Hi Pete,

This should be a very interesting program to watch coming up on PBS tomorrow night.

My husband and I gave back our greencards when we learned I couldn't get reasonable health care coverage in the USA becasue of my RSD. We figured the pre-existing condition clauses would be used for basically anything and everything if anything catastrophic were to happen to me. It's too bad really but we had to make sure we are both properly insured. California dreaming is just that.

MsL

Thanks, MsL!

I hope the rest of us can keep this thread going!

I'd be so very disappointed, if not!

Let's all THINK, NOW's the time!

(If you don't have an opinion, then you're going to get no dinner. Like it or not. Sorry, but this conversation should help us to form opinions, and questions).


THANKS!

Pete

IMHO [and no, we're not talking party politics] Frontline is a is a sneaky one, so be careful. It purports to be an objective documentary, but it has a way of landing on the side of "conventional wisdom."

I was first struck by this years ago when it did a program on the decision to drop the Atomic Bomb, totally ignoring the scholarship of people like Gar Alperovitz and Gabriel Kolko, who had been through Henry Stinson's diaries etc., and painted a pretty convincing picture that Japan was on the eve of surrender as a result of the firebombings, they were just down to the status of the Emperor, but the problem was, for years the West had been begging Stalin to invade from the East after the fall of Germany, and he said he would do it, three months to the day, but by that time, Japan was so weak and the territorial concessions that Stalin wanted (and took) were so significant, that time alone became of the essence in securing a Japanese surrender . . . .

Yet none of this - stuff I spent much of a semester studying in college - made it into the Frontline documentary. Ditto JFK in Dallas, and although I can't say I took that one for credit, I did live it.

Mike

Mike,
I was watching a show called "the Manhattan Project", on hulu, I think it was on "Modern Marvels".
They got into the political end, that the US wanted to drop the bomb(s) quickly, so that Russia couldn't get in on the peace treaty, and therefore, as the spoils go to the victor, Russia was kept out!

Thanks for the info, Mike!

pete

My humble position on the current health care bill --

WHO is going to pay for it? How, as a country, can we possibly afford the initiatives set forth by the House? We can't even afford Social Security and the existing Medicare programs - those funds are projected to go broke by the time people my age (now 49) are ready to retire.

More work needs to be done. A government sponsored program on the level that is being currently proposed is by far too expensive for the country as a whole.

I think we all agree that something has to be done. We need reform. Let's get it right.

Sandy

Putting aside how certain issue's of women's rights are dealt with in the House bill, there is [strike: only] one key - but fatal - flaw in what I have heard will be in the final Senate bill at least (and may be in the House version, dunno) and that is that people with mandated employer sponsored insurance will be inellible to participate in the public plan, no matter how bad their coverage is.

With that, the insurance industry has innoculated itself from any competition from the public plan, where the public plan could have been quite competitive by, among other things, saving on the 30% of revenue that we're told goes into stringing people out on their claims. Does anyone know off hand whether this provision is in the final House bill?

Finally, for a nice discusion on the economics of paying for this, check out a story that ran in Monday's NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/he...0cost.html?hpw Apparently, the great hope lies in the concept of "bundling," which, to the best of my understanding, is what Kaiser Permanente was and is built on. And unlike a lot of for-profit HMOs, Kaiser's care is pretty good.

Mike

I understand that besides "taxing the rich", that medicare / medicaid are going to lose a LOT of funding.
This is how, in a short article I read, it was explained, would pay for this new law.

pete

Thanks Pete. So much for my reference to the inability of most folk to qualify for the public plan being the "only" key flaw of the legislation.

Too much Baclofen, forgot about that one. Although I wonder how a cut in Medicare can in the end survive the wrath of AARP. But as for cutting Medicaid, that's just shameless.

Somebody correct me on this, but it seems like it's been a very long time since the powers at be in the U.S. were publically committed to aiding the poor, especially as a matter of real priority. How have we become so debased as a people?

Mike

Kaiser is a nightmare and wouldn't wish that coverage on an enemy. Kaiser is the inventor of the HMO which is how not to cover someone in short order. You have to use their doctors and hospitals. The US is now heading into third world status with it's pathetic, fragmented way it delivers healthcare. In order for me not to ramble, there are two industries that can collude and fix prices, health insurance companies and major league baseball. The insurance companies have managed to divide this nation at the expense of millions of Americans well being. Just keep in mind a congressman or woman will never go without their government provided coverage ever. No pre-existing condition can never apply to them.

Just a bump up of the original post.
New health bill & information.