The Chair of the Senate Finance Committee Max Baucus, a supposed Democrat representing Montana has offered up his version of health care reform. he is viewed as the stumbling block to a public option and he came through for the insurance industry. Bear in mind insurance companies have funded his reelection campaign to the tune of three million dollars, though of course he would tell you no way is he influenced by more money than I will earn in the rest of my working life. Also interesting to note, none of the Republicans on Baucus's critical committee have joined with him in supporting his plan and he has gutted the public health care option to bring Republicans into his supposed "compromise." I tell you this: if the insurance companies don't want a public option it has to be good for we the people. Period. Let me also point this out: no member of the US Congress has ever been denied health insurance through their collective Congressional health insurance scheme for pre-existing health conditions or for rescissions (which are claims by private insurers that people lied on their applications and thus void their policies when they need them the most). How I wish we had FDR at the helm in the White House right now, a man who was reviled far more than President Obama ever has been and who stood up and did what was right. The only trouble is, in a country that doesn't know it's own history no one knows what I mean when I mention FDR, the New Deal or the Great Society.
I found this Associated Press report on Baucus's explanation of his sell out plans on the Huffington Post:
The bill by Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee, would make major changes to the nation's $2.5 trillion health care system, including requiring all individuals to purchase health care or pay a fine, and language prohibiting insurance company practices like charging more to people with more serious health problems.
"This is a unique moment in history where we can finally reach an objective so many of us have sought for so long," said Baucus, D-Mont. "The Finance Committee has carefully worked through the details of health care reform to ensure this package works for patients, for health care providers and for our economy."
Consumers would be able to shop for and compare insurance plans in a new purchasing exchange. Medicaid would be expanded, and caps would be placed on patients' yearly health care costs. The plan would be paid for with $507 billion in cuts to government health programs and $349 billion in new taxes and fees, including a tax on high-end insurance plans and fees on insurance companies and medical device manufacturers.
But the bill fails to fulfill President Barack Obama's aim of creating a new government-run insurance plan – or option – to compete with the private market. It proposes instead a system of nonprofit member-owned cooperatives, somewhat akin to electric co-ops that exist in many places around the country. That was one of many concessions meant to win over Republicans.
In other ways though, including its overall cost and payment mechanisms, the bill tracks closely with the priorities Obama laid out in his speech to Congress last week.
Baucus is still holding out hope for GOP support when his committee actually votes on the bill, probably as early as next week.
6 comments:
"...$349 billion in new taxes and fees"
finally something we all can be excited about! 349 billion divided by 305 million Americans = $1144.26 that we all now owe a piece. Do we get to make payments?
This new era of "change" sure sounds like another verse of the tax and spend song.
-Peace
Where were you when the budget deficit was being ballooned to kill Iraqi's and Americans?
Ooops that was the Republican so that was okay. Even though Shrub lied about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction and Saddam Hussein's connections to Al Quaeda.
If (IF) the deficit has to go up and it has since Eisenhower lets have it increase to benefit Americans.
Of course health care reform could be covered by charging rich Americans a 5% tax surcharge- ie pay $15,000 a year more if you earn $350,000 a year. But that would be class warfare. Ho hum.
What would Jesus do? Ignore the needs of the poor in the new religious world view.
No, Sir. It wasn't ok. I threw a hissy, and we sent them anyway. When he admitted to the nation that there wer no Weapons of Mass Destruction, I said ok, you left out one thing. You should have said, sorry, we were wrong. Load em up boys and bring em home. We are done. But I guess that would have made too much sense. I never could figure out why we went to Iraq to chase one guy when it was another guy that supposedly ran the 9/11 attack.
I thought the one good thing this president had in his running campaign was that he was going to stop the nonsense and bring our boys home. Maybe I am confused but I am pretty sure I heard him beat that drum and say that phrase numerous times prior to November. Guess what? It is now September and I checked with my neighbor. One of his grandson's in currently doing his second tour in Iraq and the other one is out in the desert training for his second tour. And now, our president has decided in all his infinite wisdom that we need to spend billions more to send our boys to Afghanastan. But I suppose that is ok since he is a democrat?
You can quit throwing the religion flag. Jesus didn't say tax and spend. With the IRS picking peoples pockets from 20-35% on every dollar they currently earn, they should already have enough money to run the country. After all, if 10% is enough for God, why isn't 10% enough for the federal government?
As far as you insinuation that I ignore the poor, perhaps I believe the organizations I support do a better job of serving that our government has in the past or will in the future.
Glad to hear that you and yours are willing to shell out the $1,144.26 per peson charge this is obviously going to cost. We both looked at out income and checking and don't know how we can pay for it. But I'm sure that doesn't matter.
p.s. thanks for not cussing at me and throwing the N word at me this time. The civil debates are a lot more enjoyable.
-Peace
We are pulling out of iraq and losing the war in afghanistan where the effort should have been in the first place.You're pissed at Obama? I voted twice for him and I, his socialist buddy can't get a public option health care bill out of him. Who gives a shit what the nutters in the republican party want? Obama does and he pisses me off on that score.
