The Furies of Health Care

You mean they still have things left they didn't cram down during the Bush years? Amazing, you guys just want to burn the constitution on PA ave?

Pizachu: is from the Obumer administration

Pizachu: Liberalism is a mental disorder,
.
Pizachu has no facts, just mental disorder

No, you betch, no spite on the part of the right wingers.

This bill that is an insurance company give away, you think will help the democrats in 2010 or 2012? One republican senator recently told us Rush that everything they put in the bill was designed to kill it. So, neither party really looks that good come election day. America is still the only industrial nation without affordable health care for all it's citizens.

That is exactly what they have done, Alex. Because they didn't win the election, they have refused to participate in making bills or suggesting their own ideas. they just want Obama to fail, and the country along with him. They have done their darndest but the bill, such as it is, will pass. And if it isn't the best bill, it is partly their fault!!

You go off your meds again?

I agreed with you to a point.

Perfectly okay with the Republicans opposing healtcare reform. I think some things should be hard to do, and I'm happy, so far, that the Democrats have risen to the occasion.

But it's not at all arrogant to call out the Republicans for their role in this. Death panels, birthers, lies about veteran's benefits, posters from Auschwitz and people bringing guns to town-hall meetings.

This isn't vilifying "all public opinion contrary to theirs." It's rightly calling the opposition unhinged from reality and knowlingly dishonest. It's not the contrary opinions that are rightfully vilified. It's the lies.

@Maspring, absolutely correct, the only reason this bill was forced to devolve to the point that it has is because the Republicans pulled out there tried and tested boogiemen and scared the pants off of every Democrat leader with the fear that they might lose every single voter who fell for the death panels, care rationing, Nazi / concentration death camp style government run hospitals etc etc. They have no shame !

Our Dem leaders once again proved spineless, knowing full well that at the very least the Public OPTION was the right thing to do. They even caved on reducing the age for Medicare.

Despite my belief that the trigger idea was a complete joke, it at the very was a pretend attempt to put the HC Insurance companies on notice. Instead we have congratulated them for ripping the American people off, and for costing untold numbers of deaths at the hands of THEIR death panels. We have rewarded them with another 40 Million customers with no accountablity whatsoever. Sure they will do a little token reduction and when we have moved on, they make it all back.

I do blame the Dems for being so gutless, but if the Republicans hadn't pulled out the white sheets and burning crosses, then the weakness of our Dem leaders would not have been tested.

As you say, a system of checks and balances is healthy but only when the opposition party is not so blatantly dishonest. The Republicans didn't care what was in the bill. They have simply acted like a bunch of insolent children sulking in the corner because they lost the elections so badly. Way to look out for the American people Republicans and much of their electorate have as much blood on their hands as their leaders do for being so ignorant to fall for all the lies.

Our government has become a joke, a bunch of weak corporate run sell outs. We the people are just along for the ride.

to maspring.....

Some things in life are certain..... I would have been correct had I picked where you would go with your rebuttal.... way before you committed it to print.

You do yourself a disservice by limiting the scope of your surveillance to a small segment of the opposition. I always find it best to eliminate those individuals who, no matter what side's pennant they chose to wave, would be an embarrassment. Gleaning real information from accurate facts is always more rewarding than sifting through the camera ready pomp and circumstance. I'll leave that nonsense to the skilled political orators of the MSM ...they're paid a good buck to focus on the fringe of any bias...."cause that's what sells papers". Besides, Lord knows, I'm all for full employment even if it means Chris Matthews' career survives another day.

Remember, "the truth will set you free', so like yourself I too am for exposing liars. When the CBO presents their final numbers, I expect to feel assured the analysis is indisputable. So you tell me, why is their math so fuzzy now? Finding a cheat at the CBO wouldn't be hard, so I have to assume they were unknowingly operating on false info supplied by outside sources....a source everyone is familiar with. Which equivocator should we ask???

Though I disagree with his politics, a salute is owed Senator Michael Bennett, Democrat from Colorado. He's poignant words delivered from the Well of the Senate today summed up all that needs fixing on Capitol Hill.

http://hotairpundit.blogspot.com/2009/12/senator-michael-bennet-d-tries- to.html

RevPettibone... I will agree that a lot of main stream media attention was paid to the nut cases at the town hall meetings. It it would be completely disingenuous of us to characterize "the opposition" as this sad collection of dimwits who showed up to shout down their Senators, except for one fact.

