Senate Republicans Cry Real Tears Over the Fate of Insurance Companies; Little To Spare for the Uninsured
By Susie Madrak Tuesday Jun 16, 2009 5:30pm
After the rape and pillage of the last several decades, do we really care all that much about the survival of the insurance companies? If they were providing adequate service at a reasonable cost, it might not be so infuriating. But to pay all that money and get so little in return?
Yet the Senate Republicans, the Party of No, the Handmaidens of Corporate Welfare, are more concerned about losing their political patrons than the fact that people all over the country are, quite literally, dying.
WASHINGTON — The mood was upbeat in early March when scores of powerful lawmakers and lobbyists joined President Obama in the East Room of the White House to talk about fixing the nation's health care system. Still, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, rose to tell Obama that many Republicans had a problem with his plan to let the government compete with private insurers.
"There's a lot of us that feel that the government is an unfair competitor," Grassley said. "We have to keep what we have now strong, and make it stronger."
Translation: We can't possibly let you cut into insurance companies' obscene profit margins!
Three months later, disagreement has turned to discord over a key element of Obama's health care prescription: his insistence on a "public plan" to compete with private insurers. America's Health Insurance Plans, an industry trade group, is joined by the American Medical Association, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others that have expressed misgivings about greater government involvement.
"We're not sure that the government is very good at running a health plan," said Nancy Nielsen, president of the AMA, which heard Obama defend his plan Monday.
Except for Medicare, with that measley 3% in administrative costs - and the V.A. system. But we'd rather not talk about that!
That has led to a number of compromise proposals, designed to inject choice and competition into the market without letting the government set prices or shift costs to the private sector.
"What I am trying to do — and what a public option will help do — is put affordable health care within reach for millions of Americans," Obama told the American Medical Association.
The first Senate and House bills to emerge this month would offer a public plan, but a third bill, in the Senate, to be unveiled soon might not include it. Ten of 11 Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee wrote Obama this month in opposition.
An analysis by the Lewin Group, a health care consulting firm, found that a public plan such as Medicare would draw 119 million people away from private insurers. That's because a plan patterned after Medicare could pay doctors and hospitals 20% to 30% less than its private competitors. Limiting who can join and regulating what the plan must pay providers would reduce the upheaval, the analysis said.
In other words, we need to make sure the people who need it can't get it...
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Redsate is whining the Democrats are playing by Limbaugh's rules of bipartisanship
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2009/06/16/brea...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OrDo0K3VFc
was one of the cornerstones of capitalism.
it depends on whose competing...
...No, that's not it...
Oh! It depends on whose WINNING!
The life of the working man will never improve as long as these tired old fools like Grassley, Hatch, McConnell, et.al are in Washington under the guise of "representing" the people. They are self serving partisan hacks who have spent all these years in congress lining their pockets and stacking their bank accounts with money from lobbyists of large corporations, and putting their interests before the needs and interests of the people. Only with the gentrification of these useless blowhards will there be even a chance for any kind of improvement in the quality of representation of the people.
Life, yeah, single payer health care
Liberty, yeah, The will of the people.
The Pursuit of Happiness. yep, single payer health care.
I was listening to Ed Shultz today, He had a couple of callers that asked some good questions. They were conservatives and they were very nice.
Workman's Comp, would be history. Gone. No need for it.
Small businesses would get a break. Hell, Big business would get a break. There will always be disability. And there should.
Seems to me that Life requires healthcare.
The pursuit of happiness also requires healthcare.
Especially if it's making you go bankrupt.
So Yeah! I think health care is a right.
To many damned politicians are being bought by the Med industry.
I don't get it. Why are they allowed to buy politicians?
That should be illegal.
Single payer healthcare. NOW!
Hooey!!!!!
The public option is a swindle and you should know it by now.
Nothing but crocodile tears from the Republicrats on the public option.
The insurance companies will put all the sick people there and any others they don't want to insure and watch their profits soar.
Their mission is profits, NOT health care and the less health care the greater the profits.
With the public option, they will have nothing BUT profits.
Meanwhile the sick people on the public option will be paying their own premiums, if they aren't in a coma and what does the public get… the bills!
Privatize the profits and socialize the losses!
That is the way of the Corporatocracy.
It is the way of the Republicrats!
I don't have a lot of info on how it is supposed to work. I thought you as the citizen had the option to go with it or stay with the ins you have. Are you saying ins co's will be able to cut people loose against their will? The info about public option is too vague which leads me to believe that there may be problems.
Do you have info or websites that explain it in greater detail?
Denying care is how they pay the big bucks to the ceo's and the others that make fortunes from it.
Our government helps them cheat us.
Here is a list of elected people taking payoffs to cheat the American people and the amounts of bribes being taken. This is just from health care and insurance.
It is mind boggling to think how much these people are taking from others!
