I don't know why Obama is so hung up on passing healthcare legislation. . . I don't see how this can be anything but bad for his political career. This should have been an issue in his 2nd term . . . now, after the healthcare legislation gets put into play, one has to wonder if he will have a 2nd term.
Well then its a good thing for Obama that most of the expenses of ObamaCare and new taxes that he will implement, wont take effect until after his reelection
That is a good thing for Obama. Although I doubt his opponent will let it slide like that and I can see Obama being trashed for his healthcare legislation at the next election.
This is what is driving me nuts. This isn't like passing a tax cut (or increase) that can be expired a few years down the line if something turns out badly. Once healthcare legislation is enacted, there is no chance it will be taken away, and no chance it will do anything but increase in size. It kills me that there is a group of politicians more concerned with ramming through bad legislation as quickly as possible, rather than taking the time to get it right and do something good.
In order to foist this on the public, they're playing some really deceptive games with the math. They have CBO score the bill, which costs $1T over 10 years. They collect $1T in taxes up front, over like nine years, before they even give anyone $.01 of service. They spend the $1T in year 10, and it's "budget neutral" ($1T in via taxes, $1T out via benefits over the 10 years). What is unsaid is that in year 11, it costs $1T too, and there's no $1T in taxes collected and saved up to pay for it. The closest thing to immortality is a government program.
Of course, you exaggerate wildly... speaking of deceptive games with math. Well, everyone gets to define immorality for themselves, so that can be your definition if you want it to be. barfo
This maybe over simplifying things some but we need to slow down and ask a few basic questions first before we try and "fix" health care. Most important question we need to ask - How do we provided health care to the citizens of the greatest country on Earth? And it needs to be phrased like that. We deserve to have the best health care on the planet. That does not mean socialized health care. We first need to define what we are trying to achieve here. Second, my health insurance is unlike any other insurance product I currently purchase. By itself is "insurance" the right vehicle for administrating health coverage? My car insurance does not cover fuel, oil changes, new tires and basic maintenance. My home owners insurance doesn't cover cleaning out the gutters, painting, repairs and improvements. Yet my health insurance does cover these types of things. I would love to have my auto insurance cover 80% of my fuel and maintenance expenses after I pay my annual deductible. The same for my home owner's insurance. If my auto and home owner's insurance were to start to cover these things as the price goes higher should I expect my employer to pay part of this? I can't see anyway financially we can make the current system cover everyone for everything while keeping the price affordable for the majority of citizens. I have no idea what the answer is but I do know that what is being offered isn't the answer. I just don't think there has been enough effort put into the basic questions of what is needed, how do we provide it, what are the costs and how do we pay it.
It's possible you are right - this might be the thing that dooms him, but... 1) There is an actual problem here that needs fixin' 2) He's trying to do something about it 3) He campaigned saying he was going to try to fix it 4) Once passed, more people might like it (see, e.g., Medicare) 5) Politically speaking, it's a long time to 2012, and this may not even be in the top 10 issues by that time. A lot can and probably will happen between now and then. barfo
Because waiting for the last ten years has been wonderful in terms of premiums. And I'm sure waiting will never allow lobbyists and the insurance industry to mount a massive campaign to down any measure. So even if socialized health care IS the best health care on the planet we're not allowed to have it? Interesting concept. You've totally lost half the country by not even bothering to consider all options. Amazingly, it seemed like most of the posters on this board were okay with a plan like Switzerland which has..*gasp*..a public option!
That's unrealistic. The world is static and never changes. See: Middle East. I'm positive nothing will happen between now and 2012 dealing with Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Israel, Mexico, mid-term elections, carbon offset bills, stimulus packages, bailouts, economic recovery and or re-dive, unemployment, or otherwise that would detract from the anger over health care.
It's not like those questions haven't been asked by lots and lots of people before. Waiting isn't going to somehow produce any new answers. There are a variety of approaches available, all with some positives and some negatives. Many are too radical to be adopted under our political system. The plan now being proposed is a compromise among many many constituent groups. As a compromise, and as an incremental change, it's not going to be anyone's dream - but it is what we can realistically do. Saying "we need more time to study the issue" isn't plausible at this point. Lots of people have studied this issue for lots of years. Time to do something. barfo
Like I said, I don't have answers but you're assuming that an "incremental change" is in fact an improvement over what we have now. I've seen hundreds of studies from scientists and universities about global warming and we're still debating if it's real and what to do. I haven't seen much over anything about providing the best health care possible to the average American citizen besides what has been told to us by the politicians, lobbyists and industry leaders. I'm not saying to delay it for 5 or 10 years but I just can't help but think that if we were to have given this process a year of investigating and defining problems and answers before introducing legislation would have been the better way to go.
