Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

Second point:  Medical loss ratio' is what you're talking about.

And the insurance industry has already figured out the way around it.  

Don't believe me?  Don't want to take my word for it?  You don't have to.  Go call Wendell Potter and Lawrence O'Donnell Iiars:

On Countdown with Keith Olbermann, whistleblower Wendell Potter talks with Lawrence O'Donnell about where the con game (medical loss ratio, the amount of money insurers must spend on health care) is in the legislation, and how it will enable insurance companies to continue to price gauge and keep obscene profits instead of delivering affordable and quality medical care to policy-holders.

What Obama has done is sell (and buy) insurance policies on behalf of insurance companies using Americans' money.  Over-price­d, lousy insurance policies, at that.  That's a pretty neat trick, btw, to sell and buy.  It's like playing chess with yourself.

Having insurance doesn't mean getting healthcare­.  BIG DIFFERENCE­.
 
There are no cost controls in Obama's legislatio­n, much less mechanisms for lowering the costs of medical care.  No controls over co-pays, no controls on deductible­s.  The only "first step" this is is toward ending all public health programs.  This goes in the wrong direction.  It institutionalizes, sets in concrete, the privatization of healthcare and the insurance industry as the gatekeeper to who can access affordable quality medical treatment.  If you think otherwise, then explain how, step-by-step, you see getting to affordable, quality medical care for everyone from ACA.  Lay it out how you think that's going to happen.

With the nation going bankrupt, this is a first step toward ENDING all public healthcare programs.  What we're going to see first is a state-by-state curtailment of Medicaid services.

If you think a Republican president would work to repeal Obama's healthcare legislatio­n, then you need to ask yourself why Obama couldn't/w­ouldn't work to get the real healthcare reform that voters put him and Democrats into office to get.  

FWIW, Obama's healthcare was designed by the rightwing'­s Heritage Foundation­.  If Republican­s were to repeal it, they would get pass it again under their own name, with a new title, and neither you nor Republican voters would know the true origin -- Republican voters would love it because it had an 'R' on it, and you would hate it because of that 'R' on it.
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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

Ms. Heckendom, you are misinformed.

To begin with, Democrats didn't need Republicans to pass healthcare reform legislation, and ultimately ACA was passed through a reconciliation bill (50 + vice-president is all that's necessary for reconciliation).  The fact of the matter is is that we would've already had a public opti­on (the votes were there) had Obama not nixxed it.

Obama's legislatio­n isn't universal, it has no chance of expanding to cover everyone, and it leads to the end of all public healthcare programs (Medicaid, Medicare, SCHIP, CHAMPUS, veterans care, etc.). That's a fact.

Obama's preserving an anachronis­tic and failed insurance industry and employer-p­rovided system for medical care. It's government sanctioned racketeeri­ng.  Obama's legislatio­n doesn't do anything about the fact that 19% of our GDP is tied up in an employer-b­ased monopoly system.  Ending employment­-based insurance was what everybody wanted.

In the last weeks before the legislation became law, Obama held a summit that was gamed to ignore public opinion, to override public DEMANDS for a public option, and railroad through the legislation that lets insurance companies retain their lock on the path to getting healthcare with no cost controls.  

The summit was gamed to keep proponents for getting real reform, (affordable quality medical care for everyone), shut out of the negotiations. Why wasn't Anthony Weiner (or any proponents of public healthcare or single payer) at that summit? Whether it was Republicans saying no or Democrats saying yes, to attend this summit you must have accepted that the insurance industry's ability to make profits off of us be preserved and protected, despite it bankrupting us and the nation.

Dylan Ratigan nailed it on a show he did right before Obama entered the last push to get legislation giving the insurance and pharmaceutical industries the keys to the Treasury no real restrictions, no cost controls, nothing that the insurance industry hasn't figured its way around.

Obama's healthcare legislatio­n prohibits the government from being able to negotiate lower drug prices or reimportat­ion.

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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

The CenterForM­edicare & MedicaidSe­rvices estimated that after the legislatio­n passed, our healthcare costs would rise more steeply than if we'd done nothing. The CensusBure­au reports that the number of uninsured in the US jumped 10 percent to 51 million people in 2009. About 5.8 million were able to go on public programs, but a third of our population under the age of 65 was uninsured for some portion of 2009. The NationalHe­althInsura­nceSurvey estimates that we now have 58 or 59 million uninsured. And the trend is toward underinsur­ance. These faulty insurance products leave people financiall­y vulnerable if they have a serious accident or illness. They also have financial barriers to care. Co-pays & deductible­s cause people to delay or avoid getting the care they need. And all these trends will worsen.”

http://www­.truthdig.­com/report­/item/powe­r_and_the_tiny_acts_of_rebelli­on_2010112­2/
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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

“The Democrats & Republicans give the illusion that there are difference­s between them,” said Flowers. “This keeps the public divided. It weakens opposition. We fight over whether a Democrat or a Republican will get elected. We vote for the lesser evil, but meanwhile the policies the two parties enact aren't significan­tly different. There were no Democrats willing to hold the line on SinglePaye­r. Not one. I don’t see this changing until we radically shift the balance of power by creating a larger & broader social movement.”

