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All around the country, the people are coming out and saying YES to health reform in advance of the vote in the House expected this weekend.
In Nebraska, they’re out in force:
In Illinois, Representative Melissa Bean is getting the message outside her offices:
They’re getting it out in Grand Rapids, MI, too:
In Ohio outside Representative Mary Jo Kilroy’s offices, we’re getting the message out and outnumbering teabaggers:
In Pennsylvania in front of Representative Carney’s office, they’re getting out the message:
And in Erie, PA, Representative Dahlkemper is hearing it:
In Nevada, Congresswoman Titus is getting the message:
In California, Representative Costa is hearing it:
In Wisconsin, they’re getting out the message:
In Pottsville, Pennsylvania, they’re getting the message out in front of Representative Holden’s office:
In Iowa, Representative Boswell is hearing it:
And in Aliquippa, PA, Representative Altmire is hearing it:
And online, the people are calling their Representatives for Susan, who had to fight cancer and her insurance company because Blue Cross’s catastrophic coverage didn’t think cancer was catastrophic:
It’s come down to yes or no. The people say yes. Click here to call your Representative and say yes, too.
(also posted at the NOW! blog)
I’m proud to work for Health Care for America Now
133 Comments
This is the beginning. I hope it passes. But we will need to stay involved to get it right. Many on this site including its guru are being too politically correct. There are lots of good things in the bill and we can make it better but we need to start. Every other country that has universal coverage achieved it incrementally. All of the demonizing of Obama and the other progressives who support this is self defeating. I wanted a PO also but one thing I didn’t realize before was that Germany, The Netherlands, Japan and many others use a private system and regulate it. It works for them it can work for us. What doesn’t work is the system we have now.
Please provide the details of any legislation that has been “fixed” by subsequent legislation in the last 30 years.
Welfare. Patriot Act. SCHIP. Just off the top of my head.
In the last 30 years? C’mon Jason, you know better than that.
How was the Patriot Act “fixed?” How was welfare “fixed?”
Without doing some research, I’ll concede that SCHIP might have been made better.
But that still leaves a whole lot of crappy legislation over the last 30 years where we were “promised” that fixes would come soonest (and we’re still waiting) Think Medicare Part D, think No Child Left Behind. Think NAFTA. Where are all those fixes where the folks in Congress know it’s a piece of crap yet do nothing?
Clinton’s welfare reform is pretty universally considered a success. Obama let a ton of the Patriot Act expire, making his revisions a definite improvement, if not the full repeal I would have liked.
Now, there’s certainly no guarantee health reform will in fact be fixed, or be fixed in the right way. But there’s no guarantee it won’t be fixed either. Like everything else, it’ll be a fight, and one that I think we can win if we decide to engage.
So how is that welfare reform of Clinton’s looking in today’s world where the folks who were kicked off welfare due to the lifetime caps and are now unemployed supposed to get by?
Or is it declared a success because the folks affected are poor and out of sight making them so many more victims of the wonderful economic policies of the last 10 years?
As long as the Patriot Act is in place allowing warrentless wire-tapping and such, it is not fixed by any stretch.
So I’m guessing we’re going to be agreeing to disagree on how efficacious the bill will be and how “improved” it will be.
My bet is not very improved or effective either one.
Welfare was fixed if your politics line up with Newt Gingrinch or Ronald Reagan. I am not sure how limiting welfare made it better if you are progressive.
I won’t even get in to all the bad fixes the Patriot Act has taken on. I guess if you like the secretary of defense being the absolute athourity on civil liberties, then yes I guess it is fixed.
So by saying this bill saves lives makes passing this crappy health insurance bill ok?
I love the arguement that the votes aren’t there for single payer so we should just accept this crappy bill. In my opinion it’s those people that are our biggest obstacle to getting real health reform. Why would anybody take them seriously?
Note: So, Jason, how many of those people holding signs and “making their views known”…have actually READ the bill? Especially the one that’s emerging from reconciliation (which is changing by the hour)? Truly…how many of them have seen the exact language?
My guess is: They’re going on talking points they’ve been given…nothing more.
Additionally:
1. What EXACT PARTS of the Patriot Act did Obama allow to “expire”? Please be specific.
2. And as for Obama and company’s latest Bush-isms:
a. Their threat to veto Intelligence Committee Oversight legislation (translate: same stand as Bush)
b. Rendition and “secret questioning” of prisoners in countries that torture (translate: same as Bush)
c. Veto of further investigation of the Ivins anthrax case because it” would undermine public confidence” in an FBI probe of the attacks “and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions”; (sounds like Bush to me)
d. Treasury’s stonewalling of Elizabeth Warren’s oversight of TARP…for example, counterparties’ payments of 100 cents on the dollar to Goldman, etc. via AIG bailout:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz7ruJw6byQ
e. I could keep going until the end of the alphabet: backroom deal with hospital industry that guaranteed no public option even though Mr. Obama promised all negotiations would be covered via CSPAN (I can find several campaign quotes for you if you don’t believe me), backroom deal with Pharma guaranteeing no drug importation, closing Gitmo, bringing troops home, domestic spying…
See, Jason, here’s the problem: There have been so many lies, so many promises not kept, so many sleight-of-hand moves by this administration…that, quite honestly, I don’t believe a word he or Gibbs or Rahm spin. Ditto Pelosi, Reid and company.
P.S. I voted for him.
I wish you well.
http://www.mainjustice.com/2010/02/27/obama-signs-patriot-act-reauthorization/
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sunsetting-provisions-patriot-act-revives-privacy-debate/story?id=9173895
Jason, the links you left for me “proving” that Obama let provisions of the Patriot Act expire…wow. JUST THE OPPOSITE.
From Link One:
“President Barack Obama on Saturday signed into law legislation that would temporarily extend three controversial provisions of the Patriot Act that had been set to expire.”
From Link Two:
“With full support from the Obama administration, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill last month reauthorizing the law that has in recent years sparked much controversy over rights to privacy…”
And it was House Dems, not Obama, who attempted to try and reign in some of the sweeping invasions of privacy from that Patriot Act, over the objections of the White House:
“In renewing only two of the three sunsetting provisions, the House version has defied the White House, [which was] quietly pushing Congress to totally renew its predecessor’s law.”
Respectfully: I have no idea how you came up with the idea you did. None. Baffled.
P.S. Actually, they’re excellent links to stories that document…Obama’s lock-step similarity…to Bush. Probably not what you wanted to offer.
Take care.
In the end, some provisions expired and some were extended.
Jason here showing us the good D Party/Obama WH propaganda carrier he is.
