The House passes a healthcare bill:
Over angry Republican objections, the House on Wednesday passed a sweeping expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, financed with increases in tobacco taxes and cuts in subsidies to private Medicare insurance plans for older Americans.
The bill embodies the Democrats’ vision for health care, taking a step toward the goal of universal coverage while reversing what they see as Republican efforts to “privatize Medicare.”
By a vote of 225 to 204, the bill passed, with support from 220 Democrats and 5 Republicans. Ten Democrats joined 194 Republicans in voting against it. The bill would provide coverage for more than four million uninsured children in low-income families, prevent cuts in doctors’ Medicare payments scheduled for Jan. 1 and raise the federal cigarette tax 45 cents a pack, to 84 cents.
It would also increase assistance to low-income Medicare recipients and eliminate co-payments for most preventive care provided to Medicare recipients.
The bill will be vetoed, so it is probably not even worth going into the specifics, but one aspect of it I find very curious- why cancel co-payments for preventative care? It would seem to me that assuming you believe in a large role for the government in Healthcare, preventative medicine would be one of the things you would want to encourage. A little bit of money spent in preventative care would seem to be wise, assuming the previously mentioned assumptions.
*** Update ***
I completed misinterpreted the article- the elimination of the copayments is doing precisely what I thought it was not doing. Somehow I perceived that to mean preventative medicine would not be covered. Reading comprehension 101.
JKC
That’s exactly why they’re doing it, John: preventative services would be free to the patient, as opposed to a co-payment charged for sick visits.
Steve
Let’s say your co-payment for a preventative visit is $20. If the co-payment is cancelled, now you get the same visit for $0.
This is actually pretty common in private insurance plans – for example, some give you a free checkup every 6 months with no co-pay.
John Cole
Then it is me being an idiot and misreading it. I read that to mean they would no longer provide preventative care…
Face
A bill to give some really fucking expensive health care to lower class children, and this is how you tag it? Sick f#ck.
Edmund Dantes
I’m leaning towards you misread it at least I hope that’s what happened.
John Cole
It was under Democratic Stupidity because I read it wrong- I thought they were doing the opposite of what they were. I can go through and change the tag if it makes you feel better, or can do what I prefer to do- keep things as I have posted them with this comments section evidence and an explanation of what happened.
Regardless, it will never be law while Bush is in the White House, but will eventually That is really how I have come to view the entire health care system- big business wants government health care, and it is going to happen in the next 10-15 years.
Face
Under what guise is Bush planning on vetoing this? Jesus, the commercials with sick, injured, and diseased kids just write themselves.
Seriously, can Bush really spend 12 bill a month in Iraq, yet veto this coupla-bill legislation?
(tag’s fine now that you’ve explained it. Thought you were clowning on the Dems for this bill)
Zifnab
Fixed. Clearly, John has forgotten how the Republican political system works over the course of the last week.
Well, then, I guess that makes you a Democrat, John. :-p
Zifnab
Big business will inevitably get a piece of government health care. Unless the US Government wants to start making its own band-aids and asprin, that’s inevitable. The question is whether we’ll just see Big Business mascerading as Government Healthcare, or whether the people will actually control their own health policy.
Ripley
Under what guise is Bush planning on vetoing this?
Iirc, there was an extension of Medicare benefits that BushCo opposed – among other things, I’m sure. And really, does anyone think that Republicans actually care about kids and senior citizens? It’s not like they have any money to contribute…
Also of note, re: the tobacco taxes, the FDA may become involved in some tobacco industry regulation.
Jake
It already does. In fact, I can’t think of a major p[l]ayer that doesn’t have a Medicare Advantage plan or three.
Annarborblue
Off topic, but TNR has basically confirmed the “Scott Thomas” stories (the one factual mistake was that the disfigured woman was in a base in Kuwait, not Iraq).
Unsurprisingly, conservative bloggers are treating the TNR confirmation like it proves that the story was false.
Sorry for the threadjack.
Jake
And from the Washington Post, I think this must have caused some amusement at the AARP HQ:
Kirk Spencer
Two comments for one.
1) I knew – not guessed, but KNEW – that some form of national healthcare was coming when H. Lee Scott (CEO WalMart) and Andy Stern (President SEIU) jointly declared their intent to see it happen within a decade. If good politicians are those who run to get in front of the crowd, these are the ones shouting “No, Go the OTHER WAY…” It only remains to see if they realize the situation before or after they get trampled.
2) Rep Tom Price of Georgia put an impassioned editorial into his local paper today about this. He hit many high notes to include the fact it was covering people with family incomes of up to $82,000. Then, in the same paragraph, he shot himself in his foot.
Ummm, could it be that by your own statement apparently 71% of all children in America are currently ineligible for insurance? Or the fact that even at approximately the 75th quartile of income (ie, making more than 3/4 the rest of the people in the us), 11% STILL can’t get medical insurance?
Raising the cap on SCHIP that high might be too much. Maybe – on a fiscal basis. But on an emotional basis stopping it is, well, it’s standing in front of the crowd waiting to get trampled.
