CBO: A Strong Public Plan Saves Lots of Money




Something tells me Baucus, Conrad, Lincoln and Carper have beeswax in their ears, or they just don't give a damn anymore. It's all about 'gubbbmmmminnnt' control to them. FACTS be damned.


http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/09/cbo_a_strong_public_plan_saves.html

Get the Public Option

NOW!!!!

FOR EVERY ONE !!!!!!

could pick up some momentum over the weekend based on this CBO scoring.

though selfishly I hated it, Friday was a much better day for me to follow the proceedings. Also, it's much better if they are not in a rush to catch their planes and can take the time. So yes, Tuesday is much better. But I also wonder how much longer they will go after Tuesday. If reconciliation is still being considered, I think that Oct. 15 is a deadline for the bill, but I have no idea why, one of these Byzantine Senate rules.

They're already hauling in the dirt, trying to figure out how to bury this as deeply as possible.

Let's not let them.

K&R

If the facts show that it will reduce the deficit then he will support it.

And Baucus was in favor at some earlier point. So everything is still in flux.

:-)

Thanks for the thread, rhombus.

...shove it up your asses.

no good argument can be made now without a politician looking like an insurance company shill. This is good public policy and should be in the final plan as an option FOR ANYONE THAT WANTS IT.

They already knew this. It's pretty basic economics and far from rocket science. Unfortunately, too many democrats are beholden to the insurance industry. Sadly, there are some that feel they have an obligation to protect insurance company profits rather than the people they are supposed to represent.

Saving $$ means less profit for CEO's and their 200 assistant vice president CEO's.

That's what we should be getting.

I think I am going to send this little article to my esteemed Senators (McCaskill & Bond), we will see if they respond. I don't expect anything from Bond and McCaskill has been a disappointment on this and so many other issues.

I'm not sure they reakky do care about good finances though.

That is all.

insurance company money. Like all bribes, it causes selective hearing.

I suppose it depends a lot on who heads the CBO at any particular time. Didn't the Chairman of the Fed have a reputation of being politically independent before Greenspan shredded that illusion? Just asking the question. I've always been curious about this.

The problem is that most Medicare payments underpay for the services rendered, so the more people you get underinsured this way, the higher the private insurance rates go.

This isn't going to work unless Medicare payment schedules are sharply adjusted upwards.

Over the next 9 years it looks like the percent of the population covered under Medicare will increase about 5% - going up to around 17.~% from the current 12.5% or so. Now add 5% insured under a public plan, and you are up to around 22%? Then you have Medicaid, and Medicaid reimburses even lower on average than Medicare.

This will push private insurance rates way higher, and make private insurance much less affordable, so what will happen next? You'll have way more people who can't afford private insurance.

Either go single payer all the way, or reform the whole system so that we pay out more for Medicare and Medicaid, but don't think you can game the system this way.

Every time a privately insured or uninsured person goes to a hospital or a doctor, part of their charge covers the Medicaid and Medicare patients. The more of them there are, the higher those costs go.

See, what Medicare pays out for a scan might be something like $200 or $300, but a privately insured patient will be charged $1,500 or so, because the Medicare payment doesn't come close to covering the cost of the scan. That is why private insurance now costs so much. And the reason the costs have been rising so much is that we keep adding more and more people to the public insurance rolls, so more and more costs are being shifted to the diminishing pool of privately insured patients.

You cannot fix the system this way. This is by far the stupidest proposal yet. The reason why the Blue Dogs are so against this is that most of them come from more rural areas in which the hospitals are already in desperate straits.

Most doctors already have to limit the share of Medicaid and Medicare patients in their practices, because the privately insured and uninsured patients' payments have to cover the costs of treating the Medicaid and Medicare patients. So once the doctors get above their M/M quotient, they stop accepting new patients on Medicare or Medicaid. However the hospitals can't refuse patients, so what happens is that every other patient is charged way more than the service cost to make up for it.

It would be way better to just go to national healthcare and slap on a payroll tax, but people need to realize that the payroll tax would be really high - somewhere between 17-20%. (Of which the employee would pay half and the company would pay half.) And there would be more rationing than there is now, too. A lot of things wouldn't be covered.

But still, you can't fix any system by doing more of what is already breaking the system down. In many rural areas hospitals simply can't afford to provide a lot of types of treatments, and people are dying or becoming disabled because of it. Medicare and Medicaid don't pay enough to fund the facilities, and if the percentage of Medicare/Medicaid recipients at these facilities rises too high, they simply have to forgo certain types of treatment and equipment.

About 40% of the people in the US don't even have access to a hospital that can offer clot-busting treatment, and this is one of the reasons. I know a woman who went to a regional medical center in SGA with an infant in respiratory distress, and there was not one pediatrician available to treat the baby. This is what you get. No doctors. Few nurses. Poor equipment. There's something way worse than being uninsured or underinsured and having to declare bankruptcy because of high medical bills - dying because the hospital and the doctors aren't even there. THAT'S WHAT THIS PROPOSAL WILL DO.

Instead of off shore secret corporate accounts.


When will the USA wake up?