Do any Obama cogniscenti know any specifics of what his health care plan will look like?

I rephrased the title to try to get some of the president's more vocal cogniscenti to answer this question.

Surely someone here knows something ..... no?

On one side are Dr. Dean and John Edwards, both of whom have spoken to him in the past about a plan that includes extending Medicare to people who opt in. On the other are insurance flacks and SOS Clinton, motivated to keep us subject to the whims of big insurance with no public alternative.

His own plan before the election was terrible, neither universal nor public, with no mechanisms to stop the worst insurance company abuses.

<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/02/elizabeth-edwards-favors_n_94654.html>

Elizabeth Edwards continued her passionate advocacy of universal health care on today's morning shows, appearing on both The Today Show and Morning Joe. Edwards noted her preference for the health care plan devised by Hillary Clinton, stating that it's mandated coverage made it the only truly "universal" health plan between Clinton and Barack Obama: "It means every American has to be covered. Senator Obama means every child has to be covered. I think we need to go the full nine yards."

and into Medicare has a chance of working. No plan that doesn't prevent insurance companies from jacking up copays and deductibles for sick people while denying care will work. All of these things combine to prevent people from seeking care when they do get sick.

No plan that doesn't focus on the delivery of care instead of insurance company profit will work. Any plan that allows the industry to assume all people are trying to get something for nothing is a failure. Any plan that bankrupts people who get seriously ill is a failure.

Cost cutting has gone as far as it can go. The only places left to cut are profit and bureaucracy and that means dumping the insurance industry.

Single payer NOW.

Bingo!

There is no other way that I can see.

Surely that's where Obama is headed.

Right?

poised to become HHS Secretary and Health Czar is evidence of that. The Daschle-type planning is going on right now. It will be costly, it will further entrench the health insurers, and it will fail to cover all.

Heck the money Obama and Treasury are lavishing on Wall Street firms could have financed the transition to single-payer, including retraining for unemployed insurance industry workers.

Mandating that people MUST purchase from the insurance monopoly does nothing but enrich the insurance monopoly.

All those different companies mean it's not a monopoly? Wrong - they are unified in their price fixing, and even Medicare bases its fees on what the insurance industry decrees is acceptable to them. So maybe it's an oligopoly - multiple companies colluding to set the industry-wide standards.

Obama's plan, such as it is, undercuts that aspect of it by refusing mandates other than on children, but it still leaves the price setting in the hands of the insurance industry - and industry which can set the prices without regard to actual market costs.

Single payer is the ONLY way to go - which we're not seeing from Obama either.

about single-payer?

My understanding right now is that Obama is even balking at extending medicare to younger adults.

the mandates, under Hillary's plan would. The lack of mandates under Obama's plan would profit them a little less.

And even though I am an obama supporter, I have been saying for two years that he is NOT going to give us universal health care. Kucinich was the ONLY one who was right on healthcare.

As for universal care it is necessary but it will probably need a new president to accomplish it unless people can break that corporate hold on the administration.

at best a temporary leveling out of costs, but after that leveling out the prices will skyrocket because the insurance is MANDATED and the public has no choice but to pay what they are told to pay.

They own the well and are charging for the water - and you either pay or go thirsty. The only way it can be mandated would be for the government to take the payment directly from the peoples' paychecks and hand it over to the insurance companies - otherwise people WILL choose to go without. And if the government is going to be so invasive as to garnish wages, or institute a special tax, to get the insurance payments WHY THE FUCK NOT INSTITUTE SINGLE PAYER which would be more cost efficient, as 1/3 of the money will not be skimmed off to pay for executive salaries and advertising campaigns, as is done with private insurance today.

it'll be a "health insurance" plan - an entirely different thing (and it won't work).

:(

to me personally- i feel that this is the most important issue of obama's presidency. it's a big part of the key to getting the economy back on it's feet as well. and i'm having my doubts that his administration is going to do/get it right. if we don't have a single-payer system in place by the end of his first term- i don't think that he'll have a second chance at it. the people really can't take another 4 years of these kinds of healthcare cost increases.

They probably know how long the knives are and how deeply they'll stick us