just a minute!!!!!

[historian]

if the public option bill which would offer govt run insurance to the average joe who cant afford the blood sucking rates offered by private insurers is not on the bill then WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT?????

[ixion]

1. The Point:

To provide insurance companies with a massive perpetual revenue stream.

Mission Accomplished.

[HopeforChange]

4. We are F'd

[FarLeftFist]

2. These are some:

1. BEGINS TO CLOSE THE MEDICARE PART D DONUT HOLE - Reduces the donut hole by $500 and institutes a 50% discount on brand-name drugs, effective January 1. 2010.

2. IMMEDIATE HELP FOR THE UNINSURED UNTIL EXCHANGE IS AVAILABLE (INTERIM HIGH-RISK POLL) - Creates a temporary insurance program until the Exchange is available for individuals who have been uninsured for several months or have been denied a policy because of pre-existing conditions.

3. BANS LIFETIME LIMITS ON COVERAGE - Prohibits health insurance companies from placing lifetime caps on coverage.

4. ENDS RESCISSIONS - Prohibits insurers from nullifying or rescinding a patient's policy when they file a claim for benefits, except in the case of fraud.

5. EXTENDS COVERAGE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE UP TO 27TH BIRTHDAY THROUGH PARENT'S INSURANCE - Requires health plans to allow young people through age 26 to remain n their parents' insurance policy, at the parents' choice.

6. ELIMINATES COST-SHARING FOR PREVENTATIVE SERVICES IN MEDICARE - Eliminates co-payments for preventative services and exempts preventative services from deductibles from the Medicare program.

7. IMPROVES HELP FOR LOW-INCOME MEDICARE BENEFICIARIES - Improves the low-income protection programs in Medicare to assure more individuals are able to access this vital help.

8. PROVIDES NEW CONSUMER PROTECTIONS IN MEDICARE ADVANTAGE - Prohibits Medicare Advantage plans from charging enrollees higher cost-sharing for services in their private plan than what is charged in traditional Medicare.

9. IMMEDIATE SUNSHINE ON PRICE GOUGING - Discourages excessive price increases by insurance companies through review and disclosure of insurance rate increases.

10. CONTINUITY FOR DISPLACED WORKERS - Allows Americans to keep their COBRA coverage until the Exchange is in place and they can access affordable coverage.

11. CREATES NEW, VOLUNTARY, PUBLIC LONG-TERM CARE INSURANCE PROGRAM - Creates a long-term care insurance program to be financed by voluntary payroll deductions to provide benefits to adults who become functionally disabled.

12. HELP FOR EARLY RETIREES - Creates a $10 billion fund to finance a temporary reinsurance program to help offset the costs of expensive health claims for employers that provide health benefits for retirees age 55-64.

13. COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTERS - Increases funding for Community Health Centers to allow for a doubling of the number of patients seen by the centers over the next 5 years.

14. INCREASING NUMBER OF PRIMARY CARE DOCTORS - Provides new investment in training programs to increase the number of primary doctors, nurses, and public health professionals.

[NJmaverick]

7. This is an outstanding post. Have you thought about making it a seperate thread?

I think all of DU would benefit from this excellent list

[FarLeftFist]

14. This was already a separate thread here on DU

Link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x11487

[Cronus Protagonist]

#9 - made me laugh out loud

Sure, THAT will be effective. Is that sunshine going to be like the sunshine that's now being shone on everything by the new Obama administration? I ask because that's as bright as a coal mine in a power outage.

And #11 is called AFLAC today.

[golddigger]

13. Lol...you have to admit they are getting faster with their

talking points.

[historian]

10. wonderful reply!!!

thank you. you are to be commended for it.
well done!!!!

[mdmc]

11. All of that paid for by the working poor and middle class that

cannot afford treatment that is "covered" by their current for profit health insurance.

[cark]

15. Big Deal

If nobody can afford it. In your 14 points I noticed 2 huge gaping holes - it does nothing to lower the costs for the average person and it does nothing to contain rate increases going forward. It may help those that can't get coverage, but it just shifts the costs to others like my family who are already paying too much and are getting hit with another 10% increase this year. How does this help the average family that already has insurance - which is the vast majority of people?

[Cronus Protagonist]

3. The point is to have CHANGINESS

They have to do SOMETHING to claim there's changiness in the air.

[ElboRuum]

16. Changiness? Kind of like "hopitude"?

[npk]

5. Saving face

The President ran heavily on reforming health care. He must deliver something or else his domestic agenda will take a major hit. I think many in congress who support a more robust option see this as a first step. Once they get this bill passed it will be easier to add to the legislation at a later date.

[ixion]

9. it is easier to add something to a bureaucracy than to extract it

so I don't think you're going to see many changes.

[Richardo]

6. Oh for Christ's sake take a Xanax and read a little.

Or you can have your hysterical aneurism, whichever you prefer.

