That's easy to say from behind a keyboard.

Of course it is, you press down on some keys... of course communicating that verbally would be easier but unless you guys meet or call each other on the phone, that is the easiest it gets... :facepalm: It's even so easy a cave man could do it.

NA6 is correct, even this cave man can see it

Chiming in with my :2cents:.

First off, that statistic that the US has only average healthcare when compared to the rest of the world is total BS as it's based on a formula that heavily weighs access to care. I'm not saying that access is not important, but like it or not, bottom line, in any country whether the US, Canada, UK etc.... If you have money, you get better care. Not saying that it's right, wrong, or should make you vote in any particular direction. The number one predictor of your general health regardless of where you live is....socioeconomic status time and time again REGARDLESS of socialized medicine or not. And to all the people who praise Canada or the UK, they have an expert panel (NOT a death panel), that decides on whether new treatments are cost effective based on a formula. So if it's not covered and you can't pay for it, you don't get it. Ten years ago if you were older than 55 in the UK and needed dialysis and couldn't pay for it, guess what, you were SOL (aka dead) whereas in the US Medicaid picks up the tab (aka ultimately you and me).

Now before everyone jumps on me for being a republican anti-abortionist/anti-gay...I'm not saying the US has the best system either. There are tradeoffs. One of the founding members of the original Medicare system wrote a great book called The Iron Triangle of Healthcare. Short version, there is cost of care, quality of care, and access to care and there are all trade-offs. For example, US has high cost and high quality, but poor access (which is why they score poorly in comparison to other countries) whereas the UK has high access, high cost, but poor "quality" i.e not fun waiting 5 years for a knee replacement/rationed care.

So I call BS on Obama's plan because there is NO WAY you can increase access and maintain quality AND keep costs down. Regardless, healthcare is already rationed even in the current system. If we want universal access, then we either have to accept lower quality care or much higher costs. Call a spade a spade, if you want to pass socialized medicine with access for all then be honest that it's either going to cost us up the butt like other countries (ever see the tax rates in countries with socialized medicine) or the "quality" in terms of coverage will not be there. As much as we'd all love it to be, we can't have it all ways. To use a car analogy, it'd be like saying I'm going to make a 300hp miata that is reliable and it's going to be cheap. You got to pick your tradeoffs...some people want access and some people want quality.

I like the fact that people from all over the world come HERE to the US to some of our medical centers because they don't have to wait 6 months for a critical surgery and because we have some of the most advanced medical centers in all the world. But NOOO, our medical system sucks because some treatments and surgeries cost more... that is how it is supposed to work, you get what you pay for. The better and more complex things will cost more like with anything else. Its not fair that some people can't afford to have life saving treatments, so lets level the field and just give everybody mediocre care, because that is their right... (not) :facepalm: When and if (god lets hope they don't get their hands on it) the government takes control of yet another aspect of our nation, it will go down hill even faster.

I'm still waiting for that economy to be fixed...

Good post brgracer.

also, who wrote these bills?

In H.R. 3200

‘‘(4) REQUIREMENTS FOR SPECIFIC STANDARDS.—The standards under this section shall be
11 developed, adopted and enforced so as to—

‘‘(C) enable electronic funds transfers, in
22 order to allow automated reconciliation with the
23 related health care payment and remittance advice;


I always love when the Govt has access to my bank account.

Wait...whu?

That means you can't even manage your own budget and decide when you can mail in the check?

Won't work for shit. Took us two months to come up with what my daughter's little (6mile) ambulance ride cost back in August.

SEC. 1233. ADVANCE CARE PLANNING CONSULTATION.

‘‘(B) The level of treatment indicated under subpara graph (A)(ii) may range from an indication for full treatment to an indication to limit some or all or specified interventions. Such indicated levels of treatment may include indications respecting, among other items—

'‘(i) the intensity of medical intervention if the patient is pulse less, apneic, or has serious cardiac or pulmonary problems;
‘‘(ii) the individual’s desire regarding transfer to a hospital or remaining at the current care setting;
‘‘(iii) the use of antibiotics; and
‘‘(iv) the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.’’.


