NEWS: Democrats Blowing It On Health Care

POLITICS: Democrats Blowing It On Health Care

It’s really quite interesting to watch the Democrats throw it all away. This time, they seem to think blowing the chance at decent health care reform will aid them in future elections. Or perhaps they have taken so much money from the health care industry that they don’t give a shit. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Fixing health care is the biggest problem facing our country. If we don’t do something drastic, it will completely destroy our economy in the years to come. As it is, we’re in bad shape. Democrats, specifically Senate Democrats, have decided to help the poor insurance industry out as much as possible. Es no bueno.

Most of the debate is over the dreaded “public option.” Oh, dear no. We can’t have a public option. That’s socialized medicine! Americans must be able to choose! And by that I mean they can’t choose a public option! They have to be able to choose between private monopolies! This is fucking America! We demand to be fucked over by private companies as much as possible!

And make no mistake about it; those against the “public option” want to continue with monopolies.

So, that's what the "free market" kids are fighting for. Monopolies. Yay!

A public option would guarantee the possibility of lower cost, reliable coverage. It will bring cost control by reforming how we pay for medical care. It will create competition between private insurers that simply does not exist today. It will also force private insurers to perform better, something they are not doing today.

To those who say the public option would drive the private companies out of business; I thought everything government did sucked? Is government bad or highly efficient? Please stick to one talking point, no matter the subject. Secondly, the private insurance companies have had their chance and to say they fucked it up would be an understatement. They deserve no protection. I have no interest in keeping pedophiles in business, either. Their time has come and gone. They could have kept costs lower, kept people from dying, insured anyone with preconditions, but they decided to go for the biggest profits possible and now they are on the deserving end of what’s coming. They only compete to insure the well and reject the sick. Then they employ adjusters to get the company out of paying for health care services when the well become sick. Welcome to the world of failure. They made their bed, now they have to lie in it.

If any of you loud mouthed, utopian, not living in the real world Libertarians bring up regulation, feel free to explain the exact regulation that makes health care so expensive. If you can’t detail these so called regulations, shut your face and stick your broad stroke arguments up your ass. Your simplicity has grown tiresome. This current debate is for adults and what you want will never be, so stay out of it or act like an adult and accept that what you want ain’t going to happen.

As far as the public plan, Democrats are right now working on a way to water it down until it is completely ineffective. Senator Jay Rockefeller, who is a son of a bitch because of his FISA legislation, has come up with a good public health care plan. His plan would partner a public plan with Medicare for more bargaining power and access to provider networks. According the non-partisan Lewin Group and the Commonwealth Foundation, Rockefeller’s plan would drop premiums 20 to 30 percent. Can’t have that, now can we?

Rockefeller’s plan would force private insurance companies to be more honest. They would have to cut their bullshit administrative costs and fire quite a few of those adjusters whose job is to find ways to not pay for care. Right now, you have no choice. You can choose between one horrible private insurance company or another. There really isn’t much difference. The idea is to force them to become insurers instead of profiteers.

Other Democrats are working on plans that would do almost nothing. Senator Chuck Schumer has a “level playing field” public plan that won’t save much at all. It will just create a plan that will allow private companies to dump old, sick and high-risk patients onto the public plan. This is considered a compromise. It will be awesome because by doing it halfway, they will create exactly what the right wing claims will happen. It will be a terribly ineffective, expensive plan. It would not use low rates that Medicare sets or use taxpayer subsidies. It wouldn’t force its way into networks. It would just be like any other insurer, except for the fact that it would be a dumping ground for private insurers to unload their expensive patients. It’s one of those genius “Democrats compromise and create a pile of shit plans.”

Finally, there’s Ben Nelson’s “Trigger Plan.” You know it’s good because Nelson has taken millions and millions of dollars from insurance companies. The Trigger Plan would be like a big, invisible, scary fist looming over the insurance industry. If the private market didn’t offer cost control or enough options, the public plan would come into existence - but it would be at the state level. It’s a regional Trigger. Some states might have a public plan and others would not. It’s basically set up as a way for private companies to game the system. Ben Nelson doesn’t seem to realize the trigger should have been pulled 8 years ago. If he wants to set the threshold where costs are now, it’s a big lose. Go Blue Dogs!

Those are the public plan options. Now which one do you think Democrats in the Senate will choose? I’d bet big money on the “Level playing field” plan because it doesn’t actually threaten the private insurance market. It actually helps them in their quest to be the biggest douche bags on Earth.

Prepare for failure.

FearTheReaper is a writer, actor and stand up comedian. Check back each Tuesday and Friday for more from FearTheReaper You may also enjoy his blog, Stop All Monsters.

Just one of the reasons I wouldn't choose either party to support. They are both corrupt. It's just that in general, Democratic officials tend to be "the lesser of two evils."

I'm not a Michael Moore fan by any means (in fact, he's pretty douche-tastic too), but I didn't doubt his reporting of Democrats who were so opposed to privatized plans crippling the nation's ability to afford coverage and fighting the "good fight" only to end up taking bribes/contributions/whatever from the health care and pharmaceutical conglomerates and no longer pushing for socialized medicine/health care back in the '90s.

Good article.

The argument private healthcare providers always roll out is that they will deliver healthcare more cheaply and more efficiently. The truth is the US spends far more GDP on healthcare than countries like France and Switzerland with their public health schemes (I don't know the comparison with us in the UK).

Yet this addiction to private suppliers, and wariness of public services means the US is the only industrialised nation not to provide its citizens with public healthcare free at the point of need.

The major issue of healthcare delivery within a publicly funded system is (surprise) one that is created by private companies - the drug suppliers - and complex cost-benefit analyses are done to weigh up the high price of the drugs against their efficacy and the lives they might save.

Not sure about the paedophile reference though. Seems rather unnecessary.

well we saw this coming didn't we?

Making it at the state level is a steaming pile of crap as well. Look at the auto insurance industry. NJ's insurance laws are a fucking joke and allow companies to create a "separate company" for their NJ business. The NJ based companies then complain about how the regulations make it difficult to make money, threaten bankruptcy and pulling out of the NJ market, unless they're allowed to raise rates or dump high risk clients. Meanwhile, the parent companies are making record profits outside of NJ. NJ currently ranks 3rd in the nation with the highest rates in the nation and requires mandatory minimum insurance levels (although mandatory minimums should be a national requirement IMHO).

The dems are still working under the assumption that bipartisanship would get things done in ways that everyone can be proud of, but the repubs are actively working to block everything the dems do even if they write the exact legislature that the repubs want.

its a game that the dems have been playing for a long time and its left them without a spine.

God forbid we just do away with middlemen all together! Who needs the government or an insurance company interfering with me and my doctor? In "ye olde days" people dealt directly with doctors, face to face. No insurance companies. They negotiated a price that was fair and feasible for both parties, and if they couldn't they went elsewhere. It's a true "free market" approach to the health care industry. If a doctor wants to be a dick and say, "Ya know, I'm not going to fix your heart for any less than $25,000" to a person on welfare, well that doctor will quickly find him or herself out of work because no one is going to be willing to spend that kind of money if they can get the same job done elsewhere for cheaper.

We would still need the state to regulate who can or can't practice medicine to avoid any back-alley, bargain basement surgeons, but that, to me sounds like a far more reasonable plan than public health care or giant insurance conglomerates.

Most doctors today became doctors to help people, but they're in a fucked up system that is controlled by the insurance giants. Get rid of the middlemen all together, and people will be able to get the care they need at a price that they can afford.

Simple.

It seems they used a smart ploy in talking about Health Care reform so that the media will focus on it while they sneaked in a vote for Cap and Trade in the house (which passed).

They gave up one piece of milquetoast legislation to pass another?