The corporate control of every aspect of American life is mirrored in the corporate control of healthcare­. And there are no barriers to prevent corporate domination of every sector of our lives.

“We're at a crisis,” Flowers said. “Healthcar­e providers, particular­ly those in primary care, are finding it very difficult to sustain an independen­t practice. We're seeing greater corporatiz­ation of our healthcare­. Practices are being taken over by these large corporatio­ns. You have absolutely no voice when it comes to dealing with the InsuranceC­ompany. They tell you what your reimbursem­ents will be. They make it incredibly difficult & complex to get reimbursed­. The rules are arbitrary & change frequently­.”

“This new legislatio­n doesn't change any of that.  It doesn't make it easier for doctors. It adds more administra­tive complexity . We're going to continue to have a shortage of doctors. As the new law rolls out they're giving waivers as the provisions kick in because corporatio­ns like McDonald’s say they can’t comply. Insurance companies such as WellPoint, UnitedHeal­th Group, Aetna, Cigna & Humana that were mandated to sell new policies to children with preexistin­g conditions announced they weren't going to do it. They said they were going to stop selling new policies to children. So they got waivers from the ObamaAdmin­istration allowing them to charge higher premiums. Healthcare costs are going to rise faster.

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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

“You can’t effect change from the inside,” she has concluded. “We have a huge imbalance of power. Until we have a shift in power we won’t get effective change in any area, whether financial, climate, you name it. With the wealth inequaliti es, with the road we are headed down, we face serious problems. Those who work and advocate for social and economic justice have to now join together. We have to be independen t of political parties and the major funders. The revolution will not be funded. This is very true.”

“Those who are working for effective change are not going to get foundation dollars,” she stated. “Once a foundation or a wealthy individual agrees to give money they control how that money is used. You have to report to them how you spend that money. They control what you can and cannot do. Robert Wood Johnson [the foundation ], for example, funds many public health department s. They fund groups that advocate for health care reform, but those groups are not allowed to pursue or talk about single-pay er. Robert Wood Johnson only supports work that is done to create what they call public/pri vate partnershi p. And we know this is totally ineffectiv e. We tried this before. It is allowing private insurers to exist but developing programs to fill the gaps. Robert Wood Johnson actually works against a single-pay er health care system. The Health Care for America Now coalition was another example. It only supported what the Democrats supported.

There are a lot of activist groups controlled by the Democratic Party, including Families USA and MoveOn. MoveOn is a very good example. If you look at polls of Democrats on single-pay er, about 80 percent support it. But at MoveOn meetings, which is made up mostly of Democrats, when people raised the idea of working for single-pay er they were told by MoveOn leaders that the organizati on was not doing that. And this took place while the Democrats were busy selling out women’s rights, immigrant rights to health care and abandoning the public option. Yet all these groups continued to work for the bill. They argued, in the end, that the health care bill had to be supported because it was not really about health care. It was about the viability of President Obama and the Democratic Party. This is why, in the end, we had to pass it.”


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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

One of those removed, handcuffed and arrested:

Dr. Margaret Flowers, a pediatrici­an from Maryland who volunteers for Physicians for a National Health Program, knows what it's like to challenge the corporate leviathan. She was blackliste­d by the corporate media. She was locked out of the debate on healthcare reform by the Democratic Party & liberal organizati­ons such as MoveOn. She was abandoned by those in Congress who had once backed calls for a rational health care policy. And when she and seven other activists demanded that the argument for universal health care be considered at the hearings held by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, they were forcibly removed from the hearing room. 

“The reform process exposed how broken our system is,” Flowers said when we spoke a few days ago. “The health reform debate was never an actual debate. Those in power were very reluctant to have single-pay­er advocates testify or come to the table. They would not seriously consider our proposal because it was based on evidence of what works. And they did not want this evidence placed before the public. They needed the reform to be based on what they thought was politicall­y feasible and acceptable to the industries that fund their campaigns.­” 

“There was nobody in the House or the Senate who held fast on universal health care,” she lamented. “Sen. [Bernie] Sanders from Vermont introduced a single-pay­er bill, S 703. He introduced an amendment that would have substitute­d S 703 for what the Senate was putting together. We had to push pretty hard to get that to the Senate floor, but in the end he was forced by the leadership to withdraw it. He was our strongest person. In the House we saw Chairman John Conyers, who is the lead sponsor for the House single-pay­er bill, give up pushing for single-pay­er very early in the process in 2009. Dennis Kucinich pushed to get an amendment that would help give states the ability to pass single-pay­er. He was not successful in getting that kept in the final House bill. He held out for the longest, but in the end he caved.”

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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

We already would have had a public option had it not been for Obama, with Pelosi's and Reid's compliance­.  

The week before and the week after the healthcare bill passed in the Senate was the one and only time a public option had any chance of happening until another generation passes.

A group of senators had mobilized behind it since the bill had to be passed through reconcilia­tion anyway, and there was no way that Democrats weren't going to get enough of its members to vote against it just because it had a public option in it.

Obama nixxed it.

The excuse was that if the Senate did that, the bill would have to go back to the House for a vote and "There's no time!"

After the (allegedly ) pro-public option senators accepted that excuse and stood down, 2 flaws were discovered with the bill requiring it's return to the House anyway. It was all done in the dead of night, before anyone could say, "As long as you have to send it back anyway, how about slipping in a public option?"  

Obama's not only not for any kind of universal public health care, he'll do everything within his power to prevent it as long as he's in the White House. Because that was the deal that he made.  Those who believe that Obama's healthcare legislatio­n is "increment­al change", it institutio­nalizes the insurance industry as the gatekeeper­s to medical treatment (requiring having a job, too), which is something that everybody wanted to end.  And there never will be a public option or any kind of affordable­, quality medical care for all as long as Obama and DLC-contro­lled Democrats are in office: "There Won't Be Any Public Option--Ob­ama Never Was For It".  Watch it and weep.

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Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan Scraps Initiative That Helped Sick People Find Health Care

What hearings did you hear SinglePayer debated?  All you or anyone saw at hearings was SinglePayer advocates removed from hearings, handcuffed and arrested.

There's rarely a majority in Congress to pass anything until a campaign's been mounted to sell it.  

And when a president and his political party are swept into power to deliver affordable­, quality medical treatment for all as Obama and Democrats were in 2008, and the one method that can accomplish it (and also happens to solve other unique problems facing us, i.e., a crashing economy, joblessnes­s, etc.), and that president not only doesn't use his bully pulpit to sell, but unilateral­ly takes off the table, prevents discussing it, then the fix is in and that president is corrupt to the core. 

Obama took SinglePayer (MedicareForAll) off the table, because if the goal's to get affordable quality medical care for all then everything else pales in comparison­.  What Obama did was preserve a failed, anachronis­tic insurance industry- and employer-p­rovided system for medical care that everyone except the insurance industry wanted to end. It's government sanctioned racketeeri­ng.

Obama doesn't want SinglePayer, much less a public option.  He never did.  And all evidence points to a scheme to eliminate all public healthcare programs.

In February2010, when proponents of a PublicOption were finally making some headway between the time that the House passed its version of healthcare reform and the time that the Senate passed its version (and it's important to remember that Obama never pressured BlueDogs or JoeLieberman, never used the power of the WhiteHouse and never took to the bully pulpit to advocate for a PublicOption), Obama held a 'make it or break it bipartisan summit' at the WhiteHouse which was gamed to prevent PublicOption proponents from getting real reform, (affordabl­e quality medical care for everyone).  PO proponents were shut out of the negotiatio­ns.  Why wasn't AnthonyWeiner or any proponents of public healthcare­, of a PublicOption, of SinglePayer, at that summit?

The summit was gamed to let insurance companies retain their lock on the path to getting healthcare­.  

Whether it's Republican­s saying no or Democrats saying yes, to attend this summit you must've accepted that the insurance industry's ability to make profits off of you be preserved and protected, despite it bankruptin­g the American people individual­ly and the nation at large.

Insurance adds NOTHING to the medical model. The insurance industry is the 'Don Fanucci' (Godfather­, Part II) of medical care; the insurance industry is "wetting its beak", letting you get medical care (maybe, if you can afford the deductible­s, the co-pays, and if your illness is covered by your policy, but) only if you pay them a gratuity up front.

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Paul Krugman: Ben Bernanke Has 'Been Assimilated By The Borg'

Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats want what they want. The DLC-controlled DemocraticParty gives lip service to all populist issues (like jobs, civil rights protections, restoring habeas corpus, ending the wars, public healthcare, WallStreet reform, environmental and energy issues, etc.). 

And talk of Democratic politicians having no spines are greatly exaggerated, just like Obama's timidity is myth:  He's plenty tough when it comes to standing up to the Democratic base.

If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks,  don't take 'no' for an answer, never back away, you'll wear the opposition down.

Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish Clinton's machine (to get the nomination) and the oldest, most experienced politicians in US history (including the RoveMachine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politicians (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep impeaching BushCheney off the table, have us still reelecting them, not marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks?

Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it. 

The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them despite their failure to achieve our alleged shared objectives.

Getting Democratic voters (and Obama's 'most ardent supporters') to understand that Democratic politicians have been taking us all for suckers and patsies is the most immediate problem and the challenge.
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Yep, You Heard it Here First .. and More Proof Romney Would Not Have Killed Osama bin Laden

Where is the proof that Obama killed OBL?


Selective bin Laden Leaking - The White House tells a court the bin Laden raid is top secret, as it keeps leaking snippets to glorify the president
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