Cutting Through the Disinformation: Democrats Health Care Bill Rejected Bipartisan Solutions

@MDinBoston, why should you care? Don’t you have Romney Care? Aren’t you thrilled?

A few facts for you to absorb:

“death panels” = IMAC or equivalent. When you have appointees on a panel deciding what needs to be cut back to fit the budget alloted, you have a death panel. Want to fall back on a private insurer denying coverage as a comparison? Wrong… With single payer, it’s a death panel. With a private insurer, it’s a customer who’s lost to the competitor.

While you’re touting how terrific universal health would be for a nation, you might want to consider that out of the top 20 nations with the highest debt to GDP, 18 of them are single payer or two tier. Oddly enough, despite our spending and 95% debt to GDP, we’re still #20.

So, according to you all, we should shoot to #1 and pile on universal coverage.

Look at your own backyard and the costs. Highest increase in the nation… yup… that’s you.

Sorry, that’ dog don’t bark.

@MD in Boston has the chutzpah to tell me to “stow my attitude”?

Let’s look at your first comment on this blogsite, MD in Boston.. and your opening sentences.

I’m so glad to see you toeing the big business and insurance company line here. What a good little dog. Fetch! Heel!

I’d say your hypocrisy and lack of tolerance shines thru quite nicely. Care to open/add your other cyber foot to your mouth?

That you do not know what the IMAC is, is truly an embarrassment. I posted on the Obama written legislation last summer. Not like it hasn’t been around. But perhaps you know it by a new acronym as it’s safely ensconced in the Senate health care bill. It’s a Medicare Advisory Commission made up of Presidential appointees who’s job is to decide what Medicare payment adjustments… i.e. cuts… need to be made in order to stay within budget.

Additionally they are to make recommended changes to the Medicare plans and coverage to the POTUS. If he approves them, Congress can only stop them by a joint resolution of disapproval within 30 days. If that is not done, the recommended changes go forward. This is passing off Congressional authority to unelected appointees, and implementing a nigh on impossible way to thwart their recommendations.

i.e. “death panel” A term that you brought up first here, I might add. So if you want to stop beating that horse, I suggest you stop bringing it up. But the fact remains this overly endowed advisory commission is a death panel, since you are mandated to enroll in Medicare at age 65 (if you wish to receive your SS retirement benefits).

You also might try playing educational catch up with the NYTs article on this, or CBS’s watered down version.

I repeat… when you are forced onto Medicare by holding your Social Security benefits hostage, then are subject to a panel of unelected appointees deciding what get’s slashed and burned for benefits and coverage, you have a death panel because you are not given the choice of a private insurer.

Oh yes.. you can do the Medicare Advantage… assuming it lives thru Obama’s reign. But any private insurer who plays umbrella coverage to Medicare refuses treatments for alternative, and perhaps better, treatment when Medicare offers a lesser treatment under their coverage.

Choices… it’s all about choices. Or, in this case, the lack of them.

INRE Romney Care:l

Pluses: more people covered., some assurance of good care.

This lie that the uninsured do not get good care is so bogus. Even the uninsured get treatment. Problem is they get treated thru the most expensive facility… the ER. One would think if you wanted to cut some of these costs, they’d be better off opening 24/7 clinics for some of these things people wander into the ER for. ER has high dollar trauma equipment that even those that show up for animal bites or flu shots must pay for.

And as far as “more people”… you may want to do some ‘splaining about that to the 30,000 *legal* green card holding immigrants they dropped from coverage last summer because this social health care experiment doesn’t work.

As you yourself admit:

over budget, costly plans. In fact, the MA example shows what NOT to do. #1 – make sure it’s funded, make provisions for shortfalls.

Forget the rest of the BS that follows that statement above. Because you miss the problem by a mile…. you think you control costs by controlling insurance premiums, and collecting more money the feds pay out.

Pray tell, how does limiting how much medical providers are paid by medical insurers affect the bottom line of what it COSTS to provide medical treatment? All you are doing is forcing the medical provider network deeper and deeper into the red, shorting them their costs of doing business.

And there in lies the problem with all this BS “reform”. If you want to reform the cost of insurance to the patient, you must attack the costs to the medical providers… not the insurance providers.

Privately insured pay 133% average ABOVE provider costs. Why? Because Medicare/Medicaid UNDERPAY the providers by 20-30%. They have to make up that financial loss somewhere.

So you and ilk think the answer to to put more people on the “underpay” list, and still expect the medical providers to provide stellar service?

Look around at the nations and their history around the world, MD in Boston. Look at how much state of the art equipment is available in US medical facilities compared to those countries with single payer or two tier systems?

When you read the WHO’s 2009 health care reports on sundry countries, two things will become obvious to the ideological oblivious… that public options (aka single payer) do not coexist with private for very long… or the choices of private options whittle down to very little competition. And that even the precious public option/single payer does not control the costs of medical treatment… it only controls how you can drive medical providers and facilities bankrupt, or into deep rationing to survive.

If you have a hornets nest, you can either spray the critter flying near you, and think you cured the problem. Or you can go attack the nest itself.

In the case of those who believe in this O’healthcare debacle, it’s abundantly clear you haven’t got a clue where that hornet’s nest is located.