Oh, goodness. Politicians are about to ‘fix’ health care.
When this President says he can find $300 billion in Medicare and Medicaid savings to partially fund a proposed new government health care entitlement, the skeptic is inclined to ask: If $300 billion in savings are possible when politicians are looking for money to spend, why wasn’t $300 billion in unnecessary spending eliminated?
We all know the answer. When politicians talk about future costs of proposed entitlements, they lie. And what they profess to find in “savings” from existing programs and what they actually deliver are miles apart. On spending and “savings” they have no credibility. None.
The Congressional Budget Office projects the cost of a new health care entitlement at up to $1.6 trillion, though of course some politicians, including Sen. Max Baucus (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, dismissed that projection as outdated. The final cost, he predicted, will be presented at less than $1 trillion. Those “savings” would come from fees paid Medicare and Medicaid providers, said Baucus.
Insurance for families with incomes of less than $88,000 would be subsidized, while that transfer of income would be made possible by a tax on some health insurance benefits. Details, however, are still changing. Formal work on the legislation starts today in the Senate Health Education, Labor and Pensions Committee headed by U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.)
Whatever you think about health care in America and the cost of it, sit tight and watch. It’s about to get worse.
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184 comments Add your comment
Larry Craig
June 17th, 2009
8:11 am
Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) has acknowledged an extramarital affair with a campaign staffer in a statement released by his office. “I deeply regret and am very sorry for my actions,” said Ensign. He is expected to announce the affair at a press conference at 6:30 pm tonight. The affair, which was with a woman who worked for both Ensign’s re-election campaign and his Battle Born leadership political action committee, began in December 2007 and ended in August 2008. Ensign’s wife, Darlene, said that the couple’s “marriage has become stronger” and added: “I love my husband.”
Larry Craig
June 17th, 2009
8:13 am
“When former Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was arrested in an airport men’s room in the summer of 2007, Ensign was among Craig’s toughest critics, saying Craig should step down because he had been charged with a crime.
“I wouldn’t put myself, hopefully, in that kind of position, but if I was in a position like that, that’s what I would do,” Ensign told The Associated Press at the time.
During the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton, Ensign, then a Senate candidate, called on Clinton to resign.”
He will not heed his own advice, we know that!
Aquagirl
June 17th, 2009
8:18 am
Jim, it’s already “worse” for many people. I suppose you favor the Republican approach: bribing old people with socialized medicine for their votes, while everyone else goes to h3ll in a handbasket.
AH
June 17th, 2009
8:23 am
I’m shocked at anyone who would support anything coming out of DC by either one of the parties. We need to stop looking at this as if our team is winning or losing up in DC because every time anyone up there does anything for us we all lose.
HDB
June 17th, 2009
8:36 am
Question that should be asked is that why does this nation NOT have universal health care? Reason: Insurance companies would not have a monopoly on the marketplace; insurance companies would not have the influence with Congress; insurance companies would not control the cost of medicine!! If there were a nationally subsidized health care plan, EVERY American regardless of pre-existing condition could be treated at a reasonable cost! Too many Americans are falling through the cracks because of the profit motive of insurance companies.
Jackie
June 17th, 2009
8:41 am
We have the most expensive health care in the world. Our system is based purely on profit, profit from those who suffer.
Today’s topic speaks of the attempt by the government to “fix” our current system. If left to the free market, we would pay premiums that are more outrageous than they are currently. We can not afford continuous increases in health care insurance premiums.
One only needs to look at personal premiums to get an idea of what it actually costs your household to be “protected” from a medical emergency.
The world’s other industrialized countries have a “socialized” system of health care and the myth perpetuated by those who control the media continues to say other systems do not work. Really?
Churchill's MOM
June 17th, 2009
8:41 am
As a doctor’s wife I am opposed to anything that reduces our income.
As a wife I hope that Ensign’s soon to be ex wife takes him for everything he has and then some.
Peadawg
June 17th, 2009
8:46 am
HDB, “Question that should be asked is that why does this nation NOT have universal health care?”
Go ask that question to people in Canada that come to the United States for their health care needs and they will tell you universal health is the dumbest idea!
