Can't pay for everything

We are witnessing the down-fall of America, a victim of her own dreams, dreams long since dead.

Say what? I want of pay for folks that abuse their bodies in every possible way, while I spend time and money on my body and what goes into it!

I want to pay big time for the gluttons, the drunks, the druggies, the losers, the stupid and the fools!

Hey, Buddie, can you spare a dime?

The polititions keep telling us that they can spend our money faster and better than we can.

All we need to do is give them more, and they will prove it.

Any questions?

Surprise, surprise, more brain flatulence from Mr. Le Berthon and some local yokels:

Where to start?

First, we already pay big time for providing health care for everybody. We do it in the most ineffective, high cost way possible: through emergency room care in all hospitals that have such services. Got a flu, go to the ER, got a hangnail, go the ER, whatever big or small ails you, wait in the ER and run up bills many times what a doctors office visit would run. The current system already does what you complain about, and all our tax-dollars pay for it.

Second, we are paying bid time for the current system. Medical cost as a percentage of average family income has gone up from 4% at the end of WWII, to 8% during the Vietnam era to 16% now. And with those costs rising faster than inflation, want to bet against it being 32% in another 20-40 years. While some of this rise is attributable to higher costs for Medicare, the VA medical system, and federal employees health coverage, all being public systems that currently cover over half of the public, the humongous elephant in the room has been the rising costs over that time of private medicine and private insurance.

Third, Dreier and other devotees of keeping the current system were shrieking like Movie Star Scream Queens last week when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that various plans in Congress in a ten year span would cost over $1 trillion and still leave many millions without coverage. The Problem: this estimate specifically EXCLUDED any form of publicly financed coverage (AKA "the public option").

What cost over a trillion and didn't get the job done was the kind of plan that Dreier and others could live with. One that excludes competition from a public plan. One that simply rearranges the deck chair on the Titanic.

Today, a new CBO estimate that factored in public coverage tells us that over 10 years the added competition a public plan would provide would lower the cost to $611.4 billion and cover 97% of all citizens. At this price, health reform with public coverage competing against private insurance would be REVENUE NEUTRAL. It wouldn't cost taxpayers any more than they are putting out today.

I know that all these numbers seem huge. And that is what Dreier, Mr. Berthon and the local yokels are counting on to scare ill-informed readers. But if we do NOTHING, the estimated cost to our economy of keeping the current system will be over $25 trillion a year within the next few decades. If we following the lead of Pied Piper Dreier, we are all going to pay BIG time, and get less and less care for it.

Last of all, if Dreier thinks that public coverage is soooooo bad, why doesn't he drop the public plan he personally benefits from, and that Mr. Smith, his BFF also benefits from? After all, Dreier has taken millions from the insurance industry, from corporate medicine, from big Pharma, etc. Yeah, but we know! We'll be waiting a long time for that to happen.

Who suggested we do nothing? The best thing we can "do" is get the gov't out of the health care business. Gov't mandates and lawsuits are what make health care so expensive. We should purchase our health care the way we purchase a house or hamburger. Freedom, free markets, and competition always work to give us the best quality, variety, and value in any product. Stop using straw-man arguments!!!

How can we speak about "fixing" the health care system without even bringing up who is using the ER for every medical situation. We tried to fix the public schools with NCLB and look at them, no better but cost alot more. Tax paying Americans are going to be dumped by their employee based system into the "welfare health care" where we are going to pay more, get less and probally catch the swine flu waiting to see a doctor.

Larry Hernandez wrote:

Surprise, surprise, more brain flatulence from Mr. Le Berthon and some local yokels:
Where to start?
First, we already pay big time for providing health care for everybody. We do it in the most ineffective, high cost way possible: through emergency room care in all hospitals that have such services. Got a flu, go to the ER, got a hangnail, go the ER, whatever big or small ails you, wait in the ER and run up bills many times what a doctors office visit would run. The current system already does what you complain about, and all our tax-dollars pay for it.
Second, we are paying bid time for the current system. Medical cost as a percentage of average family income has gone up from 4% at the end of WWII, to 8% during the Vietnam era to 16% now. And with those costs rising faster than inflation, want to bet against it being 32% in another 20-40 years. While some of this rise is attributable to higher costs for Medicare, the VA medical system, and federal employees health coverage, all being public systems that currently cover over half of the public, the humongous elephant in the room has been the rising costs over that time of private medicine and private insurance.
Third, Dreier and other devotees of keeping the current system were shrieking like Movie Star Scream Queens last week when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that various plans in Congress in a ten year span would cost over $1 trillion and still leave many millions without coverage. The Problem: this estimate specifically EXCLUDED any form of publicly financed coverage (AKA "the public option").
What cost over a trillion and didn't get the job done was the kind of plan that Dreier and others could live with. One that excludes competition from a public plan. One that simply rearranges the deck chair on the Titanic.
Today, a new CBO estimate that factored in public coverage tells us that over 10 years the added competition a public plan would provide would lower the cost to $611.4 billion and cover 97% of all citizens. At this price, health reform with public coverage competing against private insurance would be REVENUE NEUTRAL. It wouldn't cost taxpayers any more than they are putting out today.
I know that all these numbers seem huge. And that is what Dreier, Mr. Berthon and the local yokels are counting on to scare ill-informed readers. But if we do NOTHING, the estimated cost to our economy of keeping the current system will be over $25 trillion a year within the next few decades. If we following the lead of Pied Piper Dreier, we are all going to pay BIG time, and get less and less care for it.
Last of all, if Dreier thinks that public coverage is soooooo bad, why doesn't he drop the public plan he personally benefits from, and that Mr. Smith, his BFF also benefits from? After all, Dreier has taken millions from the insurance industry, from corporate medicine, from big Pharma, etc. Yeah, but we know! We'll be waiting a long time for that to happen.

