[quote name='mykevermin']Just humor me with this question: you *truly* think that you've adequately summarized the proposals, allocations, long-term outlooks, projected cost accountability, and specifics of either one or both health care bills with your post above? Yes? No?[/quote]
Pretty much, yeah, as much as you can summarize a 2000 page bill in a post. See, I don't see the proposed options as having "cost accountability."
If that was really a priority... why no tort reform? Why no private managing of medicaid care? Why are bankrupt programs like Medicaid being expanded in some areas? Its like pumping more blood into someone with a severed arm before the wound is patched - stop the bleeding first!
It's no wonder some folks can't fathom why massive federal legislation that has to account for 300 million people can approach nearly 2000 pages in length - as it would appear you'd be much more happy with a bill that says "fix stuff, don't screw up" and find that adequately detailed.
The bill introduced by the house is trying to fix things that are not broken, and what i've heard from the senate bill they are robbing peter to pay paul.
There are some basic points of healthcare that do need to be addressed:
1. Outright denial of people with pre-existing conditions.
2. People who can afford healthcare, but choose not to buy insurance until there is a life-threatening emergency and spend their money on other things instead.
3. People who cannot afford healthcare and abuse Medicaid (i.e. multiple trips to the ER in a given week feigning symptoms because their doc won't prescribe them the particular med they want - I've seen it firsthand) resulting in higher healthcare costs.
4. Frivolous lawsuit judgments resulting in doctors practicing defensive medicine so they don't get sued, resulting in higher healthcare costs.
5. Regulations requiring insurance companies to cover huge bundles of various services that people may not want insurance resulting in large premiums when buying insurance outright such as periods between jobs; there needs to be more options and the ability to opt-out of certain services like auto insurance. The forced bundling of every service under the sun again results in higher healthcare costs.
Now those are some complex problems, but the 2000+ page house bill only addresses 1 & 2 while simultaneously creating potential new problems (i.e. potential lower quality of care w/ public option). The Senate bill also manages to address only 1&2 without some of the potential problems from the house bill, but creates problems too by cutting medicare payments again resulting in potential lower quality of care for medicare patients.
Could a bill be created that addresses 1-5 in under 2000 pages? I don't see why not. Just cut out the pork/payouts, wordiness to disguise big gov't, unnecessary fixing of problems that don't exist, and replace it with innovations that benefit the people without growing government. The main problem is that the current crew in charge seems to care more about serving themselves (government) than the people, and is too fearful of ticking off their constiutents to make a bill that truly serves the people.
in' thing Congress is up to - i.e., what's the bivariate correlation b/w anger with the actual policies proposed and knowledge of what those policies are?
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