I always love when the Govt gets to decide what treatment I can get at the end of my life...


sorry this is hard to copy and paste from. It's also incredibly hard to read & comprehend.

they dont decide treatment, they decide payment. you think your current insurance fine print reads any differently?

SEC. 59B. TAX ON INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT ACCEPTABLE
19 HEALTH CARE COVERAGE.

‘‘(a) TAX IMPOSED.—In the case of any individual
who does not meet the requirements of subsection (d) at
any time during the taxable year, there is hereby imposed
a tax equal to 2.5 percent of the excess of—

‘‘(1) the taxpayer’s modified adjusted gross income
for the taxable year, over
‘‘(2) the amount of gross income specified in
section 6012(a)(1) with respect to the taxpayer.

‘‘SEC. 59C. SURCHARGE ON HIGH INCOME INDIVIDUALS.

‘‘(4) NOT TREATED AS TAX IMPOSED BY THIS
CHAPTER FOR CERTAIN PURPOSES.—The tax posed
under this section shall not be treated as tax
imposed by this chapter for purposes of determining
the amount of any credit under this chapter or for
purposes of section 55.’’.


The tax posed under this section shall not be treated as tax...

If you have privare insurance they are not deciding anything, you insurance company is.

Stayed out of this thread until now, just wanted to come in and say that the 2010 military pay chart has come out, and the house's 3.4% raise won out over Obama's 2.9% proposal!

[/happydance]

This just means you can do an electronic tranfer, not that you have too, or that the government will just take it from your account.

‘‘SEC. 1173A. STANDARDIZE ELECTRONIC ADMINISTRATIVE TRANSACTIONS.

‘‘(2) GOALS FOR FINANCIAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE TRANSACTIONS.—The goals for standards under paragraph (1) are that such standards shall—

‘‘(D) enable the real-time (or near real-time)
determination of an individual’s financial
responsibility at the point of service and, to the
extent possible, prior to service, including
whether the individual is eligible for a specific
service with a specific physician at a specific facility,
which may include utilization of a machine-readable
health plan beneficiary identification card;

SEC. 223. PAYMENT RATES FOR ITEMS AND SERVICES.

(1) IN GENERAL.—The Secretary shall establish
payment rates for the public health insurance option
for services and health care providers consistent with
this section and may change such payment rates in
accordance with section 224.


(c) ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESS FOR SETTING
RATES.—Chapter 5 of title 5, United States Code shall
apply to the process for the initial establishment of payment
rates under this section but not to the specific methodology
for establishing such rates or the calculation of
such rates.

(d) CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in this subtitle shall
be construed as limiting the Secretary’s authority to correct
for payments that are excessive or deficient, taking
into account the provisions of section 221(a) and the
amounts paid for similar health care providers and services
under other Exchange-participating health benefits
plans.

(f) LIMITATIONS ON REVIEW.—There shall be no administrative
or judicial review of a payment rate or methodology
established under this section or under section
224.


I love it when the the government can price-fix, then remove the ability for "judicial review" against it. This is designed to ruin private insurers, thus universal gov't run health care.

I'm sure that is their aim. Make it as hard to understand as possible so they can interpret it how they want and bend it to their liking.

Let's just hope if it does pass that the state governments stand up and tell the federal government to shove their healthcare plan up their ass. That's all it would take to fix a lot of things, having state governments with a spine.

I hope you didn't interpret what I wrote as I think that the US has average health care. Being amongst the best of the world (as I wrote) is not being average. The formula in the article i referred to is: number sick / number still living after 5 years. Not that advanced ;)

Apparently you think there is something bad about this which means you don'tt understand what you read.

I personally would rather they perform whatever service, without judgment on my bank account. The idea of the govt having electronic real-time access to all your personal/private data is not win.

It has the potential to improve QOS and decrease cost burden for those of us who are "financially responsible", by reducing the degree to which we must compensate the insurance company and providers for their losses.