Jo Atlanta
June 17th, 2009
8:49 am
It is a simple fact that healthy people pay more for their care than sick people. If I am healthy and do not use the insurance, in effect I pay more than the person who uses the insurance a lot. Another simple fact is that health insurance is dropped as an unnecessary expense when the healthy person loses a job and cannot afford the insurance or when the private insurance company raises the price to more than the healthy person can bear. What remains is people who desparately need insurance that is continuing to get more expensive. Single payor, universal health care is not the least expensive solution for a healthy person. But it is a sane solution for all of us.
ideclarenothing
June 17th, 2009
8:50 am
actually, i dont mind universal health care. since it will be underfunded, it has to ration care. that means the old will go without treatment cuz they are old. there goes a large voting block for the dems. also, immigrants will be rationed because of their immigration status. all the free healthcare they get now (and despite the main stream media, they do get free healthcare) will go away by government mandate. so, there goes another big voting block for the dems. the way i figure it, the health and working folks will be the only ones left, and we are mostly conservative.
not a bad plan, not a bad plan at all.
Jackie
June 17th, 2009
8:51 am
@peadawg
Those Canadians that you speak of coming to the USA for SPECIALIZED health care treatments were for procedures like liver transplants.
Do you think those in this country are not required to wait for specialized remedies to their health emergencies?
catlady
June 17th, 2009
8:56 am
Here is what I DO know: I pay for my health insurance (which is allowed to decide what is and is not “necessary”, and how much each year they will go up on costs and down on coverage). I pay my co-pays and deductibles. I pay (in taxes) for Medicaid, Medicare, and Peachcare. I pay for the indigent through taxes and because the rates go up for those who pay to cover the care of those who don’t. So, it looks like I am paying NOW, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it be bettter to cut out at least ONE middleman (the insurance companies) who make a profit off of me? Universal health care does NOT need to subsidize the insurance companies!
So saying, I would hope that if universal health care would have financial penalties for those who use services wantonly. For example, I have a neighbor who goes to the ER a dozen times a year, never paying her bill. She works and has health insurance available, but does not buy it. (Her money goes for cigarettes, for example). She even went the other day for a tick bite! For any of our supported care including Mediaid, Medicare, and Peachcare, there should be penalties, to be taken out of pay or welfare checks or whatever, for unnecessary use of the ER or other services.
reservoirDAWG
June 17th, 2009
9:01 am
This is a disaster waiting to happen. Honestly, what private enterprise that the government has become involved in have they ever gotten right?
William Casey
June 17th, 2009
9:07 am
Jim… people who oppose health care reform USUALLY ALREADY HAVE programs for THEMSELVES. What is your program and what do you pay for it? In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a retired teacher with a decent-but-not-great program that costs $270 per month for me and my 18 year old son.
One Voice
June 17th, 2009
9:07 am
We need universal health care. I don’t care how much it costs. It can and must be done. It’s easy to gripe about the costs of health care when you actually have health care. And even those of us who have health insurance now have worse coverage than ever. As an educator, I have benefits that used to be considered one of the best perks of the profession. But now it’s not that inexpensive and the coverage is terrible. They deny every claim they can, like a leukemia test for my daughter, saying tests due to obesity are not covered (She’s actually skinny and just tall, hence at the top of her weight range, and luckily, she’s perfectly healthy). That’s what happens when you have for-profit insurance companies making money off of others’ illness. It’s a deplorable system. There needs to be a public option and an array of non-profit private options. I don’t care how much it costs.
Citizen of the World
June 17th, 2009
9:08 am
If the “fix” for our health care system is to be a true fix, we need to get for-profit insurance companies out of the equation. As long as they are part of the system, they will continue to seek ways to deny coverage to anyone but the healthy (unless you’re covered by a group policy, which fewer and fewer of us are), and they will continue to seek ways to deny claims for those they do cover. And even when insurance companies come through, a family’s responsibility for a major medical problem could run into the 10s of thousands of dollars, if not $100,000 or more. It’s estimated that up to 60 percent of bankruptcies in the U.S. are related to medical bills, and this is for people who have coverage!
There are two good Frontline documentaries for view online (go to pbs.org) — one is called Sick Around America and the other is Sick Around the World. They give a good look at our problems and how other countries have avoided these problems using several different models, any one of which would be better and less expensive than what we have now. Of particular interest is Switzerland, mostly because it used to have our exact same non-system and it adopted a better way.
The U.S. spends upwards of 18 percent of its GDP on healthcare; most of these other countries spend less than 10 percent and get much better outcomes.
