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It was as if the whole town was getting excited about the new Wal*Mart coming in on it’s edges, and the town council votes to allow it, only if the owner of that town’s businesses, can be in charge and set Wal*Mart’s prices.
What then is the point?
That, my friends, is what Health Care Relief is, without the public option…
Don’t take my word for it: Here are the words of Republican chairman Michael Steele, in an recent ad lit piece seeking donations to the RNC….
“Obama and liberal Democrats in Congress are pushing for a government-run, health-care scheme that is inefficient, limits choices and hemorrhages taxpayer money like the Post Office,”
Great Point: It costs me, if I use Federal Express, $7.95 for them to come to my door and pick up a letter… It costs me .44 cents if I choose to use the inefficient, choice limiting, and taxpayer hemorrhaging U. S. Post Office to drop by and pick up the same letter…
If the same were true for health care, which would benefit you for the same service? The cheaper inefficient, choice limiting, and taxpayer hemorrhaging bureaucratic public option, that happened to be much cheaper, or a service that charges 1700% more for the same option, which no one can afford?
The sprawling bureaucracy is starting to look good…
It is obvious why Steele brings up this point. The Democratic reform plan modifies the current price structure and that threatens their enormous profits, generated from hospital charges like $6,000 a day for semi-private rooms, $30 for two aspirin and a single round of chemotherapy for $13,000. Of course such costs are ridiculous; but they get collected every day, because there is no other option for citizens to turn to…
Public option is the only way Health Care can be reformed… There can be no relief, no lowered costs, and by default, no hope for America, if the public option is not somewhere in the Health Care Plan that passes Congress.
Private only? Might as well not build that Wal*Mart on the town’s edge if your going to keep the same high prices Colonel Potter charges in his downtown businesses, simply because he can….
Public option is the Wal*Mart of Health Care… Without it. We’re poor.
All in all, it stems from two things the past administration did…
1) Deregulated business to the point of not monitoring our financial capital markets.
2) Taxing too low, so that it became way too expensive for a corporation to reinvest it’s money back into America.
Errors not in philosophy, but in achieving the proper sense of balance.
Arguments from the other side about health care don’t hold much water… Here is a random sampling of what I heard today..
Q1. I have good insurance. I don’t want to lose it because of Obama.
A1. Under Obama’s plan you keep your insurance… His plan doesn’t affect you one bit. But why then are you up for denying the other 80 million of Americans who over the past year couldn’t have health insurance because their employers couldn’t afford to fork up it’s cost?
Q2. I don’t want to someone to tell me what I can, or can’t have done medically after I’m retired.
A2. In that case you need to ditch your private insurance plan and pay everything out of pocket, because telling you what you can and can’t have done, is exactly what your private insurance companies are doing right now… (Btw, has your private insurance dropped you yet because you’ve 65 or retired? If not, get ready. That’s coming…) But that should be no reason why those with no health insurance who are still working, should not be able to afford health care…
Q3. I don’t want my children and grandchildren to pay for health care like they pay for social security and medicare…
A3. Good, Let them die from something as curable as measles, and your children and grandchildren won’t have to pay a penny. Like it or not, Social Security works… How much again, was your Social Security this month?……
Q4. I don’t want poor whites, blacks, or hispanics to have the same access to quality health care as I have.
A4. They won’t. Remember you said you had a good private insurance? Most of them don’t… Still doesn’t explain why you are so bent on denying them a right to any medical treatment whatsoever, because their employers simply can’t afford to pay for their health insurance….
Q5. Why don’t you just shut the fuck up and stop screwing with our attempt to muddy your “boy” by telling lies and spreading rumors…
A5. Because I love this country. I need it to survive. Lies and rumors are interfering with our national survival… Since you don’t read, you probably don’t know there is a global economic crises affecting all people on this planet. Keeping health care costs low by inserting the government option at insurance marketplace, will make our nation’s products and services more competitive against those other nations who like us are just trying to survive as well.
Q6. Give me one good reason why I should support Health Care Reform !!!!!
A6. Your birth certificate will be meaningless unless there is immediate Health Care Reform.
Q7. Oh no! Really?
A7. Absolutely. You and Obama will be standing side by side in the exact same boat, with exactly the same legal documentation, unless Health Care Reform is passed as soon as possible… Is that what you want? I mean…. really… is that… what you want?
(For full image: right click, view Image)
Courtesy of the New England Journal of Medicine
So says the New England Journal of Medicine… Does this contradict what you hear in the news? Here is why:
The voices of physicians in the current debate have emanated almost exclusively from national physicians’ groups and societies. Like any special-interest group, these organizations claim to represent their members (and often nonmembers as well). The result is a well-established understanding of the interests of physicians’ societies but little, if any, understanding of views among physicians in general
A total of 62.9 percent of physicians who participated in the survey … said they favored a public option, or government insurance plan, against 27.3 percent backing a private system alone.
