The Largest Expansion of Medical Coverage since Medicare

[BeatleBoot]

The Senate bill would:


-- Extend coverage to 31 million Americans, the largest expansion of coverage since the creation of Medicare.

-- Ensure that you can choose your own doctor.

-- Finally stop insurance companies from denying coverage due to a pre-existing condition.

-- Make sure you will never be charged exorbitant premiums on the basis of your age, health, or gender.

-- Guarantee you will never lose your coverage just because you get sick or injured.

-- Protect you from outrageous out-of-pocket expenditures by establishing lifetime and annual limits.

-- Allow young people to stay on their parents' coverage until they're 26 years old.

-- Create health insurance exchanges, or "one-stop shops" for individuals purchasing insurance, where insurance companies are forced to compete for new customers.

-- Lower premiums for families, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office -- especially for struggling folks who will receive subsidies.

-- Help small businesses provide health care coverage to their employees with tax credits and by allowing them to purchase coverage through the exchanges.

-- Improve and strengthen Medicare by eliminating waste and fraud (without cutting basic benefits), beginning to close the Medicare Part D donut hole, and extending the life of the Medicare trust fund.

-- Create jobs by reining in costs -- fostering competition, reducing waste and inefficiency, and starting to reward doctors and hospitals for quality, not quantity, of care.

-- Cut the deficit by over $130 billion in the next 10 years.


Not a Pony. But historic nonetheless.

[Political Heretic]

1. Bullshit.

[BeatleBoot]

4. An informative response, thanks.

I heard the same reaction from my Republican boss today.


Politics make strange bedfellows.

Indeed.

[Political Heretic]

8. Blah blah blah.

(This is a press release, as such is has no copyright protection)

Nation’s Largest RN Organization Says Healthcare Bill Cedes Too Much to Insurance Industry
By National Nurses United

December 21, 2009

The 150,000 member National Nurses United, the nation’s largest union and professional organization of registered nurses in the U.S., today criticized the healthcare bill now advancing in the U.S. Senate saying it is deeply flawed and grants too much power to the giant insurers.

“It is tragic to see the promise from Washington this year for genuine, comprehensive reform ground down to a seriously flawed bill that could actually exacerbate the healthcare crisis and financial insecurity for American families, and that cedes far too much additional power to the tyranny of a callous insurance industry,” said NNU co-president Karen Higgins, RN.

NNU Co-president Deborah Burger, RN challenged arguments of legislation proponents that the bill should still be passed because of expanded coverage, new regulations on insurers, and the hope that it will be improved in the House-Senate conference committee or future years.

“Those wishful statements ignore the reality that much of the expanded coverage is based on forced purchase of private insurance without effective controls on industry pricing practices or real competition and gaping loopholes in the insurance reforms,” said Burger.

Further, said NNU Co-president Jean Ross, RN, “the bill seems more likely to be eroded, not improved, in future years due to the unchecked influence of the healthcare industry lobbyists and the lessons of this year in which all the compromises have been made to the right.”

“Sadly, we have ended up with legislation that fails to meet the test of true healthcare reform, guaranteeing high quality, cost effective care for all Americans, and instead are further locking into place a system that entrenches the chokehold of the profit-making insurance giants on our health. If this bill passes, the industry will become more powerful and could be beyond the reach of reform for generations,” Higgins said.

NNU cited ten significant problems in the legislation, noting many of the same flaws also exist in the House version and are likely to remain in the bill that emerges from the House-Senate reconciliation process:

1. The individual mandate forcing all those without coverage to buy private insurance, with insufficient cost controls on skyrocketing premiums and other insurance costs.

2. No challenge to insurance company monopolies, especially in the top 94 metropolitan areas where one or two companies dominate, severely limiting choice and competition.

3. An affordability mirage. Congressional Budget Office estimates say a family of four with a household income of $54,000 would be expected to pay 17 percent of their income, $9,000, on healthcare exposing too many families to grave financial risk.

4. The excise tax on comprehensive insurance plans which will encourage employers to reduce benefits, shift more costs to employees, promote proliferation of high-deductible plans, and lead to more self-rationing of care and medical bankruptcies, especially as more plans are subject to the tax every year due to the lack of adequate price controls. A Towers-Perrin survey in September found 30 percent of employers said they would reduce employment if their health costs go up, 86 percent said they’d pass the higher costs to their employees.

