A little OT, but, Obama and Conservadems keep saying that the Public Option is only one small part of reform, but I still can’t for the life of me figure out what else in any of these bills controls costs?

Sure if the government stops paying for stuff it controls costs from the government budget point of view, but what exactly do they claim will lower costs for the consumer? Even if it’s utter B.S. I’m really curious what their answer to that is.

Which one of the competitive public options before the House or Senate is “government funded” again?

Lincoln is neither principled nor logically consistent, much like a Republican.

Not sure that’s the best way to go if you want to continue living in a democracy.

A person has to eat before we worry about healthcare, don’t you think?

Right. the key to go after blue dogs is to demonstrate over and over and over that they have no “ideological” support or opposition to much at all.NO dem is trying to ice the PO out of “strongly held belief” unless that is the belief that the insurance industry is a very useful patron, and they “believe” it would be dangerous for them to go against their wishes on ANYTHING. I was reflecting how screwed america is. In past empires, the largess flowed from the central core of govt power; the monarchy or a strongman or dictator. In the american empire, the largess flows INTO the govt from outside of it, from powerful industrial intrests, who buy whatever laws they want. The govt acts as an expensive service for them.

As John Trudell says, “The rule of law is the law of rulers.”

Isn’t Government Funded actually Taxpayer Funded?

sometimes its probably needed, although lots of things are needed that arent given or recieved. in any case, its a comforting thought and i understand why anyone would have it.

It’s actually worse than that. Not only is there nothing in the bill to control costs to the consumer without a strong PO, the bill will actually cause premiums to RISE to consumers as insurance companies are forced to cover things they aren’t covering now, like pre-existing conditions, maternity care*, etc. Premiums are gonna to up, and with no strong PO, who nows how high they’re gonna go up.

*Unbelieveable that in this country, insurance companies in IIRC 22 states are not covering maternity care because pregnancy is a “choice” and therefore not medically necessary. I read that somewhere (here I think) but can’t find a link, sorry.

Yes, but to my knowledge not one of the competitive public health insurance options currently being debated in the House or Senate are paid for by taxpayer dollars.

In other words, we’re willing to give taxpayer $ to a$$holes like Xe Blackwater, but we insist that a competitive public health insurance option be paid for through the premiums of its customers.

If the Dems lose seats in 2010, my fondest wish is that Lincoln will be one of them. I have no respect for her at all and she is definitely a drag on the party.

Learn more about this program

Link – http://www.rma.usda.gov/policies/

Kent Conrad likes government insurance for farmers too!

Link – http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/us/politics/04farm.html

If the public option of healthcare reform is socialism then so is the farm subsidy program and the USDA risk management program.

Time for some hardball.

Identify and attach all of these types of socialist programs to the healthcare bill.

Many of these programs benefit the constituents of the republican anti HCRF coalition and Blue Dogs.

Let them make a stand against socialist farming.

Hypocrisy!

I’m living for the day when Ellie Mae Clampitt will be headed back to the farm where she belongs. I’m so sick of these yokels who don’t have a clue and the IDIOTS who keep voting for them. I can’t wait to see this woman crying through her concession speech on election night.

[Edited by Moderator: the use of certain terms in reference to woman are strictly prohibited at this site]

It pains me to have to say this, but our elected representatives are not all of them the brightest bulbs in the box. This especially true of the Blue Dogs. Now Blanche may well be afraid that the Insurance Companies will fund an opponent if she doesn’t back them to the hilt, but she’s a big girl and can probably take the heat. I think it is more likely that she simply doesn’t understand how the health care industry works, and believes that if the Insurance Companies are in any way penalized, they will stop paying Arkansas hospitals, which will then have to shut down. I believe this is what Conrad thinks, too, as I pretty much said as much.

Between cupidity and stupidity, it is always a close call with these people.

