RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events A right to Health Care

WASHINGTON -- An independent senator counted on by Democrats in the health care debate showed signs of wavering Sunday when he urged President Obama to postpone many of his initiatives because of the economic downturn.

"I'm afraid we've got to think about putting a lot of that off until the economy's out of recession," said Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman. "There's no reason we have to do it all now, but we do have to get started. And I think the place to start is cost health delivery reform and insurance market reforms."

The Senate requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster and advance a measure to an up-or-down vote. Senators from both parties said that Democrats might use a voting tactic to overcome GOP opposition, abandoning the White House's goal of bipartisan support for its chief domestic priority.

Democrats control 60 votes, including those of two independents, but illness has sidelined Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. The party's leaders also cannot be assured that their moderate members will support every health care proposal.

"I think it's a real mistake to try to jam through the total health insurance reform, health care reform plan that the public is either opposed to or of very, very passionate mixed minds about," Lieberman said.

Talk about resorting to this maneuver comes as Republicans dig in against the idea of a government-run insurance program as an option for consumers and a requirement that employers provide health insurance to their workers.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Republicans would like to start over "with a genuine bipartisan approach."

"The American people will be very troubled by a single political party's 'my way or the highway' attitude to overhauling their health care, especially when it means government-run health care, new taxes on small businesses, and Medicare cuts for seniors," McConnell, R-Ky., said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Democrats would consider the voting tactic, known as reconciliation, if necessary to pass a bill by year's end if Republicans won't work toward a bipartisan solution.

To Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, "that would be an abuse of the process."

Even Sen. Kent Conrad, the Senate Budget Committee chairman, acknowledged that "it's an option, but it's not a very good one." He has warned that nonbudget items in health care legislation would be challenged under the rules allowing reconciliation.

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., also suggested that a fresh start was needed.

"Bringing up of the health care situation in the midst of recession, the unemployment problems ... was a mistake," Lugar said. "For the moment, let's clear the deck and try it again next year or in subsequent times."

Kennedy, one of the major proponents of health care reform, has missed most of the recent debate because of cancer. Both Hatch and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Kennedy's absence has taken a toll on the process.

"He had a unique way of sitting down with the parties at a table and making the right concessions, which really are the essence of successful negotiations," McCain said.

Lieberman and Lugar appeared on CNN's "State of the Union" while Hatch and Schumer appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press." Conrad spoke on CBS' "Face the Nation" and McCain on ABC's "This Week."

It is now almost certain that the public option will also be removed from the health care bill in favor of an even more subtle path to a Washington takeover. Mandates, in all shapes and sizes, are now the biggest threat.

Americans are increasingly learning that the so-called "public option" is a means to a single-payer, Washington-run end. (Take the plan's supporters at their word, including public option architect Jacob Hacker and President Barack Obama himself.) Unfortunately, just as Democrats avoided advocating single-payer because of strong public opposition, it is now almost certain that the public option will also be removed in favor of an even more subtle path to a Washington takeover. We need to be prepared to sustain opposition to the bill when it happens.



Mandates--either an employer mandate that requires all employers to provide health insurance, an individual mandate requiring all Americans to have health insurance, or a combination of the two, as envisioned in the House bill H.R. 3200--are, in my view, now the biggest threat we face.



The insurance industry has been carefully avoiding taking a strong position opposing reform and they are lying in wait to launch a huge blitz of support for a revised health care bill once the public option is removed. And why wouldn't they?



Any health care bill will include expensive new regulations that ban excluding pre-existing conditions and charging different premiums based on people's health care histories because these practices are politically unpopular, regardless of whether they make good business sense. On their own these changes will send premiums through the roof-- a whopping 95 percent increase according to a recent study from the Council on Affordable Health Insurance. That won't help the insurance industry or politicians who would have to face angry voters.