Bizarro World Democrat
Bush’s biggest priority is to keep your kids sick, and his biggest fear is the phrase “so help me God”. If you’re as sick of this jackass as I am, then vote for me in 2008.
Dave
I wonder how the nutters are going to take it when more big businesses get behind this (and they will). The only ones really with anything to loose in this are the health insurance industry. The battle is really what it will look like, not if it’s going to happen.
I’m curious about your take one socialized medicine in general John.
les
Bush will veto because this bill would expand a highly effective and popular program; it is not in the interest of Bush and his ilk to have the public get the notion that the gov’t can actually work–for them. Big biz–employers, not insurance cos.–will be behind this and more because they’re tired of being the health care payment system.
les
I think you’re wrong, Bizzaro; this is just a side benefit for the Dear Leader.
John Cole
I am generally against it. That being said, the current state of health care is a mess, and I can see the writing on the wall- it is going to happen. Slowly at first, perhaps, but it is inevitable- businesses have been rumbling for a while they can not compete because of health costs, Congress will respond.
The appropriate thing to do now is to make sure that it happens effectively and efficiently, and we get the most out of the tax dollars we will inevitably spend on it. The dangerous thing is that the piecemeal way we will get it over the next decade is what will probably lead to the truly American outcome:
Shitty government run healthcare that spends a lot of money and accomplishes little.
That is just how we do things here, though.
Salty Party Snax
If people get sick, it’s because they are bad.
John is right. Don’t stand in God’s way. Let the evil suffer.
JW
Hey John,
Would it be okay if I were to comment on this or should I just not bother.
TM Lutas
Socialism has always been about robbing peter to make paul look really good. Paul, in this case, is the health care system end user payment. But what’s always been the case is that socialized systems have been a net drain and proven ultimately unsustainable. This is also true of government run health care. The German army wants to end their draft. Their health ministry vetoes it because the lack of labor from the conscientious objectors would bankrupt the health system.
Different government systems rob in different ways but they all are unsustainable. It’s no fix to go that route and I don’t think that ultimately we will.
Zifnab
John, keep in mind that this isn’t government run hospitals we’re talking about. It’s government run insurance. Medicare doesn’t make your respirators and your hip replacements, it just pays for them. That’s all this is ment to do.
All that bullshit about “It takes five years to get an MRI in Canada” is bullshit because they’re lacking MRI machines, not because socialized medicine is broken. It’s like saying the highway system doesn’t work because of traffic jams. On the contrary, the reason everyone’s out on the road is because it works so well.
That’s just my take anyway.
The problem is that insurance is a zero-sum game. Unlike, say, an ice cream cone or an airline ticket, when you’re buying an insurance policy you’re not really getting anything. You’re not buying a good or a service, you’re buying potential future money. If you buy car insurance and you don’t get hit by a car, you don’t get anything out of it. If you buy flood insurance and your house stays dry, you never see a return on your investment. It’s the nature of the business. Furthermore, when demand is high (flood insurance in the middle of flood season), the company doesn’t want to sell to you.
The insurance business is a giant con game when its a for-profit industry. Con games and price gouging are not compelling reasons to embrace a capitalistic enterprise. It’s not the fault of the companies that the very nature of the business they are in demands that they screw over consumers. That’s just the way insurance works. You need providers who don’t fuck their clients. That leaves non-profits and government entities… ok, that leaves non-profits. But until we come up with a non-profit health insurance system, a government-based system is the next best thing.
Ripley
Insurance is, for all practical purposes, a socialist system, if you think about. You’re pooling risk and pooling premiums. Where do you think the claim money comes from, the benevolence of the carrier? It comes from the other insureds’ premiums. (And sure, those premiums are invested as they’re collected, to help create a profit and greater financial assets, but still…)
But I’m not sure that the spinoff of “gov’t. healthcare” is really a fair angle for this particular discussion, either. There’s an important distinction between health benefit coverage and healthcare. Whether universal coverage will lead to nationalized healthcare, I don’t know. (I know, it’s a bit of semantics.)
I worked in Employee Benefits for a while – one of my clients was one of the biggest companies in the nation. An employee told me, during a switch in coverage options at annual enrollment, “$30/month for health insurance is ridiculous!” From my perspective, I think people want universal coverage, even if it has a whiff of “socialism” to it.
Also, there is some gov’t involvment in insurance, generally at the state level. The gov’t has an interest in ensuring that the insureds are dealt with fairly and that the carrier is financially stable.
Sorry if I drifted OT a bit.
Dreggas
My biggest problem with this bill is that they plan to fund it with an increased sin tax. The end result will be similar to what happened here in california when they passed one of those ever so lovely “Propositions” that started paying for people’s health care by taxing cigarettes.
What happened? People quit smoking (not a bad thing)
this dried up funding for the program (not a good thing)
So they had to fund it elsewhere. How’d they try and do that?
A lovely little gem called prop 86 this past year that…wait for it…would raise taxes on cigarettes to provide more money for kids healthcare. Again put a poor kids face next to the chance to stick it to the big bad smokers.
