The Note: Obama Sells Health Plan to Public, Congress

Look at the polls - real American want a government health care option. Obama is on the side of the people with this one.

The people that were following the debate were less supportative??? That says what I have known all along, most Americans just are not informed about the issues and therefore that is how we end up with the caliber of politicans that we have now and how something as bad as this health care legislation ends up getting passed.This country does not have a chance.

I agree with the majority of Americans that we need improvements in health care, we need a public insurance available to all, to provide much needed competition to private insurance companies and to make sure everyone has access to affordable health care insurance.
The fact that so many in Congress want to back away from public insurance shows they are not listening to their constituents but they are listening to the private insurance companies' lobbyists.
We need affordable public health insurance.

We need change, but both sides need to lay it all out on the table and I'm sure the answers are somehere
in between.

To those that want a public plan, the polls being used to support the Whitehouse effots also said, "Among the "obstacles" to health reform, the poll found that "many Americans are concerned that their own healthcare may be compromised if the government is involved, and while they are generally willing to pay more in taxes for universal coverage, that support drops when dollar amounts are mentioned." In short the math doesn't add up, if health care spending is currently 2 Trillion a year, how does the government plan on funding a plan that costs 1 trillion over the next decade. Yes people are in favor of it if it does not cost them anything and does not affect their ability to make choices. The key to healthcare reform has to be on the overall cast of healthcare itself. Otherwise the Whitehouse is positioning the insurance industry to collapse as they did the mortgage industry.

I agree that we need a change in our health care, however, costs are out of control. My wife and I went for a consultation about birth control (we are in our late 40's). No exam, just a 20 minute consultation $154 each. This is absolutely ridiculous.

ObamaCare specifically exempts members of Congress along with federal employees; the exemptions are in section 3116. If nationalized medicine is good enough for us then then it should be good enough for them.

The cost of insurance will decrease if the cost of care were less. I agree that no one should have to spend $154 for 20 minutes, however, insurance companies typically do not pay your physician $154. They negotiate to pay your provider a lessor amount. Yes the Government could do this, however they will pay your physician even less than your insurance company causing your physician to evaluate if he wants to continue providing care at all!

All I know is that something has to be done...this president is trying...if he didn't do anything everyone would be screaming...now he's trying to get people together to discuss this and make it better and people are screaming. Our health sysmtem is broken. I'm so tired of working so hard and then having to pay so much of my salary for healthcare and my employer is ready to not pay anything towards it because we will go out of business. I wish these Republicans would shut up and try to work with this president and some Democrats too. How come Bush did nothing about this and now Republicans have a plan? Right!

Also I believe the pharmaceutial companies should be investigated...there is way too much fraud and greed...they go to dr.'s offices, give them samples, take them to lunch, etc. in other words they pay the dr.'s off....I know people who work in offices so don't tell me this doesn't happen. It's a lot of greed. And then dr.'s are afraid of lawsuits, which should only be allowed for ligitimate reasons, not spilling hot coffee from McDonald's on your lap and suing! Duh!...and then the dr.'s order tons of tests that aren't necessary because of fear of lawsuits.

What makes any sane person think that the government can manage health care. Look at what the government has done to Social Security, Medicare, Public Housing, and now AIG. With this kind of a track record they have proven that they aren’t even capable of successfully operating the local burger stand. To start with where will the money come from and not cause an increase to the government debt any more than it is? In his first 132 days in office Obama has increased the debt of the government by 694.2 Billion dollars. At this rate he will increase the debt of the Government by 1.9 Trillion dollars in his first year alone and 7.6 Trillion dollars by the end of his 4 year term in office. If he is elected for a second term with the same rate of spending then the government debt will increase by 15.3 Trillion dollars. Since the debt owed by the Government was 10.6 Trillion dollars when he took office an additional 7.6 Trillion will almost double the debt in just 4 years to 18.3 Trillion dollars and at the end of his second term it will have increased to an unthought-of 26 Trillion dollars. The interest alone on this amount of debt will consume more than half of the entire federal budget. This does not even include what Obama wants to put into healthcare which has been estimated may actually cost upwards of 1.6 Billion dollars. This is money that the Government does not have and cannot conceivably have without raising taxes to the point where everyone in the country will be paying a much higher tax rate than they are currently paying. No matter how you want to put it any healthcare reform will require government involvement which will lead to required government spending so the money is an important issue, if it’s not there then healthcare will have to wait until such time as it is available. Obama promised change but this is ridiculous he makes all who came before him look minor on their spending while in office. Time to stop spending and do what should have been done long ago, cut spending which is not specifically authorized in article 1 of the constitution.
There is NO money for healthcare, there is NO money for education reform or any other dreams in the upcoming budget. Look at what the government has done to Social Security, Medicare, Public Housing, and now AIG.

