Click pic to embiggen
The map is from two years ago. While the Senator’s positions (and Senators) may have changed, it’s unlikely any of the costs listed have gone down.
Is the public option dead? Liberals fear losing it. The White House is pushing ‘curve bending,’ whatever the hell that means. Republicans, on the other hand, are trying to scare the elderly and spouting other blatantly false crap which hurts their credibility. And then, out in the far reaches of the galaxy that even Hubble can’t see, is Glenn Beck.
@ 28 Guyver
So we agree the US system is not perfect. That’s a start.
Okay let’s go a stage further – do you think it is the best in the world as it is? If not then what non-universal health care system is better?
‘I’ve lived overseas and the systems are not better.’
Pray tell – where, and for how long? And was it the same or worse and how?
I ask because I don’t believe you have any meaningful experience. Why? Because I’ve lived here for many years, and in Europe for any years. It’s obvious.
‘The other links are from ABC and CNN news. Good grief! Fringe indeed.’
Fringe in the sense – that you can always find isolated examples of when things don’t work, or have problems. It doesn’t say anything about the system. It’s from the fringe of the system. Unless you think there are millions of boob jobs on the NHS? No? No – because they aim to only do them in cases where there is disfigurement. Which is fair enough. So its fringe and in this context scaremongering.
‘But I’m not a heartless, evil, greedy person. There is ONE way I am willing to go with universal health care. The catch is, we all go to a fair tax system and eliminate income tax.’
No. You are at least a heartless, greedy person – I’m assuming your not a stupid person – because you claim it’s acceptable for someone say earning 100 million dollar bonus to pay the same tax as someone earning say 20k USD. What a crock. Lets call a spade a spade.
‘Weakly” claim is entirely your interpretation of it.’
Its weak as your claim is hearsay.
On the news I heard this morning that 100% of Americans think people using the name ‘Guyver’ are health care reform scaremongers.
That has as much strength as your claim.
Give us the link. I’m fascinated now to see where this supposedly solid data is coming from.
29, You can’t be serious. I’ll disagree with you on the post office. “Free” health care isn’t cheap and disproportionately burdens people who are higher income earners. ‘Nuff said. Perot if nothing else is at least an independent.
30, There was no misquoting. All statistics use carefully chosen words. I have affordable health care. ‘Nuff said on that.
Sorry to hear about the supposed woman you know, but Life is unfair. Grow up or Suck it up. The Federal government is not authorized by the Constitution to provide health care for its citizens.
Liberals like yourself try to make life “more fair” by riding on the shoulders of others who take matters into their own hands and achieve.
Speaking of trends.
@33 Guyver
‘You can’t be serious. I’ll disagree with you on the post office.’
How so? Please explain.
Do you send all your letters fedex?
@33 Guyver
And whilst you’re at it, could you explain how you got this cheap ‘excellent’ health care plan?
Where do I sign up? What do I need to do?
Hey if I can get great cheap health care in the current system, hey sign me up. Tell me how I do it. I’d really like to know.
>The current trends in health insurance is HSAs and higher deductibles. Why does it seem logical to pay a company for a service which equates to customers paying more out of pocket for health care?
Because that’s the way it used to be. Why shouldn’t insurance be insurance against a catastrophe, rather than paying every little expense? Do you tremble at the sight of auto-insurance deductibles too?
The 50 million wth no insurance is really close to 10 million when you subtract illegal immigrants, people eligible for Medicaid who don’t bother to sign up because they are healthy, and people who can afford insurance but would rather not spend the money.
34, The USPS is terrible with packages. When I send packages I end up paying more to ship via USPS. A package in a box over 12″x12″ (or something like this) but weighs as much as a smaller box package incurs about twice the price. Tracking costs extra as does signature confirmation. Not to mention when packages are lost or late, the USPS doesn’t tell you when it will be scheduled for delivery or where it currently is. On the matter of letters, how many postage rate hikes have we had in the last handful of years?
35, Pretty easy. Go back to school and get a good education. Good employers have a tendency to hire better educated / qualified employees. Those more desirable employees are rewarded with better benefits. For the children, kill the Department of Education, reform education, give parents vouchers so they can vote where their kids go to school, test competency of teachers (while empowering principals the power to fire substandard teachers on the spot), and make education the responsibility of the State. Will this fix every person’s problem? Probably not. But I would argue it would fix a lot. IMHO the poor education kids have been getting is the root problem for being unattractive to better employers who have the better benefits.
More government isn’t the solution.
27 / 32: Okay, so it was probably Fox that I heard mentioning the poll this morning because I found it on Rasmussen.
And I stand corrected. It’s 70% and not 80%, so if nothing else I was off by a whole 10%. 🙂
Whenever I hear about the debate about “health care”, I have to ask are we talking about health care costs or health care cost coverage? It is not the right of every citizen to have any and all health care costs covered by the State.
