I’m pissed b/c the NYT’s shows support going down.

OF COURSE IT’S GOING DOWN.  ALL YOU DO IS PRINT REPUBLICAN LIES AND INSURANCE INDUSTRY WONKERY.

Talk about reality, talk about how single-payer is off the table, and you’ll have pissed off people telling you the same thing Obama’s doc is telling you.  This reform does not go far enough at all.

If we leave things as they are, we’re really screwed in the future.  Premiums will continue to rise unrestrained all the while fewer and fewer conditions are covered at any reasonable percentage.

The lie-laden television commercials are what make me want to scream.

If there’s enough doctors joining Scheiner, think it’ll make a difference?  In my dreams it will.

I’m pissed b/c the NYT’s shows support going down.

OF COURSE IT’S GOING DOWN.  ALL YOU DO IS PRINT REPUBLICAN LIES AND INSURANCE INDUSTRY WONKERY.

Well, funny story…  People do tend to support initiatives as they hear more details.  Ask someone, “Do you support Obamacare” and you get a waffle answer.  Ask them, “Do you support regulation barring insurance companies from dropping a patient with pre-existing conditions?” or “Do you support a public plan run by the government?” or “Do you support a government policy that provides affordable health insurance to all US citizens?” and your numbers go up.

Obama and the Dems can win on this issue.  And they will win, the closer the legislation gets to going out the door.  Because eventually you’re going to force the Republicans to clarify what they mean by “Obama wants to kill old people!” and stack that up against “This policy will insure XX million uninsured Americans / This policy will fix premiums and co-pays and deductibles at such and such rates / This policy will mandate employee provided health insurance.”

What’s more, while folks on the fence are falling off against health care reform, folks who do support reform remain fairly stout-hearted.
http://images2.dailykos.com/images/user/426/hcchart.PNG

I’m a huge advocate for the public option at the very least and in my own fantasy land, single payer insurance and it is everything in me not to cry as I watch what’s going on. People are being hurt as they get taken in by scary sound bites . I put a piece up a week ago on my post about Laura Ingraham being a cancer survivor yet fighting against reform and I got responses talking about how cancer patients would not be given treatment under Obamacare.

It just makes me very, very tired and I swear, I think I’m starting to tune it out. Add that to the fact that I live in NC and we still don’t have a budget and I am sure there will be cuts to the poorest and social programs. God I need a drink!

I got responses talking about how cancer patients would not be given treatment under Obamacare

Indeed.  Our local paper is ful of hysterical letters and comments about how the elderly will be denied care and/or euthanized, chronically ill people will be encouraged to die, people will wait months for a life saving operation, blah blah blah.

I have never seen such a mind boggling display of idiocy (and racism) like we’ve seen in the last 6 months.  I’ve lost any faith I may ever had had in the general population of the U.S.  I’m starting to think mass euthanisia may be the best way to go.

There isn’t going to be a public option after the Senate’s conservative Democrats get done with the bill. There will be an individual mandate to buy insurance, though. The Democrats will deliver us all as forced customers to the insurance companies who paid to elect them. And the individual mandate, as a regressive tax, will punish poor and lower-middle-class voters for getting uppity and demanding health care reform. Next time, they’ll know better.

God, I hope you’re wrong.

Yeah, me too. I thought everything was looking decent for a while, but now the damned conservatives have made it clear that they will not be satisfied with being involved in the process and being able to tell their constituents that they fought for their voices to be heard and this is an improvement that will help our families and so on. They have decided that they must absolutely dominate the entire process, or else there will be no bill.

Those brave Democratic Senators and Blue Dog Congress people are only trying to make sure our Insurance Company Overlords stay healthy and competitive, which is Good For America — even if it’s bad for Americans…

Kucinich: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFcjxnPpGY8

asdf, my bet is that it’s going to be a bit sneakier than that. There will be something called a “public option” all right, but it will deliberately be fatally crippled- too small and too expensive. Then the Thugs and conservatrash DINOs can say “see, we told you it wouldn’t work!”

Then after that the insurance companies will jack up their rates and attribute it to the new regulations, and we’re off and running toward the next Republican majority.

Am I bitter about this? Hell yes I’m bitter. If it goes down this way I may never again vote for a Democrat.

