WH, I usually "preview" my posts before posting them. You apparently didn't. You only have 8 of 11 Youtube characters, and you post doesn't work.
So, the excuse here is that we should stand pat because 'its too complicated'?
I mean, really. There's 20 different things you can attack this thing on that are much more valid. Like where the funding will come from, wether it will be effective at all without other reforms like tort, inclusion of other parties in the conversation (as Spursmania brought up), etc.
I mean, the current system has a complexity of it's own, as explained by 101A earlier in this thread.
One thing for certain. I will never agree with socializing our medicine without trying so many other things first, starting with serious tort reform.So, the excuse here is that we should stand pat because 'its too complicated'?
I mean, really. There's 20 different things you can attack this thing on that are much more valid. Like where the funding will come from, wether it will be effective at all without other reforms like tort, inclusion of other parties in the conversation (as Spursmania brought up), etc.
I mean, the current system has a complexity of it's own, as explained by 101A earlier in this thread.
I think part of the problem is that the two parties basically don't want to sit down and talk about it. I mean, what I see here is the Dems trying to push their , but I suspect they won't pass it without some kind of GOP support (much like the TARP program), while the GOP is not even looking at the negotiation table.
Then you take the usual suspects (Peloni, Barney, etc) and they're going to try to pass it anyways.
And the end of the day we might end up with something that most likely sucks or basically the status quo, which, IMHO, sucks too.
We already have 50% socialization of our medicine.
We already have tort reform in Texas, which has done little to control costs.
The charts are funny. We could just put WC in charge of all decisions. That would simplify the charts and save us money.
The scary stories from other countries are funny in their own way, too. You would think our country could produce plenty of scary stories given our partially socialized system.
My view is that nobody is convincing on controlling costs. Some groups are going to make a lot less money if universal health care is going to cost less. I am wondering who that is going to be and how that is going to happen.
I think we need medicine based on evidence, outcomes, and reviews. There is too much use of expensive drugs and treatments, which are new and unproven. There is too much medicine for dying patients. Expensive medicine with bad outcomes should be reviewed and the doctors, hospitals, etc., should be fined to take the profit away from it. I think tort reform in the form of some kind of no-fault insurance would save money if bad doctors were banned and injured patients were taken care of.
It's doable competing against a force with unlimited funds on the printing press and not even focused on any form of profit whatsoever.
Crumble away America. You had a good run.
These are all debates we need to be discussing. I think most reasonable people want access to quality healthcare, quality Doctors, fair prescription and insurance policy prices. But this massive reform does not solve our problems. It will only create a bureaucratic mess and cost an astronomical amount of money. We are in a recession for God's sake.
There is no need to ram this partisan bill down the American people's throat without honest discussion about the main problems we have with the insurance industry, drug companies, and medical malpractice issues.
The Congressional Budget Office. Otherwise known as CBO. What is it?
As bills move forward in the legislative process, CBO will prepare estimates of their costs and other effects.
Appointment of the Director
The Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate jointly appoint the CBO Director, after considering recommendations from the two budget committees.
Director
Douglas W. Elmendorf is CBO's Director. He has been appointed to serve from January 22, 2009, to January 3, 2011, completing the most recent four-year term of office.
The CBO (Congressional Budget Office), with the head hired by Nancy Pelosi, just proved another major surprise that American people didn't know about the health care reform bill.
The CBO report released today tells us that the plan will actually increase medical costs while reducing service, proving Obama is not being honest about one of his major goals being to reduce costs.
The CBO released today tells us that to pay for all the new Obama programs to date, not including health care, EVERYONES TAXES WOULD NEED TO BE INCREASE BY 44% WITHIN THE NEXT 10 YEARS!!
This is coming from Nancy Pelosi's pick to head the Congressional Budget Office. This is not the republicans trying to scare people, although admittedly it is very frightening.
Not frightened at all over here.
Many doctors already refuse to take Medicare and Medicaid patients because those programs pay less than the commercial health insurers. This is "cost reduction" that is being resisted by the "cost producers".
I'm 1000s more docs, clinics, tec will refuse to take patients covered by a public options.
the exorbitant health costs to be reduced are "care" providers incomes. Don't worry, relax, they for-profit health industry will buy enough Congress s, esp business-friendly/anti-citizen Repugs, to block a true public option.
