Baucus Care

[Gerry Clinchy]

I admit to being a bit "slow" ... but where did Baucus come up with his $8000/$21,000 maximum cost numbers? Might that be the cost of the plan that covers the Congressmen/women?

Such a "deluxe" plan for a person with a pre-existing condition might cost more. In which case, the insuror who insures those people takes on added risk for the pre-existing condition costs, and also gets hit with an excise tax on the cost over the max stipulated. Does that make the insurance for those pre-existing conditions even more expensive than it might otherwise be (as the tax gets passed onto the consumer)? A "luxury tax" on health insurance?

And what if people/businesses get fined again and again.....are they gonna throw me in jail because I have no health insurance......hmmmm....get thrown in jail and guess what? Now I have FREE medical.

Probably not jail ... not enough jails. Maybe an ankle bracelet? Then you can keep working to pay off the liens that the enforcement agency for the tax (IRS?) slaps on everything you own & cleans out your bank account. But cheer up, once you exceed $10K, you can go to one of those companies that negotiates away your tax liability for pennies on the dollar

[Buzz]

Gerry, it looks to me that in the interest of trying to write some kind of bipartisan bill, Baucus, or as liberals like to call him - Faucus has come up with something that will rile up both liberals and conservatives. Don't expect to see too many liberals trying to defend it. The only reason I've been replying to this thread is to try and understand where booty is coming from.

[TXduckdog]

Buzz.....see my additional post on BaucusCare.

[zeus3925]

HeyTex, how about combining all your threads on " Bacuscare" into one.

[ducknwork]

HeyTex, how about combining all your threads on " Bacuscare" into one.

Getting carpal tunnel from clicking?
________
DOUBLE EAGLE SHOTGUN FPS 380 HOLDERS

[Gerry Clinchy]

NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/he...html?th&emc=th

I think this gets more confusing as it progresses:

On Sunday, President Obama said he saw the need to protect union members, but he also defended the tax. “I do think that giving a disincentive to insurance companies to offer Cadillac plans that don’t make people healthier is part of the way that we’re going to bring down health care costs for everybody over the long term"

Okay ... we want everyone to have health insurance, but we don't want people to have health insurance that is too good, even if they are able & willing to pay for it themselves? But maybe it would be okay to have an expensive plan if it required you to maintain a lower weight, or stop smoking, or whatever is deemed to be "healthier" for you?

They say the Senate's bill now has 564 amendments. Who could possibly keep straight what the bill now provides for? Maybe that's the whole point: out of frustration people vote just to make it go away?

[Julie R.]

For those that think businesses will continue to provide health coverage because it's the industry standard, like Franco's business and the auto industry.....remember that private, for-profit companies will also turn to outsourcing jobs abroad if it becomes too expensive. Or they'll find a way to use independent contractors rather than employees (thus not offering insurance nor required to). Insurance will become the labor union of this century, another bloodsucker on domestic productivity and another reason for more jobs to go abroad and more US companies to relocate out of the US, another thinly disguised way to transfer wealth from those willing to work for it, to those who aren't.


Maybe we should just let the UN come up with a world health plan where the US can just insure the world so everyone can be healthy and happy.

[Buzz]

For those that think businesses will continue to provide health coverage because it's the industry standard, like Franco's business and the auto industry.....remember that private, for-profit companies will also turn to outsourcing jobs abroad if it becomes too expensive. Or they'll find a way to use independent contractors rather than employees (thus not offering insurance nor required to). Insurance will become the labor union of this century, another bloodsucker on domestic productivity and another reason for more jobs to go abroad and more US companies to relocate out of the US, another thinly disguised way to transfer wealth from those willing to work for it, to those who aren't.


Maybe we should just let the UN come up with a world health plan where the US can just insure the world so everyone can be healthy and happy.

Car manufactures have already explicitly stated that factories have been located in Canada over the US because of healthcare costs and the lack of well educated workforce here.

[TXduckdog]

HeyTex, how about combining all your threads on " Bacuscare" into one.

Sorry man....different parts of it came up at different times. I don't know how to do that.....perhaps the admin could.

[T. Mac]

NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/he...html?th&emc=th

I think this gets more confusing as it progresses:

But just as much, the tax is intended to discourage the overly generous coverage that many experts say has helped propel the country’s reckless spending on medical care.

So, as congress' health care plan (not to mention most government employee plans) is one of the "best", it is thus one of the major contributors to the "country’s reckless spending on medical care"?

What I find very confusing is that nearly everyone says the real problem is the rapidiy rising costs for health care. And that this HC plan will try to fix that. But I do not read or see how that is going to happen unless the plan will limit or reduce coverages. And this would seem to mean that many of the critically sick people would be written off (as they are the ones that tend to generate the bulk of the claims and thus incur the bulk of the costs). If this is the case, what difference is it that you are denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, or denied treatment because your plan does not cover those costs?

Part of the rhetoric promoting the plan is that the government will need to promote med students into choosing family medicine over specialties and this will be done by increasing salaries for GPs and increasing their abilities to semi-specialize. So now we are going to control/reduce costs by increasing the upfront costs? Further, looking at my state (CA), we have 10 medical schools. Last year these 10 schools produced less than 100 GPs. (I think the actual number was 88). It is hard to fathom how we are going to produce enough GPs to cover approx 40m additional patients in short order. There was some talk at one of the town hall meetings that nurses or nurse practioners would cover some of the overload. But the nursing programs are even more impacted than the med schools. It would seem that using the rules of econ 101, if you suddenly increase your demand significantly with limited production (numbers of doctors) you will increase the costs of care?

Another confusing point is that if health care costs are spiriling upward and the plan is to decrease these costs, primarily at the specialty/advanced care levels, what happens to all the folks who are now working at these levels. For example, if part of the plan is to decrease CT scans, what happens to all the CT techs, the engineers who maintain the machines, the manufacturing plants that produce the instruments, etc? And what does this do to the development of newer, more efficient machines of the future? Where do all these highly trained people go for work in this economy?

I just don't see how anything good can come out of this, without it hurting a lot more than it helps.