Mr. Elephant......, and Felipe:

Can't you see the elephant-sized contradictions in your arguments? Or has self-righteous posturing corroded your reason?

If the free market is so Hot and Perfect, then why would employers dump employees into it? If the free market produced cheaper, better plans, then why would choose otherwise? Are you going to argue that it would be cheaper for them to simply dump? Don't go there so easily. It will not work out as you think. Dumping employees into Public plans won't be cost-free for them, and they would lose the very generous tax breaks they get for buying private insurance for employees. Businesses big and small would gain from what the President is backing. It is the bottom-line of the Health-care DENIAL industry, AKA: Private Insurance Companies, that would lose.

Think about it. Doesn't it phase you a little bit that Wal-Mart has suddenly signed on to one of the plans that forbids offering optional public health coverage, and replaces it with enforcing employer mandates? Plans with Employer Mandates, that isn't the plan I support. It is what the GOP and DINOs are offering to head off Public Option plans. Your hero of unfettered capitalism has joined the forces of real darkness.

What does Wal-Mart and the Like have to gain? How about getting a competitive advantage over smaller rival businesses in cities and towns all across the nation. Think of all the shops in Upland that cannot afford to pay for mandated employee health insurance. Doesn't WalMart and other big corporate retailers stand to gain by using government to drive smaller competitors into bankruptcy?

If you knew more than drivel about Canada or Europe, you'd know that small businesses still thrive in these places. In fact, they have far more competition than we do here, in the land of the big-box chain store. They benefit the most from the option for available public health coverage.

And what about tying employees down to jobs that they hate but can't quit due to health coverage concerns for the family back home. Where is the freedom in that?

Turn down the spin-machine and do some real research.
The numbers don't lie if you look at them squarely. By arguing from ignorance and what corporate P.R. tells you, you are supporting that which is really bankrupting our nation. How patriotic and smart is that?

the only ones who will benefit will be ones who dont do sqwuat to help themselves.and expect more free handouts,because they have been a "victim".and wont take responsibility for their poor choices that put them in position they are in.so the bleeding hearts make the responsible people take care of the "helpless" dregs.some really need help,but most think they are entitled.

First I am a woman.
Second I have a child with serious medical issues.
Third, my family is on a "small company plan" a company that is laying off people left and right. We pay ALOT in co pays and premium fees etc.... but giving that I have spent 10 years in the public school system and have watched it sink lower and lower and lower so excuse me that I am frightened to buy into Obama's plan. You will note that he does not send his kids to public school, nor will he be using the "govt heath plan" OH but he already is, is that the plan my family will get I BET NOT.
My point is not that insurance companies are good or that heath care in Cananda is not good, I am just trying to keep my kid alive.
We CAN NOT take in 10 - 15 (or more) million people without any taxes taken in and give them heath care. Fine if you want National Heath Care we HAVE to send the criminals home (BTW a criminal is some who breaks the law). Our schools are drowning in kids that do not care to ever learn English.

Larry Hernandez wrote:

Mr. Elephant......, and Felipe:
Can't you see the elephant-sized contradictions in your arguments? Or has self-righteous posturing corroded your reason?
If the free market is so Hot and Perfect, then why would employers dump employees into it? If the free market produced cheaper, better plans, then why would choose otherwise? Are you going to argue that it would be cheaper for them to simply dump? Don't go there so easily. It will not work out as you think. Dumping employees into Public plans won't be cost-free for them, and they would lose the very generous tax breaks they get for buying private insurance for employees. Businesses big and small would gain from what the President is backing. It is the bottom-line of the Health-care DENIAL industry, AKA: Private Insurance Companies, that would lose.
Think about it. Doesn't it phase you a little bit that Wal-Mart has suddenly signed on to one of the plans that forbids offering optional public health coverage, and replaces it with enforcing employer mandates? Plans with Employer Mandates, that isn't the plan I support. It is what the GOP and DINOs are offering to head off Public Option plans. Your hero of unfettered capitalism has joined the forces of real darkness.
What does Wal-Mart and the Like have to gain? How about getting a competitive advantage over smaller rival businesses in cities and towns all across the nation. Think of all the shops in Upland that cannot afford to pay for mandated employee health insurance. Doesn't WalMart and other big corporate retailers stand to gain by using government to drive smaller competitors into bankruptcy?
If you knew more than drivel about Canada or Europe, you'd know that small businesses still thrive in these places. In fact, they have far more competition than we do here, in the land of the big-box chain store. They benefit the most from the option for available public health coverage.
And what about tying employees down to jobs that they hate but can't quit due to health coverage concerns for the family back home. Where is the freedom in that?
Turn down the spin-machine and do some real research.
The numbers don't lie if you look at them squarely. By arguing from ignorance and what corporate P.R. tells you, you are supporting that which is really bankrupting our nation. How patriotic and smart is that?

