swell

[davemerrill]

It sure is great that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is going to give up his government health care. He doesn't need some kind of federally mandated health coverage! He's an American! He can get out there in the free market and find his own health insurance! Right?

Right?

Oh wait.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder how Gabby Giffords would be doing right now without her government-supplied health care. Or Dick Cheney, for that matter?

-Tim E.

[sixstop.livejournal.com]

somehow under this legislation they voted to overturn? I suspect that if its rules were applied, it wouldn't have covered the expense of the cutting edge heart pump procedure that Dick Cheney had at his age. So I'm not really persuaded by this as an example.

Besides, most of this 'reform' legislation exempted certain unions and almost all government employees anyways, allowing them to keep whatever healthcare agreement they had negotiated as a condition for their office elected to. Apples to oranges.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

You're not persuaded that Boehner is a grandstanding hack willing to waste valuable legislative time on repealing legislation that the majority of Americans feel is necessary? HE's got HIS government health care plan, but everybody else should just suck it up.

How about the way Boehner claims government employees should have their pay frozen, while his own paycheck gets an annual increase of $30,000? I see a pattern of behavior here.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

I wonder how I would feel if Dick Cheney shot me in the face, without my government health care? I'd have to apologize to him for getting in the way of his bullets!

[sixstop.livejournal.com]

my comment wasn't intended as a means to open the discussion on hypocrisy of elected officials under the law. If we want to get into that, we can. ;p

My comment was also not a critique of the agenda set and executed by the new majority party. Both of these are separate issues.

My comment was to point out a fallacy I saw by comparing the not "mandated" health care that Dick Cheney consumes as a federal employee and former vice-president to the type of health care that is "mandated" by the healthcare reform act under financial penalty of non-compliance.

Dick Cheney's heart operations were performed by private medicine university hospital, GWU. The government did not 'supply' this health care to him. The net cost of this heart procedure is not easy for me to find through quick skimming links (but we can extrapolate from the general cost of regular open-heart surgery being about $100~$125k that it likely costs at least double.) nor is it evident who picked up the bill. Nor is it clear the exact status of health coverage of a former VP. Not knowing these things, such comparisons to the care mandated in the reform act are meaningless and... well not very persuasive in defining the discussion to me. **

However, Cheney's net worth before government office was at least $30 million. If there isn't an actual 'former VP health insurance plan,' i suspect his estate would be able to cover the cost without government help.

Even if all the parts of the reform were currently inforce, the elected officials neatly made sure they wouldn't have to come under force of this law, as is common for most legislative process intended for the masses, Dick Cheney likely would be among the least affected in the population.

** (not that anyone should care what i think, but I've decided that in political rhetoric I've been consuming, it gets too heated without any resolve, and I realised it was because in all the discourse i sift through, nobody was trying to actually persuade me of anything, just incite me as a perceived opponent. From now on, I'm framing any chit-chat on politics on the basis of being convinced or persuaded of something.)

[efathefinger.livejournal.com]

Good to know that pointless comparisons which only serve to confuse the issue. Federally mandated is the right phrase though, its not federally provided, or federally paid for, they just plan on fining you through the IRS if you and/or your employer fail to pay for it on your own.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this.

I don't think any rational person believes that there doesn't need to be reform, I think most people have the common sense to understand that a 2000 page bill that wasn't even presented in full until it was voted on just feels wrong.

I mean, you want to make sure everyone has health care? Fine. Mandate that starting today, every single American Citizen is automatically enrolled in Medicare/Medicade, every single Medical Care provider is mandated to accept the payments determined by the Government, done, finished, one page.

Well, except that seems like a rather not-American way to go of course.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm going to assume that prior to receiving his current cutting-edge treatment, Mr. Cheney did not turn down any coverage that was offered to him as a federal employee. I'm also going to assume that if Gabby Giffords didn't have the coverage offered to federal employees, her own private care would have been insanely (perhaps prohibitively) expensive.

The point I'm making is that the basis of the opposition to health care reform seems founded on the idea that government is evil and/or inadequate and should just let the free market do its job. (Which it already was for a really long time with awful results.)

And yet, as Dave observed, federal employees don't seem to be in any hurry to turn down their government-provided health care. Huh.

Do I think last year's bill was perfect? Hell, no. But without it as a starting point, reform wouldn't even be on the radar. I heard today that the repubs are finally beginning to draft their own changes. I doubt they would have had any motivation to do so if not for last year's bill.

-Tim E.

[sixstop.livejournal.com]

even if we make that assumption, this care constitutes a whole...18 months of his life before needing some care while active VP. Before that his private sector lifestyle was how he managed to get by.

