Healthcare/Insurance Reform, Stealth, and 'straight up lying'...

[WhiskeyGirl]

Is it stealth reform or straight up lying?

...Hiatt says

"Single-payer national health insurance may be the best outcome, but we should get there after an honest debate, not through the back door. (my emphasis)"

I didn't like that sentence for two reasons. (1) The country has spent the last six months debating health care reform in town halls, Congress halls, cable shows, morning shows, blogospheres, and dining rooms. I just don't know what "honest debate" Hiatt holds his breath for; (2) What's wrong with a little sneaky public policy?

...eventually stealthy starts to look like a euphemism straight-up lying. But a bit of sneakiness is probably going to be necessary to get some cost control legislation through Congress.

http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/10/health_care_cost_control_and_sneakiness.php

Sneaky cost containment
Jon Kingsdale, director of the Massachusetts health insurance exchange, begins by saying, "I'm not so much of a policy wonk. I'm more of an administrator." And he's got an administrator's practical insights:

"If you're going to do health-care cost containment, it's going to have to be stealth. It's going to have to happen before any of the players understand what's happening. "

The Trojan Horse stealth approach to single payer?

The nation has debated for months.  It was ugly.  I remember watching those town halls and tea parties on TV.

Why are congress and the president deaf to the voices in America?  Maybe all this healthcare debt will stimulate foreign countries?  Workers? 

Why continue to beat a dead corpse?

[WhiskeyGirl]

The Stealth Single-Payer Agenda
 
By George F. Will
Sunday, June 21, 2009

To dissect today's health-care debate, the crux of which concerns a "public option," use the mind's equivalent of a surgeon's scalpel, Occam's razor, a principle of intellectual parsimony: In solving a puzzle, start with the simplest explanatory theory.

The puzzle is: Why does the president, who says that were America "starting from scratch" he would favor a "single-payer" -- government-run -- system, insist that health-care reform include a government insurance plan that competes with private insurers? The simplest answer is that such a plan will lead to a single-payer system...

Assurances that the government plan would play by the rules that private insurers play by are implausible. Government is incapable of behaving like market-disciplined private insurers. Competition from the public option must be unfair because government does not need to make a profit and has enormous pricing and negotiating powers. Besides, unless the point of a government plan is to be cheaper, it is pointless...

The president characteristically denies that he is doing what he is doing -- putting the nation on a path to an outcome he considers desirable -- just as he denies any intention of running General Motors. Nevertheless, the unifying constant of his domestic policies -- their connecting thread -- is that they advance the Democrats' dependency agenda. The party of government aims to make Americans more equal by making them equally dependent on government for more and more things.

No more money in your pocket, it all goes to the common good, and the rich get richer.

Almost 39 percent of the uninsured are in five states -- Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, all of which are entry points for immigrants. About 21 percent -- 9.7 million -- of the uninsured are not citizens. As many as 14 million are eligible for existing government programs -- Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, veterans' benefits, etc. -- but have not enrolled. And 9.1 million have household incomes of at least $75,000 and could purchase insurance. Those last two cohorts are more than half of the 45.7 million.

A bailout for Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California?  (I don't recall Texas having budget trouble at the state level.)

Insuring the perhaps 20 million persons who are protractedly uninsured because they cannot afford insurance is conceptually simple: Give them money -- (refundable) tax credits or debit cards (which have replaced food stamps) loaded with a particular value. This would produce people who are more empowered than dependent. Unfortunately, advocates of a government option consider that a defect. Which is why the simple idea of the dependency agenda cuts like a razor through the complexities of this debate.

read more here - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/19/AR2009061902334.html

Still good reading, and they are still trying to beat the public/consumer/competitive option to death life...

jmho

[WhiskeyGirl]

Healthcare for all, punishment for all

Updated: 2009-10-12 12:22:34

Commentary by Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D.

In the 2008 campaign, we heard healthcare in this country is “broken” and must be “reformed.” We heard “healthcare reform” would be the signature piece of an Obama Presidency. We were promised no new taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 per year. We heard promises of transparency in government. We heard promises of a White House that would listen to all. Now that President Obama and a Democratic majority are in office, what have we gotten?

What the Democratic majority is doing to healthcare in this country is a crime. Punishment won’t fall on Congress and the President, who are excluded from the healthcare proposals. Punishment falls on the American people, especially the elderly.

Instead of “health insurance for all,” the House and Senate healthcare bills have become punishment for all. Here is the list of Americans who face the healthcare “reform” punishment...

...Buying “care insurance” should be like buying car insurance: flexible, transparent and simple. We support health care for the poor through Medicaid.


But what we found shocked us: radical solutions, discussions behind closed doors, patients like we are not included, just big companies, lobbyists, unions and politicians.

read more here -  http://www.joplinindependent.com/display_article.php/nigd1255371754

The more they push healthcare change, the more things stay the same...

Why aren't the meetings on CSPAN?  FOX?