Heritage Wrote Obama's Insurance Plan - says buzzflash

http://www.buzzflash.net/story.php?id=1030429


Most of the health care reform bills circulating in Congress contain some form of this concept. The exchange, in fact, is now the centerpiece of proposed plans drafted mainly by Democrats. It’s a curious development, because the concept was largely popularized by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank best known in recent years for advocating Social Security privatization during the Bush administration. Its track record ought to make Americans more wary of Obama's proposals than any talk of "socialized medicine"...Obama, then, is running a big risk. The Massachusetts model suggests that if he fails to win a public option for his federal exchange plan, he could leave Americans with a largely useless shopping program cooked up by the same people who brought us marriage counseling as a poverty cure. It's hard to call that real reform.
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???? (blue dogs have anything to do with this)

their everywhere.

and if it's not them -- it's people from other groups -- who also happen to be members of Heritage.

he's trying to let the Senate and Congress write the bill

He's trying to have it all ways...'be above the fray' 'watching which way the wind is blowing' harping on 'bi-partisanship' when the GOP stated goal is to sink anything....

This is turning into a g*dd*mn joke when 76% of Americans signalled they wanted CHANGE in health care.

:dem:

-Laelth

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x472461

"Heritage is the source of a number of radical free-market and socially conservative policy plans that have occasionally worked their way into law, with questionable results. Among the most prominent: welfare reform, which it advocated in the mid-1990s as a means of reducing out-of-wedlock births and restoring “personal responsibility.” The idea—also embraced by a Democratic president—was considered a resounding success during the boom years of the late Clinton era when millions of poor single mothers went to work. But now that the country has hit a major recession, it has become clear that welfare reform mostly succeeded in shredding the safety net for poor children. (Incidentally, out-of-wedlock births have never been higher).

More recently, Heritage has promoted the idea that what poor women really need to get themselves out of poverty is a good man. At its urging, the Bush administration gave more than $100 million in grants to “marriage entrepreneurs” charged with encouraging poor single mothers to get hitched rather than to get welfare. Needless to say, the poverty rate is still on the rise.

Like many of the foundation’s ideas, a health insurance exchange looks better on paper than in practice. When Massachusetts launched its health reform experiment in 2006, it relied heavily on Heritage's policy prescriptions. Under then-Governor Mitt Romney, Massachusetts created a voluntary insurance exchange similar to the one Obama often promotes. Massachusetts outlines some basic requirements for plans that participate but it doesn’t set rates or reimbursement levels. And far from revolutionizing health care, the exchange—known in Massachusetts as the Connector—is demonstrating the limitations of relying solely on the market to solve the nation’s health care woes and rein in skyrocketing medical costs.

Trudy Lieberman, a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review, has done a stellar job of reporting on the Massachusetts initiative. She recently found that the Connector had all but failed to create more affordable insurance options for people in Massachusetts as promised. Using a hypothetical family from Pittsfield in western Mass, Lieberman went shopping on the Connector website. She found that coverage for a 44-year-old couple with an income of $66,150, slightly over the eligibility limit for a state insurance subsidy, “All but three of the fourteen Connector policies cost at least $1,000 a month, or $12,000 a year—eighteen percent of their income.” The cheapest policy, at $820 a month, was no bargain. Yet according to the state’s own guidelines, a Pittsfield family with kids could only afford $364 in monthly premiums."

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/08/obamas-insurance-plan-comes-right-wing-think-tank


As the pieces fall into place it is more and more apparent we are going to once again get screwed.
Next will be medicare and social security.

nt

The idea didn't come for Romney the federal government has been using an exchange, Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, since the 1960's Obama references it frequently.

I am pointing to an article that points to the many similarities between what is emerging in congress and the heritage foundations proposals. Given democrats past actions and their swing to the center right since reagan, anything they propose that looks and smells like something out of the heritage foundation is suspect and most likely garbage.

Massachusetts plan doesn't have a public option.

So now we are getting Romney's health care plan and Bush's education plan.

Someone remind me: who won the election?

He's the one that wants a healthcare plan (apparently any plan) passed fast.

Anyone who believes the Heritage Foundation wrote the HELP or House bills is a moron.

is a moron.

Idiotic.

I thought space aliens wrote the "bill"... (Hint: there isn't a "bill" yet, but what the heck...)

The idea that you want a table that really compares all the plans seems obvious. If you ever tried to do this on your own, you would quickly find it is not easy. The fact is that "exchange" will be the sunlight that will bring competition to the insurers. (If there is a public option, it will allow people to see how much lower it costs and that it does not cut benefits.

This is like saying that because (choose your favorite Republican) likes chocolate, chocolate is bad.

quickly, if it can compete using medicare reimbursement rates, if it has the power to force for profit prices down, if the ins. corporations don't squash it...if, if, if.

An exchange without a strong public option is what Mass has. It's failing.
If we get the same thing with a weak or non-existent public option it fails too.
No strong public option has emerged in congress as of yet.

I want a public option, but having or not having a public option is completely independent of having an exchange or not.

Insurance companies could not compete. They would be left to insure vanity options and extras.