Healthcare Legislation

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Posted By: greatmidwest @ 07/18/2009 3:46:33 PM

The time for healthcare reform in America is now...we can no longer continue to be nation where numbers as high as 50 million Americans lack basic health insurance.

A government option of affordable health insurance , by no means will jeopardize or theaten the health insurance industry. Heck, the federal government already subsidizes the USPS, has that put an end to FedEx, UPS, Airborne , or DHL ??? The answer is no, and health care reform won't put an end to Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Aetna, United Healthcare, or Humana either...

God Bless Amercia and her great people.

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Posted By: John Dough @ 07/17/2009 2:41:41 PM

I knew too. You only need look at Europe, Canada and any other nations that have national health care - costs do not go down or slowdown, care is rationed, doctors are assigned and you stand in line in some cases waiting to die or dying while waiting. It is said that 45 million people in the US do not have health care, the dirty little secrets are that that number includes illegal aliens in our country, and millions who simply choose to roll the dice and not spend the money for it. The number of people making over 65K and could afford insurance (even if they only bought a catastrphic policy) is estmated to be 1/4 of the uninsured total. A good example is my neighbors two sons both single one earning 45K and the other 70K and they choose not to buy insurance so they have more money to spend on what "they" want instead of what they need. Figures lie and liars figure don't believe everything you here about the number of uninsured.
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  Posted By: JimF @ 07/18/2009 2:03:24 PM
  
  Yes, the 45K uninsured are a mix of people. Does that mean that therefore none of them should be insured? How does that dispute anything? Yes, some of them can afford plans -- and if they had plans that would help spread the risk / cost.
  
  As for your contention that people in Europe and Canada have rationed care and die waiting for care, that is questionable. Care varies widely by country (the systems in Norway, England and Canada are all quite different), but the general stats I've seen are that waits are comparable or less than in the U.S. My own experience taking a friend to emergency care in Berlin was mixed, but it was certainly much quicker service than he would have gotten in the U.S.
  
  Remember, hundreds of thousands of Americans go to Mexico each year for medical care they can't afford here.
  
  Care is rationed in the U.S. today: Both my wife and I have been denied coverage of prescribed drugs; in one case, a substitute the insurance company insisted upon made me seriously ill. I'm not 100% confident a government bureaucracy would be better than the insurance companies' bureaucracy, but saying rationing would be introduced is misleading.
  
  The worse waste of money in our extremely expensive health care system is the insurance companies' bureaucracy, which is mainly designed to prevent people from getting care. Surely, that can be improved upon.

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Posted By: unionave @ 07/18/2009 9:34:14 AM

While congress and the corporate media play their political game of charade and diversion with the lives and well being of Americans many of these Americans are losing health care coverage and will lose their lives while the game goes on .

Posted By: Chapalody @ 07/17/2009 6:03:45 PM
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Who in the world thinks President Obama cares about anyone who disagrees with him. President Obama has a timetable and nothing, no comments from the CBO, are going to interfere with the world he's creating. The economy, taxes, and especially the unemployed are small sacrifices the people are going to have to make. President Obama's world comes first. Let's not forget how happy the people are supposed to be that the AMA has endorsed President Obama's health care. Endorsements at this time mean nothing, especially from the AMA. It's a known fact now that President Obama strong arms everyone to go along with him or else. So the endorsement from the AMA should be considered pressured and not at their own free will to do so. The banks were the first and then the automakers followed in telling how President Obama used tactics of a thug to get them to play ball or else he would destroy them in the media. What President Obama is really telling the Democrats along with the Republicans is that by the time he gets through appointing his Czar's, he won't need the Democrat's for fast track passage on anything. His Czar's will do it for him without having to go to Congress and without debates or votes. It isn't so much about passing health care. Health care is only a front for President Obama on the government he wants and not the government that's in place. The only problem is that the idiots in the Democrat party thinks President Obama is one of them. Don't forget the Czar's, are President Obama's way of dealing with the old school Democrats he campaigned against. Once President Obama gets enough Czar's in place, you can kiss the one party system goodbye. The government will be composed of President Obama and his Czar's. When President Obama appoints a Czar to the House and a Czar to the Senate, you can kiss Pelosi and Reid goodbye. Their days of power are over. Pelosi and Reid made their beds. It's their children and grandchildren who will pay for it. When President Obama gets through with this country, the only good thing about it is that the children of the ACLU nuts, the children of the anti American's, the children of the atheists, the children of the gays, the children of the protesters against the war, the children of the terrorist sympathizers, the children of the Democrats, the children of the human rights nuts, the children of the going green nuts, the children of the global warming nuts, and especially the children of Al Gore will have to pay through their nose for the country President Obama is remaking.

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Posted By: John Dough @ 07/17/2009 2:50:24 PM

FACTCHECK.ORG

The Census Bureau estimates that 45.7 million lacked health insurance at any given time in 2007. But fewer lacked coverage for the full year, and more did without for one or more months during the year. All three numbers are likely to be higher for 2008 due to massive job losses.

Twenty-six percent of the uninsured are eligible for some form of public coverage but do not make use of it, according to The National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation. This is sometimes, but not always, a matter of choice.

Twenty-one percent of the uninsured are immigrants, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. But that figure includes both those who are here legally and those who are not. The number of illegal immigrants who are included in the official statistics is unknown.
Twenty percent of the uninsured have family incomes of greater than $75,000 per year, according to the Census Bureau. But this does not necessarily mean they have access to insurance. Even higher-income jobs don't always offer employer-sponsored insurance, and not everyone who wants private insurance is able to get it.
Forty percent of the uninsured are young, according to KFF. But speculation that they pass up insurance because of their good health is unjustified. KFF reports that many young people lack insurance because it's not available to them, and people who turn down available insurance tend to be in worse health, not better, according to the Institute of Medicine.