Some D Party hack job may well come your way Jason if you keep this up. Just think–working in Mr. Yes I Can Tell Lie’s WH–wow–maybe just down the hall from Rahm’s office–wow Jason–awesome.
Hey folks — Jason Rosenbaum is a real D Party Team Player. Ain’t that swell? And guess what? Things can always get fixed later. Just fall in line like Jason Rosenbaum. Come on guys! Join the Team. Be a Team Player. Oh and nevermind what Mr. I Can Tell Lies said during 2008. He is making AHIP and PhRMA happy now. Good enough for Jason. Jason is a Team Player.
It is because of lackeys like Jason here that Mr. I Can Tell Lies can shank single payer and any PO ideas good and deep. Able to get away with this woefully over rated POS AHIP/PhRMA approved Brand Obama HCR.
This “we can fix it later” line is really rich. What happened Jason? Not enough D Party in Congress and the WH to do a decent basic single payer or truly good PO with this HCR? Who is running the Congress and the WH Jason? McConnell,Boehner and Karl Rove? Clue up Jason. Fix it later?
Why not just do it right now? What? AHIP and PhRMA wouldn’t like it?
It is because of political simpletons like Jason here that we end up with a D Party run Congress and WH that is giving us what AHIP/PhRMA want. Not what we want. And then Jason Rosenbaum comes along here to FDL to tell us this Obama HCR sell out is great and grab some pom poms. Sheesh.
Mr. I Can Tell Lie’s — our changey hopey POTUS who is BFF with AHIP and PhRMA so much he is just giving them what they want while screwing a good many Americans who actually voted for his Yes We Can BS.
Of course if G.W.Bush had tried shoving this AHIP/PhRMA “fix” on us Jason Rosenbaum would have been all over that terrible,awful idea. The photos that Jason carefully preselected above to push his propaganda would have been differently done then. Hate that Bush. Love that Obama. But same idea Jason. Consistent much Jason? Lame Jason Rosenbaum. Wannabee D Party guy.
I couldn’t agree more. Health care will always be a fight, and it’ll be a fight to make this bill better and even make sure it’s implemented in the right way. But it’s a fight that’s good for us to have.
Is that like our 8 year fight to stop the Iraq war? How many more die without health care while out elected officials sell out to corporations? Over a million have died in Iraq. 180,000 more americans die before this bill takes effect. Excuse me, but we could have done much better than this in the country that I grew up in which used to be great and is now made up of cowards not willing to fight for anything worth fighting for, only for mass murdering innocent people.
Huh? The reform bill is implemented too slowly, I agree. But it’ll save way more lives than the other option, which is no reform.
How many lives will it save? Be specific.
How much corporate welfare, and de facto fascism, is worth one life saved? Be specific.
If one could prove that castrating every born male reduced aggression and saved lives, would that be a good policy? Better than nothing?
Right, so quantification is important. Here’s my back of the envelope calculations.
Simply not having insurance costs us 45,000 lives per year. There are about 45 million uninsured, so that’s a .1% mortality rate. The bill in front of us will insure 32 million people who don’t have insurance now, so simply by the fact that they will have insurance, the bill will save 32,000 lives per year.
Now, it’ll actually save more than that, but it’s much harder to quantify. There’s a certain number of people who are insured today but lose their lives anyway because their insurance is crappy. The bill caps out of pocket costs, does away with annual and lifetime benefit caps, forces insurers to offer a standard benefit package with free primary care instead of junk insurance, will be subject to reviews on rates and practices to continue to offer insurance to individuals, can no longer deny care based on pre-existing conditions or charge more for sick people, and mandates they spend 85% of premium dollars on care instead of the average 80% or so they do now. All that will save a lot of lives, though it’s really hard to say how many.
Now, on the downside, the bill will give private insurance about 16 million new customers. (CBO says Exchanges will have 24 million people in them, and also says employer and individual market will lose 9 million, so 24-9 is 16 million that are new customers.) That’s about an 8% increase in both membership and revenue for the insurance companies.
So if you want to be rough about it, that’s your equation:
32,000 lives per year + a whole lot more because insurance gets way better vs. 8% increase in revenues/customers for private companies
How exactly do you derive a 1000:1 rate besides making the vast assumption that the basic benefits package covers the things that those 32,000 people die of? What kills them? Is it covered, how much? Can they afford what isn’t covered?
Additionally, how much corporate welfare, and de facto fascism, is worth one life saved? Be specific.
If one could prove that castrating every born male reduced aggression and saved lives, would that be a good policy? Better than nothing?
That’s the conclusion of the Harvard study. Insurance in America isn’t so hot today, but the Harvard study said 45,000 die every year because they don’t even have insurance under the crappy system we have today. The only thing I’m extrapolating is the mortality rate, really, but it’s the best number I’ve been able to find. If you’ve got better, let me know.
As for how much corporate welfare is worth it, that’s a choice everyone has to make for themselves, I guess. For me, the very real benefits outweigh the very real downsides in this specific case.
They’re not dying because of lack of insurance, they’re dying because they have some ailment that necessitates medical attention that insurance would assist with.
What you haven’t proven is that the standard benefits package defined in this bill is sufficient insurance to deal with the ailments that are killing those people. To make the point, relative to the Harvard Study on the blanket claim of purely lack of insurance, if those people were all provided with insurance that had a $1 Million deductible, and covered only hospital bed linens, would you be able to sufficiently impact that 45,000 per year number?
Clearly there are degrees of underinsurance that are in context, despite being claimed as irrelevant by people oft citing the Harvard Study as only pertaining to the uninsured.
I’m not saying that the 45,000 number isn’t the best number you can find, I’m saying that you don’t apply a linear analysis to the extrapolation based on no sample data, and conclude that a 0.1% correlation is even remotely reasonable. It’s just bad mathematics. So, while I see how you arrived at your number, I also see that the procedure for doing so is completely meaningless.
So, how many people will this save? Be specific. It’s okay to say you don’t know, don’t have the necessary math background, or the requisite sample data to actually answer the question. It’s just that you should stop asserting that it will save a bunch of lives each year, because you have no empirical basis for that claim.
Do you even know what’s covered by the standard benefit package? Go look it up, it’s actually a really nice package, with a lot of federal oversight.
As for the number, I’ll admit it’s a rough calculation. Health is complicated and hard to quantify. But in a rough and conceptual way, I’d say the calculation is pretty accurate, and I have yet to read anything that says it’s not.
As for underinsurance, plenty more die of that, probably more than because of uninsurance just because so many more are insured than uninsured. I wouldn’t be surprised to find the bill saves way more lives because it makes great strides at solving undersinsurance than it does because of the strides it makes in uninsurance.
