WHERE do you get your news???

Mixed GOP response to WH health summit invite

http://www.dailyfinance.com/article/mixed-gop-response-to-wh-health-summit/825498/

"WASHINGTON -Republicans sent mixed signals after President Barack Obama challenged them to participate in a one-of-a-kind televised summit with Democrats to come up with health care legislation.

House Republicans derided the Feb. 25 event, casting doubt on whether it would produce any bipartisan agreement to extend coverage to millions of people and rein in medical costs.

"Are they willing to start over with a blank sheet of paper?" said Kevin Smith, a spokesman for House GOP leader John Boehner of Ohio. "We need answers before we know if the White House is more interested in partisan theater than in facilitating a productive dialogue about solutions."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was more receptive, saying he would work with the White House "to maximize the effectiveness of the meeting."

The summit is considered a last, best attempt to revive Obama's yearlong health overhaul quest, now stalled after Democrats lost their filibuster-proof Senate majority."

Even before the meeting the GOP are saying to scrap the plan and start over...yet another delay tactic..and I suppose since you did not know about this summit then you may not know the importance of HC reform before it's costs consumes 1 out of every 6 bucks we spend in the country is on HC costs. Anthem Blue Cross recently announced a 39% increase in premiums...that after announcing record profits from last year when they raised on average 69% on premiums...

HC reform is essential in controlling costs...the opposition are only for continuing the out-of-control and unregulated HC industry profits. Again the GOP are worthless in this debate...they think making President Obama fail is a viable platform? Are you kidding me?

I see nothing wrong with asking queations about what they are going into.
What is Obama willing to give up in the bill?
Why not start with a clean slate, and work together on the bill?
How is the GOP worthless in a debate they were never included in in the first place?

That's an outright lie...they were given to op to debate and contribute from the beginning...and "clean slate" is not an option since the HC bill has already been vetted and accepted as a viable way of keeping HC costs from further bankrupting the economy as well as insuring millions of American who HAVE NO HC. The alternative is to continue the Status Quo of corporate control of policy to contine their inflated profits and poor HC.

Oh, but WTF...all I get here is AM shillchit...from people who have not been paying attention to anything but King Limpballs and Princess Beck...you guys need to wake up.

