On September 23, 2010, key provisions of the Affordable Healthcare Act (aka, Health Care Reform, or "HCR") become active.
As of that date, it shall be illegal for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you become ill. It shall also be illegal for insurance companies not to insure your children due to pre-existing illnesses. And, parents will have the right to insure their children up to age 26 under their policies.
The day should not be allowed to pass, however, without calling the Republicans to task. With votes.
I propose "Sense of the Senate (and House)" Resolutions that read as follows:
"The Senate (House) joins the American people in celebrating September 23, 2010, as the day when insurance companies will no longer be allowed to drop peoples' coverage when they become ill, or to refuse to insure children due to pre-existing illnesses, and when parents will have the absolute right to insure their children up to age 26 under their policies. This is a day, long overdue in America, that the people shall have a new birth of freedom against the dictatorial powers of health insurance companies".
Bring this to the floor of each chamber for a vote. Yes or No. Up or Down. The American people or the insurance companies.
Let us see what the Republicans do. If they vote in favor of this resolution, they will have associated themselves with President Obama's health care reform, and alienate their base. If they vote against it, they will have voted for the insurance companies and against the American people.
We know where Rush, Beck, Palin stand. I suspect we also know where Senator Jim DeMented (R-SC) stands. On the House side, we can probably predict where the "Tea Party " caucus will wind up. Would it not be great for Taryl Clarke (Bachmann's bright, reasonable and wonderful opponent) to have this albatross to hang around Bachmann's neck?
There is one additional benefit. It would convey to the people of this country that Democrats are indeed proud of what they have achieved. Not perfect, but a giant first step. Something that can be built upon in the future. Until now, Democrats have conveyed the message, "we didn't really mean it". This would provide them the opportunity of reversing that perception.
Of course, Ms. Bachmann et al. will refer to something in the Constitution -- which they probably have not read, and certainly do not understand -- and rail against the federal government.
But, using federal power to free people from the dictatorship of the insurance companies? Providing health care security, guaranteeing children's coverage, enabling 26-year-olds to be covered under their parents' plans.... versus some abstract and totally false reading of the Constitution?
That's an argument we can win -- big time.
Health care needed reform but not like this. This is bill is going to create problems for many years to come.
The non-partisan, non-profit research organization the Kaiser Family Foundation, produced a helpful 9-minute cartoon video explaining the basics of the law.
http://www.doubledutchpolitics.com/
http://www.consumerreports.org/health/insurance/health-insurance.htm
"If we allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good, we'll never get anywhere..."
-Paul Abrams
"Ultimately there is no dividing line between Wall Street and main street."
-Barack Obama
Seems to me that with the "enemy of the good" excuse you Democrats have figured out (you think) the perfect way to shovel even more money at your corporate buds without (you think) totally alienating your base. Well, you're calculations were wrong; the base isn't as dumb as you had hoped it was. You have alienated your base and you all are about to be toasted in November. No amount of elaborate sophistry is going to change that fact.
^Or having insurance companies write the legislation and feign mild agitation at the unfairness of the bill. How about we quit listening to the squawking of both parties and understand bowing before the top-hat wearing cigar wielding robber barons who WRITE such legislation is intolerable; furthermore, representatives who allow such naked fascism and yellow-journalists who endorse blatant lies for the sake of political allegiance should have their deception held to flame.
Finally the myths about healthcare reform should go away thanks to Consumer Reports. Get expert, unbiased, and fact-based information on healthcare reform on what the GOP and Tea Parties refer to as "Obamacare":
http://www.consumerreports.org/health/insurance/health-insurance.htm
The games that insurance companies play when forced to take pre-existing conditions, is to jack the rates up even more than they already have, to pay for it.
Why is the system an expensive mess?
"Breaking Down “Additional” Spending in the U.S.