Their Republican Senators did not distance themselves from any of this behavior. They embraced the birthers. The spoke at rallies with giant posters from Auschwitz. They refused to condemn the deathers.

I would agree that it's possible to marginalize your opposition by focusing only on their fringe. But you can only do that if the heart of the party disavows the fringe. And that isn't happening.

The Republican party has become the fringe. That's why they're dismissed as such.

to maspring......

You first say it would be disingenuous for you to characterize the entire GOP, but I guess you're forgetful, cause you went on to do it any way through out the rest of your thread. Come on, even you can't believe a politician, be he Red or Blue, would seriously want an aggregate to stop irritating the opposition.

Now given your logic, I would be hard pressed to depict Democrats on the Hill as any thing other than lying money chasing brown-nosers and spineless jelly fish. All their whining isn't gonna work this time. People can see how they want to detract from the facts and carpet over how they've caved to insurance companies and BIG pharma. This bill is NOTHING like what was promised the American people.

Voters need to take the time to look at some of the political disingenuousity surrounding this "health what-ever-you-wanna-call-it-now bill". The do what ever it takes to get the "damn thing" passed policy, that many are choosing to ignore, is an insult to the electorate. In order to get the AMA endorsement, the Botox- tax was tossed out and replaced with an E-Z -Tan-tax........ Senator Nelson gets a sweetheart deal for his state (lets' not forget where Mutual of Omaha is) and the rest of us will pay for Nebraska's free ride. Where's the promised "reform" in an action like that ? It's hard to keep my composure, when this bill is just a lot of money spending and wall papering over holes. As it stands now, the members of some demimonde would have more respectability than our esteem Senate does. We will never see real reform until Washington finally shows they care about the American people more than they care about the next election.

It would be great to have a republican read the following into the Congressional Record:

I am an independent candidate for president. This is my Health Care Program, a nuts and bolts solution that every republican can support; that every citizen can support.

My independent health care program is better than the hodgepodge health care program created by the bought and paid for congress under the tutelage of money stuffing lobbyists. Theirs is a fascist failure, stinking of bureaucracy and in their legalistic fine print an untenable corruption of our constitutional rights.

My program does not require an Act of Congress. It deserves the consideration of the American people because it is clearly stated in plainly readable language, while their 2000 page "bill," mastered by lobbyists, represents the downfall of their own self-corrupted politics.

On the strength of their program the 535 should be thrown out of office in the next election, with two exceptions, because there is always an exception to every rule, that in itself, a universal. Bernie Sanders should stay in the Senate. Marci Kaptor in the House. All the rest must go. As soon as you say, well my representative really is a good person - then they all will stay, so excluding only one senator and one member of the House all the rest must go by 2010. All 434 Members of the House and 33 Senators.

Health Care is an issue that ties up one-sixth of our economy! Unless we repair our broken health care delivery, we are guaranteed to become a 2nd rate 2nd tier lender nation. All of these CEO's everywhere in USA are snatching millions of dollars in bonus' etc., because they smell the almighty dollar might permanently implode turning 20 million dollars into ten, your 40 grand a year into 20 grand, the purchasing power for all imported goods, cut in half.

All of these issues are woven with each other.

The following Health Care program does not involve insurance companies, or any government bureaucracy, or any act of congress, excluding a one line change in the tax code, providing incentive for medical professionals to treat "charity" cases for a tax deduction, the pot of gold at the end of the medical provider's rainbow: Freedom of Income Tax.

My program will cost half as much money as the congress program - give or take, mine is 43 billion dollars a year.

Their 86 billion dollars per annum comes from our federal treasury. The cost of my health Care program is evenly spread throughout our whole country, a few pennies from non-income tax-paying teenagers, and a few extra pennies from retired people along with everyone else's loose pennies, including undocumented workers' pocket change.

We can agree our economic heartbeat, is shaky - near collapse; the dollar has been in the dumpster for months, could permanently go lower leading to implosion. One of our "prob limbs" on the tree of our economic life is the growing rolls of those who lost their health care insurance along with their jobs.

My Loose Penny Program, unlike the billions in taxpayer's bailout dollars, is a capital injection that will instantly begin to repair our economic muscle, by repairing our health care delivery - boing! - Without government's intervention.

But to create actual jobs, by reestablishing a healthy economy where "health care" isn't dragging down the economy, as union contract health care commitments drained General Motors, stealing the profit from every car, mission critical diplomacy is required.

President Obama needs to get off his fly around speech here and there campaign trail, most recently a trip to Home Depot with a bogus sprechen about caulking and fiberglass, wipe down the makeup on his eyelids (he wears eye shadow - wife Michelle can give him cold cream) and summon all our fast foods, supermarket; Target and WalMart CEO's to the White House to ink my proposed infusion solution.

The beauty in this proposal is it can actually happen in spite of our corrupted congress, a self-created culture which, as noted above, includes all 535 members of the House and Senate.

The only thing wrong with the following proposal is it is patent Michael Stephen Levinson. It is an out-of-the-box solution, and personally, as a candidate for president, waiting to lead a healthy nation, I have an expressed stake in the political process.

Were Obama's advisors only willing to set the issue of the Michael Stephen Levinson candidacy aside, we would all benefit because mine are the sounder ideas, short and long term, the better all around health care program! With my program, Doctors and dentists make more money because I have removed the ancillary insurance company profit motive, dragging on our access to medical relief, so all of the people will live a longer healthier, more prophet-able life.

Obama went to Cairo, Oslo, and in a few days Copenhagen. He can meet with KFC. Your loose pocket change, the pennies in your pocket will make the critical health care "diff rinse" for the whole country.

Every chain must participate in my Loose Pennies Program, regardless the size of their enterprise. My purpose: an additional two-cents in the cash registers of many thousands of locations nationwide, wherever we fast food eat and shop. For every item registered over the counter we want two pennies extra, added as patriotic gratuity.

This proposal is not for a government mandate. The only requirement to begin this program is the go-ahead from the CEO's of all the participating chains, as merely handling all of the two penny gratuities, for a half point out of the interest the millions of Medical Assurance Savings accounts will accrue, is very profitable for the chains! The pennies add up fast!

Anyone can refuse to pay the voluntary two cents gratuity. Burger, fries and a drink totals six extra cents, pennies off the pavement. Regardless what we purchase at the market; we are only pitching in some loose change out of pocket. 40 items at the supermarket could easily add up to $150. Does another 80 cents inhibit your generosity?

A worker chosen by the workers to represent them can meet with the managers to approve the total pennies for everything out the door the week before, dividing that total by everyone's hours worked.

Then we include up to $2 dollars extra for every hour in the worker's paychecks. A $5 deduct for a Medical Malpractice Pool is part of the deal, but employers don't have to match the $5 being set aside for the Malpractice Pool, so their sticker prices won't rise from any extra cost of doing this two penny business on behalf of their workers. More about this $5 set aside for a Malpractice Pool later.

The chains won't be squeezed from our Medical Assurance pay raise as that is simple an accounting plus minus spreadsheet wash!

The worker's pay increase doesn't come out of management's pocket, but work place production will increase. When someone quits, the crew might ask the boss to leave them pick up the slack, so they earn more gratuity money!

The overage from the two penny voluntary program, above and beyond the $2 dollars hourly extra in every pay, goes to interest bearing Medical Savings Accounts, with the worker's name on his or her portion.

Never mind the overage from the busier locations, where people work harder. Two dollars an hour in a forty hour week is more than $4000 a year. There are other innovative possibilities because the prime issue inspiring our voluntary gratuity, earmarked for the working not-so-rich at the bottom of the economic food chain, is Health Care. That is why we are doing this.

I include the president in the mix so he can pat himself on the back, but in fact don't hold your breath waiting for president Obama to get involved because his people didn't come up with this idea. Factor in the obvious: ten or twelve million direct benefactors of a $4000 a year pay raise might reward the guy who created the program with their vote on election day.

