Obama Slams Health Care Critics For Spreading "Outlandish Rumors"

[Exterminator]

Us functionally illiterate folk don't believe the government is responsible for us from cradle to grave.  We believe you should work for what you get not have it handed to you.  Some will do better than others and if you're one of the ones who happen not to have it so well it is not up to someone else to pay your way.  If this health care thing is going to be so great why won't congress go on it too?  I mean gee why should they have it better than us?  Yes, someone needs to get the insurance companies in line but to put it in the government's hands....... Maybe they won't pull the plug on grandma....kind of hard to do if it don't get plugged in in the first place.  It will be HMO, or what ever that was with the insurance companies, on a bigger scale.  A bunch of people with no medical knowledge making decisions about treatments and hospital stays.

All you are doing is parroting the same old tired bullshit talking points that have already been refuted here and illustrating, once again, that your choice in life is to remain ignorant of the facts.  People like you who refuse to learn about a subject before you spew your crap have no place whatsoever in the national debate.

[Exterminator]

My problem is too much of it is left open for interpretation which, yes, it could be what you all are saying but on the other hand it could be what the others are saying just as easily.  Why take a chance and let them rush it though?  Work on it and get it right don't let this be another stimulus thing.  If these things are not intended to happen take the wording out that makes it look bad.  Where's the problem in that?  It is worded so those things can happen just them saying, "no that's not what that means", don't prove a thing.  It's written in such a way that if they chose it can and will happen.  "Cost effective"

No, it's not written that way; you just don't have the reading skills to understand it.   

[Henry Hawk]

even washington NOW want's a "do-over"....

[Exterminator]

Like I said...they'll keep talking and talking about this and nothing will get accomplished.  You repubs are famous for that.   

[Henry Hawk]

Like I said...they'll kee ptalking and talking about this and nothing will get accomplished.  You repubs are famous for that.   

[Exterminator]

[Palehorse]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/18/reinhardt.health.inflation/index.html

Commentary: Frightening future if health reform fails

By Uwe Reinhardt
Special to CNN
     
Editor's note: Uwe Reinhardt is James Madison professor of political economy at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. From 1986 to 1995 he served as a commissioner on the Physician Payment Review Committee, established in 1986 by Congress to advise it on issues related to the payment of physicians.


Uwe Reinhardt says health costs are rising at unsustainable pace, gobbling up middle-class incomes.

(CNN) -- Watching the angry outbursts at town hall meetings on health reform and the continuing public ambivalence about current efforts to reform our health system almost makes me wish that the reform effort fails.

Perhaps Americans need to be taught a basic lesson on the economics of employment-based health insurance before they will feel as smugly secure with it as they do now and before they will stop nitpicking health-reform efforts to death over this or that detail.

And America's currently insured middle class will be increasingly desperate if health reform fails. Millions more such families will see their take-home pay shrink. Millions will lose their employment-based insurance, especially in medium and small-sized firms. And millions will find themselves inexorably priced out of health care as we know it.

Milliman Inc., an employee benefits consulting firm, publishes annually its Milliman Medical Index on the total health spending by or for a typical American family of four with private health insurance. The index totals the family's out-of-pocket spending for health care plus the contribution employers and employees make to that family's job-related health insurance coverage.

The Milliman Medical Index stood at $8,414 in 2001. It had risen to $16,700 by 2009. It is likely to rise to $18,000 by next year. That is more than a doubling of costs in the span of a decade!

Since 2005, the index has grown at an average annual compound rate of 8.4 percent. Suppose we make it 8 percent for the coming decade. Then today's $16,700 will have grown to slightly over $36,000 by 2019.

Economists are convinced that this $36,000 would come virtually all out of the financial hides of employees, even if the employer pretended to be paying, say, 80 percent of the employment-based health insurance premiums. In the succinct words of the late United Automobile Worker Union leader Douglas Fraser:

"Before you start weeping for the auto companies and all they pay for medical insurance, let me tell you how the system works. All company bargainers worth their salt keep their eye on the total labor unit cost, and when they pay an admittedly horrendous amount for health care, that's money that can't be spent for higher [cash] wages or higher pensions or other fringe benefits. So we directly, the union and its members, feel the costs of the health care system." ("A National Health Policy Debate," Dartmouth Medical School Alumni Magazine, Summer 1989: 30)

Unfortunately, very few rank-and-file workers appreciate this fact. Aside from their still modest out-of-pocket payments and contributions to employment-based insurance premiums, most employees seem sincerely to believe that the bulk of their family's health care is basically paid for by "the company," which is why so few members of the middle class have ever been much interested in controlling health spending in this country.

The price for that indifference will be high. If efforts at better cost containment fail once again, and health care costs rise to $36,000 on average for a typical American family of four under age 65 -- as almost surely it would -- that $36,000 will be borne entirely by the family. That family's disposable income would be much higher if the growth of future health spending was better controlled. And, as noted, many smaller firms will stop altogether providing job-based health insurance.

It would be a major problem for families with an income of less than $100,000 a year. In 2007, only about 25 percent of American families had a money income of $100,000 or more. Close to 60 percent had family incomes of less than $75,000.

Here it must be remembered that the wages and salaries of the solid American middle class have been relatively stagnant in recent years and are likely to remain so for the next decade. Unemployment is not likely to fall significantly soon, regardless of what stock prices do on Wall Street. Indeed, often stock prices rise as firms lay off workers to drive up profits through leaner payrolls.

This prospect -- relatively stagnant family incomes combined with family health-care costs that double every decade -- is what America's middle class should contemplate as it thinks about the imperative of health reform.

It is a pity that this central issue seems to have been shoved aside by mendacious distortions from Sarah Palin, Betsy McCaughey, Rush Limbaugh and other extremist commentators seeking to frighten Americans with their prattle about "death panels" and "pulling plugs on granny" that no bill before Congress even remotely envisions.

But no, focus on the negative propaganda being put out there by the very industry that is raping you! 

Funny how some sheeple will listen to any shill out there. . .

[Exterminator]

Thanks, PH; I was debating whether or not to post the entire article although I doubt our resident pundits will even take the time to read and/or understand what it's saying.  Henry will probably avoid it altogether, though, because it shows how health care costs already erode take-home pay and how they will continue to rise if left unchecked and that flies directly into the face of his 'let the workers keep more of their money' mantra.  That ilk is only capable of thinking of things in single, disconnected terms rather than as one piece of a larger and much more complex puzzle.

[Palehorse]

Thanks, PH; I was debating whether or not to post the entire article although I doubt our resident pundits will even take the time to read and/or understand what it's saying.  Henry will probably avoid it altogether, though, because it shows how health care costs already erode take-home pay and how they will continue to rise if left unchecked and that flies directly into the face of his 'let the workers keep more of their money' mantra.  That ilk is only capable of thinking of things in single, disconnected terms rather than as one piece of a larger and much more complex puzzle.

I tried to limit it to just a few sections, but ended up posting the whole thing because I strongly believe it is directly on point as well. I've been complaining for years about how we pay more and more for less with these insurance companies, and I continue to be dumbfounded at how so many people are failing to see how they are being robbed!

I posted it in the futile hope that perhaps a Princton professor's perspective on this effort might open their eyes to things. . .

[followsthewolf]

I wouldn't bet on it you guys.

Any time you quote anything from a "professor," it's just another "one a them intellect-ules spoutin' off again" you know.

Or, you'll be accused of having an over-sized ego, or being gay, or whatever else comes to mind when one is intellectually empty.

The subject of future unchecked health care costs scares the bejeezus out of me, though.

[Palehorse]

And Henry, I do NOT want to hear that "but congress won't even accept this kind of coverage for themselves" line either. It is a lie plain and simple!

READ THE FRIGGIN' BILL: This bill is intended to provide the SAME coverage as members of congress enjoy, as well as the same choices! The POTUS has said so, the bills say so, and yet people still continue to swallow that plethora of tripe being put out there by the very industry raping us! Wake up!

There is no death panel, nobody besides the immediate family is going to unplug grandma, and you aren't going to have to wait in the crowds of folks at the local free clinic to see your own doctor!

[Palehorse]

I wouldn't bet on it you guys.

Any time you quote anything from a "professor," it's just another "one a them intellect-ules spoutin' off again" you know.

Or, you'll be accused of having an over-sized ego, or being gay, or whatever else comes to mind when one is intellectually empty.

The subject of future unchecked health care costs scares the bejeezus out of me, though.

And yet they accept as "the gospel" anything spewed by shills that are subsidized by the very industry this bill is trying to reform and regulate! Rush Hambone says it and it is accepted as the unvarnished truth!

Yup, pretty soon the majority will be unable to afford healthcare!

[followsthewolf]

Rush will simply laugh about the costs, though. He's isolated from any cost-affiliated cares by the money he's earned from the fools that support him. Bet he's just giggling like a little girl about his status and the way he's gotten there.

[Palehorse]

Rush will simply laugh about the costs, though. He's isolated from any cost-affiliated cares by the money he's earned from the fools that support him. Bet he's just giggling like a little girl about his status and the way he's gotten there.

Ironic isn't it?!

[Henry Hawk]

I am basically through arguing (with the zone).....I will NEVER get excited about turning MORE power over to the Government....and IF you cannot see that, by READING the BILL, then, there is nothing to argue about......I'm done.

I know our current system is FAR from perfect.....but it IS better than other countries....the POOR get FREE healthcare now.....the VAST majority of the working class already has employer provided insurance...let's FIX it without GIVING Washington the controls.

the bottom line IS.....the TRUTH will prevail.  Americans are speaking out against this...for one main reason....the are SICK of Government MIS-Managing OUR Taxes.