Arlen Specter (R-D- PA- $4,026,933)
Max Baucus (DLC- MT- $2,833,731)
Mitch McConnell (R-KY- $2,758,468)
And when you just go right to Big Insurance, the non-presidential candidates who got the biggest legalized bribes were the 7 senators who have been tasked with the job of killing single-payer:
Ben Nelson (DLC-NE- $1,196,799)
Max Baucus (DLC- MT- $1,184,113)
Joe Lieberman (DLC- CT- $1,036,302)
Arlen Specter (R-D- PA- $1,035,530)
Chuck Schumer (D-NY- $981,400)
Mitch McConnell (R-KY- $929,207)
Chuck Grassley (R-IA- $884,724)
We need to investigate and prosecute these criminals now. Severe jail terms are in order for these criminals!
{ You don't have to repeat post the same comment. Once is fine. SM}
Why Won't C&L Discuss Single Payer?
Really .. why not?
I haven't seen a single front page post presenting the argument for single payer.
Why not?
I think I've seen it discussed. Right now, the initiative being championed by some Democrats was described by Krugman in 2007, called then, the Demoplan, and now, called the public option.
It seems kinda like a stealth single payer option, since it doesn't reduce choice, and instead, adds a choice.
The devil is, of course, in the details. Will the public option be constrained from negotiating prices, much as Medicare-D is?. Will the public option be a dumping ground for chronically ill patients and a windfall for insurance corporations?
I don't see too many people who frequent this blog that don't recognize that the best way to resolve health care costs is to copy a single payer system from Europe, Japan, or Canada. Why reinvent the wheel when it's already been invented?
I guess the question at this point is whether the public option represents a half-loaf, versus the whole-loaf single payer, and by shooting for the half loaf, we're more likely to get something, and shooting for the whole loaf might mean getting nothing, given our corporate owned government.
Edit: At this point, I don't know enough of the details of the public option to determine if it is that "half loaf".
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/bill-moy...
But didn't Grassley himself say just a few days ago that "80% of Americans were happy with their health plans?"
So if 119 million would switch to the public option (i.e. 20%), that means there are almost 600 million people in this country (if I did the math right.) That's twice as many as there were in July of last year (source: World Fact Book.)
I guess all those one-year-olds are making some critical health care decisions!
Must be using Karl Roves math
Since these geniuses got us into free trade, the cost of doing business in foreign countries can not be ignored. Our competitors in Europe, Japan, and Canada all have health care costs that don't exceed 11% of GDP, whereas our system costs at least 16% of GDP and leave 16% of our people uncovered. We also have to examine whether the approach of having our employers pay for the coverage, as opposed to the government, renders our companies uncompetitive. We can not examine health care separate and apart from trading concerns.
The benchmark of successful health care reform should be, at the very least, to reach a cost structure that is no more expensive than our competitors, covers everyone, and provides comparable service. (The easiest way to do that is copy a system from one of our competitors.)
Our current system, which revolves around corporations enhancing shareholder value, necessarily drives up prices, because increasing patient costs is the driver to enhancing shareholder value. The approach provides incentive for maintenance regimes that produce recurring revenue flows as opposed to cures that would reduce costs.
The Republican approach to health care, proposed by McCain in the campaign, and elsewhere more recently, revolves around taxing employer paid health care as imputed income, and having a tax credit so people can buy their individual policy. This needs to be examined in the light that 86% of large corporations self insure, as opposed to paying a premium. The idea of sending 300 million Americans around to negotiate their individual policies is a prescription for maximizing costs (and shareholder value), as opposed to adopting national self insurance, for the same business reasons our large companies do.
At the end of the day, we need to send these politicians a message: Money talks, and BS walks. We want a plan that costs no more than our foreign competitors pay, covers everyone, and provides a comparable level of service. We have the easy option, copy a single payer approach from abroad or from Canada. They have an impossible mission, if successful health care reform is defined as reaching a comparable cost structure.
I think that's why single payer has been off the table, because they don't want to conduct the debate within the lens of a cost benchmark.
..it's only until your day of need.
You better believe they're crying. They are scared witless! The filthy unwashed masses are trying to kill their cash cow. How dare they!. Who's going to give them "campaign contributions" if the corporations loose their stranglehold on health care? And I'm not talking about the chicken feed they get from the constituents they have so diligently screwed. I'm talking about real money from fat cat insurance corporations who seem willing to spend more money on keeping the status quo than it would take to give everyone insurance.
I still think single payer is the way to go and the public option runs a distant second choice, But hey.... get that foot in the door!
Howard Dean said yesterday, We don't need the republicans on board to do this, we've got the votes to pass it without them.
Stop the Bipartisanship, It's not working! If you've got the votes then go for the throat and pass single payer legislation already!
If we can't get this done now... it will never happen. The Republicans are masters at obfuscation and intimidation.
Bill Maher said the same thing last Friday.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/14/bill...
I think the problem is more than a Republican problem, a significant number of Democrats are corporate owned.
Republicans are against competition!
The whole business model of insurance is to pay as little out as possible, your death over an expensive treatment.
Aren't these the same Republicans demand that mothers have high risk pregnancies verses life saving abortions and insist on high tech machines to prolong life verses death with dignity? Aren't they the same ones who promote Viagra and overuse Oxycontin and try to prohibit medical marijuana?
But if we take away the exorbitant administrative costs, how will they pay for all those lobbyists??
'Free market' my ass. I've got a dollar (just barely) that says what we'll end up stuck with is the Govt requiring everyone to buy insurance, at the current -or even higher- outrageous prices, in order to get even less coverage of lower quality. If that scenario doesn't scare the shit out of the people crying about socialized medicine, I don't think anything will.
..as well as mandatory auto insurance. We've all seen howenforceably that is. The architects of that plan are deluding themselves. How are people going to pay for mandatory insurance if they don't have the money?
Single payer is the only thing that's going to work.
HR-676
Planning on getting re-elected Grassley? You've become an insult to Iowans.
as in to be sociable , is it in our best interest to be healthy as in our own well being as a whole ? .
What follows is a response from me (about 1 month ago) to a blog about the U.S. Medical system, and the chance of Obama being able to bring about any significant change for the good of our American neighbours to the south.
I would truly like to believe that it is a possibility for all Americans to have complete health care. I would like to think that the interests of major Pharmaceutical companies, Health Insurance carriers, Hospital workers unions, various Health care Professional associations such as the AMA, and others don't have a vested interest in the status quo.
During 2008 the Health care industry, Insurance industry, Pharmaceutical and Health products industries, Hospitals and Nursing home industries and Health services and HMOs contributed 205 million to the Republicans and the Democrats.
During the same period, the lobby industry in the USA spent a total of 3.27 billion lobbying at a state and federal level. Of that 3.27 B the industry with the highest ranking lobbying costs was....you guessed it...Health at 485.122 million. (Wouldn't that pay a lot of premiums for low income families)
The second biggest spending took place by the Finance, Insurance and real estate sector...at 459.587.
Not that I am a pessimist, and I truly do wish my friends south of the 49th my best, but unless they can grease the slime balls like the corporations can, I don't think the prognosis looks good for universal health care in the U.S.
Oh...if you want to see where these numbers come from check out,
http://www.opensecrets.org/index.php
There are other sources available....just google it :-)
Best of luck
Funny thing is, this article in Crooks and Liars just confirms what many have suspected for a long time. It's not the people or the politicians who run America....it's the companies. Very sad
All health insurance companies should be non-profit. That's the law in every other country that offers a national healthcare system. That would help solve some of the problem. It's a total conflict of interest to allow these companies to profit making decisions that involve people's lives.
I agree 100%. Essential services like healthcare should not be in the private sector.
...the GOPers, Corporatists, Blue Dogs and Democrats who stand in opposition to a government administered public health plan that is open to all without restrictions or to a full out single payer system are seriously misreading the mood and will of the American People. They are living in a bubble and are, if they screw us over, going to be in for many rude surprises come election time.
The insurance companies, for-profit HMO's and Big Pharma are operating as little better than criminal enterprises. At best they are some of the worst predatory social parasites this country has ever seen. That politicians and the AMA have come out so far in opposition against the best interests of society only highlights how corrupt they have become. They aren't even leaving themselves enough room to maintain a shabby pretense, and seem oblivious to it.
If ever there was the perfect example of why all elections at the federal and state level need to be publicly financed, with strict prohibitions against taking any kind of private money, this it it. The difference between who is corrupt and who isn't could not possibly be put in more stark relief. And these bozos think nobody is paying attention.
BTW, add the military medical system to the list of medical services that the government does exceptionally well.
This is a prime example of why Taxpayer dollars shouldn't be used to provide health care benefits for elected officials. These people get elected and provide themselves the best healthcare in the system at our expense and then deny the people who are paying to keep their families safe, the health care they need. BTW, from the looks of these old men, most are already on single payer health care anyway.
Single payer is Medicare. Socialized medicine means the government owns the institutions and employees the medical staff. We already have socialized medicine brought to you be private insurance companies. They don't own the facilities or employee the medical staff, they have them on contract. We already wait and are denied health care we need by some teenager at the insurance company who has no idea what they are talking about. Insurance companies already make life and death decisions with no knowledge of the situation. They do it based on money and bonuses. Wouldn't you rather have a Dr. do this? I would.
I read an article where a Dr. called for approval of a surgery that was needed immediately and was denied. He told the insurance company, in front of the patient, that if anything happened to his patient he would call the District Attorney. He got instant approval. According to the Dr. he does this several times a week.
It's time to forget about suing and start holding these people criminally accountable for these decisions.
I've always said if they hurt one of my family, I'll have them arrested.
BTW: I've worked in and around the medical profession for 30 yrs. If you knew what I know you wouldn't be so complacent re: this situation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovTHWI3vE7A
Reslugs have always been in the pockets of banks and insurance companies and the lowlife crooks love the money they get under the table. Why do greedy Reslugs hate this country so much??
It is plain to see. The GOP does not care about average Americans. The GOP does not want a real health care solution. The GOP only cares about insurance companies and their well being.
The Congress, cabinet, and President have universal healthcare. We the people (who pay their salaries and premiums with tax dollars) deserve the same coverage they have. If they offer us less, they should opt out to help them with their lovefest with the insurance industry.
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