From Stark:
As U.S. House Republicans move toward a repeal vote on health care reform, Democrats are launching a vigorous effort to defend the bill — an effort that seems a lot more coherent than anything they were able to muster while the bill was before Congress, or while Democratic Congressmen were before voters last November.
Today, the Department of Health and Human Services is offering a state-by-state analysis of what health care repeal would mean. And HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Gov. Chris Gregoire have scheduled a joint conference call to discuss how many state residents are benefitting from the reforms.
Here’s a link to HHS statistics for Washington state.
At the same time, there is evidence that health care reform is getting some grudging support in unexpected quarters. A recent AP poll showed that while opposition to it remains strong, that opposition is waning and even opponents see things they like in the complex legislation.
The AP report on poll results includes this: “Among Republicans support for repeal has dropped sharply, from 61 percent after the elections to 49 percent now.”
That’s striking. One can speculate that many conservative Republicans may be realizing that the reform bill contains benefits for them. Millions of Americans have pre-existing medical conditions that are costly to treat, and the health care reform law eventually will make it easier for them to get affordable coverage. You don’t have to be a liberal to find that prospect attractive. The Los Angeles Times has a report.
Another sign that politicians on both sides of the aisle are taking a more nuanced approach: Via Huffington Post, physician and former GOP Senator Bill Frist says his party should get beyond the repeal effort and focus on using the existing law as a platform to build a better health care system for everyone.
In red state Oklahoma, a poll in the Tulsa World indicates that many Sooners feel as conflicted on this issue as a Ron Paul supporter cashing a Social Security check. Two-thirds favored Oklahoma taking legal efforts to block the health-care reform, but only 37 percent said the entire law should be repealed. And, even among those who said the entire law should be repealed, about two-thirds then identified at least one element of it they thought should be retained.
As long as the government is forcing anyone to comply with this edict, or face a fine, it no different than any other entity using a firearm to rob a person! Where is freedom in this senairo??
As far as I can tell,
the only requirement towards affordability is that private insurance companies are to be compelled to spend 80% of their premium revenue on actual health care.
There are no cost controls anywhere to be seen in this legislation.
The state requires me to get car insurance. Should that be repealed?
Requiring health care providers to spend money providing health care is something I’m okay with.
The insurance companies who don’t want to comply with this new law have the freedom to get out of that industry and go to work doing something else.
‘nerd,
“The insurance companies who don’t want to comply with this new law have the freedom to get out of that industry and go to work doing something else.”
Apparently, you disagree with the idea that insurance companies perform a useful function in society.
Really?
The vast majority of Americans have no idea what is in the healthcare reform bill. Large numbers may not support “Obamacare,” but when polled about specific aspects of the bill, support skyrockets. This suggests that many Americans may be misinformed about the legislation.
Furthermore, the drop in support for repeal among republicans may simply be due to the fact that the issue is getting less coverage on Fox News and talk radio these days. As Gore Vidal was so fond of saying, Americans have notoriously short memories.
BTW, a lot of people on the left have been questioning the influence of right-wing media on political affairs lately. Indeed, many are now asking, “Whatever happened to the ‘ground zero mosque’ story?”
Salon.com is even arguing that “A manufactured story disappeared just as suddenly as it burst onto the media scene in 2010.” Of course, the story burst onto scene just before the election:
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/12/31/park_51_a_look_back
Sure…if useful is gouging into the poor house and then finding ways to squirm out of paying off when the need arises. 20% off the top on any household claim after a burglary and then they gouge as deeply as they can even with recent purchase receipts; or denying med service for a host of contrived reasons. Leeches were useful back in the day, and I fail to see the difference between them and insurance salesman….
Todd is right, most people don’t know what they are griping about when it comes to the bill, and even congress people are loathe to give up their gravy train. when they give that up then maybe I’ll consider giving something up….then again…likely not….
John, your employment of logic is….so logical. It goes over many a head….
john,
“The state requires me to get car insurance. Should that be repealed?”
It seem likely to me that you understand the difference.
Don’t you?
@davesix
Ah, I love it when someone translates English into English.
The idea that individual insurance companies that don’t want to follow the new law can drop out of the industry will leave only those companies that are capable of peforming their function within the law.
If an automobile manufacturer doesn’t want to put airbags or seatbelts into their cars then that company can’t sell cars in the United States.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t think that car companies perform a useful function in society.
And remember, car companies complained that mandating that the put these safety features into their products would cripple the auto industry.
The mandates do have very different motives and effects. The car insurance mandate protects me from damage by an uninsured driver–although I’m sure a lot of uninsured motorists are driving in defiance of this state-level mandate.