A really nice package? It contains a suggestion to limit cost-sharing to the use of co-pays rather than co-insurance, and contains no limits with exception that overall benefits fit a rubric of 70% actuarial coverage. The only thing that’s nice about it is that there’s no cost-sharing allowed on “Preventive services,” excepting that there’s no definition of what those are, other than that they’ll be selected by a special task force. Meaning? Huge pile of question marks.
That doesn’t mean that you’ll end up with a 70/30 cost-sharing plan. It just means that the plans covering a given pool must attempt to be designed to cover 70% of the actuarial cost of whole risk-pool. Depending on the make-up of the pool, that can still mean that if you get a chronic illness, you can still be screwed with a 20/80 plan, so long as the rest of the pool balances the actuarial value out to 70/30 coverage. There’s a whole lot of data and number crunching required to make any sense out of remotely how useful that provision will be, and there’s a 10% variance allowance, and considering this hits margins directly, we ought to assume we’re really talking about 60%; not 70%.
I’ve long been completely unable to find any real rate-increase regulation authority, excepting for the restriction on grandfathering in existing policies forward into the new regulatory framework, and in doing so the increase in the old plan price can be limited by the Commissioner (appointed by the President, I can’t wait until we get the Timothy Geithner of healthcare).
Oh, and there are no price controls on how much the standard (essential) benefits plan will cost out of the gate. We have literally no idea where the mark is going to be set by the market on where to start the bidding. All we know is that the most expensive essential benefits offering can’t be more than 3x as expensive the cheapest within the same corporation’s offerings; discriminating on age.
No, you’re missing a lot of what’s in the package. Keep looking!
As for rate authority, it’s in there too. You’ll find it!
(Hint: it’s not in the changes to the bill, it’s in the original Senate bill)
I’m not reading just the changes, I’m reading over the full text of the reconciliation bill. The essential benefits schedule is not robust in definition, details, nor difficult to locate. What’s hard to find is on-going rate increase regulation authority, outside of grandfathered plans.
There are scads of nullifying clauses to assertions of defined reforms as well. The 10% variance allowance on what first looks like a hard rule of 70% actuarial value is among the most obvious. Others are less literal, and show up as competing mechanisms.
Thank you for arguing the details for those of us who don’t have time to do our own research today. Jason is welcome to own this bill and take credit for every bit of the good it does.
Hey buddy, I hope HCAN pays well because you continue to get your ass kick here, even though you’r the editor of the space. Carrying water for an unpopular bill must be a burden.
I don’t feel terribly burdened by standing up for what I believe in. This bill’s good sides outweigh its downsides in my opinion. But thanks for checking in.
I gave a link to the PDF of the legislation, and apparently I’m completely blind, because I can’t find any ongoing rate-increase regulation authority… I’ll take a page # of where that’s located.
Sec. 10104. Amendments to Subtitle D.
It is?
I took a glance through and that’s mostly stuff about abortion coverage, multi-state plans and co-ops.
Could you give me a page number? Searching this enormous PDF is a pain.
I’m assuming you’re talking about “Subtitle D—Additional Consumer Protections” ? I can’t even find a Sec. 10104. Searching for “10104″ returns no results.
The above contains no expressed authority for rate-increase regulation.
Literally the only rate-increase restrictions I can find are in Sec. 102:
Start here and work down, makes navigating the bill easier:
http://dpc.senate.gov/healthreformbill/healthbill49.pdf
I see why I missed it now.
That section of the bill requires that insurance companies seeking certification submit certain information to the government and to the people who would buy the plans. Cost-sharing, enrollment, etc.
It doesn’t actually say that they have to consider premium cost for qualification for the Exchange, or rate increases, or anything else. Just that the information has to be given to them. So it’s entirely up to the discretion of the Exchange, Secretary and States whether to *do* anything with that information.
How does that help when the insurers are allowed, since they have the anti-trust exemption, to work together, to raise prices as a group, so that there is no option but to accept them?
Basically we keep coming back to the fact that, without a public fallback plan, there is no way to contain the private insurers. They can skim and hike and scam, and as long as the government is required to take at least some of their offers, which it is, since it can’t provide the insurance itself, we’re hosed.
It says that the states and HHS are required to use the information, rate increases specifically. It was part of the amendments to the original Senate bill.
It says they ‘shall’ take the rate increases into consideration.
What does that even mean?
If insurers all raise their rates, every year, what good does it do to ‘consider’ them?
Are you seriously telling me you expect the Secretary to de-certify them all?
It’s legislative language. It means they must take it into account by law.
And, BTW, I’m not arguing on the anti-trust issue, it’s a problem.
It’s a killer. We spend 17% of GDP on health care, and as Jane’s fact sheet notes, under this bill, that will still soar up to 20%.
We cannot survive that, as a nation. We’re already cutting everything else to pay Wellpoint’s bills. We don’t have money for roads, schools, drinkable water or new power plants so we can breathe the air.
Costs will not go down under this bill. They just go up slightly more slowly. The sheer mind-numbing cost is breaking our backs today.
Morally and legally, I consider this bill reprehensible, for the steps it takes on the road to fascism, for the blow it deals to women, for the way it legitimizes an industry that in any sane world would be a crime rather than a profitable enterprise.
But purely pragmatically, I look at that 20% of GDP figure and I feel sick. OECD average is what, like 10% today? Even assuming it grows dramatically… What kind of competitive disadvantage does it put us at when we’re spending 20 cents of every dollar on health coverage? And for what? So that everyone has access to 60% junk insurance? So that we have a patchwork system? So that we’re still the only country in the developed world with medical bankruptcies?
See, I think that’s fair. Folks can be against the bill, I’m not saying being against it is an illegitimate view by any respect. Just trying to keep folks honest as to what this bill does and does not do, and the amounts in which it does and does not do them. Then folks can make up their mind.
Funny, I feel the same way about people supporting the bill.
I had a discussion with a CJUS prof about the death penalty way back in my undergrad days. He was a Texas judge before he semi-retired into Academia, so he’d had some experience with the legal profession in our most gung-ho, hang em high state, though I don’t know that he ever sentenced anyone to death, I think he was mostly on civil matters or something. What I’m getting at is, in the CJUS Ethics class I took from him, he said that, given the research, there are two internally consistent positions on the death penalty. You can be opposed to it, or you can be in favor, knowing that, on average, about 10% of the people you execute are innocent. He had a friend, also in law in Texas, who held that second position. The point is not to self-delude.