5. Major loopholes in the insurance reforms that promise bans on exclusion for pre-existing conditions, and no cancellations for sickness. The loopholes include:


* Provisions permitting insurers and companies to more than double charges to employees who fail “wellness” programs because they have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol readings, or other medical conditions.
* Insurers are permitted to sell policies “across state lines”, exempting patient protections passed in other states. Insurers will thus set up in the least regulated states in a race to the bottom threatening public protections won by consumers in various states.
* Insurers can charge four times more based on age plus more for certain conditions, and continue to use marketing techniques to cherry-pick healthier, less costly enrollees.
* Insurers may continue to rescind policies for “fraud or intentional misrepresentation” – the main pretext insurance companies now use to cancel coverage.

6. Minimal oversight on insurance denials of care; a report by the California Nurses Association/NNOC in September found that six of California’s largest insurers have rejected more than one-fifth of all claims since 2002.

7. Inadequate limits on drug prices, especially after Senate rejection of an amendment, to protect a White House deal with pharmaceutical giants, allowing pharmacies and wholesalers to import lower-cost drugs.

8. New burdens for our public safety net. With a shortage of primary care physicians and a continuing fiscal crisis at the state and local level, public hospitals and clinics will be a dumping ground for those the private system doesn’t want.

9. Reduced reproductive rights for women.

10. No single standard of care. Our multi-tiered system remains with access to care still determined by ability to pay. Nothing changes in basic structure of the system; healthcare remains a privilege, not a right.

“Desperation to pass a bill, regardless of its flaws, has made the White House and Congress subject to the worst political extortion and new, crippling concessions every day,” Burger said.

“NNU and nurses will continue to work with the thousands of grassroots activists across the nation to campaign for the best reform, which would be to expand Medicare to cover everyone, the same type of system working more effectively in every other industrial country. The day of that reform will come,” said Ross.

[Political Heretic]

10. Hmm... where's your sarcasm now?

[BeatleBoot]

15. My sarcasm?

It's standing over there next to the pony.

[Political Heretic]

19. Any substantive policy comments to the 10 detailed points outlined by nurses?

:shrug:

[Political Heretic]

25. Hmm... nothing?

That's what I thought.

[HuckleB]

14. Hey Progressives, the Health Care Fight Is Still On: Time to Push Back

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/144754/hey_progressives,_the_health_care_fight_is_still_on:_time_to_push_back/

[Political Heretic]

21. The problem is, this bill isn't even a "start" It's not something to "build on" in the future.

It would have to be undone before forward progress could be made. That's my opinion. It's why referencing the social security framework passed in 1935 that did not include everything that was needed but was later added does not apply to the current situation.

[HuckleB]

26. I've noted that opinion.

I've yet to see an argument that justifies it, however.

The Consequences of “No”
http://healthcarereform.nejm.org/?p=2360&query=home

[Political Heretic]

29. Oh really? How about this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7301706

[HuckleB]

32. There's criticism there, but hardly an argument that weighs everything that must be weighed.

Oh, and you already posted that!

Now, try paying attention...

http://healthcarereform.nejm.org/?p=2360&query=home

[Political Heretic]

38. Incidentally, that's not a substantive policy response... and there's a heap of irony

In criticizing me below for letting nurses do the talking for me, you offer in response the New England Journal of Medicine to do the talking for you.

(There's actually nothing wrong with that, its a credible source with an important voice on the issue. And I had already read their opinion. But I thought it was silly that you decided to mock me for quoting a credible source and then in return...quoted a credible source.) :)

[HuckleB]

39. Yawn.

You're not offering anything of substance, why would I do anything but give you a link? And the link I provided offers a big part of the equation that you have chosen to ignore. Further, you are asking others for "substantive responses" to your links. If you're going to do that, you really ought to do more than offer links. That's my point. Do you get it. Of course, I already made this point below, before you went on your "irony" rampage.

[Political Heretic]

34. I don't agree that the consequences of no outwiegh the consequences of Yes.

The consequences of yes are worse than the consequences of no, for all the reasons so intelligently written about today in the new-making statement by the largest nursing organization in the nation.

[HuckleB]

36. Hello?

Those are criticisms, and they don't weight the pros and cons, so you've offered no actual argument to support your opinion.

:eyes:

[Political Heretic]

40. Actually they do weigh the pros and cons.

"those are criticisms" - right, and they are criticisms so large that they make passing this bill more harmful than helpful to ordinary Americans.