Has anyone asked the people spreading the bs about euthanizing old people and denying treatment to cancer patients how often it happens in other countries?

I mean according to a list I found on wiki (ya, not the best source, but at least it’s sourced) Canada is ranked 14th in the world for life expectancy while the USA is down around 45th.

If the life expectancy is better in most countries with universal healthcare, then would it be a good counter to toss that information out when the “deathers” bring it up?

The problem with Single Payer is the operant word - “Single”. It means the government will be the sole provider, and if you like such a system, fine. But if you don’t, tough.

At the very least, if we must have government run health care, can’t we at least have it on the state, as opposed to Federal, level? This way, you have 50 competing plans, and 50 different choices out there to pick from.

Finally, I’m glad this has been delayed a month. The rush to get something passed before the Congressional break was unsettling, to say the least. I’d much rather see them take the necessary time to get this right, i.e., to fix as best as possible the issues people are most concerned about without putting in place some massive centrally run bureaucratic health care system that may just end up giving us the worst of the old combined with the worst of the new.

it means the government will be the sole provider

No it doesn’t. FAIL.

Eric the Idiot, the US has BY FAR the worst-run health care system in the industrialized world. It costs much more and delivers much less than any other country’s. It’s not even a remotely close contest. One could literally choose a country AT RANDOM from the list of advanced countries and simply copy its system, without the slightest fear that you wouldn’t be making a big improvement.

Stop spouting bullshit and go educate yourself.

“If the life expectancy is better in most countries with universal healthcare, then would it be a good counter to toss that information out when the “deathers” bring it up?”

America is so completely unique, and special, we cannot compare ourselves to any other nation on earth.  In fact, the very idea of comparing ourselves to other nations, especially those Uropeons, is ludicrous on the face of it.

We need to stop worrying about all this and let the Miracle of Market Capitalism solve it for us.  If we’d just unleash The Marketplace, Private Industry would solve these problems in no time…

(We can just directly send them our paychecks, and they might send us back a small stipend for our troubles…and if you get sick, just die…)

The problem with Single Payer is the operant word - “Single”. It means the government will be the sole provider, and if you like such a system, fine. But if you don’t, tough.

If you don’t understand the difference between a single payer system (like Taiwan’s) and a single provider system (like England’s), you have no business posting about healthcare.  You basically just came in here and told us that your football team won their game by kicking a home run, so we all need to shut up and stop claiming we know more about football than you do.

I agree, single-payer is the way to go, I ache for it. (I’m 59, without even health insurance, no matter health care)

However, at this point I’d settle for a strong public option, which is still in play: if the Progressives in Congress stay strong.

Help them stay strong—Call Congress: Take the Pledge for the Public Option

http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/publicoption

EricJG, “Payer” and “Provider” are two completely different ideas, and do not necessarily have much to do with each other.

Ever heard of Medicare?  Medicare (from The Evil Government) is an example of Single Payer we have in America right now (and have had for a long time), and the zombie corpse of Thomas Jefferson has not risen up to show us the error of our ways…

Enough talk—take action!

More ACTION you can take for healthcare TODAY:

http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/publicoption

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/30/759570/-They-will-Draw-a-LINE-IN-THE-SAND-Today.-Will-YOU-Be-There

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/30/759500/-The-Great-Healthcare-Schlep-(Updatedwith-Lowey-Information)

So you say you only want to act on Single Payer, okay:

SINGLE PAYER ACTION!

URGENT ACTION ALERT for SINGLE-PAYER from RNS for National Healthcare

Our House of Representatives may vote as early as this week on its bill to reform the healthcare system.  On July 17, 2009, the Education and Labor Committee approved an amendment offered by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-OH, to that bill that would allow states to pass and implement single-payer plans with the necessary federal ERISA rule waivers which might otherwise prevent states from doing so.

This was a huge victory for single-payer but if we are to build on this victory, we must act now. The Kucinich amendment must be retained.

Find your elected officials here and call today!

http://tinyurl.com/l259b5

Thank you, EricJG, for showing us exactly why we’re going to be sold up the river to the insurance industry and Big Pharma.

I can’t even say “thanks for playing” b/c you don’t even understand the terms of the game.

