Healthcare proposal: no fixes; just more entitlements

B_starinvestor

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Organizing for America | BarackObama.com | Health Care

Obama's healthcare plan does nothing to plug the holes in Medicare and Medicaid.

It is simply creating more entitlements.

All of these new entitlements, and no way to pay for them. We are already mortgaged to the hilt, and nobody wants to buy more of our debt.

This is beginning to look like this administration will continue to move forward in pushing its agenda with absolutely no regard for payment in any fashion.

What will happen to the tens of millions of people that are already on Medicare and Medicaid? Are we leaving them in the dust in an effort to continue gaining popularity with young liberals?

The train is so far off the tracks at this point I can't believe we are even discussing more entitlements.

Geithner was prepared to orally service the Chinese while begging them to buy more debt; and all they said was, "don't lose the money we already lent you." How embarrassing.:rolleyes:
 

Phil Ayesho

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oh shut up

you don't even know what an entitlement is, you numbskull.

Is Social security an 'entitlement'?

NO- its a pension plan that I have been paying into my entire working life.
Its just happens to be a pension plan that congress RAIDED in the 60's to pay for an undeclared war...

It just happens to be a pension plan that twisted and unscrupulous investment fucks can not manipulate with and steal from, like the pension plans of, say , ENRON workers...


National Health care will be PAID FOR by taxpayers... in premiums, just like regular healthcare... except, EVERYONE will get coverage- not just the healthy. And EVERYONE will get care... not just the ones with lawyers.

Cutting out the fat layer of profiteering and having ALL workers pay in will reduce costs, and increase funds in the healthcare system.

Your government provides armed forces, postal services, water, and medicare- and manages to do all of that pretty well...

And the fraud that that those systems suffer is quantitatively LOWER than the fraud perpetrated by the likes of Ken Lay and Bernie Madoff

So, really... back up the hyperbole with some real information... and stop the talking points misinformation idiocy...


Haven't you noticed?
nobody with a brain trusts anything you conservatives say anymore...
 

houtx48

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nothing like a whining queen to start the day......... if and or when there is health care you don't have to use it in protest. ok?
 

B_starinvestor

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oh shut up

you don't even know what an entitlement is, you numbskull.

Is Social security an 'entitlement'?

NO- its a pension plan that I have been paying into my entire working life.
Its just happens to be a pension plan that congress RAIDED in the 60's to pay for an undeclared war...

It just happens to be a pension plan that twisted and unscrupulous investment fucks can not manipulate with and steal from, like the pension plans of, say , ENRON workers...

Social Security is nothing like a pension plan.

A pension plan has assets; funds that are set aside for each eligible employee - those assets are invested and monthly benefits are calculated using a formula based on yrs of service, an interest rate, and the pension's present market value.

Payments are then made from those accumulated assets.

Social Security is a transfer payment, i.e., it comes out of my check, and is mailed to a recipient. There is no 'fund' or accumulated assets. There is nothing 'set aside' for Phil Ayesho.

It couldn't be more different than a pension.


National Health care will be PAID FOR by taxpayers... in premiums, just like regular healthcare... except, EVERYONE will get coverage- not just the healthy. And EVERYONE will get care... not just the ones with lawyers.

Cutting out the fat layer of profiteering and having ALL workers pay in will reduce costs, and increase funds in the healthcare system.

What taxpayers? Where are the taxes coming from? We are running a deficit now; where are these premiums being sourced?

Your government provides armed forces, postal services, water, and medicare- and manages to do all of that pretty well...

all but the medicare

And the fraud that that those systems suffer is quantitatively LOWER than the fraud perpetrated by the likes of Ken Lay and Bernie Madoff

agreed

So, really... back up the hyperbole with some real information... and stop the talking points misinformation idiocy...

very simple....WHERE ARE THE TAX DOLLARS COMING FROM? Lala land? We can't pay for our programs even before this new premiums need to be funded....where, where, where are the new dollars coming from in this shrinking economy?
 

javyn

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Yeah Star. Far better to just let uninsured ill people die. Who cares? They are poor! Hahahahaha!

Do you advocate letting the state pay for their funerals, or are mass graves a better idea to keep societal costs down?
 

B_starinvestor

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Yeah Star. Far better to just let uninsured ill people die. Who cares? They are poor! Hahahahaha!

Do you advocate letting the state pay for their funerals, or are mass graves a better idea to keep societal costs down?


Try going to a grocery store. Fill up your cart with groceries and food. Get to the checkout line with no cash, no credit cards, no food stamps, no money orders and then show me how you pay for the groceries.

This is my question: how in the hell are we going to pay for it?

Of course I wish everyone had health insurance. We don't have any funds to pay for it; and it will be next to impossible to borrow any more.
 

javyn

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We don't have any funds because your boy Bush blew all our money in Iraq. Look where that got us.

Sorry, but your ilk can ALWAYS find money to go to war, yet NEVER find money to help the people in this country who need it or improve our infrastructure.

Anyway, what I'd do at the grocery store is just take the groceries, using "national security" as a pretext. Then if anyone has anything to say about it I'd shout traitor from the rooftops.

Try going to a grocery store. Fill up your cart with groceries and food. Get to the checkout line with no cash, no credit cards, no food stamps, no money orders and then show me how you pay for the groceries.

This is my question: how in the hell are we going to pay for it?

Of course I wish everyone had health insurance. We don't have any funds to pay for it; and it will be next to impossible to borrow any more.
 

Zeuhl34

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We don't have any funds because your boy Bush blew all our money in Iraq. Look where that got us.

Sorry, but your ilk can ALWAYS find money to go to war, yet NEVER find money to help the people in this country who need it or improve our infrastructure.

I agree. If this country wants to free up some money, I believe our wars in the Middle East/Central Asia (Afghanistan is NOT the Middle East) need to be ended/scaled back. Our defense spending then needs to be severely scaled back. Global defense spending for all countries combined is roughly 1100 billion USD, with the US spending 623 billion of that (source: World Wide Military Expenditures). The HAS to be a large portion we can cut and use to free up money for some sort of nationalized healthcare.

Anyway, what I'd do at the grocery store is just take the groceries, using "national security" as a pretext. Then if anyone has anything to say about it I'd shout traitor from the rooftops.

Yeah, you gotta watch out for corn. That shit can be a real threat:biggrin1:
 

javyn

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Yeah, we should have listened to Eisenhower's warning to always keep the "military/industrial complex" in check.

Actually, this drastic military spending is no surprise from an economic standpoint. It is evidence of the inherent failure of the capitalist system itself. We have a major supply glut as all capitalist economies end up getting, and increasing military spending to eat up that oversupply is the easiest way to combat it. Of course that only works for a while.

Funny thing is the Soviet economy collapsed for the exact opposite reason, supply shortages due to lack of an effective pricing system. Lenin saw the light, and instituted the New Economic Policy freeing up the economy and allowing private ownership, and they actually started to have a revival. If he hadn't have died so soon, to be replaced by Stalin and his centrally planned economy, the Soviet Union might have gone down a very different path.

Which is why I have a whacked out hybrid philosophy on where we need to be economically that will make a conservative blow a gasket and make a liberal/socialist/communist want to shoot me for being a sellout.

Socialized ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, private ownership of small business and property, and ironclad unswaying support for the free market as a pricing mechanism for the win!

That way people who work hard for a living won't be taxed to death, and we'll no longer have the problem of the elites who have no job or function in society other than owning all he capital /means of production over our heads.
 
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lucky8

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Obama's plan nothing more than government sponsored health insurance that will be priced lower than private insurance in hopes of spurring price competition? If so, it's a step in the right direction. The only thing that will bring down healthcare costs is price competition, but sadly, this is a problem entrepreuners won't be able to fix by themselves, we need the government to step in on this one
 

jason_els

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Medicare and Medicaid will be dinosaurs once national health care takes the stage.

So long as insurance companies and lawyers are in the mix, we will see health care costs escalate at unmanageable levels. Employers increasingly do not want to be burdened with providing health insurance, increasingly nomadic/temp/per diem jobs are becoming the norm where the old one-employer model just isn't feasible.

Doing nothing is not an option. There must be drastic reform before over half the country has no insurance in 2025.

We WILL have national medicine. If we do it now then we'll save ourselves a world of headaches and costs.

And yes, it will have to come from various sectors of spending including defense. When we were the world's economic powerhouse we could afford our imperial defense service. We can't any longer. Nor can we afford a host of other things. If we want to truly live within our means then we're going to have to tighten our belts. Doing so will ultimately bring renewed prosperity to our country as it becomes a happier, less stressful, and better place to live. Good health care is the number 1 thing we can do to relieve an enormous amount of pressure on people. The second is providing high-quality education to all our people. The third is enfranchising the poor by giving them good health care, a good education, and a stake in their own assistance by, for example, giving them ever-increasing ownership in public housing and good quality child care.

I'm even at the point of endorsing government support for 100% tax-payer backed GED, collegiate, and post-graduate education (including room and board and allowance) because the wealth generated by people who complete these programs far outpaces the original costs of educating them. Sure it's "free" for 4 to 8 years, but out of an entire working career, that's next to nothing and We The People get paid back in higher tax revenues from that person rather than making a person system-dependent for the rest of their lives.

For us to maintain a post-industrial world standard of living without a vital world resource like oil, we must be competitive with other such nations and, happily, the US is world-class when it comes to high-end education and resource development.

But so are other countries who already are well on their way to adjusting to the contemporary economic and world power paradigm. They have national medicine, "free" higher education, and empowering public assistance programs. Their citizens make more money than we do. They may get taxed more, but they're not worried about losing their homes to medical bankruptcy, saving thousands for their kids' college or even their own adult education, or where their next meal is coming from if they lose their job. These countries behave like tribes, each person working to their best because they get rewarded for doing so, and taking care of those who can't because they realize the quality of the entire society depends upon how they enfranchise the disabled, elderly, poor, and children.

The US has, historically, never behaved this way. We're all about being independent, insular, and winner-takes-all. That's not surprising because we're not a tribe. Unlike nearly every other nation, we're not all of one culture going back millenia. Fourteen percent of our people are from a former underclass of slaves! We don't share the same religion, ethnic backgrounds, or history. We see ourselves as a nation of individuals, not, "of a people." We must change that in order to move on or the Great Experiment will end as a failure because we will be unable to compete with other nations.
 

transformer_99

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I have little faith in national healthcare in the USA, even if it were to come to fruition. Unaffordable healthcare under Obama has taken the place in center stage, as unaffordable mortgages took center stage under Bush. Even if it were affordable, the copays and lack of coverages would be structured to have the same effect as an outrageous deductible and no coverages ?
 
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B_starinvestor

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Obama's plan nothing more than government sponsored health insurance that will be priced lower than private insurance in hopes of spurring price competition? If so, it's a step in the right direction. The only thing that will bring down healthcare costs is price competition, but sadly, this is a problem entrepreuners won't be able to fix by themselves, we need the government to step in on this one


A little surprised by this offering from you, Lucky.

You think the gov't will come in and spur price competition?

How exactly will they do that, when they will be stipulating the costs of insurance?

They will drive the providers of insurance out of business. And the medical professionals' pay/comp/benefits will be suffocated - driving the talent out of the marketplace. Moreover - how will the medical/healthcare infrastructure accommodate a 20% increase in patients?

This will be an absolute disaster. Oh, and we can't pay for it.:rolleyes:
 

B_Nick8

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Geithner was prepared to orally service the Chinese while begging them to buy more debt;

So perhaps your point is that Geithner won't have to open his mouth any more than he already has--which would be the good news--and certainly not as wide as he would if it were, say, the Germans.
 

seterwind

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How will the US pay for it? No one, unless someone on LPSG works for the US Government accounting agency, could possibly answer that question. Stop asking it, there is a way as the war and current programs are being paid for. Your GDP is in the trillions. The numbers we are given are too vague and too abstract to possibly come up with a plan to pay for it.

No one here is going to answer that question Star, no one can. Thats why Obama was elected, to get people to figure out how to get things done, To manage the current problems and resolve them in a timely manner, To push the USA forward and improve it.

I suggest that if you really want to know how all this is going to be paid for, you write to the white house or get yourself a job with them. Request current spending plans, last years spendings, and dig through the paper work yourself. Until then stop asking a question without a point.

If your still reading this looking for an answer I'll give you the best one. Obama will tax people more, move funds from one program to another, allocate part of current deficit spending from one program to this one, cut a program deemed too costly and spend it on the health care, have a lobbyist pay for part of it, and possibly add a premium onto the service based on income to have health care.

I believe that is all the government options for spending on a program.
 

lucky8

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A little surprised by this offering from you, Lucky.

You think the gov't will come in and spur price competition?

How exactly will they do that, when they will be stipulating the costs of insurance?

They will drive the providers of insurance out of business. And the medical professionals' pay/comp/benefits will be suffocated - driving the talent out of the marketplace. Moreover - how will the medical/healthcare infrastructure accommodate a 20% increase in patients?

