President Barack Obama’s administration signaled on Sunday it is ready to abandon the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run health insurance as part of his ambitious health care proposal.
Facing mounting opposition to the overhaul, administration officials left open the chance for a compromise with Republicans that would include health insurance cooperatives. Such a concession is likely to enrage his liberal supporters but could deliver Obama a much-needed win on a top domestic priority opposed by GOP lawmakers.
A government-run public option to health care, even being a far-left idea, have worked in many countries and could work in the US, but it seems that the Obama Team is going to drop the plan altogether.
Another example of how beholden the government is to special interests.
How many campaign promises is this guy going to break before we see him from what he really is? A hack with good speechwriters.
This isn’t the change people voted for. The Obama administration is a failure.
I haven’t read the other comments, but living in a country with free (ish), poorly working healthcare, all I can say is poor, poor americans… It’s better than what you have now…
“but it seems that the Obama Team is going to drop the plan altogether.”
That’s because to many Conservatives public health care is another step into forcing them to treat poor people as equals.
# 18 Fido
“Let’s see how Big Insurance does with some competition.”
Big Insurance, Big Oil, Big Tobacco OOOOhhhhhh they’re gonna git ya!
But Big Government is benevolent and wise.
#26 JimR said,” If you want to make a serious point, use an example that is based in reality…..Doctors don’t do their own X-rays or blood tests……”
Take your own advice. Some Doctors do take X-Rays and blood tests.
“Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs….let’s vote for JOBS!!!!!!
“YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! ”
(Oh.)
…………Where were we again?
The proposal by the Whole Food’s CEO in a recent WSJ Op-ed doesn’t seem like a bad alternative to me.
Excerpt:
• Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health insurance is not. This is unfair.
• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable.
• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying.
• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are passed back to us through much higher prices for health care.
• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. How many people know the total cost of their last doctor’s visit and how that total breaks down? What other goods or services do we buy without knowing how much they will cost us?
• Enact Medicare reform. We need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading towards bankruptcy and enact reforms that create greater patient empowerment, choice and responsibility.
• Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Just watched Billiary at a Kenyan Town Hall Q&A. She made the point that Botswana got lucky twice. Diamonds were not discovered until JUST AFTER the british colonials left in peace AND the Botswana government treated the Diamonds as a resource to build their infrastructure==ie, they did not sell off their resources to some foreign corporation to line the pockets of corrupt local officials.
IE===CORPORATIONS BY DEFINITION ARE PARASITES.
To the degree that is true, doesn’t matter how mature the organism is: just born Botswana, or fully mature USA. CORPORATIONS ARE PARASITES. And if we want a healthy society, we should get CORPORATIONS out of healthcare so that their parasitic profits don’t line the pockets of their management, shareholders, and politicians.
A new theme is born.
#40, Web, big government represents you… you put them there by majority vote. So when you imply sarcastically that big government is just like big business… greedy and ignorant… what are you saying about the populace who put them there?
#45–Jim==seems just too obvious, but its a slow afternoon:
big government represents you… /// Sunday school crap. Once elected, they do as they please—ie, make themselves rich. When two voters have opposing views, how does their elected official “represent” them in the meaning YOU impute?
you put them there by majority vote. /// A vote demonstrable influenced by the money spent to influence the voters. Majority Vote == controlled by money and misinformation.
So when you imply sarcastically that big government is just like big business… greedy and ignorant… /// Well, corrupt and self interested really is pretty close.
what are you saying about the populace who put them there? /// That they are as easily led as you have just demonstrated.
#14 gets it. “It will take 50 years to get this done.” Bingo! Too true. It will take the populace 50 years to realize private health insurance doesn’t work. Then they’ll throw the commercial insurance bastards out of the game for good. This was never about “healthcare.” It’s about ACCESS—who has it & who doesn’t.
$47 Ah yes, another Pyrrhic victory for the sheep of the Republican party.
It’s all about undermining the Obama presidency while handing the special interest groups what they want. Then you criticize for lack of making progress. I want to punch you in the neck.
The Special Interest lobbyists are spending $millions, spilling their lies to the American people. So many lies that they have likely disrupted any chance of Universal health care. They have lied so much about the Canada system, and paid off so many people to give birth to their lies, that the gullible population believes them. The wealthy insurers want no change, so they can ring every dollar out of a system.wrought with fraud and corruption In the long run cost will explode and only the upper class will have the money to buy care. Lose your job and even those people will join the millions out of work unble to pay for medical care for their family.
