Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zeta1961 who wrote (68060)	1/12/2010 10:45:47 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 149317

Health Care Reform to Date: So Very Far From Perfect by Jon Walker / Published on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 by FireDogLake.com The most common defense of the Senate health care bill is that we should "not make the perfect the enemy of the good." If this were a debate between the perfect and the good, the decision to accept a compromise that only result in "the good" would be easy. The issue is that we are not discussing the perfect, the good, or even the very decent. The fight is between the acceptable level of small improvement and a terrible corporate giveaway with a few minor improvements thrown in. To show how far the debate is from the perfect I want to quickly outline what the perfect would look like. The Perfect The perfect would have the access to top of the line equipment and procedures found in Germany. It would offer equal access for everyone to a fully integrated health care with no or very low cost sharing, like that found in the UK. The system would provide our nation with average life expectancies on par with Japan, at low per capita cost like those found in New Zealand. The perfect would increase our average life expectancy by roughly five years, cut our health care spending by 65%, and provide every individual in the country with access to high quality care with no large personal medical costs and eliminate fear of medical bankruptcy. The Very Good The "perfect" is probably unobtainable for a variety of reasons beyond politics. The very good would look more like an expanded, improved version of Medicare for everyone. It would be Medicare for all with some of Medicare's more serious problems resolved - like fixing the wasteful drug benefit program run by private insurance companies. This system would provide every American with good health insurance while reducing our national health expenditure by roughly 20-35%. The Good There are many different ways to get a "good" health care reform. One approach could be an option available to all to buy into a Medicare-like robust public option - this would be approximately 25% cheaper than private insurance - combined with automatic enrollment of everyone below 250% FPL in a high quality public health care program. Another approach would be a Belgian-like system in which for-profit health insurance companies are eliminated; all non-profit insurance funds are required to only sell a few standardized high quality insurance plans; the same insurers are required to use a single government-set reimbursement rate, so all can truly afford health insurance. Such a plan would also need something like direct government negotiations with drug companies and drug re-importation to rein in the pharmaceutical companies. It would also need to provide true universal coverage instead of the Senate or House bills which will leave over 20 million in this country without health insurance. The Decent A decent health care reform bill would have some tough new regulations on insurance companies combined with a stronger social safety net and real cost control. Under such a bill, employers would be required to provide insurance, but they may offer only good health insurance, like in Hawaii. A decent reform bill would need centralized reimbursement negotiators to reduce costs, as well drug re-importation to reduce cost for pharmaceuticals. A major expansion of public insurance, like Medicaid, would also be needed for all the uninsured or provide generous subsidies to buy into a very cost effective Medicare-like public option. The Acceptable Acceptable reform is basically the House bill without the anti-choice Stupak amendment. There are some new regulations in the bill which cover all private insurers in the country. The bill employs national regulator enforcement so the new regulations have some bite to effect change. There is a limited amount of cost control, but not nearly enough to truly drive down overall health care costs. Employers are required to provide at least somewhat decent insurance coverage. There is a very large expansion of Medicaid with increased payments to primary care doctors to make expanded Medicaid coverage usable. The subsidies are good for a limited number of insureds. People would be forced to buy insurance that might not be affordable but at least they are not forced to pay private insurance companies which have ruined our existing system. Acceptable reform only decreases the number of uninsured but does not get us universal coverage. The Bad The Senate bill is just a bad corporate giveaway with a very few good things in it. It has some good new regulations but leaves enforcement up to the states. This is recipe for regulations which are not enforced and are therefore meaningless. The new regulations only impact the small group market; they don't apply to the majority of private insurance in this country. The weird "free rider" provision instead of a real employer mandate creates some bad hiring incentives along with incentives to drop coverage. The quality of the insurance people will be forced to buy is incredibly low and the subsidies are insufficient. People will have no other choice but to buy coverage from very inefficient and wasteful private insurance companies. The bill lacks real cost control and the new poorly-designed excise tax will result in millions of Americans getting lower quality health insurance. The bill is not even a good foundation for future reform because it works on a state-by-state basis while directing huge amounts of money and power to the industries which opposed real reform. The Senate bill does not provide anything close to universal coverage; it also contains a major roll back of women's reproductive health rights. Far from perfect It is important to remember that the perfect was never mentioned in this health care debate. The very good was declared impossible and did not even have a place at the table when they started planning reform last year. Even good reform was dismissed almost immediately. The debate this entire time has been between what might be labeled "decent reform" at best, and terrible corporate giveaway labeled "reform." This is not about making the perfect the enemy of the good. We were never even offered the "good" as a compromise. *Jon Walker is political writer and blogger for FireDogLake. He is an expert on health care policy and the politics of health care reform. © 2010 FireDogLake.com