It would be unfortunate if any doctor had to make less money, but it’s certainly not right for insurance company shareholders and executives to get rich off people’s pain and suffering. Other industrialized countries don’t allow this because it’s shameful, and we shouldn’t allow it either.
Get involved and let your representatives know that you want a public option for health insurance. Anything less will not be a fix.
Pockasnocka
June 17th, 2009
9:10 am
Met a person who went to Australia, had a serious cardiovascular event, got off with a bill one-tenth of what it would’ve been in Nashville where he lived.
BugKiller
June 17th, 2009
9:13 am
The fact of the matter remains… nationalized health care will cause a brain drain in the medical profession.
Why does everyone else in the world (where they HAVE nationalized health care) come to America for the truly special, life-or-death procedures?
Why are our heart surgeons, brain surgeons, eye surgeons, oncologists (cancer, people), and other specialists the best in the world?
Because the medical professions in this country attract the best and the brightest people.
Why?
Because they can make a ton of MONEY in those professions.
Nationalized healthcare will reduce the amount of money hospitals will be able to pay their specialists.
Specialists with their own offices will be told by the government that no, this heart surgery no longer costs $20,000, it now costs $5,000, and because we’re the government, you’ll take it.
You know what will happen then?
The smart people follow the money, people. The best and the brightest will go into pharmaceuticals (they’re already starting), into engineering, into computers.
Then you’ll have the same issues in America that they have in Canada, and Europe, and that they had in the Soviet Union:
Bad doctors. Or even worse… INCOMPETENT doctors.
Nationalized health care, in the end, is good for no one.
Our government tends to mess up everything they meddle with. Why are private schools better than “public” schools?
Because those “public” schools are actually GOVERNMENT schools. Why does the teaching profession not attract the best and the brightest (for the most part)?
Because there’s no money in it, accept for private schools. And why are many teachers so bad? Because for them, they couldn’t make $35,000 a year doing anything else.
It’s easy as hell to get certified from Aderhold at UGA. DId you know that to become a history teacher out of UGA, you don’t even have to take more than 4 or 5 history classes, and are not required to take much, if any, upper level history courses? The secondary social studies ed majors at UGA don’t even take 1/4 of the history classes of a history major.
And people wonder why kids “public” schools in Georgia roundly fail the history portion of their CRCTs.
Government is NEVER the answer people.
Not for schools.
Certainly not for health care.
What happens the first time some new, incompetent doctor in this “fair” land of Obamanation screws up so badly a family member of yours dies?
Do you think you’ll be able to sue him or her?
Keep on drinking the kool-aid NObama keeps on serving, socialists. You only have about 3 more years of it left.
conservative democrat
June 17th, 2009
9:13 am
The system is already broken. I was rear ended in traffic by an idiot that was following too close at 7am and went to the emergency room for my injurieson March 18th. A tetanus shot that would’ve cost me $10 at the county health department was $186. At that rate, the nurse that administered the shot was making $3500/hour. Dr. Patel, who examined me for 2 minutes was getting about $18,000/hour. Fortunately, I wasn’t severely hurt. Tenet was paid twice by my health insurance and again from my auto coverage. It has taken months to get then to agree to reimburse the overpayment and the money hasn’t changed hands yet! I hope Obama’s plan can fix this, but I withhold judgement. So far, I like what I hear.
One Voice
June 17th, 2009
9:14 am
reservoir dawg @ 9:01 (Do you even have a degree from UGA?): That was one of the dumbest statements I’ve ever read. Did you know that “the private enterprise that the government has become” controls less than .003% of the businesses in this country? Absolute silliness.
AmVet
June 17th, 2009
9:16 am
I say leave our “health care” system alone. There’s nothing at all wrong with it.
In America, 18,000 Americans die each year because they cannot afford health care, according to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Many more get sick or become sicker.
None of the advanced western countries in the world spend more than 11% of their GDP on healthcare. The U.S. spends over 16% of its GDP on health care and does not cover 47 million people.Tens of millions are under covered.
In the U.S. the drug companies charge their highest prices in the world, even though we, the taxpayers, subsidized them in large ways. In other countries like Mexico and Canada, they cannot get away with such drug price gouging, with a pay or die ultimatum.
In the U.S., computerized billing fraud and abuse cost over $200 billion last year, according to the GAO arm of Congress. In other counties, single payer prevents such looting.