So I can respect people who say that they’re for the bill for the Medicaid expansion, or for the subsidies up to 200%, or for getting rid of the Medicaid Advantage waste even. What turns my crank, so to speak, is when someone like Kucinich comes out and says that this in any way helps us to single payer. Or when people say that it will lower costs dramatically, or that it covers everyone, or that the subsidies pay for everyone’s premiums so there’s no reason to complain about them. You’ve never done that; I have seen people who do, however, even here on FDL.
Yeah, there are very little totalities in the bill, that’s for sure.
What I’d like to see is html where when a bill is amended, you can just click a link to go back to the original language it supplants. Perhaps apply a strike tag to removed language too, while they’re at it. The language needs to still be there so you can see how it changed over time, but this scrolling back and forth between a few paragraphs in 2500 pages is madness squared.
can you copy the text and paste it into a word processor?
Probably, with some pdf readers. What I’d be worried about is getting the formatting messed up, which can matter a lot with this sort of thing.
I’m going to play around with pdf to html converters this weekend, that’s for sure. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of them simply choke on a 2500 page pdf.
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/access_onlinetools.html
You might also try emailing it to yourself at a Gmail account, and then using Google’s PDF viewer inside Gmail to view it. That ought to vastly improve searching.
Preview.app on Mac OS X 10.6 does a pretty good job of not choking on it. I just don’t like how its search field deals with parsing terms.
Heh, how nice of them to convert it online. As opposed to building it into their software. I wonder why, if they’re willing to do conversion, they don’t just, you know, do it.
*shrug*
I need a better pdf reader too, but thanks for the tip. Hopefully I can find something that does it all around better.
Check out sunlight foundation, too, they do a lot of work pushing government to do things like that.
I saw their thing on the health care summit, where they listed each politician’s campaign donors while they spoke. That was pure genius.
I’m looking at the standard benefits package. I did that a while ago when I decided to oppose this bill in the first place, and.. I have no idea where you get the notion that this is specific.
What it does is name a few broad, very very broad, categories that have to have benefits ‘covered’. But it then gives the Secretary the total authority to define what that actually means, after being ‘informed’ by a survey that will be later conducted of employer provided health plans. So you have to *say* you cover, say, hospitalization. But the bill in no way specifies what that means. What your copays are, how many hospitals, what services it covers in the hospital, etc. All of that will be determined later through this process. It could turn out good or bad; that all depends on the survey results and the implementation.
The person who does oversight on these benefit determinations? Who makes sure that a good job was done designing these packages?
It’s the Secretary. They have oversight over themselves. I’m sure that will work out great.
This. ++
Jason, I don’t doubt the sincerity of your belief that the things you think are in this bill are in fact in there. What I’m finding more and more that I doubt is your ability to thoroughly dismantle a legislative proposal, think like the adverse party (the insurance company), and look for nullifying clauses that undo what supposedly has just been done.
Which is precisely the strategy one should employ. When I read legislation I do so starting from the hypothesis that the entire bill is an elaborate smokescreen to screw me, and I test that hypothesis as I go. I look for the most negative possible interpretation of everything and try to imagine how it could possibly be used to my detriment.
In the case of the Senate health bill, every time I read it mental klaxons go off and red lights flash behind my eyes. There are so many loopholes that could be used to abuse us, it’s not even funny. It’s just sad.
No, that’s not how it works. The bill names the already existing authorities that have jurisdiction over the standard benefits, and those authorities already have their recommendations.
Huh? The Preventive services task force already exists, and already produced its report of what will be included in preventive services that are barred from cost-sharring arrangements?
Can you link me to this report?
More information coming soon on this, check the front page soon. I misspoke in some of my comments about specific authorities, they aren’t named, but they still need to be consulted and the process must be “public and accountable to Congress” as well as providing benefits on par with large-group coverage. And HHS specifically can’t make coverage decisions, only your doctor can, so everything is “covered” basically.
I have a great insurance plan and they still get to decide what’s covered and what’s not. Drugs, procedures, doctors and hospitals, etc.
The bill could have specified in much greater detail required services, like it does for Emergency care. It does not. The reason why is fairly obvious, given that a Wellpoint crony designed the thing.
We already know that the insurance companies are setting up the means of gaming the 85% medical-loss mandate, so I don’t really see how that’s a benefit. They’ll just use SPV’s, shifting definitions of the term, regulatory capture, and accounting sleight-of-hand. They have whole litigation teams, departments of executives and functionaries whose entire jobs are to cleverly game precisely these kinds of “restrictions.”
The national rate regulator is out. I had no faith in its efficacy to begin with, but it’s out, so it doesn’t matter.
They can also charge more for sick people, by just shifting the entire price structure upward. Their only limits are on the delta between the lowest rate and the highest rate. There’s no cap on how high it can go. Taking an already extremely inelastic demand market, and putting the force of government mandate on it, didn’t shift the playing field in favor of the consumer.
See, I bet you didn’t know rate review was built in at the national level in the original Senate bill, did you? Not as strong as the independent rate reviewer, I’ll agree, but a federal authority indeed.
Yes I did know that, I also knew about the essential benefits package, the lifetime and annual limits, and actuarial value mandates.
I’ve been reading the changes in H.R. 4872 most of the day. At least the version that was stamped as being from Mar. 17th 2010.
good thing someone here is.
thank you nathan.
Just to add to this, here’s some info on the study:
http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/medicine-health/articles/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-lack-health-coverage
They’ve accounted for factors like income, which correlates with quality of health care pretty highly. Which means even having crappy health care is enough to save your life if you’re one of those 45,000 who were identified in this study.
Other research backs this up. Having insurance, any insurance, means you’re more likely to not see a doctor, not go to the hospital, etc…
Not to say that underinsurance isn’t a problem, it is, one that the bill really makes strides at solving, too.
the harvard study you keep referring to was written by woolhandler and himmelstein. are you going to also include in your comments their analysis of the health insurance reform you are selling? that probably counts as facts too.
Go for it, link it up!
Based on the comments in this thread one could conclude that people think you wrote the hairball!
your post. your assertions. and your selective use of facts.
that makes the responsibility to provide supporting links your responsibility.
i’ve asked you for the links you say exist but so far refuse to provide.
this is my fourth request for links to back up your assertion (the first was @27, second @33 and third @52 in case you need help remembering).
And he never responded to my query @ 49.
I’d have to take issue with any number of parts of this particular comment.
For one thing, you’re assuming that nobody’s insurance gets worse. As you yourself note, a lot of people will LOSE the insurance they have now and be forced onto the Exchange. With its 60% actuarial value plans, they’re probably going to get worse care. So their mortality rate goes up, not down.
Secondly, insurance in general is going to get worse as the Excise tax takes effect. Plans will be slashed back and care cut to bring down premium costs. Mortality goes up.