That's where mandates come in. The insurance companies will insist on, and probably receive, an individual health insurance mandate that will make it illegal not to buy their products. The penalty for violating the mandate will be a sizable new tax (2.5 percent of gross income in H.R. 3200), or garnishing your wages. President Obama beat Hillary Clinton in part by opposing such a mandate, but now he supports it. Call it a nod to political reality, or selling out to insurance companies if you're more harshly inclined.



The big insurance companies will spend tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars supporting a mandates bill, because their smaller competitors will be regulated out of business while they can mint huge profits from all of the new customers now required by law to buy their products.



Why would big government central-planners support this type of legislation? Because even without a public option, the mandates are enough, over time, for Washington to exert total control over our health care. Under an individual mandate, politicians and bureaucrats would get to define what counts as "health insurance" they would decide what it takes in order to qualify for the mandate and make decisions, based on political considerations, about what must be covered and what won't be covered, reimbursement policies, and potentially every aspect of your health care.



Vast new subsidies will be required to ease passage of a bill that would otherwise slam lower income constituents--those subsidies mean businesses and the middle class will be slammed twice --once to pay higher premiums for the now-legally-mandated purchase of health insurance, and again with higher taxes to subsidize coverage for others.



The overall expense of the system, especially as new regulations are piled on, could in turn be used to justify an ever-larger and more intrusive government role that could ultimately lead to outright rationing and all the horrors of a Washington-run system.



The left is desperately trying to keep the public option distraction alive. By acting as if it is still the major controversy in the bill, they hope to continue to draw fire away from the risk of a mandates and subsidies bill until they can announce a last minute, possibly bipartisan, so-called "compromise" that will catch free-market activists off-balance by removing the public option, and its slightly more subtle incarnation, the non-profit co-op. Despite all the public noise, at the end of the day the far-left (with the exception of perhaps Dennis Kucinich and a tiny handful of others) will fall in line behind a mandates and subsidies bill, because they know it serves their interests.



Conservatives, we need to keep our eye on the ball. No Washington takeover of health care means no mandates, subsidies, or other self-serving policies designed and promoted by the big insurance companies in corrupt partnership with big government politicians. We need to focus on tax reform that will put people who buy their own insurance on a level-playing field with people in employer-based plans, open up interstate competition, and put meaningful curbs on out-of-control medical liability lawsuits.



Any legislation that centers on mandates and subsidies is a big-government bill that will limit freedom and place a huge burden on taxpayers. Beating back just the public option would buy a Pyrrhic victory.

President Barack Obama was wise to vacation this week on Martha's Vineyard. Not because it's one of the few places in America where his health-care plan is still popular, but because by getting out of Washington he gave staff time to repair his vaunted message machine, which was starting to break down.

Two weeks ago, White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod said in a now legendary "viral" email that, "It's a myth that health insurance reform would be financed by cutting Medicare benefits." This was sent out the day before Mr. Obama told a Montana town hall that he'd pay for health-care reform by "eliminating . . . about $177 billion over 10 years" for "what's called Medicare Advantage." And it was two days before Mr. Obama told a Colorado town hall he'd cover "two-thirds" of the "roughly $900 billion" of his plan's cost by "eliminating waste," again citing Medicare Advantage.

Who's right? As a former senior adviser, I can tell you who: the president. What's more, according to a White House fact sheet titled "Paying for Health Care Reform," Mr. Axelrod was misleading his readers. It notes the administration would cut $622 billion from Medicare and Medicaid, with a big chunk coming from Medicare Advantage, to pay for overhauling health care. Mr. Obama heralded these cuts as "common sense" in his June 13 radio address.

Medicare Advantage was enacted in 2003 to allow seniors to use Medicare funds to buy private insurance plans that fit their needs and their budgets. They get better care and better value for their money.

Medicare Advantage also has built-in incentives to encourage insurers to offer lower costs and better benefits. It's a program that puts patients in charge, not the government, which is why seniors like it and probably why the administration hates it.

Already, an estimated 10.2 million seniors—one out of five in America—have enrolled in Medicare Advantage. Mr. Obama is proposing to cut the program by nearly 20% and thus reduce the amount of money each will have to buy insurance. This will likely force most of them to lose the insurance they have now. Yet Mr. Obama promised in late July in New Hampshire that, "if you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan."