In other countries, administrative expenses of their single payer system are about a third of what the Aetna’s and other insurers rack up.
In other western countries, medical outcomes for children and adults and paid family leave are far superior to that of the U.S. The World Health Organization ranks the US health care system 37th in the world.
Disgraceful…
ideclarenothing
June 17th, 2009
9:19 am
oh, i cant wait until daschles federal health care rationing board gets fully funded. then the fun will really start. if youre old, sorry, you are going to die in a couple of years anyway, so no health care for you (daschle actually stated this in an interview in the mid 90’s). your child does not fit within the government requirements, sorry, no health care for you.
finally, we get rid of all the poor people, immigrants and old people and us health 20-40 year olds get to rule this country.
AWESOME!!
Elephant Whip
June 17th, 2009
9:19 am
Survey:
Who has watched “Sicko?” If you watch that movie, you will see how universal healthcare works in France and Canada, among other places. In that movie, people go from the US TO Canada to save exponentially on prescription drugs and treatment. The people in France talk about how small a proportion of their income goes to medical care. The philosophy in those systems is preemptive medicine, which is not the focus in the US.
The problems with the healthcare industry in the US come from one problem: the Hippocratic Oath v. Profit. The healthcare industry is all about profit, when profit should be secondary to the duties of doctors under the Hippocratic Oath.
Big Bucks GOP doing the Lords work
June 17th, 2009
9:19 am
President Barack Obama is expected today to introduce a plan to reshape
financial regulation and give the Federal Reserve greater supervisory
authority over large financial institutions whose problems pose
potential risks to the economic system.
It would also create a council of regulators, led by the Treasury
secretary, to fill in regulatory gaps.
Mr. Obama told reporters Tuesday that a “lack of oversight” allowed
what he called “wild risk-taking.” He said it led to “very dangerous”
conditions that imperiled the global economy.
Reacting to the proposal, John Boehner, the Ohio Republican who leads
his party in the House, said in an interview today on “Good Morning
America” that it is “going to be too big of a foot on an industry that
already is having financial problems.”
Today’s plan is the product of weeks of meetings among government
officials, financial experts, lawmakers, industry executives and
lobbyists, The New York Times writes.
Now, lobbyists who lost the initial skirmish inside the administration
will head to Congress to try to influence the final product.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright
June 17th, 2009
9:21 am
Ah, that’s my boy. Fake left, move extreme left. It always gratifying to see Jr., er, the President take his socialized medicine plan straight from the church. You know, the Trinity United Church of Christ, where the current President grew up. We has a saying that 20% of the members support the other 80% as concerns the weekly contribution as well as other work. But I must confess, in the church, that 20% still RUNS the place – only responsible way to run the church.
Not that I’m trying to sound an alarm or anything but Jr.’s socialized healthcare reform sounds more like a return to plantation days. You know the 20% (masters) stealing from the 80% (slaves) and asking ‘em to grin and be grateful. At least in the church those that pay the tab still govern, here, well, I’m not sure I can agree with Jr. on this one.
This just sounds too much like slavery.
Big Bucks GOP doing the Lords work
June 17th, 2009
9:23 am
The managing director of a collapsed Chicago hedge fund, Lake Shore
Asset Management, was indicted by a federal grand jury. Prosecutors say
Philip J. Baker, now on the lam, operated a $300 million fraud.
Col. Harumph
June 17th, 2009
9:25 am
Truly, no sane person would allow the useless bureaucrats of Washington to have anything to do with their health care. This is just another bald-faced communistic scheme to confiscate my personally-generated wealth to the Obamafascists to fund their nefarious schemes to enslave the upper-crust of Our Great Nation.
I personally prefer the skimming vulture bureaucrats of the private insurance industry to make my choices for me. That is what makes America great!!!!
Sincerely and etc.,
Colonel Nathan Bedford Harumph, US Army (ret.)
Big Bucks GOP doing the Lords work
June 17th, 2009
9:26 am
Bernard L. Madoff’s sons are being sued by two former traders at their
father’s firm who allege that the two men helped their father cover up
his massive Ponzi scheme,
Big Bucks GOP doing the Lords work
June 17th, 2009
9:28 am
A judge approved a settlement requiring a unit of Banco Santander of
Spain, which fed $3 billion to Mr. Madoff, to pay $235 million for
potential legal claims.