I don't think I'm assuming that. Some incremental changes would be worse, some better. That's because we are morons. Who else is going to tell you what to think? Again, this process has been ongoing for what, decades? This is not something that sprang out of thin air. Healthcare is something like 17% of our economy. Everyone and his brother has studied this. The fact that the man in the street is just thinking about it for the first time is kind of irrelevant, because if they held off for a year, the man in the street would be thinking about it for the first time next year instead of this year. barfo
I think if the government was to provide healthcare for those unable to afford it, it wouls be incrementally implemented over a 3 or 4 year period.
Post count at S2? It's not what I'm trying to optimize. You were the one who said we should take enough time. How much time did you have in mind? barfo
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/56508 House Health Care Bill Neither ‘Durable’ Nor ‘Desirable’ Says Former CBO Director Tuesday, November 03, 2009 By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer (CNSNews.com) – Former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin said that the House Democrats’ health care overhaul was neither durable nor desirable because it raised insurance premiums, rationed care, and failed to bring down the cost of health care in America. Speaking Monday on a conference call with reporters, Holtz-Eakin said that House Democrats had failed to draft a bill that would deliver meaningful health care reform without breaking the budget. House Democrats unveiled their 1,990-page health care bill last Thursday. President Obama called it a “critical milestone.” Holtz-Eakin, however, said: “We are going to generally raise the cost of existing insurance to those who already have it – and that’s a majority of Americans – and then put in place a fiscally rickety way to get insurance to those who do not have insurance.” “As a result I think that these are reforms which are not durable in any deep sense and are not desirable from the point of view of policy,” he said. He further said that many of the tax provisions in the bill were not sustainable revenue measures but budgetary “gimmicks” designed to manipulate the CBO’s 10-year scoring process. “It continues to be true that it does not ‘bend the cost curve,’” said Holtz-Eakin. “This does not deliver on the fundamental promise of real health care reform, which is to have services of the same quality or greater at lower cost, and lower cost growth certainly.” Instead, the House bill employs budget “gimmicks” to hide its true cost and make the bill appear fiscally responsible while creating another federal entitlement program that Congress will not be able to pay for, he said. “This sets up instead a large entitlement spending program that grows at 8 percent a year as far as the eye can see, and which [current] CBO Director Doug Elmendorf said earlier this year did not bend the cost curve,” said Holtz-Eakin. “It leaves the architects with only gimmicks to disguise this problem.” Among those “gimmicks” is the front-loading of new taxes and the delaying of spending provisions, Holtz-Eakin said, both of which give the appearance of balance while concealing the real 10-year cost of the bill’s expensive insurance subsidies and entitlement expansions. “It front-loads all of the taxes and back-loads all of the spending so as to give the appearance of balance over the 10-year window,” he explained. One of the effort’s largest savings provisions, a reduction in Medicare payments rates, is “unrealistic,” Holtz-Eakin said, because Democrats made no substantive changes to the health care delivery system that would allow them to cut the rates at which the government pays doctors for providing care to seniors on Medicare. “And I think it’s quite real that the Medicare payment reductions promised are politically and substantively unrealistic,” he said. “There’s been no change in the delivery system that would allow one to believe that you can cut in half the basic growth rate of the Medicare spending program, compared to history.” Another of the bill’s payment mechanisms, a new tax supposedly focused on millionaires, is also unsustainable, Holtz-Eakin claimed, because it was not indexed for inflation, a fact that meant it could end up ensnaring millions of middle-class Americans whose businesses make them look like millionaires to the IRS. “The House has a real clear pay-for in the tax on millionaires, half a million for single [filers] and a million for couples, but that tax is not indexed for inflation and, to my eye,” he said, “looks exactly like the Alternative Minimum Tax – a tax targeted on literally just over 100 high-income individuals but is now threatening the middle class year after year.” Holtz-Eakin said that the House proposal committed to two great sins of public policy: creating an unfunded entitlement and enacting unsustainable tax policies to try to pay for it – mistakes that would make the reforms a detriment to economic recovery and growth. “The heart of this bill is to repeat two of the greatest policy errors this country has made: to create large, unfunded entitlement spending programs, and to have a tax law that is not politically viable over the long haul,” he said. “The budgetary aspect is crucial given the outlook for our economy, which we’re on track to triple debt over the next 10 years and run deficits of a trillion dollars as far as 10 years from now,” said Holtz-Eakin.