At this point I’m about ready to say that Obama has fucked this up royally by being so passive and turning the whole thing over to Congress. Good luck selling a plan to the public over the August recess when nobody can say what the plan even IS. In the end Obama will have expended his remaining political capital to pass a pile of crap that will quickly be seen by everybody to be a total failure. What a disaster.

I say forget the whole thing and revisit it when the system is so near total collapse that everybody understands there’s an emergency. That can’t be too many more years down the road.

Hate to say it, but please lay off the insulting of the Eric’s of the comments thread. He’s not a troll (or if he is, not a very good one), and he could obviously benefit from reading pandagon’s health care news coverage.

Ill-informed does not mean stupid, and equating the two makes people likely to stay ill-informed.

That said, Eric, assuming the state plans are not available nationally, but only in each state, it doesn’t allow people to choose competing plans without a major move. Which is a little like saying that you can get universal health care, you just have to move to Canada.
Not to mention, as has been pointed out, that Single Payer does not mean private insurance somehow disappears, nor does it mean that all doctors become employees of the state.

No to mention:

At the very least, if we must have government run health care, can’t we at least have it on the state, as opposed to Federal, level? This way, you have 50 competing plans, and 50 different choices out there to pick from.

No, that means that you can have great health care in, say, Massachusetts, and lousy health care in, oh, Mississippi.  There’s no “compete” or “choice” to it; you’re stuck with what your state will provide.  In no way does that help health outcomes for the entire US.  There are times that Federal control is appropriate.

Yeah, we wouldn’t want a heath care system where if you don’t like it, tough.  I mean, I know I have so many options.  I can either take one of like 4 extremely similar plans from my employer, or pay something like 35% of my gross wages for private insurance, or go uninsured (which also means unemployed, since maintaining health insurance is a condition of my employment).  Wow, good to know I have soooo many fucking options without the evil gubmint interfering with my free market options.  But hey, at least I have insurance (finally), so I’m no longer among the ranks of the uninsured.

Rep Kucinich’s amendment won’t help those who live in poor states at all.  It’s a nice gesture, and we should applaud him for it, but that’s what it is in the present. 

As for the POTUS not doing anything to move his agenda forward, remember back to 1993 when Clinton pushed his health care agenda. It was dead before the ink was dry mainly because people were afraid, confused, and misled by the same people who are leading the opposition now.

Take it for what it’s worth,  but most Americans have no clue what any of this means to them.  And they’re not going to be pushed farther than they are willing to go.  That’s reality, and the Administration senses that. The rest is just rhetoric.

http://www.truthout.org/073009A

asdf, my bet is that it’s going to be a bit sneakier than that. There will be something called a “public option” all right, but it will deliberately be fatally crippled- too small and too expensive. Then the Thugs and conservatrash DINOs can say “see, we told you it wouldn’t work!”

Then after that the insurance companies will jack up their rates and attribute it to the new regulations, and we’re off and running toward the next Republican majority.

Actually, this has been my problem with any of the reform put forth so far, including the house bill, which is a little better than the senate’s.  None of the public options have been truly public, as in everyone can opt in, day one.  Which means people like my husband, who has junk insurance through his employer, are forced to keep the insurance they have now, even though they don’t want it.  I fail to see how such a plan, with such a small pool of people, will exert any kind of competitive force on for-profit insurance companies.  The only people who can enroll are the uninsured or those with pre-existing conditions, i.e., people who weren’t Big Insurance’s potential customers in the first place.

I also have major concerns about the “affordability” of insurance, with or without a public option.  Especially when politicians bandy numbers like 11 or 12-percent of household income around as being within the range of affordable premiums.  I guess if you are somehow (how?) managing to pay 20-percent of your income on insurance, that’s a bargain.  But that’s not affordable for me.  If I had that kind of money, I would have insurance now, possible even decent coverage.  And even at 400-percent the poverty level, the so-called “generous” government subsidies will leave many families struggling, especially since subsidy limits don’t take into account regional variations in cost-of-living, nor dept load.

As long as for-profit insurance is considered a “necessary” entity in health care, a feature of all the bills, I don’t see how things can change much.  Even the better parts of these bills—an end to recission, no denials for pre-existing conditions, coverage that must include preventative care—system will have the unintended consequence of further increasing costs in a profit-driven system.  Costs which the insurance companies will pass on to the consumer, via various loopholes, crafted by their lawyers.

