there to see Buffet. Yeah right.
Shorter McSame: “I know how to fail. That One doesn’t! I’ve got more experience failing and I’ll make sure we can all fail together. That One won’t!”
I think Obama can be pushed in the right direction – we just have to get organized and do it. The group Health Care for America Now is a good place – join and after the election get all your friends to join too. Elizabeth Edwards is involved in this group and they are for single-payer.
Thanks. I just put up another one. Going all sacrilegious.
yes. that too.
Meyer Lansky, who knew a little about gambling, said that the only game you had a chance with was blackjack. That excludes poker because the house doesn’t play.
Heh, you didn’t hear anything from the repugs recently on Obama’s 100K in Denver, eh?
Digg it!
I wonder what’s up with John Edwards these days…
good evening pal,Percy almost died last night,i think he has epilepsy,found him in a corner body temp 92,in a rigid state,frothing at the mouth…..oy
funny..i dont
Medicare Part D requires the recipient to contract with one of a multitude of private insurers, so that would complicate things. Getting rid of the Initial Coverage Limit (aka Donut Hole) would be nice, although the insurance companies would probably just raise the premiums/deductibles. I’m lucky, my scrips are all relatively low cost and I never reach the ICL. When my mom was alive, she would reach it around May. People taking really high priced drugs could easily do it in January or February and then have to pay around $3500 out of pocket before the insurance began to kick in again.
Craps relies entirely on dumb luck,
well, that and the gaming of his chairmanship of the committee which decided which tribes got casinos and which ones didn’t.
I’m betting he’s the world’s “luckiest” craps player…
I think that should be the first thing they do. Then start to fix Medicare as a whole. Going to single payer will have to be done in increments and isn’t going to be as easy as some think. For instance, what do we do about hospitals that are privately owned, as almost all are?
Another failure to sell single payer properly is to explain how it will work and how it will be payed for. People hear single payer and they hear free government paid health care. Not hardly.
But if he won a lot he should have declared his winnings, right..? (crickets)
Juck Mohn FcCain.
The ‘Donut Hole’ snagged numerous elderly…! It was a travesty of epic proportions! Getting rid of Part D in its entirety would go far and like I said before allow Medicare to negotiate the med prices…!
that is a different group – will post more info in a minute with links. this is a very important point.
It’s about time somebody came down hard on the spoiled, self-indulgent, coddled middle class in this country. /s
He may be tarnished but I still like him…!
It’s a common misconception of Americans who haven’t had to deal with it that Medicare = free health insurance. Unfortunately, it don’t work that way.
What do you mean?
My mom was lucky, although she was on a fixed income she could afford her meds. A lot of people just stop taking theirs.
bad judgement..imo…not yours…his
Under McCain’s health plan I am uninsurable…… Cancer just rules any private coverage……
currently I have one of those consumerism plans…… you know those plans…. where they think we seek too much healthcare and have to pay big bucks up front before it kicks in……. $1500 deductible per year before it starts paying at 80% then I have another $3000 out of pocket before it hits 100% coverage……. with copays my last year out of pocket was over $5000….
I hit my 100% in December last year and it started ALL over again…… My CT scans last week are going to be my nickle……. I WANT an Universal Health Plan which should be a single payer plan……
BTW…. I have the high option …… Thank God….
The easiest way to do it is to start with the SCHIP program. It is designed like Medicare. Only the kids never age out of the system. There would be a new cohort each year, and gradually the SCHIP would meet up with Medicare. People who have insurance now would keep what they have, people who don’t could buy into the system on some sort of sliding scale in the beginning. People on Medicare DO pay premiums every month for stuff they get outside the hospital setting, and they pay premiums for drugs as well.
Costs could be reduced by the implementation of the ’single claim form’ rule – where any insurance company has to take the Medicare superbill as a claim form. The reason right now that doctors and hospitals have to have such huge insurance billing departments is because each company has their own form and they are constantly re-designing them so there is no computer program in the world that can keep up. This one item would save approximately $140 billion per year according to some estimates (and the estimates are over 15 years old!)
Medicare is the easiest way to explain single-payer. There is no need to do anything about private hospitals. Medicare pays them as well as not-for-profit ones. Medicare allows you to choose your own doctor, hospital, clinic, etc.