It's little different in practice from when mag strips started showing up on the backs of drivers' licenses. I have to swipe my DL and be entered into a Federal database every time I buy Claritin-D, because some jackasses figured out that pseudoephedrine was a handy precursor manufacture of methamphetamine and methcathinone. Do I find it a trifle irritating? Sure. Has it negatively impacted my quality of life? Not that I can tell.

With deference to Thomas Jefferson, of course.

I'm fairly certain this is not going to be part of an emergency room determination so much as it is an office visit for whatever not-urgent thing you're in for.

you know, like when you get preauthorized for your current insurance for a given procedure.

Ok have you stopped to think about those of us who have the option to have or currently have insurance that is cheaper than what is outlined by the government. What do you think is going to happen to those people? I will give you one gues.



The government rate will be the new rock bottom and what ever you have now will increase in cost to a point of being eqaul or more expensive than the governments terms the ins companys are in this to make profits not see that people live better lives. Idealy in there world everyone would have insurance until they where hurt or about to die then they would no longer be a burden on the system and the revenue they put in would not need to be expended back into them. When you think about it thats a ingenius business modle, kill your cleints in just enough time so that they can garuntee your profit margins. And brainwash future generations to accept there control.

Something else I haven't seen come up is the paperwork. I have never had an easy experience with anything involving the federal government and paper work. Can you just imagine how much bullshit paper work and run around you will get any time you have to renew or change information, and god forbid you have to use the insurance. I can just see it now. Just imagine the DMV bullshit, except for you are forced to deal with it, not optional. Or if you don't deal with it you get fined out the ass.

I have tricare because I am retired military, I just log onto their website to update stuff and make payments. Pretty simple actually. But, why the concern, just buy blue cross blue shield or something. You don't have to use the public option. You guys keep bitching about the "government insurance", don't use it and there is nothing to bitch about.

Not sure exactly what you are saying but it appears you think your insurance is cheaper than what the government is going to offer? which will make your insurance go up? Highly unlikely, one of the reasons for te public option to provide a less expensive option than what you can get now.

Because I expect the government insurance to strangle out everything else, making it unaffordable or even non existent.

Lolz at still thinking the Govt can run any program effectively. Did you get your swine flue vaccine yet or are you still waiting in line?

OMG OMG OMG!!!!

I just came up with this awesome idea! Get this...

So, there's like 10% unemployment rate right now, 2% above the promised rate if there was no recovery package.

So here's what we do. We implement a huge health care overhaul, taxing companies that don't provide health care, enough care, or that don't cover part time employees, etc, basically making it harder for a smaller business to operate efficiently. So more small businesses close up shop, and more stop hiring, basically stagnating grow.

Then we require this huge number of unemployed to purchase buy health care or be taxed!!!


I'M FUCKING GENIUS!!!! We hurt business and growth, which will increase the unemployment rate.

On top of that, this will pretty much require more people to live off McDonalds, effectively getting unhealthier!!!! DO YOU SEE HOW BRILLIANT I AM!?!!?

So more people will be unemployed, forced to buy health insurance, but health care will be more 'affordable'!

omg, i can't believe the thing i come up with sometimes...this is epic. :brain:

I wish more people could see how awesome Obama truly is. He is like our savior, he will turn the country around! Around into oncoming traffic and kill us all!

You might be on to something. If people get fat and die early. Then we dont have to deal with the expensive medical care when they get old. So everyone go out and eat fatty food and smoke cigarettes and shoot up heroin so you die early and cut down on healthcare costs.

so decent health insurance at $400 a month is affordable?

I've got news for anyone with those $50/month plans... just TRY to go in and get some kind of procedure you need done and see what happens. It's a fucking scam.

Yes I think it is affordable. I certainly do value my life at higher then $4800 a year.

Having to pay that might mean I go without other luxuries in my life, but hell if I am dead I can not enjoy those luxuries anyways.