Third, your analysis of the benefits to insurance companies is awful. Even if it was only an 8% increase in revenue, it’s a complete guarantee of future profits, because the Government is mandated by law to pay no matter what, much like a bond. This turns an uncertain but profitable market into a certain profitable market. That’s much more desirable to investors for obvious reasons. Effectively this removes a ton of risk from the health insurance business.
Fourth is the governmental/civil liberties aspect brought up by some commentors. As Jane noted, being compelled to purchase the product of a private oligarchy is a dangerous component of corporatism/fascism. If this bill passes it provides a framework for any future large industry to buy legislation guaranteeing them perpetual profitability.
The value of insurance in the individual market is, on average, much worse than the actuarial value in the Exchange. Plus you have all the regulations. People in the Exchange will be getting much better insurance.
Excise tax is stupid, and will likely cause some mortality, but it’s a different group we’re talking about. Excise tax really only affects employer plans, not the uninsured or the Exchange. So my calculations as a baseline still stand.
Kind of, it also allows government to control how insurance companies make profits. But yes, in general, this is a problem, and one day it will have to be fixed in some way, good or bad. It’ll be a fight to make the fix the right way.
Anyway, given that you’re admitting to reading the bill looking for flaws, it’s inevitable you’ll find them. The people that I talk to, as well as my own analysis, says this bill is some good and some bad. It’s up to folks to make their choice as to whether it’s more bad then good.
Here’s the problem Jason. The people who are being “regulated” by this bill are reading this thing for any tenuous loophole to exploit the shit out of, and there are mountains of them.
Your advocacy of this bill, considering these massive flaws in the construction of what little prima facia benefits do exist, is tantamount to relying on corporate benevolence to follow the spirit of the law, and not the letter, or lack of letter as the case may be.
That is patently asinine; as in literally retarded. You’re placing all your trust in political appointees being apolitical, and the ineptitude of corporate counsel. Considering that corporate lawyers aren’t inept, and that political appointees aren’t apolitical; in what possible world is that going to result in positive outcomes for the public-trust?
I get it, but it’s not a really good objection. The bill has the force of HHS, DOJ, and other agencies behind it, not to mention state enforcement. But nothing I or anyone can say can sway you because your argument comes down to why would anyone follow the law?
Good question. That murder law sure won’t work, people are going to shoot everyone anyway. It’s useless, let’s not pass it.
Extreme example, I’ll admit, and I’m not denying that competition with a public entity is a better way to go, but to say they simply won’t follow the law isn’t much of a rebuttal.
No, I’m saying these people will not follow the law, and I’m saying that there’s no real enforcement if they do, because if there was any will to actually disrupt the business model of private insurance companies, this entire bill wouldn’t look anything like it does today.
I have almost no faith in the government to enforce laws regulating industries that they’re so close to. AIG, Goldman, Citi, Blackwater, Raytheon, Monsanto, etc. I have zero faith in government finding any teeth in the “regulation” they’re putting out there, especially so when huge swaths of it were f’ing written by the very entities who would be regulated.
What you’re telling me is that AHIP wrote a bill that will do material damage to its entire institutional framework, and undermine its long-term profit position? Out of what? The kindness of its heart?
They have no incentive to follow the law here, and all manner of mechanisms to outright avoid it by legally circumventing it.
Ahh, now you’re in my area of expertise. My degree is in CJUS/POLS.
So, on the issue of deterrence: laws against murder do not deter murder. You’re absolutely correct. That has no bearing on their utility, though; laws against murder are primarily useful for public safety, in that they allow us to segregate murderers away from the general population. Even this is of limited utility, as most murderers aren’t prone to repeat offenses. Your average murder is a crime of passion.
Insurance industry behavior, on the other hand, is calculated behavior. Rational. Carefully considered and premeditated. Although in general deterrence doesn’t work in the law, against this sort of behavior it stands the best chance. The trick is to make the certainty that they will receive negative sanctions, ie costs or imprisonment, high enough, and severe enough, that it outweighs the immediate benefits. For that, you need a clear, unambiguous authority that regularly exercises its power and instills a certain level of fear.
Your laundry list of agencies actually works against deterrence. It adds to uncertainty, both of the severity of punishment and of its nature, and makes the mental calculation of risk/reward harder. It also lengthens the time frame between the behavior you wish to deter and its consequence, which studies have shown countless times decreases the effectiveness of deterrence even further.
That’s right, but large publicly traded corporations are also inherently more conservative than, say, people or small business.
Well that certainly depends on your definition of ‘conservative’. I’d say they’re a lot like psychopaths, in that they’re confronted with an overwhelming need to achieve ever greater rewards (profit) in order to appease stockholders.
Plus, as Wendell Potter talked about with regard to medical loss ratios, if one company does something and it increases profit even slightly, the entire industry has to adopt the behavior or be severely punished at the stock market. So even if they trend conservative, they’re only as conservative as their most liberal, ie impulsive and daring, member. So any ‘innovation’ that screws customers and creates profit will spread like a cancer through the entire industry.
Good point on Wendell. He’s in support of passage.
You yourself said that some people will lose their employer coverage and go to the Exchange. Those people are the ones I was referring to; without a doubt, their coverage on the Exchange will be worse. 60% actuarial value is pure junk insurance.
Secondly, how will the government regulate their profits, exactly? The anti-trust exemption remains in place. All the insurance companies have to do is stick together and they set the terms, not the government, since there is no public alternative. Under this bill, they can charge whatever they want, because the threat to boot them off the Exchange is entirely idle.
The Excise tax is *not* a separate issue to mrotality, because it’s part of the reason employers will drop coverage or shift people to lousier plans. Lousier plan = higher mortality. Ending up on the Exchange = higher mortality.
So to review: under this bill, people with good coverage will lose it and die faster, while insurance companies maintain their oligarchy and anti-trust exemption, meaning that the Exchange has about as much authority over their prices as I do.
CBO puts that number at 4 million. They’ll mostly be folks who take the free choice vouchers Wyden put in the Senate bill and choose to take the Exchange over their employer health care.
As for Exchange authority, the states and HHS have specific instructions in the law to evaluate insurers in the Exchange every year and modify or deny rate increases, or kick them out of the Exchange, if they want to. If the states don’t do their job, HHS gets to step in and take over. That’s a lot more power than you have, unless you run the Exchange in Massachusetts or something.
Who defines ‘doing their job’? If the state simply approves every rate increase, is that doing their job, or not?
There’s a lot of ‘if they want to’ in your answers. If they wanted to, states could have passed laws to do this already. If they had the will, they’d have done so already.
This is why a good national rate review board was so essential. There is no way states can stand up to the insurance lobbies and their money. How do we know this? Because they’ve already tried and failed.
