Well said.
Somehow 535 members of congress think they know what's best for 300 million
citizens. Dodd should have to go to England or Canada for his surgery since
that's the type of care he wants for us.
ms15
Phoenix, AZ
Arizona Republic
...your conservative Republican government
bailed out insurance
companies and wall street if I recall back in October,
remember!
Anonymous
[I'm glad you brought up that half-truth.
First of all, it was the overwhelmingly Democrat majority in
Congress that passed those bailouts and sent them to lame duck
President Bush to sign during the wind-down of a close presidential
campaign. Obama and the Dems are now hypocritically taking credit
for the "success" of those bailouts while they bash the guy who
signed them into law for all of the ills that their
majority Congress helped create while GWB was president. Typical
lib-spin! -ED]
The truth is that most U.S. citizens are very
dissatisfied with their health care insurance once they try to use
it for something other than a routine doctor visit. Also, please
explain why dental and vision care are separate items, which need to
be paid for separately. Are not the eyes and the mouth part of the
body?
LeahMica
Wilmington DE,
News Journal
[Obamacare is supposed to be about
getting those who have no 'insurance' covered. But if you're one of
those who is dissatisfied with the comprehensiveness of the coverage
you're currently paying for, how much better do you expect things to
be if the government takes over? -ED]
Hi there eddo: I can't really tell what you
are upset about in this post. Is it that congress does indeed have
good health care? Or is it that you feel the insurance companies are
being treated unfairly? Or is it that the status quo is good enough?
Right now, I would say that the insurance companies have too much
say in our health care. This has been going on for a long time. My
doctor has to ask permission, in writing, to write me a
prescription. They don't question the medicine, but they question
the dosage. Is that what an insurance company should do? This all
seems like another complaint about the lawyers in congress. Why
don't you write and complain about the insurance companies playing
doctor?
luiesmom
Great Falls, MT
Tribune
[I am being neither defensive nor critical of
the insurance industry per se. I am being extremely critical, as
always, of hypocritical liberals -- especially Obama and Pelosi.
Honestly, I wish that my family and everyone else could have the
kind of free benefits that the Obamas, Dodds and the rest of
Congress enjoy but that is as unrealistic as blaming all of our
health care problems on insurance companies, drug companies and
Conservatives who, coincidentally, are all in favor of people making
money in the course of being helpful... whereas the libs would just
as soon see us throw taxpayer dollars at everything whether it makes
fiscal sense or not. -ED]
Actually lombago I see some very promising
days ahead. I believe that most of both sides of the fence believe
that there is a need for health care reform and that is progress. I
saw a survey that 24% of the population did not see any need for any
change. Now, how it is administered and paid for is the makings of a
very good and needed debate. Perhaps it will end somewhere in the
"middle".
The coverage (health care) of the elected officials is interesting,
but not the real question of the millions who cannot get coverage or
the pre-existing conditions thing. If being a public employee should
be a criteria for taking away health care benefits then I guess the
US military needs to figure out how to take care of those bullet
holes on their own. This is of course silly, but so is using the
health care of Congress as a yard stick for, well, anything! Again
we need to separate the issues that may be related, but sometimes
are not. School teachers should not lose health care benefits
because their pay is from we the taxpayer. I must say - you have a
very good post here!
mostlymalarkey
Wausau, WI
Daily Herald
...last
time I disagreed you didn't post it. I am a nurse. I have seen plenty of
people misled and cheated by insurance companies
that don't
pay, delay payment et.cet. There are many who despite working are unable to
get insurance (not offered or too pricey or refused)...Quit lying about
healthcare reform. Industry people know it is needed. Lots of working folks
can't get insurance, and when they do the companies are often renigging on
what they promised leaving folks with huge co-pays, deductables and unpaid
surgeries.
Shinelight
Chicago
[And I'm sure
Sen. Dodd will be having those kinds of problems when he goes to
Sloan-Kettering on our dime. You can't see the hypocrisy? The
lie about Obamacare is that it's about reform. It's about
changing everything he possibly can to socialism. -ED]
Welcome to
Comrade Clinic ...... your number is 29304 .... ATTENTION CALLING 12 THAT IS
NUMBER 12 YOU ARE NEXT AT WINDOW B.
deserttrek
Palm Springs, CA
Desert Sun
...it's
about Losers who can't find their way out of bed every morning to go
work....ahhh, but they always got money for smokes, concerts and B*Ball
tickets...say it ain't so?
BigLeeBail
Palm Springs, CA
Desert Sun
[You
'Springers are certainly providing the comic relief today! -ED]
I have
always said if the elected officials aren't included in the new health care
then I don't want it. I just can't believe the people who think we should
pay for Cadillac insurance for them while we have rationed Insurance like
England. By the way I know people in England and I'm not sold.
50s cutie
It's a
very good analysis, eddobloggo. but I agree with luiesmom that you fail to
draw the correct conclusion from this information. Pelosi, Waxman, et. al.
are among the very few Democrats (or Republicans) who are honest about
feeling guilty about having what the rest of us can't have. Actually, the
"perfect insurance" which Congress and the President enjoy IS private
insurance, and it costs way more than it should (and we, the taxpayers, pay
for it). I think I read that it's on the order of $40,000/year for each of
them and their families, or more than $10,000/year for an individual. It's
true, we spend anywhere from $4,000 to $7500/per year per person for our
existing "healthcare system" (it varies by state, with Mass. being the most
expensive with their compulsory insurance system), but Single Payer
advocates would claim that most of this money is wasted - on obscene profits
and rake-offs by the "insurance industry" and Pharma, and the phoney bills
and bankruptcies caused by unregulated (and unaccountable) local healthcare
providers. 60 Minutes did a story about how it is common practice for
hospitals to bill those WITHOUT insurance anywhere from 4-10 times more than
those who have it, or Medicare, or whatever. This accounts for all of the
yearly double-digit price increases we have had since the 1980's, at least.
Just applying normal consumer protection laws might cut our "costs" in half.
But ultimately, Single Payer or a Japanese-style hybrid system is the way to
go.
greateco
Great Falls, MT
Tribune
[Regardless of what you or I might believe or suggest -- and I'm sure we
disagree with each other somewhat more than we agree -- it is unfair and
un-American for this to be crammed down our throats by using the kind of
purely partisan political tactics that Obama, Pelosi et al are using. This
is a lot more serious and important than buying a DVD player or a box of
cereal according to consumerist standards. -ED]
Who said
anything about doing away with homeowners insurance companies?
Craig51
Des Moines, IA
Register
[Well, if
they think insurance companies are evil and expendable what's to stop them
from taking over auto and homeowner's once they seal the deals on health
care, the domestic auto industry and banking? Do you see, my friend, how the
threat of socialism becomes clearer when it creeps closer to YOUR home? -ED]
This about
taking money that goes to private sector insurance companies and private
hospitals and putting that money in the hands of the people that need it the
most -- government bureaucrats. If we don't grow the bureaucracy, how will we
get out of this Depression I'm creating to bring us all together?
Once the hyper-inflation kicks in from all the money we're printing, we'll all
feel a lot closer. Well, maybe you will, huddled around those barrels on
street corners for warmth this winter. Me and Michelle will be fine, so don't
worry about us.
BarryFromKenya
Wausau, WI
Daily Herald
If we get
ObamaCare, One of the czars in the Obama administration will soon enough
advise the boss that they will run out of money for their health care scheme
as they quickly did with their Cash for Clunkers. The result will be to resort
to gene testing and a polite nice e-mail note written and signed by none other
than the president's Health Teleprompter's (pretty special, huh?) concluding
with, "come on, you don't want to be a burden to the country, do you?" and
advising the tested to report to an ObamaObstetrics clinic for "voluntary"
sterilization. Those determined to carry genetic messages that could cause
them to frequent doctors and run up bills, be resistant to change or have
infections resistant to drugs, or be of undesirable potential for earning
enough money to pay down our rapidly growing national debt (meaning work
cheerfully for the Chinese) will be escorted along with the aged costing "The
Plan" too much. If the price is right, meaning YOU will offer THEM a large
amount of cash for your Clunker body they may let you have one experimental
baby who will be monitored from conception to the day before the due date. You
can only guess what will happen if there's a problem with the baby. Since it
wasn't born yet it will not qualify for the special HHS e-mailed certificate
suitable for framing that will be known by the Surgeon General as, "Thank a
Clunker for choosing to be a Plunker". When this plan fails I don't even want
to think what's next.
OreMtn
Great Falls, MT
Tribune
This is NOT about health care reform.
It IS about
health insurance reform! Two very different birds that the
anti-reform crowd is trying to shoot.
Uriah
Missouri
[No. This is about replacing insurance
with bureaucracy. No one opposes reform and most of us believe that
it is necessary -- preferably in the form of cost-cutting. -ED]
Hi Ed. Well written blog. As someone
generally on the other side of the aisle, I feel as though both
sides can't make the health care debate about politics. We really
need to focus on the uninsured and the underinsured of this country,
of whom there are too many. It seems reasonable that we should be
able to come up with a better solution. We as taxpayers already pay
for those folks when they use expensive emergency room visits for
medical care, often for problems that could be largely prevented
with regular doctor visits. I, too, believe there may be better ways
than single payer insurance, but I do believe that the debate should
focus on the folks who desperately need some sort of coverage.
As far as AIG goes, I believe the government had virtually no choice
but to bail them out after seeing the consequence of letting Lehman
Bros. fail. The entire commercial paper market would have frozen,
and companies all across the globe could've been insolvent
instantly. AIG was so wrapped up in the CDS market, it would've been
a disaster.
Friedlander
Wausau, WI
Daily Herald
[I appreciate your reading time and comment,
Friedlander. While we agree, somewhat, that the need for fiscal
reform in the health care industry is necessary (tort reform, as
well) it is quite possible that all of the bailouts and stimuli
could end up being in vain or, at least, that less cash input might
have had a similar or better overall result. In other words,
choose your poison -- disaster now or disaster later. And we all
know that the administration is actually being run by people who
have a 'never waste a disaster to advance the cause' mentality. -ED]
I called Senator Sherrod Brown's office today
to find out about any
town hall meetings and was told that I should listen to local
media or check his website. They will post the meeting a day or two
in advance. At this time, they are keeping it a secret.
MorbachMan
Cincinnati, OH