Sounds like a good plan to me:
"For us to start over now could simply lead to delays that could last for another decade or even more," President Obama said.
In fact, let's go for the "even more" part. After the Clinton health care plan crashed and burned, we managed to keep this massive growth in government at bay for a decade and a half.
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But the massive growth in insurance premiums and health care costs, not so much.
Granted Doug, they went up, as did everything other product.
Key word there being product, like. ya know, anything we WANT to buy.
I don't have the "right" to a gall bladder surgery, but I have the right to contract with someone to have gall bladder surgery, much like I have the right to contract with an insurance "pool" to offset expenses associated with my health care costs.
Once you force an insurance "pool" to accept everyone regardless of their malady, it's no longer pooled risk (or insurance) it's welfare. It's the antithesis of risk pooling.
Just call it (the end product BHO & Dems want) what is: socialized medicine
Between 1993 and 2004 the cost of health care DOUBLED. Putting off a solution just made it more expensive.
The solution is keep the frickin' feds out of it, period. They created this clusterfark (think Ted Kennedy).
The longer we wait to reform our screwed up system, the more it will hurt us and compromise our competitiveness in the world market. The republicans lack the vision or will do get anything done on this.
Lewis, I wouldn't characterize the Republicans aversion to driving our economy off a cliff as a lack of will or vision. I'd call it common sense.
While obviously guilty of spending like drunken sailors on really stupid stuff in the recent past, they (repubs) finally figured out that the voters (at least the ones with jobs) don't subscribe to the new math invented by this administration.
You don't even need econ 101, just a basic understanding of 3rd grade math to understand 2+2=4 not 657 or some other made up number.
But the GOP is IGNORING the fact that Medicare is carrying a $37 TRILLION deficit. They have not offered ONE proposal to fix this.
The US will be bankrupt in 10 years under our current course. We need to change health care.
How is creating a new entitlement going to solve the problem of entitlements bankrupting us? Everybody (Democrats and Republicans alike) knows that doing something about existing entitlements, like delaying eligibility and offereing incentives to younger people to opt out, is an absolute necessity, but everybody just hopes the problem will go away.
Explain to me how not allowing an insurance company to deny you for a pre-existing condition ( inlcuding things like being a battered wife ) is an "entitlement"?
Here is an outline of the President's proposal and how it affects the bottom line: http://www.whitehouse.gov/medicarefactsheetfinal/
I'll try to 'splain it to ya Kevin, it's a rather obtuse question that once again doesn't really pertain to any of the remarks above it, but hey that's your gig, so I'll roll with it. A law which forces an insurance company to accept bad risks is not an entitlement to the patient immediately, per se, but rather a Dictatorial fiat blatantly forcing costs to exceed revenues, thusly forcing the independent business (insurance company) into insolvency and out of business.
This creates yet another "rahmalicious disaster" only the Government can save by transferring the pool of risk (and of course premiums-soon to be known as more taxes) from the shareholders of the company to the entire population in the form of National Health Care, thus "entitling" every man woman & childs healthcare to be cared for from birth.
I also love the link to Barry's "fact sheet"...In commercial lending that type of proposal is called a pro-forma, which any banker will tell ya is nothing more than an idea with a sh*tload of made up figures, of which NONE are verifiable.
I've never seen a guy that can talk so much, so well and end up saying absolutely nothing verifiable as this Prez can....
It's genius I tell ya, genius. In the private sector they bring people up on charges for blatantly lying, obfuscating and defrauding the public with phony figures, but in Barry's case, no problem.