No, what I want is for my MRI to be covered even if I already had back problems before I signed up for insurance. It isn't charity. I pay for a service, and I expect to get it.
For the obligatory car analogy, just because I got rear ended doesn't mean I should be denied car insurance when I try to change car insurance companies.
I have heard estimates of about 400 pages, if it was set at a "normal" font and spacing. Using the 400-page number just for the sake of argument, that isn't all that unreasonable.
The reason why bills like this have such huge margins is to allow legislators and their underlings plenty of room to make notes...or at least, that's what I assume it is done for.
Re:A false choice, of course...
on
Health Care Reform
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Well, this is only a first step in the direction of socialized medicine. They wanted a stronger step, with the "Public Option", but that wouldn't fly, so they backed off a bit.
Look into some of the people behind the scenes of those in power, those that influenced them and even older quotes from those in the administration. They have been put on record saying they want to move to single payer and socialized medicine..but they know it has to come a little at a time.
You honestly believe that arguably the largest industry in the country (aside from the oil industry) would allow the United States government to take it over in its entirety and run everything from development to market to treatment?
Let me guess...you've got a bridge to sell me as well.
Understandable, but then you get into the problem of who gets to decide what every state does or doesn't need? Who gets to choose which model to follow? Different parts of the country have different requirements, depending on environment, local culture/cuisine, local economy, etc. Trying to do that would work as well as trying to put together a universal educational standard accross all 50 states...'cause that has worked out so well for us.
Re:You don't understand what would happen...
on
Health Care Reform
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· Score: 1
It actually wouldn't be like what you describe, because all of the insurance companies would set up shop exclusively in the states with the least regulation. So in your example, you'd only have the choice to buy your policy from New Jersey. And remember that most people don't actually choose their insurer--their employer chooses it for them.
I know that is the "real world" reason, I was just talking about from a practical and legal standpoint.
The whole "buy insurance across state lines" is a health insurer proposal to crassly deregulate the market in their favor, turned into a Republican talking point by a flimsy claim that it would lower costs. (Which it easily would, by reducing the insurers' operating costs while further enabling them to not pay your claims.)
I agree with everything else you said, but if you to be compensated for "pre-existing conditions" then you're looking for charity, not insurance. The purpose of insurance is to trade low-probability, high-cost risk for high-probability, low-cost premiums, and thus combat uncertainty. It's not meant to be a savings program or a handout. The efficiency of insurance is directly correlated with accurately assessing each client's risk and setting their premiums accordingly.
People aren't looking to be compensated, they are looking for their coverage to not be dropped or denied because their health was already fucked when they signed up for insurance.
That sounds sensible to me.
Re:A false choice, of course...
on
Health Care Reform
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· Score: 1, Flamebait
Government is why these things cost so much
You sure those multi-billion dollar profits that all parts of the healthcare industry sees every year doesn't have something to do with it?
The fact that we play video games so frequently in our house ("we" and "our" meaning my fiancee and I), we have a recumbent bike in front of the TV and take turns.
Works out great for those streaming netflix/civilization revolution DS marathons:-)
..it will be interesting to see what kind of repercussions google's employees living in China might have to face. This may sound weird, but I'm a bit worried for their workers over there...
Re:A false choice, of course...
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Pelosi has said this is only the first bill and that we should expect many more. I would assume that means trying to push for public options, and perhaps eventually build on the populist anger towards private insurance to remove it from most of the market. I think the push for socialized medicine is exactly what a large part of the Democratic party is fighting for, though by no means enough to win the day right now.
Remember though, a single-payer system affects only insurance companies. Private companies would still be building medical equipment, doctors would still run independent practices, and pharmaceutical companies would still exist. You could consider single-payer to be socialized insurance, but not socialized healthcare.
The bill empowers the DHHS to waive most of the fines for things like long-term care facilities' employees abusing patients if the facility serves an under-served population, and this is defined as rural areas or ethnic minorities. This is just Jim Crow under a new name: it means that facilities serving ethnic minorities are held to a lower standard, and African-American patients of them are not entitled to the same protections of the laws that white patients are. That's just wrong.
Re:This bill has nothing to do with health care.
on
Health Care Reform
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· Score: 1
As others have said, the CBO numbers are all we have to go off of for now. Both sides of the aisle have touted CBO findings to support their arguments in the past, so I see no reason to write them off now just because you don't like the results.
My death metal binder hasn't had any new CDs added to it since I graduated from high school back in 2002. The summer after I got out, I spent nearly a whole week ripping every single cd in that binder...now it just sits as a monument to an angrier, adolescent-addled mind:-) I'll pop it open every now and then for nostalgia or to show people that yes, even though I'm all "sitting at a desk programmer wearing a tie" now, I was once an gothish metal head.
I still have the 7/16th inch tunnels in my ear lobes, but I'm proud of those...even though my "crazy" days are behind me, I will still never take a job where they ask me to take out my tunnels.
Re:A false choice, of course...
