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Landmark Health Insurance Bill Passes House
theodp writes "A hastily-crafted amendment imposing tough new restrictions on abortion coverage in insurance policies helped pave the way for the House to approve the Democrats' bill to overhaul the nation's health insurance system. 'It provides coverage for 96 percent of Americans,' said Rep. John Dingell. Rep. Candice Miller disagreed, calling the legislation 'a jobs-killing, tax-hiking, deficit-exploding' bill. The 1,990-page, $1.2 trillion legislation passed by a vote of 220-215 and moves on for Senate debate, which is expected to begin in several days."
Update — 11/08 at 13:45 GMT by SS: Changed vote totals above to reflect the actual bill vote. The 240-194 number was for the abortion restrictions amendment.
Dude, get a clue !!! The bill has no provision that the recipient of health care be a legal resident. Regardless of protestations to the contrary, unwelcome aliens will take full advantage of the U.S. taxpayers. The bill does nothing to streamline the payment process which now sucks up a huge amount of premiums. The bill does not limit the insurance companies from denying coverage for any damned thing. True, they can't deny selling you a policy, but that policy can have lots of loopholes to deny specific conditions. There is no mention of tort reform. That alone is the main reason that many doctors and hospitals are going out of business in my state. This nightmare does not really improve our health care system. There are so many other provisions that could have been enacted to make the system better. Do you see any limitations on Big Pharma in this bill? Neither do I. I am in favor of an improved health system. This bill is not even close to an improvement.
Normally I ascribe all life to intelligent design, but in your case I'll make an exception.
I'm of the opinion that even the current system of private coverage is fundamentally a violation of doctor-patient confidentiality. You've got these insurance companies just itching to monetize any piece of data they can get from their paying customers, such that the half-assed nature of HIPAA really provides no assurance that your medical information won't be used in one way or another that is ultimately against your well-being.
The only way to be sure your information (any info, not just medical records) won't be systematically abused is to make sure it isn't entered into a file or a database in the first place. Unfortunately, there seems to be a real focus on doing just the opposite with these healthcare changes - some sort of magical computer worshipping cargo cult thing where too many people think that if they can just get all our personal info into a database it will be the best thing since sliced bread. I'm tired of sacrificing privacy for the promise of increased efficiency and convenience and I am doubly tired of those promises failing to pan out in the long run. But that's exactly what I expect is going to happen here too.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The issue is that many people won't buy health insurance until they need it. That fundamentally breaks the model because insurance depends on having a pool of healthy people paying but not costing anything. The legislation kind of makes up for that by forcing everybody to buy health insurance (with threats of jail or heavy fines if they don't), but ultimately that will screw poor people who don't have money to buy it.
Do you have ESP?
Presumably, in the same way that any other tax evasion will. Does the police force, military, court system, fire brigade etc. enslave people?
The interesting thing is that it really will fix nothing. All this did was offer up some competition to Insurance (not necessarily a bad thing), but will fund the indigent, which is mostly Illegal aliens here.
What is really sad is that it had NOTHING TO LOWER COSTS. We are in need of tort reform (how much money is paid out for lawsuits); costs of the docs eduction; costs of the drugs; costs of the hospital; etc.
What is amazing is that the neo-cons passed a monster drug bill to help buy old votes. Part of it required the feds to pay TOP DOLLARS for the drugs. Here is the American gov who passed a bill that would make the US federal gov the single largest buyers of drugs in the world, and the neo-cons forbid negotiations for LOWEST PRICE. This is expected to costs something like 400 BILLION dollars, instead of 50 BILLION over the ten years that it was looked at. This is a nice and easy 350 billion dollars to be save. So, did the dems include that in this bill? Nope. They are leaving us at paying the TOP DOLLARS for this.
I swear, The only thing worse than a GD democrat is an elected republican. The republicans are about pure greed and corrupt. The dems are stupid. America is in serious trouble.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We rank 37th in infant mortality
The US ranks 37th in *reported* infant mortality. The main difference is what is considered a live birth vs. still birth. Most countries don't count it as an infant death if the baby dies within 24 hours of birth, and in countries with less capable neonatal intensive care that happens a lot. Premies simply die and don't get counted, except in the US.
You hide that "general welfare" part behind the Interstate Commerce clause in your sentence so well! It almost makes it seem like it has nothing to do with establishing laws that affect the general welfare of the people. I bet a lot of people who read it actually stop and have a wtf? moment, which makes them miss out on those two little important words!
You are trying to make it seem as if Congress has no power to do anything other than that which is explicitly granted in the Constitution, which is comically untrue. It makes me wonder why we don't just fill all 535 seats of Congress with printed copies of the Constitution.
The answer to your question, then, is "never", at least for a legitimate challenge. It may be "challenged" in court, wherein someone will ask that very same question ("where does the Constitution authorize Congress ..."), which is when the judge will probably have the very same response as Mrs. Pelosi.
My medical insurance has recently gone up to $995 per month, now that I have just recently reached the age of 55. That is almost $12,000 per year that I am paying for medical insurance, just for myself. That is with a $1,250 deductible and no dental coverage.
I once tried to switch to a less expensive plan, but Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona would not let me switch. I have never had any significant health problems, other than being somewhat overweight and having very slight high blood pressure. It was only during the last year, that I finally needed to start taking a mild diuretic to lower my slightly high blood pressure. I am a non-smoker in good health who walks 45 minutes per day, wears my seatbelt, and does not eat junk food. Despite that, I need to pay 1/3 of my net take home income (after taxes) on Medical insurance. How much would I have to pay if I had more significant health problems?
I would like to see more willingness for Congress to ignore the lobbyists, and work on the causes of it being so expensive such as tort reform, big pharma, and the insurance industry.
Is this bill going to make my insurance less expensive, or perhaps subsidise my insurance?
Our government is already spending way more than it collects for taxes, so is this something which our country can afford without having to inflate our money supply more or borrow even money from China and elsewhere? I seem to recall Nancy Pelosi claiming that they had found some way to pay for it all. I have not really been following the news closely enough to know about those details.