But the president can ask everyone on the low end of the economic chain to divide their bounty as follows, at least this is exactly what I am guaranteed to do as president, regardless what the corrupt congress does. The participating chains can do this on their own, without the president or congress' participation:

The president can order it or the chains on their own can divide the $2 an hour extra to be taken home half in cash, with the balance, the other dollar an hour going to dramatically grow these proposed Medical Savings Accounts, the health care solution for at least ten million uninsured people. $2000 in the pay envelope. $2000 in the Medical Assurance Savings Account.

More than ten million of the uninsured people will have their medical care access guaranteed with a Medical Savings Account they can share with their spouse, significant other, and off spring. The Medical Savings Account, as a health care solution is the solution and it beats health insurance!

The congress wants to stuff health insurance down your throat because that is all they know, and the health insurance lobby has made it clear they will be dough-ing the $$$ to keep them in office forever. That is them, populating the Congress and stuffing their gullets at the public trough forever.

In fact, the staff of the United States Senate has such a tax free medical savings account withheld and deposited from their pay check. So they have super insurance policies with high deductibles that when the need arises the high deductibles are easily covered from their medical savings accounts.

Insurance companies are dedicated to making money, not protecting the sick from financial disaster. When an insurance company cancels your policy because you have an expensive disease, they don't refund your premium.

But with a Health Assurance Savings Account, when you quit or get fired from the job, your medical savings account goes with you, your Medical Savings Account debit card in your pocket!

After a year behind the fast food counter, a 40-hour per week worker could have more than two grand in their Health Assurance account. Ten million uninsured people at the bottom of our economic food chain might not have health care insurance but all would carry Health Assurance.

In the event they don't feel right they have access to medical care, and a second opinion, because the money to pay is there! When it's your money, unneeded procedures evaporate.

Other companies, besides the fast food chains could have the "public Lev option" of creating Medical Savings Accounts, in lieu of providing an insurance policy for their workers. The insurance companies would find workers in group company insurance programs were leaving them in droves to establish medical Savings Accounts!

This sensible choice solution eliminates the insurance company monopolies. A worker could opt out of his company's insurance policy. The employer's end would go into his paycheck, a raise in take home pay. The half the worker was paying would still be withheld, but go into the worker's Medical Assurance Savings Account.

Health "insurance" without the insurance companies.

Small businesses unable to afford insurance coverage for their employees could set up Medical Assurance Accounts for their workers.

Is there any government bureaucracy involved in my program? Is my proposal 2000 pages of unreadable language? Does my proposal require three years of preliminary bureaucracy - bureaucrat rules and regulations to be developed?

This two cents program works for the medical professional, too. You agree to the fee, the doctor swipes your Medical Assurance card and the money is debited from your Health Assurance account. The Dr.'s cost layer represented by his required compliance with the insurance company bureaucrat is out of the mix.

This proposed over-the-counter voluntary two-cent gratuity, $344 dollars monthly doesn't bash government. These out of pocket pennies go to the working not so rich, without intrusion. Government bureaus are by-passed, except perhaps to investigate anonymous complaints about businesses that may be cheating their workers.

In all the dry cleaners add a nickel to every shirt pressed, a dime for every dry cleaned piece. In all the family operated dry cleaners, medical savings accounts will replace the worker's share of their family's health insurance.

This 2 cents extra covers 90% of all the minimum and lower wage jobs in USA, juicing the recovery by pumping the bottom of our economic chain, enriching the people most likely to purchase goods with their money!

The fresh dollars these people spend will create jobs. Those in low echelon hourly jobs, working 40 hours a week will have $80 extra weekly in his or her pay envelope, the "diff rinse" between scraping by and getting ahead; the advantage of $75 after a $5 per week set aside for our Medical Malpractice Pool, $35 in their pay with a minimum $35 earmarked for Health Assurance Savings, as we also need to set up a Catastrophic Illness Pool from the Medical Assurance Savings Accounts - to protect the solvency of the individual Medical Savings Accounts.

To restate: $2 an hour X 40 hours is $80 fresh dollars a week, $344 a month, more than $4000 fresh dollars a year going to more than ten million UNINSURED working people, based on our voluntary two pennies on every item over the counter in all the fast food chains, WalMart, KMart, Target, and every supermarket chain.

