Obama applauds healthcare progress
The White House just issued a statement this morning reacting to word of a deal with hospitals to help finance a healthcare overhaul.
"I am pleased by the progress we're making on health care reform and still believe, as I've said before, that one of the best ways to bring down costs, provide more choices, and assure quality is a public option that will force the insurance companies to compete and keep them honest. I look forward to a final product that achieves these very important goals," said the statement from President Obama, who is in Moscow for day two of his first Russian summit.
Administration and industry officials told several news organizations late Monday that after talks involving the White House and key Senate Democrats, the nation's hospitals were on the verge of signing off on a deal to reduce their anticipated payments from Medicare and Medicaid by about $155 billion over the next decade.
The government could use that money to help provide health coverage to millions who now lack it. The cost of healthcare overhaul is projected at $1 trillion or more over the next decade.
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I'll believe it when I see it. Anything short of a strong single-payer option (without a built-to-fail "trigger" stumbling block) is just shuffling profit from one predator's pocket to another's, while Americans "choose" between foregoing medical care or landing on the street.
Medbiz as it stands is nothing but a huge antitrust violation, sucking up premiums and exorbitant drug markups to pay lobbyists to quelch anything resembling real competition. Before swallowing any scare story about Canada or the UK whole, Americans should talk to people from those countries.
No matter what eventually happens with healthcare reform, I am glad that at least it is being discussed at the highest levels of government. A refreshing change of pace from prior administrations. God bless President Obama and the USA!
No matter what eventually happens with healthcare reform, I am glad that at least it is being discussed at the highest levels of government. A refreshing change of pace from prior administrations. God bless President Obama and the USA!
If "the king" wants everyone to have healthcare, why not just decree it like he did to the banks and car companies. Send Rauhm out to break some more legs. That wouldn't cost the gov't (us real taxpayers) anything. This bunch of clowns think that the US can just keep on printing money and buy all the votes it wants. They need to wake up and look at the far left West Coast at the state of financial affairs in California to see where they have the entire nation headed. Dump the pork barrel stimulus that was passed without reading and use that money to give investment credits to MANUFACTURING COMPANIES that produce jobs that last if they are competitive with the orient.
Just keep giving them controll, next it will be how cold or hot you can keep your hosue. Vote them out
There must be one public option for those who wish to have it. Let the private plans compete with the public option.
Thank you.
Try ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Try shrinking the size of the military and just protect our continent. Allow no one into our country unless they have been checked. Stop wasting our money on limos and flowers and gyms, etc. for the royalty--senators and congressman. Let them buy their own gas and oil and security forces. Then there would be plenty of money left over for the people, not these phonies that we deal with. Yoou know what needs to be done, you just won't do it because your a den of thieves. You allow business to do anything and claim it creates jobs. You give them tax breaks and then they move out. You pass along the costs for everything you cancel to the property owners, Also, take away the special benefits for the royalty, let them have the same insurance we get.
Universal Healthcare still = Cruel hoax. No such thing as a free affordable lunch!
Sure public option, whatever, but if it is based on the same insurance model which has no incentives to reduce costs then it will be just as bad as the private insurance system that the government created three decades ago. Costs that have been growing faster than inflation need to be kept in check and the only way you do that is if you put an incentive to control costs into the hands of people. Give people a rebate if they are healthy and don't need additional medical care. That $500 yearly rebate will go along way towards insuring that people seek coverage beyond a yearly visit only when they feel it is necessary. Without an ongoing incentive to reduce costs, then we are going to have to introduce government imposed rationing and more onerous paperwork to justify medical procedures.
Did this blog's author -- who apparently must review all comments -- really feel the need to allow "Chuck's" obviously canned demagogue worship of a comment _twice_?
For you single payor dreamers, the single payor approach requires that private payment for health care be outlawed. That's not going to happen here, so just forget it. The first time somebody gets so much as a new symptom while waiting for diagnostic equipment they could have hired out themselves, a court is going to throw it out.
As far as King Barry's tripe, he's speaking out of his rear end. Private insurers already must compete with government insurance, which has already driven up costs considerably. In the face of an even further empowered state-corporate edifice that doesn't have to control costs (because of its near limitless funding on the backs of the taxpayers), or be at all honest, what manner of regulation does His Worship suppose will inspire private third party payors to control costs or be honest?
Fools.