There are roughly 23,400 seniors on average in a congressional district who have Medicare Advantage, but who face losing it if Mr. Obama has his way. That's enough votes to tip most competitive House and Senate races.

Back in 2006, Mr. Obama and other Democrats railed against GOP efforts—modest though they were—to slow future Medicare spending growth. Now he and his party may reap what they have sown. As the president pushes to enact an overall cut to Medicare he will imperil Democrats in tough re-election races. Mr. Obama has a dangerous old tiger by the tail. Seniors are much more likely to vote than the population at large.

Adding to the Democrats' woes are polls that show weak support for ObamaCare among Independents and Democrats. In the new ABC/Washington Post poll, only 45% approved of Mr. Obama's plan and 50% opposed it—with 40% "strongly" opposed.

Despite Mr. Obama's barnstorming tour, last week's Fox/Opinion Dynamics poll said "the health care reform legislation being considered right now" is opposed by 21% of Democrats, 50% of Independents, and 81% of Republicans. Only 37% of Democrats and 15% of Independents think their families would be better off if it passed.

The problem for Mr. Obama is that he lacks credibility when he asserts his plan won't add to the deficit or won't lead to rationing; that people can keep their health plans; that every family's health care will be better, not worse; and that a government run plan isn't a threat to private insurance. A large number of Americans don't believe the president on this.

With this week's $2 trillion upward revision in the White House's deficit projections, August has been the cruelest month for Mr. Obama. The president is now facing a politically explosive mix of unpopular policies and an angered electorate.

It's still too early to count Mr. Obama out. His team will be back in Washington next week. They'll work on their messaging and have more than $100 million—much of it from pharmaceutical companies—to spend on ads bludgeoning reluctant Democrats and energized Republicans.

The White House will exert enormous pressure—and in the spirit of Chicago-style politics, employ threats when necessary—with Senate and House Democrats. The health-care battle, already intense, will get more so in the months ahead. ObamaCare is unpopular, but it is far from defeated.

Massachusetts law requires Kennedy’s seat to be filled in a special election that won’t be held for at least 145 days. Patrick, a Democrat, said he wants the Democratic-controlled state legislature to allow appointment of an interim senator to serve until the election.

The current law was passed in 2004 to prevent the state’s Republican governor at the time, Mitt Romney, from appointing a successor if Democratic Senator John Kerry won the presidential election that year.

Some people, including Medicare recipients, will have to give up some current benefits to truly reform the nation's health-care system, Rep. Betsy Markey told a gathering of constituents in Fort Collins on Wednesday.

Markey has repeatedly said during the August congressional recess that Medicare spending needs to be reined in to help pay for reforming the broader health-care system.

"There's going to be some people who are going to have to give up some things, honestly, for all of this to work," Markey said at a Congress on Your Corner event at CSU. "But we have to do this because we're Americans."

About 275 people att-ended Wednesday's meetings, split into two groups. About 1,300 people have attended Markey's health-care meetings over the past eight days, and another 10,300

10,300 participated in a telephone town hall earlier this week, Markey spokesman Ben Marter said.

The audience at Wednesday's gathering appeared largely supportive of Democratic reform plans, with a number of people arriving with signs prepared by Organizing for America, a spinoff of Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

At her Colorado State University event Wednesday, Markey repeated many of the themes she's stressed throughout the August recess - she believes the health-care system needs a significant overhaul that focuses on reducing costs, but the proposal crafted by House Democratic leaders is too high.

She stressed at both gatherings that the status quo wasn't an option.

"I do think that our health- care spending is directly tied to the economic health of this country," the Fort Collins Democrat said.

However, one of the nation's leading political analysts said it appears increasingly unlikely that the Democrats will be able to pass any sort of comprehensive reform this year.