We need to stop worrying about all this and let the Miracle of Market Capitalism solve it for us.  If we’d just unleash The Marketplace, Private Industry would solve these problems in no time…

In many ways, that seems to be the crux of most of the bills I’ve seen.  “If we force everybody to buy insurance, the market will magically fix everything that is wrong with the current system.  Because we all know the problem is all those irresponsible, healthy young people who refuse, refuse, I say, to buy health insurance.”

I say forget the whole thing and revisit it when the system is so near total collapse that everybody understands there’s an emergency. That can’t be too many more years down the road.

Unfortunately, I’m inclined to feel the same way.  Which is frustrating, because I really thought Obama and company would use their tremendous political capital to get this right, or at least a lot more right than it is now.  It’s also unfortunate, because there are people who are much worse off than me.  I’ve been uninsured now for six years, but at least I’m healthy. (And old, or at least older, and female, which means my age and gender cancel out “healthy.”)

The sad thing is, given the weakness of all these reforms, the Rethugs shouldn’t have to resort to lies like “killing old people and cancer patients.”  In some ways, the truth is scarier than their lies.

But then, for a Rethuglican, “truth” is never as sexy as lies and hyperbole.

(Sorry about the length.  If I post something like this at DKos, I’ll get eviscerated for being a single-payer purity troll.  Well, guilty as charged.)

“I’ve lost any faith I may ever had had in the general population of the U.S.  I’m starting to think mass euthanisia(sic) may be the best way to go.”

And the best part is, there’s no possible way that our grandchildren are going to have to pay for it! I do believe Badkitty is a genius!

At this point I’m about ready to say that Obama has fucked this up royally by being so passive and turning the whole thing over to Congress.

The intention was to avoid the Clinton plan’s fate, which came about because the proposal happened outside of Congress, which damaged the critters poor little egos and gave opponents plenty of time to bullshit and mobilize. The truth is, though, that you’re getting the same bullshit, while Congress—a bought and paid for subsidiary of Corporate America—is incapable of coming up with a bill because some fuck from Wyoming who represents rocks thinks he’s special, or because Mary Landrieu is a waste of space, or because Kay Hagan is in hock to the insurers.

Not to mention the many Blue Dogs who represent districts with huge numbers of un- or underinsured people but seem not to want them covered.

I don’t think radical healthcare reform is doable in America. I think the institutional structures and vested interests make it impossible. Obama’s meant to be reading up on how LBJ did Medicare, but the moral of that story will be that he put the thumbscrews on people, just as Tommy Douglas and Nye Bevan did in their day.

So I’m headed towards Steve LaBonne’s belief, not in a Naderish “heighten the contradictions” way (and I don’t lump Steve with that belief) but with the old trope that if something can’t go on forever, it has to stop at some point. You can only bleed so much healthcare money from people after food and shelter, and people will either stop paying and go direct to bankruptcy court, or start cracking the skulls of health insurance CEOs. Sooner, not later.

This is pretty much the test of Obama’s Presidency.  Will he keep the bipartisanship rhetoric but abandon the practice to get things done, or will he be rolled by Bush’s Leftovers?

Both are actually possible.  Obama’s a big dude.

So I’m headed towards Steve LaBonne’s belief, not in a Naderish “heighten the contradictions” way (and I don’t lump Steve with that belief) but with the old trope that if something can’t go on forever, it has to stop at some point. You can only bleed so much healthcare money from people after food and shelter, and people will either stop paying and go direct to bankruptcy court, or start cracking the skulls of health insurance CEOs. Sooner, not later.

I’m distraught at the idea that many more people may have to be murdered by the insurance industry, or at best lose their life savings, before we can get meaningful reform. But I fear that is the case. Some democracy we’ve been lecturing the rest of the world about all these years.

Obama’s a big dude.

Obama’s a big phony. Eisenhower wearing an FDR costume.

“Obama’s a big phony. Eisenhower wearing an FDR costume.”

I’m not quite ready to write him off just yet, but there’s too much truth in that statement…

Obama’s scared of what happens if he allows Bush or Cheney to get charged, and with good reason.

I honestly don’t know if he’s gonna decide that he’s a transformational leader or just another modern Democrat building edifices for Republicans to later destroy, like Reagan did to Carter’s solar panels.