Thu 25 Feb, 2010
Get it? I made a dick joke using Anthony Weiner’s last name.
Goddammit it, I’m fucking pathetic. But not as pathetic as the Democrats inability to use reconciliation to give us a public option.
Tags: Anthony Weiner, Democrats are owned by the Insurance Industry as well, Health care, RepublicansWed 17 Feb, 2010
In 1993 this man tried to kill everyone's grandmother.
For Republicans, the idea of requiring every American to have health insurance is one of the most abhorrent provisions of the Democrats’ health overhaul bills.
“Congress has never crossed the line between regulating what people choose to do and ordering them to do it,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). “The difference between regulating and requiring is liberty.”
But Hatch’s opposition is ironic, or some would say, politically motivated. The last time Congress debated a health overhaul, when Bill Clinton was president, Hatch and several other senators who now oppose the so-called individual mandate actually supported a bill that would have required it.
[...]
One reason the individual mandate appealed to conservatives is because it called for individual responsibility to address what economists call the “free-rider effect.” That’s the fact that if a person is in an accident or comes down with a dread disease, that person is going to get medical care, and someone is going to pay for it.
“We called this responsible national health insurance,” says Pauly. “There was a kind of an ethical and moral support for the notion that people shouldn’t be allowed to free-ride on the charity of fellow citizens.
[...]
But the summary of the Republican bill from the Clinton era and the Democratic bills that passed the House and Senate over the past few months are startlingly alike.
Beyond the requirement that everyone have insurance, both call for purchasing pools and standardized insurance plans. Both call for a ban on insurers denying coverage or raising premiums because a person has been sick in the past. Both even call for increased federal research into the effectiveness of medical treatments — something else that used to have strong bipartisan support, but that Republicans have been backing away from recently.
Only in America will you find a liberal party trying to reform health care by using a 17-year-old conservative party idea and the conservative party calling the idea the liberal party stole from them as a socialized, Marxist, government-run death camp.
Tags: Democrats, Health care, I can't wait until a big comet wipes us out, RepublicansTue 9 Feb, 2010
When we’ve got the greatest health care in the world:
The Obama administration and state insurance officials pressured Anthem Blue Cross on Monday to justify its decision to raise rates by as much as 39 percent for thousands of outraged and frustrated California customers.
[...]
The Obama administration and Poizner’s office were prompted to act after Anthem members with individual policies – those who are not covered through employer-sponsored or group plans – were told last week that they would have to pay premiums up to 39 percent higher than their current rates. The Woodland Hills (Los Angeles County) company would not say how many people will be affected, but Anthem has as many as 800,000 individual policyholders – more than any other for-profit insurer – in the state.
[...]
“These extraordinary increases are up to 15 times faster than inflation and threaten to make health care unaffordable for hundreds of thousands of Californians, many of whom are already struggling to make ends meet in a difficult economy,” Sebelius wrote, adding that WellPoint earned $2.7 billion in the last quarter of 2009 alone.
[...]
Anthem, for its part, said higher medical costs as well as a smaller pool of members to absorb the risk made raising rates necessary.
“Unfortunately, in the weak economy many people who do not have health conditions are forgoing buying insurance,” the company wrote in a statement Monday responding to Sebelius’ letter. “This leaves fewer people, often with significantly greater medical needs, in the insured pool. We regret the impact this has on our members.”
Don’t you love how Anthem blames the people who don’t buy insurance for the 39 percent premium increase? I do. And so does Obama.
Tags: Health care, Insurance Companies, ObamaMon 25 Jan, 2010
Even as Speaker Nancy Pelosi affirmed her commitment to pass far-reaching health care legislation this year, members of Congress and health policy experts began Thursday to deal with the reality that a smaller bill would have a better chance.
Passage of a comprehensive bill looked impossible after the Democrats’ loss of a Senate seat in Massachusetts. As an alternative, lawmakers in both parties said, some pieces of the bills already passed by the House and the Senate could be pulled out and packaged together in a measure that would command broad support.
The consensus measure would be less ambitious than the bills approved last year. It would extend insurance coverage to perhaps 12 million to 15 million people — and provide political cover to Democrats, who said they could not simply drop the issue after spending so much time and effort on it.
[...]
Lawmakers, Congressional aides and health policy experts said the package might plausibly include these elements:
¶Insurers could not deny coverage to children under the age of 19 on account of pre-existing medical conditions.