The president over-reached by trying to push through major initiatives on health care and climate change in the midst of an economic catastrophe, said Charlie Cook, publisher of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

"The public trust in government to get this right may have been eroded enormously by what's happened in the last year" to the economy, Cook said Tuesday at a Denver health-care discussion organized by the American Association of Retired Persons. "Under the best of circumstances this would have been hard, but it's just a lot harder right now."

The Obama administration has committed strategic and tactical blunders on health-care reform that make it difficult, if not impossible, to pass any reform plan this year, Cook said.

"I think the mistakes they made weren't stupid mistakes, but just because they weren't stupid doesn't mean they weren't mistakes," he said.

Cook said a key mistake was leaving the drafting of the specific plan to Congress. He said that amounted to "outsourcing domestic policy" to congressional leadership.

"There are institutions that are hated more than Congress, but not many," Cook said.

With large majorities and an popular ally in the White House, congressional Democrats must have thought that all they had to do to remake America's health care system was hit the legislative "Easy" button.

Wrong. As members of Congress wind up a tumultuous August recess hearing from their constituents, the plan is in disarray. Make that "plans." With three variants skittering about in House committees and labored attempts at compromise in the Senate, there is no coherent plan. The public is confused, divided and angry. The more lawmakers try to tweak it and explain it, the more suspicious voters become over where this reform is headed.

Instead, it's time for Democrats to reach for the "Reset" button - you know, the one that sits on that big desk in the Oval Office, next to the "The Buck Stops Here" sign.

President Barack Obama should call a time-out on health care reform, go back to the drawing board, and actually listen to what all Americans are saying instead of dismissing those who object as simply uninformed stooges. Polls show that Americans increasingly agree with Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., who argues for a more incremental approach and says it's "a real mistake to try to jam through" the proposed Democratic overhaul.

Even some of Obama's supporters seem unsettled by the botched message and bumbled strategy on health care reform. They wonder why he ceded the job of crafting a plan to the likes of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her left-leaning allies who have yearned for a government-run, universal single-payer plan - an overhaul far more radical than Americans were ready to accept.

Obviously, there's little reason to believe that the end product will turn out to be bipartisan in any meaningful sense.

Merely re-labeling it to make it more palatable won't help: It's Health Care Reform. No, it's Health Insurance Reform. No, it's Entitlement Reform. No, it's Hospital Gowns with Open Backs Reform.

So here's our message for Congress:

Tear it up, folks.

Just tear it up and start over.

Maybe Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger can help with the "tearing up" of these, 1,000-plus page bureaucratic behemoths.

But we have some suggestions for the "starting over" process - several core principles for health care reform:

First, do no harm. Even though the present system doesn't work for far too many people, for most Americans it does works reasonably well, despite troubling flaws and abuses. Americans may not want the kind of "change" that would take that away. Obama continues to say that if you have a plan you like, you can keep it, but language in the proposals is troubling on that score. Even some Democrats who support the House legislation are concerned that it could force people into a "public option" any time a private plan changes.

So "you can keep it" may prove a hollow promise - and one of the most egregious bait-and-switch jobs in the history of American politics. As for a public option, there's concern that with the advantage of government backing, it would price and regulate private insurance out of existence. Even some liberal commentators admit that the public option amounts to a "stealth single-payer" proposal to torpedo private-sector plans.

Cover everybody. Virtually everyone agrees that health coverage should be universally available, for economic as well as moral reasons. Coverage should extend to all those who lack access to quality, cost-effective health care. The benefits should be obvious - less cost-shifting in the system, broader risk pools, better overall health and productivity, lower costs from misuse and over-use of the system, such as making hospital emergency rooms function as primary care centers.

Protect small business. Small businesses are caught in the health-care squeeze as they attempt to cover their employees. They're hurting because they don't get the kind of built-in government subsidies that larger firms do. That has to change. They need at least a level playing field. But Democratic plans would go in the opposite direction - penalizing them for not offering health plans. Proponents are quibbling about the revenue level at which they'd be taxed, arguing that it would affect "only" a few "big" small businesses. But the top 2 percent of small businesses account for 56 percent of all the sector's income, and employ 16 million people. That's a lot of hurt. Penalties are backward thinking. Instead, small businesses should get positive incentives. They are the engine of job creation.

