After waiting patiently for over five years, I am ready for the citizens to throw up our hands and say “Enough” lets come together and figure out a way to reform the rising cost of health care. These costs are crippling our businesses and citizens. Medicare will go broke in the year 2018, so unless we have reformed health care; we are just spinning our wheels, trying to form a bipartisan committee to tackle Medicare. Entitlements such as Social security, Medicaid, Medicare, along with private insurance, prescription drugs, doctors, hospitals, unions, and foreign competition are all connected when it comes to our high health care cost. Now is the time, especially since today 5 million people are unemployed and over 40 million are uninsured.
The Obama administration proposed $634 billion of the new $3.6 trillion budget to be put in a reserve fund over the next ten years to tackle Health Care reform. Tax increases on the 2% of our wealthiest, spending cuts, and tax savings in the health care industry will pay for most of the cost, according to the president’s staff.
Democrats are also proposing to cut federal payments to insurers that have private plans under Medicare, that on average have been 14% higher than what the government usually spends on its Medicare patients. The democrats claim this will save $177 billion over the next 10 years.
The administration’s wants to create generic versions of the biotechnology drugs and is thinking of making upper income seniors pay a higher Medicare premium.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Obama also wants the hospitals to received just one payment to cover the hospital stay and outpatient care for 30 days after. He would also like to cut payments to hospitals that routinely readmit patients after they are discharged.
The ideas that have been mentioned have their drawbacks, such as research and development funds being scaled back by the prescription drug companies, raising taxes on the wealthiest will leave less money for investments, and government intervention into routine hospital practices.
The Republican Party has to come forward with their ideas in order for this to be a true bipartisan reform. I’m sure we will hear weeks of squabbling over the same old arguments of socialize medicine, Hillary care, taxes, class warfare, frivolous lawsuits and one –sided gloom and doom stories before the politicians enter the door to hopefully have a meaningful bipartisan solution.
One of the main reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire was the fact that the middle class got tired of paying most of the taxes with nothing to show for it. Some familiar?
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Sorry, Mike, I had to go make an emergency stop at Lowe's. I totally agree with the Dover Policy. It may open some eyes ala Vietnam when they showed caskets being carried from planes at a more rapid rate than the Iraq thing. The total shame of it is that not enough people in the country have a relative or friend serving in the military to affect them. I'll certainly bet more attention would be paid if the draft were still around.
February 27, 2009 at 5:53 p.m.Banning media coverage at Dover is censorship that obscures the truth of combat’s most tragic result and therefore denies the nation a full accounting of the cost of war, lives and treasure.
What's happening with your blog? i posted this and it came out in a different one. Is it Homeland Security? The ghost of Boosh?
tafoer
February 27, 2009 at 9:20 a.m.Your response is so typical of the CPAC, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Joe the plumber, and Sarah Palin wing of the Republican Party….When confronted with substantiated data they reach back and pull out the boogey man (straw man argument) illegal alien is going to get your health benefits.
I noticed you never offered any solutions. Is status quo, your answer?
Don't forget to remove 10 to 12 millions illegal aliens from you total. The only thing we need give them is a bus ride to their place of origin.
February 26, 2009 at 9:23 p.m.Tafoer,that may be so but during the debates republicans and democratic quoted the 47 million
and the USA Today
Updated 8/29/2006 10:50 PM ET
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By Julie Appleby, USA TODAY
February 26, 2009 at 7:32 p.m.The percentage of people with job-based health insurance dropped again last year, helping push up the level of uninsured Americans to 15.9% of the population, the highest since 1998.
Estimates released Tuesday by the Census Bureau show that 46.6 million people lacked health insurance in 2005, up from 45.3 million in 2004. Unlike in other recent years, there was no increase in the rate of enrollment in government-based programs, such as Medicaid, which had helped to offset declines in private insurance.
Job-based health insurance, which is the way most Americans get their coverage, began falling in 2001, even as health insurance premiums rose at double-digit annual rates. Last year, premium growth averaged 9.2%, lower than in previous years, but still three times inflation
I think even Fox uses 40 million uninsured.
The Kaiser Family Foundation, a liberal non-profit frequently quoted by the media, puts the number of uninsured Americans who do not qualify for current government programs and make less than $50,000 a year between 13.9 million and 8.2 million. That is a much smaller figure than the media report. (47Million)
February 26, 2009 at 7:15 p.m.Kaiser’s 8.2 million figure for the chronically uninsured only includes those uninsured for two years or more. It is also worth noting, that, 45 percent of uninsured people will be uninsured for less than four months according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Johnny2bad
February 26, 2009 at 5:20 p.m.That joke has been around for awhile in reference to socialized medicine but it is also true that the 47 million that are not insured could be potential new customers of the insurance companies. It is essential to know if we can make that happen.
You think health care is expensive now, just wait until it's 'free' ...
February 26, 2009 at 5:08 p.m.Oh yeah, they never left Washington after 1993-4, they knew it would come back around...Like the Taliban they had the patience to wait it out…JObama said they could have a seat at the table just not all the seats...Bar Joe the plummer from any meeting.
February 26, 2009 at 4:11 p.m.I saw this in last week’s NYT.
The 20 people who regularly attend the meetings on Capitol Hill include lobbyists for AARP, Aetna, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the American Cancer Society, the American Medical Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the Business Roundtable, Easter Seals, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the United States Chamber of Commerce…And this just pre-season.
Easter Seals?
BTW… What you think about the new Dover policy?
Stop Le Bron James
The health care lobbyists will soon be coming out of the woodwork like termites.
February 26, 2009 at 3:57 p.m.coolgranny
February 26, 2009 at 3:03 p.m.I am sorry, forgot to mention the conservative wanted what the employer paid for the employee's insurance to be counted as taxable income to the employee.
Normally, you lose any flex-plan money you haven't used ,so I guess that is the reason it has not really caught on.
The last time I checked my hub's paystub, the medical was taken out after taxes, so we did pay taxes on it. The flex spending is before taxes, but it will probably be done away with soon. It's the only perk out there in insurance land.
February 26, 2009 at 2:55 p.m.Thanks John
February 26, 2009 at 2:51 p.m.While I was waiting for my wife to complete her routine mammogram, I saw two young ladies being turned away because they did not have the $60 for the test. As a country we are so backward thinking, preventive medicine will save billions.
I certainly don’t know the answers but I cannot see why the lobbyist, doctors, hospitals and insurance administrations, and the prescription drug representatives can’t sit down and come to a reasonable solution. It’s because of this inaction that we have to have government intervention. If we have a private sector solution, and then let’s go for it.
I heard one conservative say that the employee that has health insurance should be taxed because that is taxable income…Then a liberal said the employer should not be allowed a deduction…That’s where we are but let’s get it out in the open and come to some conclusion.