As far as the federal government cost of health care to its own employees you can Google FEHB and see what the different plans available to federal employees are. It should be noted that these are the same exact plans which are available to our elected federal officials. The government does not pay 100% of the employee health insurance and the portion they pay is considered a benefit in lieu of wages just like most major employers who provide a health benefit to their employees. Usually the larger the company (more employees) the more likely is that they provide the health insurance rather than paying the larger wage as most employees would rather have access to the health insurance instead of the small increase in wages. For an employee in California with a family looking at an HMO (California Health Net, High Option) this amounts to roughly $4.40 an hour. For the same family in California looking at a FFS (Blue Cross Blue Shield Service Benefit Plan, Standard Family) this also amounts to $4.40 an hour. Small business's which have fewer employees cannot afford to offer this type of benefit to their employees without having to make drastic cuts (layoffs) or drastically raise the price of their finished product/service both of which will probably cause the business to fail in time due to lack of profit. The federal employee still has to pay to participate in the insurance ($292 a month for the HMO and $357 a month for the FFS) so the government does not provide 100% of the insurance to the government employee. Probably the best that the government could do for health care would be to somehow expand the FEHB type of insurance for the general public to participate in but with no government funding for the general public. You have to remember that the federal employee is receiving his government share of the insurance funding as part of his wage and benefit package and performing labor in return, the general public would provide no benefit to the government for any government funding of their health care. Perhaps another question you may want to ask yourself is how much would I pay for healthcare insurance? Would you pay $1055.00 per month to be able to partake of the HMO I used as an example? Would you be willing to pay $1120.00 per month to be able to participate in the FFS I used as an example? If yes then maybe the answer is not government paid healthcare but the government allowing all citizens to participate in their healthcare programs at their own expense (they would have to pay the total of what the government pays for their employee plus what the employee pays). I would imagine that there are some plans which would be cheaper but they might not offer the same level of health care as a more costly one. If this was the way they go then it would be up to each individual to carefully compare costs and benefits between plans before making possibly a wrong choice.

When Medicare was created in 1965, benefits were relatively limited and retirees paid a substantial percentage of the costs of their own care. In 1965, Congressional actuaries expected Medicare to cost $3.1 billion by 1970. In 1969, that estimate was revised to $5 billion, and it actually came in at $6.8 billion. Things have gotten worse since, and Medicare today costs $455 billion and rising. Medicaid was intended as a last resort for the poor but now covers one-third of all long-term care expenses in the U.S. -- that is, it has become a middle-class subsidy for aging parents of the Baby Boomers. Its annual bill is $227 billion, and so far this fiscal year is rising by 17%. Schip was pitched a decade ago as a safety net for poor kids, Schip is now open to families that earn up to 300% of the poverty level, or $63,081 for a family of four. Any new federal health plan will inevitably follow the same trajectory, no matter how much Senators might claim they've guaranteed otherwise. The Lewin Group consultants estimate that 119 million people who now have private insurance could potentially be captured by the government under the Obama public option. This is on top of the 90 million already in Medicare or Medicaid. This would guarantee a spending explosion that would over time lift federal outlays as a share of GDP into the upper 20% range or higher. This health-care debate isn't like the "stimulus" bill, which was largely about short-term spending and deficits. This one is about whether to turn 17% of the U.S. economy entirely and permanently into the arms of the government.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, during the phase-in period of Social Security, Congress was able to grant generous benefit increases because the system had perpetual short-run surpluses. Congressional amendments to Social Security took place in even numbered years (election years) because the bills were politically popular, but by the late 1970s, this era was over. For the next three decades, projections of Social Security's finances would show large, long-term deficits, and in the early 1980s, the program flirted with immediate insolvency. From this point on, amendments to Social Security would take place in odd numbered years (years that were not election years) because Social Security reform now meant tax increases and benefit reductions. When revenues exceed expenditures, as they have in most years, the excess is invested in special series, non-marketable U.S. Government bonds, thus the Social Security Trust Fund indirectly finances the federal government's general purpose deficit spending. It is also interesting to note that the Supreme Court has established that no one has any legal right to Social Security benefits. The Court decided, in Flemming v. Nestor (1960), that "entitlement to Social Security benefits is not a contractual right". In simple terms, the decision means that since no one has any legal right to Social Security benefits, Congress can cut or eliminate benefits at any time.

The Trust Fund is regarded by some as an accounting trick which holds no economic significance. Others argue that it has specific legal significance because the Treasury securities it holds are backed by the "full faith and credit" of the U.S. government, which has an obligation to repay its debt. It is important to note, however, that while the Treasury guarantees the interest and principal payments it makes to the Social Security Trust Fund, the benefit payments made from the Social Security Trust Fund to American retirees have no guarantee at all. The Social Security Administration's authority to make benefit payments as granted by Congress extends only to its current revenues and existing Trust Fund balance, i.e., redemption of its holdings of Treasury securities. Therefore, Social Security's ability to make full payments once annual benefits exceed revenues depends in part on the federal government's ability to make good on the bonds that it has issued to the Social Security trust funds. The federal government's ability to repay Social Security, in turn, is contingent on fiscal policies taken today (which have tended to increase deficits and the percent of the budget spent on interest and principal payments) and in the future. Once again in simple terms if you want Social Security then the government is going to have to reduce its debt (lower spending to pay off debt) or raise the FICA taxes to ensure that there is enough coming in during the current year to cover the benefits which are to be paid. Raising the FICA taxes is probably not the way to go as in the coming years there are more people who will be receiving Social Security than there will be people paying the taxes which means that the government has to stop spending on all of their dream programs that they are now trying to pass. Bottom line is the Government does not have this kind of money and there is no way they can get this kind of money without a large tax increases on the entire population.

All I know is that something has to be done...this president is trying...if he didn't do anything everyone would be screaming...now he's trying to get people together to discuss this and make it better and people are screaming. Our health sysmtem is broken. I'm so tired of working so hard and then having to pay so much of my salary for healthcare and my employer is ready to not pay anything towards it because we will go out of business. I wish these Republicans would shut up and try to work with this president and some Democrats too. How come Bush did nothing about this and now Republicans have a plan? Right!

Posted by: Barb
______________________
Didn't Nancy Pelosi make the statement "we won, you lost"? Since the Democrats have a filibuster proof majority in both houses of Congress why would they need a SINGLE Republican supporter? They can pass this health care package in an hour if they wanted to.

It seems what you really want is to change the first amendment. You favor freedom of speech but ONLY for the Democrats.

what we need to do as voters is remove all health care for goverment workers including the president until they come up with a plan to get health care for everyone,People are actally dying because they cant afford medical treatments,one term in office and they have health and pension for life .did we get to vote on that?

The poll showed that those folks who followed the debate more closely were slightly less supportive on average. Since the insurance industries, the doctors and the drug corporations have had the reform under their scope from the beginning and they tend to be less supportive the stats do not surprised me. Us 9-5 working and middle class folks aint got time to focus all our attention on it, but we understand that what we have now is broken and dydfunctional. We need change now.

Nationalized health care is not the answer its is a disaster!

Hey Barb your right something has to be done ...but you can't create more problems by fixing one ...how about trying to address the minority of people without healthcare with out inconveniencing the majority

The Real Story: Congress, their staffs, and other federal employees enjoy special health care privileges that are denied to the rest of Americans. Congressmen and other federal workers understandably like the system that they have set up for themselves at your expense. So much so, that buried in many of the leading bills to restructure the health care system, there are provisions that exempt members of Congress, their staffs, and their dependents from each bill's effect. Demand that Congressmen and Bureaucrats stand in line for their health care just!!!!!!! Never Forget: They work for you. You pay their salary and benefits. Not Vice Versa.

No excuses Congress. Be true Democrats and vote for the public health care option. Don't sell out!

"Nationalized health care is not the answer its is a disaster!" - We have low life expectancies and higher infant death rates than other technologically advanced countries. We spend more per capita and its a leading cause of bankruptcy. In other words - privatized insurance is ineffective and expensive. How is that not a disaster?

We're all being led down the primrose path by a president who says we MUST reform healthcare and education by devoting more government spending to these areas. The government doesn't know what to do to help. Look at all the debate without solutions. All this administration has suggested is more spending.