Thanks Scarecrow – recd

Sonds like they favor Dorgan’s ill thought out proposal; “His appearance at Green Bay on Thursday suggests that the Obama White House thinks it can apply this formula to the health care reform debate. The friendlier turf, they believe, is outside Washington.” ; OF COURSE IT IS ! The American public would love a single payer plan but the public isn’t lobbying for re-election dollars.

next up: let’s pressure hcan (health care for america now) into folding on their demand of keeping the private insurance option.

now THAT would be progress!!!

Are we making headway? Sure feels like it.

My best friend is a physician, and he said he was scared that a Public Plan would cap his earnings… I asked how much of his earnings he spent dealing with Insurance companies, complying with all their rules etc… and he said quite a bit… so I asked him what the marginal cost of not having to deal with all that bullshit would be, and he said “I never thought of that… but it would be substantial savings, and I’d know my patients would get the meds I prescribe instead of going without”

I don’t think the AMA is exactly beloved outside their own four walls… it’s tough to make folks without insurance feel bad for Doctors and their lobbyists crying about “hurting” insurance companies and Big Pharma.

The sense I get is that we are at least making an effort, and for once, Dem leaders, the WH and some progressives are all pulling in the same direction. The distance between advocates of single payer vs “robust” public plan with mandate for insurance is preventing a united front, despite strawman arguments that one leads eventually to the other. However, IMO this split is not yet hurting the combined opposition to the industry/Republican coalition, and the enthusiasm of sp advocates in knocking down Republican arguments is helpful. We have a common opponent. That’s how i see it. Other?

Perfect example of lack of critical thinking. Just jump to conclusions.

Americablog is saying that 120 million Americans will choose a public plan over the health insurance plan they have. I am one of them….. right now I owe the Mayo $3660 as part of my deductible and co-insurance (out of pocket expenses). I’m on disability and on a reduced income, so far this year I have earned $26,000.

My deductable is $1500 & co-insurance is $3000= $4500 every year before my plan starts paying 100%. I have met this dollar amount now for the last three years…..

About this quote from Obama’s speech:

What else do we say to all the families who spend more on health care than on housing or on food?

I hope someone with the President’s ear will remind him that families lucky enough to have insurance are NOT spending “more on health care than on housing. . . .”

they are spending more on a lottery ticket than on housing or on food. That ticket is their insurance premium, with the mere chance that when it comes to actually needing health care that the insurance will “approve” of them getting it.

Here’s an idea:

Since bailouts are all the rage these days, how about we institute a Medicare For All option, and that for all doctors who take a certain number of MFA patients, the government pays off/forgives their student loans?

clinics and physician’s offices have whole departments who obtain authorizations, some non-medical and others nurses. That kind of overhead can be very expensive……

Then there is the same type of department at the health insurance company plus they hire doctors to review cases that the nurses cannot approve. I worked for 11 years in these departments, mostly doing case management but also doing utilization review. Not bad pay for a nurse who does not want to work acute care anymore….

Lottery tickets are one of the most aggressive taxes that exist. They are purchased disproportionately by the poor, and in many states the funds go into higher education, benefitting the upper middle class disproportionately.

The purpose of all that review is for the insurance companies to deny payment. Insurance is the ultimate moral hazard business. The minute you file a claim (same thing on auto & home), “your” insurance company becomes your enemy. They try it on life insurance, but their options are pretty limited in that case.

it’s tough to make folks without insurance feel bad for Doctors and their lobbyists crying about “hurting” insurance companies and Big Pharma.

Exactly! Are they deciding between food and medical attention or medicine? They have no idea what its like watching your child sick and trying to decide if they are ill enough to seek medical attention because it will take you all year to pay the bill.

If huge numbers move over to a public option…. you are going to see increases in fee schedules across the board, negotiation of drug coverage and 30% will NOT being going to the big boys while they deny coverage, hold claims until the doctors haul you into collections, try to arrange payment plans for multiple providers ….. How the hell am I going to get the money for $3600?

I guess I wasn’t clear. I was saying that insurance payments are more like lottery tickets than actual insurance — because you pay and pay, but there’s no guarantee the insurance company will actually cover you when you get sick.

I was making a different point, because people don’t usually think about lottery tickets as a regressive tax.

But, yes, I missed your point, which is a good one. Thanks for clarifying.

Elmore was paying for a self employment policy for himself and his youngest son. In prep for going to the Maritime Academy in CA in the fall, he found out his son’s policy was canceled in 2007. He filed claims for treatment for an allergic rash…. poof no more coverage

The medical schools put out an excess of specialists, eg, neurologists, cardiologists, with few opting to be general practioners, which is what the country needs. The govt could give grants to those who chose general med and work out in the communities for x number of years. The AMA has an artificial limit on the number of MDs it hands out each year. The govt could do away with that at the same time.

I watched a guy prolly in his late 60s buy 50 $3 scratch off tix yesterday. Paid with a 100 and a 50. Looking at him you’d figure he didn’t have 10 bucks on him.

AMA is willing to consider other…

This is pure PR. It goes to show what a tin ear the AMA has both in its initial response and its what I would call clarification rather than retraction. But make no mistake the AMA is in the bag for insurance companies and Big Pharma and, of course, itself. Note how patients appear nowhere in these priorities.

Democrats hint compromise to win Senate health care deal

BY MARY AGNES CAREY AND ERIC PIANIN
KAISER HEALTH NEWS

WASHINGTON —”Senate Democrats are offering to scrap a controversial government-sponsored health insurance provision in an effort to win more than a dozen moderate and conservative Republican votes to extend health care coverage to nearly 46 million uninsured Americans.

“Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the chairman of the Finance Committee, signaled his willingness Thursday to compromise to attract enough GOP support to pass the legislation in the Senate this summer with as many as 70 votes.

“Baucus emerged from a morning session with key Republicans and Democrats saying he was “inclined toward” jettisoning the proposed government insurance program, which President Barack Obama endorsed last week, in favor of a new proposal to create national, state and regional health care insurance cooperatives.

“Republicans oppose the public insurance option, saying it would undermine the private insurance industry and lead to a national health insurance system.”

http://www.miamiherald.com/new…..93302.html

I remember when the doctor would come to the house or we would go to the doctors office and we paid the doctor . Around the time when GHWB arrived in Washington the insurance corps showed up and some how squeezed in between us and our doctors and our doctors were no longer our friends and things became very complicated when the paperwork task force arrived and took over . The question is “why can’t our doctors become our friends again ?” Paying the doctor would greatly reduce the paperwork task force , cut out the middle men , just think about the reduction in costs and if you do not get sick you never pay anything . Would it be possible to make health care insurance illegal ? They are certainly not useful .

“…government insurance program,…”

Single payer is not government insurance…again the democrats let the conservative define the dialogue. It is not for profit health care…we get to pay for the health care without making Big Insurance rich for nothing in return.

I agree. It’s a robust debate and it doesn’t hurt for it to be fractured at this point as that leaves open the door for views from all quarters. It is at times like this that it pays to either be extremely well prepared with ideas and plans and/or to be very nimble and creative with new ideas to stretch the debate in new directions to keep it alive and ‘uniquely American’.

Also the cost burden is greatly reduced for business, unions and other organizations that provide insurance for employees.
Cut some MIC spending for a month of war…that will pay for it all.

What law lets an insurance agency person override the authority of a doctor to treat their patient per their training?

Can we have some truth spoken by our fearless leaders? There seems to be an underlying assumption that the current racket, euphemistically referred to as the “health care industry,” would be great if it weren’t for the huge cut taken by the health insurers. While it’s true that there’s an enormous amount of unnecessary middleman expense, the cost of medical services alone is ridiculously out of scale with the earnings of the average American. If people actually had to pay for most of this stuff out of their own pockets, they wouldn’t. The health insurance industry is necessary for this beast to continue to gobble because it helps mask the reality of the situation. People think to themselves, “thank goodness I’m insured or I would have gone bankrupt paying for my 2 day $30,000 hospital stay.” Really – stay at a five star resort and it will seems like a huge bargain compared to your spartan hospital room. Not only that, your room service will arrive more quickly than the nurse who is allowing your IV to run dry because of the gross under-staffing. We’re not sure why “medical care” costs so much, or precisely where all the money goes. But since it consumes an eighth of our gross national product, aren’t these questions worth some investigation and candid comment by the people supposedly intending to reform the system?

Hey Scarecrow,

A straight forward question…. How many of the corporate health players are tax exempt corporations? What is the % percentage of corporations within the entire health service industry, insurer to hospice, which have obtained tax exempt status from the IRS?

The reason I ask this question is simple? It seems a quid pro quo is developing between the Demoerratic leadership and corporate Rethuglicans, to enslave, to render subservient, the American people to a corporate controlled healthcare system lacking proper cost control mechanisms while avoiding congressional use of tax incentives as a mechanism to reduce costs by virtue of lets say questionable…… a questionable tax status?

So I will say it again…. When a tax exempt health insurer cuts insurance coverage for a person who gets ill and can no longer work and pay premiums how does this lessen the burdens of government when that person and family is bankrupted by the overpriced cost of healthcare offered by said tax exempt corporations. This is abject rape of the American people by corporate interests. Mandated Healthcare in the absence of real cost control measures is corporate servitude enable under the color of law. Corporate health tax exempt or not, like the oil corporations do not have the right to bankrupt the governed in the lust for their myopic profit. We dealt with this issue before……. it was called Slavery. Corporate servitude is an insidious for of slavery, where all liberty is extracted from the governed???

Oh BTW Oil the life blood of American liberties at this point is sucking again vast quantities of liberty/money from Americans…. again. $70.00+ dollars a barrel. Just another obvious question never really asked? How does one get control of outrageous cost increases in the health services when we cannot even control the cost of energy? ASININE

Life Liberty and pursuit of Happiness as defined by corporate America was not what America’s founders intended………….

I think they got a memo from the White House indicating not to worry, the fix is in, the American people who believe our public plan will be an attractive alternative just don’t know that — yet.

I agree. It’s pure PR. I don’t believe the AMA has suddenly changed its tune.

And it should be noted that there are medical folk who are with us in that they are disgusted with the ins. co’s gaming the system for profit, with little regard for the human element.

Here’s the “co-op health plan” that the AMA is “willing to consider.”

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said Wednesday that he is “frankly not terribly interested” in what the major health care reform coalition thinks and is pushing ahead with a proposal the group rejects.

“I am unaware that HCAN has any votes on the floor of the United States Senate,” said Conrad when told that the coalition Health Care for America Now opposed his plan to create regional health care co-ops instead of allowing consumers to have access to a public plan option.

Oops. Just saw this. Seems it’s already been noted. Good for them.