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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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 Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2010 8:00 pm Post subject: House Approves Health Overhaul |
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This deserves a single thread.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/health/policy/22health.html?hp
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House Approves Health Overhaul
WASHINGTON � Congress gave final approval on Sunday to legislation that would provide medical coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and remake the nation�s health care system along the lines proposed by President Obama. |
(Did Canadian identity just die?)
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By a vote of 219 to 212, the House passed the bill after a day of tumultuous debate that echoed the epic struggle of the last year. The action sent the bill to President Obama, whose crusade for such legislation has been a hallmark of his presidency.
Minutes later, the House passed a package of changes to the bill and sent it to the Senate. After the second vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced: �On this vote, the yeahs are 220, the nays are 211. The bill is passed!�
The Semate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, has promised House Democrats that the Senate would quickly take up the reconciliation bill with the changes in it, and that he had secured the votes to pass it.
But while the Senate is bracing for a fierce floor fight over the reconciliation measure, the landscape was permanently altered by passage of the original Senate bill. Should the reconciliation bill, which cannot be filibustered, collapse for any reason, the core components of the Democrats� health care overhaul would move forward. Indeed, Senate Republicans were quickly faced with a need to recalibrate their message from one aimed at stopping the legislation to one focused on winning back a sufficient number of seats in Congress to repeal it.
Mr. Obama, who was scheduled to speak shortly after the historic vote, watched its roll call with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the Roosevelt Room inside the White House. Since Monday, the president had spoken with 92 lawmakers, either in person or by telephone, the White House said.
Democrats hailed the votes as historic, comparable to the establishment of Medicare and Social Security and a long overdue step forward in social justice. �This is the civil rights act of the 21st century,� said Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 3 Democrat in the House. |
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Street Magic
Joined: 23 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2010 9:20 pm Post subject: |
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Here's a nice (though somewhat biased in favor of) summary on what to expect from the bill:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/mar/21/what-expect-health-care-bill/
I didn't know about the extension of dependent coverage to children up to age 27 (and that it'll take effect right away) until reading that. That really would've taken the bite out of all my dad's scaremongering about how I'd get sick and financially ruin the family if I couldn't find a job with insurance right after graduation. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2010 9:33 pm Post subject: |
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| ANSWER: Some of the reforms would go into effect very quickly, such as the limits on rescissions, elimination of lifetime limits on coverage, extension of dependent coverage to children younger than 27, the creation of a national high-risk pool for Americans who cannot get insurance because of pre-existing conditions and a �reinsurance� program for early retirees. |
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| A: People who can afford insurance would have to buy it or pay a tax. There are no criminal penalties for noncompliance, but it would be a legal obligation. The idea is personal responsibility: Those who are able to purchase insurance should do so rather than waiting until they become seriously ill and create a bigger burden on taxpayers. No slackers! |
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| A: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the reforms would have little, if any, effect on the cost of insurance for large businesses. It projects the cost of insurance in the small-group market to increase but be offset by the tax credits that small businesses will receive. |
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| A: About 23 million to 25 million would remain uninsured, but 38 percent of them would be eligible for Medicaid if they became really ill. |
I don't see how these combine to create a positive image of health care. If anything, they make it out to be horrible.
-Healthy people will be forced to purchase unneeded health insurance.
-Unhealthy people will be picked up by the "high risk pool" to ensure they don't threaten private insurance industry profits (what a surprise, unlike the idea of healthy people having access to a "public option" of some sort, insurance companies take no issue with unhealthy people having essentially the same, so long as it's limited to the customers they don't want). These people will be paying rates that are up to 125% that of the most expensive coverage on the highest market too.
-Across the board costs will either remain the same or increase.
-Over 20 million people will remain excluded from the system.
How is this good in any way? Higher costs, personal mandate, non-universal coverage for the relatively healthy, public option for the unhealthy (and thus non-profitable). This is just an insurance industry handout. Thanks but no thanks. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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Street Magic
Joined: 23 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2010 9:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| -Healthy people will be forced to purchase unneeded health insurance. |
Yeah, that's really an argument against the concept of insurance in general though. Insurance wouldn't make sense if people only paid for it after they needed it. That would mean paying an organization a smaller amount to have them pay a larger amount. The only real alternatives would involve doing away with insurance altogether through either fully socialized health care or private health care cheap enough for people to pay for up front. |
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Street Magic
Joined: 23 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2010 9:55 pm Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/03/19/fact-sheet-the-truth-about-the-health-care-bill/
This is bad public policy. |
Taken from the Myth column:
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| The �excise tax� will encourage employers to reduce the scope of health care benefits, and they will pass the savings on to employees in the form of higher wages. |
That's weird. Sounds like liberals are using Reaganomics logic. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2010 10:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Street Magic wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| -Healthy people will be forced to purchase unneeded health insurance. |
Yeah, that's really an argument against the concept of insurance in general though. Insurance wouldn't make sense if people only paid for it after they needed it. That would mean paying an organization a smaller amount to have them pay a larger amount. The only real alternatives would involve doing away with insurance altogether through either fully socialized health care or private health care cheap enough for people to pay for up front. |
Nothing about insurance demands people be forced to participate; plenty of people consider themselves at sufficient potential risk -- despite currently being healthy -- to willingly participate in health insurance.
That said, you actually have written out my feelings on the matter fairly accurately. Either we should have fully socialized health care, or we should have cheap health care which we pay directly for over the counter, with emergency or highly expensive mandatory treatments being subsidized. I am arguing against private insurance in general (or at the very least arguing the government should provide an alternative to it). |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2010 11:55 pm Post subject: |
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This article belongs on this thread.
Healthcare Bill to Cause U.S. Hyperinflation By 2015
FORT LEE, N.J., March 20 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Inflation Association - http://inflation.us - today issued a warning to all Americans of a potential outbreak of hyperinflation in the U.S. by year 2015 caused primarily by the healthcare bill and rising interest payments on our national debt.
Medicare was created in 1966 at a cost of $3 billion per year and the House Ways and Means Committee estimated in 1966 that in 1990 the cost of Medicare would reach $12 billion per year. Instead, the actual cost of Medicare in 1990 was $107 billion (792% more than what was projected) and today Medicare costs $408 billion annually. In 2003, the White House Office of Management and Budget estimated that the Iraq War would have a total cost of $50 to $60 billion. So far, we have already spent $713 billion on the Iraq War (over 1,000% more than what was projected).
The Congressional Budget Office is estimating that the healthcare bill will cost $940 billion over the next 10 years, but if history is any indication, the actual cost will likely be several trillion dollars. NIA believes the healthcare bill will be the final nail in the coffin of the U.S. economy and will just about guarantee that we will see hyperinflation by the year 2015.
continued at link |
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pkang0202
Joined: 09 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Mon Mar 22, 2010 12:25 am Post subject: |
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