[jeffkrol]

Kucinich: GOP push against healthcare law could revive single-payer push - The Hill's Blog Briefing Room

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) argued that Republican efforts to repeal the healthcare law could actually open the door for a single-payer system favored by liberals.

Appearing on Fox News on Friday, Kucinich fired back against charges that caps on how insurance companies spend their premium dollars would put jobs at risk on the brokerage side of the industry.

"The bottom line is: they're going to make whatever pleas they can to try to cut the limitations that are coming in place in this new bill," he said. "But the fact of the matter is, beyond all of this is that we really have to move someday towards a not-for-profit system where the insurance companies aren't dictating the kind of health care we're going to have in America."

Kucinich said that Republican efforts to starve the new healthcare law could inadvertently push the country toward a single-payer system.

Kucinich: GOP push against healthcare law could revive single-payer push - The Hill's Blog Briefing Room





To quickly sum up the 2 sides.......
GOP lawmaker likens healthcare repeal to the battle of Fallujah - The Hill's Blog Briefing Room

WOW, comparing healthcare to war, how low will they go? Why do repubs just not care when people die, either in war or because of lack of health insurance? Healthcare is a basic human right and EVERY major religion agrees. BY people will die on 01/01/2011 at 11:59
People will die… you are an imbecile. We TP Patriots will have none of this communists regimes actions stand and if we don't kill this monstrosity now… we will do so in 2012. Move to Cuba if you like their health care so much.BY Ken in Texas on 01/01/2011 at 12:11

[Wheatfield]

It's interesting how the Republicans seem to want to protect office jobs in the health insurance scheme but are willing to send manufacturing jobs to China at warp speed.

[Parallax]

It's interesting how the Republicans seem to want to protect office jobs in the health insurance scheme but are willing to send manufacturing jobs to China at warp speed.

No mystery there. Follow the [contribution] money.

[mikemike]

Kucinich is a dead man walking... his district is history.

Looking into my crystal ball I see a repeal of the individual mandate through the courts and congress being unable to lift a finger to fix it anyway which will lead to an even more dysfunctional system.

My advice to anyone worried about HCR is to lose 10-15 lbs because it is going to get worse before it gets better so you want to be healthy for the next 5 years.

[Tom S.]

No mystery there. Follow the [contribution] money.

To expound upon that, the largest lobbyists in Washington are the drug companies and the American Medical Association. That's why when the Medicare Prescription Drug program was passed a few years back, the government relinquished the right to negotiate lower drug rates with the pharmaceutical companies.

Only in America!

[jeffkrol]

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/photos/the-year-in-cartoons-2010



http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/KHNCartoons.aspx

[jeffkrol]

Nine Ways The New Health Law May Affect You in 2011 - Kaiser Health News
too much to quote.......
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Daily-Reports/2011/January/04/repeal-vote-date.aspx
DEATH panels redux..............

Now there's a real death panel, and John Boehner is in charge -- it's the Republican legislative campaign to undermine the ACA. Boehner and the Republicans want to give our health care back to the insurance companies, kill strong consumer protections that end the worst insurance company abuses and sentence more than 30,000 Americans a year to death because they can't afford health insurance.

As one of the first acts of the 112th Congress, the Republicans plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act and all the benefits and consumer protections that are making a real difference in the lives of millions of Americans right now. What are they replacing it with? Nothing. They're referring that question to a bunch of committees that will deliberate for months and play political football with our lives and health. What does that really mean? It means letting the insurance companies off the hook so they can run roughshod over consumers and deny our care and jack up our rates whenever they please.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ethan-rome/boehners-real-death-panel_b_804356.html

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Last edited by jeffkrol; 01-05-2011 at 07:11 AM.

[jeffkrol]

It’s funny to watch Washington Republicans squirm to square their simultaneous call to end access to healthcare for 32 million Americans while keeping a white-knuckling grip on their own government-sponsored healthcare.

Sen. Charles Schumer is amused. Schumer, a Democrat from New York, is pressing congressional Republicans who oppose the Affordable Care Act and are seeking to repeal it — and its historic achievement of providing access to quality healthcare to 32 million previously non-covered Americans — to forgo their government-sponsored healthcare. To keep their own “Cadillac” healthcare plans while working to strip working-class Americans of theirs is hypocritical, the senator says.

The challenge for Republicans is that, despite their rhetoric, they really like their government healthcare. Failed Senate candidate Sharron Angle spent millions of dollars attacking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for his support for the Affordable Care Act during her campaign, only to have revealed that her own healthcare is provided by the government. Maryland’s new GOP representative, Andy Harris, lamented publicly that his new government-provided healthcare plan, the congressional plan, didn’t start the day he arrived in Washington for orientation — two months before being sworn in to office.

Schumer’s tactic is gaining traction. One GOP freshman has refused his government healthcare plan, pledging to “struggle” to find coverage in the individual market. Schumer drew a spastic rebuke from a spokesman for Incoming Speaker John Boehner, who attacked the Affordable Care Act because it is “destroying jobs” and will “bankrupt our country.” The spokesman insisted that Congress is getting the same type of “employer-sponsored health care coverage from private-sector companies as tens of millions of Americans. That has nothing to do with the Democrats' health care law.”