[Orrex]

8. Here's an illustration of THE FUCKING POINT!!!!!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x83255

[nightrain]

12. knr. It seems the point is to ensure insurance and pharma contributions

for the next couple of elections.


How silly and naive to expect this Congress and this Administration to be concerned about peoples' health! :sarcasm:

[kenny blankenship]

17. They kept it there as long as they needed Democratic voters to feel engaged and to give support

or rather, it was kept there as part of the negotiations long enough to forestall us from crying bloody murder at them. But only that long. When they didn't need it anymore - poof it was gone!

Remember who put Health Care Reform on the agenda? It was not Barack Obama. He didn't have a health plan at all until he was shamed into getting one by other Democratic primary candidates.

WE PUT IT ON THE AGENDA. Democratic primary voters. You know : those stinkin awful Liberals.
And what did we want? Single Payer. And Obama agreed with us, at least far as trying to convince us he shared our values and ideals: he said Single Payer would be his choice if designing a system from scratch. He pledged to support something else called a Public Option because that would likewise be a social, PUBLIC response to the private sector collapse, but one which would exist alongside the existing private sector insurance and eventually grow to eclipse it. Having a token public sector response was enough to cause us whacky liberal Democratic primary voters to identify with him, and later, it would keep us "invested" in the process of passing some kind of HCR legislation once we had made Obama President. He made sure to convince us he was a liberal, public sector kind of guy by condemning Hillary Clinton's Private Sector uber alles approach of Individual Mandates forcing the purchase of for profit health insurance.

But then he got into office.

Whatever they promised the people during the election, Obama and the Democratic leadership had no commitment to anything but legally mandated support of the Private Sector Insurance Mafia. Everything else was negotiable but individual mandates to purchase traditional insurance. Of course that's not what we voted for. You have to have something to keep people who don't want mandates and who're sick of the private sector collapse QUIET while you work out a deal. You have to have something to keep them from peeling away and bolting. At first they kept us on board by saying even though most would be obligated to buy FOR PROFIT private sector insurance, there would be the PUBLIC OPTION on the other side to balance the ledger. People with the most difficulty buying protection from insurance rackets would find shelter in the Public Option where at least nobody would be squeezing them for profits. That made the compulsory nature of the rest of the proposed measure seem, if not totally fair, at least sensitive to the appearance of fairness. It wasn't Single Payer, but it was more than a token gesture in that direction, we were assured; and we were also assured that in time it would grow into the same thing as Single Payer because the insurance companies couldn't compete with non-profit govt. run insurance, and the eligibility terms would get progressively more open.

Then they set about shaving the Public Option down.

They got out their planes and their sanders and knives. And they whittled it this way and whittled it that way. Always the
Public Option shrunk. It's eligibility terms shrunk. There was soon talk of non-national, non-government agency "Co-ops" to run the public option, because apparently the Federal government can't be allowed to do things of this nature, Medicare notwithstanding. Then there was talk of Private, for-profit insurance companies managing the "public option" as if they could be trusted to run something originally intended to provide them with competition and maybe put them out of business. Then there was talk of shelving the Public Option indefinitely - to become active as a program only if and when private sector, for-profit insurance had failed to deliver some unspecified benchmark of performance. All the while they noisily bandied the Public Option around, they were hashing out the other terms of their "reform", the ones that would govern for-profit private insurance. Few remarked that these other terms prominently included a guaranteed revenue stream, backed by the taxpayer. Once they had agreement on the terms of for-profit insurance, guess what happened next? They dropped the Public Option, which had kept us kooky Democrats in line and invested in the success of the "reform", and started to omit any public response to the private sector collapse completely from the legislative program. The Public Option was the compromise position of Single Payer advocates. Now the compromise was not only horribly compromised, it was altogether gone. One last saving throw was attempted by adding an expansion of Medicare for 55 to 64 year olds. But no that was intolerable as well. By the time the Single Payer Public Option Medicare Expansion last vestigial placeholder for any kind of PUBLIC response to the private sector collapse was shitcanned for once and all, the hopes of Democrats had been trashed by so many cycles of vitiating compromise that the last gesture towards anything public disappeared with scarcely a whimper.

They kept the Public Option around to keep us "hooked" until it was too late. At the end they said "it's this or nothing" and gave as their strongest excuse for their chicanery that, if we had the gall to hold them responsible for rooking us, they would lose in the upcoming elections and that would hurt us too. Lovely fucking people, these Democrats.

Hostage takers, Frauds, and Liars. Bribe sponges. Human traffickers.

[notesdev]

18. Seems the point is to accelerate national insolvency

Remember when "bringing costs down" was the motive force behind HCR?

Does the final version do a single thing that would reduce costs?

Was the bait-and-switch intentional?