Comments on: HELP Committee Draft & CBO Score

By: BearCountry

BearCountry — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:56:05 +0000

selise, you are right. I did not phrase it very well. The public option is not single payer, but what I think is that the public option will drive the insurance toward single payer because the insurance companies and their Congressional minions are already admitting that they really can’t compete with a good public option that the government runs. The ability of the government to do medical insurance well is causing the corps to scream that the government can’t do a good job, and, simultaneously, they are saying that the government run public option would put them out of business. obama is giving them cover by saying that we can’t move to a better system because we are not starting from scratch so we have to design the system to give the insurance companies payoffs that will far exceed anything they could have dreamed of when this started.

By: weacman

weacman — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:25:34 +0000

My school district family policy costs 17 grand, of which the district pays 90 percent. And there are denials of certain procedures and drugs and drug copays and NO vision coverage.

Under this proposal nothing changes. Oh, wait, the cost of my plan will continue to rise.

Oh, and I can’t participate in the public option. And stop calling it “strong”. The only strong public option is single payer.

By: selise

selise — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:53:48 +0000

hahahaha!

of course it’s a fucking feature. we’re being fed sound bites, campaign slogans and a few talking points.

evidence based policy? even evidence based policy debate? — nowhere to be found.

By: lambertstrether

lambertstrether — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:47:15 +0000

Selise, you write:

we can’t tell the difference between cost shifting and cost saving.

Is that a bug? Or a feature?

By: lambertstrether

lambertstrether — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:46:31 +0000

And single payer would save $350 billion a year. Too bad we can’t get HR676, the single payer bill, whipped and scored so there’d be a proven, science-based solution to use as a baseline for HEAP. Especially now that we have a smoking gun on how the health care debate is being managed.

By: lambertstrether

lambertstrether — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:41:23 +0000

Many, many thanks. I’m in total disagreement on the policy, but I do l-o-o-o-v-e the tools!

By: nahant

nahant — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:33:32 +0000

I 100% agree!! Put these dam insurance companies out of the health insurance business period! As we all know it was their greed that has caused this us all this misery for the American citizens while the owners of these companies have been getting fat off our dollars!!
Single Payer, no co-pays, no deductibles. Every working citizen pays according to their income into the fund.

By: selise

selise — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:31:12 +0000

no jane, not just that - it doesn’t include the costs to households or employers or states! (unless i’m missing something?)

that’s why we need to know what this bill is expected to do TOTAL healthcare costs — what if the costs to households goes way up under this or any other proposal? this is the kind of analysis that has previously been done. it’s not unusual, in fact it’s absolutely critical.

the federal dollar component is only a fraction of our healthcare costs (less than half). without total (and component) cost projects (instead of fed budget only) we can’t tell the difference between cost shifting and cost saving.

http://www.cms.hhs.gov/Nationa…..jected.asp

By: Kassandra

Kassandra — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:28:15 +0000

Just shows you how much they’re making killing us off.

By: Ann in AZ

Ann in AZ — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:27:16 +0000

Christy has a new post along the same lines on the front page: “Health Care: HELP Bill Released During Public Option Call With Sens. Dodd, Brown and Whitehouse”