The NJM's observation's:

"Voting for the status quo may be politically tempting, but it won’t stop the steady erosion of coverage in the United States. The authors of the 2009 IOM report were blunt: “There is no evidence,” they wrote, “to suggest that the trends driving loss of insurance coverage will reverse without concerted action.”1"

However, voting for a bill that actively makes things worse than the status quo, is worse than even the consequences of "no." What we need is legislation that would improve conditions for poor and working Americans. I don't believe this bill will do that. I believe it will make things worse, not better, and not static. I believe this in part of the reasons outlined above.

Keep in mind that all the NJM's link points out is the serious need to do something rather than do nothing. However, we are in the terrible situation where what congress is proposing we do is actually worse in critical, show-stopping areas than the way things are now. Therefore no matter how badly we need to do something about our health care crisis - what congress is choosing to do only continues to the crisis and is worse than "No" (where "no" means no to this bill and ongoing activism to demand a real bill that will actually help rather than hurt.

OK?

Now can you lose the smug rolly eyes. We may disagree, but I deserve better than that. And so do you from me.

[HuckleB]

41. No, they don't.

Yes, I'm going to roll my eyes, because you are not being honest in any way shape or form.

I'm done with your BS. There is no point in talking to a wall.

[Political Heretic]

44. I'm not being honest, or you just don't agree with me?

I think its pretty honest and very easy for anyone reading to figure out.

Nurses feel that this bill will make things worse for poor and working class individuals and families if passed as-is. Therefore, they do not agree that the consequences of NO greater than the consequences of passing this bill as-is because, as they clearly state, this bill will actually make things worse than they are right now.

That's their opinion. And it's an opinion they back up with multiple examples. Now of course they might be wrong. But my point is all the details in the world about how bad things are right now (NJM) doesn't matter if proposed legislation would make things worse than they are right now.

[MineralMan]

20. Perhaps you can expand on that extremely well-informed comment.

Or, perhaps not...

[HuckleB]

27. He let the leadership of one group of nurses do the talking for him.

[MineralMan]

28. Oh, well. I guess they know best.

[Political Heretic]

31. What I "guess" is that their policy analysis and 10 point criticism holds water.

That's what I "guess"

By the way... have you read any of the bills? Because I have.

[HuckleB]

35. This nurse is glad you think so highly of nurses.

:):evilgrin:

[Political Heretic]

30. What's wrong with that? You have a substantive policy response?

To the ten points outlined?

Didn't think so.

I've scores of threads over several months arguing passionately and directly about quality health care reform. I found the statement from the largest nurses organization in the U.S. to be so intelligently written and direct that there's no point in me saying it more poorly.

[HuckleB]

33. You haven't offered any substance.

You're just posting links. So here:

http://healthcarereform.nejm.org/?p=2360&query=home

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/down-memory-lane/

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/what-has-health-care-reform-ever-done-for-us/

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/coverage-and-costs/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/opinion/18krugman.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/opinion/21krugman.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

On edit: Bye. It's not worth my time to attempt to engage you in any way.

[Political Heretic]

42. I've already responded to the first link, and the rest are all Paul Krugman

That's fine, and there are certainly other smart people out there who think passing this is better than not passing it. But I think you can make a much more substantive case for why that's likely not to be true.

Saying "you haven't offered substance" is just silly. Saying "your just posting links" is silly. These are credible voices informed on the subject of health care. We're not expected to just "invent" our opinions out of thin air. We read analysis and that helps form our opinions....

So "just posting links" is disingenuous. It is a substantive argument for the reasons why the current proposed legislation will do more harm than good for poor and working class individuals an families. Followed by ten points of examples or "specifics" as to how and it will do more harm than good.

I wish rather than sticking with this "you have no substance" idea you could just accept that reasonable people can disagree on this issue of whether or not we should pass a not-great bill because it DOES have more benefits than harms and is this better than nothing, OR if we should oppose the bill because it does more harm and will make things worse for poor and working class individuals and families, rather than even marginally better.

[HuckleB]

43. Your response contained no substance, however.

Krugman deals with the whole that you want to avoid.

End of game.

[Political Heretic]

45. "substance" being "things that I agree with." No substance being "things I don't."

Krugman does not deal with the consequences of this bill being worse of poor and working class individuals and families than what they currently experience. No does it address any of the ten identified examples of dimensions of the legislation that will contribute to making things actively worse for real americans than the bad health care situation they're already in.