It's cool. The country will blindly accept it if the Asians don't lend it to us. The people are trained well.
Nope. No reason to worry at all. It's not like we're in a global economic crisis caused by massive debt obligations or anything.
I know, poor JPMorgan just posted $2.3 billion in profits.
But I feel for you, it's going to be tough to live without that 42" HDTV.
42"? Please.I know, poor JPMorgan just posted $2.3 billion in profits.
But I feel for you, it's going to be tough to live without that 42" HDTV.
BO says costs will rise as healthcare expanded
Thu Jul 16, 2009 4:30pm EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Elmendorf told lawmakers on Thursday legislation to expand health care coverage would increase federal healthcare costs "to a significant degree" and revenue will need to be found to keep from increasing the deficit.
Asked by the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee about his remarks to a Senate committee earlier Thursday that the legislation would not hold down healthcare costs, he said, "The point I made earlier this morning is that it raises future federal outlays more than it reduces future federal outlays."
Elmendorf told the panel, "The coverage proposals in this legislation would expand federal spending on health care to a significant degree and in our analysis so far we don't see other provisions in this legislation reducing federal health spending by a corresponding degree."
He said ways to pay for the healthcare programs could include further savings from the Medicare health program or changes to the current exclusion from taxes of employer-paid insurance premiums.
The nonpartisan budget analysis arm of Congress has not yet estimated the cost of the full House healthcare legislation working its way through three House committees.
The House bill pays for the roughly $1 trillion 10-year cost of the healthcare overhaul with a combination of estimated savings in health costs and taxes worth $587 billion over the period. It sets up a government-run health plan to cover many of the uninsured and expands coverage in other government health programs.
The Senate Finance Committee is considering other options, including a tax on health insurers and a tax on employer-paid premiums. Chairman Max Baucus, a Democrat, said their task was not helped by President Barack Obama's opposition to counting the value of employer-paid premiums as income.
Republicans seized on the CBO director's comments as evidence the legislation should be rejected or at least more time should be taken to examine it. Obama has urged Congress to pass it out of each chamber by August.
"Today's CBO testimony should be a wake-up call," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said. "Instead of rushing through one expensive proposal after another, we should take the time we need to get things right -- especially at a time when hundreds of thousands of Americans are losing jobs every month."
Backers of the House bill disputed this assertion. "It is true that we don't know how much reform will bend the cost curve (slow the increase in healthcare spending); but we know it is better than doing nothing," Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts Ins ute of Technology economist who backs the House bill said on a call organized by backers of the bill.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters that she hoped the formula for paying for healthcare reform could change. Instead of half of the more than $1 trillion in costs being covered by savings program spending and the other half from new revenues, Pelosi said, "I hope that we can change that percentage" and "squeeze more savings."
(Editing by Bill Trott)
Last edited by Spursmania; 07-16-2009 at 04:35 PM.
Health reform bills won't reduce costs
Congressional Budget Office director tells Senate panel that 2 health reform bills would increase government spending and not do enough to contain costs.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The health reform bills released so far would increase government spending on health care without sufficiently reining in health care costs.
And at least initially they aren't likely to significantly lower premiums for the majority of Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance.
That's the sobering takeaway from testimony Thursday by Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf.
Elmendorf's preliminary conclusions were based on a bill jointly released by three committees in the House this week and another bill passed by the Senate health committee on Wednesday.
"The creation of a new subsidy for health insurance ... would by itself raise federal spending on health care. ... [T]o offset that there have to be substantial reductions (on the tax or spending sides of the ledger]," Elmendorf told the Senate Budget Committee. "The changes we've looked at so far don't represent the fundamental change on the order of magnitude that would be necessary."
CBO analyzes the costs of legislation. Congress is not obligated to follow their lead on estimates, but the agency can play a key role in shaping bills.
Both the House bill and the Senate health committee bill would use federal money to subsidize financially strapped Americans so they can buy health insurance. They would also create a national insurance exchange from which eligible Americans could choose among insurance plans. And they would establish a public health plan to compete with private insurers on the exchange.