Ironically, that's exactly what I've been paying for the past year (well, $400.86, to be precise) since I'm still on the old COBRA plan and haven't taken the time to find something better. I have done some looking around and seen that plans comparable to my current one in terms of coverage, limits, deductibles / coinsurance, etc., seem to be available in the $100-$175 range (and from reputable companies such as UHC) which isn't too bad at all.

I fail to see any reason why private insurance companies will jack up their rates. If anything, the gov't option should (in theory) give them the ability to dump a lot of their high-risk / low-margin customers onto the Fed, and then reduce rates for more desirable customers in order to woo us in.

magnamx-5's scenario seems to pre-suppose price fixing on a rather colossal scale. That's not too hard to do if you're in the sugar trade, but I can't see a bunch of huge insurance corporations having the skill and agility to pull it off. Their policy is dictated by the marketing dept.

lol yeah it is way cheaper. MY employer offers us shit for about 100 bucks a month. Im to cheap to shell out for that though.
What i am willing to pay for is a 30-50 dollar a month 70-30 plan with 6k outlay annual and 2mill limit. Give me that and im fine, and realy any person should be fine with something like that. These fucking designer plans are ridicuoulous if something falls off or you can't stop the bleeding go to get it fixed other than that die like a man.

That's awesome. I know a lot of people, and I mean a lot of people that pay $800 a month for insurance. I was suprised because being retired military my premiums are very reasonable. There was a thread on another car website of guys talking about how their premiums have recently increased. Their increases was more than my whole policy, and these are guys that are mostly conservative republicans and are against the healthcare bill.

On that same note, there was one guy that posted that was losing his insurance. He lost his job. His wife had coverage through here employer but they would not let her add the sone and husband for a year. So for a year his kid has no coverage. Also, any issues his son has under the opld employer policy will not be covered under the new employers policy once she can add the kid. That suck.

They would have been had the fellow maintained continuous coverage. That is, in large part, what COBRA is all about in the first place. It gives you an easy opt-in after losing company-sanctioned insurance (albeit it at an unreasonably high price) so that you can maintain continuity of coverage and avoid precisely this pitfall.

I can't remember precisely what I used to pay for coverage when I was a salaried employee, but I recall that it fairly trivial- maybe $60 a month or so. Obviously this was in part due to subsidy by my employer, but like I said before- if you can't find a good plan for around $150 for a healthy single person, you're doing something wrong.

Those were projections, not promises. Projection are best guesses based on availible data, trends, history etc. Sometime they are write, sometimes wrong.

Sometimes wrong? Seriously, why does everyone want the gov't to handle everything and/or ANYTHING? The failure and efficiency rate is retarded. I mean for god's sake, Obama can't even get Gitmo closed (Let alone make a decision on troops in Afganistan), and that was sooooo 9 months ago.

Nothing wrong with working out a way to get cheaper health care and universal access, but if you honestly think the current legislation is anywhere in the right direction you're out of your mind.

And you have a good plan that is a sure fire success I suppose???

The one we have now that functions well enough for 98% of the population. We have other shit we need to be worrying about, like the 10%+ of people who won't be able to pay for any kind of insurance because they don't have a job.

Actually it only works for 85% of the population. I'd say it is a considerable issue when 15% of the population has no coverage.

I could be just as insensitive toward jobless people (me). Just a bunch of lazy bums. Walmart is always hiring.

15% yes, but like always they are including the ones who willingly don't have insurance. I had the chance for insurance at my last job, and did carry it for a while until the rates went up and I wasn't willing to give 1/6 of my check to insurance I never use. I haven't looked at any figures but I bet more than half of that 15% are willingly without insurance. No plan they EVER pass will give everyone insurance. Nothing will ever be perfect, people will just have to accept that some people will have to go without. I know that isn't the American way, but sometimes it can't be helped. And like always, health care isn't a right. If you don't have it, it isn't the governments fault or place to give you/make you be insured.

Thats a big problem, you have people who could have insurance but don't because they either don't want to spend the money or can't afford too, so when they have a tragedy, the tax payers pay for it.

