It's ON! The end of the Health Insurance Bill - EXCEPT for the mandate to buy worthless insurance!

[grahamhgreen]

"House Republican whip, Congressman Eric Cantor of Virginia said, “If all of Obamacare cannot be immediately repealed, then it is my intention to begin repealing it piece by piece." http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/8/headlines#7

As many here have been saying from the beginning, "The bill gives trillions to Big Crapsurance that will use to crush any any of the meager reforms in the bill".

Now it begins, piece by piece, they will dismantle the effective provisions of the bill leaving us with nothing but a mandate to purchase overpriced insurance that will never be paid out in the event you actually get sick.

Bad bill. Bad move.

Let's expand Medicare in reconciliation in the lame duck session - it's our last hope.

[stray cat]

1. The GOP only controls the House

[provis99]

23. the House controls appropriations.

[leftstreet]

2. It's a WIN for the political class!

Both parties knew this would happen

:grr:

[Unvanguard]

3. Actually, by everything I've heard, they'll go after the mandates first.

Republicans are nothing if not politically savvy. It is the bill's weakest political point, and when those go, everything else falls with them.

[DURHAM D]

6. Wrong - the mandates will be kept.

The insurance companies want them to stay.

[Occam Bandage]

10. The mandates are the foundation on which the good parts of the bill are built.

Killing the mandates would be the easiest way of killing the viability of the whole project, and the Republicans would have the backing of the American people to do it.

What they won't tell the American people—and what America won't realize until after the fact—is that without mandates, you must have pre-existing coverage exceptions and you must have the ability to drop people for getting sick.

[grahamhgreen]

16. No the mandate is the bad part of the bill

Without the mandate, you can still have all of the other provisions - it will just drain big insurance until the beg for single payer or a public option.

[Unvanguard]

22. Actually, it will wreck the capacity of the insurance market to function.

And that applies just as much whether or not you have a public option. The problem is adverse selection: combine no mandate with a bar on discrimination, and people have strong reason to not buy insurance until they need it, sending premiums way up and encouraging other people to do the same.

Single-payer would solve the problem, but only because single-payer is funded through tax money, which is itself effectively a mandate.

[grahamhgreen]

26. I hve no problem with a tax for single payer, or public insurance,

only one that forces me to pay taxes to a private company.

The insurance market only functions because of the taxpayer bailouts and subsidies - remember AIG. In fact, it could be argued, that is what this HCR is all about. Without a mandate, big health insurance could not survive into the future.

There is no reason to allow anyone to profit off of health care, in the rest of the civilized world this is not only illegal, but considered immoral and unethical.

[grahamhgreen]

8. No, they are not, first

"The New York Times reports Republican lawmakers plan to use spending bills to block various provisions which they object to and limit access to government-subsidized private health plans that include coverage of abortion.

In addition, Republicans want to limit money and personnel available to the Internal Revenue Service, so the agency could not aggressively enforce provisions that require people to obtain health insurance and employers to help pay for it." - Democracy Now


They will dismantle it like a hog to slaughter - and they have trillions of dollars to figure out how - they will NEVER go after the mandate, they'll just use it as a rallying cry to rile up their base.

[Unvanguard]

14. Um, it's right there in your second sentence.

Abortion funding and mandates: the two parts of the bill they think they can politically succeed against.

[grahamhgreen]

17. I'm reading that as

"and employers to help pay for it". In other words, not the mandate for individuals, only the part that requires companies to help pay.

[Unvanguard]

18. Yes, they are going after both the employer and the individual mandates.

But they are going after the individual mandate. Hell, a dozen Republican Attorney Generals are challenging the individual mandate in court.

[woo me with science]

24. I have heard the mandates will be first, as well. nt

[benchwarmer]

4. bs

not gonna happen

[grahamhgreen]

11. Is IS happening...

"House Republican whip, Congressman Eric Cantor of Virginia said, “If all of Obamacare cannot be immediately repealed, then it is my intention to begin repealing it piece by piece." The New York Times reports Republican lawmakers plan to use spending bills to block various provisions which they object to and limit access to government-subsidized private health plans that include coverage of abortion. In addition, Republicans want to limit money and personnel available to the Internal Revenue Service, so the agency could not aggressively enforce provisions that require people to obtain health insurance and employers to help pay for it."