Frankly, let the individual States implement a system and let’s see how it goes. There is absolutely no reason it must be done at the Federal level. If the States cannot get their act together to implement a system what makes anyone believe that the Federal government will do any better? By far the best thing the Federal government can do is to streamline the existing system to increase competition.
A single payer system is not required in order to provide universal health care cost coverage. There are other less draconian solutions that can achieve the same goal.
#42 Guyver
‘I was in the military’
Right. So you don’t have any experience of it, as I originally claimed.
The best you can claim is your ‘friends moaned’. Well I’ve a news flash for you, people moan everywhere.
I’ve heard even rich people with great super expensive health care moan on occasion.
‘Get a real job and you’ll be whining a lot less.’
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
If I actually care about people who live in poverty doesn’t necessarily mean I’m in poverty.
You assume that my thinking something is a good idea it would have to directly benefit me. I guess because that is your thought process. Everything has to benefit you. Thus you are a ‘heartless, evil, greedy person’, by definition.
I may have to pay more taxes. I’m happy with that. I actually give a crap about my fellow human being. You apparently do not – especially if they ‘don’t have a real job’. Screw them.
It’s not all about me. It’s not all about you.
Type of health care system probably doesn’t change people’s health all that much. Life expectancy is roughly the same in Europe, America, Australia, a little lower in Eastern Europe, Central America, a little lower in Asia and South America, and horrendous in Africa.
Infant mortality is about the same, and probably responsible for a large share of the differences in life expectancy.
44, Good grief. I lived in the local economy of both countries collectively for 9 years and hung out with my friends after work. To insist that I would have needed to be wait-listed days, weeks, or months with local health care to understand what my friends were already telling me is utterly stupid. I can say I was there and it wasn’t so rosy.
On your soap box of rich people moaning, I already stated that “You will always find someone who is dissatisfied with what they have or don’t have.” The difference is there is liberal whining like yours and reasonable whining like what my friends explained to me. They wished their health care system was more like ours.
I never said you were in poverty. And no, I did not assume that something had to benefit you in order for it to be a good idea. I’m soooooooooo evil that I’m willing to go along with a universal health care system IF we moved to a fair tax and eliminated the income tax. But something tells me you think that a rich guy paying the same rate of tax as a middle class guy is unfair. Tax a person’s consumption, not their productivity.
I have no problems with helping my fellow American out so long as everyone is either contributing proportionately or that it is of my own free will instead of government bureaucratic force.
And no, I did not say “screw” those with no real job. I said for them to go back to school to become more skilled and marketable. Otherwise suck it up instead of whining. I merely suggested revamping medicare and the education system as well as improving the workforce with better education to attract better employers with health care plans.
But I get it. You want this to be an entitlement provided by the Federal government (which has no Constitutional authority on this). Somehow you want to say that I’m trying to say this is all about me? LOL. You want to have it your way instead of earning it through hard work and better education. Typical liberal rubbish. You want to have it your way right away along with your perception that 99% of Americans don’t have access to good health care.
It wouldn’t surprise me that you probably also think that taxpayers should pay to have everyone own a $200k+ home.
#39, Guyver,
The USPS is terrible with packages. When I send packages I end up paying more to ship via USPS. A package in a box over 12″x12″ (or something like this) but weighs as much as a smaller box package incurs about twice the price.
How the eff does that make the United States Post Office inefficient? It sounds more like the person sending the parcel is an idiot.
Pretty easy. Go back to school and get a good education.
And just how many more lawyers, accountants, and others with an education do you think this economy can handle?
For the children, kill the Department of Education, reform education, give parents vouchers so they can vote where their kids go to school, test competency of teachers (while empowering principals the power to fire substandard teachers on the spot), and make education the responsibility of the State.
You must be that idiot sending the parcels through USPS. First, education is a State responsibility; second, parents already have control over local school boards for local policy and State representatives for State policy; third, the power to fire a public servant should remain with the elected representatives, not a bureaucrat.
BTW, there are far more teachers that drop out from teaching because the pay is too low and aggravation from Principals and Superintendents too stressful. I work with a couple. Great for us but definitely a loss for the schools.
IMHO the poor education kids have been getting is the root problem for being unattractive to better employers who have the better benefits.
Which demonstrates what ass you are. Your so called “better employers” offer no better or only marginally better benefits than do other comparable employers. Anyone with any education knows that the State Universities are the equivalent to private Universities.
More government isn’t the solution.
We aren’t asking for more government. We want the government to do what the private sector has failed at.
#41, Guyver,
Well, your lie is out. It wasn’t 70% approving of health care. It was comparing their health care to other plans. And yes, Rasmussen is Right Wing orientated. But then the clincher, that poll you linked to is from May 14, not this morning.
Here, read the actual report
1*How do you rate the health care you receive? Excellent, good, fair or poor?
26% Excellent
36% Good
28% Fair
8% Poor
2% Not sure
2*Do you have health insurance?
78% Yes
19% No
3% Not sure
3* How do you rate your own health insurance coverage? (answered only by those who have health insurance)
30% Excellent
40% Good
23% Fair
6% Poor
1% Not sure
5* Have health care costs ever put you in a situation where you had to miss some credit card, rent, or mortgage payments?
26% Yes
65% No
9% Not sure.
>Canadians much prefer their form of Health Care.
Paul Krugman did a poll of the Canadians in his audience, and found that they thought their health care was terrible.
When did the right wing in the US become so obsessed with Canada?
Overall, Americans and Canadians are fairly satisfied with their health care systems. Of course the uninsured in the US rate it lower but the insured rate it higher.
As a Canadian I’ll say that I don’t think the US should adopt our system whole hog. It’s a Canadian solution for a different country, culture, geography, and history. Like anything it could be improved but it generally works for us – but it probably wouldn’t work for the US.
To the left and right down there, come up with your own better ideas and quit emulating or trashing another country. You do have a math problem on your hands since your costs, especially for private insurance, are increasing rapidly, you will soon be spending twice what Canada spends as a percentage of GDP, net 2 million people per year drop off the insured list, and businesses are getting crushed by the costs.
#48
So, instead of 70% it was actually 62% and that’s assuming we count “Fair” as disapproval. If we count “Fair”, that means 90% approval. I’d have to say you are proving Guyver’s point.
The map means nothing.
Even less than nothing. If the guys from TN aren’t blue dogs they don’t want to get reelected. You do not mess with medicare because the seniors will show up and vote your butt out of office.
Yeah we do need reform. However I’d like them to do it a little at a time so we can have some clue about what we are doing and how much it will cost.
TN Care. We had to scale it back.
Hawaii: They dropped it when people dropped insurance to get their kids into a free program meant for poor kids.
California: They had to take an ax to it and its still breaking them.
Mass. They don’t have a clue how they will pay for it especially if the costs keep growing.
As Obama said about Bush and his 911 bills: when you try to shove a great big bill with a lot of radical changes through you are certain to make some major screw ups. Duh!
#6 Traaxx said, in part:
“There are only two ways to control costs, 1.)ration care; 2.) ration what you pay the doctors and nurses.”
I prefer a third option: ration what you pay the tens of thousands of claim denier bureaucrats and super-extra-highly-paid executives of the insurance companies. Also bring back mutual insurance companies.
– – – – –
# 28 Guyver said, in part, after proposing the elimination of the income tax:
“I can meet you half-way.”
Halfway from where to where? I could say I deserve for the government to put me up in luxury accommodations on Mars, with an army of servants and concubines and you can go to Hell, and ask, Won’t you meet me halfway?
Also, it is very unlikely that the bureaucracy for the “public option” will be run by the Department of Education. It is much more likely to be set up along the lines of Medicare and the VA — two of the most efficient health care organizations in the country, spending approximately 1/4 to 1/10 as much (as a percentage of their income) on bureaucracy as the insurance companies do.
– – – – –
I heard an interesting and indicative statistic the other day: when the Medicare bill was passed, health insurance companies spent 95 percent of every premium dollar on health care. Now it’s 80 percent, a fourfold increase in profit. Yet insurance premiums keep doubling. Corporations have no word for “enough” in their language.
When Medicare passed, private out of pocket payments for health care were much higher. Insurance companies were making bigger payouts on average.
Once you have government health care, it can be used to justify almost any restraint on freedom: After all, if the state has to cure you, it surely has an interest in preventing you needing treatment in the first place. That’s the argument behind, for example, mandatory motorcycle helmets, or the creepy teams of government nutritionists currently going door to door in Britain and conducting a “health audit” of the contents of your refrigerator. They’re not yet confiscating your Twinkies; they just want to take a census of how many you have. So you do all this for the “free” health care — and in the end you may not get the “free” health care anyway. Under Britain’s National Health Service, for example, smokers in Manchester have been denied treatment for heart disease, and the obese in Suffolk are refused hip and knee replacements. Patricia Hewitt, the British Health Secretary, says that it’s appropriate to decline treatment on the basis of “lifestyle choices.” Smokers and the obese may look at their gay neighbor having unprotected sex with multiple partners, and wonder why his “lifestyle choices” get a pass while theirs don’t. But that’s the point: Tyranny is always whimsical.
Mark Steyn
It will be fun over the fall break to hear the president try to ‘answer’ all the questions and concerns that keep coming up as more and more become aware of what all is contained in the House Bill.