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Insurance sales across state lines (surely a real interstate commerce item)
As far as this one point is concerned, I can tell you why this is unlikely to ever happen. The individual state laws regarding insurance companies and what they have to cover/can't cover/etc varies wildly from state to state, even between neighboring states. It would be nigh impossible to do this.
Say you live in Maryland, and want to buy Insurance A from New Jersey. Say Maryland has a law stating insurance companies have to cover a specific condition, but they DON'T have that law in New Jersey. You will have bought insurance that isn't guaranteed to cover you the way it should because the laws are different in the two states...this is why companies have different "arms" in every state, because every state has vastly different laws. This is a very simplistic example, but they only get worse from there.
The only way interstate shopping of insurance would happen would be for the federal government to require all states to have the same insurance requirements...and we surely don't want the federal government trampling on states rights, now do we?
No, it sounds like higher taxes. Socialized Medicine would happen if the government was running the healthcare industry, which it isn't. The government runs a few healthcare PROGRAMS, but it is no where even close to running the whole INDUSTRY.
Remember kids, regulation != socialism, and taxes != socialism
Instead of just repeating a talking point, explain in detail how this bill will "socialize" medicine.
Re:This bill has nothing to do with health care.
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 1
Except those findings are for the OLD bill
Not quite. Taken from the very first paragraph of the.pdf I linked to:
"The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) have completed a preliminary estimate of the direct spending and revenue effects of an amendment in the nature of a substitute to H.R. 4872, the Reconciliation Act of 2010; that amendment (hereafter called "the reconciliation proposal") was made public on March 18, 2010. The estimate is presented in three ways:
An estimate of the budgetary effects of the reconciliation proposal, in combination with the effects of H.R. 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), as passed by the Senate;
An estimate of the incremental effects of the reconciliation proposal, over and above the effects of enacting H.R. 3590 by itself;
An estimate of the budgetary impact of the reconciliation proposal under the assumption that H.R. 3590 is not enacted (that is, an estimate of the bill's impact relative to current law as of today)."
Re:This bill has nothing to do with health care.
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 1
Never mind, I see what you are looking for, and no the analysis I linked to is not it. Still, preliminary findings are better than no findings, don't you think?
Re:This bill has nothing to do with health care.
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 1
What CBO analysis? They said they have not had time to review the new revised bill, so there is NO analysis.
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No, what I want is for my MRI to be covered even if I already had back problems before I signed up for insurance. It isn't charity. I pay for a service, and I expect to get it.
For the obligatory car analogy, just because I got rear ended doesn't mean I should be denied car insurance when I try to change car insurance companies.
I have heard estimates of about 400 pages, if it was set at a "normal" font and spacing. Using the 400-page number just for the sake of argument, that isn't all that unreasonable.
The reason why bills like this have such huge margins is to allow legislators and their underlings plenty of room to make notes...or at least, that's what I assume it is done for.
Well, this is only a first step in the direction of socialized medicine. They wanted a stronger step, with the "Public Option", but that wouldn't fly, so they backed off a bit.
Look into some of the people behind the scenes of those in power, those that influenced them and even older quotes from those in the administration. They have been put on record saying they want to move to single payer and socialized medicine..but they know it has to come a little at a time.
You honestly believe that arguably the largest industry in the country (aside from the oil industry) would allow the United States government to take it over in its entirety and run everything from development to market to treatment?
Let me guess...you've got a bridge to sell me as well.
Understandable, but then you get into the problem of who gets to decide what every state does or doesn't need? Who gets to choose which model to follow? Different parts of the country have different requirements, depending on environment, local culture/cuisine, local economy, etc. Trying to do that would work as well as trying to put together a universal educational standard accross all 50 states...'cause that has worked out so well for us.
It actually wouldn't be like what you describe, because all of the insurance companies would set up shop exclusively in the states with the least regulation. So in your example, you'd only have the choice to buy your policy from New Jersey. And remember that most people don't actually choose their insurer--their employer chooses it for them.
I know that is the "real world" reason, I was just talking about from a practical and legal standpoint.
The whole "buy insurance across state lines" is a health insurer proposal to crassly deregulate the market in their favor, turned into a Republican talking point by a flimsy claim that it would lower costs. (Which it easily would, by reducing the insurers' operating costs while further enabling them to not pay your claims.)
Pretty much -_-;;
I agree with everything else you said, but if you to be compensated for "pre-existing conditions" then you're looking for charity, not insurance. The purpose of insurance is to trade low-probability, high-cost risk for high-probability, low-cost premiums, and thus combat uncertainty. It's not meant to be a savings program or a handout. The efficiency of insurance is directly correlated with accurately assessing each client's risk and setting their premiums accordingly.
People aren't looking to be compensated, they are looking for their coverage to not be dropped or denied because their health was already fucked when they signed up for insurance.
That sounds sensible to me.
Government is why these things cost so much
You sure those multi-billion dollar profits that all parts of the healthcare industry sees every year doesn't have something to do with it?
Awesome, thank you very much! I appreciate it :-)
The fact that we play video games so frequently in our house ("we" and "our" meaning my fiancee and I), we have a recumbent bike in front of the TV and take turns.
