Insurers, doctor-owned hospitals get late help

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By ALAN FRAM

WASHINGTON (AP) - Tucked into President Barack Obama's health care bill are several 11th-hour changes that help major insurance companies and doctor-owned hospitals.

Among the beneficiaries, according to lobbyists and congressional aides, are Kaiser Permanente, the giant California-based insurance company; Geisinger Health Plan based in Pennsylvania; and doctor-owned health facilities in about a dozen states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

House leaders hoped to approve the revisions Sunday when lawmakers vote on the health care legislation. They were included in a 153-page bill revising the giant Senate-passed overhaul package, and in separate language that Democrats plan to add.

Some of the special deals in the health care bill have been widely derided by Republicans and Democrats, and a few have been dropped.

Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20100321/D9EJ709O0.html

---

See the FULL story.

[dkf]

1. Like this isn't one big huge special deal?

Special deals within special deals within special deals. That's how our government works you know.

[groundloop]

2. Presiden't Obama's Plan???? - I coulda' swore the House and Senate are writing the bill.

Oh, I see this article is from AP. Never Mind.

[pattmarty]

4. Oh, he just gets to walk away from this piece of shit? It's the fucking.........

........Democrats bill, they ALL own it.

[TerribleLarryDingle]

5. So what should we do now?

Hand a victory to the Republicans and let them take control in Novemeber?
I swear that's what it seems like a lot of DUers want.
Your and others quest for a mythical perfect bill is playing right in to the Teabaggers(R) pants.

[pattmarty]

6. Wait and see. I kind of like to say "I told you so". Mythical perfect?.......

.........This bill is a give away piece of shit and the more one sees of it the stinkier it gets. Reminds me of all the shenanigans the Republicans pulled on the Medicare (crap) bill, same shit different players AND worse bill.


Edit to add: What we do now is suck it, it's going to pass if it hasn't already.

[robinblue]

8. Reading this OP, it is is getting "stinkier" as you say. Whow, more to the insurance

parasites!!

[New Dawn]

10. We never wanted the insurance industry and DLC's Individual Mandate.

Now the Individual Mandate is going to cause the Democratic Party to be massively defeated in both the 2010 and 2012 elections. We, the base of the party, never wanted this slimy piece of shit bill. The right-wing leadership forced it on us, and will now suffer the electoral consequences, beyond any activist's control.

[pattmarty]

3. Ya know, everybody talked bad about Bush's "Medicare reform"........

.........which it was stuffed with special deals and such, but this is the same thing only larger. If fucking blows and down the road the Dems WILL pay.

[groundloop]

7. This bill isn't perfect, in fact it's quite a ways from my vision of perfect. HOWEVER -

I've come to agree with those like Howard Dean, Ed Schultz, and all the other pragmatists who say that at least it's a start and has some good in it. With all the Joe Liebermans and Bart Stupaks in congress it's about the best that could have expected. I'm not thrilled by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm not about to sit out the next election and let this country get turned over to the repuglicans without my vote being counted. It's time now to get to work and throw out Lieberman, Stupak, Nelson, and all the others that got in the way of single payer or public option and finish the job.

[cornermouse]

9. Well, you know we gotta make sure

Those poor little poverty stricken insurance companies don't go belly up, don't ya know?

[QC]

11. Thank goodness the insurers are getting some help.

The poor souls can barely keep their executives in fresh Maybachs these days.

[kestrel91316]

12. Oh yeah. Because insurers need SO MUCH HELP......

:sarcasm:

[aquart]

13. Aren't Kaiser and Geisinger BOTH non-profit?

Isn't strengthening them a good thing?

[w4rma]

14. No. (nt)

[Still Blue in PDX]

15. Kaiser is nonprofit. nt

[Hell Hath No Fury]

16. Non-profit is relative as far as care --

I have had Kaiser for several years now. They can be OK, but make no mistake, they actively discourage some diagnostics and care to save money.

I have had serveral incidents where I have been told things were unneccessary, including an xray for an injured foot, a mammogram when I had a breast lump, and further bloodwork when I was having what I thought were hormone issues. I now have a foot that will need surgery to repair the break that healed incorrectly, I had a biopsy on a lump found when I was finally given a mammo, and am (finally) being treated for a serious vitamin D deficiency and anemia.

And let me tell you about my nurse practioner who was leaving to start work on a new program Kaiser was implimenting: her new job was to go visiting seriously ill Kaiser members to advise them on end of life matters, and how they have the option of refusing care if they wished. The ways she spoke of her work made it clear to me it was primarily about subtly discouraging people from engaging in heroic (and expensive) efforts to stay alive.

Now, I am all for everyone being educated on end of life care and the importance of knowing what you want, but I find it positively unseemly that it be done in that manner.

One final Kasier story from a nurse friend who worked there in the SF ER. An elderly woman came in to the ER three times in one week for abdominal pain. She was given a few minor tests and then sent home each time with the explaination it was just gas. The fourth time she came back, a doctor took her more seriously and delved a little deeper. Within in half an hour she was in the operating room -- as they opened her up her rotted intestines literally pours out of her and she died on the table.

And that is what "non-profit" can be about.