Is the Obama Health Care Plan Really Better Than Nothing?

[foginthemorn]

I thought this was a fairly good summary where things stand now.



http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/obama-health-care-plan-really-better-nothing


Is the Obama Health Care Plan Really Better Than Nothing?

Submitted by Bruce A. Dixon on Wed, 07/22/2009 - 08:39



The health care debate inside and outside the matrix
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The real Obama Plan: doesn't cover the uninsured till 2013, if then.


The first clue that something is deeply wrong with the Obama health care proposal is its timeline. According to a copyrighted July 21 AP story by Ricardo Alfonso-Zaldivar,

“President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare law on July 30, 1965, and 11 months later seniors were receiving coverage. But if President Barack Obama gets to sign a health care overhaul this fall, the uninsured won't be covered until 2013 — after the next presidential election.

“In fact, a timeline of the 1,000-page health care bill crafted by House Democrats shows it would take the better part of a decade — from 2010-2018 — to get all the components of the far-reaching proposal up and running.”


..........If the Johnson administration with no computers back in the sixties could implement Medicare for 45 million seniors in under a year, why does it take three and a half years in the 21st century to cover some, but not all, of America's fifty million uninsured? And why does the Obama Plan make us wait till after the next presidential election? ............................


The Obama plan is about health insurance, not health care.

As BAR has been reporting since January 2007, the Obama plan is not a health care plan at all, it is a health insurance plan. Based largely upon the failed model in place in Massachusetts since 2006, the Obama plan will require employers to provide coverage or pay a special tax. Everybody not covered by an employer will be required to purchase insurance under penalty of law, in much the same manner as you're currently required to buy car insurance.

“In my state,” testified Dr. Steffie Woolhandler of the Harvard Medical School last month before Congress, “beating your wife, communicating a terrorist threat and being uninsured all carry $1,000 fines.”

As in Massachusetts, the health insurance plans people are forced to buy will cost a lot and won't cover much. In a July 20 National Journal article Dr. David Himmelstein says,.........

“Nearly every day that he is in the clinic, Himmelstein says, he sees a patient who has problems paying for care "despite this reform.' Some of them had free care before the 2006 law took effect but are now expected to handle co-payments. If you're not poor enough to get a subsidy, say you're making $30,000 a year, you're required to buy a policy that costs about $5,000 a year for the premium and has a $2,000 deductible before it pays for anything. For substantial numbers of people, it's effectively not coverage,' Himmelstein said. The policy he described is about the cheapest Massachusetts plan available, according to the Physicians for a National Health Program report, which Himmelstein co-wrote.”

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The Obama plan's “public option” is a bait-and-switch scam

A July 21 pnhp.org article titled “Bait and Switch: How the Public Option Was Sold” outlines how the public option is neither public, nor an option.

“Public option” refers to a proposal... that Congress create an enormous “Medicare-like” program that would sell health insurance to the non-elderly in competition with the 1,000 to 1,500 health insurance companies that sell insurance today...

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Taxing the rich, paying for health care. How the Obama Plan stacks up against single payer.



............The Obama plan will not contain costs. It will subsidize the insurance vampires well into the next decade. .................
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Single payer, according to a study by the California Nurses Association would eliminate 550,000 jobs in private insurance while creating 3.2 million new ones in actual health care. It would be responsible for $100 billion in wages annually and a source of immense tax revenues for local governments.


So is the Obama plan really better than nothing?................MORE............

[John Q. Citizen]

1. What is the number in congress of the Obama plan? I thought Obama didn't submit a bill.

If I'm wrong about that, I'd like the chance to read his bill.

Thanks.

[Uzybone]

2. not this crap again

its worse than single payer but far better than nothing.

[emulatorloo]

9. I felt like I was reading a left wing version of Jonah Goldberg in the NRO

Does the far left and far right have some kind of pact to work together to divide everybody? Sometimes it seems like it.

[bkkyosemite]

3. and

"Since the president's success depends mostly on keeping people silent and in the dark, he will probably be unable to mobilize the 13 million phone numbers and email addresses collected during the recent presidential campaign, and now held by OFA, his campaign arm. If an organizing call went out to them, too many would try to read the bill and discuss the options, and such a discussion could easily get out of hand. When OFA called house meetings on health care last December, the most frequently advanced question was why we couldn't or shouldn't get a single payer health care system.

Single payer isn't dead yet. It's very much alive among Barack Obama's own supporters. To succeed, he has to bury it alive, to keep them in the bubble, in the dark and quiet, or clapping so loudly they cannot hear themselves or each other think. It's not over."

Everytime they ask me to support Obama's option I email back Single Payer Now!!

[foginthemorn]

5. I basically do the same

with Move-on. You are right. It is not dead yet.

[Warpy]

4. I suggest the hysterical Mr. Dixon try living with nothing for a decade

or so and perhaps then he can make a determination of which is better.

I've been living with nothing since 1987 and anything will be an improvement.

[kimmerspixelated]

6. The "health" care system is a horrible mess to begin with.

Mix in all the possibilities of a fix so that once again caters to insurance companies, and promises that Big Pharma still makes tons of money, and there is really little there that helps people. It is a hugely complex problem, and I am worried about the fine print and the fact that anything good about it is still years in the future.

[swilton]

7. I AGREE WITH THE DIXON ASSESSMENT OF THE OBAMA

PLAN.

The Bill Moyers program on Saturday covered his plan with two highly qualified health specialists (one doctor, one journalist - at least one if not both were university professors). Michael Moore had this half-hour program on his website - I highly recommend watching it. www.MichaelMoore.com
Basically, Obama is trying to fix the health care problem by treating the symptom rather than the cause (for-profit based motives of pharmaceuticals and health insurance industries). The Obama plan in requiring that the uninsured acquire 'health insurance' (something they would have now if they could afford it or had jobs) will financially burden the neediest. Furthermore, it plays into the hands of the h/i, pharma lobbyists by rewarding them with the additional 'business' of the currently uninsured without further regulating them.

The only way to get a health system that functions adequately, is to take the for-profit motive out of any system - in other words - remove pharma and h/i from the table. The fact that this has not been done is why you see the commercial (is it Thelma and Louise) sponsored by lobbyists and endorsing Obama's health care plan. Having said that - what the Obama plan actually is no one really can say - it is at least a thousand pages long - he has been deliberately vague about it in case the proposal crashes which looks like it might happen.

HR 676 - Single Payer is the only way to go - unlikely it will happen given the power of the above mentioned lobbyists. Moyers Panel suggested a way out might be a long-term phase in single payer/phase out of the h/i industry - find them another job (hurricanes, disaster relief) over a ten year period.

[redqueen]

8. So... about that Weiner Amendment...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6161470&mesg_id=6161470

[foginthemorn]

10. Its a grand plan. and I hope it passes.