Oh, I forgot to say that their answer is that the individual mandate is what will help control costs by making the risk pool bigger. IMO it’s BS, because an awful large part of those without insurance now are actually without insurance BECAUSE they have serious medical issues. IMO, the increase in stuff they’re forced to cover will more than offset the spreading of the risk pool, and premiums are going to go up. IMO. YMMV. (EDIT: Plus I think the individual mandate might get tossed by courts as unconstitutional. We’ll see on that)

From what Jane wrote here last night after her excellent interview with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, it sure sounds like Lincoln is on her way out!

Frankly, if they fail to make real health care reform a reality, then they deserve to lose the super majority.

The second paragraph of the Dumas quote is bang-on brilliant.

Poor thing. Out of a job with the GOP and in as a lobbyist. One of our devoted democratic senators working for the GOP openly, working against people openly, and yet, she still has the power to cause harm.
Our country is the golden shrine of corruption. Berlusconi would be so proud.

Hypocrisy!

By all means, do elaborate.

I think the argument for government subsidies of big ag and big business generally goes this way: The Europeans and the Japanese do it (to say nothing of the Chinese) and so we have to do it in order for our industries to compete. I have no problem with that, given that that is only the public argument that’s made and doesn’t admit to the crass cronyism that’s really involved.

Still, if you’re going to make that argument, then why not make the same argument on the individual scale: If the European and Japanese (and Chinese?) governments support their workers with “socialized medicine”, then why can’t our government do the same?

The July report by the CBO projected that 6 million people would enroll in a government-run program…

At Obamas price of $900B over 10 years, that’s $15,000 per year premiums. Ouch!

I think the Blue Dogs are an invention of the business-friendly Democratic Leadership Council. They are nothing more than whores for the entrenched economic interests, dressed up as Democrats.

She IS a Republican, in reality. She also is a devious liar who is wholly owned by Big-ag, as you suggest. As one from the farm belt, I know that the scnadals of monopolies, like the banks and investment corporations, is huge in things agricultural. Lincoln is up to her neck in that morass. She needs to go. At least put her in democratic isolation, never to have a word in any legislation ever again.

There is the naive view that the exchanges in which people can compare plans on an apples-to-apples basis will encourage competition and reduce costs in and of itself.

That is what a lot of the Conservadems think reduces costs (or pretend they do).

The sliver comment has to do less with costs than with extending coverage by restrictions on denials of all sorts and subsidizing those at the bottom who cannot afford full premiums. But without something like the ability to provide public plans and with insurance companies still colluding, they can partition the market in exchanges just like they partition competition between states.

Finally on triggers. I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that Olympia Snowe wants to see triggers on the entire bill, even if it does not contain a public option.

I don’t think I’d call it a super majority when we have to worry about the likes of Short Ride and the Blue Dogs. Local parties have helped put these people in office and that’s where we need to start making some changes. Our local party leaders have enjoyed all the access the conservative pols have given them, with the result that they talk out of both sides of their mouths.

The public option isn’t “government funded”, it is government administered.

Government funding is orthogonal – subsidies to help lower income people buy mandated health insurance would go for any insurance those people choose, and a public option would just be one choice among many.

Helping low income Americans is something the Randians hate.

Here’s the problem with that framing. Taxpayer funded subsidies will be available to all of the plans allowed in the exchange — private, co-op, or public. The public plan, if it has Medicare + 5% rates, sets a cost benchmark with which other plans must compete. So the public plan has a greater potential of saving taxpayer money than an exchange with subsidies and no public plan.

Is starvation a pre-existing condition?

I’ve read that the Obama price tag of Health Care Insurance Reform is $900B. Is that “government” funded, or what does that number mean?

I hate the term “government funded.” It implies that the gov’t actually pays for something. It should be called “citizen funded” – it’s our money paying for everything. The gov’t neither “toils nor spins”.

Hey Mod: Are comments getting disappeared, or are my fingers deceiving me?

If the goal of the public plan is to set a cost benchmark with which other plans must compete, and if lowering costs is important, and if we think the concept has a chance of working, why use Medicare + 5%.

Why not Medicare – 5%, or – 10%.

That way the public plan has an even greater potential of saving taxpayer money. Assuming the concept works.

There are going to be subsidies for people below certain income levels to purchase insurance. They can purchase private insurance or the public option, but that’s the biggest part of the cost.

