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  #31  
Old 08-28-2009, 08:22 AM
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Like Your Health Plan? Read This

by Michael D. Tanner

Michael D. Tanner is a Cato Institute senior fellow and co-author of Healthy Competition: What's Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It.
Added to cato.org on August 26, 2009

This article appeared in the Orange Country Register on August 26, 2009.
In his most recent weekly radio address, President Barack Obama denounced "willful misrepresentations and outright distortions" in the debate over health care reform. He then went on to repeat one of the most outright distortions in the entire debate: "If you like your private health insurance plan, you can keep your plan. Period."
No, Mr. President. No you can't.
To go straight to the chapter and verse: under Section 59(B)(a) of HR3200, the bill making its way through the House, and Section 151 of the bill that passed out of a Senate committee, every American would be required to buy health insurance.
It is time for the president to stop spreading this particular 'willful misrepresentation and outright distortion.'
And not just any insurance: to qualify, a plan would have to meet certain government-defined standards. For example, under Section 122(b) of the House bill, all plans must cover hospitalization; outpatient hospital and clinic services; services by physicians and other health professionals, as well as supplies and equipment incidental to their services; prescription drugs, rehabilitation services, mental health and substance-abuse treatment; preventive services (to be determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the United States Preventive Services Task Force); and maternity, well-baby, and well-child care, as well as dental, vision, and hearing services for children under age 21.
But that's not all. Section 1239(b) of the bill also establishes a federal Health Benefits Advisory Committee, headed by the U.S. surgeon general, which will have the power to develop additional minimum benefit requirements. There is no limit to how extensive those future required benefits may be.
If your current health insurance doesn't meet all those requirements, you won't be immediately forced to drop your current insurance for a government-specified plan. But you would be required to switch if you lose your current insurance or "if significant changes are made to the existing health insurance plan."
More critically, for the 70 percent of us who get our insurance through work, those plans would all have to satisfy the government's benefit requirements within five years.
More likely, your employer will simply find that the increased cost and administrative burden is not worth it, and will dump you into the government-run "public option."
The Lewin Group, an independent actuarial firm, estimates that under the House version of the bill, as many as 89.5 million workers will simply lose their current employer-provided plan and be forced into government-run insurance.
Seniors, too, could lose their current coverage, at least the 10.2 million seniors currently participating in the Medicare advantage program. That program offers many seniors benefits not included in traditional Medicare, including preventive-care services, coordinated care for chronic conditions, routine physical examinations, additional hospitalization, skilled nursing facility stays, routine eye and hearing examinations, and glasses and hearing aids But the House bill cuts payments to the Medicare Advantage program by roughly $156.3 billion over 10 years.
.author_pub2 a { float:right; margin: 10px 0 8px 8px; display:block; height: 142px; width: 110px; background: url(/people/pub_photos/tanner.jpg) no-repeat -110px 0; } .author_pub2a a { float:right; margin: 10px 0 8px 8px; display:block; height: 142px; width: 110px; background: url(/people/pub_photos/tanner.jpg) no-repeat 0 0; } In response, many insurers are expected to stop participating in the program, while others increase the premiums they charge seniors. Millions of seniors will likely be forced off their current plan and back into traditional Medicare.


Finally, the bills would all but eliminate Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), currently used by nearly 10 million Americans. Section 122 of the House bill and 311 of the Senate bill set minimum payout levels for any insurance policy. Insurance payouts must cover 70 percent of claims under the House bill and 76 percent under the Senate bill. And the bills also prohibit any deductibles or co-payments for preventive care.
But virtually none of the high-deductible insurance plans in existence today, and required to accompany an HSA, can meet such a standard. They are simply not designed to work that way. The result will be that a plan designed to those specifications would offer few if any advantages over traditional insurance and would not be competitive in today's markets.
As a result, insurers warn they would stop offering high-deductible policies.
Any way you look at it, under the bills currently before Congress, millions of Americans will be forced out of their current health insurance plan, even if they are happy with it. Period.
It is time for the president to stop spreading this particular "willful misrepresentation and outright distortion."
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  #32  
Old 08-28-2009, 02:37 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cbirk View Post
Like Your Health Plan? Read This

by Michael D. Tanner

Michael D. Tanner is a Cato Institute senior fellow and co-author of Healthy Competition: What's Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It.
Added to cato.org on August 26, 2009

This article appeared in the Orange Country Register on August 26, 2009.
In his most recent weekly radio address, President Barack Obama denounced "willful misrepresentations and outright distortions" in the debate over health care reform. He then went on to repeat one of the most outright distortions in the entire debate: "If you like your private health insurance plan, you can keep your plan. Period."
No, Mr. President. No you can't.
The only distortion here is being created by the GOP, amplified by Faux News and legitimized by the Cato Institute, to discredit what this administration is trying to accomplish.........

