President to Formally Back House Democrats' Health Care Bill

I have seen insurance rates increases year after year. I've known people denied health care for a variety of reasons. A friend of mine who works at a hospital has witnessed people being kicked out of the hospital because of lack of coverage. And most honest people who open their eyes and pay attention are familiar abuses of all kinds. There are also many people who do not have any health coverage because they simply cannot afford it. These people tend to end up at the emergency clinic when they are really sick, costing up to five times what they would if they had coverage. It's time for real reform.

Rather than make a legitimate attempt to resolve the health insurance related issues plaguing this country, the Republican plan is basically yet another wholly partisan distraction likely intended to slow down and stall the reform process altogether. Under the Republican alternative that was offered, the number of uninsured Americans would increase to 52 million by 2019.

52 million.

What was the Republican strategy again? Something about derailing and delaying, yes?

On Friday, a Republican rep, Foxx (of North Carolina) suggested that it’s better to be uninsured than enrolled in the government’s Medicaid program. However, according to a Harvard Study, every year 45,000 Americans die because they don't have health insurance.

We can't afford to derail and delay.

Not that I'm letting the Dems off the hook here. Ezra Klein has a good blog up about the three types that are holding this thing up-- the controversialists concerned about electric type issues (e.g. abortion and immigration), the centrist skeptics, and those worried about process.

The conservatives and blue dog Dems who say "“When the economy’s not strong there’s a lot of interest in controlling spending and we need to do that first, and slow down and blah, blah, blah" are totally mad. We've been at this for years-- Congress has been debating this issue intermittently since the early 20th century. It's time. And on the economy front, it's just crazy that some people truly believe the thing to do during a slump in demand is to remove government spending from the economy, worsening everything from unemployment to child poverty.

They know that all the profits from all the evil health insurance companies would only pay for a few days of health care in this country.

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Actually, if we just took the health care sector's lobbying budget per year (and that's lobbying to shape health care reform)--which is approx. $260 million, at least for this year, we could buy basic decent insurance coverage for approx. 50,000 people. And hey, if we toned down the perks, jets, bonuses and didn't touch profits, we could do even more.
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If most Americans want changes then why do you have the gas pedal to the floorboard?

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I find this canard funny. Gas pedal to the floorboard??? Sure, it's only been 100 years or so. Five different presidents. Wyden introduced his bill a couple years ago. Congress has been working on this for several months. I sure wouldn't want to need to get something done quickly on the reform opposition's timetable. I'd be gray and my son would be graduating from college (he's in kindergarten now). LOL.

It's time to get this done and press forward with jobs, energy and energy jobs.

Nancy Pelosi will go down as the worst every Speaker of the House.

She is an idiot.
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Yeah, and you're a genius.

And most Americans want Congress to continue to work on these bills, albeit with changes.

Posted by: Alyson |

If most Americans want changes then why do you have the gas pedal to the floorboard?

The premise that lack of insurance coverage can cause death is absurd. It's just more liberal fear mongering"

Yeah because people with chronic conditions and disease who are booted off their insurance suddenly are healed or those who delay seeing a doctor for a condition because they lack insurance and the means to pay for a visit.

The White House will today issue a Statement of Administration Policy today endorsing the health care reform legislation from House Democrats.

It will not be a signal that the president favors the House bill over the one from Senate Democrats, officials say.
Say What? Does Obama endorse the House
bill or not?
Since he hasn't backed the Senate bill
I have to assume despite the denial that
the president favors the House bill.
That means he favors cutting Medicare
Benefits for seniors and taxing
middle class Americans to pay for it!
Also by endorsing the House plan
without modification I must assume that
the president favors the thousands of
dollars in penalties that will be
assessed against those who can't
afford to of refuse to buy coverage!
Forcing people to buy any kind of
insurance is unconstitutional!
No one is forced to drive a car so don't
even go there(you can walk or take
public transportation).
So I guess we can assume that
President Obama is in favor of
openly violating the Constitution of
our great nation. Seems clear to me.
2012 can't come soon enough.

Not one Republican for the bill and can't even get all the Democrats to support this Pelosi / Obama care bill.

Nancy Pelosi will go down as the worst every Speaker of the House.

She is an idiot.

More and More doctors are opting-out of Medicare for reasons that reimbursement rates are too low and paperwork too much of a hassel...for more facts look up the NYT article, dated April 01, 2009 entitled: Doctors are Opting Out of Medicare...Point: To say most seniors are happy with Medicare is a false statement alyson...you may wish it too be true, but it is a false statement...EVEN according to the NYT....

Actually, I think it is like going to the circus watching the partisans and ideological zealots twist and contort (and gyrate and jump through hoops)to avoid supporting what every other first world nation has managed to accomplish-- universal health care at a lower cost.

45,000 americans die every year because they lack health insurance. Children who don't have health insurance are 60% more likely to die if they get sick than children with health insurance. Most senior citizens like their Medicare coverage. And most Americans want Congress to continue to work on these bills, albeit with changes.

Onward...

It is like going to the circus watching the partisans twist and contort like pretzels in order to support this garbage. They are the chicks in the nest, mouths wide open in eager anticipation of whatever it is the Mother Government chooses to drop down their gullets. Amazingly, they don't seem to care what the plan is. Their disbelief sits in a jar on the shelf next to their collector's edition Inconvenient Truth and Farenheit 411 dvd's. They know it is a total lie that this bill will cost ~1 trillion over 10 years. They know that all the profits from all the evil health insurance companies would only pay for a few days of health care in this country. And they know that real tort reform would save many times more money than eliminating all health insurance profits would do. They know it is insane to tie health insurance to employers and they know the tax write-offs associated with it artificially inflate the costs. They know institutions like the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins have serious misgivings about the bill. They know there are a great number of targeted fixes that the vast majority of Americans agree on.
They know all this and much, much more but the trudge forward with religious ferver. Addiction to government is a strange disease.

btw, remember when Big Pharma was evil?