The $80 extra a week is divided in half. $40 for pay envelopes, $40 for Medical Savings Accounts. Then $5 out of the pay raise for a Malpractice Insurance pool, which Dr.'s are invited to join, by putting in $5 per every office visit; and $5 from your Medical Savings Account into a Catastrophic Illness Pool.

Here is how the Catastrophic Illness Pool works:

You are working for five years at Burger King. You are an assistant manager. You started out flipping burgers and stayed with your Medical Assurance Savings. You have kidney failure and need dialysis while waiting for a kidney transplant. That is catastrophic. Your Medical Assurance Account won't be depleted on the spot.

Relative to Malpractice Insurance pool, doctors and dentists, the med professionals are invited to participate with $5 per visit, so the doctors can, down the road, cancel their exorbitant Malpractice insurance. Then we establish a reasonable award for all the different malpractice possibilities, allowing the aggrieved party to get a lawyer in the event there is a disagreement. The malpractice pool will dramatically lower the cost of practicing medicine, so a Dr can earn more money and lower his fees!

The Malpractice pool lowers the cost of a Doctor being a Doctor and gives us a chance to develop a public access data base that identifies doctors who are repeat malpractitioners.

Millions of uninsured not so rich people building Medical Assurance Accounts will directly benefit from this voluntary deal. We gain from tipping our pennies to working folks, as these millions of uninsured won't be crowding emergency clinics for care, which we all pay for, a tremendous savings for the taxpayer!

Emergency health care cost is infected by the actuarial projections of how many uninsured people might use an emergency room walk-in for care during the course of any year.

Working people in min-wage jobs with Health Assurance accounts pay for their access on a need-to-be seen basis. In addition to medical savings accounts, the two cents gratis could secure a million mortgages near default, a contribution to neighborhood health as deserted house disease is a cancer that devalues the whole street.

A worker with a Medical Assurance savings account can use the card for his spouse and off spring, so coverage is there for at least 20 million people.

For the rest of our uncovered citizenry, doctors and dentists must be allowed the volunteer opportunity to do tax deductible charity, treating them. A charity patient is anyone without insurance. The plan: doctors do $50,000 in charitable medical services and deduct the $50,000 off the top of their federal tax. Then, after all the deductions, the doctors take an additional half off their bottom line; twenty-five thousand or half, whichever is greater.

Medical professionals could perform $100,000 in charity and deduct $50,000 off their tax, and because they only owed $49,000 in taxes, earn a one thousand dollar income tax credit. This health care approach cost effectively makes sense.

Doctors won't be at the mercy of an insurance companies,' take it or leave payment for services rendered. People suffering from unaffordable premiums, with pre-assurance from their physicians, will begin to cancel their overpriced insurance policies.

Every doctor will have a waiting list of patients waiting to be classified as charity. Doctors will have more patients, their work incentive: Freedom of Income Tax.

Isn't this one-line change in our tax code easier to digest than a nineteen hundred page med-reform tax increase stick-it-to-us vaccination, unread even by its authors, our Representatives to congress? Would insurance company's shills show up at town hall meetings screaming, "It's a communist plot! Down with their two cents for medical savings accounts?"

Every doctor and dentist will have a sign on the door: "No insurance? I'm here."

These ideas will enrich our economy from the bottom up, possibly save a million mortgages, and insure access to health care services for many, if not all the millions of uninsured people, whilst leaving the rip off insurance companies out.

The long-term solution to our health care prob limb is free medical education for doctors, dentists, and all related personal, our goal one hundred thousand doctors graduated every year until we have one family doctor for every thousand people.

A national marijuana tax could fund this program, as could a three per cent reduction in military expenditures. Politishinz are good at identifying issues but fold their intestinal fortitude as those of Money & Power who finance their campaigns govern every solution.

In that light, the above proposed change in our tax code, encouraging doctors and dentists to treat the uninsured as a deductible charity, could not pass either House of our current congress, absent a million person public outcry and sit-in surrounding the Capital first.

Robert J. Samuelson wrote, in the Monday, September 14, 2009, The Washington Post:

"Americans generally want three things from their health-care system. First, they think that everyone has a moral right to needed care; that suggests universal insurance. Second, people want choice; they want to select their doctors -- and want doctors to determine treatment. Finally, people want costs controlled; health care shouldn't consume all private compensation or taxes."