I didn't say they gave up Health Care Reform, they just used the distraction it caused to pass a unpopular bill (it already failed once less than a year ago).

How is that Tort reform is off the table?

Trial lawyers (biggest Dem donors) want to tell sad tales of wrongful actions. Ok fine, don't cap damages, but at what level of risk can the doctor be off the hook. IF that is not defined, then the doctor is better off ordering tons of very low yield tests that cost the doctor nothing, then getting sued.

Hence skyrocketing health care costs.

No public option is going to save any money if more people can pile into doctor's offices and have insurance to cover every 1 in 10,000 chance of disease that can be tested for!

Just some points I'd like to make:

1) I'm not sure how it's a monopoly if like there are ten different "Big Insurers" according to FTR's link.

2) I'm now sure how that report from FTR's link could be considered unbiased in anyway since it was released by those who are "Pro-reform".

3)I agree with drdetox. There seems to be a lot of money spent towards migigating minor risks. This goes for other things too, like Pharmecuticals and human trials. I think there's an over abundance of litigousness for an industry whose practice is far from an exact science.

4)Look at the startlingly bad conditions in the VA Hospital that came to light a while back. Do we really want "the poor" to be treated in those conditions? I volunteered one summer as a file clerk for a VA Hospital and the first day I walked in there was a stench so bad that I thought I was going to be sick. And more over the fact they were using massive paper files in this day and age (it was 2003, but close enough), should tell you something.

5) How in god's name are we going to pay for "Public Option"? We're a gazillion dollars in the hole.

I could go on, but I'll leave it here.

Libertarians are hardly "not living in the real world utopians". It's beyond ironic to be called that by the people who brought us communism, and believe that the government can be your friend. The left is just mad because we sided with them for 8 years to oppose Bush, but won't side with Obama just to oppose the Republicans. They can't ask us where we were when Bush took our civil liberties, as they do Republicans who complain about Obama's power grab, because they know exactly where we were, fighting it tooth-in-nail, so they resort to calling us racist, or crazy if they won't to be different. I'll admit that, while I was never a True Believer, at one point, after Obama got elected, I was hopeful. He seemed to be surrounding himself with intelligent people of diverse ideologies. However, after his $1.7 trillion dollar budget, destroying the unarguably successful D.C. vouchers program (because the NEA is clearly more important than the education of poor black children), and refusal to consider tort reform it disappeared. The latter shows that he is only willing to reform health care on terms that are beneficial to him. I don't really have a problem with a public option, but I don't want government health care, because government health care will suck. And have no doubt, it will be shitty. If you don't believe me, go to an inner city school, or a school in the impoverished rural South, the DMV, the Post office, or anything else our government runs. So I will keep my private insurance, but unless private health insurance costs are lowered through tort reform, they will be lowered through cutting quality, or will be driven out of business, and we will all be stuck with shitty government health care, run by incompetent goons instead of doctors.

Don't worry guys obama will make everything trendy and awsome!

>Making it at the state level is a steaming pile of crap as well.

Well if the people of a state want to do it then you really don't have a right to complain if you don't live there. Your opinion doesn't matter outside of NJ.

1) Read it again.

2) Go read one of your right wing sites to get the news you want.

3) No, it isn't a lot of money. Read up.

4) You do realize the "startling bad conditions" in the VA hospitals were due to the government handing over VA contracts to PRIVATE CONTRACTORS don't you? No? You should read up on the subject. You just made an argument against private companies.

5) In the long run, it will cost us less. Weird, right? You should read up on it.

Indeed. Communism is bad, so no health care reform.

hate to break it to you reaper but a system in which there multiple big name insurance companies to choose from isn't a monopoly on health care, in fact its the exact opposite of that. Free competition is the very system we use to fight monopolies in this country, and as far as socialized health care can anyone name a country which socialized health care that actually improved the quality of life for it citizens. Look at Canada they did it and all it did was establish a system where you'll die waiting on the sub par treatment that prob wouldn't save many lives even if they got it in time

Reading comprehension was never your strong suit. Allow me to help.