But wait, doesn’t it? The Affordable Care Act provided middle-class Americans with access to the same type of healthcare coverage as Congress, right? So, repealing it takes that access away for average Americans and keeps it for Boehner and other opponents of the law.

Schumer’s actions drew an even sillier response from Rep. Eric Cantor’s office. Cantor’s spokesman called the Affordable Care Act the “Obamacare disaster” and tried to muddy the water by challenging Schumer and congressional Democrats to “pay higher taxes for the next two years” because they opposed tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 a year.

But see, here’s the rub. Congressional Democrats opposed the Bush tax increases and supported the Obama tax cuts for all Americans but opposed the bonus tax cut for the wealthiest 1.6 percent of Americans. Since congressional salaries for members of Congress fall well below the $250,000 threshold, and the $1,000,000 threshold Schumer proposed, they are completely consistent with their proposals.

Boehner and Cantor need to come up with better answers for why they should have access to healthcare and 32 million Americans should not. For congressional Republicans, government-sponsored healthcare is a pre-existing condition they are unwilling to sacrifice.

For congressional Republicans, government healthcare is a pre-existing condition - The Hill's Pundits Blog
As to brave Walsh........ anyone able to decipher this???

"We just don't want to get into a system where people can purchase insurance and then drop insurance whenever they want to. That's not - that's not going to help the system at all."

I "insurance shop" all the time... for all sorts of things...... WHAT is he suggesting.. forcing people into one plan for life? Isn't that Medicare???? Eliminating "people" making their own decisions, isn't that totalitarianism/communism???
Freshman Rep. pledges to forgo federal health insurance – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs

[mikemike]

In the face of record low spending increases on healthcare, health insurance premiums are seeing record high increases thanks to the new law.

With an individual mandate the insurance companies are being forced into the role of de facto private tax collectors. Washington was too weak to increase taxes to pay for the healthcare of those without insurance, so instead they said we are going to require everyone to have insurance. That old adage will have to be amended, "nothing in life is certain except for death, taxes, and buying health insurance."

[Nesster]

While the tax observation is true enough, the 'market driven' solution to the issue is supposedly a price neutralizing method.

Thus: you have, say, a pool of 100 healthy young uninsured + 20 chronically ill with preexisting conditions. The insurance companies would love to get the 100 healthy young people, as they will make money off them, and refuse to insure those 20 chronically ill ones. Forcing the companies to take on just the 20 is a political impossibility, as is taxation to provide them coverage in a single payor scheme. So the market based solution is to require all 120 to be covered - make the individuals buy insurance and make the companies issue insurance. In theory the overall system will be more efficient and the cost 'leakage' from emergency room care to the uninsured is stopped. The insurance companies make more revenue from the majority of healthy to offset the lack of profit from the chronically ill.

[jeffkrol]

Washington was too weak to increase taxes to pay for the healthcare of those without insurance, so instead they said we are going to require everyone to have insurance.

Hmmm lets ponder that, the reasons and the solution.....
Medicare for all, taxes for the rich to pay for it.. Tax cuts for businesses...

[Wheatfield]

Hmmm lets ponder that, the reasons and the solution.....
Medicare for all, taxes for the rich to pay for it.. Tax cuts for businesses...

If you take the leeches out of the system.....
The insurance companies are the true winners in your health care system.
Go to a single payer system (socialized health care) and all of a sudden you've probably got a couple hundred billion dollars a year freed up.

[Nesster]

...not to mention the 'benefits tax' that has hurt both US private sector employers and employees: the cost of insurance has crowded out pay increases and new jobs. And furthermore, if cost is not contained into the future, a rational employer will seek to move jobs to countries where this uncontrolled variable isn't in effect: e.g. Canada.

If you think about it, a 8% per year increase in health insurance does inhibit hiring: for without it, I can project my new hire's cost purely on pay for performance + occupancy etc. Under the current system, I would have to see an 8% increase per employee medical cost in my business to justify hiring.


but of course I misspeak above: that is socialized medicine and merely extends the job killing extent of the federal government, and thus would net the USA a massive layoff of workers, if enacted.

[Wheatfield]

but of course I misspeak above: that is socialized medicine and merely extends the job killing extent of the federal government, and thus would net the USA a massive layoff of workers, if enacted.

Just like shipping manufacturing overseas has been job killing? Perhaps some of those laid off HMO leeches could be put to work rebuilding factories...
At least then they would be producing something.

[Tom S.]

If you take the leeches out of the system.....
The insurance companies are the true winners in your health care system.
Go to a single payer system (socialized health care) and all of a sudden you've probably got a couple hundred billion dollars a year freed up.

You give our government WAY too much credit. Because of lobbyists, a single payer system will end up costing more.

There is no doubt that America could curb health care costs, but to do so properly will step on everyone's toes in some form or another, so it's not acceptable to anyone.