Time to Trash the Trigger
In every major legislative battle, there are a few critical moments that decide the fate of that legislation. In health care reform, we have already seen two: the first when President Obama insisted that we do health care reform this year; the second when Senate Democrats had the guts to ignore Republican hysterics and decided they would move health care in a way that required a simple majority instead of 60 votes. The third big moment is upon us, and the fate of whether we can get real reform of the health care system accomplished will likely be decided over the next few days. The moment I am talking about is the debate of the so-called trigger mechanism for having a public option in health care insurance.
The insurance lobby has had multiple tactics for stopping the public option idea, which they despise because they know if regular folks have choice to go to a public option, insurance companies won't have the same ability to treat their customers like garbage when they get sick. The first tactic was just to try to kill the public option outright, and the good news is that they appear to have failed at that. This so-called trigger proposal is the second tactic: the idea is to write a "trigger" that will allow for a public option only under certain conditions, but write the legislation so that those conditions would never get met in the real world. It's a classic DC tactic, right up there with calling for a commission to study something. Olympia Snowe is carrying the insurance industry water on their trigger proposal, proposing triggers that would only get tripped in some fairyland none of us have ever visited.
The great thing for the insurance companies in a tactic like this is that it gives "centrist" Senators (centrist in Washington, DC usually means those who have taken massive amounts of campaign contributions from the affected industry) an excuse to help the insurance industry while looking like they are open to the public option that their constituents have been demanding.
Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress have gotten some good things done so far, and are building real momentum in getting us moving in the right direction on health care. But if conservative Democrats force the adoption of the trigger, it will destroy Democratic unity and doom health care reform, because progressives will start attacking Democrats rather than insurance companies. We really are at a critical moment.
The only committee seriously considering the trigger turkey is the Senate Finance Committee, whose members average several hundred thousand a piece in insurance industry contributions. If you care about getting true health care reform, now is the time to make your voice heard: call the Senate Finance Committee members and tell them "NO to a trigger."
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Screw the trigger...
We need to GET OUT the GREEDY PRIVATE MIDDLEMEN insurers
from HEALTH INSURANCE if we want any
possibility at all to LOWER MEDICAL COSTS in America.
GREED has crashed the US Economy.
GREED is crashing ALL affordability of American healthcare coverage.
It is time to STOP LISTENING to insurance industry lobbyists
and ASK: CAN YOU AFFORD TO BE RIPPED OFF ANY LONGER??
40% of home foreclosures are caused by UNAFFORDABLE MEDICAL EXPENSES!
H.R. 676 is the only permanent solution to our healthcare problems. All the rest is insurance companies lobbying. Let's get the names of the elected officials who vote against single payer and we shall remove them in the next election. We can do it! Obama was not elected by the lobbyists, but by us. We can do it again and again. We put a man on the moon and we will make single payer healthcare insurance happen. Good bye to health insurance companies and HMOs and their deciding what is good for us. Let our physicians and nurses make those decisions.
Obama recommends that we write thousands of letters to our congresspeople:
http://www
He is pushing us to push for single payer. It's our chess move now!
We need healthcare coverage for all citizens. I favor H.R. 676, the U.S. National Health Insurance Act, but I know that major and complex changes will need to be made, and nobody knows quite how it will look in the end. What I do know that the current employment based insurance system does not work and needs to be replaced ASAP. I want to replace my existing private coverage with something better!
People routinely mistrust federal bureaucrats. I'm not so thrilled with them either, but I am fed up with the insurance industry bureaucrats. At least we have legal means of changing the federal bureaucrats, but no such option is there for the private insurance industry bureaucrats who exist only to profit from our health concerns.
Self-employed people like me can only buy more expensive health coverage with extremely high deductibles and full of exclusions. This is unfair to small businesses. Having the world's largest group policy as a choice would lower costs and improve coverage.
A Lewin Group study estimates that premiums for a public plan would be about 30% less than coverage under private insurance, or about $761 monthly for a family ($298/individual), compared with a $970 ($405/individual) monthly premium for the same coverage in the private insurance market. (The figures represent the total premium in each case, including both individual and employer contributions, if any.) These savings could be a serious boost for consumers who are struggling to afford health insurance.
just like the morgage bail out for the american people. The Dems need to know if they try to slide one past our noses it will eventually come out and we WILL loose faith in them. They either are for us or are not. Time will tell the truth, so they better be real careful about what decisions they make.
It's "lose", not "loose."
Thanks for correcting my typo. You must be real fun to have a conversation with.
I voted for Chuck Schumer and I know he is one man for the people. I am sure he would support public option health care or single payer plan. He truly cares about his people and would always fight for their rights. He is one Honorable man.
I have a question. If judges, even Supreme Court judges - MUST "recuse" themselves from cases where they would have a "conflict of interest" - Then WHY doesn't a Congressman or Senator have to do the same thing when a vote comes up for an industry, such as the Insurance Industry - when it can be shown that they have taken LARGE amounts of MONEY - Is that not a "conflict of interest"???
