Posted on 05/21/2009 11:48:57 AM PDT by freespirited
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, speaking to reporters this morning, sounded extraordinarily optimistic about the prospects for bipartisan support of the health care reform bill that his committee will begin writing in mid-June. "Very high." he said, saying he puts the odds at 75-80%. ...
1. Will the bill provide universal coverage? It has to come pretty close, Baucus said, .By "nearly everybody," Baucus added he was talking about something like 96% of all Americans. ...
2. Will the bill have a government-financed "public option"? ...While Baucus said that "a version will be there," he also hinted strongly that it will be structured as some kind of compromise.
One possibility that he sounded pretty enthusiastic about is having the public option as some kind of "fallback". For instance, there may be such an option in insurance markets where there is no real competition--which, these days, is pretty much everywhere. Another version under discussion would trigger the fallback if the private health insurance industry failed to bring costs under control.
3. What about single payer? Not on the table. Why? Because it couldn't pass the Congress, Baucus said. He also said single payer does not focus enough on quality of care ...
4. How will you bring costs under control? Baucus said the key will be changing the way that health care providers are reimbursed, so that they will be rewarded for the quality of the care they provide, and not the quantity.
5. What about the tax exclusion for employer-provided health care? Baucus hinted strongly that he wants to put some limits on it, because it is "analytically true" that counting health benefits as a kind of tax-free income is regressive, distorts the system, and encourages overuse. But he added: "I'm not endorsing it at this point."
(Excerpt) Read more at swampland.blogs.time.com ...
Here it comes. Mr. "I'm Cutting Taxes for 95% of American Families" is going to tax our health insurance benefits as part of his wealth redistribution scheme.
Well if Ron Paul votes for it I will be surprised.
How are Republicans going to vote? Yes, yes and yes I’m guessing.
So much for the party of no. :(
Yep. And remember how they eviscerated McCain on that very issue.
If Obama had floated the proposals that he has over the last 120 days during the Presidential campaign, he would have gone down in flames.
Repubilican death wish!
That’s not surprising since they are all members of the Republicrat party.
When do the hangings start?
Socialized medicine, here we come.
Actually I think he did. Every speech 0booooombashiite made was riddled with high spending, give away programs that he was proposing. His nationalized health care was promoted by 0boooooombi over & over again, including in the debates with John RINO McCain, who got his ass handed to him by 0booooombi because McCain couldn't effectively portray nationalized health care as a socialized debacle and relate it to the rationed health care messes in Canada or Great Britain. McCain tried to convince Amerika that socialist lite was better than 0booooombashiite's plain old socialism and got trounced by 0booooooombashiite.
I despise 0boooooombashiite with a passion, but in all honesty he is charging full speed ahead on his programs & proposals to redo Amerika into a socialist-fascist cesspool. 0boooooombashiite promised it and he is delivering, sadly to the delight of +50% of dumb ass, stupified masses, while those of us in the tax paying minority will end up paying for his socialist crap.
I just wish for a change we would have a Repub with 10% of the ideological balls that 0boooooombashiite has shown. Again, I can't stand the lying POS sonofabitch, but he is carrying out his campaign promises to make us a socialist hell hole. Unfortunately once socialism is in with various programs, it NEVER gets retracted or reversed.
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I agree with Max. There will be republicans voting along with democrats on a lot of things. But there won’t be any conservatives.
The same people who can’t balance a budget, nor their own checkbooks are going to complete their control over medical care in the US? We are so screwed. Why do we keep voting in these people?
Sadly I agree with Baucus.
The GOP moves further to the left every year. They are not the party they were back when Clinton was in office. Also there isn’t enough anger like there was back with HillaryCare. So there isn’t going to be enough calls to congress now. Another thing is the democrats are not going to waste this opportunity to pass healthcare reform. It took 15+ years to get to a point where this is a possibility. They got the numbers now and they will ram it though.
Universal Health Care will be sold as PREPARATION OBAMARRHOID!
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