Shar
June 17th, 2009
9:28 am
While I share AH’s frustration at the bald-faced, shameless lies that politicians of all stripes intone with becoming gravity (and for which they are usually not around to take the consequences) as well as their genius for creating ineffective, wasteful solutions (ditto on the consequences), in the case of health care doing nothing is no longer an option. Between unaffordable premiums, lost coverage, inadequate access and skyrocketing costs – with no end to any of it in sight – our cowardly, corrupt representatives must finally look at our national delivery system and wriggle just a bit in the suffocating clasp of their Big Pharma/Big Insurers/AMA/Advocate-For-The-Poor patrons and find some adjustments that will allow medicine to continue to be available.
As roughly 80% of health care expeditures occur in the last five years of life, and as the chronically or catastrophically ill are not able to fund their own care, the young and the well will continue to bear the burden of health costs either through cost shifting in private insurance or through taxes. The latter does not have to include a profit margin, which would make it more attractive if only the government could take on the task with any hope of efficiency. This is as unrealistic as the hope that for-profit companies will responsibly moderate their cost structures and treatment protocols to consumers who are not liable for paying the charges and who are fearful and desperate. Perhaps the utility model, wherein a public necessity is delivered through a monopoly with regulatory oversight, can be adjusted and improved for health care.
The costs incurred by patients who are unable to pay them must be addressed, however painfully. Under our current system, there is no check or accountability. The risky lifestyle choices that individuals make are paid for by us all; the interventions made to extend a terminal patient’s life are stupendously costly – and profitable – to everyone but the person making the decision. Having government make rules about efficacy and availability of care smacks of Big Brother, but those kind of difficult and painful choices must be made if cost factors are to be included in health care decisions. The social debates about welfare mothers paying for their own children’s costs can and should be extended to national health care. Taxpayers may be willing to pay for treatments that improve health and restore wellness, but are they as comfortable paying and paying and paying for treatment of emphysema and lung cancer patients who are life long smokers? For irreversible brain damage among motorcycle drivers? For cardiac care for the morbidly obese? For renal failure among alcoholics? For chronic care of non-citizens?
These are really hideous issues that have been swept under the rug as interested parties across the spectrum have writhed and bargained to maintain the status quo and enlarge their slice of an exploding pie. I don’t hold out much hope that all the crucial issues will be addressed, but the financial unsustainability of the current system and the shrinking availability of care have forced us, kicking and screaming, to the point of making some decisions. Let’s hope that the pros and cons of other nationalized systems are evaluated rationally and changes can be made to reflect American needs and expectations while ensuring financial viability.
Curious Observer
June 17th, 2009
9:29 am
I have employer-provided health insurance as well as Medicare. The employer-provided health insurance costs me and my employer $11,000 per year–for a family of two. Even then, I’m faced with a $3,600 corridor deductible and a 20% co-pay. Somebody is getting wealthy off this insurance, and I know it’s not me. And I see what the insurer actually pays the doctors, and they certainly aren’t getting rich. For instance, my participating doctor bills my insurance company $136 for an office visit and lab work and eventually receives reimbursement of $42.
I humbly suggest that there is no way a few individuals undergoing critical care can account for the gap between what my employer and I pay and what my health insurance company pays. I can only conclude that the insurance company is not only adding tremendous overhead to the cost of my insurance but is also making a handsome profit–thanks to squeezing both the doctors and the patients.
I’m ready to see single-payer national insurance. The supporters of the status quo don’t scare me with their projections of rationed care and governmental inefficiency. We already have rationed care and inefficiency with the current private system. The insurance company even decides what pharmaceuticals I can be prescribed, and no governmental program would be so inefficient as to charge $11,000 per year for coverage and pay out only $2,000 per year.
I say bring single-payer universal care on. Nothing could be more inefficient or costly than the current private system.
Elephant Whip
June 17th, 2009
9:31 am
BugKiller:
First: we already have bad doctors and no one in the medical profession does anything to get rid of them. And insurance companies try to kill civil remedies to dumb doctors’ heinous, harmful practices, while continuing to jack up prices.
Second: The reason that medical expenses are so high is because a bunch of profiteering leeches have come between doctor and patient (and pharmacist). Take out some of those leeches, and the doctors can still make a ton of money.
Voice of Reason #1
June 17th, 2009
9:31 am
I don’t care about insurane for every American. I want to pick my doctor from wherever, not just on my stupid “plan”. The doctor I want isn’t on my plan; he refused to join any more. sayt it takes time to fill out all those applications. I want my doctor I had! Who are they (insurance company) to tell me what doctor I can go to? That jacked me up and I still hate that.
reservoirDAWG
June 17th, 2009
9:36 am
One Voice, it sounds to me that you cannot afford healthcare. The point I was making was that these buffoons in DC, and Atlanta for that matter, are a bunch of clowns. Now go back to praising the obamanator.
gatorman770
June 17th, 2009
9:39 am
I would just like to see Congress and the President do away with their free lifetime insurance, medical plan and 401K (plan backed by the US Treasury) and have to have the same medical insurance plan and retirement plans as they scheme up for the rest of us Americans.
Jackie
June 17th, 2009
9:42 am
@Michelle Obama
For a Harvard lawyer, your ebonics are lacking and presentation of logical facts does reflect on your education.
Would you care to be more specific and remove your feeble attempt at being “street wise?”
One Voice
June 17th, 2009
9:44 am
Bug @ 9:13, You shouldn’t disparage the public education system when you write things like “[they] are not required to take much… upper level history courses”. Didn’t listen very well in your high school language arts classes, huh? The public education system does an excellent job for those Americans who choose to take advantage of the free education. Sure, it can and should always be improved. But my grandfather is a non-U.S. born citizen who to this day cannot speak English or read and write in any language, and two generations later, after going through solely the public school system, I am about to finish a PhD at a major national research institution. The opportunity is there for those who want to take advantage of it. I guess government is only okay if you want to bomb another country, drive on actual roads, or have the fire department put out the blaze in your double wide, huh?
Atlanta Native
June 17th, 2009
9:47 am
The DMV
The VA hospitals
The Schools
The DOT
These are the shining examples of government efficiency and caring for the public.
Before you trust in this healthcare system, remember that one of the present administration’s cost saving ideas this year was to quit funding healthcare for injuries sustained by veterans while in the armed forces. They backed off quickly, but it is a harbinger of things to come.
The people who will run this for the government will have something the private sector insurance companies do not have: Their government job is a property right protected by the Constitution. If they are inept, they cannot be fired without numerous administrative hearings. So they won’t be. They will abdicate any compassion or rational thought for the published guidelines and mandates.
Presently, my employees and I have the exact same insurance coverage. I spent years fighting with insurance companies on behalf of my employees. Then HIPAA came, and I am no longer allowed to help.
What will happen when the government “solution” is implemented and the health care benefits I offer to attract employees and keep them are taxed?
Simple. I will no longer provide such benefits and leave the administration of their healthcare to the government employees who either cannot find jobs in the private sector or want a job with guaranteed hours and no actual responsibility. I will get myself a either a Medical Savings account or great insurance and pay for it with the money I used to spend on them. I will go to private physicians and they will go to substandard doctors on the government list of lowest bidders for services. So, I know of one group it will be worse for and one that will get better, or at least the same coverage.
The idea is populist, but the actual results will be less for most and the same or more some.
What is needed is an overhaul of the safety net, not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Michelle Obama
June 17th, 2009
9:50 am
I knows an affirmative action admittance when I sees one and Jackie yous affirmative action.
I was nevah prouder of my country than when it let me into Harvard past all those white and Asian males who had perfect SAT scores and GPA’s MUCH higher than mine.
Anyway that’s the way the country should work and only when the GOVERNMENT controls everthing can it work that way. Anyway …that’s the way I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh..
One Voice
June 17th, 2009
9:50 am
reservoirdawg,
My household income is more than twice the national median (I have a feeling you couldn’t define median without googling it). I also have an actual degree from UGA, a job, and health care. I know that more than half the country is in much worse financial shape than I am, which is exactly why universal health care is needed (just as you seem to be in need of more education).
Jackie
June 17th, 2009
9:54 am
@Michelle Obama
How would you know that, SLOW MOTION?
You don’t know whether to scratch your watch or wind your hip!!!!
