House Republicans unveil $700B health care plan

[ducks]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090729/ap_on_go_co/us_health_care_overhaul_republicans

[Winehole23]

It's hard to see how the GOP's plan, depending as it does on tax credits/deductions and block grants to states, would be paid for (or be deficit neutral), but kudos to them for formulating policy, instead of just sitting back and criticizing.

That said, I fail to see what's so goddam conservative about a GOP healthcare handout. It is only slightly less gargantuan than what the Dems are proposing. And while the absence of a government run plan in the GOP alternative may seem encouraging at first glance, it would amount to a healthcare subsidy -- the second GIGANTIC one proposed by the GOP within a very few years.

This is emblematic of postmodern conservatism: posing big government subsidies ( i.e., the socialization of healthcare costs) as a solution to "socialized medicine".

This indeed may be preferable to Obamacare in the the abstract, but calling it *conservative* would be perverse. It's another $700 billion GOP handout, via the US taxpayer, to a very influential corporate constituency.

:td

[sabar]

Cool, another plan that ignores the underlying problem because the medical industry has a billion lobbyists and special interest groups in D.C.

Maybe if any political party was man enough to tell Pfizer that their monopoly on new drugs is no longer going to be valid costs could go down.

Competition achieves an efficient market. As it is, government-sponsored patents create monopolies for things like new drugs, MRI machines, robotic surgical tools, and more. These monopolies will never charge the fair market price until their monopoly dies in the 20 years or whatever retarded length it is. I don't even know how a merger between giants Pfizer and Wyeth was ever allowed.

The GOP talks about the free market yet doesn't care about the driving force behind it, competition. Both the GOP and dem plans do nothing to bring normal pricing structures to drugs and machines, which constitute large medical expenditures that get handed down to the customer. They let these monopolies exist, but they get paid by the taxpayer instead of out of pocket.

I just looked it up. Drug and tech patents last 20 years. Pharmaceutical corps pay more in marketing than they do in R&D too, so they just fleece patients to increase the bottom line, not to research new drugs.

But like I said, the corporate lobby is and will always be the problem in these situations. Since so many drugs originate from the U.S., we could reduce drug prices across the globe by actually putting competition back into the drug market. We could make $400 prescriptions and 1.5 million dollar machines in the past.

But we won't. Or rather, our alleged representatives wont.

[Creepn]

How else are these plans supposed to get funded if its not by our tax dollars?

[Winehole23]

Why are either of these plans desirable at all?

[Marcus Bryant]

lmao. And the defenders of freedom, liberty, capitalism, and puppies trot out their own health care socialism.

[Marcus Bryant]

Why are either of these plans desirable at all?

Because "something" has to be done! Something always has to be done. There's always a crisis of some sort to hoodwink the gullible.

[101A]

why are either of these plans desirable at all?



c r i s i s!!!

[fyatuk]

It certainly sounds preferrable to the crapfest that is the Dem's plans, but it's kind of like deciding which has the stronger stench between a wheelbarrow full of dung and a barrel full of dung.

[Winehole23]

...

[Wild Cobra]

Well, the republicans have to make a plan, weather they plan to actually try to get it passed or not doesn't matter. If they did nothing, there would be that to complain about.

I just hope that they really don't want theirs to pass either.

[Marcus Bryant]

Doing nothing is preferable to the two plans.

[Marcus Bryant]

Cool, another plan that ignores the underlying problem because the medical industry has a billion lobbyists and special interest groups in D.C.

Maybe if any political party was man enough to tell Pfizer that their monopoly on new drugs is no longer going to be valid costs could go down.

Competition achieves an efficient market. As it is, government-sponsored patents create monopolies for things like new drugs, MRI machines, robotic surgical tools, and more. These monopolies will never charge the fair market price until their monopoly dies in the 20 years or whatever retarded length it is. I don't even know how a merger between giants Pfizer and Wyeth was ever allowed.

The GOP talks about the free market yet doesn't care about the driving force behind it, competition. Both the GOP and dem plans do nothing to bring normal pricing structures to drugs and machines, which constitute large medical expenditures that get handed down to the customer. They let these monopolies exist, but they get paid by the taxpayer instead of out of pocket.

I just looked it up. Drug and tech patents last 20 years. Pharmaceutical corps pay more in marketing than they do in R&D too, so they just fleece patients to increase the bottom line, not to research new drugs.

But like I said, the corporate lobby is and will always be the problem in these situations. Since so many drugs originate from the U.S., we could reduce drug prices across the globe by actually putting competition back into the drug market. We could make $400 prescriptions and 1.5 million dollar machines in the past.

But we won't. Or rather, our alleged representatives wont.


The government is concerned with preserving capitalists, not capitalism.

[Spursmania]

Doing nothing is preferable to the two plans.

:toast