The courts will rule on the constitutionality of this new federal mandate on health insurance. If it’s unconstitutional, get rid of it, or change it to make it constitutional. Rule of law is a big deal to me.
But from a purely practical standpoint, a health insurance mandate is an essential feature of reform, unless you want to go to a Canada-style system. (And I doubt you do, since that amounts to a more restrictive sort of mandate.) If young, healthy people can “save money” by not getting health coverage, the coverage is that much more expensive for the people who are likely to need it.
And when the young and the “healthy” uninsured do find themselves in the hospital, the cost of their care will be shuffled onto those who have insurance–as is NOW the case.
Some people see the mandate as unfair to the young and healthy, but they won’t always be young, which means they probably won’t always be healthy. The system will benefit them eventually–just like Social Security and Medicare deductions will. We hope.
But the insurance mandate provides for a public law promoting private profit for a few benefactors that control the gates of health care spending.
A mandate is fine if and when there’s a low-cost low-overhead alternative to private corporations that skim acres of cash off vital services spending.
The Canadian system is ideal for a large population like ours since the savings in prescription costs alone would far outweigh any government overhead.
What do you make of the weakness of legislators to engage in bulk discounts?
I haven’t studied the bill enough to know how the mandates to buy private insurance will work in practice. Ideally, I suppose, the health insurers will compete on price, just as car insurers do.
“Democrats are deriding last night’s House vote to repeal ObamaCare as “symbolic,” and it was, but that is not the same as meaningless. The stunning political reality is that a new entitlement that was supposed to be a landmark of liberal governance has been repudiated by a majority of one chamber of Congress only 10 months after it passed. This sort of thing never happens…
More House Members—245 in total—voted to rescind the new entitlement than the 219 Democrats who voted to create it last March. That partisan majority narrowly prevailed over all 178 Republicans and some 38 Democrats. The three Democrats who favored repeal yesterday confirmed the bipartisan opposition to the kind of vast new social program that historically has been built on a national bipartisan consensus…
Various liberal sages chimed in with a prediction/hope that repeal will backfire on Republicans, usually based on outlier polls like those produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation. These are the same wise men who after Scott Brown’s Massachusetts Senate upset a year ago importuned Democrats to pass the bill anyway. They claimed it would be a political winner, eventually, once voters were hooked up to subsidized coverage.
But such spin can’t overcome the reality of premium increases and other damage in the insurance market that consumers can see in their own paychecks and that will only grow. Recall that reform was sold as a way to control costs and increase consumer choice. But underlying medical costs continue to climb, carrying premiums aloft in tandem. Even a nonprofit insurer like Blue Shield of California, a reliable lobbyist for progressive causes, says it must raise rates by as much as 59%, in part to comply with ObamaCare’s mandates…
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704590704576091973130244618.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Auto insurers have it easy.
There’s no appreciable difference between car values and accidents State-to-State,
no such thing as a pre-existing condition,
no experimental treatments or end-of-life issues.
No aging or lifestyle concerns.
The actuaries that figure costs and exposure have tons of data to study,
there are highway improvements subsidized by taxpayers and
roadway standards and driver’s education too.
Traffic is strictly regulated by laws and ordinances.
Once a car is totaled,
the insurance is done,
and the costs are spread over every single driver enrolled in the company so they’re affordable to all.
There’s no requirement to cover your machine,
just your actions.
Parts are interchangeable and there’s no auto-lobby that keeps those parts artificially inflated.
In short,
there’s no way to make any kind of comparison between the two types of mandates.
And the most important difference of all – blame is allotted for any traffic accident so the coverage is easily defined.
AFY. Amen!
citizen, your comment is so comprehensive and accurate that I can’t believe that I ever disagreed with you.
My compliments!
Actually, citizen doesn’t need any compliments from me, but there they are anyway.
The Florida Medical Association weighs in: http://www.facebook.com/notes/florida-medical-association/statement-from-fma-president-madelyn-butler-md-on-the-house-repeal-vote-on-ppaca/193368574009791
“…• The PPACA adds more than 18 million people to Medicaid, which already has access issues due to inadequate physician reimbursement rates….”
“Nearly two-thirds of U.S. doctors surveyed fear healthcare reform could worsen care for patients, by flooding their offices and hurting income, according to a Thomson Reuters survey released Tuesday…
“When asked about the quality of healthcare in the U.S. over the next five years, 65 percent of the doctors believed it would deteriorate with only 18 percent predicting it would improve….
http://www.cnbc.com/id/41149280
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
At the beginning of 2011 my health insurance coverage increased in price over 10 percent. Together with more people losing their jobs in the USA, and millions already unemployed, I have no idea how many families are going to be able to gain access to affordable health care without some kind of federal government help.