Another 9.6 percent favored a completely government-owned health care coverage system.
“It’s clear that the majority of US physicians support both public and private options to expand coverage,” NEJM said, noting that between 52 and 69 percent of Americans favor a supplemental public option.
The survey found that even 58.9 percent of Southern doctors want reforms to include a public option.
The poll also found that 58.3 percent of doctors are in favor of expanding Medicare to people as young as 55 years old.
This result is more in line with the chatter I hear inside the Doctor’s offices whenever I go in for medical care… It is nice to finally get their perspective endorsed by none other than the New England Journal of Medicine, an organization devoted to the study of science, and not to making its members rich.
I was talking to an old Republican who visits his doctor tomorrow for his monthly visit, and we were discussing hospitals around where he lived…
As he was ruminating about why he wouldn’t go to this hospital, or that hospital, or the problems with every other except for the one he was going to, he blurted out “we need health care reform now.”
Of course me, wasn’t going to let that opportunity pass.. “Its your party that is holding up the process… They are insisting on the status quo”.
His reply was: “Oh private insurance sounds good, until you try to use it… Then you find this isn’t covered, that isn’t covered. and it dawns on you that you have been paying all these years, only to be ripped off… They have your money… They’re giving none of it back…”
He opened my eyes to another insurance scam… “Before I was on Medicare D, I was paying everything out of pocket, my pills used to cost around $40… Now, they cost over three times as much… around $140 and with the insurance I have, I pay: $40 dollars… We’re just subsidizing the insurance companies… Our cost, their cost, has stayed the same… They just mark up the price to pretend like they’re spending something on us. Nothing’s changed…”
He added one more item that allowed me to see a broader perspective:
“The debate is between those who have been through the hospital process, and those who haven’t… Those who argue to keep things the way they are, stacked in favor of the providers, have never been sick. When you get old, and broken down, you realize that the way things are now, isn’t good. You’re ready for it to change….”
His words still echoed hours later… Apparently we need YouTube scenarios of what happens in hospitals today, to be viewed publicly as part of today’s health care equation… Congress needs information. It would be a shame if it lived in a bubble of lobbyists and made a monumental decision, without directly seeing how that decision impacts the daily lives of Americans… both Democrats….. and Republicans…..
This was dated July 3, of this year…
Riverstone Holdings LLC and the management team of Babcock & Brown’s North American Energy Group confirmed the purchase of the wind development portfolio from Babcock & Brown LP to form Pattern Energy Group LP. Pattern Energy will be an independent, fully integrated energy company that develops, constructs, owns and operates renewable energy and transmission assets across North America and parts of Latin America.
Riverstone is committing $400 million to expand and support Pattern Energy’s renewable energy business.
Pattern Energy retains the Babcock & Brown North American energy development team, which has successfully developed, financed and placed into operation 2,000 MW of wind power across 11 states.
Pattern Energy also maintains the current Babcock & Brown development pipeline that exceeds 4,000 MW of wind power in 11 states and 4 countries in addition to several power transmission projects. Riverstone is committing $400 million to expand and support Pattern Energy’s renewable energy business.
That is all I know at this time.. A short phone call could stir up interest again….
I heard insurance was first proposed by Ben Franklin… His philosophy was that if everyone paid a little bit into a kitty of sorts, there would be plenty of funding available to rebuild if disaster struck… One can afford a small pittance. but tragedy is often catastrophic.
Stability over the entire market would continue through any tragedy and long term planning could become more accurate and the economy could grow, even if just from facing less setbacks….
Somewhere along the line, that sentiment became distorted. Perhaps it was because the number 10 contributor towards George Bush in 2000, was the insurance industry? Since then Health insurance premiums in states rose between 88 percent and 145 percent in the past decade, far outpacing wages and overall inflation.
Can contributions of $1,000 to $20,000 really buy significant influence? Yes, and they do, because most of it comes from an elite donor class and groups of donors with shared policy agendas.
Generous political donors are not representative of the rest of America. Only one-quarter of one percent of the population of the United States gave a hard money contribution of $200 or more. Under today’s financing laws, policy for the rest of us is being held hostage by those privileged few…. 000.25% controls the other 99.75%. State Reps! Remember that the next time Wayne Smith takes you out to dinner…
Yeah, maybe that’s why we need health care reform… Ben Franklin’s plan got corrupted by greed….
It is really odd that insurance worked well for 200 years… Only during the last 8 have we ever been denied benefits for which we bankrupted ourselves to pay for in the first place…..
It is time we return to Ben Franklin’s ideal. It is time.
Despite the economic downturn, Wal*Mart has done well…
It would make sense to use the same approach with health care… Of course Wal*Mart is a private corporation…. But since no private corporation is willing to jump into the fray of reforming health care, it befalls the people, through their representative government to do it for them…
Biden decribed how it works
“So, the profits might not be as high per person they cover, but there will be a much larger pool of paying customers,” he said.
