HEALTHCARE THREAD

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2009/11/19/quebec-facebook-sick-leave-benefits.html

when NPR pundits doubt that something as "EXPANSIVE" as the Senate bill will pass, you know we're fucked.

END THE TWO MOTHERFUCKING GIULIANI WARS, we can afford it.

Stupak-like motion tabled by Senate, 54-45. PHEW.

whoah was honestly not expecting that to happen

pleasantly surprised!

Meanwhile this Ezra Klein column is worth reading.

no-one seems clear on whether the public option was dropped or not. news said yes, reid said no, apparently there is some kind of pseudo thing

im prepared to beat the shit out of joe lieberman if it comes to it

i am not a violent person but

no jury in america would convict you

soooo does anyone know whats going on

I don't get how allowing 55+ citizens to "buy into" Medicaid solves anything; this is more feinting.

ppl 55 to 65 are the most likely to be un-/underinsured and have the worst health of those not covered by medicare. it's a fair chunk of ppl that should be covered.

yeah it's a feint but with the lieberman and snowe show what are you gonna do?

fuckin Lieberman. tyranny of the minority here.

can someone explain this stupid "national insurance program run by private insurers" plan cuz I don't see how this accomplishes anything.

i don't really get that part. the only good signs of this that I see is that it will now be illegal to rescind coverage or deny coverage for people with pre-existing conditions (that is, that's really the thing I'm most concerned about since my family now falls into this boat), and I think there is a price cap on how much they can raise the costs on people with conditions. But there also doesn't seem to be anythings stated about the level of care required; you can have 'insurance' that refuses to pay for anything substantial. Is there anything in the bill to keep that from happening?

A death panel.

and not to be redundant but I wish all kinds of horrible cancer on Lieberman. Ass cancer. Brain cancer. Ronnie James Dio's cancer. in fact, just take all the cancer afflicting everybody else and give it to ol' Joe, that'd be good.

Why? His gold-plated health care will pay for it.

gold doesn't cure everything

yes it does!

to be fair even with a public option in place this would be a concern. the government doesn't do anything I want it to do for me in a timely manner so I wouldn't have a huge amount of faith that they would extend the highest quality of care either. I don't know how you get to that point. It seems almost insurmountable.

Anti-trust exemptions will definitely remain in here. In ten years it will be single-payer but instead of the gov't it will be Too-Big-To-Fail AmeriCross Corporation. Unlike a gov't plan we won't be able to vote for changes but will nonetheless have to bail them out when they've jacked up premiums so high no one can afford to pay.

way to go dumbshits

Yay for a government report to include the phrase "insurance death spiral".

Senate has completely fucked this up imho

eh, there were similar reports about the house bill, werent there?

no. not the same thing either, as the Senate is coming later in the process. there's not going to be anything resembling a public option in the Senate bill, it looks like. and the compromises they've proposed so far have not secured the support of the necessary "moderate" votes, AND they're ridiculously underfunded and expensive, AND they don't accomplish what a public option would.

in short, Pelosi delivered. Reid isn't going to.

these guys

if the bill still prohibits private insurers from denying based on pre-existing conditions, jacking up rates on people because of those conditions, dropping people because of those conditions, and gets rid of lifetime and annual caps (apparently it didn't do the latter but they were working on fixing that), then I think it is still a vital and awesome bill even without the rest of this. do I want a public option? absolutely yes. do I care if that public option is only available to people 55 years old? no, because selfishly, neither I nor anyone in my family falls into that category right now. But we are potentially fucked by the pre-existing stuff and any laws that go into place that will keep me from going into bankruptcy because my wife has cancer are good by me.

that reason essay is so weird. like, he acknowledges that france actually has a better health care system. but he opposes the things that make it possible. but he acknowledges that the u.s. system is nearly broken. but he can't bring himself to actually support socialized medicine in america. so he'll just keep going to france to get his socialized medicine there. while fantasizing about some mythical "market-driven" american system that will somehow someday be better than the one we have.

This just in...

There will be no healthcare reform...EVER!

That is all.

that.... essay made my head hurt a little

Former Democratic National chairman Howard Dean, a major public option supporter who also backed the Medicare expansion, told Vermont Public Radio: “This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill.”

srsly wow

howard dean way not otm

how the fuck have these shitting fucks fucked this thing up this fucking badly, is what i would sincerely like to know

i wonder if that's dean's way of getting lieberman to vote yes

tracer have you lived under a parliament for so long you have forgotten...

the distance between campaign promise and policy execution is about 1 trillion bazillion times longer and more assfucked here than anywhere except lebanon

*dean scream*

i actually am a fan of guy, surprised at his assessment of the proper course of action. agree this is the collapse of hcr tho. for now.

we're #2 but we try harder.

xp

what do u mean by "the collapse" hunter?

depriving insurance companies of the ability to rescind coverage or deny coverage for pre-existing conditions are very valuable insurance regulations. i guess i should wait til i read more on the bill, but i dont see much more.

i dont have a lot of faith these changes will make insurance more affordable for the majority of people who need coverage. insurance is made more affordable when lower risk people who are able to pay for coverage enter the pool. how does this accomplish that? it is designed to allow high risk or expensive people to have access to insurance (which is v. important obv). how does it address healthcare costs? does it still have provisions taxing goldplated plans or subsidies for lower income people?

basically the regulations without the public option will mean an increase in costs. I can't believe anyone is arguing the opposite, this seems baldly obvious.

goole yeah, the contrast has made me realize (realise?) how weak the national parties in the u.s. actually are. just look at the party chairmen. neither of them runs the show. there is no there there! i dunno, i should read up more on the parliamentary whip system, somehow the 'governing party' generally manages to get major policy enacted in the u.k. without months of protracted, public sausage-making.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/12/health-reform-would-dramatically-expand-access-to-health-insurance.php

i'll have to read later, but this is the kind of assessment im seekin

depriving insurance companies of the ability to rescind coverage or deny coverage for pre-existing conditions are very valuable insurance regulations. i guess i should wait til i read more on the bill, but i dont see much more.

to be fair to you and everyone its hard to say exactly whats in the senate health care bill since these negotiations seem to be happening at an hourly rate--that being said (and this is the dems fault, including the white house) the messaging on this bill has been TERRIBLE, meaning that a lot of progressives are standing around calling this a collapse, a ripoff, etc. j0hn was doing it in another thread yesterday. and ill admit it: this is not a great bill. this isnt really in the "very good" bill range. but it is a GOOD bill. like, you know, c+/b-, depending on ones expectations. and this is how progressive policy change on this scale happens--its a foot-in-the-door process. scrapping this bill because it isnt liberal enough means no one will pick healthcare up for another 10 years, and probably more; passing this bill despite its major flaws means that it can be expanded.

as to some of yr specific questions:

i dont have a lot of faith these changes will make insurance more affordable for the majority of people who need coverage. insurance is made more affordable when lower risk people who are able to pay for coverage enter the pool. how does this accomplish that?

i dont know specifically how to address this question but the idea, id guess, is that wide-ranging subsidies + more competitive "insurance marketplaces," or whatever theyre called, will bring more people into the system.

how does it address healthcare costs?

well, it doesnt have a single, wide-ranging, all-encompassing solution for rising healthcare costs... it has dozens and dozens of possible solutions that it proposes to test out in various places. atul gawande writes about it here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/12/14/091214fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all

does it still have provisions taxing goldplated plans or subsidies for lower income people?

the cadillac plan tax is still one of the most contentious elements of the bill--its still in there (last i heard) and may be weakened (i.e. the "cadillac" threshold raised from $8k/$21k to $9.5k/$25k). but i think it has much stronger support from the white house than the public option did, despite opposition from labor, and reid seems committed.

as for subsidies--as you can probably guess from the 538 graph on yglesias's post, its got em. enough? well... that depends on what you consider "affordable" w/r/t healthcare and so forth. but silver argues convincingly that even if theyre not "enough" theyre still vastly better than the "status quo."

i mean i guess the thing that i take away from the whole debate is:

1) the healthcare status quo is terrible.

2) this bill makes the situation (pick one: marginally/somewhat/vastly) better.

3) (and this is the sticking point for all of us i guess) this is the last chance we have for a decade or more to enact reform on this scale and create a structure off which further progressive policy can be built.