[Occam Bandage]

5. Not at all. They'll go after the mandates first.

The mandates are the least popular part of the bill, but the most necessary part. Without mandates, you can't throw out pre-existing coverage bans (otherwise, people could just wait until they got sick to get insurance). Without mandates ensuring risk is evenly distributed, you can't afford to cover the at-risk.

Once the Republicans kill the mandates, the rest of the bill dies by default. And, by happy coincidence, the mandates are the part voters hate most. Win-win for them, lose-lose for us.

[grahamhgreen]

12. Getting rid of the mandate is a win for us

If the rest of the bill stands, we can bring big insurance to their knees.


They are NOT going after the mandate first -

House Republican whip, Congressman Eric Cantor of Virginia said, “If all of Obamacare cannot be immediately repealed, then it is my intention to begin repealing it piece by piece." The New York Times reports Republican lawmakers plan to use spending bills to block various provisions which they object to and limit access to government-subsidized private health plans that include coverage of abortion. In addition, Republicans want to limit money and personnel available to the Internal Revenue Service, so the agency could not aggressively enforce provisions that require people to obtain health insurance and employers to help pay for it.

[Occam Bandage]

15. Not in the slightest. If the mandate dies, the rest of the bill is absolutely unenforceable.

Without a mandate, it amounts to nothing but a pack of pointless pipe dreams. Of course, "a pack of pointless pipe dreams" does seem to be the preferred professional-progressive policy platform.

[grahamhgreen]

19. Why is it unenforceable? the same enforcement mechanisms are still in place.

All it does is bring big insurance to the bargaining table.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

7. The Republicans are suicidal

They're already interpreting last Tuesday's electoral sweep as a "mandate" to do a lot of things that a majority of the people don't actually support. Let them try and fall flat on their faces.

[phleshdef]

9. Reconcilliation can only be used to pass 1 bill a year.

[BzaDem]

13. They actually CAN repeal the mandate with reconciliation, but they CAN'T repeal the pre-existing

condition regulation with reconciliation.

Though they can't use reconciliation anyway, since they don't control the Senate.

[ProSense]

20. Good grief.

Are people this damn desperate?

Republicans can't do shit. They don't control the Senate.

[Angry Dragon]

21. I am as pissed as many here on DU

I can be as quick as anyone to condemn on the first hint of
bad news. With that stated, let's sit back and actually see
what the republicans come out with and how Obama reacts to it.

Pay attention to what they say, but also let's see how this starts to pan out.
You can write as much as you want to boner and Obama, but I do not think either one
hears very well.

I intend to attack if either one goes against the American people,
but I have no idea which direction they are going.

[ipaint]

25. Mandates are useless when giant for profit private ins. companies are

involved in providing access to health care. Mandates do not reduce costs nor do they increase access to health care as long as for profit corporations are gatekeepers. Every other country understands this but us. There are no effective cost cutting measures in the bill. A band aid here and there but nothing large enough and strong enough to hold off the greed of the private health industry giants and their cohorts on wall street.

The mandates are the ins. companies and Karen Ignagni's coup d'etat. Hundreds of lobbyists were employed and millions of dollars in bribes were spent to get a mandate in the bill and bury a public option.

The health ins industry is going to bleed tens of millions of customers (retiring baby boomers) in the next ten years. The mandates bail out the health ins. industry by forcing Americans to buy ins. regardless of whether it comes with affordable access to actual health care. A dieing industry needed new customers badly and congress and the president delivered.

Now repubs will strip anything decent out of the bill and since this is "historic groundbreaking legislation" brought to Americans by the Democratic Party, guess who takes the fall when the shit hits the fan in 2014.

Besides that millions more Americans as a result of a continuing depression in the lower classes are within 133% of the poverty limit rolling them into an severely underfunded medicaid program. Should be interesting watching the middle class once again battle the poor for subsidy dollars vs. medicaid dollars.

The mandate will be used by the right to bludgeon the democratic party into the ground.

[DURHAM D]

27. Thank you.

There are a lot of confused people up thread.

[JVS]

28. Watch the republicans make HCR so bad that they can run against it again in 2012

:eyes: