Health care reform almost at the finish line... correction: it's finished

Let's stop ignoring this topic. It's about to happen. I'm watching a rerun of the Rachel Maddow show right now. She's outlining everything about the bill.What are your thoughts? I want to hear both sides.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

I would just like to hear the truth. I'd like to hear a non-partisan, non-political explanation of what it entails. I'm not a lawyer and I don't have time to read the bill itself, but I can't trust any source to not embellish something and put their spin on it.

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"Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Othersfor example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einsteinconsidered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws."-Carl Sagan"Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God." -Desmond Tutu

It sucks, but is better than what we have now. Hopefully, it will be like medicare and social security. They both sucked at implementation, but improved over time.Can you tell I am a progressive?

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

But what is it actually going to do? I am in need of insurance because I am a contractor (I consider myself a temp under contract) so i have no access to company funded insurance. I have a 6 year old son in my care (his mother lives in NY, my other son gets badgercare along with my g/f, his mother). I have tried to price out private insurance and it is utterly ridiculous, to say the least. i simply cannot afford it. i have tried to jump through the hoops to get Badgercare for at lest my son, and now they tell me I make too much money.if this bill does nothing for me and people like me, fuck it. Especially if it makes insurance mandatory (which I doubt it does){abe} I realize that last line sounds rather selfish. I did not intend it that way. All I meant was to say that, isn't the whole point of "health care reform" to make health care more affordable? if not, what's the point?Edited by hooah212002, : No reason given.

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"Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Othersfor example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einsteinconsidered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws."-Carl Sagan"Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God." -Desmond Tutu

It is very difficult to get to the truth while sifting through this sea of political pundits and hysteria on both sides of the isle. The Right has nothing good to say about it, and you can't even get a consensus from the Left. Kucinich and Moore are hugely opposed to it, among many other dissenters on the same side of political spectrum.I have therefore been waiting for it to be posted on the internet, per the Government Transparency Act. I finally have a copy, but reading through it carefully is a huge undertaking. The Bill is over 1,000-pages of pure bureaucracy. The Bill is pure legalese, which is absolutely boring. But it is necessary, nonetheless.From what I have read so far, I can say that I have grave concerns about funding such a huge operation while in the midst of a massive deficit that continues to increase daily.In the meantime I will continue to read the bill before I can give a final endorsement to propose it or oppose it.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

Therein lies the crux. I feel your pain.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the proposed reform will have a positive effect on the deficit.link: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/...care_reform_bill_cu.html

If I understand the bill correctly, you will need to buy insurance but you will be given subsidies to lower the price. The only way to keep premiums where they are and still force insurance companies to accept people with pre-existing conditions is to increase the risk pool. This isn't really a concession to the insurance companies. It is an economic necessity.Frankly, I don' think anyone can really say how this bill will work by reading the bill itself. I think it will take 2-4 years to really see what this bill does. It's not selfish at all. Asking what a bill will do for you is the whole point. Everyone should be asking that. For people like myself who already have employer provided health insurance a possible benefit is lowering my premiums. The bill will supposedly do this by getting uninsured people on insurance. This will prevent them from walking away from emergency room bills. These unpaid bills require hospitals to increase their overall charges, and hence increase insurance rates for people who do carry insurance.This is why the moaning and groaning about having to pay for health care for the poor (and illegal aliens) is so misguided. We are already paying for it. IMHO, it is also misguided to claim that this bill will "bankrupt the country". Guess what? Health care is already bankrupting this country. Everything that the Republicans are complaining about is exactly what the current system is doing.Frankly, I really don't see how prices can be controlled without the government being a big part of the system. The one government model we do have in this country, the VA system, is able to spend about 15% less per patient and still give equal care. The savings could be less if more of the care could be done in house (some VA care is contracted out). If we continue to base health care on a for-profit system americans will lose out because there is no profit in giving everyone health care.

What I don't understand about the people that are against reform, is why do the love corporations so much. Why do you adore the corporate world? They are raping the US citizens on health care, pharmaceuticals and in banking, but people are ok with that. Why do they believe corporations, that are motivated by making their execs wealthy, will treat the average person better than the government? The free market does not work without effective and strong regulation.This is proven time and time again. Health care, pharmaceuticals, banking all have raped the American people during this period of deregulation.I used to work for UnitedHealthcare. In the mid part of last decade they eliminated actual health insurance for their employees. They forced everyone into health benefit accounts or some such crap. Bottom line was the employees paid a lot more out of pocket. They claimed every year that they could not afford more than 2% raises and actually once mandated that 20% of people in EVERY department would not get a raise.3 days after one announcement that there would be paltry raises and no bonuses the CEO cashed in $120 million dollars in stock options. This was the 3rd year in a row he did that. At one point he had over $1 billion in stock options he could exercise. Most of these were found to be fraudulently awarded. As a matter of fact he made a PARTIAL settlement with the feds for $468 million.Why the hell do the American people feel a need to protect these bastards?

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

That, and similar questions always leave me severely addled and depressed. Indeed, it is a uniquely American trait to continually vote against ones self interest. Perhaps these two books best answer your question:What's the Matter with Kansas
What's the Matter with Kansas? - WikipediaManufacturing Consent
Manufacturing Consent - WikipediaEdited by dronester, : clarity

There's an old adage about the devil you know. It's not a matter of loving corporations. Rather, conservatives are able to make people fear government run health care more than the shitty insurance they already have, or want to have. I think we should really address whether or not health care should be part of the free market. We have decided that other necessities, such as education and roads, are too important to be trusted to the free market. Imagine if we treated education the same as we treat health care. We would have 10% of kids too poor to go to elementary school. Imagine if 10% of people were not allowed to use our road systems? So why does it make sense to keep 10% of people out of primary care and only give them access to emergency care which ends up costing us a lot more in the long run? It doesn't make sense, and yet this is the system people are defending. Whether this was true for UnitedHealthcare or not, this appears to be the case for employers in general. What money they could use for raises is eaten up by increases in health coverage.

The point was that only the very top of the corporate ladder(even at the health care companies) are doing well. The rest of us a subsidizing their multimillion dollar salaries.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

Just as a form of comparison - the Canada Health Care Act,which established 100%, universal, single-payer health care in Canada in a system which has been functioning very well without bankrupting that nation......was 14 whole pages long. Fourteen. Around 1% of the length of the US bill.Just saying. I'm not entirely sure we need to have a bill that's so long and complicated, when others have manage to achieve the same goals (reigning in health care costs and ensuring everyone can be covered without bankrupting the nation) without a bill so long and complicated.Of course, length has nothing to do with content, excepting that there is more of it, so I'm not necessarily opposed to this bill just because it's long. It just suggests to me that all of the Democratic spinelessness and filibuster-avoidance horse trading may have resulted in what the software industry calls "feature creep," where your product is designed by committee and winds up trying to do too much in too complicated a way, resulting in being woefully inefficient if it works at all.

Good morning! It's good to have a beautiful day off, for me at least.People nowadays are gullible enough to believe everything Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh have to say. Recently, ESPN news accidently posted misinformation that the Obama Administration wants to ban private fishing. ESPN later apologized for the mistake. Yet, Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck continue to LIE about this on their shows. There has even been a protest in Washington by their sheeps about this.Did you guys hear about the 40 or so thousand nuns that openly defy the church and support the reform?

I mention in passing that the US pays more public money per head on health than the UK; and we have free care (at the point of use) for all.