Not to mention, it’s good to have TEETH so as to make eating easier.

If I hadn’t just gotten my hair cut, I’d be pulling it out right now.
Maybe…………

Reid, Durbin Open To Majority Vote To Beat Health Care Filibuster

Good points, but in (snarky) answer to your question:

#1 is good bc it’s conservative (ie, big corporations & fat-cat CEOs get welfare)

#2 is bad bc it’s teh eeeevul socialism (ie, teh serfs get health care)

In both cases, the taxpayers (eg, you ‘n me), pay for this, but we (eg, us serfs) are certainly not entitled to direct, personal benefit from the sweat of our labor. Doncha know??

Blanche Lincoln is a tool and is probably hoping to be voted out of office so that she can become a K Street Lobbyist and truly reveal her inner K Street prostitute. Albeit, I’m also willing to accept that Blanche might also be quite teh stoooped tool, as well.

Blue Texan’s regularly scheduled post is ready to be read: “The Republican Brand in Ruins: 75% of Americans Dislike Republicans; Over 70% Think Palin’s Not Qualified to be President”

Now you’re getting into reich wing talking point territory. One of the biggest complaints from some doctors and other providers is that Medicare payments are not sufficient. Two towns in TX, one being Houston iirc, are shown as an example of the inequality of costs/payments. The Medicare + 5% is an attempt to alleviate that disparity to some degree. The cost savings are savings from what private insurance costs.

That’s a great point and that’s one of the thing that pisses me off most about these watered down reforms.

Even Conservadem plans without a PO, are projected to cost in the $900,000,000,000 price range. So what do we get for that? My premiums, paid for by me and/or my employer, will continue to skyrocket and my out-of-pocket costs will also keep increasing (copays, deductibles, etc.) AND I’ll have my share of the $900B govt. spending ON TOP of all that.

I don’t see any silver lining to that cloud.

As for Medicare -5% — many doctors and hospitals already lose money on Medicare patients, or barely break even. Doing something like Medicare -5 would probably run many providers out of business.

While some specialties clean up on Medicare, General Practitioners barely squeak by. Clearly some reform in how Medicare reimbursement is figured is also needed.

What in the world are you calculating? That 900 billion dollars is going to 6 million people who will end up in the PO plan? Are you insane?

Please think a little before you post.

Sorry, my post should have been tagged to #10 who said:

“to my knowledge not one of the competitive public health insurance options currently being debated in the House or Senate are paid for by taxpayer dollars

we insist that a competitive public health insurance option be paid for through the premiums of its customers”

Call joe liebermann’s office and demand he stop siding with the Medical Industrial Complex/Cartel against the wishes of a majority of citizens in his district.A Public Option with a Opt Out provision will leave millions of Americans in red states to the whims of the criminally corrupt Medical Industrial Complex/Cartel.Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score’s the baucus plan at $829 Billion over a 10 year period, that is paid for. The CBO also states that it will lower the deficit by $80 Billion and it would be much lower if there was a public option.Criminally corrupt politicians are the reason the U.S. is ranked near the bottom of every catagory when ranked next to other modern, industrialized nations. Time for publically funded elections. lieberman $12.6M, mcconnell $7.8M, baucus $7.7M, cornyn $6.7M, kyl $5.6M, grassley $5.4M, ensign $5.2M, conrad $5.1M, cantor $4.9M, nelson $4.9M, burr $4.8M, boehner $4.4M, hatch $4.4M, lincoln $4.1M, vitter $3.9M, carper $3.6M were paid by the Medical Industrial Complex to kill Health Care Reform. (Source: OpenSecrets.org, Aug. 09)Follow the Money: LinkCall Congress and demand, Single-Payer Health Care for All!(Toll Free # House and Senate)1-866-338-1015 _____ 1-866-220-00441-866-311-3405Sign Single-Payer, Public Option and Health Care as a Civil Rights Petitions: Link Link Link kucinichpetition Don’t let the Medical Industrial Complex steal your Health Care from you and your family by donating huge sums of money to Crooked Politicians in order to maintain the Status Quo. Keep up the good fight.SEMPER FI!

That would be funny if it wasn’t so realistic! I just got my “Changes for 2010″ from my Medicare Advantage Plan: instead of paying zero premium monthly (I think Medicare pays my monthly premium, or reimburses or something), I will have to pay $36/mo. A lot of other stuff went up also, topped off by the hospital bill that is my “deductible”. Last year that was $875 ($175/day for the first five days, after that they pick up everything); now it is $200/day for the first 10 days for a grand total of $2,000. All this on a fixed income. Something’s gotta give!

And to add more fun to the party, Social Security payments won’t go up AT ALL for the first time in about a generation, I think.

Because providers are complaining that the Medicare rates are too low and that they will not see Medicare patients. That’s why it must be +5% until a better basis for the rates can be found. The House bill also authorizes HHS to explore rates other than micro-managed fee-for-service rates (you know, the 250-page end-of-life EOBs that heirs get after a loved one’s death). So there might be a way in the future of beginning to bring rates down. Increasing the number of providers, through medical scholarships, would also bring costs down.

But the cost problem is a systemic one, not one of too high salaries (except for practice partners). Doctors who are employees of large hospital healthcare systems tend to make lower salaries and have more difficulty paying off their student loans – especially primary care doctors. And all providers could benefit by surer and more rapid payment of fees, which would allow them to shed the staff they currently have doing pre-certifications and collections.

The whole idea of the public plan is for premiums to be paid by its customers (except where subsidies are the same as for private or co-op plans). The Medicare + 5% is the rate that the plan will pay out to providers. The alternative is negotiated rates, which would be very time-consuming to set up and difficult to manage, given that HHS would likely try to sign up the entire Medicare provider network so as to provide people their choice of providers.

You are confusing apples and oranges.

The 6 million figure is for the public plan.

The $900 billion is for ten years of the entire bill, including any adjustments to Medicare, SCHIP, Medicaid, and subsidies to low-income folks in the exchange — who will purchase from private, co-op, or public plans.

I just made a donation to FDL Action via Actblue to Fund Organizers in Arkansas: Dare Blanche Lincoln to Filibuster the Public Option.”

Looks like I am the 227th contributor and that the total is now $8,979.

Who wants to be number 228 and put the number over $9,000?

I read this comment on Salon.com regarding the Public Option:

Take it off and then put it back in

Here’s what Reid is probably going to do. They will remove the public option to get past the filibuster. Then when the senate bill is in reconcilliation with the house bill, it will be put back in. A reconciled bill can’t be filibustered. We will get a public option. Don’t believe the hype, it aint dead.

Is this how it’ll work out?

- Tom

The south reminds me of a take from the old dry-cleaning ads about One-Hour Martinizing: Never Needs Irony! That’s because just living there supplies that ingredient.

A redneck is only comfortable talking in groups of nodding heads. That allows considerable contradiction to creep in over the years. The hoosier is dead set on two points: (1) the utter depavity of accepting government handouts, therefore the Black is less than the white on that account alone, and (2) the Farm Bank is a justifiable and important instrument for agriculture.

Diversionary Acreage is the official name; it’s landowners (not limited to farmers) being paid (and lucratively) for not growing a number of listed crops. The idea is stabilizing prices but the real objective is harvesting votes.

Now, these points are neither contrasted nor debated, because no one would suggest anything which is not generally held down south. And these are the sort who will finally decide on important matters pertaining to all of us?

I’m in total agreement with you. After reading every word of every bill numerous times, there may be cost savings somewhere but I can’t find it. What I can find is that my premiums will increase dramatically under the Baucus bill.

I think a lot of folks are missing the big picture. There are four components to any health care delivery system:

1) Patients
2) Doctors, nurses, hospitals
3) Pharmaceuticals
4) Insurance companies

Which, among the four, do not contribute to the delivery of health care? Which of the four have a parasitic relationship with the rest and should be “thrown under the bus?”