Elmendorf did not offer any assessment of a bill in the works at the Senate Finance Committee, which has yet to release draft legislation.
Health policy analysts support two ways to "bend the curve" on health care costs above others, Elmendorf said.
- Change how employer-paid premiums for workers are treated -- currently they're tax-free to the worker.
- Change how Medicare pays providers to reward cost efficiency and quality of outcome rather than the a la carte approach of fees for service.
The prospect of taxing a portion of employer-provided health benefits has become a political lightening rod on Capitol Hill as many lawmakers and unions expressed staunch opposition, and President Obama did not offer his outright support.
Consequently, while taxing a portion of health benefits was a leading "pay-for" idea -- at least in the Senate Finance Committee -- the political pushback has muted its prospects for being a serious contender at this writing.
"Basically, the president is not helping us," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., told reporters Thursday. "He does not want the exclusion and that's making it difficult."
In response, White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters that Obama has consulted lawmakers of both parties about how to "save money and find revenue to pay for our health care reform. If that's disagreeing with Baucus, somebody else will have to make that determination."
The tricommittee House bill proposes to pay for half the cost of reform by taxing the richest households -- imposing a surtax as high as 5.4% for income over $1 million, and imposing lower rates on households making at least $350,000.
Asked if cost containment becomes more difficult by relying primarily on Medicare cost savings without taxing employer-provided health benefits, Elmendorf said, "Tying one of the two hands behind one's back makes the job that much harder."
The long-term concern
The CBO has said numerous times and in numerous ways that the federal budget is on an unsustainable course. The economic crisis has made the debt situation more urgent, but it is not the primary cause.
"Over the next 50 years, with rising health care costs, the retirement of the baby boom generation, and the permanent extension of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, federal debt will climb to more than 400% of the gross domestic product," Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., noted during Thursday's hearing.
But there will be risk to the economy within the next 10 years. The country's debt is on track to exceed 60% of GDP next year and will top 80% by 2019. And that assumes interest rates stay low.
Should buyers of U.S. debt grow concerned, however, that the country is not addressing its debt situation adequately they will start demanding higher rates, which would make the country's debt situation even worse. That's why fiscal policy experts have been calling on lawmakers to rein in health care costs, find ways to boost tax revenue and cut spending as soon as the economy is in recovery.
Premiums unlikely to go down soon
When asked whether the health bills released so far would help reduce premiums for Americans with health insurance, Elmendorf said the people most likely to see a decrease in what they pay are those who currently buy policies on their own because their employer doesn't provide a policy.
That group could see their costs go down for three reasons: the creation of an insurance exchange; the additional compe ion from a public plan option in the exchange; and guarantees that insurers could not refuse coverage to anyone with a pre-existing condition, Elmendorf noted.
But for the vast majority of Americans -- those who get their insurance through their employers -- the cost-reducing potential of the exchange and public plan, at least initially, would have "fairly small effects relative to the level and trajectory that health care premiums are taking," he said. "We don't think those workers will see noticeable changes in their premiums."
That's in part because the two bills as they're written currently would limit eligibility for who may use the exchange.
- CNN's Ted Barrett contributed to this report
So, the idea of costs growing exponential while the standard of care decreases exponentially is appealing to you?
Not frightened at all over here.
El Nono--my son has GERD and has tried every PPI/antacid in the book. Initially, my insurance company denied Prevacid, but his GI doc got it approved. However, it didn't work and he was switched to Nexium which was the only PPI that worked for him. My insurance company would not pay for it no matter how many times his doc called them. I finally had to call and got a very nice customer service rep. I explained that we have tried everything and Nexium was the only thing that worked for him and she got it approved. Of course, with insurance it's still $50. So you should try calling them yourself and tell them you've tried others and nothing worked. Anyway, good luck with it. I know how frustrating it is.
Now his GI doc doesn't take my insurance because of what they paid, but there are so few pediatric GI docs in SA and 3 or 4 of them are in his group. Luckily, he only goes every 6 months so I can eat the cost.
Since my husband is a doctor, I'm very interested to see what happens with health care. The bulk of his payments are from Medicare, but I can assure you if Medicaid becomes the norm, patients are not gonna be seen. Medicaid pays crap. I know my GYN doesn't take it.
