[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')ajor new health reform benefits take effect today to help keep health insurance companies accountable, lower health care costs, guarantee more health care choices, and enhance the quality of health care for all Americans.

Starting today, insurers will be required to:
Keep you covered when you get sick:
Cover kids with pre-existing conditions:
Allow young adults to stay on their parents' plan up to age 26:
Remove lifetime limits:
Phase out annual limits:

For any insurance plan that goes into effect after September 23, 2010, your insurance company must:
Pay for preventive care like mammograms and immunizations:
Give you a better appeals process for insurance claims:
Let you choose your own doctor:
Provide easier access to OB-GYN services:
Allow you to use the nearest emergency room without penalty:

Many other new benefits of the law have already taken effect, including rebate checks for seniors in the donut hole and tax credits for small businesses.

[diemos]

It never ceases to amaze me that everyone was perfectly thrilled to have a system where the death panels were run by underpaid insurance company bureaucrats who actually profited from denying you care.

[ian807]

Single payer could only have happened in a sane political environment that had actual popular representation. That hasn't been present in Washington D.C. for a long time.

What we have are a few remnants of popular representation in a sea of corporate feudalism where the names of the Barons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Industries) are rarely uttered.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')
Personally I would have preferred a single-payer instead of a insurance/pharma support bill but hey, you gotta start down the slippery slope somewhere.

[Pops]

I would say plant that this is the perfect time to address the crazy escalation of medical costs because it impacts personal and public costs big time.

Unfortunately the bill didn't do that...

[Timo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')
Personally I would have preferred a single-payer instead of a insurance/pharma support bill but hey, you gotta start down the slippery slope somewhere.

[ian807]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')Why not focus instead on getting the deficit down and the economy revved up and getting job creation in the private sector going instead of doing things that will hurt the private sector and delay the recovery like increasing government regulations and raising taxes and creating a huge new expansion of government in the middle of the deep recession?

[PrestonSturges]

The insurance companies were only 3 years away from bankruptcy anyway, which they all admitted. Google some phrase like "financial death spiral."

The short term maximization of profit requires excluding everyone that gets sick or who has ever been sick. This shrinking pool forces prices higher and higher, and more people go without coverage. The hospitals end up eating the costs of these uninsured people. Once the operating revenues aren't enough to pay the fixed costs, they're broke.

[Pops]

Here is my little story of why our system is doomed.

My wife fell and broke her wrist, we have no insurance, the doc at urgent care put on a splint (a cast really) and said come tomorrow and see the orthopedist The orthopedist looked at the xray and told us if we had good insurance he'd operate but since we don't and the operation would cost $10,000, the cast the GP put on would do just fine.

It did, he charged us $600 for a consultations to tell us the GP did all that was needed and to take the cast off and tell us the GP did all that was needed. The urgent care GP and room that was all that was needed cost $150.

We have truly amazing medical capabilities in this country. But if we had had good insurance and had called the ambulance and gone to the ER and had the surgery and, and, and - the $150 that was all we needed could have added how much to the GDP?

$15,000?

[americandream]

Socialism contemplates the utter destruction of corporatism and its vested interests and its replacement with an egalitarian state devoted to the NEEDS of labour. Anything else is reformism or fascism, not socialism.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')ajor new health reform benefits take effect today to help keep health insurance companies accountable, lower health care costs, guarantee more health care choices, and enhance the quality of health care for all Americans.

Starting today, insurers will be required to:
Keep you covered when you get sick:
Cover kids with pre-existing conditions:
Allow young adults to stay on their parents' plan up to age 26:
Remove lifetime limits:
Phase out annual limits:

For any insurance plan that goes into effect after September 23, 2010, your insurance company must:
Pay for preventive care like mammograms and immunizations:
Give you a better appeals process for insurance claims:
Let you choose your own doctor:
Provide easier access to OB-GYN services:
Allow you to use the nearest emergency room without penalty:

Many other new benefits of the law have already taken effect, including rebate checks for seniors in the donut hole and tax credits for small businesses.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ian807', 'H')ow would you like to eliminate all food safety regulations? How about traffic laws?

[efarmer]

I heard a woman one day describe how she fell in Germany on vacation and broke a shoulder. The Germans did surgery and put pins in. And when she got home to America her doctor followed up and told her the job was perfect and had healed properly and removed pins. The Germans had told her since she was foreign that their state medical insurance did not cover her and they did not deal with her American insurance and so would have to bill her the full charge and she would have to seek recourse on her own.

She dreaded the fight with her American insurer and expected a $20,000 invoice.

The full boat bill came in for $1400 which she paid.

Oh yeah, the German procedure she received is not approved practice for insurance coverage in America. They would have done a much more invasive surgical procedure.

I am waiting for the idiots in Washington to do their last little piece of unfinished business for their corporate masters. Make it illegal to go leave the country for treatment, surgery, or to die painless and cheap and try to beat them and their partners out of the take on the racket they have set up.

Americans are going to figure out how to escape their health care system, you can count on it.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'A')nything else is reformism or fascism, not socialism.

[dinopello]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'H')ere is my little story of why our system is doomed.

[PrestonSturges]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('efarmer', 'I') heard a woman one day describe how she fell in Germany on vacation and broke a shoulder. The Germans did surgery and put pins in. .....The full boat bill came in for $1400 which she paid.......Oh yeah, the German procedure she received is not approved practice for insurance coverage in America. They would have done a much more invasive surgical procedure.

[diemos]

Another amazing thing about the whole health care debate was how no one showed the slightest interest in how people else where in the world organized their health care. Even when it was pointed out that most places in the world had better outcomes with half the cost and everyone covered.

Point that out and all you would get was a glazed look and a knee jerk monotone "America has the best health care system in the world. If you don't like America why don't you get the hell out."

How can a democracy work when the vast majority is incapable of critical thought and their brains just regurgitate slogans and soundbites.

[PrestonSturges]

American health care is like a Dr. Seuss cartoon where water would be delivered to your house by a long line of people with teaspoons passing the water from spoon to spoon. You call in your order and the people on the street rush to line up to your door and somewhere miles away they start dipping water out the lake with a spoon. It's inconceivable that someone would say "Hey if we just scrap this crappy system, we could get this service much cheaper."

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', ' ') "Hey if we just scrap this crappy system, we could get this service much cheaper."

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '[')i]Starting today, insurers will be required to:
Keep you covered when you get sick:

[PrestonSturges]

It's not a solution, but since the health insurance CEOs admit the industry the industry was already heading for financial collapse, further changes are coming. Of course, now they and the GOP will blame Obama, and the public is not interested in the fact that the executives had said something entirely different under oath. Sworn testimony can't get in the way of telling a good story.