Doing the math on the Obama plan.
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When he addresses Congress tonight, one of President Obama's central tasks will be to convince Americans that he’s serious about controlling health costs. Of course, the president already claims that he is. He's repeatedly emphasized the need to rein in runaway health spending, which he rightly portrays as increasing federal budget deficits and depressing workers' take-home pay. The trouble: many, if not most, experts don't believe him. Aside from rhetoric, they don't find much in Congress's various bills that would reduce the torrid pace of health spending.
Obama's task won't be made easier by a new report concluding that H.R. 3200—the main “reform” bill in the House—would increase government and private health spending over the next two decades. Here's what the study finds:
The study was conducted by the Lewin Group, a consulting firm that is owned by one of the nation’s largest health-care insurers, UnitedHealth Group, and was commissioned by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, an organization focused on budget deficits and rising federal entitlement spending for the elderly. "For health-care reform to be fiscally responsible, it must not just pay for itself over 10 years and beyond," said David Walker, former head of the Government Accountability Office and now president of the foundation. "It should also result in a significant reduction in the tens of trillions of dollars in the federal government's unfunded health-care promises."
All this highlights a dilemma for Obama. To much of his Democratic base, health-care reform means achieving the longstanding liberal goal of universal health insurance, or something close to it. But that costs more money. Meanwhile, many Americans want to spend less money on health care, because they fear higher premiums, out-of-pocket expense,s or taxes. In a recent opinion survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 51 percent of respondents said that health-care reform should expand insurance, and 49 percent favored tougher cost control. (People could choose more than one answer.)
Until now, Obama has tried to navigate around the dilemma by condemning high health costs but backing congressional proposals that mainly provide more coverage. Under H.R. 3200, the government would require most Americans to have health insurance and most businesses to provide it or pay a special tax, equal to 8 percent of payroll. Poorer Americans would either qualify for coverage under an expansion of Medicaid or, if they didn't receive insurance directly from their employers, could buy it on an "exchange" where competing plans—including a so-called public plan managed by the government—would be offered. People entitled to use the exchange could qualify for diminishing federal subsidies until their incomes reached four times the government's poverty line (or $88,000 for a family of four). Companies could also pay for their workers to buy insurance on the exchange.
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Clintus, my good friend....
I think you missed my sarcasm. Those words were levied against Obama by Murdoch's omnipotent news mediums. They are not my constructs. And I couldn't agree more about some relevance to Obama's predecessor. I guess you didn't check to see the ridiculous post I responded to. It only merited brutal sarcasm.
Robo007:
Before you start bantering about words whose meanings are clearly unknown to you, perhaps you might wish to considered consulting a dictionary to determine what the definitions of "fascist," "communist," "Arab," "dictator," "Kenyan," "terrorist supporter," and "racist..."
Ironically enough, with the exception of your "Kenyan" label, the vast majority of your accusations could quite be used to quite accurately describe President Obama's predecessor from the past eight years.
Posted By: Gary Ruehle @ 09/17/2009 9:14:18 AM
I am SO angry with these totally criminal enterprises that call themselves health insurance companies. Here is my story dealing with a horrible health insurance company called Universal Health Care Inc. of St. Petersburg, Florida, their medical director and ax man Dr. Edward Lowenstein and their CEO, Dr. Akshay Desai.
In my opinion Dr. Lowest steins ONLY purpose with UHC is to deny as many claims as possible, even after approving them several times by phone, fax, and e-mail leaving the patient in a life threatening situation with the very real possibility of loss of leg, being put into a horrible Thai jail for non payment of a hospital bill.
And the owner and CEO, Dr. Akshay Desai will not even give me 3 minutes of his time to hear how his company, Universal Health Care and his operatives almost cost me the loss of my leg and my life when I faced an emergency situation of a deadly knee infection while I was visiting my family in the country of Thailand.
This person donates hundreds of thousands of dollars to Governor Crist and then gets appointed by him to the State Board of Education! Another words, he BOUGHT this position with money he made by denying ME and others like me service.
Universal health cares officers that denied me care are Bruce Hoffman, bhoffman@univhc.com and their medical director Dr. Edward Lowenstein, elowenstein@univhc.com. The fax for their cold hearted CEO, Dr. Akshay Desai who unfortunately is on several advisory boards in Florida has a fax number of 727-302-0550.
We could have almost free health care if we eliminated these FOR PROFIT insurance companies and put their criminal CEO's on trial for the disaster they are putting all of us through who depend on their "services?" WHY is our government not going after these criminal enterprises under the RICO act at least?
Their CEO's are getting paid hundreds of MILLIONS of dollars in salaries by denying service to the very people who need it causing over 20,000 deaths and untold suffering to others who have paid into their corrupt system thinking they were safe when their services were needed but, finding themselves dis-enrolled, denied or being told that a life saving procedure is not an emergency and not covered as what happened to me. Why should they be living in 12 bedroom mansions, have multi million dollar yachts and private jet aircraft and live like corrupt kings of old all being funded by us?
If these companies were turned into NON PROFIT companies run by a REASONABLY paid board of directors, there would be literally BILLIONS of dollars taken away from these criminal CEOs and put into taking care of the sick and needy where it should be.
No wonder over 500,000 Americans are becoming medical tourists every year and saving over 80% on their medical cost by traveling to an exotic location for their procedures. Check out www.theanewyou.com for valuable information about this.
Gary M. R
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