46.3 million Americans without health insurance

[bugscoe]

Quote from bigarrow:

In my opinion, our country can afford a health care plan that covers all of us. This might be able to be achieved just by regulation of the insurance industry, and if the republicans cared any they could have gotten regulations through while they were in power and avoided all this, but they don't care, not about health care for the individual.

Lol. This country is already broke!

And pleeeze...the bill the dems keep pushing has nothing to do with health care/insurance reform.

It's nothing but an ideological scorecard push for them. They've offered no serious discussions or debate on the issues, kept republicans closed out since April, and refer to any opposers as racist nazi terrorists.

They've handled this whole thing like teenagers who've discovered booze for the first time.

 

[Scataphagos]

Quote from bugscoe:

"... And pleeeze...the bill the dems keep pushing has nothing to do with health care/insurance reform.

It's nothing but an ideological scorecard push for them.

Absolutely correct. The Dems will shove a crappy plan RIGHT UP OUR COLLECTIVE ASSES... just because they can. (The Dem's Health Care push is NOT mostly about health care... it's about government gaining greater power and control over every aspect of American life... :>( ...it's about Obama's pathological narcissistic desires to make America a Marxist society...)

50 years ago, Ronald Reagan stated, "... the road to Socialism is through Government Health Care...".

 

[bigarrow]

Quote from Scataphagos:



50 years ago, Ronald Reagan stated, "... the road to Socialism is through Government Health Care...".

Reagan wasn't always right, he wasn't the messiah you know just a man, a politician.
All the crying about the democrats and Obama, you guys know the only reason the democrats are in power is because the republicans failed. We had no choice to but to fire the people who failed, it's the way capitalism works. I've fired a few good ole boys with great potential but in the end they were just f%ck ups and had to be let go, that is what the republican party did they f%cked up and their only answer was Palin. I really do hope they run a smart logical, pragmatic candidate next time, it would be a good change to be able to chose from 2 good candidates instead of the lessor of 2 evils, which is what we've had the last 3 elections.

 

[Scataphagos]

Quote from bigarrow:

".. We had no choice to but to fire the people who failed, it's the way capitalism works.

BULLSHIT! Congress's DIS-approval rating at the '08, election was 86%. Yet, 95% of incumbents were sent back to Washington.

American voters on balance are naive, stupid, and greedy. THAT'S why we have Obama in the White House.

Yes, Obama's election (likely fraudulent because he's not really eligible to be president) was a backlash against Bush-ism. So, we got something "different"... not necessarily better.

 

[chipmunk]

Gee....so what is the average cost per month for health care in the U.S.A.?

 

[Mnphats]

Quote from trefoil:

Your 2nd statement makes no sense.
If you don't allow those with pre-existing conditions into the pool, you also can't tell everyone they have to be in it. Without the latter, you can't control costs, because the healthy will opt out.
We are, remember, not talking about insuring the old, they've already got Medicare. The poor, who also tend to get sick more, have Medicaid. So the pool we're looking at is working age folks and their children.
If you allow opt-outs, the childless will opt out because children do tend to go to the doctor more. This will increase the insurance cost for families. Families have enough struggles without the added struggle of paying more for insurance because the selfish, anti-social types of people who decide not to have families also decide to stay out of health insurance.
Which is precisely where we are now.

Medicare in part is exactly the reason with expensive procedures.


Doctor wants a $1000 dollar procedure. Medicare will only pay $500, leaving the next guy with health care insurance paying $1500 for the same procedure to cover the governments lack of payment.



Also, lets say someone with medicare gets a knee replacement surgery and is in the hospital several days. On day three the patient unfortunately develops a bladder infection. Nothing to do with quality of care just that certain percent of the population develops a bladder infection. Medicare denies the ENTIRE claim. Again forcing the hospital to charge the next guy with health insurance double to cover the cost.

 

[bugscoe]

Quote from bigarrow:

We had no choice to but to fire the people who failed, it's the way capitalism works. I've fired a few good ole boys with great potential but in the end they were just f%ck ups and had to be let go,

This is a beauty.

If our government actually thought this way, we might actually make some progress.

 

[bigarrow]

Quote from bugscoe:

This is a beauty.

If our government actually thought this way, we might actually make some progress.

I know, but it wont happen, the system favors the incumbents, the major changes are gradual except for the president, that is sudden and that is what happened. Obama will be judged the same way as his predecessor Bush was, the right will hate him even if he is successful and the left will love him even if he is a failure and those of us in the middle will get to make the decision of who the next president will be.

 

[Random.Capital]

Quote from bigarrow:

Reagan wasn't always right...

Reagan turned Social Security into the world's largest Ponzi scheme and kicked of the golden age of massive credit expansion. Far from being "always right", the guy did irreparable harm to American fiscal responsibility.

 

[trefoil]

Quote from Mnphats:

Medicare in part is exactly the reason with expensive procedures.


Doctor wants a $1000 dollar procedure. Medicare will only pay $500, leaving the next guy with health care insurance paying $1500 for the same procedure to cover the governments lack of payment.



Also, lets say someone with medicare gets a knee replacement surgery and is in the hospital several days. On day three the patient unfortunately develops a bladder infection. Nothing to do with quality of care just that certain percent of the population develops a bladder infection. Medicare denies the ENTIRE claim. Again forcing the hospital to charge the next guy with health insurance double to cover the cost.

This situation is forced by the other fact that always gets ignored in these debates: we already have socialism for the vast part of the middle class that works for large employers like GE, Citi, (which, like every too big to fail financial institution, double-dips by being too large to fail and getting all kinds of subsidies for its employees on top of that; a class which includes GE, now that I think of it) GM, and so on.
The largest "tax expenditure" - where the entity gets to expense the entire cost of the thing paid for - is health insurance, for corporations. This is a massive hidden subsidy. It raises the price of all medical procedures.
The sensible thing to do would be to eliminate this. McCain proposed it, and Obama has been toying with it. It's the single best way to both pay for reform and bring costs down.