Sounds good, but I'll wait to be impressed when someone in congress admits they are being overpaid and does something about it.

my husband came home from the office to tell me a story that is almost hilarious if not downright sad and stupid. 

He's a CPA working for this client (he's got lots of stupid IRS stories).  A year ago she forgot to add something to her tax return so they did a 1040X to fix it.  That should have been the end of it, paid up and done.  It was something simple.

She gets this bill for 26K from the IRS.  My husband upon her request calls the IRS.  Nobody seems to know why she got this bill.   A year and six agents later nothing has been resolved.  It goes from one hand to another with each time a long phone call after a long wait.  My husband listens to the music in the background while he works waiting.   Every single time my husband has to give his CPA number, his place of business the client's name etc..etc.  They put him on hold AGAIN while they go and get the file and come back and say "what's the problem? 

Then it ends with "well I don't know, send xyz and we'll look at it."  So he sends the requested information only to be told later when he calls back.... "well not sure what happened but we never received that information."  ON and ON it goes. 

A year later still not resolved.  This is a very simple matter. 

Today he says to the client... CAN YOU IMAGINE THE GOVERNMENT RUNNING THE HEALTHCARE BUSINESS? 

We're all going to be dead. 

 

For the record, I too am against the current health bill that is being pushed in the U.S.

My position is best summed up by one of the few sane congressmen in the United States. He voted against the Iraq war, is one of the few politicians that actually knows how to spell "labor" in an era of neutered unions, and he voted against the health bill.

Here's his reasoning (which I agree wholeheartedly with) why:

"We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money not providing health care. We cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem. When health insurance companies deny care or raise premiums, co-pays and deductibles they are simply trying to make a profit. That is our system."

"Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. They are driving up the cost of health care. Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills. The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%. It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care. Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when you get sick."

"But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care. In H.R. 3962, the government is requiring at least 21 million Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that causes costs to be so high, which will result in at least $70 billion in new annual revenue, much of which is coming from taxpayers. This inevitably will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance companies - a bailout under a blue cross."

http://kucinich.us/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2838&Itemid=1

If that loony Kucinich is against the current health bill, I am for it.

 

When it comes to economics, I may be good with math but I know I can't figure out the numbers involved in the profits of insurance companies and such. However, there is one simple thing I do understand about insurance. Insurance was meant to be a "just in case" protection program, a program meant to provide medical care in case you needed it when the cost was beyond your reach. The idea was you paid into it, kinda like a savings account, and then if an accident happened, if an illness all of a sudden hit you or if you needed a normal check up from a doctor, the insurance was there to take care of you.

But this whole concept was mixed up when both the insurance companies and the people buying the insurance expect more from this service.  Insurance companies expected to make huge profits from people who would pay in to a service that they would use occasionally and that, like Social Security, enough people would pay in to cover any large medical cost of any one individual.

The people on the other hand expected to pay 10% prices on any medical need at any time and the insurance would swallow the other 90%. But when the peoples medical needs exceeded the insurance profits, thats when premiums would go up, when insurance companies would refuse to provide insurance to particular people or pay for particular medical treatment and they would, in some cases refuse to pay the bill leaving the people stuck with a huge medical bill that could easily ruin their financial status.

So on the one hand you have insurance companies wanting to make profits (which is the point of a business) and on the other hand you have people who want top of the line, expensive medical treatment at 90% discount rates and what you get is 2 groups of greedy people that don't care how they get what they want as long as they get it but the irony of the whole thing is how the 2 most important parts of this whole argument are ignored.

The price of medical treatment and the people who get stuck paying for it.

Why is no one fighting against high medical cost? Why is no one saying medical treatment is too expensive? Do doctors really need to drive Porches, Benz and own huge homes? Maybe they do, but why should people either die due to not being able to afford a needed treatment or ruin their economic future just to live another day in it?

Why do so few care about those who will get stuck with the cost of these high medical cost, the greed of the insurance companies and the people and the total lack of fiscal responsibility of the United States Gov't?

Greed from both sides is to blame, one wanting more money for less service and the other wanted more service for less money and neither one cares who pays for it so long as they get it and politicians only care about re-election, control and power.

I'm sure no one here cares but pretty much every point Mr. Rogers makes has been debunked. See http://mediamattersaction.org/emailchecker/200910070011 if you care.

I've always considered Kucinich too far to the left even for my taste but in this case I tend to agree with him.

Unless something substantial changes in conference I'm against HR3962 on the basis that it only provides lip service to true change and is therefore doomed to fail.

But the more people like you complain about it the more I have to rethink my position and consider supporting it. IF JU is against it then it must be good although for the life of me I don't really see what it is that you all are so afraid of. It's about as weak a public option as the right could hope for and it will in most likelihood be the refuge of only those that have been kicked off private plans, in other words a selected set of people with very high medical expenses. This will force the public option to end up being *more* expensive than private plans which of course will make it a complete failure.

I would think that the right would be drooling at the chance to allow this democratic plan to fall on it's face and reap the political benefits in 2010 and 2012.

The way I view it we may as well go with the status quo for another 10 years. By then the average family health insurance plan will be closer to $30K a year instead of $13K a year it is now and we'll have closer to 50% uninsured instead of only 15%. I can afford $30K insurance premiums, can you?

