Oct
11

What’s So Bad (or Great) about Obamacare? (Part 9 of 9)

UPDATE: How does the most recently unveiled health care proposal, presented by Max Baucus, D-MT, and the Senate Finance Committee, compare? Very similar, in fact. Here is what Senator Jon Kyl, R-AZ, said on the 9/16/2009 Hugh Hewitt radio show:

“It provides for a government takeover of health care…. [I]f you take the true costs, it’s over a trillion dollars. It will cut Medicare significantly, hurting care for seniors. It’ll mandate that everybody in America have insurance, as defined by the federal government. It will raise a lot of taxes in order to pay for that insurance for people who can’t afford it. And it will set up a regulatory regime for all insurance which will end up with government-run insurance. Now, that’s to be distinguished from a government health care plan, or a government-run insurance company. They call that a ‘co-op’, and there’s that in here, too. But, that’s different from running health care. And, at the end of the day, this bill puts Washington in charge of all health care in America….”

Of course, Kyl was only addressing some of the provisions of the Senate bill, but it sounds awfully familiar to me.

UPDATE 2: Yes! The “public option” has been soundly defeated – by members of both parties – in the Senate. But, this is not the end. And there is still plenty to object to in the Democrat-proposed bills. The drama continues….

UPDATE 3: 10/11/2009: Democrats in both the House and the Senate have been hard at work the past few days, crafting new versions of their various health care bills. Of course, it’s all “behind closed doors”. What can we expect? Read this article about the “Secret Plan”. (Yeah, I know it sounds kinda hokey, paranoid, conspiratorial. But this investigation is by some very well-respected journalists & researchers.)

One last thing. Many Left-leaning people like to say that Republicans are “the party of NO” and that conservatives in general are just whiners and complainers with no real solutions of their own. Well, that just isn’t the case. Granted, some of our leaders on the Right don’t always get their “stuff” together as soon as I would like. But there are, indeed, conservative Senators, Representatives, Governors, etc., who are putting out good ideas to address various political & cultural issues. They are backed up by solid research by respected think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), American Solutions, and the Center for Health Transformation.

Go here for some examples of Health Care Solutions from the Right side of the aisle.

Then, if you haven’t already done so, go to Free Our Health Care NOW! to see what you can do to take action!

« What’s So Bad (or Great) about Obamacare? (Part 8 of 9)

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Tags: Congress, health care, healthcare, legislation, Medicare, Obamacare, Politics

Posted in Politics
2 Comments Posted by sirrahc

So, Republicans Don’t Have Any Better Ideas, Huh? « A View from the Right says:

January 30, 2010 at 8:32 pm

[…] reform or to address the energy issue or jobs & the economy, etc. (I pointed out in a previous post that this was baloney.) In his State of the Union Address, President Obama went on record again […]

Richard Lewison says:

October 24, 2010 at 5:14 pm

Health insurers provide a simple administrative function. They take money in from subscribers and they distribute it to be used for medical care. Control of medical costs is a more complex issue but insurance is simple. So there are only two measures of the effectiveness of insurance 1) How fast they pay for medical services and supplies and 2) (and this is the important one) what percentage of the money paid in actually goes to pay for medical services. The reality is that private insurers have typically had as much a 30% or more overhead to perform their administrative function while the government run program Medicare – which is public insurers paying for private medical services only has an overhead of roughly 5%. This means that for every thousand dollars of your money you pay into private insurers, $700 is available to be paid out for actual services, whereas with Medicare roughly $950 is available to paid out for medical services. In addition the AMA claims that Medicare is also the fastest to reimburse for services delivered compared to private insurers. So for the consumer, clearly Medicare is the more efficient / lower overhead insurance option and the better value. So why is everyone so in favor of private insurers? Insurance companies don’t particularly add value to the medical profession. Now it’s different with providers. Some of the greatest innovations are from private institutions and corporations. The key there is to somehow control costs because while they may spend a lot to provide high quality services, they also often overcharge to justify their investment. That is why the cost of health care is bankrupting the country. But health care is a necessity and needs to be addressed honestly and fairly. I just can’t see supporting insurance companies. All they do is suck money out of the system. At least “Obamacare” will require that they use 85% of the premium money to provide medical services. While this is not as efficient as Medicare it is a step in the right direction by making more money available for actual providers of medical services. and the idea that they won’t still be making plenty of money – well that’s simply baloney.