Today's quizpollFollow

The "Health Care Summit" is happening today. The President will be gathering together the leadership in Congress for a "meeting of the minds" to try and forge a compromise over health care reform. What's the general mood on this here?


Edited, Feb 25th 2010 1:05pm by MoebiusLord

What happens if you lose that job through no fault of your own?

Just sayin' - many of the people suddenly without health care did their damndest to make themselves indispensable to the companies they worked for. A good friend of mine is getting laid off on March 1st because the car plant he worked for is closing, despite him working 80 hour weeks for the last year since they laid off his assistant. The company has no place to move him or any of the other workers. And I don't think he's been able to find another job yet since he was notified, despite spending every waking moment he wasn't helping the plant shut down trying to do so. He absolutely has to have family insurance; his baby son has epilepsy.

I think that there needs to be a better safety net. I don't want free government healthcare. I have no qualms about paying for doctors visits (I'd rather have no copays for anything short of an ER visit) nor paying for my medication. What I do want is an assurance that if I come down with a life-threatening disease, my husband won't have to sell the damn house to pay for the treatments if he loses his job (and consequently, our healthcare.) I do not believe the latter is going to happen, but millions of Americans didn't think it was going to happen, either.

I got downsized once, 6-7 years ago. My department merged with another department. My company was going to have to put me through a month of training in another state, and because of the merger, they had too many staff in the new mega-department. I would be the most expensive employee to keep, since I was being paid the most, and would require that training - so they let me go instead. It came out of nowhere. My COBRA payments would have been 2/3 of my unemployment insurance check, so I opted out and went uninsured and stuck with the public health department for the next 5 months while I looked for another job.

The health care economic market is broken. If nothing else it should be fixed. If it were fixed the product would be more affordable to all, there-by lessening the need for government subsidy.

I don't like drug companies. I don't like health insurance companies. There is too much profit being made - more than proper capitalism would allow for.

I admire Obama's perseverance. If he expects re-election he has to deal with this unsavory business now.

No. You're retarded.

The health care market is one of the most economically complex markets out there - more so than energy, technology.

It's extremely restricted, falsely inelastic and the perceived value of the product is all fucked up because most people don't pay for their own goods - their employer does.

From what I understand, the proposed healthcare reforms actually cover a lot of what you said.



Like this. In exchange for being allowed to sell across state lines, however, they're going to lose their anti-trust exemption that allows them to price-fix and carve out territories. It's a trade-off the companies DON'T want to make. The insurance companies would rather work with the existing system, where they get to set the prices on a state by state basis and dominate the market for that state, rather than have to deal with regulations that prevent them from driving out their competition as they've been doing for the last 30-odd or whatever years.

The insurance market doesn't want more competition. And that's why they are doing their damnedest to kill any sort of meaningful healthcare reform, by egging on Republicans to kill the bill by any means necessary.

Nice idea but I doubt it'll accomplish much. The GOP is still putting all their chips on obstructionism and it's too late to back out now. It was obvious that they weren't serious when they gave the ridiculous demand that everyone start over from scratch; a tactic designed to let them say "We tried!" without actually doing anything.

The bill presented by the White House is already designed to be passable via reconciliation which, according to NPR, is the standard route for health care legislation from either party. I won't gamble on whether or not it passes the House but it wasn't written with the expectation that the GOP would suddenly have an open mind.

And the Dems are still putting all of their chips behind an idea that the majority of Americans have already said no to. It was obvious that they weren't serious as soon as they suggested they were open to compromise then came out with a bill that largely mirrors the bills from the Senate and the House; a tactic designed to let them say "we're willing to be magnanimous" without having to mean it.

So now it's ok to do things bypassing senate rules, but when the Republicans wanted to get around filibusters is was un-American? Hillary Clinton & Harry Reid didn't think much of that idea when the Oval was otherwise occupied.

Nah, the individual components are actually very well received (with the exception of fines and taxes on high end plans). It's a failure in marketing, not in legislative writing.


Newsflash: The Democrats are the majority party. They drive the legislation. This isn't a 50/50 proposition.


Huh? Senate Rules allow for reconciliation. You're welcome to not like the rule but you can't claim something is being "bypassed".


Insurance mandates period would be open to subsidy. The OPM plan wouldn't have special subsidies any more than Humana gets special subsidies for being part of FEHB.


You are. You're just not waiting until you're cancer-ridden to do so.

Edited, Feb 25th 2010 9:26am by Jophiel

The same could be said of the naive people who approve of those proposals. "failure of marketing".

That idea was so well received by the left when Republicans held the White House & Congress.

Sorry, poorly worded. The idea is no different. Senate rules allowed for the things the Republicans wanted to do, as well, at which Reid & Clinton and the majority of American media went apoplectic.

Yeah, hence them being a bad thing.

Why should anyone be able to tell me when I can and can't wait until to buy something? If I wait that long, I should have to pay more. It's really simple.

Clearly some of the market failure is due to past government legislation that is no longer appropriate for the current market. All the more reason to fix it.

However, the complexity of the market was not created by the government. Nor is the product optional enough to leave it to market forces.

That's the same attitude taken by the anti-seat-belters, come to think of it. Seatbelts are mandatory in the majority of motor vehicles on public roads.

"Who are you to tell me that I can or cannot do what I want to with MY vehicle?" they screech, claiming that the laws are a violation of privacy, etc etc.

And then one of the ********* dies in a car crash because he didn't wear his seatbelt.

Seatbelt laws in private vehicles are no different than any other restrictions placed on driving: legal as its a privilege to drive, not a right. However, the wisdom behind them is anything but sound. Trying to eliminate risk through behavioral mandate is stupid. Add to that that there are more important things for governments to deal with and you have bad idea all around.

That's a great giant load of crap. It was made complex by government due to the regulations they placed on it. Prior to regulation it was simply an enticement to get better employees. Once it became ubiquitous and government got involved, it got complex. It was also only then that health care in general got too expensive for insurance to be optional. Left to market forces insurance and out of pocket payment would be significantly cheaper.