This bill is the health insurance companies’ wet dream. It will force us to buy health insurance from them, use our tax dollars to pay for the coverage, and allow them to deny people 20-years-old and older with pre-existing conditions while not allowing the government to buy cheaper drugs from Canada.
I wish I had some extra money so I could invest it in Aetna and become Warren Buffett rich.
Tags: 19 year olds are considered children now, Deny Coverage, Health care, I hate this fucking countryThu 17 Dec, 2009
I knew the health care bill was bad, but I didn’t know it was that bad.
Tags: Health care, Health Care Bailout, Wendell PotterWed 16 Dec, 2009
The Senate needs to kill this health care bill:
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.
There’s nothing in this bill that benefits you or me. There’s no single-payer, no public option, no prescription drug reimportation, and no extending Medicaid.
But there’s a ton of things in this bill that benefits Big Business. There’s a mandate that makes it illegal not to have health insurance. There’s a provision banning drug reimportation. And there’s a provision that makes it more difficult for generic drug makers to produce cheaper versions of popular drugs.
So this health care bill is nothing but a huge hand out to the health insurance/pharmaceutical industry. Yet liberals and progressives want this bill to pass.
Why?
Why do they want to pass a bill that makes not having health insurance illegal? Why do they want to pass a bill that doesn’t include prescription drug reimportation? Why do they want to pass a bill that helps the health insurance/pharmaceutical industry more than the American people?
Maybe it’s because they have developed a serious case of Stockholm syndrome and think Democrats have their best interest in mind. Or maybe it’s because they honestly think this is the best bill they can get.
Whatever their reason is they need to know that this health care bill is worthless and it needs to die a horrible, painful, violent death.
But since they can’t be reasoned with, and since they think Obama shits golden truffles, this health care bill will pass through both the Senate and the House and Obama will sign it by the end of January.
Which means I need to call my stock broker and have him put all my money in Atena, because they’re fixing to make a killing.
Update: Looks like Howard Dean hit a nerve.
Tags: Democrats, Health care, Howard Dean, Kill This ThingMon 14 Dec, 2009
I thought everyone knew Joe Lieberman was going to do this:
Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) informed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in a face-to-face meeting on Sunday that he will vote against a health care bill that includes a public option or a provision that would expand Medicare, a Democratic Senate aide tells the Huffington Post.
The two senators had a discussion in Reid’s office shortly after Lieberman appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday morning. The Connecticut independent discussed with Reid some of his concerns about the legislation, elaborating on issues he had raised during the show. According to the source, who was briefed on the exchange, Lieberman punctuated the discussion by telling the majority leader directly that he will vote against the bill if the Medicare buy-in and public option provisions remain in it. Roll Call reports that Lieberman said he would also support a Republican filibuster of legislation that included these provisions.
Joe Lieberman has been screwing over Democrats ever since Al Gore picked him to be his running mate in 2000. So why is this a surprise? I mean, you’d think the Democratic leadership would have anticipated this from the guy that smeared Obama during the campaign .
But regardless of how stupid the Democratic leadership is for not seeing this move, I hope they force Joe Lieberman to follow through with the filibuster. Why? Two reasons: I’ve never seen a live filibuster and I want this health care bill to die.
Now I know this may come as a shock to you, but I’ve never seen a live filibuster and I’m curious to see how long Joe Lieberman can speak. Because when I saw him on Face the Nation yesterday he sounded like a fat man struggling up a flight of stairs. And that was just during a 21 and a half minute show. I can only imagine how difficult it will be for him to speak for four, five, or six straight hours.
The second reason I want to see Joe Lieberman go through with the filibuster is because this health care bill needs to die a slow, painful death. Because it’s a bill written by the health insurance industry for the health insurance industry.
As the bill stands right now the health insurance industry gets to keep the inexpensive, healthy young people while forcing the government to take the expensive, sick old people. Which means the health insurance industry will make hundreds of millions of dollars in profit each year because they won’t have to spend money of things like heart surgery, life long diabetes medicine, knee replacements, hip replacements, and other things old people need. (How is that fair? And how is the government capable of taking care of people 55 and older but incapable of taking care of people 54 and younger?)
But I know Joe Lieberman’s not going to go through with the filibuster because Democrats are sackless, corporate shills who are going to give in to his demands and pass a health care bill that benefits the health insurance industry while fucking over every one else.
Tags: And I want to see Lieberman pass out from exhaustion, Democrats, Health care, I want to see a fucking filibuster, Joe Lieberman