Trying to incite an emotional reaction by using Dick Cheney as an example of hypocritical people opposed to health care reform while actually using it the entire time...and as someone who has no potential legislative power anymore, and someone who would be minimally effected by the reform act even if it were in full effect, AND as someone whose window of even being affected by it for his current medical needs is dubious at best... It just doesn't hold up as an example.

Even if Cheney was a lifetime user of the federal employee health plan, it bears precious little resemblance to the mandates in the reform act; so even still, comparison would be meaningless on a substantive basis.

Its not realistic to compare what the government offers as health coverage as an employer to what is mandates as an authority to the citizenry. It just doesn't add up as a perspective to convince me that they have anything to do with eachother, other than the word 'government.'

[(Anonymous)]

OK, I'll drop Cheney then. I notice you haven't said anything about Ms. Giffords.

-Tim E.

[sixstop.livejournal.com]

you're right. :)

I don't know enough about her overall to offer any substantive commentary, or to say anything remotely persuasive (or at least entertaining). Gotta get more info for mahself...

[(Anonymous)]

It seems to me the core issue is ever-rising costs, which contradict the claims that are made for a free market approach (i.e., reducing costs). Medicine is a highly technical field requiring great training and education, it's true, but it's not as if every year we all get 5-10% healthier and live 5-10% longer to go along with those 5-10% cost increases. Nor do I believe that every year we get 5-10% unhealthier, and they've got to raise prices just to keep our fat asses alive ^_^. Except for college tuition (another problematic area), I can't think offhand of another service industry whose prices always go up, up, up, and never stay stable or decrease.

--Carl

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

Mandate that starting today, every single American Citizen is automatically enrolled in Medicare/Medicade, every single Medical Care provider is mandated to accept the payments determined by the Government, done, finished, one page.

Yeah, but when that's proposed it's shot down by the Republicans because it's SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Hence the neither-fish-nor-fowl compromise bill that America has, that nobody's really happy with. BECAUSE... COMMUNISM!11!!

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

Well, and to be truly fair, we really have to distinguish between care and cost.

Every single victim of that shooting, I am confident, got the same high-tech high-quality trauma care that exists. Yes, I'm sure the Congresswoman got first dibs but being shot in the head (and not dead) would move her to the head of the line anyway.

The paying of the bills later, that's an entirely different issue.

[sixstop.livejournal.com]

well, having a category error is about 40% of my problem with the discussion of social medicine and reform. None of what has been done distinguishes between 'health care' and 'health insurance' and 'health plans.'

Too many things are covered by health insurance that have no business being covered, and should instead be offered as a 'health plan.' In my line of work, I know that this is such a huge misunderstanding people have expectations about and this drives up care costs.

[(Anonymous)]

Here's some more background on Cheney's treatment. Aw, and guess what...?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/dick-cheneys-heart-device-was-developed_b_811778.html

-Tim E.

[(Anonymous)]

It is different, but certainly not disconnected. I'm sure the recovery process (not to mention the family's outlook) is substantially cushioned by the fact that they aren't facing financial ruin on top of everything else. It would be nice if every victim of such circumstances had that advantage. It would speak well of us as a society.

-Tim

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

My medical plan for Dick Cheney is a two minute head start before we release the savage dogs.

[sixstop.livejournal.com]

if nobody's happy with it, why are you saying its legislation that the majority of Americans feel is necessary? ;p

[sixstop.livejournal.com]

A big part of the answer to your particular issues here is that there has been for almost 15 years standing a shortage of new medical care personel entering the field at the service level, ie nurses and doctors. Raw man-power is an issue that has been overlooked too often in the face of the easy blame of big medical companies and big insurance companies.

they have been making this issue known far before Obama was a twinkle in an exploritory commitee's eye. As far back as 2000, i'm finding stories talking about nurses in particular with burnouts, older graduates entering the field (and leaving quicker too), bad nurses getting re-hired with no oversite due to the high demand and then exposing hospitals to liability and increasing insurance bond costs on nurses, harsh middle management environments at hospitals... etc etc

I found an article talking about a law in 2002 passed to give out more student loans to those entering medical fields, and to get them to stay longer in the medical field, but it doesn't seem to have had any net effect nearly 10 years later.

And this is just the nursing...

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

Because it's the truth?

http://www.gallup.com/poll/121664/majority-favors-healthcare-reform-this-year.aspx

http://www.gallup.com/poll/126929/slim-margin-americans-support-healthcare-bill-passage.aspx

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-03-23-health-poll-favorable_N.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/12/AR2010031203719.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/suspicious-health-law-hurt-economy-abc-news-washington/story?id=12639778

Everybody thinks the legislation that was passed has issues, but - and this is the tricky part so pay attention - something is better than nothing.

Since the Republican health care plan that was proposed as an alternative to Obama's plan was a big stack of blank paper, I think they have all earned a heaping helping of shut the fuck up.