1) You missed the part about those ten big companies have a monolithic presence in regional markets, dominating states & regions so while there are several companies working within the same field they don't all work within the same market, you understand this conceptually, yes? There are many markets, given that health insurance is regulated at a state level, meaning that one company's model may not work in California but might be highly effective in New Jersey.

2) The study was compiled by a pro-reform group using data gathered by the American Medical Association. You know, one of the huge anti-reform groups. The pro-reform people are basically using their own data against them, but the fact that he put it out there that they're a pro-reform group is a lot better than all these 'citizens for' groups that are currently choking CNN with anti-reform ads & scare tactics.

3) I'm not entirely anti-tort reform, so I'm the wrong liberal to wave this ax, but seriously, that's not the real problem, here. Did you catch the part in the study where in six years premiums have risen 87% and in seven years profits 428%? Are you so blinded that you really think that its the endless litigation that's causing the poor insurance companies to not be able to break that stunning 500% rise in profits in under a decade? Tort reform is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. It isn't the serious issue that needs to be addressed, that issue would be the fact that so many people have no health insurance because costs to the consumer is skyrocketing, & that clearly isn't because these companies are hurting & need to pass the increasing costs of doing business along.

4) Way to muddy the waters. The public option, at least the three that I saw discussed in this piece don't refer to government managed health care providers. It referred to government wading into creating a publicly financed alternative to private health insurance. Maybe I misread the information given I'm exhausted, argumentative, & healthcare isn't my forte. But then again, give your posting history & mine, I'd wager I didn't.

5) How in god's name have we spent the last six years paying for two wars while slashing taxes, & rising discretionary spending? The bottom line is that this a problem that's lingered since the first days of Clinton's administration, if not longer, but that's the earliest high-profile initiative to address it I can think of. That's sixteen years & two Presidents ago, its not getting any better. Its time to address this now, the numbers are only getting worse as more Americans- including children- are uninsured while insurance companies' profits continue to rise, even outpacing the costs they pass on to consumers? Allow me to paraphrase Mario Coumo, who once said something to the effective of 'We cannot afford to do nothing while we wait to do everything.'

Erm, I almost hate to break it to you, but "If a doctor wants to be a dick and say, 'Ya know, I'm not going to fix your heart for any less than $25,000' to a person on welfare" neatly describes health care for people on welfare now, and doctors aren't exactly going out of business. The purchase of insurance is a completely rational response to a problem of catastrophic health costs: given the option of paying $500 per year for insurance to cover 100% health costs, even when the yearly average nowhere near totals $500, versus the .5% chance of having to pay $50,000 for on operation, most reasonable people are going to pay that $500 even if it never pans out. Why? Because most people can't afford a $50,000 bill.

Well, why not bargain down from $50,000, you might say? Well, first let's grant the assumption that the total amount of time, labor, and resources that went into providing that care (it's not like hospital operating rooms or the doctors that work them grow on trees, after all) isn't actually $50,000, just to be fair. There's still this thing called leverage: a person with a greater bargaining position can command a higher bargaining price. When you are on an operating table asking the doctor to put your spleen back in, it is the doctor that has leverage. This happens rather frequently in health care, and in fact it's one of the main reasons why applying market principles to health care is a bad idea: health care isn't about rational relations between freely contracting parties. When you get hit by a car, you go to the closest ER, not the one that bargains for the lowest price.

I'm not against a public option, but given are current debt I don't see it as viable. Spending that kind of money in this economy in hopes of saving money in the long-run won't work, especially considering how much he's spent ( around 2.6 trillion if I'm not mistaken), and plans to spend. If he actually cuts the deficit in half by 2012, then I'd be more receptive to a public option. He's simply spending too much $$$.

Dear.

God.