No one too happy with Reid’s latest Medicare buy-in proposal
First it was the WaPo, noticing that the Medicate buy-in that Reid announced as such a wonderful compromise substitute for the abandoned (for the moment) public option “could be a bigger step toward a single-payer system” than those rejected plans.
Now the NY Times has gotten into the act, with an article noting that the buy-in will create higher premiums for those who take it, as well as for those who want “the same health benefits as members of Congress.”
Rural states don’t like it. Federal employee unions and retirement groups, likewise. And then there’s this:
Republicans denounced the proposal, saying it would add new financial obligations to a program that could not afford its existing commitments.
“If the Titanic is sinking, the last thing you want to do is to put Grandma and more of your family on the boat,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa.
One gets the distinct impression that this new proposal was not exactly well thought out.
But that’s been true of the entire enterprise from the start. Reid and Pelosi and company keep hoping we won’t catch on before they pass some terrible bill that will change health insurance for the worse rather than the better. But if they’ve lost the WaPo and the Times on this one so early in the game, I’d say the buy-in option presently under consideration is one of the worst in a long line of bad suggestions from House and Senate. Is it any wonder their approval ratings are in the tank?
Since every politician in Washington knows that Medicare & Medicaid are unsustainable fiscal train wrecks, I wrongly assumed that the Democrats were finding a graceful way to stir the pot, declare victory, and make them go away under the guise of “health care reform”. I guess that I vastly overestimated their intelligence.
Stark, I am wondering whether this is just divided mind among politicians. One side of their minds calculates the political ramifications of their decisions, an entirely separate part of their brain calculates the wisdom of whether something will actually work. It is as if they are speaking about two separate entities.
The word integrity, relatedly, comes from “integrate;” that the various parts of one’s life are open to each other and cross-influence each other.
I guess nobody ever went broke underestimating the Congress. Reimbursement rates to doctors and hospitals are dreadfully low. Putting more people into that program could put some hospitals out of business and cause some doctors to not accept Medicare patients. Then there is the little matter of an exploding deficit. Do these people in Congress ever think beyond their next meal?
I expect that the next step will be to formally nationalize medical care so that doctors will work for the government and hospitals will stay open (for the common good, of course).
They will keep patching the system until it completely falls apart.
Maybe Osama was right when he said the difficult task was to bring down the Soviet Union and the Untied States would be a piece of cake.
Now they’ve added/discovered a Health care loophole would allow coverage limits
A loophole in the Senate health care bill would let insurers place annual dollar limits on medical care for people struggling with costly illnesses such as cancer, prompting a rebuke from patient advocates.
The legislation that originally passed the Senate health committee last summer would have banned such limits, but a tweak to that provision weakened it in the bill now moving toward a Senate vote.
As currently written, the Senate Democratic health care bill would permit insurance companies to place annual limits on the dollar value of medical care, as long as those limits are not “unreasonable.” The bill does not define what level of limits would be allowable, delegating that task to administration officials.
Adding to the puzzle, the new language was quietly tucked away in a clause in the bill still captioned “No lifetime or annual limits.”
When it comes to this administration’s legislature, nothing is what it says it is. In fact, the opposite is usually true.
AVI:
It is as if they are speaking about two separate entities.
“Half-brained” x 2 is more my bet. Whatever, they just seem to be getting progressively worse.
This sort of action lends credence to the conspiracy theories of people like Limbaugh, Beck, and Levin who say that the left is trying to crash the system so it can be remade into a socialist society with a central government that controls all aspects of life. The alternative and simpler explanation is our representatives are in over their heads and generally clueless as to what they are doing to us.