[sixstop.livejournal.com]

I'm laughing because you don't see the inherant contradiction of the words in your posts. ;p But lets chat some more on the subject and see if we get anything out of it.

The conclusion you've draw that something is better than nothing, i reject for the following reasons:

1: The association you've drawn on your earlier comments is based on saying because these polls, both before and just after the bill's passage, show that since more people wanted reform, they wanted THIS reform. "...repealing legislation that the majority of Americans feel is necessary..." Not any reform at all, but this specific reform. Thats a syllogistic fallacy by the undistributed.

2: Only one of your polls listed is in the last few months since November's election, and the ABC poll that is somewhat fresh reads a margin of error of 3.5%, the gallups are at 4%, which means that none of these polls are accurate enough to make any decisive claim that a majority or even a plurality, which you have done. Besides, the poll referenced in the last ABC link shows 50% oppose the reform and 45% support it. This information simply indicates its a far more divided issue than many people on either side make it out to be. But what -is- decisive from that last ABC poll which is on-going, not one-time, is that EVERYBODY polled regardless of support or opposition, thinks this law will hurt jobs, the economy, and increase debt & spending by more than double the margin of error. It seems they can't agree on the reform law's current status, but they all agree its going to be financially bad beyond statistical error.

http://www.langerresearch.com/uploads/1120a3%20Health%20Care%20Reform.pdf

That to me also discredits the idea that THIS legislation is better than nothing. Otherwise, the impression of the financial impact would be closer to split as well.

3: Your last remark is kinda vitriolic... but I need to point out a fact. When the health care debate took place in the house, the minority republicans were not allowed to directly contribute legislative proposals on the floor of the congress. Pelosi setup the terms of debate to exclude them ever taking the floor on the issue. This was supposedly in retaliation to the bush years super majority. You say they offered blank paper; well, they actually have to have the floor to offer anything at all. They were only directly given the option to vote. If something really was better than nothing, why exclude minority republicans from offering direct amendments to vote on? That would have ensured no 'special votes' would've had to take place when the bill came back from the senate, as threatened by the speaker, for example.

(Obama had a similar sentiment to yours at the end there with the whole 'we won get over it' meeting they had before the healthcare stuff started. I have to ask, what kind of reaction was expected by them to such treatment other than more lock-stepping?)

[sixstop.livejournal.com]

4: The house republicans running for office last Nov didn't keep their platform secret for if they returned to congressional power. If something was better than nothing, there would be a corellative reaction in the polls you cited since the elections, or at least near them from campaigning. Interpreting the polls in a vaccuum of that consideration doesn't offer any insight in my estimation. Either they were voted in because of, or irrespective of their position on repealing the reform act. If we're supposed to take away that something WAS better than nothing, the polls would have shifted more over time to show that. Instead the 'wait and see' answer shrunk, 'should have done more' has shrunk, and 'strongly support' has shrunk into 'somewhat support.'

(Either way, its hypocritical to say they are wasting time with this while not castigating democrats when they did the same thing, sending up legislation to the other side of congress knowing it would die. Otherwise they can't say they kept a campaign promise (which dems did before they took both houses). Meaning this point is true of all politicians, not one group.)

A relatively benign commentary on The Slate points out some of this stuff, too.

http://www.slate.com/id/2279943/

------

For the record, I am personally opposed to most forms of Socialised Medicine, defined as the government directly managing patient level care or financing for citizens. But that does not mean I can't be convinced that a method of delivering some types of social welfare isn't wise, reasonable, or needed in some cases. Nobody tries to convince me, though, they call me a heartless evil prick who wants everyone to just die. I don't think I'm heartless. :(

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

So if evil Pelosi commanded that minority republicans were not allowed to directly contribute legislative proposals on the floor of the congress, then who authored the Patients Choice Act?

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2520

I think... yeah. Paul Ryan's a Republican.

You're right in that I'm being really fast and loose when I talk about how Americans want health care reform, and I'm conflating "reform" and "The Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act" AKA "Death Panels Takin' Our Jobs Away".

However, this is a Livejournal post, so you'll excuse me if I don't quite follow the rigorous debating standards so highly prized by John "Douchebag" Boehner, the crybaby, lobbyist-banging corporate shill who is America's Speaker(tm) right now because a lot of hillbilly retards are really pissed off a black man is in the White House.

It is not my objective to convince you, or anybody else, of anything; my objective here is to throw some cheap shots at douchebags and let off some steam. If you're fine with grinning millionaire douchebags denying healthcare to women and children while enjoying it themselves, that's great.

I'm not, I think it's disgusting. Which is my point. Disgust.

[sixstop.livejournal.com]

sure. we're not legislators, if its not fun or at the very least engaging, there's no point in continuing and generating stress.

"It is not my objective to convince you, or anybody else, of anything;"

Totally understand, not trying to chaffe anyone too much, just like running my mouth. :]