Works out great for those streaming netflix/civilization revolution DS marathons :-)
..it will be interesting to see what kind of repercussions google's employees living in China might have to face. This may sound weird, but I'm a bit worried for their workers over there...
Pelosi has said this is only the first bill and that we should expect many more. I would assume that means trying to push for public options, and perhaps eventually build on the populist anger towards private insurance to remove it from most of the market. I think the push for socialized medicine is exactly what a large part of the Democratic party is fighting for, though by no means enough to win the day right now.
Remember though, a single-payer system affects only insurance companies. Private companies would still be building medical equipment, doctors would still run independent practices, and pharmaceutical companies would still exist. You could consider single-payer to be socialized insurance, but not socialized healthcare.
The bill empowers the DHHS to waive most of the fines for things like long-term care facilities' employees abusing patients if the facility serves an under-served population, and this is defined as rural areas or ethnic minorities. This is just Jim Crow under a new name: it means that facilities serving ethnic minorities are held to a lower standard, and African-American patients of them are not entitled to the same protections of the laws that white patients are. That's just wrong.
Interesting, I must have missed that part...can you provide me with page/line numbers from the bill? here's a link if you don't have a copy handy: http://www.scribd.com/doc/28572002/Reconciliation-HR-4872-Full-Text
As others have said, the CBO numbers are all we have to go off of for now. Both sides of the aisle have touted CBO findings to support their arguments in the past, so I see no reason to write them off now just because you don't like the results.
My death metal binder hasn't had any new CDs added to it since I graduated from high school back in 2002. The summer after I got out, I spent nearly a whole week ripping every single cd in that binder...now it just sits as a monument to an angrier, adolescent-addled mind :-) I'll pop it open every now and then for nostalgia or to show people that yes, even though I'm all "sitting at a desk programmer wearing a tie" now, I was once an gothish metal head.
I still have the 7/16th inch tunnels in my ear lobes, but I'm proud of those...even though my "crazy" days are behind me, I will still never take a job where they ask me to take out my tunnels.
Insurance sales across state lines (surely a real interstate commerce item)
As far as this one point is concerned, I can tell you why this is unlikely to ever happen. The individual state laws regarding insurance companies and what they have to cover/can't cover/etc varies wildly from state to state, even between neighboring states. It would be nigh impossible to do this.
Say you live in Maryland, and want to buy Insurance A from New Jersey. Say Maryland has a law stating insurance companies have to cover a specific condition, but they DON'T have that law in New Jersey. You will have bought insurance that isn't guaranteed to cover you the way it should because the laws are different in the two states...this is why companies have different "arms" in every state, because every state has vastly different laws. This is a very simplistic example, but they only get worse from there.
The only way interstate shopping of insurance would happen would be for the federal government to require all states to have the same insurance requirements...and we surely don't want the federal government trampling on states rights, now do we?
Source: I work in the healthcare industry.
No, it sounds like higher taxes. Socialized Medicine would happen if the government was running the healthcare industry, which it isn't. The government runs a few healthcare PROGRAMS, but it is no where even close to running the whole INDUSTRY.
Remember kids, regulation != socialism, and taxes != socialism
yeah, who would have thought?
CDs aren't portable. And take-up a lot of space.
My binder with 300+ death metal CDs and the jewel case inserts in it from high school would agree with you -_-;;
Especially the AOL ones...they seemed to soak up more liquid than any of the others.
Remember: if it ain't an AOL disc, it ain't worth jack!
Instead of just repeating a talking point, explain in detail how this bill will "socialize" medicine.
Except those findings are for the OLD bill
Not quite. Taken from the very first paragraph of the .pdf I linked to:
"The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the staff of the Joint Committee on
Taxation (JCT) have completed a preliminary estimate of the direct spending and revenue
effects of an amendment in the nature of a substitute to H.R. 4872, the Reconciliation Act
of 2010; that amendment (hereafter called "the reconciliation proposal") was made public
on March 18, 2010. The estimate is presented in three ways:
An estimate of the budgetary effects of the reconciliation proposal, in combination
with the effects of H.R. 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
(PPACA), as passed by the Senate;
An estimate of the incremental effects of the reconciliation proposal, over and
above the effects of enacting H.R. 3590 by itself;
An estimate of the budgetary impact of the reconciliation proposal under the
assumption that H.R. 3590 is not enacted (that is, an estimate of the bill's impact
relative to current law as of today)."
When our government starts taking away our liberties
You mean like this? http://haacked.com/images/TerroristsHateFreedom.gif
Never mind, I see what you are looking for, and no the analysis I linked to is not it. Still, preliminary findings are better than no findings, don't you think?
What CBO analysis? They said they have not had time to review the new revised bill, so there is NO analysis.
Uh...this analysis:
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/113xx/doc11355/hr4872.pdf
Where the hell have you been?
Someone mentioned that people should read the bill (which they should), so I figured I would help out and provide the links to what is available.
Would you rather there be nothing available? Actually, don't answer that...it's clear your mind is made up without actually reading anything.
Can you give specific examples of how this bill will lead to bread lines? Or are you just throwing bullshit around?