He, like others, picks parts of the bill, says that they are good, and says that because they are good we should pass the bill because it will be "better" than what we have now.

But he fails to deal with the other parts of the bill that are terribly bad, because he does not beleive they will be so bad that they actively hurt real Americans more than help. But many others do.

You can't prove that your right and I'm wrong about what the consequences of this legislation will be. Likewise I can't prove that I'm right and you're wrong about what the consequences of this legislation will be. We simply have to read as much as we can read, learn as much as we can learn, and then take a stand that we thing best reflects the needs of working Americans.

After months and month of tirelessly following health care reform and reading until I feel like I'm going blind, I believe following:

1. I believe this bill does not have sufficient benefits for poor people
2. I believe this bill has critical flaws that will hurt poor people more than they are currently being hurt.
3. I believe that the benefits that DO exist for poor people do not sufficiently out way the remaning problems for poor people.
4. All things considered, further effort to improve or redo legislation would be more helpful to poor people (by not making their condition in health care worse) than harmful.

Now other people disagree - there's no way to get to a "proving" of absolute right and wrong. We're all looking at all the information we can and doing our best to make an educated guess about whether this proposed legislation is "good enough" or not.

You could be right, or I could be right. But I've done my best to figure out where to stand, and this is what I'm coming up with.

[HuckleB]

2. I'm a single-payer advocate.

Yet, I want this bill passed, for reasons similar to those stated by Paul Krugman.

A Dangerous Dysfunction
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/opinion/21krugman.html

Pass the Bill
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/opinion/18krugman.html


However, I don't understand any claim about this bill regarding job creation. How would this bill create jobs?

After all, if the limits on administration costs are taken seriously, then insurance companies are going to have to get serious about making the process more efficient, thus cutting jobs on their end, as well as in doctor's offices.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[BeatleBoot]

5. I'm wearing slippers

and I've been lucky enough to be employed and have worked my arse off the last 2 weeks.

So, no. Not a paid shill.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[BeatleBoot]

17. Nope.

But my feet are warm!

[Donnachaidh]

11. uh yeah,,,

still hustling the *official* party line though - slippers or not.

[BeatleBoot]

18. Well, I am a Democrat

If that's what you mean.

Slippers on or off.

Looking down at my toes...yep, the same toes, same feet that walked and walked, knocking on doors and working polls... for Democrats.

Definitely a Democrat.

How about you?

[Political Heretic]

22. See my signature.

[BeatleBoot]

49. your signature line

lacks the word "bowel".

[daa]

6. I have a bridge in Brooklyn for you to buy nt

[BeatleBoot]

7. Another bright quip!

Oh, man, you got me on that one.

[daa]

12. Your entire list is bullshit

For example charging someone 3 times as much based on age is a good thing??

Cutting "waste fraud and abuse" in Medicare? You sound like a republican. It is CUTTING Medicare so people will not have choice because doctors will NOT take Medicare patients.

Purchasing through an exchange for the same lame insurance companies with an additional layer.

You must be young and naive.

[BeatleBoot]

13. Actually I'm old and smart

But thank you for making it personal.

Love it!



:rofl:

:spray:

[daa]

47. You may be old

[quiller4]

51. Charging 3 times as much based on age is a great thing since now

those 55-60 pay 8 to 10 times as much as those 25-30.

[rug]

16. I thought it was the greatest expansion in a century.

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

23. Isn't it true that Credit Default Swaps total 700 Trillion dollars?

The global economy is sunk. Do you understand that?

We are Broke. There is no f'ing money for this nonsense.
Waste of time et effort.

[libertypirate]

24. Yeah now lets talk about the other 2900 pages of loopholes

You better hope that you are one of the few needles in that hay stack of loop holes.

Your trying to put lipstick on a Palin for Christ sake.

[madfloridian]

37. It requires you to buy insurance, does not provide health care.

Just gives the insurance companies 30 million more customers

[tonyafd]

46. Michael Moore

Perhaps the central theme of Michael Moore's documentary Sicko
was that some health insurers deny 100% of all initial claims.
Is there anything in the bill that makes that illegal? 

[mmonk]

48. You mean insurance coverage.

[ddeclue]

50. Thanks for the B.S. talking points..now for the truth.

this is a giant giveaway to insurance companies and a giant screw you to the Democratic base.

:puke: