The Health Care Bill has passed...
 

So now what?


Thoughts?

Now it's Christmas Eve.

This won't register on many people's radars until after the New Year.

Surprise.

Ha!

DS, IDK? A lot of people are like frazzled and we'll probably see what happens in 2010, possibly February. I'm not sure, but I think since it is approved, it goes through House & Senate reconciliation, and voted upon :confused: by the entire Congress the large bill. Then is sent to the POTUS for signature.

Forget about the Bill itself - Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson has set a new political low by selling his vote. The chutzpah of this act amazes me - and Arlen Specter (Mr. Magic Bullet theory!) has been one of my senators for decades!

I think that without a public option, the whole thing is useless. I will still have no choice. In my perfect world, health insurance being provided by an employer would be completely eliminated. They don't cover my car insurance, life insurance or home owners insurance. I don't want them handling my health insurance either. I would like an opportunity to opt out of my insane HMO and get some real insurance where I can have the doctors of my choosing. Right now, if we are covered by a spouse, we can opt out and we get $500. They PAY around $11K for each employee. I want to be able to opt out and get that whole amount from them to buy my own insurance. This bill is not "reform".

It's less about reform for people who already have insurance and more about people who cannot afford to buy insurance and do not get insurance from their employers. It's about time. We already pay for these people to get very poor medical care through ERs all across the US. They do not get turned away, and we pay through our taxes and higher insurance premiums. In return, we have a whole class of citizens who get horrible medical care with no follow up and only catastrophic care. They tweaked a few things with the insurance companies, but this is a first step. Congress can't make huge changes all at once....hell, look what they had to go through to do this little!

I do realize that, I just think it's a band-aid though, not a fix for what is wrong with the system. I work for a health care system in Detroit, I truly understand the need for insurance for the uninsured. Our system provides hundreds of millions of unreimbursed care annually.

The health care system is so much more broken than just the unreimbursed care though. I know he had to battle just to get this, and hopefully, in the future, people will accept that there are more changes that need to be made. Most insurance companies are in the business of making money. Most are not non-profits. None of the companies that make money off of hospitals/health care are non-profits yet most of the hospitals are (all of them are, in Michigan). A model where you have all these profit organizations having a feeding frenzy off of a non-profit entity is simply wrong. It can't work no matter what.

The only entities that insurance companies have to please are our employers. Our employers are only happy with those insurance companies who offer lower premiums. The only way that insurers can do that is to deny as much care as they can. Most people who don't work in health care do not understand that insurance companies dictate their treatment almost completely. Most do not understand that, if your primary care physician KNOWS that a certain treatment is not right for you, they cannot skip that step and move to a more expensive treatment because they will get points from the insurance company if they don't try things in a specified order. Critical pathways, managed care.. all attempts by the insurance companies to make more money, not truly ways to better manage your illness. There is no real competition among insurance companies for the users of the system. The users of the system are bound to use whatever insurance their employer chooses to provide for them. I don't see much changing until THAT changes.

I say boo! I am one of the Americans who enjoys my health insurance that I have.

Real reform should start with competition across state lines for the best deals/coverage and caps on medical malpractice lawsuit awards.


Polls show most Americans dissapprove of this bill. I think the democrats have shot themselves in the foot with this one proving it isnt about the folks they claim to represent but about power. If Congress truly cared about the folks then put healthcare aside for now and concentrate on what matters to most presently (myself included) : JOBS and the ECONOMY.

Most Americans don't understand that the health care system is on the verge of a collapse similar to the auto industry or the banking system.

I think people should be able to keep the health insurance that they have, if they enjoy it, even if they change jobs, quit work to be a stay at home mom, find themselves unemployed or forced into early retirement, etc. Being able to enjoy the health insurance that you have should be something that everybody can do. Yours may be good now, but if your employer decides to make a change, you are at their mercy. If your employer makes a change, you may end up like me... losing all of the doctors who have been treating you for 15 years, know your history and your family, know and understand how different medications work for you, etc and be stuck with whatever doctors the new insurance will cover, whether you like it or not.

I completely get what your saying Dee...I had this same argument with my coworker yesterday. We're on the same side. I think that the main problem in health care is that we are allowing companies to run insurance companies and hospitals as "For Profit" companies. No one should be able to make a profit on the backs of peoples' health. It's unethical and it's plain wrong. I'm glad they were able to get something started. I hope they don't think that this is going to "fix" health care, because it won't. The problem is...you can't fix a system by basing the new system on the foundation of a broken system. I agree with you that the American public has no idea what they are talking about when they say they are for or against health care reform. They are just mimicking the talking head pundits of their chosen parties. The only people who really know the ins and outs are those that have been effected by the imperfect system or work in the system.

I do think that the health care system needs to be reformed, but I'm not sure about the bill that was voted out. My view is, what do lawyers really know about health care?

Ditto

This is one of my favorite words ever. Sorry, I am a spazz for language. /hijack.

Are you old enough to actually remember ditto paper?