It would give the insurance companies about 45-55 years to phase out of business or find some other way to make a living.
A long time ago I was at a hotel in San Juan that had a casino and was in there regularly for the free sandwiches, drinks and cigarettes. I won at blackjack and bought jewelry. And stood amazed as someone at the craps table just kept losing thousands and thousands of dollars. I really wanted to ask him to just give me some of it.
Don’t feel guilty for one minute, lokywoky. You earned health care, and in America you should have it.
Not only (but especially) because you are a veteran.
Everyone in America should have health care.
Several years ago I read a statistic that during the preceding 20 years, 4 of every 5 dollars in campaign contributions by Big Pharma went to Republicans. Among other legislation that got passed during that period was lifting the prohibition of TV advertising, which is when drug prices REALLY shot through the roof.
True, but can we dare laugh? Funny.
I forgot to add that every single person who works for a living pays money for the Medicare system, including the self-employed. It is one of those ‘payroll’ taxes. So, free it is not.
I hope you get that wish.:)
we discussed this issue recently (Glenn W. Smith’s post on Sunday). here is one of my comments (if you go to the thread, you can read the discussion and get links)
I think we all should have the same socialized medicine that McCain has been covered by all his life.
The points is, even after you begin to use it you still have to pay as you go.
Dugg.
Where are you getting your info on insurance forms?
CMS (center for Medicare Services) has mandated only two billing forms which insurance companies have been accepting without issues. I worked 11 years in health insurance companies AND for a software company that processed those claims. The UB92 is for Facility based billing and the HCFA1500 is for physician/provider billing. There is standard coding and that isn’t the issue.
The issue is the 25-30% Administrative overhead…… the people they hire to review and not pay claims even if they have been authorized.
Well, the reason I feel guilty is that most of the stuff that is wrong with me isn’t because of my military service. It just burns my a** when I see all these guys with the bullet holes and the burns and the TBI and PTSD who are being denied care because the Bushits are screwing them over and don’t want to pay for all the wounds they caused – because they are too forking cheap. A**holes!
heh.
Use the current economic crisis as cover to provide the single payer universal health care plan we need. We are spending the money anyway with this crazy quilt of bailouts we’ve got going.
If we take health care costs off of GM and Chrysler’s backs, chances are they won’t need a bailout.
Other US businesses would become immediately more competitive in the global marketplace because of the cost savings.
The savings to the middle class would inevitably be spent on other things thereby giving the domestic economy a much needed lift.
If everyone got health care through the govt., small business (and remember, both sides agree it’s small businesses that create jobs) will prosper because they will be able to compete for talent without worrying about how to afford health care benefits. And, entrepreneurs won’t have to stay in a job just to keep health care benefits.
If we could pull 700 billion out of our collective rears for Wall Street on 1 week’s notice, I really don’t want to hear about money not being available for this.
I do. He is a good person. Except one thing. Clinton had the same problem. I wonder about Sarah.
Whenever that issue has been raised McCain plays the POW card, pointing out that he had no health insurance while imprisoned in Hanoi. THAT is the plan he wants for most Americans.
I’m sure he’ll surface after the election. There’s gonna be much work to be done, and he can still help.
Keith Olbermann to Sarah Palin: “You, Governor, are a fraud.”
Yeah, she and her running mate
Maybe my info is outdated – I haven’t really kept up on the issue. The info originally came from the Surgeon General’s office.
christy upstairs
I want the one he was covered by for 67 of his 72 years.
works for me.
you might like chris floyd’s sorta related post: The money was there all along.
Yup, how I do know that. My late hubby was on Medicare, and I got stuck with almost a $1400 bill for his last hospitalization while they took back his last month’s Social Security check because he passed away one DAY before the end of the month. The bill was the hospital deductible.
Not to excuse their behavior but part of the trouble is that people with lots of power, prestige, and/or money get too many opportunities to cheat. They might make the right choice time after time and then in a moment of weakness yield to temptation. With repetition, the transgression gets easier. Of course, a lot of them probably never put up much resistance.
obama’s plan is not single payer and i want single payer? or at least, i want to fight for single payer?
When HIPAA was passed as part of that was the two designated forms. They are different because there is different info needed for each type of service. This standardization is part of the HIPAA electronic transactions which were mandated that insurance companies be able to accept either if a Claim, Authorization or other types of request.