Of course in the fine print it was a different story. A good chunk of said money would go to…drum roll please…back funding the initial program that raised the tax which resulted in people quitting.
Real genius there.
Of course Prop 86 wasn’t even pushed by people with a real conscience on the matter, it was being pushed by…the health care industry and…corporate hospitals.
This is the same shit wrapped in a different bag altogether, let’s just raise the tax on cigarettes and wed ourselves even further to people smoking so we can pat ourselves on the back and say we’re doing something only to realize a few years from now when the current smokers either quit (due to the price increase) or dropped dead and the money starts drying up.
These morons need to start looking at real policy, you wanna insure kids or even everyone? Great but don’t put that burden on a small portion of the country just because it scores cheap points and sounds good to joe schmoe.
Dave
Yeah, lacking any real leadership in this country from either side of the isle, I foresee publicly funded health care as both inevitable and a mess.
JW
Questions I might ask, would be. How many are American citizens? Does this cover only those that we pay our tax dollars to represent? Does this cover any child that happens seek medical attention in America? Will it allow those that can afford medical services a free pass? Will insurance companies suggest “check the No Coverage box, when asked about coverage when making a child claim”? I do think it is a drastic mistake and a major leap towards socialized medicine. It has not been successful yet.
Jake
Psycheout’s pals have spoken:
You cannot spoof this shit. It is pre-spoofed and therefore spoof-proof.
The Other Steve
I still insist the major problem with our healthcare system, is that the market has determined the most profitable avenue is to treat symptoms, rather than curing the disease.
By treating symptoms, they can sell you pills for the rest of your life.
JW
We seem to lable anything, a “sin tax”. Who is to determine that, what is and what is not of the out ordinary? A vegetarian may say that all meat products are such, a non-fisherman or non-hunter may say as much, those that will only buy American made products, will say the same. Where and who draws the line. Why do we vote and allow these “so called elected officials” that represent the people, vote for and make decisions, at will, without listening to our voice. This is applicable to any side of the aisle
Jake
For those of you with questions about how SCHIP works, or are suffering from insomnia.
Zifnab
Sin taxes are the only way to get around the Republican tax-fear. Once the program is in place, its impossible to get rid of without alienating voters. But until everyone can appreciate a program like CHIP or Medicare, they have to see it work. And the only way to get the program off the drawing board is by convincing conservatives that taxes aren’t actually going up. Sin taxes are the last bastion of revenue in a Norquist-esque tax-free world.
Zifnab
Well, there’s an across-the-board income or sales tax. Not to mention property taxes and ownership fees. I don’t think you’d call any of those “sin” taxes.
Ripley
I think a lot of elective cosmetic suregeries would be healthy candidates for taxes to support the program. We’ll call it a Vanity Tax.
Hummers would also be subject to a Vanity Tax. (The vehicles, not blowjobs. Perverts!)
And maybe some of the American corporations that outsource their jobs and manage to weasel out of paying any taxes could finally be taxed at a fair and reasonable (and patriotic) rate.
JW
Zifnab,
“Out of the ordinary” was the key, yes we all pay taxes for? But to impose a tax for specific items, is what was “tea tax”. It may not have caused rebellion, but it was and is repeated in history. Specific taxes, aimed at only specific users or a specific product is wrong. How about only taxing for each female born to your family, or a tax for the amount of plants in your home, or maybe a tax for living too far from your job? Tell me, who is determining what is a so called “sin”, and who is or has the right to make you pay cash for it?
JW
I’m sorry John Cole,
I’m an asshole and insane!
No, really I can be an asshole, but only to my friends, but that is just in jest. They know me. I had prepared a response to that post, in quite a bit of detail. I just decided not to respond until you came up with something better. I do know you, I have met you. You would know this, if you would have answered, the question. If not, my bag, you are begging to kill a badger with a stick!!!
John Cole
I honestly have no idea what is going on. Am I on Candid Camera?
JW
Really,
You should know better, those are your last words to me.
jake
Not quite.
Kirk Spencer
Proof, please, for that term “always”. Because last I saw, Sweden’s going pretty strong these days.
Punchy
Because every time a wrinkley kicks it, those damn Brownies squeeze out another junior Al Queda.
JW
Well John,
Have you had enough time too look back at you verbal magic?
You did state that I was an asshole and insane.
Though, to you I may be both I don’t feel offended. I see you as a looking glass, or maybe better a mirror. The problem being, when I look in the mirror I see something I would not like to be. Now do your homework(previous posts) I see sickness, hate, power I don’t have, and I have to push the self image of cowardice away. But, I get a grip that the image I see is you, not me. You are a poisoned well, many drink from your well before thinking. They care not that you have betrayed them before, they only think of sating themselves, without thought. You may be or consider yourself to be patriotic, but with all the BS you type, you are absolutely worthless to America, and the success of our soldiers!!!! Go ahead, argue your point, but put yourself on the otherside of the pond again and think about what you would think if all you heard from the media was failure.