Where did I say that, Aggie? Are you making stuff up again?
I'll comment on the bill when it's finalized and it's presented to vote both on the House and the Senate (if that ever happens). In the meantime, all this doom and gloom is frankly pretty re ed.
I feel you. I started off with Aciphex and it stopped working. Nexium didn't cut it either. Then we kept on trying: Prilosec OTC, etc etc etc. Prevacid is what works for me ATM.
I definitely will keep on calling, and so will my doc. I mean, I know they're just stalling and eventually I'll get my prescription filled. It just doesn't need to be like this, that's all.
Portability is also an issue. My wife has a very rare immunodeficiency disease (Uveitis), and there's only a handful specialists in the country. Fortunately, we've been keeping it under control. We used to be insured under Universal Healthcare and they covered the eye specialist in Philly. When my wife switched jobs, the new insurance (Qualcare) only does NJ, so we lost access to this guy. The 'specialist' in NJ is a hack. He really truly sucks and on top of that is an asshole. So we're back to Philly and paying out of network coverage which is a good chunk of dough. This whole thing reeks. Pisses me off also because they sure take a good chunk of change off my wife's salary. But what you gonna do? I'm still grateful she's been doing ok and that so far we won't go bankrupt doing this. But I'm definitely not happy about it.
I had to call about 3-4 times. The doc gave me a number to call. Called that number and they said you need to call this other number. I called that number and they said tell your doc to say blah blah blah and call it back in. Doctor's office says they did say that, etc. Call back the original number given and again am told I need to call the other number. Anyway, I told them that my son was just starting high school and that he was up all night in pain and he needed his sleep and the customer service rep was very sympathetic. Got a letter in the mail a few saying Nexium was approved through 2099.
I had to look up Uveitis. Yikes! How do they treat that? Unfortunately, some Docs that GOD is after their name.
I agree that healthcare needs to reformed. I just don't know what the answer is on both sides of the coin.
There's no cure. You have to take Methotrexate the rest of your life to keep it in remission. The problem is that Methotrexate is an abortifacient, and we're looking to have kids. So right now she stopped with it and she's having steroid injections in the back of her eye every 4-5 months. It worked so far while we try, but eventually she's gonna have to go back to the drug.
But fortunately she's been doing fine for the past couple of years. We just need to check up on it.
I'm actually a pessimist when it comes to believing that a reform will happen. Way too many interests at stake in the middle. I'm also tired of all the political talking, stalling and posturing, only to be left again with the status quo.
Thanks for sharing your story about your kid.
The whole intro is funny enough, but the Daily Show *socialized medicine* segment starts at 6:16, and the Sibelius interview is, well, a good intro to Kathleen Sibelius, the HHS chief.
I have a sinking feeling that this will be what happens, i.e. the status quo.
Too long to post all of it, but an interesting read.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/ma...lthcare-t.html
Why We Must Ration Health Care
By PETER SINGER
Published: July 15, 2009
You have advanced kidney cancer. It will kill you, probably in the next year or two. A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000. Is a few more months worth that much?
...
Health care is a scarce resource, and all scarce resources are rationed in one way or another. In the United States, most health care is privately financed, and so most rationing is by price: you get what you, or your employer, can afford to insure you for. But our current system of employer-financed health insurance exists only because the federal government encouraged it by making the premiums tax deductible. That is, in effect, a more than $200 billion government subsidy for health care. In the public sector, primarily Medicare, Medicaid and hospital emergency rooms, health care is rationed by long waits, high patient copayment requirements, low payments to doctors that discourage some from serving public patients and limits on payments to hospitals.
The case for explicit health care rationing in the United States starts with the difficulty of thinking of any other way in which we can continue to provide adequate health care to people on Medicaid and Medicare, let alone extend coverage to those who do not now have it. Health-insurance premiums have more than doubled in a decade, rising four times faster than wages. In May, Medicare’s trustees warned that the program’s biggest fund is heading for insolvency in just eight years. Health care now absorbs about one dollar in every six the nation spends, a figure that far exceeds the share spent by any other nation. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it is on track to double by 2035.
...
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