Now providers are presented a web based form where they enter the data and it is submitted to the insurance company through secure transactions process.
I have never understood why US business has not led the charge on single payer.
Agreed, but there has to be some sense and organization put into the program. My (dearly beloved) mother takes tons of meds and has tons of tests done, partly because she’s a hypocondriac and partly because she likes the attention she gets.
There is absolutely no way my insurance would pay for the treatment my mother gets under medicare/medical.
There are truly rip-offs that need to be cleaned up.
Because the owners are Rethugs, and the workers (the ones who really need the healthcare) are Dems.
Yeah, I had to pay for part of my mom’s last hospital stay. I’d have been willing to pay a lot more to have them make a better effort to save her.
This is true. But part of that problem is mental health care parity. It sounds like your mom would benefit from some social work-type counseling, and help with getting more socialization – a common problem among the elderly. Unfortunately, we still treat mental health care like some kind of horrid communicable disease and don’t want to pay for any of it, let alone the teensy bit that is mandated by some states now.
All (what little there is) of which would immediately go away under McSlime’s plan for letting insurance companies ‘compete’ by moving to states where they don’t have these requirements.
I had no problem with the care my husband got – there wasn’t much to do – he had that same malignant brain tumor Ted Kennedy has, only my guy’s was right on top of the brain stem and inoperable.
Thanks for the link.
What we have to do is hammer home the economic benefits of single payer.
We’ll never get there if it is just seen as the ‘right thing to do’.
But that’s the thing. Single payer would make their corporations more profitable. Unless there is a tax angle, and even if there were one, companies like the automakers would still benefit. It makes no sense.
agreed.
i’ve filed it in the same mental folder along with “why the heck does detroit fight against cafe standards?”
Mental health services and drug rehab are two things insurance (almost) never covers. In the latter case, it costs taxpayers a LOT more to treat it as a criminal matter and put people in prison.
Thanks katymine. I was already in the VA system when HIPAA passed so haven’t been out in the ‘real’ world for some time now. What I do know is that the docs are much more relaxed, and there are some really high quality providers. My surgeon used to work at Sloan-Kettering and my opthalmologist is way-over-qualifed for what he is doing. Both of them say the reason they are in the VA was because they got sick to death of fighting with insurance companies over reimbursements and HMO’s over care decisions. In the VA, if they ask for a test – they get it. And they can work their shifts and go home and no calls in the middle of the night because someone else is working that shift. All my docs have a really good working relationship with one another and are not fighting over turf either.
I guess that’s as good an explanation as any!
But I’ll bet their broke asses would be all over it today.
Sorry to hear that.
Our current system works pretty well for people who have a lot of money and are in supremely good health already.
Good.
Since when does a lot of the stuff Rethugs do/believe in make any sense?
Ideology trumps common sense with them. It would be better for their bottom line – but they are committed to ’smaller’ government and are anti-’socialism’ as well.
Saving them money doesn’t figure into it, and it’s a lot more than just the insurance premiums. When people have access to good preventive care they take less sick leave, and when their kids are covered, less time off for that as well. That means higher productivity too. But that’s not part of the equation for them. Rethugs vote against their own self-interest, rich ones as well as poor ones.
I think that’s had to do with the bigger profits on the gas guzzlers.
Short sighted? Uh, yeah.
And that’s why they’re where they are today.
Yes, it does. And that’s why McSlime’s proposal to ‘let’ people buy their own insurance is such a crock. Right now a policy for a family is over $12,000. But that’s with all the restrictions of group policies, mandates from various state governments and such.
If everyone is pitched into the individual market the sky’s the limit for costs. Any person trying to buy a policy on their own will have their health status gone over with a fine-toothed comb and there will be millions like me with pre-existing conditions who will pay double or triple that (assuming they can afford it) – or won’t be covered at all.
And believe me, when I say pre-existing condition they’ll come up with just about anything.
Mine was that I was 20 pounds overweight. Normal Blood Pressure.
Normal Cholesterol. I swam laps and rode a bike and hiked in the mountains. Everything else was normal. Just those 20 extra pounds.
But that was enough. They decided that I was at risk for diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and my face was going to fall off. That was the end of any hopes of buying insurance.