This will be an absolute disaster. Oh, and we can't pay for it.:rolleyes:

I haven't the slightest clue. I don't know a thing about Obama's healthcare plan, don't really care too much about it either. The only solution to fixing prices I see is government competition or price caps. Build the system like private insurers have. Don't force people to join the program, leave it optional. When someone signs up, tax them. Don't tax everyone, just tax the people who are on the program. Combine this with registration fees and monthly payments that are lower than private insurers, and we'll slowly start to get there. The goal is to force insurers to lower their prices, which they can afford to do, they just don't want to. This is just a thought, but it's better than nothing.

On top of this, we should start allowing Americans to purchase their prescriptions and drugs from other countries. Also, reduce the patent life of prescription drugs to 5 years or so so generics can hit the market sooner. We already pay for the R&D with our tax dollars, it's not like it would hinder business to the point where no R&D was being done at all. I don't know about you, but I don't think we really need 20 different anti-depressants on the market, there's really no need for it, these companies are just wasting money creating stuff that's already been created.
 

AllHazzardi

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Obama's plan nothing more than government sponsored health insurance that will be priced lower than private insurance in hopes of spurring price competition? If so, it's a step in the right direction. The only thing that will bring down healthcare costs is price competition, but sadly, this is a problem entrepreuners won't be able to fix by themselves, we need the government to step in on this one

That's not true. One important thing which would bring down healthcare costs is further technological advancement. As new technologies come forth, prices on the now out-dated technologies go down, making basic care more affordable, therefore cutting the costs of healthcare.

Chief example, CAT scans before MRI were far more expensive, MRI is a better imaging technology than CAT and requires more energy/up-front cost, so the prices are higher. After the invention of the MRI, the price on CAT scans and related technology reduced and came closer to affordability.

If this pattern were to be replicated, and an even better imaging technology were invented superior to MRI, then the cost of MRI would fall, and so would CAT scans.

Likewise the same could be true for automated diagnostic technology, a computer system able to scan and interpret the individual on a full body scale in a short period of time and diagnose probable issues for review by a doctor.

One could propose that this would in fact be a better operation-oriented solution than trying to trim down the expense in other ways. Not only does the old technology become more affordable, but the new technology is now also available for use.


One could even argue that this attitude could be applied to all forms of business; make the best product you can, and keep trying to improve it. When the focus is on quality, cutting costs outside of efficiency improvements(making better manufacturing technology or refining technology, and so on) is never an option. When the focus is on money, cutting costs by cutting corners or reducing staff becomes an ideal system, after all, why spend $10,000,000 so you can save $1,000,000 a year when you could just fire $10,000,000 worth of workforce or use cheaper and less functional materials? The why is an easy answer; that savings continues over the long term without sacrificing quality. Another common example would be energy technology; if constructing solar panels costs X and saves you Y in resource costs every year after, and X is based on the cost of construction, X will increase proportionally with the cost of those resources which you are consuming and reducing available quantity of. The longer you wait, the more expensive it gets, but the Y, the savings in resource costs, also increases proportionally. However, that Y increases continuously as more resources are consumed, so in the long run, the sooner you switch away from resource consumption, the better you are.


The one problem I find common to all of the current issues is not a he said she said problem, it's not lying and corruption, it's just the attitude of focusing on money rather than quality. A quick list of evidence can be gotten from any local news report about GM, Chrysler, or any other company having issues currently.
 

mikeyh9in

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Star... Aren't you tired of being wrong about Obama and his administration all the time?

Why don't you guys wait until there is actually something to be upset about? It will then at least make you look intelligent.

Maybe you have never run a large organization, but it is complicated and to fix things takes money (too bad all of the money that we could be using to fix healthcare went to and disappeared in Iraq).


Organizing for America | BarackObama.com | Health Care

Obama's healthcare plan does nothing to plug the holes in Medicare and Medicaid.

It is simply creating more entitlements.

All of these new entitlements, and no way to pay for them. We are already mortgaged to the hilt, and nobody wants to buy more of our debt.

This is beginning to look like this administration will continue to move forward in pushing its agenda with absolutely no regard for payment in any fashion.

What will happen to the tens of millions of people that are already on Medicare and Medicaid? Are we leaving them in the dust in an effort to continue gaining popularity with young liberals?

The train is so far off the tracks at this point I can't believe we are even discussing more entitlements.

Geithner was prepared to orally service the Chinese while begging them to buy more debt; and all they said was, "don't lose the money we already lent you." How embarrassing.:rolleyes: