Polosicare 1.055 Trillion

Off Topic Politics and World Issues
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By Martin Vaughan, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The Congressionalâ??Budgetâ??Office said Thursday a U.S. House health-care system re-write would extend healthâ??insurance to 96% of the nonelderly U.S. population by 2019, and spend $1.055 trillion to do so.

Penalties imposed on individuals who did not purchase insurance, and employers who did not offer coverageâ??toâ??theirâ??workers, would raise $161 billion over that time-frame. That brings the net cost of the bill to $894 billion through 2019, CBO said.

House Democrats have seized on that net cost figure to claim that their bill is below President Barack Obama’s upper limit which he set for health-care legislation of $900 billion.

The $1.055 trillion estimate also does not include $245 billion needed to stop Medicare payments to doctors from decreasing, which the House plans to address through separate legislation introduced Thursday.

The costs of the bill are fully offset by cuts to existing spending programs-- including the Medicare Advantage and other programs–saving $426 billion through 2019, and by tax increases raising $572 billion over that time, CBO said. In fact, the combined impact of provisions in the bill would be a net deficit reduction of $104 billion in the next decade, according to CBO.

CBO also said the House bill would not add to the deficit in the first decade beyond 2019–a key condition for support from fiscally conservative House Democrats.

CBO Director Doug Elmendorf, in a Thursday letter to House Democratic Chairmen, cautioned that his estimates are preliminary and “subject to substantial uncertainty.”

House leaders capped weeks of internal negotiations among Democrats today by unveiling the sweeping legislation. They aim to bring the bill to a vote by the full House by the end of next week.

The bill would create exchanges where people who do not have access to health insurance from their employer could buy coverage. It would create a government- sponsored plan to compete with private plans.

The bill would reduce the number of uninsured in the U.S. by 36 million by 2019. By that time, 30 million people would be covered through the insurance exchanges, of which 6 million would be covered by the public option.

An expansion in eligibility rules for the Medicaid program would bring an additional 15 million enrollees to Medicaid by 2019, CBO said.

-By Martin Vaughan, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9244; martin.vaughan@ dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires
10-29-091728ET
Copyright (c) 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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Hmm, how about not having this plan, but passing the $426 billion in its cuts and NOT adding the $572 billion in new taxes?

Bet that didn’t even occur.

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So, how about that bi-partisan healthcare plan? It looks as if members of the opposing factions were able to reach a compromise. Yeah, apparently it was difficult to get center left and far left Democrats to agree. Heyoooo!

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A waste of a huuuuge sum of money. By the time it gets implemented, it will probably have cost more than that!
This is a crazy economical experiment.

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Pelosi, unsurprisingly, gave a knob-job (actually, what a horrid image) to the trial lawyers. From page 1431-1433 of the bill, according to Capitol Confidential, regarding pages 1431-1433:

Section 2531, entitled "Medical Liability Alternatives,? establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]â?¦â?¦ a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneysâ?? fees or imposes caps on damages.

Wonder what else is in the 1900+ pages?

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No brains, only constituents to please

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Really think the 1900 pages were for her constituents?

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Does this number take into account the 6 access to it versus the 10 year payment of it? What I mean is, how much would 10 years of access cost?

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[quote]MaximusB wrote:
Does this number take into account the 6 access to it versus the 10 year payment of it? What I mean is, how much would 10 years of access cost?[/quote]

This is just the 10 year CBO score, so no.

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I don’t see how this wouldn’t be found unconstitutional. What power will they rely on to mandate health care coverage?

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The Supreme Court is not, nor has it been for a very long time, in the business of finding government programs unconstitutional.

The question will not even come up.

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Ah yes, let private enterprise lead us out of this mess. That’ll fix it!

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[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Ah yes, let private enterprise lead us out of this mess. That’ll fix it![/quote]

They have lead the way in everything else.

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[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Ah yes, let private enterprise lead us out of this mess. That’ll fix it![/quote]

Well it’s collective thinking that’s made it a mess for everyone. If I alone was responsible for my health-care, and noone was required to subsidize my health-care in any way, then there is no collective mess or cost.

Either way, healthcare is rationed. People will die that might, just might, have lived, if the bestest, greatest, latest (BGL!) technology, could’ve been employed up until the bitter end.

This is a choice about how to ration healthcare. Through a completely private pricing system? Or, through the cold hard reality of trying to keep government healthcare from overwhelming a nation’s budget?

You will not cover everyone and employ the BGL technology. All while still carrying out the R & D for the next generation of BGL technology. That’s utopian nonsense. The reality is, government will decide who lives and dies, who’s too old to bother with, and who warrants a fighting chance with public monies.

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[quote]Sloth wrote:
Well it’s collective thinking that’s made it a mess for everyone. If I alone was responsible for my health-care, and noone was required to subsidize my health-care in any way, then there is no collective mess or cost.

Either way, healthcare is rationed. People will die that might, just might, have lived, if the bestest, greatest, latest (BGL!) technology, could’ve been employed up until the bitter end.[/quote]

I have never seen a definition of “rationing” that included products or services being readily available to all who are willing and able to pay for it themselves, whether directly or via contracted insurance.

Being unable to receive, for example, hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of services and resources because of not being able to pay it and not having contracted for insurance that would pay it is not rationing.

Rationing prevents people (some percentage of them) from obtaining goods or services regardless that they have the means and willingness to pay an amount which a provider would be willing to provide them for, but for the government preventing it. Sorry, you don’t have a ration coupon; or sorry, the government hasn’t approved this procedure for you.

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[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Well it’s collective thinking that’s made it a mess for everyone. If I alone was responsible for my health-care, and noone was required to subsidize my health-care in any way, then there is no collective mess or cost.

Either way, healthcare is rationed. People will die that might, just might, have lived, if the bestest, greatest, latest (BGL!) technology, could’ve been employed up until the bitter end.

I have never seen a definition of “rationing” that included products or services being readily available to all who are willing and able to pay for it themselves, whether directly or via contracted insurance.

Being unable to receive, for example, hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of services and resources because of not being able to pay it and not having contracted for insurance that would pay it is not rationing.

Rationing prevents people (some percentage of them) from obtaining goods or services regardless that they have the means and willingness to pay an amount which a provider would be willing to provide them for, but for the government preventing it. Sorry, you don’t have a ration coupon; or sorry, the government hasn’t approved this procedure for you.[/quote]

I guess I mean to say that even in a free market (not that we have one), those who provide healthcare will determine who will recieve it. Rationing coupons being in the form of dollars. This will determine where to and to whom scarce resources will go. And, even if they do some charity work, community service work, whatever, there’s only so much they can do. At some point, they have to turn people away or bankrupt themselves. The government is not going to be any different. Except, politicians are in a position where they’ll be terrified to make the hard choices, until they absolutely must. And maybe, not until it’s too late.

My main point is that people will die for lack of healthcare under both systems. But one system has the potential to drag the entire nation into a financial crises.

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Dollars are not the same as rationing coupons.

One obtains rationing coupons only at the will of the government.

Dollars, on the other hand, in a free society one can obtain by providing goods and services that others wish to pay for.

It is for the most part not the case that in a free market, health care providers choose who gets to have what limited services are available and who does not. If you do your part in providing goods or services to others resulting in sufficient dollars to obtain the health care, they will provide it to you rather than choose who gets it and who does not.

Thus, no one is telling you you cannot have it: only that you must provide something of equal value (or have that taken care of by having contracted for insurance that does so. Which the insurance company wanted to provide because you provided them with something – premiums – that they considered, on average, worth the financial risk of in many cases needing to pay out.)

And no one is telling health care providers that they cannot provide service to a given person, or cannot be paid for it.

Rationing and the not-unlimited-availability-to-everyone aspect of the free market (which of course is also an aspect of any system) are NOT the same thing and not at all of the same kind.

One is coercive and the other is not.

I agree with your general point, but not that subpoint.

Rationing is the Obama view that grandma, who wants the pacemaker and who has a doctor who wants to provide it for an amount of money that she is willing and able to pay, cannot have it but shall instead receive pain pills.

With free market allocation of resources, she gets the pacemaker.

Government allocation of resources may, for example, likely result in the street bum getting a multi-hundred thousand dollar medical treatment or series of treatments, while your dad, at age 70, who has the same problem but because of his life choices and the valuable things he has done for others has the means to pay for treatment, is “ineligible” to receive it.

With free market allocation of resources, it’s the other way around.

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[quote]John S. wrote:
Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Ah yes, let private enterprise lead us out of this mess. That’ll fix it!

They have lead the way in everything else.[/quote]

If you say so!

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Ah yes, like all those European countries who pay less for better outcomes.

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[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Sloth wrote:ystem? Or, through the cold hard reality of trying to keep government healthcare from overwhelming a nation’s budget?

Ah yes, like all those European countries who pay less for better outcomes.

[/quote]

Check the cancer survival rates my friend, you will find out why what you are saying is fucking retarded.