StanF18's previous post is a perfect analogy of what's the reality here:


Originally Posted by StanF18

[/QUOTE] From where I sit, this debate is really about a fundamental philosophical difference in the role of Government. If you believe that basic health care is a PRIVILEGE and not a RIGHT, then I guess we do not really need to change anything. Survival of the fittest, so to speak. Let the private Insurance Giants deny coverage to premium-paying citizens on a whim, whenever they feel like it. Let folks pile up enormous health care bills after a catastrpohic illness or surgery, without any hope of reconciling their finances. Let health care continue to be the leading cause of personal bankruptcy and family financial ruin in this country (which it is). I guess for Libertarians who believe that the role of Government is strictly defense against foreign invaders, and not much else, this is a perfectly acceptable situation. I do not agree with this position, but I can appreciate where it's coming from: self-reliance, personal responsibility, intrinsic inefficiencies of big government, etc.

Personally, I do not adhere to this position. We are the only western Democracy which does not provide unfettered, bill-free access to health care to its citizens. The GOP is convinced that the UK, Canada, Australia, France, and Germany have it all wrong, and we have it all right. There is no question that we have the best medical technology, the most advanced diagnositcs and imaging, and space-age surgical
procedures. But what good is having all the space-age medicine in the world, when Private HMOs and PPOs give incentives to their own employees for denial of coverage, and folks wind up mired in $$tens of thousands$$ or $$$hundreds of thousands$$$ in un-reimbursed medical bills? Instead of concentrating on their treatments and on getting better after their surgery or car accident (like they are able to do in the UK or Cananda), Americans have to spend all their recuperation time on fighting with Health Insurance reps and Collection Agencies. Because the health insurance they THOUGHT would protect them, and to whom they have dutifully paid their premiums, refuses to do what an insurance company is SUPPOSED to do: PAY UP!

To use previous failures of big Government as a justification to not try and fix this mess, is neither helpful nor sincere. Forget about Government failure: What about the failure of the private sector? Specifically, the Aetnas, the CIGNAs, the Blue Crosses that have shown a big middle finger to the millions of American families that have faithfully paid their health insurance premiums? Only to be denied and discarded like so much human garbage by insurance execs watching their company's bottom line?

If you truly believe it should be every man, woman, and child for themselves when it comes to health care, then I can see how the current proposal for a Govt option and for HMO regulation is not to your liking. Personally, I think it's a travesty that the most powerful Democracy in the world can take out hidden Taliban warlords on a whim with remote-controlled Predator drones, but cannot provide sustained, basic health care and diagnostics to its' working citizens. And how this biggest, baddest, wealthiest, strongest Democracy lets the greedy private insurance giants drive millions hard-working families into bankruptcy through denial of coverage and worthless Explanation of Benefits statements. The horror stories out there are epic, and way too numerous to list. Or to bother with website links. Do your own research and it won't take you long to see how folks are being f^&ed by their health insurers every day.

Kudos to the Obama Administration for taking on this mess, and for trying to dispel the huge amount of malicious disinformation being spewed forth by the Health Insurance giants.[/QUOTE]
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  #33  
Old 08-28-2009, 04:00 PM
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You crack me up. Every group that doesn't agree with you is some how false, wrong, inaccurate or spewing rhetoric..... You sure do believe Fox News has a lot of power, do you have Fox News envy? Did they turn you down for a job....
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  #34  
Old 08-28-2009, 06:10 PM
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Originally Posted by Wagner View Post


You crack me up. Every group that doesn't agree with you is some how false, wrong, inaccurate or spewing rhetoric..... You sure do believe Fox News has a lot of power, do you have Fox News envy? Did they turn you down for a job....
No, but i'm just trying to keep your daily rhetoric fair and balanced
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  #35  
Old 08-28-2009, 06:46 PM
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Originally Posted by chile1 View Post
No, but i'm just trying to keep your daily rhetoric fair and balanced
W/E man, you're lost
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"promote the general welfare, not provide the general welfare"

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

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  #36  
Old 08-28-2009, 08:37 PM
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W/E man, you're lost
"angry white men" at it's best
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  #37  
Old 08-29-2009, 08:00 AM
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Originally Posted by chile1 View Post
"angry white men" at it's best
better believe it.
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An unwavering defender of those I see worth protecting.

"promote the general welfare, not provide the general welfare"

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

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  #38  
Old 08-29-2009, 11:51 AM
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Originally Posted by Wagner View Post
better believe it.

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  #39  
Old 08-29-2009, 06:34 PM
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And that's coming from an "un-biased" source...

btw, Newt looks young in that pic. I guess he had plastic surgery done...
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  #40  
Old 08-29-2009, 11:29 PM
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So, who said the following when speaking about a healthcare issue in 2006 saying that we've got...

Quote:
the worst of both worlds: we've got the price gouging of the private sector and the bureaucracy of the public sector
Video below to find out
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YouTube - Obama: Healthcare combining Private and Public sector WORST OF BOTH WORLDS
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