Heh, and I get called a "pawn" when it's you guys that are shilling for the HC industry....whether you know it or not.

~~~

Do they even know they are endorsing Corporate Socialism? Do they even know what Corporate Socialism is? Not a chance. Doubt they will even look nor understand it anyway...not on AM radio so it's a lie...yeah ok.

"In 1938, in the midst of the Great Depression, Congress created the Temporary National Economic Committee to hold hearings around the country, recommend ways to deal with the concentration of economic power and promote a more just economy. World War II stopped this corporate reform momentum. We should not have to wait for a further deterioration from today's gross inequalities of wealth and income to launch a similar commission on the rampant corporatization of our country. At stake is whether civic values of our democratic society will prevail over invasive commercial values"

Ralph Nader

http://www.essential.org/features/corporatesocialism.html

That's funny I don't listen to AM radio, and I don't watch Beck.

But the best is I come into this forum and I don't have to watch MSNBC because I can read your posts and know everything that Chris Mathews, Rachel Maddow, and Kieth Oberman said.Funny how there view points are ok but no one elses are.

The usual non-answer. I gave the reality...if people cannot deal with the reality of our current Corporate Socialist government then they should just bow out of the debate. HC reform is the just the beginning of wrestling our representations away from corporate sharks.

But it will get worse since the Supreme Court just allowed corporations to buy our candidates for office...yall are PIZZED off at the wrong people.

So congress isn't the reason we are in the state we are in?
Last I checked Obama payed the most ever for the Presidency. Where did the money come from? The likes of George Soros, and the unions who have stoped representing the people and just want money from there members.

Great, yet another non-answer and a bonus change the subject response....at it's worse...cannot learn even the basics of the reality so why bother responding at all?

Is there not even ONE conservative here who knows what is going on?

nope there isnt

AND there isnt even one fricking liberal that does either

and this county is going down because of it

I'd say they are part of the reason.



And yet you still don't think it's time to stop that sort of thing?

I'm not quite that pessimistic, but yeah

I post references from credible sources...don't dare try to drag me down to the T-bag level...this country is recovering better than expected, the opposition is just living in a altered state caused by the shock of becoming insignificant losers.

yeah yeah yeah

it's all them not us right?

THAT is what is dragging this country down

no ideas, no progress, just keep demonizing the opposition while they do the same

when this country collapses I will blame YOU and your ilk

Realistically NO one was really given a chance to contribute not even other democrats.



I'm one of those millions having had to give mine up last year due to cost increases and decreasing profits from my company. But the HC bill on the table is worthless. Have you read it? I have read through it at least and really there's not a word in it that's going to address the cost. The only thing that had ANY chance of reducing the cost was the public option and I have serious doubts about that.



You're both being duped as far as that's concerned. The democratic party sold out to the HC industry too. The only thing that huge monstrosity of a bill does is cause an estimated 130 trillion (yes that trillion with a 't') to run through the fingers of the government where they can skim their piece off the top.

Not sure where you get this. The GOP were there on the floor when the bill was introduced, they participated in debate then voted no across the board, the bill does include reigning in the out of control HC industry as well as addresses the economic disaster if not passed....The HC bill proposed is reasonable...it's just that the GOP are being unreasonable for politics and are ignoring the costs of doing nothing...and of course the 44K that die every year because they have no affordable HC insurance..and the poeple who are being bankrupted and llosing everything due to HC costs...do we NOT care about the human element here? Really?

Here's what is projected overall and if we DO nothing then by 2010 1 in 5 dollars spent in the US will be on HC...

"The federal budget is on an unsustainable path, primarily because of the rising cost of health care and the aging of the U.S. population."

"CBO's net calculation on the Senate health reform bill is that, when you consider new spending, planned spending cuts, and tax revenues, it will reduce the deficit by $130 billion over 10 years."

http://www.slate.com/id/2236445/?from=rss

We HAVE to reform HC or it alone will keep the US bankrupted.

PS you mean 1.3 Trillion right? Not 130...The House bill reduces it by 29 Billion...and that's over 10 years.

http://www.cbo.gov/publications/collections/health.cfm

False recovery.
When a company lays off people, they show a profit for the wages they no longer pay out. That is only very temporary as, fewer employees, lower production, less profit.

Then, there is the unemployment which doesn't truly represent the real numbers of unemployed. Won't explain again how that works. Intelligent people already know.

Gettin' to where there's only a couple ya'll Obominators left. Pretty soon, all the blame Bush threads will just get ignored.

Hussein will eventually have to accept his role in destroying our country.

there will be no recovery until the PEOPLE of this country stop consuming and start producing

a very good first move is this migration of money from the national banks to the local banks

credit Arriana Huffington for suggesting and starting that of all people

That's after the bill was drafted in secrecy. Allowing them to vote yeah or neh is no grand offer. They did as the leaders knew they would do.



Yup



Those never pan out the way they say, but in this case there could be since they will be able to skim literally trillions of dollars from the the health care reform act.



absolutely true. But what they've shown us in the health care reform act won't change that.



No I mean 130 trillion. Take a look at your own numbers for the cost of insurance. The health care bill will eventually (probably just a bit more than 5 or 6 years) result in every dollar of health care expense running through the hands of our government. That is approximately 130 trillion dollars if everyone in the country has insurance. Of course realistically it could be somewhat less, since not everyone WILL have insurance. I still can't afford insurance based on what's in the bill so I'll just have to pay the "penalty" associated with not having insurance. It's far less expensive than actually having insurance. BTW, that is in there so that the government gets it's "take" of the insurance money whether I have insurance or not.