The Status Quo are selling propaganda and downright lies, across the TV, radio bandwidths. LIES! Lies and more lies about both Health care and illegal immigration. The facts are that President Obama has an objective of introducing a Canadian and European type single payer system.
In truth it’s like a nationwide–MEDICARE–like all senior citizens receive now. It’s only difference their will be–NO CO-PAYS, DEDUCTIONS, NO PREMIUMS AND NO PRE -EXISTING CONDITIONS. The Special interest lobbyists, who work for the wealthy health care industry, are using every means possible to derail any kind of Universal health care. We must remember the British/English, French, German, Danish and other have been well accepted by their population for decades, with no worries about bankruptcy or Debt collectors calling. My health care in England, was first class when I lived in there, without financial worries and no distractions from profiteering insurance companies.As a child and a young man I choose my doctor and received eye and dentistry visits free of charges.
I NEVER HAD TO WAIT FOR A SURGERY FOR MONTHS, AS THE SPECIAL INTEREST LOBBY TRIES TO IMPLY? EMERGENCY PROCEDURES WERE DEALT WITH IMMEDIATELY. One should remember that there a large majority of nefarious special interest groups, who enjoy the status quo and will fight with propaganda and lies against their profiteering. Another place where I lived was Australia, where the health care system is equally as great as England. One year I was employed by Australian Main Roads as a junior surveyor and stepped into a fire ants nest, ending up in hospital. Once again my cost was–ZERO–because I paid into the system. There is something very calming, without the worry of billing statements pouring through the mailbox demanding money and threatening you with an attorney.
Since the inception of the European common market and the directive of open borders for cheap labor pouring into the industrialized nations, they have been overwhelmed by the impoverished needing health care. Such conditions didn’t exist before the 1960’s, as the their was no mass immigration and waiting periods. In America today and since the newest waves of legal and illegal immigration, costs to medicate these people have sky rocketed who have never paid one penny into the system. Each previous government never have restricted immigration, but allowed taxpayers to pay for their health care and welfare benefits. Each year approximately 1.5 million new immigrants are granted work visas and many become public charges.
Now Obama is insisting on yet another AMNESTY, which will be even costlier to the American taxpayers, so says the Heritage foundation. American taxpayers should not have to subsidize US businesses, which has been happening for years? A large majority of pariah corporate executives, do not want any restrictions on foreign national workers, that is why they have tried to kill a mandated E-Verify identity data base, to extract all illegal immigrants from the working environment.
That SANCTUARY STATES like California must rescind illegal immigrant refuge policies. That President Obama’s health care renewal plan—WILL–attract millions more impoverished people from around the world. That they can join with the 20 plus million already here, to get free medical care under the Democrats law now passing through Congress.
Observe this PETITION to STOP any health care to illegal immigrants at: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/nohealthcareforillegals
“Let’s see how Big Insurance does with some competition.”
Big Insurance, Big Oil, Big Tobacco OOOOhhhhhh they’re gonna git ya!
But Big Government is benevolent and wise.
I never said that. Read it again. I want the gov’t plan competing with the private plans. Competition is good, remember???
The guy in charge of the Senate bill is going with cooperatives. He says the public option is dead in his bill and pushing it is bad for the party and would never pass in the Senate.
Nancy may push it anyway and to bleep with what is best for the party.
woohoo! i hope its true..
-talk about dodging a bullet.
-s
Caved already! He didn’t last too long.
“…if you think that was great, you really have low expectations.”
After eight years of Bush/Cheney — yup.
“The Obama administration is a failure.”
And you helped! Aren’t you proud?
“Healthcare for the poor and needy is one of the basic pillars of anything that wants to claim to be civilised.”
Doesn’t look like we’ll be able to make that claim any time soon….
I heard James Carville on CNN this weekend, saying the democrats should force the republicans into filibustering health care reform.
At that moment, I relised that what he was actually saying, democrats are taking too much heat and are looking for a way to kill this reform package and blame it on the republicans.
Boo! Come on Obama show some spine. I thought everyone knew that all the people who whine and scream at the town hall meetings are people paid by lobbyists to kick up a fuss.