What do you think of Obama's health care an/or economy package(s)

Alright ramp since you seem to be so sure of whats right and wrong tell us what should be done. A filibuster is still very possible not all democrats vote for all of obama's plans and even if they do its always a severely watered down version. I think there are 2 paths to this lower taxes so people spend more money or raise them so we have a chance of getting out of debt both could work but it depends what else is paired along with it. And if you think taxes are high here you're wrong many other industrialized countries have much higher taxes i used to live in Turkey and there taxes were much, much higher now Turkey doesn't have a very good economy but that is for other reasons that i won't get into here.

 

Yea, Belgium system got a little messy over the years, also because generation B pays for generation A's retirement, and that works as long as generation B is with more then generation A, but currently we are heading to a smaller generation B then generation A so the system will be bust

 

Not true with Obamas deal, on page 16 it will prevent people from using their private insurances.

True but the doctor is one of my choosing and so is my treatment, those choices will not be there with gov't run healthcare.

I agree that health care should be made available to those who want it..but not by having the the gov't run it.

Doesn't it scare you just a little that the govt officials can be exempt for having to have the gov't run healthcare Obama proposes? To me that speaks volumes!

"Under the current Democratic draft of health care legislation, members of Congress are curiously exempt from the government-run health care option, keeping their existing health plans and services on Capitol Hill.

If members of Congress believe so strongly that government-run health care is the best solution for hard-working American families, it is only fitting that Americans see them lead the way."

 

It seems like you fear your government, seems like a very uncomfortable mindflow

 

You are right the thought of the gov't controlling my fate concerning my health scares me to death. Knowing how govts in general work and the beaurocracy involved and their incompetence on many levels, is very scary.
Those so called congressman pass bills w/o even reading them, many of our govt officials are tax evaders and many involved in scandals. I have a very low opinion of what is going on with the USA govt atm

 

It is the current govenment I dont like, not some previous ones

 

Well, the U.S. system of government is the worst form of government except for all the others (to paraphrase Churchill ) Politicians can be corrupt, bureaucracy can be inefficient, and legislators can be hypocritical, but our system has powerful checks and balances that allow us to fix any problems. If you don't like your current representative, vote for someone else. If they pass a law you don't like, write letters to Congress/the President.

Also, Vicki, you really need to stop reading conservative propaganda. The healthcare bills going through Congress hardly control your healthcare options or not allow private insurance.

Also, without Medicare or Medicaid, most of the elderly or sick would not get healthcare in this country. Private insurers do everything in their power not to pay out claims, because every dollar they pay of your healthcare costs is one less dollar of profit for them. The incentive is so perverse, which is why you hear so many horror stories from people in this country about private insurance. This is the primary thing the healthcare reforms are trying to fix.

 

Not true did you read pager 16 of the bill? But now I just heard a news alert that Obama said it will not be a government take over, but then again Obama usually says one thing and does another.

I read everything and fyi I am a registered democrat, but I never agree with any party just because I am affiliated with it, I always look at both sides I suggest though you research both sides as I do and decide the truth for yourself instead of listening only to the left wing rhetoric.

I just can not trust someone who promises one thing and does another, whether the person is liberal, or conservative.

 

wasnt obama some good guy?

 

So how do they use their private insurance if they can't use private insurance? Let's see some links for this bill.

 

my interest is tingled

 

Your health is not in the hands of the 'gov't'

Your health is in the hands of the doctors in the hospital, just as it always is.

Have you ever wondered why when you vote someone different into office nothing actually changes? The trains don't suddenly go faster and the streets don't take on a suspiciously golden sheen?

It's because the people you elect don't actually run the country. Nobody runs the country, the country runs due to the hundreds of thousands of people who work in the places that define 'the government'.

It runs because of the highways agency, the police force, the sanitation workers, the mass transport authorities, the city planners and construction workers, all the people who do the jobs which are required to make your life work.

These people don't change from government to government, if they did, the country would tear itself apart, every eight (or four) years you have someone new in power and they have a marvellous new scheme which ignores the previous incumbent's ideas completely, but because most of the people who run the country don't give a shit, or at least don't actually listen, the country remains safe from the good intentions of the presidents.

It is because of this stability that we can progress, if we were constantly changing things because of leaders we would never get anywhere. My best advice to you is to stop all forms of contact with the wider world, stop watching news, reading papers, that sort of thing, and just look at the world around you. Watch how much it doesn't change. This is mainly why I don't bother voting, because I know that it makes no difference and I feel no desire to add "I VOTED FOR SO AND SO AND THAT MAKES ME RIGHT!" to my already malformed political opinions.

So Obama wants universal healthcare, well all that's going to mean is the government is going to pay your bills out of everyone's tax money, rather than you paying an insurance company and them paying your bills. The doctors still treat you, and you might even be in the same hospital because I imagine what will happen is the government will buy most of the hospitals, rather than building new ones next door. It means you don't need to pay insurance if you don't want to, which I think is a nice thing to not have to do, but that's about it.