The bill for healthcare cannot get higher than it is now.30 percent administrative costs are higher than any other industrialized country. and 50 million americans get bupkas.
I do not bring religion into politics. The religious do. I think religion is private and should stay private but the religious zealots bring their beliefs to a political debate. And yes, when i was a kid the beatitudes, from the sermon on the mount, said "blessed are the poor" not the poor "in spirit". I think of the parable of Lazarus at the rich man's table. The camel getting through the eye of a needle or the rich man getting into the kingdom of heaven. Yet here we are now told that god loves us if we are rich and looking after god's gold is a sign of his munificence. BS I say, what happened to looking out for the least among us? Not when it costs us even a penny.
I remember Ralph Reed saying we should dismantle what little welfare we have because religious organizations would pick up the slack. Oh yeah, and Obama forgot to dismantle the white house office of religious intefrerence too while we're criticizing him.
If the real issue over health care reform were costs then we should just switch to medicar efor all and be done, cheap, efficient and easy. let God's favored buy private insurance supplements for private care if they want to, but everyone gets covered at massively reduced administrative costs. But we can't do that because the corporations won't let us. So here we sit.
You want civilized debate? Ask your neighbors who teabag, 9-12, and debate Obama's citizenship to try civilized debate. Your side of the aisle has brought nothing constructive to the table other than to impugn rthe color of Obama's skin, his ancestry and his motives. I call bullshit.
Dear Conch and Allen:
Fortunately for us, we all ride motorcycles and rise above politics, so we are immunue to taking any of this personally.
The truth is that both Leslie and I also supported Obama, because I could not in good conscience vote for the party that that performed so badly in 8 years, it couldn't list one major accomplishment going into the election. Worse, they were scratching their asses for candidates, had a commode for platform, and a message they got out of a fortune cookie.
Personally, I was enraged at the level of intellectual contempt the Republican party had for people like me -- who supported them every step of the way. And I swear that George Bush wiped his ass on the Constitution first thing every morning.
So we voted for Obama. All I wanted from "Captain Change" was for him to stick to two of his most basic campaign promises: No lobbyists in his administration, and to have every bill presented in simple language and presented to the US public five days before voting. Even better was when he said dialogues between lobbyists and elected officials would be recorded and reported.
It was my hope that President Obama would drop the rider concept in passing new legislation too.
The President stepped away from both of these promises like a virgin from a good time. They would have cost the tax payer next to nothing (especially when compared to federal funding for ACORN, which is a outrage and tantamount to funding a goon squad).
We let the Republicans go too long without calling them on the carpet. Therefore, I am not willing to cut the "Small Change" group any slack from the word "go." In his first seven months in office, the President has shirked his two most significant promises (in my opinion), is hopelessly stalled in an utterly over-complex health care reform bill (that was badly and heavy handedly handled from day one, and has made the mistake of categorizing anyone weho holds him to account as a gun-crazy, ignorant member of the unwashed street mob.
Naturally, this is just my casual assessment. I haven't really given it much thought.
By the way, the two most revered Presidents in the history of the United States are Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Know what they have in common? They were the only two Presidents in US history to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, the most basic right of any US citizen. Lift up the robes of any elected god, and you will find a flawed man who will claim the end always justifies the means.
I love chatting with you two guys. (By the way, I broke my writers block this week. Swell,huh?)
Fondest regards,
Fat Jack Riepe
I've had twenty years of having my own observations of the human condition ridiculed and reviled by people who went forward with Jesus on their right and the Ghost of Free Market captitalism on their left persuading us that the US would be a better place for all to live in, all of us raised as it were, by the rising tide.I stood aside and watched the tide rise up wondering where it would deposit us.
Deregulation has wrecked the safety net of the New Deal, globalization has reduced pay, job security health and welfare in this country.Endless tax cuts have given the top one percent of the plutocracy almost half the wealth in this country. While the people at the bottom have to choose between meds and food and rent payments.
Now that President Obama is trying to back the shipwreck off the rocks of the Second Great Depression I am told he is a Nazi, a communist, a Manchurian Candidate, a Muslim, a foreigner, and unpatriotic. Well, you know what?
Obama isn't God and isn't perfect and isn't going to give me everything I want. He is in thrall to the system of paid "free speech" that the US Supreme Court has enshrined. But every time I decide to give up there's one more outrage that just shouldn't be allowed to slip by. Death panels my ass.Republicans supported allowing people to talk to doctors about living wills before Obama was elected senator. Now they change the terms of the debate to support their lies about health care reform.
I read my history, I know where we have come from and why things happened they way they did. It wasn't like they taught me in school.
People like to say that President Obama is bringing us to dictatorship. I say the loud vocal minority that refuses to accept the mandate of we the majority are the brownshirts, and I am not going to stand by silently, next to my Jewish wife who has an expensive chronic illness, and let them dictate the terms of the capitulation of science and sanity without going on the record in reasoned opposition.
Haven't I offered a platform here for reasoned debate?
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