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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (89990)	8/27/2010 3:54:02 PM
From: tonto	2 Recommendations Respond to of 224755

Kenneth, who is forced to pay for these higher insurance costs?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (89990)	8/27/2010 3:57:19 PM
From: TideGlider	1 Recommendation Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 224755

No, it isn't a joke. It is a very costly yoke around the neck of insurance companies. That and coverage for children up to age 26? "Children"??? Don't worry Kenneth, it will be revoked or go unfunded. How is it "insurance"? Sounds like a sure thing for sick people and a hard hit for the healthy. I beleive all this probably could have been done with less cost by wiping out the huge bureaucracy created the Obamacare bill. Only an idiot like you would support people who vote on bills they didn't read and have no clue how they will actually be administered. The only "donut hole" that needs filling is between your ears. Pre-existing conditions could be dealt with and health insurance available in a medicaid and medicare program. What ObamaPelosiReidCare does is offer the worst of all aspects of the system, especially the burdensome federal bureaucracy. You have seen the diagram. You like it? Does it look efficient to you? rcronk.wordpress.com

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (89990)	8/27/2010 9:29:55 PM
From: Bill	Respond to of 224755

Yes.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (89990)	8/28/2010 8:42:00 AM
From: TideGlider	Respond to of 224755

Exclusive Video: Gov. Mitch Daniels on Obamacare’s Devastating Consequences Posted August 27th, 2010 at 8:25am in Health Care with 3 comments Print This Post Editor’s Note: On the right, please watch our exclusive interview with Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels blog.heritage.org , and then below, please read an original guest blog to The Foundry from the Governor himself. We’ve been through a global recession. Now we’re fighting through a stalled recovery. Revenues are the lowest they’ve been in half a century. Their finances a wreck, many states have effectively sunk into bankruptcy. Indiana is still afloat. In fact, we’ve fared better than most. We continue to meet our obligations without raising taxes, and the reserves we carefully built and protected will get us through the downturn. But as if we did not already have enough on our plates, the passage and implementation of Obamacare presents us with a whole new set of challenges and a costly to-do list. I note with special sadness that first and foremost amongst the bill’s consequences will be the probable demise of the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP). This program is currently providing health insurance to 50,000 low-income Hoosiers. With its Health Savings Account-style personal accounts and numerous incentives for healthy lifestyle choices, it has been enormously popular and successful. Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid, soon to cover one in every four citizens, will not only scoop up most of HIP’s participants, but will also cost the state between $3.1 and $3.9 billion over the next decade. It is hard to see how my successors as governor will be able to avoid a steep state tax increase to pay for it. Meanwhile, our medical device companies and small businesses will shed jobs as they wrestle with the taxes and penalties levied to help finance Washington’s “reforms.” Of course, it’s a misnomer to even refer to this as “reform.” It doesn’t reform anything. Instead, it perpetuates and magnifies all the worst aspects of our current system: fee for service reimbursement, “free” to the purchaser consumption, and an irrationally expensive medical liability tort system. It’s a sure recipe for yet more overconsumption and overspending. There were better options. Since my election, my state coworkers have had the choice of Health Savings Accounts in lieu of traditional health care plans. The first year this option was made available, some 4 percent of us signed up for it. Six years later, more than 70 percent of our 30,000 state workers have opted for the personal account. This trend has had a startlingly positive effect on costs for both employees and the state. State employees enrolled in the consumer-driven plan saved more than $8 million in 2010 compared to their coworkers in the old-fashioned preferred provider organization (PPO) alternative. Indiana will save at least $20 million in 2010 because of our high HSA enrollment. It has also been the source of significant changes in behavior, as state workers with the HSA visit emergency rooms less frequently and are more likely to use generic drugs than co-workers with traditional health care. Hoosiers enrolled in HIP have experienced similar changes in behavior with generic drugs now accounting for 84 percent of all prescriptions used by enrollees. This is a sharp contrast to the prevalent model of health plans in this country that encourage individuals to buy health care on someone else’s credit card. What seems free will always be overconsumed, compared to the choices a normal consumer would make. Hence our plan’s immense savings. The condescension of the “reformers” is misplaced. It turns out that typical Americans are neither too dense nor too intimidated to make sound decisions about their own health. This is, of course, a fact that national policy makers sadly ignored during their overhaul of our health are system. Now the rest of us are left to pick up the pieces.