Most brilliant Congress EVER! All the blame falls on those villainous, immoral Blue Dogs!

A House leader says Democrats haven’t yet lined up enough votes to pass their health care overhaul bill.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland says the vote that House Democrats had scheduled for Saturday could slip to Sunday or early next week.

Hoyer acknowledged to reporters Friday that Democratic leaders don’t yet have the 218 votes needed to pass President Barack Obama’s historic health overhaul initiative.

In other words, this was a Hail Nancy play. She couldn’t afford to wait too long for the vote after dropping 2,000 pages on members last week, and having them see the results of the elections this week. Pelosi and Hoyer thought that rushing a vote would allow them to BULLY RECALCITRANT MODERATES INTO SUPPORT.

She chose....poorly.

What does this tell us? Moderates have apparently balked at the pressure Pelosi has put on them to swallow the public option and a $1.8 trillion price tag. Today’s abysmal unemployment numbers probably had something to do with that as well. Robert Reich has even advised Democrats to stop their push on health-care overhauls and start worrying about job losses, or risk becoming an irrelevancy in the midterms. The moderates in Pelosi’s caucus probably came to that conclusion on Tuesday night.

I'm going to assume that Dana Milbank either doesn't have private insurance, and therefore supports expansion of government-run healthcare
OR
that he has private insurance and would refuse emergency treatment if a government entity were to provide it.

Anything else is just too too weirdly ironic.

The Evil Health Insurance Companies are not nearly as profitable as the Legislaters in DC would have you believe.

ASIDE TO "ALYSON".......

#1 The person had an apparent heart attack. Try it some day and let me know if you feel like thanking everybody who can see/here you..

#2 I do have an immpression of you as not being a member of what truly was the "greatest generation." I am not, either, but these folks have more reason to be railing about Obamacare than you do, my friend. As I am certain that you, like me, and millions more don't really have a read on what the details in either the Senate or the House Plan contains, there is one point to be made when you jab at folks talking about medicare.......isn't it amazing that out of the blue because Obama, his gang, and Congress suddenly discovered a pot of gold in Medicare (graft, corruption, the usual line) that will generate billions of dollars to partially PAY FOR OBAMACARE FOR THE UNDER 65 CROWD that apparently caused no one in Washington to worry until legislation was being considered for Healthcare "reform"...why do we have such "medicare savings" today that we didn't have yesterday....unless folks haven't been doing their jobs in the first place??????????....and why aren't those "savings," if ever found, be used to shore up what we have been told in a government program going bankrupt ( medicare). Alyson, may I suggest you read the proposed legislation...difficult as it may be for citizens to get in plain English, or just skip your comments in the future. Don't stir the soup pot if you have no soup in it.....thanks for your cooperation.

"Health Insurance companies are a parasite on the US Health Care System extorting vast sums of monies from sick and injured Americans to fill their coffers." ---James in Atlanta

James, I suggest you look up just where Health insurance companies profits stack up against other industry profit margins. On a list of profit margins by industry, Health Insurance companies rank #86 with a profit margin of only 3.3%! The top of the list was Beverage/Brewers with a profit margin of a whopping 25.9%! as sited by Economics and Finance professor Dr. Mark Perry at the University of Michigan.
Is it your position that Health Ins. Companies, who employ millions of people, do not have the right to make a profit? I'm just curious.... In following that logic, maybe beverage/brewer companies shouldn't be making such a humongous profit at the expense of consumers either?

One example: "a man standing just beyond the TV cameras apparently suffered a heart attack 20 minutes after event began. Medical personnel from the Capitol physician's office -- an entity that could, quite accurately, be labeled government-run health care -- rushed over, attaching electrodes to his chest and giving him oxygen and an IV drip."
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That makes no sense.
Dana Milbank's beef seems to be with the laws that everyone receive emergency treatment, and paying for it gets sorted out later.
There is no irony.

When the Democrats spend the majority of the time trying to save Obama's legacy by passing gov't health care
the unemployment rate goes to 10%.

Tone-deaf and out of touch with what American say is their top concern.

It isn't health care.

I found it interesting that, as Dana Milbank put its, medics administered government-run health care to at least five people in the Bachmann-teabot crowd yesterday who were stricken as they denounced government-run health care.

One example: "a man standing just beyond the TV cameras apparently suffered a heart attack 20 minutes after event began. Medical personnel from the Capitol physician's office -- an entity that could, quite accurately, be labeled government-run health care -- rushed over, attaching electrodes to his chest and giving him oxygen and an IV drip."

Milbank also notes Bachmann overlooked this irony as she said farewell to her recruits.

Reminds me of the folks on Medicare, who don't want it touched yet decry government run health care.

Most folks who interviewed people yesterday acknowledged the anger and upset, but also acknowledged that teabots are very misinformed. Sigh.

Let's get this thing done.

I don't believe any of the hype about "the abortion issue threatens passage" or "illegal immigrants may pose problem."

I don't think there would be a vote if the fix weren't in. And Pelosi won't require any more moderates to stick their necks out than absolutely necessary. I think it passes with 218 votes.