In Plain Sight
June 17th, 2009
9:54 am
My mom was a retired engineer that had a blood clot break loose and lodge in her brain. She had, what we thought, was sound medical coverage. When the Ambulance arrived she sat in the street in front of her house for 15 minutes while they called to find a hospital that would accept her insurance. She was eventually transported to Dekalb Medical where she was stabilized and then transfered to Emory for treatment. We were told that had she gotten to a hospital quicker, she had a much greater chance of survival. As it stands, my mother passed on June 27. 2006. Now we have a 7 figure lawsuite pending and I (and my brothers) are going to do everything possible to insure that this broken system turns over as much of the profits that they covet so much in exchange for the life that was secondary to that profit. And yes I understand that insurance for Doctors is one of the factors in our medical cost being so high, But when the medical community makes money its focus, thats goes with the territory!
Pubs=Psycho Talk
June 17th, 2009
9:57 am
Wooten fails to realize we cannot afford not to revise health care and take it out of the hands of the insurance companies. It is screwing patients and doctors alike, and in far too many instances killing people and causing them to become sicker. Many people cannot afford the essential medicines necessitated partly by their age and partly by their failure to reach preventive measures early on.
What I think about health care is that Jim Wooten knows little about it. Wooten has zero experience caring for patients, and being on call 24 to 72 hours at a time. Wooten has had health care paid for by his mommy and daddy or his surrogate mommy and daddy his employers, lately Cox News for all his life. This country ranks behind several 3rd world countries in efficacy, and I think a little more I’m familiar with the medical literature and what hospitals have to offer in several areas in this country and this state than Wooten.
The AMA while useful for learning mechanisms, is completely out of step with what needs doing now, and in fact, this morning 17% or 16.666666666666 to infinity of MDs in the US even belong to the AMA. Many do so for the search availability @ JAMA which aids research or just plain keeping up with its literature offered free for a limit of 6 mo.
If we cut the cost overruns in the defense budget, and the built in complete inefficiency, and the obsolete weapons that are still in the current defense budget like the F22 which has no place whatsoever in any current defense incursions on this planet, we can find the money to forge a much better health care system.
One of Obama’s targets for gaining money is to target hospitals, and when that includes teaching hospitals like Grady, it will wreak havoc. While overbilling for all matter of equipment used has been rampant in many hospitals and should be stopped and payment refused when they happen, hospitals across the board are taking a big hit from the failed economy thanks to Bush policy and policy stemming from Raegan, Gramm, Greenspan, and lately Paulson.
The insurance companies have controlled health care since Truman, and they have run it into the ground cost wise for the consumer just as the Credit Default Swap mavens ran the economy into the ground.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright
June 17th, 2009
10:01 am
O’bama jes don’t know when to stop and smell the…well, with Michelle you don’t wanna do a scratch n sniff.
It jes ain’t gonna be plesant.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright
June 17th, 2009
10:03 am
Every time I go to the grocery store they ax me if I’m gonna pay. Everytime. I wonder when those greedy grocery store managers are gonna be regulated likes they ought to.
How long will the man keep us down?
reservoirDAWG
June 17th, 2009
10:08 am
One Voice, good for you. You seem to think highly of yourself. I am doing fine as a business OWNER in the INSURANCE field. I may know a little more than you about the subject. You probably majored in a social science.
reservoirDAWG
June 17th, 2009
10:09 am
Oh yeah One Voice, are you trying to insult me? You are a grade A idiot.
Dusty
June 17th, 2009
10:15 am
The USA has the best healthcare system in the world. Now we are going to make it mediocre. Everybody will get sorry medical care.
Obama is going to cut out the “slack” and save millions. Oh yeah!! Like he’s done with the economy.
Unfortunately, you get what you pay for. We are heading for the fire sale on healthcare, the flea market of cheap. Better buy a home first aid kit ’cause you are going to need it.
Ben
June 17th, 2009
10:18 am
If Medicare is bankrupting us, why do you think more government health care is the answer? Make them prove they can get their existing systems to work before vastly expanding it. Or do we just ignore reality to live in Obama-fantasy land?
Also, health care is NOT a right. In order for something to be a right, it cannot force anyone else to give up their rights. A doctor has the right not to provide care, but if health care is a right, then doctors become slaves who, eventually, will go to jail or face some other punishment if they don’t give up a portion of their lives to provide care when they don’t want to, or are not being paid adequately for their services.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright
June 17th, 2009
10:21 am
I likes me some KC and the Sunshine Band, shake-shake-shake, shake-shake-shake, Shake your booty,…
Back at TUCC, they used to be a sayin’ that when Michelle hauled a$$, she had to make two trips…
Jes sayin’.