When McKinsey’s researchers analyzed health care spending in different countries they adjusted for the fact that more prosperous countries will invariably spend more on medical care. But even after taking higher per-capita income in the U.S. into account, they found “additional” (or excess) spending in the U.S. concentrated in five areas: hospital inpatient care; outpatient care, drugs, administration, and insurance(in that order), with inpatient care and outpatient care accounting for 80 percent of additional spending. (Pricey drugs and devices administered in a hospital or outpatient setting, show up on hospital bills).
Looking at the major components of our health care system, MGI analysts found the main sources of higher spending: “Input costs—including doctors’ and nurses’ salaries, drugs, devices, and other supplies, the profits of participants in the system--explain the highest proportion of additional spending –or $281 billion.” (Note, these are 2005 numbers.) “Inefficiencies and complexities in the system’s operational processes” add another $147 billion. Finally, administration, regulation and intermediation cost another $98 billion of excess spending.”
The report goes on to note that our fee-for-service payments to physicians encourage them to do more and see more patients. U.S. doctors see, on average, 1.6 times more patients than physicians in other countries. They also are paid more: in other developed countries specialists earn an average of 4 times GDP per capita, while generalists earn 3.2 times GDP; in the U.S. these numbers rise to 6.6 and 4.2 respectively.
McKinsey observes, in our for-profit system, “physicians frequently co-own facilities, such as ambulatory surgical centers, diagnostic imaging centers and diagnostic testing and procedure laboratories, and receive a share of their profits. The profit sharing counts for another . . . $8 billion of higher spending.”
In hospitals, the cost per day is 2.6 times higher than the OECD average, largely because we emphasize “acute care,” and “complex surgeries.” Many U.S. patients receive far more aggressive, intensive care than their counterparts abroad: One in five is likely to die in an intensive care unit (even though 90 percent would prefer to die at home.) Yet, McKinsey confirms on average, the quality of care is no better, and we don’t live as long as the citizens of many other nations."
http://www.healthbeatblog.com/2010/09/no-obesity-is-not-driving-health-care-inflation-part-1.html
Insurance companies would charge $20,000+ a year if they had to cover the elderly, which is exactly what the Republican budget proposal wants to do when they propose to eliminate Medicare.
“"The Roadmap for America’s Future, which Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) calls for radical policy changes that would result in a massive transfer from the broad majority of Americans to the nation’s wealthiest individuals.
The Roadmap would give the most affluent households a new round of very large, costly tax cuts by reducing income tax rates on high-income households; eliminating income taxes on capital gains, dividends,interest; and abolishing the corporate income tax, the estate tax, and the alternative minimum tax. At the same time, the Ryan plan would raise taxes for most middle-income families, privatize a substantial portion of Social Security, eliminate the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance, end traditional Medicare and most of Medicaid, and terminate Children’s Health Insurance Program.
The plan would replace these health programs with a system of vouchers whose value would erode over time.
Analysis by the Urban Institute-Brookings:
The Ryan plan would cut in half the taxes of the richest 1% of Americans The higher one goes up the income scale, the more massive the tax cuts would be.
To offset some of the cost of these massive tax cuts, the Ryan plan would place a new consumption tax on most goods and services, a measure that would increase taxes on most low- and middle-income families. About three-quarters of Americans would face tax increases.
The federal debt would soar to about 175 percent of GDP by 2050."
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3114
The Affordable Healthcare Act is far, far from perfect. But, it is a necessary first step.
Moreover, it includes in it an experimental program called "Independence at Home" that changes the structure of the system for elderly patients who will be seen preventatively at home by nurse practitioners and physicians assistants, who can electronically transmit information to physicians and care for the patient in their homes. By reducing visits to emergency rooms and reducing hospital admissions, Medicare should save about $150B over a 10 year period, and the individuals will get better care and have better outcomes.
Anyone who studies this knows that in several years the pressures left in the system will require relief--in the form of some public option. Indeed, a state has the right to devise their own public option and put it into effect in 2014, which is not so far away. It will take them a year or two to devise it and get to ready to go anyhow. Although you might argue that they could have done that anyhow, they really could not, because the were no subsidies for the less well-off and no universality. Now a state can use the benefits under this act and develop their own public option.