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Originally Posted by Snaieke
 And according to the CBO -- ALL plans being discussed still leave 20-30+ million americans uninsured which means costs will not be changed using your logic.
Next. |
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Originally Posted by MikeI
Snaieke, I'm pretty sure you're using old CBO numbers. The House bill is looking like it will leave 17 million residents uninsured ten years from now.
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| Elmendorf said that CBO has not completed its evaluation of the House plan, but what it has seen so far does not represent “the sort of fundamental change, the order of magnitude necessary to offset the direct increase in federal health costs from the insurance coverage proposals.” |
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Originally Posted by Snaieke
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cf...s-000003168293
I fail to see how you can come up with those numbers when the CBO hasn't finished evaluating the plan. Did they release their findings in the last 12 hours? I'm basing that on the last report they ran prior to this one but I fail to see how the underlining factors have drastically changed. Go back and read what led to those 20-30 million numbers. Also, 17 million isn't too far off of 20 million.... I am genuinely curious to know if part time employees are required to have health insurance under this, because the latest labor data indicates that the average worker is around 33 hours a week, meaning a great deal of employee's are about to fall out of 'fulltime' employment status and into 'parttime' and they are then ineligible to receive benefits. SO, the question is... if a company 'offers' insurance but only to full time employee's are they still penalized under the new plan and forced to give insurance to part time employees? |
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Originally Posted by MikeI
The quote you have there from Elmendorf is talking about the funding of the House bill. It doesn't say anything about the number of people uninsured.
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| Elmendorf said that CBO has not completed its evaluation of the House plan |
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Originally Posted by PMR
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Originally Posted by PMR
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Originally Posted by pmr
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Originally Posted by MoonBaseNick
We all know that health-care needs to be changed. My one concern is why push this bill so fast if it's not going to come into effect till 2013? I mean wouldn't you want to read some of this first, maybe change a few things here and there..
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| WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's assertion Wednesday that government will stay out of health care decisions in an overhauled system is hard to square with the proposals coming out of Congress and with his own rhetoric. Even now, nearly half the costs of health care in the U.S. are paid for by government at all levels. Federal authority would only grow under any proposal in play. A look at some of Obama's claims in his prime-time news conference: ___ OBAMA: "We already have rough agreement" on some aspects of what a health care overhaul should involve, and one is: "It will keep government out of health care decisions, giving you the option to keep your insurance if you're happy with it." THE FACTS: In House legislation, a commission appointed by the government would determine what is and isn't covered by insurance plans offered in a new purchasing pool, including a plan sponsored by the government. The bill also holds out the possibility that, over time, those standards could be imposed on all private insurance plans, not just the ones in the pool. Indeed, Obama went on to lay out other principles of reform that plainly show the government making key decisions in health care. He said insurance companies would be barred from dropping coverage when someone gets too sick, limits would be set on out-of-pocket expenses, and preventive care such as checkups and mammograms would be covered. It's true that people would not be forced to give up a private plan and go with a public one. The question is whether all of those private plans would still be in place if the government entered the marketplace in a bigger way. He addressed some of the nuances under questioning. "Can I guarantee that there are going to be no changes in the health care delivery system?" he said. "No. The whole point of this is to try to encourage changes that work for the American people and make them healthier." He acknowledged then that the "government already is making some of these decisions." ___ OBAMA: "I have also pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade, and I mean it." THE FACTS: The president has said repeatedly that he wants "deficit-neutral" health care legislation, meaning that every dollar increase in cost is met with a dollar of new revenue or a dollar of savings. But some things are more neutral than others. White House Budget Director Peter Orszag told reporters this week that the promise does not apply to proposed spending of about $245 billion over the next decade to increase fees for doctors serving Medicare patients. Democrats and the Obama administration argue that the extra payment, designed to prevent a scheduled cut of about 21 percent in doctor fees, already was part of the administration's policy, with or without a health care overhaul. Beyond that, budget experts have warned about various accounting gimmicks that can mask true burdens on the deficit. The bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget lists a variety of them, including back-loading the heaviest costs at the end of the 10-year period and beyond. ___ OBAMA: "You haven't seen me out there blaming the Republicans." THE FACTS: Obama did so in his opening statement, saying, "I've heard that one Republican strategist told his party that even though they may want to compromise, it's better politics to 'go for the kill.' Another Republican senator said that defeating health reform is about 'breaking' me." ___ OBAMA: "I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home, and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately." THE FACTS: The facts are in dispute between black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the white police sergeant who arrested him at his Cambridge, Mass., home when officers went there to investigate a reported break-in. But this much is clear: Gates wasn't arrested for being in his own home, as Obama implies, but for allegedly being belligerent when the sergeant demanded his identification. The president did mention that the professor was charged with disorderly conduct. Charges were dropped. ___ OBAMA: "If we had done nothing, if you had the same old budget as opposed to the changes we made in our budget, you'd have a $9.3 trillion deficit over the next 10 years. Because of the changes we've made, it's going to be $7.1 trillion." THE FACTS: Obama's numbers are based on figures compiled by his own budget office. But they rely on assumptions about economic growth that some economists find too optimistic. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, in its own analysis of the president's budget numbers, concluded that the cumulative deficit over the next decade would be $9.1 trillion. |
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Originally Posted by Jacob Singer
That's the single most hilarious "fact check" I've ever seen. It's already been razzed and "fact-checked" itself by half-a-dozen smart sites.
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Indeed, Obama went on to lay out other principles of reform that plainly show the government making key decisions in health care. He said insurance companies would be barred from dropping coverage when someone gets too sick, limits would be set on out-of-pocket expenses, and preventive care such as checkups and mammograms would be covered. |
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Originally Posted by ElCapitanAmerica
BTW is there a thread I missed on the Gates thing, I'm kind of surprised there hasn't been more discussion about that here.
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| Senate Finance Committee Dropping Dem Health Goals: AP WASHINGTON — After weeks of secretive talks, a bipartisan group in the Senate edged closer Monday to a health care compromise that omits two key Democratic priorities but incorporates provisions to slow the explosive rise in medical costs, officials said. These officials said participants were on track to exclude a requirement many congressional Democrats seek for businesses to offer coverage to their workers. Nor would there be a provision for a government insurance option, despite President Barack Obama's support for such a plan. The three Democrats and three Republicans from the Senate Finance Committee were considering a tax of as much as 35 percent on very high-cost insurance policies, part of an attempt to rein in rapid escalation of costs. Also likely to be included in any deal was creation of a commission charged with slowing the growth of Medicare through recommendations that would take effect automatically unless overturned by Congress. "We're going to get agreement here," Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the Finance Committee chairman, said Monday. "The group of six really wants to get to 'yes.'" Obama has outlined two broad goals for legislation he is struggling to win from Congress: expansion of health insurance coverage to millions who lack it, and reining in increases in costs. Like bills drafted by Democrats, the proposal under discussion by the six Finance Committee members would bar insurance companies from denying coverage to any applicant. Nor could insurers charge higher premiums on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions. But it jettisons other core Democratic provisions in a reach for bipartisanship on an issue that has so far produced little. The effort received a boost during the day from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, normally a close ally of Republicans. In a letter to committee leaders, the business group called for the panel to "act promptly, preferably before" the Senate's scheduled vacation at the end of next week. In doing so, the business organization dealt a blow to the Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other GOP lawmakers who have called repeatedly for Democrats to slow down. |
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Originally Posted by The Rain Dog
Change everything through sheer force of will alone?
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Originally Posted by Clarence Boddicker
Ugh
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/0..._n_245839.html Jesus Fucking Christ. So not only will this bill drop the public option and remove employer responsibility for employees, but now citizens will be mandated to purchase shitty private insurance, which will make health care access worse than it already is. The corporatism and flagrant corruption of these congressmen is mind boggling. Fuck these blue dog shitheads. |
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Originally Posted by Jacob Singer
Yeah, God forbid the President of the United States has something to say to the people who elected him. What an asshole!
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Originally Posted by Devildoubt
I don't think this bill will be the final version.
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Originally Posted by MoonBaseNick
I'll be ok if he read the damn thing and worked his ass off to get it through but the feeling that I get is that all he's done is just "pass the buck" and hoped that others will do "whats right". whatever happened to his promise of "reading every bill before it passes?"
At this point I believe that President has acted stupidly |
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Originally Posted by Khaunshar
I also think by not micromanaging as much outside his actual capacities, or rather legal sphere, he is making it harder to just turn any debate into a "evil Obama" merry-go-round.
The office of the president has become tarnished by its previous, and to a lesser extent the one before, holder. A lot of that has to do with overstepping boundaries all the time, and giving the impression that at this point, the big goal is for the powerful and rich to have their own pet president to run things according to their will. Obama seems to go a more traditional role in that regard, not having his hands in every pot at once. |