Tom,

It appears that the commenter you’re quoting is confusing the “reconciliation” process with the “conference committee” process. If a bill is passed in the House and Senate, there will be a House-Senate conference committee that will work out a “compromise” bill that will then be sent back to the House and Senate for final passage. (The initial Senate bill could be passed in the normal course or by invoking the reconciliation process; the latter process eliminates the filibuster.)

I’m assuming that the final House-Senate compromise bill coming out of the conference committee could be filibustered in the Senate, and that it also could be submitted to a vote via reconciliation to avoid the filibuster. (Whether a bill passed via reconciliation would survive the Senate Parliamentarian intact is another issue.)

If my understanding is correct then, they could remove the public option via amendment in the Senate in order to forestall the filibuster. If the House and Senate both pass a bill (they wouldn’t be identical at this point), the PO could then be put back in the House-Senate conference committee bill and resubmitted to each house in identical form for final action. At that point, Senate passage would again depend on the ability of the Dems to break the filibuster, or on their willingness to send it through via reconciliation.

Someone please correct me if I’m in error.

Is a pregnancy “doctored” before or after the baby eats? You can’t have proper health and life without both, so trying to say one has priority is irrelevant.

Sounds like Ms. Lincoln has some ‘splainin to do.

The taxpayer monies going into this are primarily the required insurance premiums they’ll have to buy and the tax dollars going through Medicaid to subsidize some people’s insurance.

The Public Option operates on it’s own premiums (with the exception that at the start the gov’t chips in some for it’s reserves to get it off the ground). I’m not sure if that money is to be recovered later. Does anybody here know?

So, they go after the PO, but it’s the Ag insurance which is subsidized. They go after ACORN, but it’s the MIC which is breaking the rules. Where does the hypocrisy and stupid lies end?

Those programs already exist, so attaching ‘them’ to the bill isn’t possible. But, we could certainly attach, via amendment, their funding. That would shake up some people.

The total reform cost isn’t entirely for premiums. There are many other smaller initiatives in the bill.

As for Medicare -5% — many doctors and hospitals already lose money on Medicare patients, or barely break even. Doing something like Medicare -5 would probably run many providers out of business.

Two things:

1) These are patients/customers the doctors aren’t seeing now. So, that means we’re not cutting money they’re currently receiving.

2) It means more money going to doctors (if they do the work), just at a lower rate (Medicare+5%).

We’re pushing more money into the system overall to serve MORE people at hopefully lower rates/person with less dependence on high-cost ER service.

And, the PO is NOT gov’t-run. It will be run by professionals (insurance people) hired to administer it and they will be paid out of the premiums, not tax dollars.

the Farm Bank is a justifiable and important instrument for agriculture.

Diversionary Acreage is the official name; it’s landowners (not limited to farmers) being paid (and lucratively) for not growing a number of listed crops. The idea is stabilizing prices

It doesn’t sound like a ‘free market’ idea to me — must be a buncha Commies out there.

How can we possibly afford spending money on Commie programs like that when we’re $9Trillion in debt? I’ll bet it was them who spent us into debt in teh first place.

If a bill is passed in the House and Senate, there will be a House-Senate conference committee that will work out a “compromise” bill that will then be sent back to the House and Senate for final passage. (The initial Senate bill could be passed in the normal course or by invoking the reconciliation process; the latter process eliminates the filibuster.)

During the Conference committee work they aren’t allowed to put something into the final bill which wasn’t in at least one of the two original bills (House or Senate). Mostly they have to choose from one bill or the other and put the better (or both) in the final bill.

I am from Iowa and work for the USDA. To compare crop insurance and health insurance is silly. Unlike health insurance there are no private companies that insure crops for other than hail storms. No private company wants to deal with droughts, floods, wind storms, or early frost because these events are nearly impossible to make actuarially sound. That is why the government decided come up with crop insurance. It is not just for big Ag, but also used extensively by smaller farmers that are not financially strong enough to withstand a total wipe out. If you want to support health insurance, stick to the health insurance issues. Bringing crop insurance into the debate isn’t going to convince anyone that we need health insurance too.

With regard to politicians
” Kill em all and let God sort them out”

Thanks for that clarification. Very helpful.