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Sounds A Lot Like Obamacare
January 20, 2011 - by Donny Shaw
The Republican House majority yesterday passed a bill to repeal health care reform (H.R.2) and today passed a resolution calling on four House committees to draft legislation to replace it (H.Res.9). As I’ve been explaining on this blog, the whole repeal effort is purely political. It’s not a serious effort by the Republicans at fixing the problems they see in the health care law, and the resolution they passed today just underscores that fact.
The resolution spells out 12 principles for what should be in the replacement bill, many of which are features of the law they voted to repeal.
(1) foster economic growth and private sector job creation by eliminating job-killing policies and regulations;
(2) lower health care premiums through increased competition and choice;
(3) preserve a patient’s ability to keep his or her health plan if he or she likes it;
(4) provide people with pre-existing conditions access to affordable health coverage;
(5) reform the medical liability system to reduce unnecessary and wasteful health care spending;
(6) increase the number of insured Americans;
(7) protect the doctor-patient relationship;
(8) provide the States greater flexibility to administer Medicaid programs;
(9) expand incentives to encourage personal responsibility for health care coverage and costs;
(10) prohibit taxpayer funding of abortions and provide conscience protections for health care providers;
(11) eliminate duplicative government programs and wasteful spending; or
(12) do not accelerate the insolvency of entitlement programs or increase the tax burden on Americans.
Most of this is already in the law. Increasing competition, increasing the number of insured Americans, making sure customers can keep their current insurance plans, covering pre-existing conditions, incentives for maintaining coverage, blocking federal funds for abortions. It’s all in the law already.
Now, there is stuff in here that I think is actual beef for the Republicans, like reforming the medical liability system, eliminating duplicative programs and reducing the burden on small businesses. But that’s perfect stuff for the Republican House and Democratic Senate to work out together over the next two years. I know these are policy priorities that are traditionally associated more with the Republican brand, but it’s all stuff that a lot of Democrats can get behind too if somehow both sides can agree to an honest discussion and process. Some of this can be agreed on and some of it probably can’t, but the way the Republicans are structuring their health care efforts this session is probably going to mean that none of it will even really get talked about.
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Comments
Displaying 1-30 of 32 total comments.
Donny,
It’s important that you understand that the reasons this law should be repealed are hiding in it’s 2000+ misguided pages. It is in fact a health insurance (NOT health care) reform law that does NOTHING to bring down the costs of health care.
An attorney friend (formerly in U.S. Justice Dept.) of mine did read it AND also read the MANY parts that are cross referenced to other existing laws.
His summation was that this law will drive up health insurance costs (eventually forcing private insurers out of business) and bring a federal government “presence” into the pre-existing (no pun intended)health care system.
My wife and I are paying 27% higher health insurance premiums this year thanks to this monstrosity. Since my wife works for that insurance company, so I take that connection from good authority.
Your attorney friend obviously overpaid for his education:
“[…] PPACA and the Reconciliation Act alsoincluded a number of provisions to reduce federal outlays (primarily for Medicare) and to increase federal revenues (mostly by increasing the Hospital Insurance payroll tax and imposing fees on certain manufacturers and insurers); in March, CBO and JCT estimated that those provisions unrelated to insurance coverage would, on balance, reduce direct spending by about $500 billion and increase revenues by about $410 billion over the 2012–2019 period. If that legislation was repealed, such reductions in spending and increases in revenues would not occur. Thus, H.R. 2 would, on net, increase federal deficits over that period.”
src: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/120xx/doc12040/01-06-PPACA_Repeal.pdf
Yes, and I hope people read the ENTIRE link you posted, not just the blurb that you pulled out of it. Then, they can also read this, where the CBO admits there’s no way they can give a full and accurate estimate on the PPACA because regulations are being written as they go, by the HHS.
http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=650
That’s what many of us have been saying all along, Donny. And I haven’t read all of it, but the parts of it that I have read, I came to the same conclusion as your attorney friend, as have my other friends who’ve read it.
What OpenCongress.org seems to be doing a lot of, lately, seems very biased, like a child kicking and screaming because they had a new toy taken away. What they fail to say is that, even though some of the points Republicans intend to address with their new legislation might be in the PPACA, the difference lies in HOW they address the issues. What I read in the PPACA was unacceptable, as a whole, while bits and pieces may have seemed positive, or even benign. You can’t say you’re going to wash dishes, and only wash one.
Or more like only washing one, then dirtying every other one in the cabinet and forcing someone else (future generations) to clean them.
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My premiums went up and my co-pays tripled, no new benefits. So … I’d say your plan sucked to begin with.