What we hear from other countries is never accurate, hell what we hear from our own is never accurate. No newspaper is going to report 'Man goes into hopsital with life threatening illness, operation has no complications, man survives. More at 7'. because that is not interesting, apparently. They ARE going to write BIRD FLU WILL KILL MILLIONS IF LEFT UNCHECKED! GLOBAL WARMING TO CAUSE NEW ICE AGE IN FIVE YEARS (in 1972)! TIDAL WAVE KILLS MILLIONS IN PLACE YOU NEVER HEARD OF BEFORE! and that sort of thing. Don't rely on news to inform you accurately, it's about as informative as a political rally, except their bias is towards hyperbole first and foremost. To be honest I don't really know of anything that can be relied on to give you an accurate view of anything, except possibly a tech manual.

 

wow, we really think alike sometimes its scary...

 

Does America have anything like OPSI?

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/advanced-search/index

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/ukpga_19980029_en_1 for example.

I work for the gov't and I'm stealing your ideas with my spy satellite.

 

Lets take a look at some statistics:

(latest health insurance statistics can be found here)

As shown, this is the latest accurate statistic information as gathered by the US Census Bureau.

nearly 30% of the population of the united states (27.8%) has insurance through the government (most likely via medicaid or medicare).

That was in 2007 before the market took a dump.

During this time, the unemployment was between 4.4% and 5%. (Unemployment rate by the census bureau is here)

The latest results for the unemployment survey show that we have gone from a 5.7~% unemployment rate in mid 2008, and have nearly doubled that and currently sit at 9.7~% unemployed as a national average.

( citation )


Also remember that unemployment only counts abled adults currently seeking a job. It does not count adults that are NOT actively seeking a job.

an additional 5% unemployment in a nation that gives health care mainly through employers means that you can easily add around 5% to your people on the government plan, and make that around 35% of the population being currently on government health care or no health care what so ever.

These people don't even have a choice.




Now, if you create a low cost government health care system, and give people and employers the choice to use it, I don't see the problem with that. Right now, Many small businesses can't even offer to give their employee's insurance through the company, and about 10% of america doesn't even have jobs to get unemployment.

Do you all literally want to shaft about 100 million of your fellow american citizens when the economy goes to shit simply because you are being too asinine to think that possibly, maybe letting people have a choice between government health care and private health care?

Sure, many of us with internet probably have enough money or a good enough job to have insurance, but some of us don't. Health insurance is one thing that people in general cannot afford to go without, and unfortunately, many (somewhere around 30% and 40%) can't afford to get our own health insurance.

We can't trust our government to handle the system responsibly? meh, we can't even trust our neighbors anymore with our own children. If the country has become so enclosed and so selfish and dispassionate that they don't even want to consider giving people a choice, then I am ashamed to call myself an american.


As for whether the proposed bill is to my liking or not, It probably isn't. I would imagine that the politics involved have turned it into a pile of shit. But I know that my representative will work towards the best interest of us constituents and make sure that if a bill is passed, it will not force people to use the insurance, in fact, it may even force insurance companies to lower the price of insurance as they might have someone who can give the exact same service without the bullshit greedy sons of bitches at the top taking a few hundred million bucks home while half the people in the country can barely scrape ends meat.



Corporate greed is getting to the point of ridiculousness, and IMO, has caused 90% of the problems in the current economy.

 

The cake is a lie! :-) They killed for nothing!

Misread your post then, so sorry.

I know many places pay higher taxes. I don't want that. I pay enough taxes already. Just because the UK or some other country suffers from high taxes doesn't mean I can't say I pay enough taxes. The fact that someone in Africa is starving is not a reason for me to not say I'm hungry.

As for what should be done? Let GM declare bankruptcy. They'd have re-negotiated all their union contracts and saved money in the end. As it stands, they can't re-negotiate the union contracts and are still stuck paying union boobs far too much money. Let the economy recover on it's own.

 

He is.

As for the healthcare reform bill, I assume you mean the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act, which is the one currently making its way through the House (though, several bills are making their way through Congress, such as this one in the Senate, which makes it hard to determine which one will actually become law).

I took a look at page 16 and I don't get how it prevents people from using private insurance. I don't read legalese that well, but from what I can tell, the section

• Grandfathers in most current private insurance programs
• Requires these programs to implement common sense provisions (like not discriminating based on health and providing minimum coverage standards) within five years
• Restricts them from jacking up premium prices for the old and sick

And I do read info from both sides quite frequently. Unfourtunately, most conservatives in this country have decided that regardless of the merits, they will oppose anything and everything Obama proposes. I still read their arguments, but I find most of them baseless (as the page 16 prevents private insurance claim proves) or outright lies. If conservatives want to make a comeback in the U.S., they need to stop lying and start providing solutions to the serious problems (healthcare, climate change, the economy) facing our country.

 

http://docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf

Thats the bill.

On page 16
Under the header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:

"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

In any case we are all entitled to our opinions, our likes and dislikes. Let's see what happens, there were new developments today and the blue dogs made a compromise.