The "bottom-line" is once again shown that we must take MONEY out of politics - we need REAL campaign finance reform - until then the CORPORATIONS will continue to rule!
That, exoevolution, is a fantastic idea! How can we implement it? Where do I sign up? Think of the consequences of a dozen Congress Critters making all the laws because they are the only members not having to recuse themselves!!
Agreed. Either we get campaign finance reform or the government of the people by the corporations for the rich will not perish from this earth.
Money cannot be taken out of politics or seriously controlled because the Supreme Court has ruled that money is speech. But there is another remedy: http://www
Until the for-profit insurance dynasty is removed ENTIRELY from this picture, NOTHING is going to change. How can it? There is only ONE solution to this overwhelming problem, and that solution is to take the words FOR PROFIT out of health care.
Agreed.
It is more than time for a healthcare revolution ... HR 676 sponsored by Rep Conyers as single-payer healthcare for all - start thinking of it as demanding the same healthcare our elected officials all have and if its good enough for them, its good enough for us! Strange world we live in when our elected officials have always had a universal government sponsored healthcare plan, thereby, they don't have to worry about whether or not they can pay for their illness, their ever-increasing premiums, the loss of a job, the loss of their home, etc., so they really don't understand the stressors the majority live by; AND, on top of it, they receive huge campaign funds from the very industries all of the rest of us have to fear - insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, the several large hospital groups, etc., exactly what we have with the banks.
A healthcare revolution ... we must unite together and drive this decision. Google HR 676 and all of the groups uniting behind it - PDA (Progressive Democrats of America), PNHP (Physicians For A National Health Program), The California Nurses Association - and call them and ask what you can do to help. Call your representatives and tell them to support HR 676.
I look at health care as our most important infrastructure.
After all, we can't drive our cars over bridges if we don't have healthy bodies.
Our health care infrastructure is letting us down now, as 18,000 people die due to lack of health care each year.
Our manufaturing infrastructure is suffering because of our lack of health care infrastructure. We can't compete with countries who value their people's health care enough to make it a national priority.
Health care isn't as simple as it was 100 years ago. Health care is more expensive than most people can afford on their own, especially with declining wages. Health care is also on the verge of amazing advancements especially since we have a science friendly government again. These advancements can not only save lives, but will prolong lives to previously unbelieveable reaches.
Are we to just say that only the rich deserve to live and the rest of us peons can just shrivle up and die?
That is simply immoral! When it is in our ability to save lives and we don't do it that is a crime against humanity. It is not in our individual ability to repair our health care infrastructure. Only by the power of organizing into governments can we collectively achieve this goal.
Scientific advancements made it necessary to pave roads and build bridges. It is time to think of our health care as our national infrastructure and treat it with something besides drug war prisons.
I believe the correct figures is 28,000 dying due to lack of health care per year.
There was a study that found 18,000 people died in 2001 from a lack of health care that was SPECIFICALLY CAUSE BY a lack of insurance.
In other words, in 2001 the health insurance companies killed 6 times as many Americans as Bin Laden did. Guess who we went to war with?
There is something wrong with the political system when we allow after voting for your senator or congressman to represent you but they only want your vote to get big business money why the hell bother to vote?
As for "voting", you're missing a couple of critical issues:
1) By running in local and state elections, most politicans are already known quanitities to the wealthy elites. They know who will vote their way in exchange for the legalized bribery that is the American system of campaign financing. We need public financing of all elections.
2) American voters must be more politically aware and better understand a candidate's political philosophy. FOX, CNN, ABC, etc., give no real information about a candidate's position.
What if the 70% of OUR country that wants a public health care option were to organize a 200+MILLION-person (peaceful) protest march at the Capital for, say, this Labor Day?
Is that the message CONgress must hear before doing the will of The People???
Yes, yes, yes!
The Potomac would flow with solid poop.
Very true, but watch how quickly members of CONgress want to be back home then.
Now I also wonder if there's a law against mailing ...poop.
Ditto to all the above, but heres another thing you can do: cut off their money, and tell them in no uncertain terms.
Day before yesterday, I got yet another call from the DCCC, wanting a donation to "help keep the Democrats in power and expand our numbers." I cut him off in mid-sentence and told him to save his breath. The Democratic party was not getting one more dime out of me until they came out with a single-payer universal health care plan that covered all Americans. I would be giving individually to Congresspeople who backed and voted for such a plan and noone else. I told him this was a deal breaker for me and not to call me again until such had been accomplished. By the time the conversation was over, I'm afraid my tone of voice was not at all a friendly tone, but I wanted to impress upon him just how visceral an issue this was for me. And how unhappy I was over the behavior of the committee couple of weeks ago when they laughed at the demonstrators in the audience for demanding a place at the table. I let him know that the feelings of the demonstrators more closely reflected my, and most Democrats, views than did the attitude of the committee. In particular that of Sen. Bachus.