BTW: I kept hearing all last year about how “Obamacare” did not address Tort reform. Where is that bill? I see they want to protect incompetent practitioners from “medical liability.” Where’s the Tort reform?
Tort reform has already been implemented by 28 states, and it has not shown to decrease costs, hell in Texas where you have the loonyiest Tort reforms the hospital staph infection rate is almost double the national average(which is only 6 times higher then Canada’s socialist system).
However Obamacare did provide funds for state experiments with further state level tort reforms, so even this point in the republican list of pet issues has been covered.
Looks like there is another direction the might go: H.R.314 HEALTH CARE TRIBUNAL- The term ‘health care tribunal’ means a trial court or administrative tribunal-
So much for OpenCongress being non-partisan and OBJECTIVE! You told us that the food “Safety” Bill was dead but it STILL managed to become law!!!
Wow! There ARE other people who comment on stories that are relatively conservative and who don’t make everything about the “u” word.
Well I don’t have insurance, can’t afford insurance and this bill will cover me and most of the republican friends I know. We make less that 20,000 a year, some a lot less.
We need this insurance bill.
Items 2 through 5, 10 and 11 make sense.
The last bill went all over the place trying to cram in issues unrelated to improving access to health care via insurance.
Spam Comment
That is incorrect, hospitals only have an obligation to stabilize you. They will stop bleeding and sew up cuts and what not, but they are under no obligation to treat long term diseases, or treat cancer, or provide diabetic supplies, or provide any form of drugs.
To say nothing of the fact that emergency room treatment is the most expensive place to receive care, people who wait until an issue becomes an emergency room problem place vastly more cost onto the system then if they had proper access in the first place and seen a doctor before the problem becomes an emergency room problem.
I suggest reading this wiki article,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act
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Now please keep in mind I wouldn’t recommend ANYONE going to Mexico for medical coverage, but for my friend, it worked. And luminous, from what I can tell EMTALA does mean you get treatment even if you can’t pay or aren’t a citizen. Which is what I had said on 1/22/11. Just because someone can’t pay, doesn’t mean they can’t get treatment. The “emergency medical condition” is a pretty open-ended definition that someone just has to say it’s giving them severe pain, where non-treatement would result in serious dysfunction of any bodily organ or part, and BAM you get your treatement. TITLE 42,CH. 7,SUBCHAPTER XVIII,Part E, § 1395dd of the provision (http://www.emtala.com/law/index.html).
Interesting. I personally know of two people that didn’t have insurance, were denied SS & Medicare, but they were never denied treatment for their cancer. Nice scare tactic, though.
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Luminous, let me repeat what I posted earlier: “Now please keep in mind I wouldn’t recommend ANYONE going to Mexico for medical coverage, but for my friend, it worked”. Definitely not saying everyone should jump down to Mexico, let alone Tijuana, but if you have to go to Canada because it’s cheaper, or Europe, then why can’t we hold people responsible for that? Btw, not saying it is always cheaper. And I did say treatment, doesn’t mean you get cured. And I’m not sure where you live where the state/county/city will put a someone in a $25k box, because here they burn them if they’re not claimed, and if they are, the family has to bear the cost. Once again, the question is, should I have to pay your treatement costs?
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Most diseases can be managed at far lower costs then what emergency care costs when they are not managed, Diabetes can be handled for $50-$100 a month usually, that is much cheaper to society then the emergency costs from non-treatment. From a simple practical stand point it makes sense to provide them what is needed for treatment them it is not to.
And if the disease is properly handled that person can work and input into society more then the cost of their treatment, if things like temporary unemployment leads to unaffordable costs for that person their $50/$100 a month problem turns into a multiple $10’s of thousands of dollars problem for a hospital stay and emergency room costs, or potential death expenses, how is that better for the tax payer then just giving them their damn $50/$100 month insulin?
Either way we the tax payer pay, though high interests costs at our banks to cover medically/death discharged debts, to high doctor fee’s to pay for those that don’t.
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What about all the ridiculous grants in the PPACA for “community programs” to teach people how to eat and exercise? Are we that stupid? Did you get rid of Health and Phys. Ed. classes in school? Can you not teach your own kids how to eat and exercise? And the menu “nutrition labels” at restaurants and on vending machines, to “highlighting healthy options”. Look, if I go to McDonald’s or get something out of a vending machine, I’M NOT SO STUPID THAT I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M GETTING. I’m not expecting Richard Simmons to jump out and get me Sweatin’ to the Oldies. STOP TRYING TO DICTATE EVERY LITTLE THING! IT’S OUT OF CONTROL!
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