To: zeta1961 who wrote (68060)	1/12/2010 5:39:40 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 149317

How Toasted Is Rahm? newser.com

To: zeta1961 who wrote (68060)	1/14/2010 6:13:11 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

The 10 Percent Rules ____________________________________________________________ By GAIL COLLINS Op-Ed Columnist The New York Times January 14, 2010 If Massachusetts was the Department of Homeland Security, the special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s senate seat would have the Democrats about four-fifths of the way up the terror alert code. Green: Everything is fine, and who cares if we spelled “Massachusetts” wrong in one of the ads. Blue: Don’t forget to vote. It’s next Tuesday. You’ll remember to vote, right? Yellow: Bill Clinton is coming for a rally. John Kerry has got to show up, too. I don’t care if he just had hip-replacement surgery. Orange: You know, it really doesn’t matter whether you win by a million votes or one vote, just so long as you win. The campaign has not hit red yet, although, for the Democrats, the whole world has begun to look orange with dark tints. Like a decaying pumpkin. It cannot be a good sign when the Massachusetts secretary of state has to deny rumors that he plans to stall certification of the election results until after the health care bill is passed. Of course, it’s all about the health care bill. “As the 41st senator, I can stop it,” Scott Brown, the Republican nominee, says frequently. We will return to our discussion of the Massachusetts special election shortly, after the following special rant about the concept of the 41st senator. * * * * * SPECIAL RANT There are 100 members of the Senate. But as Brown is currently reminding us, because of the filibuster rule, it takes only 41 to stop any bill from passing. U.S. population: 307,006,550. Population for the 20 least-populated states: 31,434,822. That means that in the Senate, all it takes to stop legislation is one guy plus 40 senators representing 10.2 percent of the country. People, think about what we went through to elect a new president — a year and a half of campaigning, three dozen debates, $1.6 billion in donations. Then the voters sent a clear, unmistakable message. Which can be totally ignored because of a parliamentary rule that allows the representatives of slightly more than 10 percent of the population to call the shots. Why isn’t 90 percent of the country marching on the Capitol with teapots and funny hats, waving signs about the filibuster? * * * * * O.K., done now. Martha Coakley, the Democratic Senate nominee, is the kind of candidate who reminds you that the state that gave birth to John Kennedy also produced Michael Dukakis. She is the attorney general, and her speaking style has been compared to that of a prosecutor delivering a summation to the jury. In civil court. In a trial that involved, say, a dispute over widget tariffs. She is so tone deaf that she made fun of her opponent for standing outside Fenway Park shaking hands “in the cold.” A week before the election, Coakley was off the campaign trail entirely in Washington for a fund-raiser that was packed with the usual suspects. But undoubtedly it was well heated. Brown, her opponent, is a conservative state senator who believes in waterboarding but not necessarily global warming. When he was 22, he won an “America’s Sexiest Man” contest, the prize for which was $1,000 and a chance to pose naked in a Cosmopolitan magazine centerfold. One of his daughters — this is perhaps the best-known factoid in the campaign — came in somewhere between 13th and 16th on “American Idol.” “For our family, especially me being on ‘Idol’ but my dad being in politics, there are always so many people who have something negative to say,” Ayla Brown told The Boston Herald this week. Her talent was singing, not sentence construction. (This week Coakley unleashed a hard-hitting ad that charged Brown with being, um, a Republican. Brown’s hard-hitting response charged Coakley with running a negative ad. He is generally thought to have gotten the best of that round, especially given that little mishap with the spelling of the name of the state.) Some polls show Coakley with a 15 percent lead. However, others show the race narrowing toward a tie. (“Dead heat,” announced a fund-raising e-mail message from John Kerry that seemed intended to induce panic attacks on the part of recipients.) The surveys that show the race being too close to call do not seem as reliable as the ones that show Coakley winning handily, but the Democrats who watch these things say the absentee ballot requests are way up in traditionally Republican areas and down in the places that went hard for Obama in 2008. The tea-party types are euphoric, pouring money in Brown’s direction. The people who voted for Barack Obama, meanwhile, are sullen and dispirited. This is, of course, partly because of the economy, but also partly because of the sense that the president is not getting anything done. Which brings us back to the 10 percent rule. Don’t get me started again. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

To: zeta1961 who wrote (68060)	1/18/2010 1:57:36 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 149317

If you want to do something about the situation in Haiti, I can’t think of a better group to give to... standwithhaiti.org

To: zeta1961 who wrote (68060)	1/19/2010 3:14:28 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 149317

Analyzing a Polling Death Spiral -- Polls drive the narrative in MA? dailykos.com