Expand our options. Consensus is growing that a major obstacle to lowering costs and increasing access is the inability of insurance firms to sell policies across state lines - and the inability of consumers to shop around for the best deals among plans offered nationwide. Supporters of this idea envision a easy-access, online clearinghouse with a menu of plans to spread risk, increase choice and expand options. This simple, market-based solution could be the key to real, cost-saving, access-expanding reform, but it is held back by needless restraints and artificial barriers.

Mr. Obama, tear down these walls.

Speaking of demolition work, how about some medical liability reform, both to cut down on the expense of insurance premiums and to curb the "defensive medicine" practices of over-testing and over-treating?

Make it portable and flexible. Find a fair, effective way to make health insurance portable. Our economy has changed from the post-World War II days where workers usually stayed with one company for life. In our volatile economy, Americans change jobs and health plans several times during their careers. We need a mechanism to carry health coverage from job to job, regardless of health status.

This requires a solution for coverage of pre-existing conditions. And it requires measures to correct a perverse disincentive: Employer-provided plans enjoy substantial tax benefits. But for the 10 million-plus individuals who seek private plans, there is no such benefit. This long-standing inequity makes no sense.

Show us the money. Reform should encourage Americans to be smarter health-care consumers, tapping into our traditional desires for choice and self-determination. But health care may be the only market in which knowledge is so hidden. We don't know how much it really costs. We don't know where the money comes from, or where it goes. Americans who are more actively involved in health-care decisions, armed with knowledge of prices and options, will make better, more informed decisions. They will seek lower-cost preventive care and become more involved in their wellness.

Protect innovation. America leads the world in medical research - the development of drugs, techniques and cures for diseases. American researchers hold 70 percent of all Nobel Prizes in medicine, and most major breakthroughs in recent decades have taken place here.

In fact, the expensive medical R&D done in this country is a major reason why other nations can make their health care systems work as well as they do. They're like race cars following in the leader's draft.

Reform must not threaten the incentives and freedom needed for innovation, which - despite heavy government subsidy - needs the private-sector economic engine to thrive.

Keep real reform local. Much of that innovation starts at the state and local level, and our area is no exception. A cover story in this section by Peggy O'Farrell and Cliff Peale on local coalitions' efforts to find better solutions speaks volumes.

Our unique political structure and cultural tradition give us 50 state "laboratories of democracy" and a robust entrepreneurial sector unlike anywhere else - which also is a reason why what works in countries with nationalized health care may not necessarily work here.

So federal-level reform should help foster that distinctive American creativity and innovation in the spirit of true, bottom-up federalism. If it can't do that, it should at least get out of the way.

"Why wait for Washington?" reads the kicker on the story. That is the central question we all should be asking.

Alternative could pay for itself

Sharp-eyed readers may note that many of these principles align well with an alternative bill proposed by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah. It may be the only truly bipartisan plan out there, with support from key senators in both parties.

Wyden-Bennett would move America away from employer-provided insurance:

Money that employers pay for coverage would go directly to workers.

Workers would use the money to choose their own insurance on the competitive, open market.

Everyone would be required to have insurance.

Since government wouldn't have to help fund employers' plans any more, that money would help pay premiums for lower-income (up to 400 percent of poverty) Americans.

The Congressional Budget Office says this plan could quickly pay for itself, and studies indicate it could reduce health care spending by $1.5 trillion over the next decade, not increase it by $1 trillion or more as the Democratic plans might.

A more radical plan? Perhaps.

But its rational simplicity is appealing.

Maybe that's why Wyden-Bennett is getting the stiff-arm from Democratic leadership - it's too simple, and it gives control-driven bureaucrats fewer levers to pull in the future.