47, Wow! Great way to cherry pick your quotes. You’re getting awfully defensive about this. What are you? A government employee? Sounds like the Perot quote hit a sore spot with you. LOL.
In your limited understanding of going back to school and getting an education, I guess I can see why you immediately chose lawyers or accountants. I had engineers, scientists, doctors, nurses, technicians, and mathematicians in mind.
If education is entirely a state responsibility, then there’s no need for a Department of Education at the Federal level. As for how you picture the greatness of a public education, try looking at link in post #26. My condolences if you are a public school teacher. 🙂
My response to you on the private market failing on health care (see from 0:22 to 0:56): http://tinyurl.com/n4t58g
48, My lie is out? LOL. Go look at the link in post #41. I never said the poll itself was from the morning. I said the morning news cited that poll. Your point is? Also, if you go look at question #3 of the poll you’ve quoted, you will see that you have proven what I already said. The morning news was pointing out strictly question #3. Combine the answers for Excellent & Good and you get 70%. If you throw in the Fair answers, you’re then up to 93%. By fair, I assume that respondents took that as meaning adequate or meets expectations.
49, Pretty funny. 🙂
50, The left likes to use Canada and certain European countries as a gold standard for universal health care.
51, Yup and the funny part is Ralph the Bus Driver didn’t realize it.
53, By meeting halfway (and if you’re liberal) then I’d go for one of your big political “wants” (i.e. universal health care) that others of your ilk share if you go for one of my big political “wants” (i.e. Fair Tax) that others of my ilk share.
I never said nor suggested that the Department of Education would be running health care. I brought up the DOE for two reasons. Government-run education essentially sucks and should illustrate along with the post office how lousy government-run services are to the general public. The other reason being that we have a growing population of lesser educated people (mostly due to the lousy public education system) who would like to have better benefits (i.e. health care) but are not attractive to employers who provide these more desirable benefits.
Most doctors will tell you that Medicare has a lot of wasteful spending and most veterans will tell you that the service they get from the VA is not ideal. I seriously doubt you’ll get insiders to candidly tell you things are efficient. But the VA is about one of the largest hospital systems in the world, if not THE largest.
#57, Guyver,
I brought up the DOE for two reasons. Government-run education essentially sucks and should illustrate along with the post office how lousy government-run services are to the general public.
I just love it when you right wing nuts claim Government run services generally suck. I can list quite a few private companies, including my health insurance company, and credit card company that suck worse than anything you might think.
A Bill Kristol admitted recently, the Pentagon provides excellent care to our soldiers. So it is more than possible for our government to provide excellent medical coverage for the rest of us.
Quickly reading the above posts it seems you have a difficult time mailing packages. The Post Office does have people that will help you. Just ask. Plus their service is much more cost effective than private companies.
Most American schools are pretty good. There are still hundreds of thousands of well qualified graduates that can’t find jobs, but not because of their education. Yes, including engineers, mathematicians, research scientists, and even lowly technicians.
And your claim that it is unconstitutional for the Federal Government to become involved in health care? Bullshit. Try reading the Constitution some day. HINT, try reading the very first sentence.
Why do you hate America?
58, You liberals are full of hasty conclusions today. No, I’m not a “right-wing nut” just because I’m not into big government. No I rarely ever use the USPS. I do so when necessary. I prefer UPS or Fed Ex because they have been cheaper and more reliable for what I have done in the past with “free” $100 insurance and tracking.
The Department of Veterans’ Affairs is NOT a part of the Pentagon. Didn’t you supposedly claim once on this website to have been a military officer? LOL. What a joke. Therefore your conclusion is bunk since you don’t even know that the Department of Veteran’s Affairs has its own hospital system independent and separate from the Department of Defense.
And with respect to the VA, no it’s not an efficient system. I have used it as well as my family members.
Yes there are skilled workers without jobs right now due to the current economic situation. Nothing is perfect. Life is not fair. Move on.
No the American schools are not pretty good. Many are passing kids who should be flunked and the standards are lowered. This does nothing for those kids but screw their futures away. Our government is too preoccupied with job security of teachers rather than doing what is fundamentally right for the kids. You can thank the NEA for that. I’ve been to both private and public, and public is a joke. I have a few friends married to teachers and the problems they deal with is not uncommon from what is mentioned in the 20/20 link on post #26.
If you’re referring to the phrase “general welfare” in the preamble you do realize that the word had a different meaning back then?: http://tinyurl.com/llh44z I bet you want people here to believe that the phrase “All men are created equal” is meant to be taken literally when the fore fathers meant something quite different. LOL.
And you do know that the Congress has enumerated powers listed in Article 1, section 8? None of which gives Congress the power to establish a national health care system.
“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.” – James Madison, 1792
HINT, when you try to read the Constitution you need to read things in context.