Wannabe TV Reality Stars Crash Obama Dinner

[SyberBitch]

Well Ant, I haven't finished all 2000+ pages of the bill, but I did find this interesting little tidbit.

7 SEC. 1555. FREEDOM NOT TO PARTICIPATE IN FEDERAL
8 HEALTH INSURANCE PROGRAMS.
9 No individual, company, business, nonprofit entity, or
10 health insurance issuer offering group or individual health
11 insurance coverage shall be required to participate in any
12 Federal health insurance program created under this Act
13 (or any amendments made by this Act), or in any Federal
14 health insurance program expanded by this Act (or any
15 such amendments), and there shall be no penalty or fine
16 imposed upon any such issuer for choosing not to
17 participate in such programs.

Thank you for actually listening Syber... I appreciate that. The usual liberal answer lately is if you lean conservative, you're called names, your lumped in with with the far right and your point of view is never even considered.

Most people are sheep regardless of their political leaning. I try not to be.

Keep reading. You showed me something in regard to businesses and corporations. This is a fine on an individual. Sometimes watching the senate and house debates on Cspan yeilds me this information.

Read the passage again, it states that no 'individual', company, business, etc... will have a penalty or fine imposed for not participating in the govt plan. Perhaps that was different in an earlier version of the bill, but if so, it appears to have changed now.

I think another problem (which you touch on in your reply) is that people are making wild declarations about the bill without ever having read it. It's a lot to read and very few people are going to take the time. I'm working my way through it. I've also done word searches on the entire document for relevant terms.

Then there's the new regulations they want to impose on women - how convenient is it that all of a sudden mammograms dont' need to be done until we are 50? Cervical cancer screenings don't need to be done every year anymore but every 2 or 3? This was JUST announced by some gov't study/regulation/suggestion, not private doctors.

Nice. I haven't seen any mention of that in the bill, but I did see a lot of proactive stuff in there about disease prevention. Weight loss, stop smoking programs, diabetes management and such. It didn't say whether those programs would be 'mandatory' or simply 'optional', but either way, I think it's a good direction to be going in. I also saw stuff about facilities being rewarded for higher ratios of healthy patients, which is also a good thing I think.

The cost of this bill is out of control and most of the shit in there is unnecessary. The "blue dog" Democrats are not happy with this bill and want to shoot it down. It's long and unecessarily complicated.

It probably is overcomplicated. I think your Medicaid idea is a good one... but that and $1 will get you a cheap cuppa. It would be nice if we (as citizens) actually had a less formal way (rather than trying to submit a full 'bill' to the House) of giving suggestions to lawmakers, when some of them actually are probably damned good ideas. However, I doubt even if the simple Medicaid reform you're talking about were adopted, it would solve most of the problems. It really is a huge mess.

This bill is actually designed to drive private health insurance out of business. Tax small businesses so they HAVE to turn to the gov't plan and eventually force the private citizen to dump their plans as they know them due to it becoming useless or too expensive through taxes.

That may or may not be true, but it doesn't seem to make sense. Why would the govt WANT to take more responsibility on itself for people's health care? The simple fact is, EVERYONE is going to need healthcare of some sort at some time. Many people will end up needing expensive care at some point. The private insurance companies are still ripping folks off big time, but I can see how a small insurance company would be wiped out pretty quickly if they had a few people with high claims. Why the govt would want to have to shell out for those care costs instead of having some private company do it, is beyond me.

I've seen, so far, a lot of tax CREDITS for business and insurance companies providing healthcare, but I haven't seen any mention of PENALTIES for those who are providing healthcare. I *have*, however, read things about how the companies (insurance) will have to guarantee at least 60-65% coverage on the medical expenses of their clients, and other new requirements which will NO DOUBT mean a lower profit margin for those companies. Whether that would put them out of business or not is unknown. It's just logical to understand that if there is going to be reform, the insurance companies who are lining their pockets (like the auto insurance I was squawking about earlier) are going to end up with smaller profit margins. Well, that's as it should be. I can certainly see why they would be complaining though.

A flat tax would be a good idea but everyone laughed at that because those with sticky fingers would have to reform.

Of course

They keep saying they are going to keep it so you can keep the coverage you have, keep your doctor that you like etc but that's impossible! How can you expect someone who's lost their job to be able to stay with the plan from that company?

I'm not sure that anyone is trying to say that people would be able to keep their coverage from a job they lost. I did see mention of requirements that people would be able to keep their coverage for a certain period of time, which I think is pretty much the way it works now.

I say scrap it, start over and get something better to brag about.

Maybe so. I'm sure that a lot of what is addressed in the bill is important (the amount I've read anyway), but it seems there is always a lot of padding in these things that could be done away with. I doubt that the optimal solution for our healthcare reform could be a simple thing, but that's a hell of a lot of pages to wade through for anyone.