Click pic to embiggin into a large PDF
This is on the website of Republican Congressman Kevin Brady of Texas who, oddly enough, is running for reelection shortly. It’s one of the milder anti-Dem, anti-Obama things I have a feeling we’re going to be pummeled with in the coming months. Personally, I’d rather hear Repubs present positive, constructive plans for doing something (anything?) rather than ‘Party of No’, negative attacks on Obama.
As for health care, I wonder if we’ll see this sort of thing here.
Let me rephrase what you said, Uncle Dave:
“Personally, I’d rather hear Dems present positive, constructive plans for doing something (anything?) rather than ‘Party of No’, negative attacks on George W. Bush.”
We heard the above during the entire Bush Administration…
“Party of No” is a demagogic statement.
Paul,
Then show us you’re bigger than that and support the President, or at least present alternatives, which the Democrats DID do with GWB. Currently the GOP has nothing to offer the country but hate and fear. They have no good ideas, so negative is all they can be.
As an actual liberal (as opposed to a partisan Democrat which is not the same thing), I am no fan of Obamacare.* (I’m also not much of a fan of Barack “I enact 90’s era Republican policy wet dreams” Obama.) Having said that, this chart is just so much BS.
There is so much wrong with Obamacare that I hardly know where to begin. Yes, it does accomplish some good things, but the costs (and I don’t mean monetary) are not worth it. It’d be nice to see some principled Republicans and Democrats (yeah, nearly an oxymoron) address the real issues. Making up charts that are misleading and designed for nothing more than the seeking of partisan advantage among the largest voting block (American morons) is just another example of why we’re headed down the tubes.
*See http://open.salon.com/blog/the_ox/2009/09/20/the_tax_that_isnt_a_taxbecause_its_something_else
“Currently the GOP has nothing to offer the country but hate and fear. They have no good ideas, so negative is all they can be.”
Sounds exactly like the Dems.
First – that “org chart” looks like some anti-government whacko threw everything he “knew” about government on a board, then had a chimp or chimp equivalent (himself) try to connect the dots. That was followed by his crying “SEE! THIS IS WHAT OBAMACARE LOOKS LIKE!” as many times as possible to “hurdle the propaganda.” Fail.
Second – when I was in school and I took tests, the teachers would insist that I show my work to get full credit. Merely writing down a one word or one sentence answer to a complicated question might get a head nod, but very little credit. Quite frankly, that lack of credit was deserved, as the short answer would not show I knew the material, that I knew the causes and effects.
Since the GOP has been out of power, all they have attempted to do was give short answers in hopes that the folks they spoke to could be fooled. When the media (and electorate) requested the GOP to “show their work” and display the guts behind their plan, they balked. Sure, they made a huge production of displaying a “budget” document that was 2 pages and effectively said “don’t worry your pretty little heads about it”, but nothing since.
The Dems aren’t innocent of this, but at least they have produced plans for review. Some of those plans were shot down, which is good – that means folks were looking at them and figured out there may be a better way. But to let the GOP get off without showing what they will do is lazy, and if we vote them back into office we will get what we deserve.
Oh, and to the GOP… holding up your last test paper with a big F circled on it (“If we keep doing what that glorious W did, all will be fine!”), and saying it will work, will just get you another F. (I’m reminded of Kevin Bacon’s character at the end of Animal House screaming pathetically “all is fine, remain calm, all is fine.”)
weird that the Republicans are blocking all these crazy schemes when they have no majority or power to stop anything……
Since the average person doesn’t even know what he is looking at with this mess of a diagram, I’d say it’s a complete failure at saying anything. Well, unless the point of it is to show that the whole system is a mess, I guess…
What’s with all this crazy Left-Right/Dem-Repub talk? I thought we’d all worked out that party politics was a sham and a cover for who’s really calling the shots. You still think the guys with the money would let you vote if it actually meant a damn?
Do a search for republican health care plan before you claim nothing is out there.
The best plan:
1. Pass tort reform to cut back malpractice insurance costs.
2. Allow people to buy insurance across state lines.
3. Deregulate health insurance enough to allow thousands of different plans to be offered, much like life and car insurance.
4. Encouragement of catastrophic insurance rather than HMO’s which hide true costs from consumers. People can afford regular doctor’s appts (given how much we pay a month for an HMO). What we can’t afford is emergency surgery, terrible illnesses, etc. HSA’s and catastrophic insurance returns control back to the consumer, not the insurance company.
He was impatient after an hour? Sounds like that’s a testament to Sweden’s HC system if his expectations were so high that he felt he shouldn’t wait an hour.
#10, “Has anyone studied this phenomenon?”
yes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal-agent_problem
Srothard:
1. Tort reform would have a negligible impact.
2. Buying across state lines doesn’t open up 50 new insurance carriers; the same players just get a different customer base. They will probably also all headquarter in a state with lax laws just like credit card companies do now.
3. See above. Which of these thousands of plans will keep them from countermanding my doctor when I need a particular treatment or dropping my coverage when I get too expensive.
4. In general I agree with you here. Insurance has an end to end stranglehold, even on things that could be paid for. Insurance breaks down when not used for rare catastrohic events. Why does my HSA empty out every year? It should be a savings account if I don’t use it.
So we pay out of pocket for simple costs like Dr visits, and insurance pays for catastrophe, who pays for chronic illness? That’s a significant portion of HC right there. People who have chronic and expensive conditions often cant afford to stay healthy (or live) out of pocket, and insurance doesn’t want the money sink. How do we fix that?
The answer was easy – have a single payer system for basic health care for all.
In a single stroke you remove the majority of weird issues.
Insurance/health companies can then compete on other qualities other than basic health care (such as having a nice room etc).
But no we couldn’t do that.
And so health care will remain an expensive, mess.
As an aside last year my health insurance with Blue Cross Blue shield in VA went up by 40%. It was too much – so we went for a very big deductable, lost dental etc, to get it down. As of this week it went up again by over 30%.
I do not have insurance with my employer because I work out of state.
Its all going so well.
tcc3 says:
Tort reform would have a negligible impact.
According to the American Bar Association… snort!
#14 “Tort reform would have a negligible impact.”
Obviously you don’t know any doctors. Every doctor I have talked to says fear of litigation is the single biggest factor driving up health care costs. It has a double impact – Doctors have to pay increasingly astronomical costs for insurance, and doctors order unnecessary tests as a matter of course to cover their ass in the event of a lawsuit.
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/05/19/doctors-flock-to-texas-after-tort-reform/
Er…yeah, why would a nation wide plan involving one of the biggest chunks of the economy look simple. LOL.
Have you seen an org chart or Microsoft Project plan from Boeing or Microsoft themselves? You think THIS PDF is complicated, not even CLOSE. This is middle school complicated. I’ve seen TRULY complicated plans.
If this is too complicated, just go back to eating your cookies and let the grown ups handle this. This stuff IF complicated.
So Lawyers are against tort reform because they have a vested interest. But we can take Drs at their word despite their own vested interest.
There’s a disconnect there.
Regardless of your position on Tort reform, its not the whole answer. The amount its not the whole answer varies depending on who you ask.
I cant help but notice you tried to crucify me for dismissing your magic bullet, yet you offer no response to expensive chronic disease.
Bless you, Intergalacial (#9) for bringing us to the finer point.
Single payer is great. How to you pay for it?
Answer: Simultaneously a)stop providing services to those individuals who are in the U.S. illegally b)Bring U.S. troops home from every “friendly” country, which we all should know by now is essentially foreign aid money that doesn’t have to be approved by congress as such.
As a former government employee, I’ve see org charts generated in our own offices every bit as confusing. I doubt the GOP had to manufacture it. It is was probably a talking points slide used to brief congress 😉
Of course, the SIMPLIST SOLUTION is what the People want – MEDICARE, EVERYWHERE !!! No charts necessary !!!
#19, Yes, the immense expense of treating chronic diseases is much more of a factor than the red herring that is tort reform.
Part of the problem with the whole system is that we pride ourselves in measuring life expectancy as a positive. If we all lived to 100 because we were all healthy, and healthy people live longer, then that would be one thing. But what we are really accomplishing is artificially extending the lives of increasing numbers of extremely unhealthy people with the use of expensive medical treatment. I don’t see the long-term benefit to this as a species.
Paul Ryan’s roadmap for America: http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/
I am not much of a fan of Government programs. They are usually inefficient and poorly run and the American people may have needed some type of basic health care for American’s who cannot afford it. But America cannot afford it either. We are ignoring the problem of low wages and poor benefits and replacing them with more federal debt to solve them. This is not going to work.
this WHOLE era is turning into a 5 year OLDS FIGHT.
2 kids just yelling and screaming at each other, and NOTHING constructive, Nothing to SOLVE the difficulty between the 2.
tcc3 said:
So Lawyers are against tort reform because they have a vested interest. But we can take Drs at their word despite their own vested interest.
There’s a disconnect there.
Yes, the disconnect is between tcc3 and reality.
We don’t have to take the Doctors’ word. All we have to do is examine our own experiences.
Just consider the dozens of megabuck extra tests that are done to ensure every possible side effect is considered.
Texas got a dose of sanity recently and put in a few medical tort reforms and guess what! The medical malpractice costs are going down.
Amazing? Not really, just common sense.
Considering that about one in four Texans have no health insurance, I don’t think tort reform savings will bridge that gap.
Is there a direct or significant correlation between med malpractice and overall healthcare cost?
For the reduction in “defensive medicine” is there an increase in mistakes, misdiagnoses, or outright sloppyness due the reduction in pressure from possible law suits? Is the cost savings worth it?
Some people would say no to both those questions. See links above.
You’re still beating a dead horse.
What about expensive chronic conditions?
The links you supplied don’t work.
Medical malpractice costs are just part of the overall tort problem. The bigger issue are the expensive costs for unnecessary tests and procedures for millions of patients – just in case.
Yes, the cost savings would be worth it. And I am speaking as a cancer survivor who has seen this up close and personal.
But what we are really accomplishing is artificially extending the lives of increasing numbers of extremely unhealthy people with the use of expensive medical treatment. I don’t see the long-term benefit to this as a species.
I quoted this because I think it’s the key point. One one side you have this clear reality. Even my relatives who work in health care tell me this all the time…they keep dead people alive for months, years. For example, Dick Cheney. It’s insanely expensive.
On the other side: Death Panels.
Republicans evidently get measured by their sheeple constituents by the gross tonnage of rhetoric they produce.
Try copy/paste. Or Google. That information wasn’t hard to find. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.
I say again: if tort reform is part of the solution, its a small part.
This is a distraction from a larger, more complicated issue.