Oh, no…..I don’t think so, Jason Rosenbaum. Sorry. As I pointed out on another post here on this thread, this healthcare “reform” bill will do nothing what. so. ever to rein in healthcare costs, let alone improve healthcare or save lives. People will continue to pay exhorbitant co-payments, premiums and deductibles, etc, and costs will escalate so sharply that many people, forced to buy healthcare insurance that they can’t afford, will refuse to use it, do to expenses, and will die anyway. What happened here in the Bay State, with the recent election of Scott Brown to take the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s seat should be a lesson to everybody, but it obviously won’t be. Scott Brown rode on the coattails of anger and frustration over this bill, and, that, combined with Martha Coakley’s poorly-run campaign, not to mention her own arrogance and laziness, got Scott Brown elected here in the Bay State by a huge landslide.
See the calculations above. You got numbers to back up your assertions?
Listen, Jason Rosenbaum! I don’t have to answer to you or anybody else on here. I’ve done enough research to realize that this bill is going to be a disaster, and, unlike you, I don’t need numbers, etc., to back me the hell up. I’m smart enough to know which way the wind’s blowing, and it’s not good. Thanks.
tell me that when you see the lives it saves. Give me a break, there is nothing in this bill that forces insurance companies to provide health care for americans. $100.00 fine for not covering people. really? you think that is going to do it.
Was the country you grew up in the one where in Trenton NJ of those entering 8th grade only 25% will graduate H.S. Was the country you grew up in the one that continues to oppress Native Americans making them by far the poorest people here. Was it the one that had assassination squads in Central American killing activists? Was it the one that just this year decided to give Black farmers the subsidies that were denied for that last 50 years?
By staying involved do you mean supporting more corporate democrats and do you think when we are all forced to fund the insurance industry, they will stop taking that money and buying our so called representatives? I am curious how do you suppose it will be fixed in the future? If when we have the WH, congress, and the senate in democratic hands and they have universal health care in their platform and they can’t do it right now, what makes you think it will ever get done? I would really like an answer to that. Those of us who were right about the Iraq war before it started are right about this also. Once the war started everybody was on board, but that didn’t mean it was a good thing. Has no child left behind been improved? Or have our schools and education gotten worse? Has anything in the country improved? Other than the stock market for the insurance and phara industries, and the military industrial complex?
Corporate money is the center of power in this country – you are right – it is the reason we don’t have universal coverage. This country has been involved in immoral wars at home and abroad for as long as I have been alive. Since Reagan the right and the corporate interests have been gaining power. We need to work within a f***** up system – that is are only choice – from where I stand. Political progress is the art of the possible not the ideal. Think of what it was like of blacks in this country before and even after civil rights – for some the answer was the Black Panthers – what did the Black Panthers accomplish? Nothing! What did the pragmatists like King accomplish? Plenty! Many radicals in the 60′s thought of King as an uncle Tom and demonized him. They were wrong. There are many disappointments on the road to freedom – it is not a road for those easily turned around. Jefferson said “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance”. We must continue to fight because that is the only choice.
i did not say anything about stopping the fight. What I have a problem with, is people giving up and saying lets just settle for something, just to get anything. It is like the democrats keep saying lets just endorse someone electable and forget about “lets endorse people because they are great.” Obviously if we have been at war for your whole life, you are younger than I and maybe that is the problem. Maybe your generation has grown up not expecting much from our country. I guess I can count myself lucky, I have lived in a time when people in this country cared about each other, cared about life and it wasn’t always just about winning at any cost or any loss.
The Reverend Martin Luther King was a pragmatist? I guess that makes Gandhi a pragmatist. And Jesus. This puts Obama and moonwood in good company.
I remember a story about a street crossing in Oakland where students from a nearby school were being regularly run over by cars. People from the neighborhood had unsuccessfully petitioned the city for a stop and go light in front of the school. The Black Panthers solved the problem by standing in the street and directing traffic themselves. That’s pragmatism.
I know you are excited, but it’s “some people” not “the people”. there’s a difference.
Those poor deluded people who don’t realize how much this version of the bill will harm them.
I will not call my members and tell them to vote yes, I have told all of them to vote no.
and you sir have not swayed me. I go on facts and numbers sir, not a bunch of people with signs, and I know just how bad this bill is.
My own opinion is enough for me, and I have the right to defend it agaisnt any number of “people”
You must have missed all my facts and numbers posts, then.
do you have a list of links to prove your point? if so, please let us have them so we can judge for ourselves.
Click my byline for my archives. Have fun!
i’ve read a lot of your posts, but don’t remember any “facts and numbers posts” that provided evidence of how good this bill is.
you can say you wrote them, you can even say they are in the archives, but unless you are willing to give links, you haven’t even started to made your case. just empty assertions.
links please.
I disagree with Jason on this issue. But I find him sincere and consistent. Sitting on your ass demanding links should be embarrassing to you. Dig up some links of your own and submit them to support your argument.
disagreement is not what i’m objecting to. people disagree about politics all the time and arguing about these issues is usually a learning experience for me. if i ever make a claim and then refuse to provide any evidence please give me hell for it.
it’s the ethic of the link that we provide evidence for the assertions we make — jason has also make the same demand/request of others.
as for sitting on my ass, instead of digging up some links. what argument are you suggesting that i should support? other than quoting scarecrow as an aside, i’ve been asking jason to provide evidence of his assertions. he gets paid for this — he can damn well provide evidence or expect people not to believe him. fwiw, i’ve watched him for about a year and a half participate in a misinformation campaign on the healthcare reform issue (although i’ve come to think it’s not about healthcare, i think it’s probably about supporting obama and the dems – but that’s just my speculation), even to the point of outright lying and i’ve had to learn there is no fracking way i should trust anything he writes if he refuses to back it up.
(and as for some evidence of my assertions, here’s one link for you – see my follow up comments @7 and @8. every once in a while i think i should write a diary on the issue of intellectual honesty vs lying, bullshit and propaganda — and what it does to poison democracy. but mostly i find the subject too depressing.)
wait ’til they get a load of the fancy new premiums.
I can’t believe how many people are being duped by their support of this trainwreck of a healthcare “reform” bill, nor can I or will I support this bill in good conscience. I’ll also add this; If so many people are gullible enough, or willfully ignorant enough to not only vote that slithering snake (yes, folks, that is what I really and truly do think of Obama and of Kucinich, too, for caving in) into office, but continue to give them unwavering “our guys can do no wrong” support, and find that they’ve been royally betrayed by them, they deserve what the f**k they get. The only trouble is, however, that I get it too.