Again please read what little we've been allowed to see. The health care "reform" act does nothing to actually reform our health care. It does nothing to address the rising cost and that is the only real issue. We already have some of the best health care in the world, problem is that fewer and fewer people can afford it. What the republican party has suggested doesn't do any more than this bill but that doesn't mean this one is the answer.

The problem I see is that the HC industry is completely out of control and any sort of reform that starts regulations to control costs will benefit us. The cost's estimates are all over the place...for every one estimate from a non-partisan group I read there are perhaps 10 industry shill groups that are spreading false info...whether it's "death panels" or inflated cost's estimates
it's been reduced to a fuzzy numbers and political powder keg game.

From the report itself:

"Health care costs are skyrocketing. Health insurance premiums have doubled in the last 8 years, rising 3.7
times faster than wages in the past 8 years, and increasing co-pays and deductibles threaten access to care.1

Many insurance plans cover only a limited number of doctors’ visits or hospital days, exposing families to
unlimited financial liability. Over half of all personal bankruptcies today are caused by medical bills.2

Lack of
affordable health care is compounded by serious flaws in our health care delivery system. About 100,000
Americans die from medical errors in hospitals every year.3

One-quarter of all medical spending goes to
administrative and overhead costs, and reliance on antiquated paper-based record and information systems
needlessly increases these costs.4

Tens of millions of Americans are uninsured."

Preventive services will reduce HC costs.

"In addition to the needless suffering and
early death they cause, these chronic conditions cost a staggering $1.7 trillion yearly."

http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/HealthCareFullPlan.pdf

I think we'll get more info released about what estimates to trust (more) when they have the televised summit on HC later this month.

But will the GOP even show up? Have you seen their plan?

I 100% agree. There needs to be regulations put in place that lower costs and keep insurance companies from running the numbers game by denying people for being sick.

That would actually BE reform.

That HC bill was NOT reform. It doesn't take 2000 pages to state the actual reforms needed.

Quick question. If Canda's health care system ( which it seems the Libs are looking to set up here ) then why is it that Vancouver's Prime Minister ( or whatever the president of the states there is called ) is coming to AMERICA to have a heart operation???

There is no doubt that costs are out of control. There is no doubt that there needs to be reform.

But, taxing people who don't buy health insurance isn't going to do a DAMN thing to " reform " the system.

It's just another Washington money grab.

Absolutely true till you get to the part where it will benefit us. But first let me reiterate, there is very little in there to actually insure lowered costs, to the insurance industry. It mostly addresses who will be insured. It appears that a big part of the democratic plan to reduce costs is to insure that everyone has insurance. That will reduce some costs since hospitals wouldn't have to eat the cost of treating the uninsured. Of course as I pointed out the plan is not likely to result in eliminating that cost, reducing it perhaps but not eliminating it.

Back to the benefit us part. Reducing costs to insurers has not historically resulted in reducing costs to consumers. Here in CA we had tort reformed introduced (part of the GOP plan to reduce health care costs), it worked quite well in reducing the cost to insurers. But the price to consumers continued to rise.



agreed.



True, but that does not mean the bill addresses the issue of cost. Is limits deductible, but then all that really means is we've lost a means of controlling the cost, deductibles are a choice we make. Most of us had not choice in taking the higher deductible because of the over all cost (for me eventually leading to me having to cancel completely). But that doesn't mean the choice isn't important and shouldn't be ours to make.




Again choices and again the problem isn't in us having the choice, the problem is in not actually having a choice because of the cost. Reduce the cost and it becomes a choice again. There are also a whole host of insurance companies that really should be removed from the industry because of policies that refuse payment on valid claims. But that isn't every insurance company.



While I agree that our health care, despite being some of the best in the world, is not perfect and could use improvement. I don't however think that is something the government can do through this act, nor do I think it is time to address that issue directly. Reducing the over all cost to consumers, and god forbid getting some competition within the industry, will have some effect on that indirectly.



That does not mean one-quarter will be saved by pushing through those changes. Short term will mean major cost increases and the lost of some facilities who can't manage that cost.



many will remain uninsured under this plan myself included.



Yes there will be some industry savings there. I think it's grossly over estimated but that's just my opinion.



I think so too, though I think way too much of it is likely to be staged especially if the GOP doesn't show up. Though I do think they will.



As said, yes I believe at least many will. I've seen the outline for their plan, it has it's merits just as the democratic plan has some of it's merits. However neither seem to address the issue of cost to the consumer. Nothing in there to mandate that insurance companies can not continue gouging us regardless of their cost savings.

The closest thing I found to that is in the democratic plan (the republicans may have something similar but I haven't seen it). That is that the insurance companies are limited in the percentage price difference between high risk insured and low risk insured to double (currently some of those differences are over triple). But it doesn't mandate how that percentage change is to be achieved. Nothing to say the insurance companies can't simply raise the rates of low risk insured to half what high risk people pay and pocket the difference. Personally I think they'll split it, lowering cost to high risk people and raising the cost to low risk and pocketing part of the difference. That way SOME people will pay less, which will help keep the politicians happy with the insurance providers. But of course all of that is just my opinion. Insurance providers (nor any other major industry for that matter) have never willingly passed cost savings on to consumers unless forced.

IOW if it is not spelled out in the bill that insurance providers have to pass cost savings on to consumers then it won't happen. And I can't find that anywhere in the House Bill, the Senate Bill, or the GOP outline.

Heath care could be made significantly more affordable simply by forcing insurance companies give us a fair break on the cost. Most of the problems you've outlined in your argument would be improved or eliminated by that alone.

No plan will work until they address run-away corporate greed, and the lack of any true competition.