Anyway in another ten years perhaps the rural poor will see the error of voting for the interests of the wealthy and we'll finally get single payer directly instead of this pretense at reform that we have now.

I wouldn't say "debunked" when the criticism says that he is "technically right".

What I do find interesting is that the author keeps referring to 45,000 people who die every year because they don't have health insurance but doesn't bother to back up that claim with anything at all.

 

That's a single point and technically correct with a significant caveat.

"So Rogers' explanation of the section is technically right, but it comes with a caveat. Rather than the government being able to indiscriminately disenroll individuals and businesses from plans, people would only be removed from substandard plans after repeated warnings and attempts to correct those plans."

Did you read the whole thing or only just this one point? What about Finland, Sweden, Iceland and even Cuba's cancer survival rates? What about Roger's major campaign contributors?

It's well documented but since you apparently haven't heard of google here's one out of millions of links you could have easily found on your own.

http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/harvard-medical-study-links-lack-of-insurance-to-45000-us-deaths-a-year/

'Well documented?'  I don't think so.  A wild ass guess based on worst-case estimates grounded in all sorts of false assumptions.  A number only a demagogue can love.

As they say, 'Never let the facts stand in the way of a darn good opinion.'

So we'd rather make our health care choices within the structure of a labyrinthine faceless bureaucracy that could give a shit whether we live or die and which saves money by not providing health care?  When the government denies care, they are simply following the rules.  That is our future system.

Speaking of a wild ass guess based on false assumptions, where is *your* proof?

The article you reference has no links whatsoever to any supporting information that denies the Harvard study claims. The closest thing to "proof" is the following reference which is made without link or reference to any supporting documentation.

"Another study by Dr. Richard Kronick, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, and former senior adviser to President Clinton, crunched the numbers from 640,000 health surveys. He came up with a very small increased risk of death for the uninsured, with a very small margin of error."

So who is this Dr. Richard Kronick, where is his study and what ulterior motives may he have? Perhaps you can supply some actual data as opposed to base hyperbole?

In point of fact the Harvard study is not the only such study that has come up with similar results. An earlier study by the Institute of Medicine in 2002 came up with the results that "yielded estimates attributing to uninsurance an overall increase of 25 percent in mortality risk for working-age adults." While this is less than the Harvard study's 40% result it is in the same ballpark. And yes, I do realize that the Harvard study was based on a similar methodology as the IOM study but it used a completely different dataset. Also note that the IOM study itself resulted in the same results with two separate datasets.

Finally take a look at the following article, Commentary—Response to Richard Kronick, that addresses Dr. Kronick's concerns, complete with references to 9 published articles/studies related to the topic.

I know that doctors are not real scientists, but I would still expect a medical doctor to at least give pretense to the scientific method. You should be able to do far better than simply providing a link to an article that makes base assertions completely without reference or link to any supporting data.

You cannot simply wave your hand and invoke the magic words "Dr. Richard Kronick" and deny the Harvard study, the IOM study and all the other material referenced in the Response to Richard Kronick article. At best if I *assume* valid sources you possibly *may* have cast some minimal doubt on the 45,000 number, however I submit that I have far more scientific evidence on my side of the balance than you do on yours.

In any case although I have effectively done so my intent was not necessarily to *prove* the 45,000 number, my intent was to simply provide a requested source for the number that any fool and a 30 second google search could have found for themselves.

If you wish to actually refute these claims (as opposed to mere hand waving) then I suggest that "Lucy, you got some serious 'splaining to do" but so far your effort is extremely weak.

Great. As I've said before I'd far rather have an indifferent bureaucracy make healthcare decisions instead of a health insurance industry that has a financial incentive to want me to die quickly. But that's just me. But don't worry, the public option is only an *option*, you are perfectly free (and in 98% of cases are *required*) to keep your private insurance. So your insurance company will most likely continue to make money by hoping you die quickly it's just that with the new legislation they won't be able to arbitrarily rescind your coverage. You can thank the democrats for that much at least.

Excuse me?  I'm supposed to prove 45,000 people a year are not killed by lack of insurance?  A claim isn't true until disproven (although in your world, apparently so).  The original article was a contrived guess, nothing more, which every UHC zealot has simply uncritically accepted as true.  When I come across the article I read taking it apart methodologically, if I do, and I decide you have any interest, I'll gladly post a link.  However, I'm not the one who claimed that number was 'well-documented.'

And that 'indifferent bureaucracy' has the same financial incentive, plus all the benefits of the MVD as a bonus.

Oh. Did you sneeze? If so then bless you.

The Harvard study was done by a number of credentialed professors with experience in the field and cannot be dismissed simply by speaking a few angry words. Not only have you *not* disproved the Harvard or IOM studies you've shown no evidence to support your claim or the claim of some random person of unknown credentials.

Your proof consists of seven sentances of vehement assertion. Must be a record for you. That's fine, I didn't expect you to do any real work.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming of boredom.

Make a claim, demand others disprove it, condescend.  Rinse, repeat.  That's the mumble way.  I knew you had no interest in the validity of the number.

It's always interesting to see how people on the left organise party politics.

I don't think anybody on the (mainstream) right want the system to fail. That's not what the criticism is about. It's not about being right, it's about avoiding something bad.

Pointing out ten years later that more people died at a higher price is not "success".