That is exactly how Wal*Mart works. Each of us pays much less for each of our individual products. We see savings. However as a whole, enough of us shop there allowing Wal*Mart to do rather well, compared to most other entities…
Some say the public option will bankrupt those private ones… Examples? None. Examples of the alternative? FedEx, DHL. and UPS all compete with the U. S. Postal Service. You get what you pay for..
So all those protesting the public option who use the post office to spread their literature, are really arguing against what works best for them… Kind of hard to take them seriously, isn’t it?
A public option lowers rates for everyone… Of course some people will be hurt… Those current Health insurance executives with 7 or 8 homes, will only be able to afford 4 extra homes now. But you and me? We will be able to afford going to the doctor….
If you have any worth upon this planet you have already seen this comment….
Be as it may, Mr. Issac, I have to disagree…
Already here in Delaware’s own blogdom a subtle change has occurred: one that like Caesar Rodney’s arrival at Independence Hall signifying unanimity,… should carry great national consequences in its implication…
That change is the subtle, if not refreshing, shift from arguing about the socialism currently embedded in the death panels of private insurance companies, to an acceptance that inserting the public option into the market, is probably a necessary and a good idea… Of course each side has qualifications, but the differences are in the qualifications. not in whether a public option is or is not, a bad thing…..
So what needs to happen is that as a blogdom, we need to band together and show the world that we, (despite being the idiots that sometimes become us, can on the whole, become the best collection of minds ever put on this planet), have accepted the viability of the public option … The public option needs to become available alongside those currently offered by the private sector.
Outside our state’s borders, the hired guns of both sides may argue whether or not, we will mimic Canada’s health options… Some may weep for no single payer system.. Some may cry over any governmental involvement at all. Both are to be expected, because outside Delaware they haven’t caught on yet… There is a reason Delaware always intellectually leads the nation. It is our small size and the fact that we not only are forced to talk to people whose opinions are opposite of what we hold ourselves, but if we want any friends, we are force to like them as well…
Most people outside of Delaware, think up ideas in a vacuum. Our ideas get tested in day to day life… And that testing acts like evolution in weaning out those ideas that don’t work. Survival-of-the-fittest, works with ideas as well…
So step back America. A broad perspective shows us clarity. On one side we have sweeping changes being proposed… On the other side, is the argument for more and even greater status quo…
For a status quo argument to work, people need to be happy with the way things are. We aren’t… Therefore no matter how loud those profiting right now off health care cry out… inevitably we must change… Just like we abolished slavery, even though when framed in economics, it made sense to southern plantation owners… It took this nation a long time, and a lot of lives to do what could have been handled in the Senate as early as the 1830′s with one bill….
Likewise, we could have pulled out of Vietnam earlier.. but the economics of the industrial military establishment, obfuscated our clarity of vision, and we went far to long on what turned out to be a debacle… even though the Americans won every military engagement they fought... a record often not reported when discussing this engagement….
The same group, the status quo, tried from the 1880′s to the 1930′s, to suppress labor unions unsuccessfully. Their failure to do so, actually saved America from going the path of Europeans during the post Depression era. Unlike Russia, Germany, Italy, we did not vote out our Democracy. Our workers already had an option.
Now if we flip: it was the status quo Democrats who tried to stymie the Reaganomics plan to jump start the economy of the 1980′s. They were wrong. Just as wrong were the Republicans who tried to inhibit the economic expansion of the 1990′s, by voting against increasing taxes… a tax increase which proved to give us the best of times… Both were protecting the status quo by making arguments that did not hold water, because in reality, of most of America’s lives were in such disarray that the status quo, had to go….
If anything, what we are seeing in today’s health care debate, is the health care industry’s equivalent of Phillip Morris saying that tobacco was harmless; that cancer is what kills people, not tobacco. As soon as the facts came out, the eventual containment of smoking was inevitable.. Through stymied tactics, it took this nation a long time to reach a destination we were just inches away forty years ago…
So I don’t mean to say Newton is wrong. In what he was trying to convey, he made an accurate call… What I do disagree with is his assessment that he doesn’t make any difference…. I challenge him to renew scrutiny as have we all, of what happens if just the option.. the option of a public health care plan alongside those of private health care, is made available for Americans to choose…
Of course there are those around here who resolutely want to protect the status quo… Obviously it works for them.. But democracy is founded on a majority rule. Why? Because often minority rule bankrupts and destroys nations… Kings, dictators, czars: these are examples of minority rule… For a single industry the equivalent of Phillip Morris to determine our nation’s financial future, makes no sense, no matter how resolutely it get argued.
Which is why Delaware bloggers whether on the left or right, have quietly accepted the public option… Both sides want more, mind you,… a partial reason as to why it has been accepted quietly, but the public option has become something they all accept…
The world… needs to hear that…..
They seed oaks and feed squirrels.
