Ask the Scrabbled: Obama's Health Plan
Have you guys been following the news on it? Most recent headline is that the governors are all balking at possibly being forced to cover something they don’t have the budget to do. But, as the theory goes, after 10 years the plan will actually save money. What do you guys think?
Comments
If you haven’t been following, here’s a great wrap-up on NPR’s blog with links to more in-depth all the recent developments:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/07/obama_plans_giant_push_wednesd.html?ft=1&f=103943429
I’m personally still trying to wrap my head around Obama’s plan — the scope of it and what it will affect is just staggering.
I can understand the concern from the guvs, especially when you’ve got states like California that are essentially bankrupt. Medicaid is probably the biggest drain on the NY’s budget as is, so if you add this onto it what do you lose (the state senate if I had my way)?
I actually listened in on a “town Hall” conference call with Rob Andrews, talking about what he wants to do for NJ.
Part of his plan stemmed from Obama’s, where states like ours will be able to get insurance from a pool of companies. Right now only companies who are licensed in NJ can sell here, but the plan opens up companies all over the US, so the prices will be more affordable. Since we have some of the highest rates in the country, I’m all for it. Well that part of the plan anyway.
Has anyone paid attention to the Healthy Americans Act? It’s a counter to the senate/house health care plans and it has plenty of bi-partisan support.
FiveThirtyEight.com talks about Bi-Partisan Support
I don’t know what is more laughably pathetic and depressing about this whole healthcare debacle: 1)That we have a healthcare system unlike anywhere else in the educated, civilized, wealthy world, that is based on charging as much as possible for insurance and medical care, but then handing it over to a group of companies whose goal is to make a profit by denying that care, and thus the services they are being paid for…2)That we have a group of people (politicians) who receive free government healthcare who (while never offering to give up that care and opt into the supposedly wonderful private system), nonetheless insist on telling us how bad some semblance of public government involvement in healthcare would be, or 3) That our pathetic media is failing on every front on this debate and rather than using the occassion to do informative pieces on how ridiculously rigged the system is, how much money these politicians are receiving from the insurance industries, and how false most of the scare tactis are, instead they are more concerned with reporting about how Newt Gingrich or John McCain tweeted about the subject and called it “Obamacare”.
I can’t say Obama has handled the whole thing well, although infinitely better than Clinton did. The best thing he’s done is point out what is painfully obvious and if we didn’t have a corporate media this sound byte would have been played over and over and over again because it distills the entire argument to it’s essence. And that is that the same people who want to tell you that government can’t do anything right or for cheap, and that market competition is always best for the economy, are trying to convince you that a government run healthcare would be too desirable, too cheap and provide too much competition.