Health Care Reform 2009 = little tweaks, modest improvements to majorly effed up system

This is what we're in for--if we're *lucky*! If the Dems had guts, we'd have real reform with a public option at the very least, and Dems would be in power for the next 30 years. But the Dems don't have guts and we're in real danger of getting stuck with those worthless republican assholes back in power in 2010, 2012.

Matthew Yglesias points out what we're really talking about here. Nothing at all grand. More of the same old shit, just slightly improved. If we're lucky!!

:eyes:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/matthewyglesias/~3/7mvVhpj5P5U/the-swiss-model.php



As Paul Krugman says in today’s column, if you actually want to analogize Barack Obama’s health care plans to something the best country to look at is probably Switzerland which has a pretty similar system. There’s no crazy socialism there, nothing horrible happens. One should say that by the same token from my point of view there’s nothing particularly great about the Swiss system. It’s basically like American health care if you patched up some of the very worst aspects.

This is the sad reality that’s gotten neglected in the sturm und drang of the health debate. What’s being proposed is really quite moderate. You could imagine a world of go-for-broke reform in which you ran the risk of something terrible happening in order to achieve the possibility of something great happening. But that’s not what’s on the table. Instead, we’re looking at some tweaks with real-but-modest upside and no real downside. And yet to listen to cable news you’d think it was the end of the world.

what had been done for the financial sector from 1996-2008.

where speculators drive the prices of insurance and healthcare conglomerate stocks through the roof while wild offerings are made and even wilder investments of premium dollars are made.

The percentage of GDP will go from teh current 1/6th to 1/5th and finally will settle at one quarter of the US economy.

Then it will all come crashing down and the huge healthcare conglomerates will be too large to fail because insurance comapnies will merge with corporate hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and medical equipment providers and nobody will get any healthcare unless there is a government bailout.

Is it me or is one of the things that is being dropped is the end of life consultation. It would have been where people would get free planning for health care directives, living Wills, etc. It is an area that attorney's make $money. Since many in the Fed are attorneys, attorney's are probably one of the biggest donation forces, it was part of the reason that the health bill is collapsing. Plus many people were asking why no tort reform. They wanted this thing to die and go away. Ya think!?!?

Lawyers don't make a lot of money doing wills. Most firms that do wills expect to lose money on that end of their business in the hopes that the Client will come back to the firm for profitable work. Besides which, lawyers are not qualified to do "end of life counseling" as it is (or was) envisioned by HB 3200.

Welcome to DU, btw.

:dem:

-Laelth

If it's not real reform, it's a waste of money. They should just save the expense and issue a list of rules for big insurance to follow. They might consider extra funds to local waste removal programs for the added expense of sweeping up the bodies of the uninsured. (WTF is wrong with this country??)

problems in congress be about anything other than congress. It’s just not in the power of Barack Obama to make the senate anything other than what it is. To pass a bill, you need sixty votes. To get sixty votes you need Ben Nelson or Olympia Snowe to back your bill. Neither Nelson nor Snowe is especially liberal, and the President doesn’t have a great deal of leverage over either of them. You can try to change the rules, or you can accept that you’re at the mercy of Nelson and Snowe and maybe a few other moderate members. And it’s crucial to remember that these people—each and every member of congress—is an adult human being, capable of making up his or her own mind, responsible for his or her own decisions, and possessed of moral agency. These are men and women who have amassed a great deal of power, and who ultimately need to decide on a daily basis what it is they want to do with that power. If they choose to use it for bad ends, then blame them for that, not Obama or his team’s alleged lack of familiarity with the United States Senate."

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/08/the-daschle-counterfactual.php


Thank you for reminding me to read Yglesias. It had been a few days.

They're going to lose their seats to Repubicans, unless they start acting proud to be Democrats.

This is how the two party system prevents genuine threats to centralized power. As to losing seats, there'll be a massive propaganda effort to build up in the public's mind whatever mandatory, for-profit bill gets signed ... some will get hurt by it, as where others can count upon the lesser of two evils angle to retain position.

to vote Dem no matter what, and the DNC to throw $ their way next election time.

noses in it.

The left will disown Obama and he may as well be a one term president.

Insurance reform with a mandate is not what people want. The want an alternative to insurance companies. Insurance reform with a mandate will not be seen as health care reform to the majority.

I for one will join the anti Obama crowd if he signs an insurance reform bill and not a real health care reform bill.

They regulate the hell out of their private ins. companies. You can't compare them to the US where private insurance companies regulate the government.