I’m sorry, but Jason is away in an alternate universe. He’ll get back to you when he returns.
For every person standing for the pictures and saying “yes”, there are 3-4 not there saying “no” to mandated insurance so CEOs can up their take home pay and bonuses.
Not what the polls say, but alrighty.
You keep talking to your polls. I’ll keep talking to the people in town and at work.
Can we please quit the negativity, stop kvetching about what coulda or didn’t get done, and focus positive on what did….first big step towards systemic health care reform, what no Democratic President has been able to pull off in decades. Sunday’s the real hurdle. If successful, of course improvements will follow. Kuchinski’s not clinging to bitterness – fired up about working “with President” on making it even better.
Beating up Obama & getting out-of-hand – envision life today if deranged mavericky McCain/Palin duo were in power & be grateful!
Give couple of years before you bury the guy. We DON’T KNOW what strategy drove the accomodation with PHARMA & hospitals – he obviously had a reason..he wasn’t in bed with PHARMA before. You vote for a leader, you gotta trust, let them lead. He said he’d make mistakes, he has & will make more, he’s human BUT he has also made significant progress in short time, horrific economy, starting up to his neck in Bush s**t to fix with $455 billion deficit & $1.2 trillion of bush expense in his 2009 budget (which Republicans blame him for), facing the most perverse obstructionist Minority in history viciously focused on making him fail, blocking every move, bunch of Tea Party wingnuts & religious weirdos asking God to kill him & leave his kids fatherless!!
US will not pull through unless everyone pulls together..POTUS needs to know his people are supporting him, not sitting around second-guessing & demanding he fix 8 yrs diasaster in one – he’s not a f- – - – miracle worker or saint.
Not like he’s been sitting on his bum! :
•Within one year, pulled US economy out of nose dive, revived credit markets & nudged the economy towards growth of 2.2% in final quarter & 5.7% in 4th quarter
- Halted the devastating monthly job losses, from avge 700,000 monthly in 1st Qtr2009, to 35,000 in 1st Qtr2010
•Passed American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 in February – played a key role in turnaround of economy over the last 3 quarters http://www.recovery.org
oStopped decline & grew GDP – from a -6.4% drop in 1st Qtr 2009, to -0.7 rate in 2nd Qtr and +2.2% growth in 3rd Qtr
oFurther 2010 growth in GDP is estimated at 4.4% by year end
o$90 billion invested in clean energy economy of the future – jobs, lower dependence on foreign oil, enhance national security, clean environment
o$10.5 billion investment in modernization of national electric grid
o$18 billion for upgrades & modernization of public transport systems, including new high speed rail
o$23 billion investment incentives to small businesses
oOver $1billion in job training grants for jobs in new clean energy sectors
oTax credits to stimulate development of clean energy manufacturing – wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles, batteries, etc
o$1 billion investment in advancing use of cutting edge Health IT – By 2014, HIT made available to 100,000 hospitals & physicians, thousands trained for careers in HIT & health care
o$650 million for Communities Putting Prevention to Work, public health program to address obesity, increase physical activity, improve nutrition, and decrease smoking.
oSubsidized extended COBRA benefits for unemployed
•Passed the largest middle-class tax cut in history – $288 billion
•Saved, or created around 1,500,000 – 2,000,000 US jobs
•Cash for Clunkers Program:
o 690.114 new cars sold
o Dept of Transportation claims 52,000 jobs were saved
•Guided GM & Chrysler through bankruptcy
•Passed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009
•Passed the Human Rights Enforcement Act of 2009
•Passed the Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights Act of 2009
•Lifted travel and remittance restrictions for Cuban Americans so can travel home more frequently & send more US currency to their family.
•Diminished role of lobbyists in the White House
•Elicited meaningful statement from the United Nations criticizing North Korea’s launch of a ballistic missile.
•Forged new alliance with Russia
•Launched White House Food Safety Working Group – initiative to modernize the US food safety systems & better protect Americans http://www.foodsafetyworkinggroup.com
•Lived up to campaign promise & helped file the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2009,
o Close down foreign tax haven loopholes
o Repeal tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas & replace with incentives to create jobs in USA
o Cracking down on US citizens & companies using offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes – 22,000 entities identified – estimated $210 billion in back taxes & penalties to be collected over next 10 years
o UBS bank fined $780 million for offshore banking violations
•Cracked down on high level of financial losses from across-the-board fraud & abuse of Medicare (estimated $600 billion lost over last decade)
oJanuary 2010 National Summit on Health Care Fraud
oNew inter-agency Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (HEAT) introduced – http://www.stopmedicarefraud.gov
o5 new Strike Force Teams added in 5 new cities – 13 more to be added in 2011 (Strike Force teams have collected $250 million in restitutions, fines & penalties since 2008)
oExpanded Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control (HCFAC) Program – $13.1 billion has been returned to Medicare
o7 new Obama initiatives, starting in 2010/2011 will generate a further $15 billion in savings for Medicare over next 10 years
oLargest pharmaceutical fraud case awards Medicare $2.5 billion from Pfizer
•January 2010 launch of nation’s first Health Security Strategy – comprehensive strategy to protect Americans’ health during a national emergency
•Passed Ryan White CARE Act of 2009 – repealing HIV entry ban
•Approved California request to implement car emission standards for cleaner air & climate control – blocked for 6 years by Bush
•Supporting repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
•Passed a $17.6 billion jobs bill – 3.18.2010
•Taken on health insurance providers – House has passed bill to repeal anti-trust exemption
•Financial Reform Bill is underway
•Created Debt Reduction Commission of 12
•Is focusing on US public education wasteland – working on reform of No Child Left Behind & further strategies to revitalize neglected US public education system & promote importance of a well-educated, highly-skilled nation if US to compete in new global marketplace & rebuild lost industries
•Immigration reform is underway
•May be days away from passing historic health reform bill
Gibbs, is that you?
Really??!? Baloney, Truthfairy! I’m not buying it.
“he obviously had a reason..he wasn’t in bed with PHARMA before.” ; where have you been? The ‘deal’ was to keep campaign contributions flowing to Dems and not Repubs.
And just wait til those 55 but not 65 start realizing they’re paying 3 times the premiums of someone who is 40.
Can I have some of what your smoking?
Jason, if this bill is so good, wht won’t Pelosi et all, allow a vote on Graysons Medicare for all at the same time?
She should, it’s a good bill.
Michelle, Malia, and Natasha speak.
Ya, he’s done such a great job that his approval rating has broke the Presidential record at 120%. Bwahahahaha. Koolaid is soooooooo addictive.
I don’t believe the majority of folks on here is arguing that Obama has not been a force for good, especially as compared to McPalin. However they are clearly disappointed becuase where he stops off is where most of us believes he should have begun.