To be clear: We're not endorsing Wyden-Bennett here. It needs more work and serious public debate. But it shows that it's possible to envision reform that doesn't resort to the tired old top-down, command-and-control mode Washington seems to favor.

Health care in America is a hodgepodge. It's wasteful, contrived and unsustainable.

Some parts are near-pure free-market solutions, and others are completely socialized. Most of us are somewhere in the middle with an increasingly strained system of employer-based, government-subsidized insurance. It is a confusing patchwork that distorts costs and perpetuates inequities.

But the current bills are not the answer. They will make Americans' health more a matter of entitlement than of responsibility.

A better direction leads to market solutions and options, with universal coverage and wisely priced, high-quality care.

It empowers individual Americans, supports their doctors, and embraces their informed choices.

Congress has made a hash of health care reform. Americans don't want PelosiCare.

So hit the button. Start over.

Do it right this time.

Vets' group assails Fox, GOP over 'suicide' manual claim
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele's claim that a Veterans' Administration handbook urges veterans to "commit suicide" is an "asinine assertion with no basis in fact," says a veterans' group.

The group, Veterans for Common Sense, is demanding an apology from Steele for making the claim, and from Fox News for perpetuating the claim.

Steele made the comments on Fox Tuesday, during a debate about health care reform. Arguing that public health care would lead to people being forced to their deathbeds, Steele used the VA health system as proof this would come to pass.

"Just look at the situation with our veterans, when you have a manual out there telling our veterans stuff like, 'are you really of value to your community,' you know, encouraging them to commit suicide," Steele said.

"Let me be absolutely clear, Steele lied. There is no VA manual encouraging veterans to commit suicide," said Paul Sullivan, the executive director of VCS, in a press release.

The controversy began August 18, when an op-ed appeared in the Wall Street Journal, written by the former head of faith-based initiatives for the Bush administration, Jim Towey, claiming that the VA manual for veterans amounts to a "death book." Since then, the talking point has been picked up by opponents of health care reform.

Towey, as the White House has pointed out, runs an organization that offers a competing handbook to the one provided by the VA.

Veterans for Common Sense is also seeking redressal from Fox News for what it says was an unfair cropping of quotes from a VA document "to falsely suggest that the Obama administration is pressuring veterans to end their lives prematurely," as Media Matters reported.

-- Daniel Tencer

Matter-eater Man argumentative User Fair Play!
6000+ posts 1 second ago Making a new reply
Forum: Politics and Current Events
Thread: Re: Health reform: Hit the Reset button
Copy and pasting the daily group think

Yeah I kind of dismissed you as fringe a while back basams, so save it for your boyfriend and the others. The book doesn't say what Steele claims, he's being dishonest to the vets.

dont let me get between you and your god.

...Veterans for Common Sense...

...is a liberal front group run by two guys that has a quote from Obama on its home page.

This aint the VFW or American Legion we're talking about here.

Veterans for Common Sense (VCS) was formed in August 2002 as a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization by war veterans who believe that we, the people of the United States of America, are most secure when our country is free, strong, and responsibly engaged with the world. Our mission, based on the pragmatic ideals of the American patriot Thomas Paine, is to raise the unique and powerful voices of veterans so that our military, veterans, freedom, and national security are protected and enhanced, for ourselves and for future generations.

"We owe a debt to all who served and when we repay that debt to those bravest Americans among us, then we are investing in our future."
~ Barack Obama, August 3, 2009

Matter-eater Man argumentative User Fair Play!
6000+ posts 1 minute 43 seconds ago Reading a post
Forum: Politics and Current Events
Thread: A right to Health Care

The controversial booklet, "Your Life, Your Choices" has been dubbed "the death book" by some commentators due to its subject matter and method of presentation in advising veterans on end-of-life decision-making. "While The American Legion does not believe this publication is in any way designed to influence veterans to end their lives prematurely," said Rehbein, "we can understand how some might interpret it that way, At best, it is an awkward attempt to help."

Hmmn I can see why this upsets the GOP parrots here.

...the GOP parrots...