Health Care Debate - Biloxi, MS

papa john wrote:

Obama has gotten us in debt so far, that our great, great grandchildren will be paying for this.He will never be as good a president as Bush.

papa john wrote:

Obama has gotten us in debt so far, that our great, great grandchildren will be paying for this.He will never be as good a president as Bush.

GaCracker wrote:

The whole world has National Health Insurance with the single exception of the United States. Canada, England, France, and many more countries around the world HAD exactly what we have. If what we have is better than theirs, then why don't they go back to what we have. No problem, insurance companies and agents could accomodate all of them in a flash.

Common wrote:

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The majority of the initiatives that would pay for reform will come from cutting waste, fraud, and abuse within existing government health programs; ending big subsidies to insurance companies; and increasing efficiency with such steps as coordinating care and streamlining paperwork. We want to take money that is already being spent on health care and re-allocate it toward reforms that lower costs and assure quality affordable health care for all Americans.
The cuts we are talking about involve spending that currently does not improve care for Americans. For example, we would save $177 billion in unwarranted subsidies to the insurance industry in the next ten years and put that money into actual care for people. These and other reforms will strengthen and stabilize Medicare.
But it’s not enough to stop there. Health insurance reform must also encourage the kinds of reforms we know will save money in the long run: preventive care; computerized record-keeping; and comparative effectiveness studies to expose wasteful procedures and hospitalizations and give doctors the tools to make the right treatments for you.
We currently spend more than $2 trillion dollars a year on health care. Health insurance reform will make a short-term investment of roughly $100 billion a year to lower costs and relieve the crushing financial burden that is eating into family budgets, forcing families into bankruptcy, making it hard for businesses to expand and grow, and preventing the government from using your tax dollars to create jobs, improve education, rebuild our infrastructure. Health insurance reform would be fully paid for over 10 years, and it would not add one penny to the deficit.
Let’s also remember that we can’t afford not to reform health care. The cost of inaction is too high. Health care spending has grown in recent years three times faster than average wages. Premiums have doubled in this decade. Out of pocket costs for people with insurance have gone up by 32 percent. Businesses are buckling under health care costs. One out of every six dollars in this country is spent on health care. Soon it will be one in five. If we do nothing, in 30 years, one third of this country’s economic output will be tied up in the health care system. Health care is the fastest-growing item in the federal budget. It is absolutely unsustainable. These costs are crushing families and businesses, keeping wages flat, stunting our economic growth, strangling our government. We have to bring costs under control now.

Orville wrote:

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Common:
Your comments sound as if they are coming right off Wasserman's talking points. If a ton of the costs of this boondoggle are going to come from savings from "waste, fraud and abuse" and it is identifiable, why not do it now? I also notice that you neglect to assign estimated cost savings to these items that you have pointed out for savings. Have you checked CBO estimates? I have, and they don't come close to the rosy picture you are painting. Weasel words and platitudes e.g., coordinating care and streamlining paperwork, unwarranted subsidies(unwarranted by who or what), re-allocate (from what to what and by whose direction?),comparative effectiveness studies(I love this one). Do you really want the federal government controlling and trying to operate one fifth of our economy? Hate to say it but the Post Office is only quasi-government so you should love its performance. Your tome is more of the same "hope and change" as we've been getting the last three years. When are you and your Marxist leaning cohorts going to simply own up to the fact that Obama is incompetent beyond any objective standard? If it weren't for the teachers unions and public unions propping him up from the public well his standing with the public would be into the teens. I pray every day that this man and his ilk are swept away in 2012 and a president with respect for the constitution and it's principles is elected.