On the stimulus (Full disclosure I am a fan because its helping me grow my cleantech company) it was not large enough, too much of the funds is going to create jobs in China and minority owned businesses have been effectively shut out of the running for funds.
On health care, he has gutted or remove the very policy ideas that could make transformational changes and he did so via secretive deals that got leaked out. He has not explained why he sold the PO out to the private hospital lobby, yet continues to pretend to support it. Its this kind of cynicism the offends us. Ok you say he may have good reasons to sell out the most effective policy elements, let’s say we buy that, then why does he not explain his reasons and not pretend to support something he doesn’t? Hyprocrisy turns people off and they become jaded.
We believe he is doing the same thing on the Volcker Rule and the Consumer Protection Agency. These are simply set pieces intended to scare the opposition but will be ostensible gutted or removed at the end of the day. We are cynical because our leaders are cynics and hyprocrits.
You know, let me say this -
The bill is up for a look today. Two thousand plus pages of “legislative English.” And everyone’s going to have this read, understood and analyzed by Sunday? It’s a colossal hairball!
Really, Jason, what this bill does or doesn’t do, when is does or doesn’t do things, and how many “backdoors” are built in won’t be known for quite some time.
You think it’s pretty good. I hope you’re right. But as to knowing with any certainty what the hairball really hides? It’s in the air…
Jason,
You’ve got a hell of a lot of time and energy invested in this whole debate. Regardless of the postings you see, I don’t think there is anyone who doesn’t appreciate your dogged determination to push the facts out every day so that some understanding of all this would be possible.
Don’t always agree with your conclusions, but Man, thanks for the hard work and having the fortitude to defend what you think. Good on you.
respectfully. i disagree.
So you don’t respect my dogged determination? And here I thought we had something of a competitive friendship here on the blog. I’m hurt, selise, really I am!
i’d respect your dogged determination if it was indeed to provide facts — for example, the links i’ve requested (this is the third request) to back up your assertion up thread.
p.s. lives are at stake. that’s why this isn’t about a competition or any kind of game for me.
I do agree with you. I decided not to support the bill, but Jason’s stand is an informed one and though I disagree with it I respect it. Mandate without a public option, even a flimsy one, was something I told myself I would not accept and I can’t. This feels like one of those times where I have to make a stand. It’s a feeling, not a certainty, but a very strong one. I cannot, in good conscience, support this bill.
scarecrow: Enron’s Ghosts Capture Health Insurance Reform
The other bit we’re likely going to see a lot of is insurance companies laundering money through SPV’s to circumvent the 85% medical-loss requirement.
Absurd arrangements of separate entities for payables, receivables, and parent holdings companies that provide the necessary shelters to usurp the law.
We’re talking about the same class of people who deftly defy their responsibilities to pay their actual tax-burden by erecting convoluted edifices of income statements.
and successfully lobby to get the bill they want. as scarecrow says:
Since single-payer, PO and Medicare buy-in were “sold” a year ago, I’ve never really understood why the game couldn’t be restricted in the USA to not-for-profits or mutuals? If there aren’t enough interested players here, then bring them in from Switzerland, Germany or Norway. You know, Globalization and all that shit.
Full disclosure, please, Jason: you work for HCAN, right?
I fully expect the first Health Choices Commissioner to be Tom Daschle, or some other duly odious ass.
selise,
I support you in this. You work very hard on legislative issues and I think it is fair to ask such questions.
It is quite fair to still address what are very big financial concerns for the everyday person still contained in this bill. How can anyone write about “this is a start” and then stop there, knowing there are weaknesses in the bill. To continue language about what needs to be continued on the health care debate is vital. Otherwise, this bill is it and there will be some serious pain for mainstreet long term. Health care reform is not done with this bill. To not continue the discussion on improvement of health care reform legislation is harmful. The signs posted in the Pottsville picture actually have it correct. And the citizens in Pottsville, PA will not be getting what their signs are requesting through this health care legislation. Thus, the work is not even close to done. Pottsville signs do not say, “Yes.”
thanks klynn. i think it’s especially important when someone is getting paid to write in support of the changing positions of his organization that evidence be provided when requested for any assertions made (and in this case it ought to be extra easy if jason really did write the posts he claims @19).
“The People are saying YES!”
Just like they did to George W. Bush.
Like Lemmings off a cliff. Have a nice fall.
Hey does anyone have a link to the reconciliation bill? I’d like to get reading on it.
I’ve been going over the Senate bill a bit more this morning and it’s a pig’s breakfast. For example, the wonderful process that you have to go through to appeal a denied claim was designed by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. The same people who haven’t been doing their jobs at the state level to stop insurance companies from denying care until you die.
So in that respect this bill is exactly like financial reform. We’re taking the same people who can’t or won’t do the job and telling them to keep up the good work, much like putting the consumer financial protection body inside the Fed.
That’s one of the most salient issues. We’re all supposed to believe, in spite of massive evidence to the contrary, that the insurance companies will follow the law and that the regulators will keep them in line if they don’t. Bwaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahaha. It would be hilarious if we weren’t talking about life and death.
The thing is, the Senators clearly know these benefit packages are going to be insufficient. In the guaranteed benefits section they make sure to carve out a vastly more detailed description of emergency care coverage, including details on copyaments and network vs. out of network hospitals. They knew, or strongly suspected, that if these details weren’t nailed down they would be insuffient after the Secretary draws up the regs. They were afraid that people would be denied care and die bleeding on a floor somewhere.
So they don’t actually trust the Secretary and this ‘survey’ process to produce a good result. If the average employer provided coverage as determined by survey isn’t good enough for ER care, why is it good enough for anything else?
That struck me as well.
http://www.rules.house.gov/bills_details.aspx?NewsID=4606
There’s a link on that page to the mammoth PDF of the full-text of the bill.
Thank you good sir. I will get on reading that after I get back from taking the wife to lunch.
Oh, and also, Jason? Not only did Obama not ‘fix’ the Patriot Act, but his Justice Department officially opposes EVER fixing those provisions that have not been allowed to expire.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/09/obama-backs-expiring-patriot-act-spy-provisions/
It would have been nice if you had given us the details on who paid for the corporate looking signs
On another note entirely, why in the holy hell don’t they also release some of these super giant bills as html? PDF bloat becomes ridiculous when your document is a few hundred pages in size or more.
I have a Core 2 Duo laptop with 4 gigs of ram and a fast graphics card, and I still have to sit watching the damn search box in Adobe scroll through page numbers. Geebus.
opencongress.org has great bill text navigation tools, check it out. And yeah, totally agree.