Don't give them another penny untill they start acting like Democrats and voting the way they were elected to vote!
that is so great!
Its real simple. There is NO MONEY to pay the 25-35% of the health care dollar that goes, under the for profit "private insurance/HMO" system, to things OTHER THAN PROVIDING HEALTH CARE - such as profits, marketing, care denial, hiring private investigators to investigate you to see if your coverage can be retroactively cancelled if you get sick, corporate jets for execs, etc. etc. etc. With that money no longer being spent, and with the kind of "administrative" overhead that Medicare has (around 2%) the money will be available to actually pay for doctors, nurses, physical therapists, laboratory tests, medication, etc. for HUMANS.
Inother words: Do the math. No "public option," no reform.
Susan: You are being misled by the government. Do you really think that Medicare has a 2% administrative overhead? You need to become more familiar with government economics 101. It is much higher but is simply money not counted or "off the books" or "a different pot of money". When you get into the numbers, you will probably find that they are less efficient that the corporate types. One of their advantages is that they do not need a profit because they have no investors to satisfy. The other big advantage is the ridiculously low reimbursement rates that they pay-pennies on the dollar sometimes. Do you think that this does not affect the care received? For those of us that work in the real world, we still have to pay full price for gauze, rent, gloves, payroll taxes; nobody gives the providers a "break" because they are taking care of senior citizens? Why do you think the government passed a law that doctors HAVE TO ACCEPT medicare if they accept any private insurance? The rates stink and, on top of that, they make unreasonable demands for their patients, as if they are paying top dollar.
OTOH, there's the case of a co-worker. He wasn't feeling well and a certain test was advised. The health insurance plan he was on denied paying for the test. Apparently, the test cost too much for him to afford paying full cost. (Of course, that's why health insurance is needed.)
Six months later he died of the cancer that test was meant to detect.
CVN, you are being misled or writing for the insurance industry, when you state: "The other big advantage is the ridiculously low reimbursement rates that they pay-pennies on the dollar sometimes.
I recently had some lab work done. The doctor billed my private insurance company $150 for the work. The insurance company paid $36 and disallowed $105. I paid $9.
Offhand, I'd say private insurance companies aren't making doctors rich with their payments. I doubt Medicare would pay less than $45 for that lab test.
+ CVN65 you are absolutely correct about medicare overhead administration costs those costs are shifted directly to hospitals and providers. All of the people you see pushing papers in the hospital that is where the money is spent. the 2% is a smoke and mirrors myth.
That is perpetrated by phoneys like Michael Moore and Bernie Sanders who concoct the myth of FREE Health care it aint free kids if you want it it will cost a hella lota loot.
The Corporations are beginning to realize they can cost shift more of the burden on to the taxpayer. Workers will receive only a portion of the money. Corporate entities must pay an equal amount plus back to the workers or directly back into a collective pot via taxation for the scheme to have a chance for this to work. Remember the same men and women who engineered the bonuses for the bank fraudsters and payed out our tax dollars in banking dividends are the same crooks trying to negotiate for corporate interests.
Good point. Universal coverage under a single payer government run plan would be a massive win for Americans, the economy, the health care industry, the Democratic party, and progressive ideals. And let's face it, it the right thing to do simply as humans!
AND there's overwhelming support in this country to do "something different" than what we are doing.
And STILL we've got politicians telling us that "it can't happen". Time to get some new politicians.
Heath care reform is not going to happen. We are going to get the health insurance industry version of the Medicare prescription plan. Our costs will continue to go up and quality will continue to go down. Here's a simple way to predict virtually all legislation that passes the Congress and Senate: what would be the best outcome for the corporations lobbying against it, but yet how can it maintain the appearance of helping voters so we can posture at the signing ceremony and have something for all of us to get re-elected on? Obama's ratings are going to start going down in about 6 months when more people start to realize the only thing he's putting effort into is giving money to corporations. The rest is all talk up front and then he doesn't put up a fight when things go badly - think EFCA and Bankruptcy reform. He just quit talking about it when the corporations had killed it. I voted for the guy and donated money, but I'm not oblivious to the way in which they are not really fighting for anything meaningful.
Mike-being POTUS does not mean that BHO can do whatever he wants to do. There is no provision in our Constitution for the "limited" Federal govt to take over any private company, provide bailouts or administer heatlhcare for anyone. The Congress is bailing on him because they expected him to move to the center, not to attempt to carry out all of his leftist propositions in the first six months.
No, silly rethug, it isn't Congress that is opposing Obama, it's the lobbyists who process the legalized bribery we laughingly call campaign donations.
Ya see, when even Montana voters overwhelmingly want single-payer healthcare, so goes the nation.
I think you're right Mike. Liberals and Progressives put Obama into office and he's pretty well shafted us on every turn. I think I'm one of a growing number who will already find it to be very difficult to vote for President Obama in 4 years.
Romney??
Centrists, who vote for either Democrats or Republicans based on which candidate they think is best in a particular race, put Obama in office. Get over yourself.
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