I have a friend who is a contractor – and he does most of the physical labor himself. His background is that he is half Native Hawaiian. He is 6′4″ tall, and muscles up the ying-yang. He got turned down for the same reason. Too heavy according to their little charts and graphs.
How would the car companies make more money on higher gas standards….unless…
OMG, they would have to pull one of those super-efficient engines out of the back warehouse where they’ve been hiding them for the last 80 years and then we’d all know they had been lying to us and cheating us for the last 80 years.
It has never ceased to amaze me that we are still driving the same engine basically that we’ve had for the last 80 years. They’ve tinkered with it a little, but the only way they have really increased the gas mileage is to make the whole car smaller and of lighter materials (plastic and aluminim instead of steel – including the engine!)
Doesn’t Exxon-Mobil own all the patents on high mileage engines?
Who knows?
GM had an electric vehicle out in the late 1990’s. I think they were trying to prove that people wouldn’t buy them. They put the engine into a large pick-up/SUV and leased them to ranchers and contractors. When the leases were up they came and got them all and they were destroyed.
Most of the people who had them were really pissed and a few filed a lawsuit to try to be able to keep them, but the lease terms required that they had to be turned in.
So…what do you think?
There were electric cars and the Stanley Steamer back in the 1930s and 1940s. Talk about efficient – but the companies that made them got bought out by GM/FORD or someone and the cars disappeared.
Might you have linky, that, being one of many thousands of most probably more efficient engines. That is an important, and unheard to me, story.
I still think big oil has the lock on efficient engines. Googling right now….
;~P
http://findarticles.com/p/arti….._n24993359
Yay for the Prius. Again!
There is also have a ‘driverless’ model undergoing testing in California using the already installed blue-tooth/GPS navigation system plus some exterior sensors. Woo Hoo!
Oh, and I have many beers in me.
*hic*
but I’m in the game, kinda.
Gee… that was only two years ago. Think of the progress that might have been made since…
???
Anyone?
I know about the Stanley Steamers because my dad told me about them way back when I was a kid – he knew a guy who had one. He said they had electric ones as well, but they weren’t very good because you had to charge up the batter with something else – like a windmill or plug it in and it didn’t go very far. Dad is long gone but I remember well his stories about the Stanley Steamer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Steamer
I do know there are conversion kits out there to turn Prius’ into plug-in electrics. Apparently you need just a middling knowledge of electrical stuff to do the work and the kits are around $1400. Nice.
If I could just fix that electrical outlet in the garage.
Hey… 110’s just a tickle
I’d give my left nut for a Prius, just not affordable now, stuck with my F-150… Easy now, i needed it in my former profession… Idiot.
Namaste
Idiot = Me
;~P
I can’t be bovvered to find out, but I fink, in each debate, when McCain would trot out his plan and pooh-pooh Obama’s, Obama’s brilliant and simple repartee was a pointed reminder for the benefit of the audience of what an excellent health plan the Senators have. And not once in all those debates did McCain have a rejoinder to that glaring fact. Not a word. Even when Obama suggested everyone should have such a plan. Zip! Nada! Bupkis!
I’d settle fer it.
At a decent price, that is…
Why would be want to have healthcare for everyone when taxpayers can continue to fund people going to emergency rooms when they could be seen by a doctor at an office. I mean we would save way too much money that way. We can’t have that.
Well, that assumes you have the same salary as a sitting Senaturd – about $187,000 per annum. They have to pay a small portion of the premium, but at that salary range who’s concerned?
Excellent point! And not just the emergency room. People are winding up in the hospital for stuff that would have just required a prescription. And when they get there they have to stay twice as long – because they waited so long.
Whew! Just think of the millions and billions of dollars we could save.
It’s like when they stopped paying the $1800 for prenatal care. The number of preemies and birth defects went up. So now they do pay for the neo-nate ICU for hundreds of thousands and half the time the poor little tykes don’t make it.
Suzanne has a diary, and it’s a doozie!
Olbermann: Sarah Palin Is A Fraud
I noticed that as well. Senaturd McSlime didn’t have much answers for anything like that. No answers. Just making fun of the O-man and making faces.
My favorite one was when Obama said the ‘fine’ for Joe the Plumber would be zero for not having a health care plan. I thought McSlime’s head was going to explode!
Thanks, Lurk!
They just give themselves a payraise to cover the difference.