The above Loose Penny Solution covers all of these issues. On Sixty Minutes, September 13, president Obama repeated, "All Americans will be required to have insurance, but those who can't afford it will get subsidies." Health Assurance Savings accounts are a much better idea!

Obama's House of Representatives plan creates a whole new layer of bureaucracy which is unaffordable and unnecessary. The bureaucracy being created will break us.

I am the unknown poet, a long-time candidate for president, roasting in the sun.

Once upon a time our Fourth Estate was independent, standing watch, reporting true. Today's corporate approach to politics locks out the unknowns who seek public office, a primary reason there aren't any candidates. You announce, "I'm a candidate." The editor's don't ask, "What are your ideas?" Rather they say, "Show us twenty-million dollars." And without access to buckets of ducats, the access to broadcast speech, to present their platforms is also blocked. Blog in the bog, dog.

We need to renew our politics, starting with the reestablishment of our First Amendment Right to televised political speech. Upon this essay, I requested e quill time of our television networks, to give my independents' response to president Obama's health care speech to the congress, which was broadcast by the networks and cable networks aired live, September 9, 2009.

I have to cut back on my postings and prepare my petition for the court. The issue of my First Amendment Right to speak will go to the Supreme Court. Under USC 47 Section 315 I filed within the seven day time frame a request for an equal opportunity to present my winning strategy for defeat of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as Obama's speech at West Point was a "use" of the network(s) air waves.

It is the beginning of my Supreme Court First Amendment complaint on behalf of your right to hear a speech and / or deliver a speech via mass media access. You are entitled to speech.

michaelslevinson.com

Read Reforms don't always get magically fixed over time By Jon Walker. at firedog lake. I agree if this is the way the senate is going to legislate, then by the time they finish with cap & trade we will need to buy house boats.

I think the Dems will do what was done with Soc. Security. At first, it covered very few Americans, but it was amended several times until it covered everyone. I think that is what they will do with this bill, to improve it and probably amend it to include a public option, and some of the other things that the progressives wanted. I don't think everything is 'etched in stone' as some of you seem to think. Wait and watch.

newswomen: Social Security wasn't a "for profit company". This bill is an insurance profit protection and enhancement act. $635 million was spent by the insurance industry to fight real reform. Once they get the government mandated insurance and the tax payer subsidies, they'll have even more of our money fight to real health care reform. Call and email your elected officials, and tell they FIX IT NOW. LATER WILL BE TOO LATE.

They will revisit this earmark soon.

Remember all the jobs that Americans supposedly wouldn't do?Well guess what,you could fill every one of those jobs with legal americans now.Unemployment rate drops ,health care costs go down and America returns to what it used to be.So I say deport them now.Build a fence along the border,take all the illegal alien criminals in prison and dump them on the other side of the fence.Problem solved.

Frenchie I think you have the parties mixed up. What you just described is jackass all the way.

So the way to dig yourself out of a hole is by starting more Gov. programs and dig the hole deeper?You don't make any sense.

I hear that...

That time frame was forced on the Dems by the Reps, according to the Senator from Missouri on MSNBC this morning. (Shaygirl)

You can't justify putting a bill this big through with such a small amount of public debate on the specifics.This whole thing is completely and totally a partisan Democrat show.You can't pin this crap on the repubs and certainly not on conservatives.

The left buys votes? Not with this bill, that was crafted by those who have received the most money from the insurance and pharmaceutical companies. The best the left can hope with this bill is the baby doesn't get throw out with the bath water, come election day. Neither party has demonstrated the will or the ability to do something for the middle class. It's a government run by big business for big business.

We can always speculate how and what if McCain/Palin...... But one thing is for sure and absloute. We could not have possibly been in worse shape than we are now, economically. And flip it off if you want but unless Obama,Pelosi and Reid are stopped you ain't seen nothing yet.

Wrong again, crypto.

Ben Bernanke was just named Time's Man of the Year. Part of the reason is that it could've been worse. Much worse.

You seem to forget that the first TARP program was passed under Bush. We were headed toward a depression this time last year.

Anyway, I hope we "ain't seen nothing yet." I'm hoping for a lot more of the same.

Dicklack is an Al Qaeda person