Posted on 05/17/2012 6:44:59 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The sourcing on this one is awfully thin, which raises two possibilities. One: The details are exaggerated or outright made up to try to start a firestorm among ObamaCare-hating conservatives. Two: The details are spot-on and are being deliberately leaked to see how ObamaCare-hating conservatives react. Can some parts of this thing be preserved or must the stench of The One's greatest victory be completely expunged before Congress takes another run at health care?
If the law is upheld, Republicans will take to the floor to tear out its most controversial pieces, such as the individual mandate and requirements that employers provide insurance or face fines.
If the law is partially or fully overturned they’ll draw up bills to keep the popular, consumer-friendly portions in place — like allowing adult children to remain on parents’ health care plans until age 26, and forcing insurance companies to provide coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. Ripping these provisions from law is too politically risky, Republicans say...
Then on Wednesday, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) gave the entire House Republican Conference a preview of where the party is heading. His message: “When the court rules, we’ll be ready.”
But Boehner warned that they’ll relegislate the issue in smaller, bite sizes, rather than putting together an unwieldy new health care bill.
“If all or part of the law is struck down, we are not going to repeat the Democrats’ mistakes,” Boehner said, according to several sources present. “We have better ideas on health care — lots of them. We have solutions, of course, for patients with pre-existing conditions and other challenges.”
Reminds me of the furor back in November 2010 when The Hill claimed Eric Cantor wanted to keep parts of ObamaCare after getting rid of the mandate. They corrected their story later that same day to say that in fact Cantor wanted to get rid of the whole law but that the GOP would come up with its own way to pay for the more popular policies introduced in the bill, like the coverage guarantee for people with preexisting conditions. I think that’s the upshot of Politico’s story. You can’t really keep parts of ObamaCare’s framework intact without the mandate; the whole point of the conservative severability argument is that the mandate is the payment mechanism for all the goodies in the bill such that if the former goes the latter have to go with it. What you could do instead is come up with a smaller bill or bills that would reintroduce some of those provisions but in an entirely new payment framework. Which, it seems, is what the GOP’s thinking of doing:
DeMint — a power broker on the right — said the public opposes Obama’s healthcare law in part because of the messy process through which it passed. He wants conservatives to take an incremental approach that keeps the focus on individual policies.
“We have a number of simple, common-sense solutions, including allowing folks to buy health plans in other states, giving tax equity to those who don’t get healthcare from their employer, expanding health savings accounts, and state pools for those with pre-existing conditions,” DeMint said.
“These can be passed in a step-by-step process that would allow Americans to digest each new reform and build trust that each of these ideas stand on their own and will improve quality and lower costs.”
But then there’s this:
Representative Tom Price, an orthopedic surgeon who heads the House Republican Policy Committee, said stopgap legislation could be crafted for 2012 if the court ended health insurance safeguards for young adults and children with pre-existing medical conditions.
“That would present a significant void and vacuum in health policy,” Price said. “There will be a need to have some things to fill that vacuum.”
I’m not too worried about that stopgap legislation somehow drifting into permanence through congressional neglect just because, as I say, they’d need to find a payment mechanism for it sooner rather than later. But if you’re looking for a way in which pieces of O-Care might actually be preserved, that’s it.
There’s bound to be more on this from the GOP leadership tomorrow so stay tuned. While we wait, enjoy this memo obtained by BuzzFeed from a leftist group about the various health-care theatrics they’re planning around next month’s Supreme Court ruling. Can’t wait to see what they have in mind for “hospital emergency rooms.”
“I would not assume the bill has any good parts”
Well, the most frightening thing is not the parts but the whole thing, which is running us broke, is incomprehensible, and is orchestrated by people with impure motives. We citizens have a tough problem.
Running out of money might be the only thing that stops the growth of our governmental monsters.
” And Romney has also consistently said that he wants to keep the popular mandates in law just as Republican House leaders do, Those popular handout mandates are terrible policies but good politically (in the short term anyway.)”
Lord, give me stregnth
Thank you KG and God’s best to you and yours.
Here’s some potentiall good news from Arizona today.
Arizona to Hawaii: Provide verification of Obama birth
http://www.jeffhead.com/verifybirth.htm
I hope more states climb on board this wagon.
Yes, but how do you run out of money when we can't pass a budget to limit spending?
Both of which would raise the cost of health-care tremendously. So much for holding Romney's feet to the fire.
What about Obama’s private army? Will they keep that, or discard it?
Planet Earth to Planet Kolob: Provide verification of Romney's claim to be "spirit born" on Kolob...
Doesn't that make Romney an alien "non-citizen" of this planet...sent to take over a human body here?
And Jeff, be honest with all the posters here: Don't you believe you're one of these "spirit birth" aliens, too?
I hope states mount an effort to get Romney to publicly confess what he already privately believes...that his origin was NOT as a U.S. Citizen nor even as an earthling!
Thanks sickoflibs.
Come on now admit it you would be disappointed if they didn’t put the BOHICA on us again wouldn’t you?
Boehner Could have defunded this mess and Bachman fought him tooth and tong, all to no avail. Boehner is in on this up to his eyeballs and he is not alone, he has many in his chain of command.
Do you have private insurance, not provide by an employer? My guess is you have no clue what a simple hospital procedure costs.
I was in a small hospital for a retina membrane removal took a couple hours. The total bill was $43,000.00 doc filled $7,000.00, 2, 3 hours tops.
A couple years ago I was in and out of a hospital maybe 2 hours to do a couple stents and set for 4 hours until the artery healed up. Total Bill on than was over $106,000.00
If you can accumulate that kind of wealth then good for you, but 99% don't have it and never will. Try and get insurance after 65, or for that matter try and find a doctor if you are on Medicare. You can't even see one if you pay cash, they can't take it. Well if they withdraw totally from medicare they can bill what they want, until ObamaCare kicks in and I am convinced it will kick in.
IMHO Boner needs to go anyways.
Sounds kinda Commie. What're you, some kinda pinko??
Pinko? Please.
Insurance by its very definition is socialism. The business model is to socialize the risk, doesn’t matter what type of insurance it is, that’s what insurance is. You take money from a large enough pool and ensure that the premiums from that combined pool are large enough to cover the statistical payouts needed to cover that pool with enough left over on top to put away for large statitical blips (payouts that affect massive amounts of the pool, hurricanes, contageons, etc) and make a profit.
That’s what insurance, ALL insurance is at its core. The problem with insurance access is that simply put, when you allow an insurer to cherry pick, they obviously are going to reject, or charge rediculous fees to anyone that increased the likelihood of payouts. This is counter the very nature of socialzing the risk, and it leads to the problems we have now.
You solve this by a simple matter called community pricing.
If you are so devout a capitlist that you think I am a communist, then you need to go cancel all your insurance on everything today. Because like it or not, socializing risk is the very foundation of any insurance model.
That right there is the actual problem with the health care system in America - COST, not access.
There are three basic "issues" with health care - quality, access, and affordability. Quality is not a problem for the US system. When we brag about having the best health care system in the world (while implicitly meaning "quality"), we really are speaking truth.
Now, most efforts to "reform" health care, from ObamaCare to even "conservative" measures, all focus on access - issues like insurance coverage and the like. But this isn't really the issue. Everybody who wants medical care can get it - even if they'll be slitting their own throats financially to do so. There's also always Medicaid, Medicare, and the emergency room route.
Problem is, by trying to forcibly expand insurance coverage, as well as injecting programs like Medicare and Medicaid, the *actual* problem of affordability is made worse. Since there's no real competition, and since government programs tend to just pay without asking a lot of questions, and since a lot of insurance companies do the same (and will get worse as universal coverage is mandated), and with the massive bureaucracy that accompanies all of this, hospitals tend to just up prices to both cover paperwork and malpractice insurance costs, as well as, well, because they know that the gubmint and insurance will pay out. There's no real incentive to keep cost down, so nobody does.
Which is why a retinal membrane removal costs $43K.
REAL health care reform would focus on bringing costs down by introducing measures to encourage thrift and competition, as well as pursuing tort reform to reduce malpractice liability. Yet nobody seems to be talking about it.
Exactly. Surgeons are essentially mechanics, in fact we have robotic surgery for prostate. Most doctors today would have a hard time matching the diagnostic capability of a good computer program. In fact I would rather have a computer than my current doctor.
In the early Sixties my cousin had a burst appendix and he went completely septic, spent three days in the hospital total cost Surgery, Room, Op room, medication, followup doc visits. $300.00.
I really don't want to go back to the time when you either had cash or you didn’t get treated, but you accomplish the same thing by rationing, and every plan will have it one way or another.
I remember my first trip to the dentist, I had never seen one, but I had a molar that had to be pulled. If there was another option available I didn't know of it. I am sure cost affected my options. This must have been 1948 or 49 but the point of this story is that my only memory of the experience was that the price for pulling that tooth was 50 cents without Novocain or $1.00 with, I was really glad dad had the dollar.
People in my childhood world rarely saw a doctor even if injured. I had an uncle working in the lead mines during WW II, he was a driller that loaded their own holes. He was tamping a hole when it went off, blowing off an arm, and I can remember this well, they wrapped his arm and brought him to my Grandfather's two room house, laid him on a bed and waited for him to die.
Pre-existing conditions and the uninsured have always been a problem, at least since they ended the public health hospital system. Let’s just return to public health hospitals.
Pre-existing conditions and the uninsured have always been a problem, at least since they ended the public health hospital system. Let’s just return to public health hospitals.
I was just thinking that government workers would probably be sent to public health hospitals. I think that I am beginning to like the idea more and more.
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