Ms. Elephant...

So you think that turning over all medical care to free markets and lifting all regulation will make things better?

That is what Felipe and the Tea baggers insist on. It is all they have to offer to fix the system as it is today. Do you really think that that is a serious proposal?

If you do, then obviously you haven't learned a wit from what Wall Street and the Financial services industry have to teach us. Do you really think that what has happened to us all due to a policy applied to that industry of pandering to free market fundamentalism and to the lifting of virtually all regulation in all matters financial has been a good thing?

Both the pandering and the lifting started under Clinton in the 1990s and speed up under Bush until the crash in Summer 2008. In that period of time, the heavy hand of SEC and other forms of regulation were lifted to the point that they were non-existent by 2004. Even when something outrageous like the Madoof Ponzi scheme was identified by reputable Whistle-blowers during that time, the SEC refused to step in.

And when Alan Greenspan, a disciple of Ayn Rand, was warned as late as his last year as Fed Chair of too much dependence on the supposed ability of free markets to correct themselves, he shrugged such warnings off as a secular heresy. "Oh you of little faith!"

If you really believe that the critics of Obama's proposals have a better idea, then offer it up. And if stones start flying because angry people recognize it as warmed over Greenspan/Wall Street libertarianism, you'll know that people do learn from recent history experienced in lost savings, lost pensions, lost homes and lost jobs.

And by the way...Obama and all members of Congress do avail themselves of public coverage, performed by government paid doctors, usually in Naval hospitals. They are fully covered by socialized medicine.

Don't confuse the mess of public education with the overall efficiency of the various government-run health coverages given to soldiers, veterans, and federal officials. Despite some screw ups, especially regarding Walter Reed and some veterans hospitals in regard to mishandling HIV, these systems stack up very good against the record of private insurance and private hospitals.

Anytime the Govt is involved in a program..........its bad for taxpayers.

EXTREMELY limited govt rules or guidelines are sometimes necessary, but not direct involvement or control.

Anyone that believes its a wise move is either blind to facts or pay no taxes and could care less who provides for them.

Larry Hernandez wrote:

And by the way...Obama and all members of Congress do avail themselves of public coverage, performed by government paid doctors, usually in Naval hospitals. They are fully covered by socialized medicine.
Don't confuse the mess of public education with the overall efficiency of the various government-run health coverages given to soldiers, veterans, and federal officials. Despite some screw ups, especially regarding Walter Reed and some veterans hospitals in regard to mishandling HIV, these systems stack up very good against the record of private insurance and private hospitals.

If you think Congress and others in D.C. avail themselves to the same treatment as veterans.........you are way off base.

They have special doctors, no waiting, no approval required, assigned doctors to see them on a moment's notice, complete VIP TREATMENT.

That is NOTHING like the federal program for veterans or military service members.

I didn't say they got equal treatment. But that could be changed by law easily if we all demand it.

On the other hand, can you demand equal treatment with Bill Gates? Can you say that everyone insured by private insurance is treated the same?

Get Real. Your fear of change is becoming blindness to the overwhelming inadequacies of the current system.

OK I'll take what they get, but we both know that will not be available to me or my child. I did not say we need to continue as we have, just that EVERYTHING must be brought to the table. When we send home the 15 million + non tax payers and heavy uses of the ER and "special" education. Lets see how we are doing then and make a plan for Americans paid for by American tax dollars.

Larry Hernandez wrote:

And by the way...Obama and all members of Congress do avail themselves of public coverage, performed by government paid doctors, usually in Naval hospitals. They are fully covered by socialized medicine.
Don't confuse the mess of public education with the overall efficiency of the various government-run health coverages given to soldiers, veterans, and federal officials. Despite some screw ups, especially regarding Walter Reed and some veterans hospitals in regard to mishandling HIV, these systems stack up very good against the record of private insurance and private hospitals.

Health care should never have been attached to employment in the 1st place. Employers did so because the silly, unconstitutional, and overcomplicated tax laws compelled them at that point in our history in order to be profitable and still attract quality workers. Again, health care should result from direct transactions between providers and consumers, without mandates from gov't and hyperlitigation that have made it orders of magnitude more expensive than it should be, could be, and would be in a free-market system. Conservatism is supporting and defending what is good; Liberalism or "progressivism" is characterized by criticizing and destroying what is imperfect. Obama, the Democrats, and I surmise Mr. Hernandez lie squarely in the latter camp and as such are destroying what has been good for decades, replacing it with something that has already been proven to be disastrous everywhere it has been tried. But let's not concern ourselves with results, right?