Not all, but some yes. I still don't think forcing everyone to have insurance with THIS particular bill is the answer to all of our problems. Instead of fucking up everyone else's insurance situation, they could just assist or outright buy everyone who doesn't have insurance a policy. Surely as hell would be less complicated and costly. Especially it wouldn't consists of a 2000 page bill that no one could possibly comprehend, surely with some bad shit hidden away in it.

I'm sorry you work at a place that offers such crappy benefits. The last job I had with benefits had free insurance that kicked ass. If I stepped up to the awesome plan it only cost me 15 bucks a month.

Costco is hiring and has awesome benefits. I have my 3rd interview tomorrow ;)

It was a medical lab too :giggle: When I started we did have good insurance, only like $11 every check ($22/month) for medical, eye and dental, but then they changed something and it went to over $150/month and we lost the eye and dental, it was extra. Still not too bad compared to a lot of insurance, but considering before my ER visit last month I hadn't been to a doctor in close to 10 years, I didn't need it. Would figure that 2 months after I quit work and lose my insurance I have to go to the damn emergency room. Fortunately it only cost me about $1200, I was expecting it to be much much higher. My mom was saying her last ER visit ended up costing the insurance company over $10k... thats crazy.

People that have insurance can keep what they have, so who's forcing you? And speak for youself, I had no trouble comprehending it, and I'm not a genius. Granted, there we a few sections I had to read more than once, but I figured it out.

How does this apply to families where one spouse has insurance for the family and the other purposely doesn't get it at their job. I work in the Defense Industry (Doesn't everyone in NOVA?) and I know at least 1/2 of the people I work with work for their own companies on independent contracts purposely so that any benefits that they may get had they worked for the company, they would instead just collect in their paycheck. Their spouses then get health insurance to cover the family at their job. I think you could accurately say 300k+ people in the NOVA area do this and not be over exaggerating. I'm wondering how this legislation would apply to those families.

One spouse works for their own company, that does not give its only employee any insurance (purposefully), and the other spouse covers the health insurance through their job. Since the company is not providing insurance to its owner, would it be fined, even though that person is covered through the family plan?

Grey area?

Uh huh... I'm sure you did. 99% of politicians haven't read it, but you have made time to read 2000 pages of line after line of technical shit that most politicians don't even understand and you comprehended it fine. I'm still calling BS on you sir. :blah::makeout:

sole proprieterships are probably exempt from providing insurance. especially if all their employees are contractors. the contractors would be on their own anyway but since the dude's spouse covers him, it's all ok.

awesome my ass, if i wont shell out for 100 a month what makes you think i will shell out for 200-300. Those people who pay 400+ a month probly make 3 times what i do and have some stupid ass, hypocondriac policy. And the last time i checked kids are covered under WICK in KY so whatever and your taxpayer BS is exactly that BS. So find a new catch phrase to hang your hat on. FWIW the government did a good job running the airlines and airports shit was on time and not to damn expensive.

Like I said, I could give a fuck if you believe me. The fact that you are too lazy to read it and to stupid to comprehend it is not my problem. It wasn't 2000 pages, and if it was in normal font and margins it would be not be anywhere near 1000. I have not read the one they just passed, like I said earlier, I read the orginal house bill, but I plan to read this one also. Some of us take the time to read shit we feel is important. And some of use have enough education to comprehend it.

:blah: Keep up the lies. :loser:

Dumbass. :laugh:

You know what, i feel great when i'm duing almost full time college and almost full time job however i cant get health insurance because my job needs me to work fulltime while to be on my parents plan i have to be full time at school yet on the other hand i need a job to help pay for my school and i need school to get a better job.

I'd rather pay extra to have that shit than go into a hospital (in my case kidney stones) and have to spend an hour with some dumb bimbo asking me how to spell my name or my address and other stupid shit while my kidneys are being torn apart by fuckin stones. Screw that shit.

Luckily back then i had insurance since i managed to find somewhat good class times yet still have few days in my job.