Baucus Unveils Health Care Plan Without Public Option

Does it include mandates for individuals? Hopefully it doesnot....that would be a good reason for weaker subsidies. No mandates...it would substract 100's of billions from the total cast

The trigger is total BS - it's a trigger that will never be pulled. Just look at how a trigger worked in the disastrous prescription drug plan - the GOP worked hard to ensure that the trigger was so weak that it'd never be toggled.

Since the Finance Committee is hoplessly deadlocked and worthless, at least this might get us out of that nightmare and toward moving the process forward.

What they are essentially saying on the committee is, we can't do anything. So we're going to check. Let everybody else do the heavy lifting. What a bunch of retarded cowards.

Unable to come up with anything because they are owned by the health insurance industry and scared to death of the backlash from the Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity freaks in their own small, rural, conservatie states. Never mind that the kind of reform we're talking about, benefits those stinking states the most.

Please!!! Spare me.

Again, at least this MIGHT get us past them and moving forward.

Health care 101 for our dimwitted representatives:

1. There is no such thing as health "insurance". Everybody WILL need care at some point or other, and in fact everybody needs preventive care, so expenditures for care are a certainty, not a "risk".What we are talking about is health care financing.

2. Health care is a textbook case of market failure. It is logically impossible to have quality care delivered and paid for efficiently to everyone who needs it by relying heavily on "free markets".

Eh, who am I kidding. The only numbers these whores ever look at are their campaign contributions.

PLEASE ENCOURAGE everyone TO LET CONGRESS and PRESIDENT OBAMA KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT IN HEALTH CARE REFORM. ONE EASY WAY THEY CAN DO THIS IS BY USING THE PDF FORM AT GOOGLE DOCUMENTS THAT I CREATED USING THE HOUSE RESOLUTION 3200 OFFICIAL SUMMARY, AS WELL AS PRESIDENT OBAMA'S LIST OF WHAT HE WANTs IN HEALTH CARE REFORM. THIS IS AN EASY CHECKLIST OF FEWER THAN 50 ITEMS. We, the government, of the people, by the people, and for the people must stand up and SPEAK! DO IT TODAY....BE VIRILE...OR VIRAL....BUT USE THE FORM AND SPEAK YOUR MIND. We CAN, we MUST, we WILL!

http://tiny.cc/YH7UH

Thank you.

--
DonnaMarieEllington
http://healthyrickets.blogspot.com

This is me giving a sarcastic, overly dramatic golf clap to Max Baucus for basically asking for the summer, getting it, and then jellydicking the entire thing.

What an asshole.

This isn't a bill. This is as far as he and his bipartisan lovefest pals got before Grassley and Enzi blew it all up by admitting they just acting as saboteurs rather than negotiating in good faith. (Hey, in Rove's day, right wing politicians used to tell the the base exactly what he was doing all the time without Democrats noticing or the MSM reporting it. How were they supposed to know the rules had changed?)

So basically, he just handed in an incomplete project for partial credit. He already had an "I," ran out the clock on his extension and still couldn't finish so, like innumerable undergrads before him, he decided a D+ or a C- was better than an F. (The grading professor being the MSM, not us).

Dear Max,

Thank you very much for a job well done. Check is on the way.

Sincerely,

AHIP

Baucus --thanks for nothing. Now get the hell out of the way.

I have to say I was actually fooled by the Democratic party. I really believed Obama would push hard for real healthcare reform, end the wars, act responsibly with the budget by rolling back tax cuts, support unionization, punish lawbreakers in the previous Bush administration, support immigration reform, close Guantanamo, pass meaningful environmental reform etc.etc. So far nothing except giving more taxpayer money to irresponsible corporations. I'm not hopeful. Will vote for Green Party candidate next time.

People. One more time. This is not the Senate Finance committee bill. This is the stack of paper that Senate Finance will start working from when they (finally!) begin mark-up.

Baucus is basically just pushing the hard part out onto the Democrats on the SFC. (Damn, let the whole committee hold mark-up hearings and propose and vote on amendments in public. What an amazing concept. Why didn't someone suggest that to Max earlier?)

For all I know,what comes out of markup may not be much different. Finance has more than its fair share of Barelydems so maybe the plan is to just report out a bare-bones mealymouthed consensus POS and put off the heavy lifting onto whatever process they use to reconcile the Finance and HELP bills. But this is NOT the Senate Finance Bill.

Is it too late for the Medicare for all bumper sticker? It would be a two page bill, one for signatures. It would get rid of all the people complaining to keep the government out of medicare. It would get rid of the "death panels" another republican dirty trick. I really think that was a set up by repukes, because it was completely unnecessary and was an amendment promoted by republicans. It would get rid of all this bs back and forth on the public option.

I say just throw everything out and make medicare for all. Then go back and throw out the prescription drug plan/welfare for the drug industry and start from scratch on that one. Hearing on the obscene profits of the drug industry and shed light on the fact that the US subsidizes world drug prices.

Make the bumper sticker "medicare for all" and see what the repukes can do with that one.

I need to know more. I can't tell if this is a good plan or a bad one. I find it interesting tha Baccus releases this jst prior to Obama's speech before both Houses

"[t]he hope is that employers would buy cheaper, less generous coverage for employees, thereby reducing the overuse of medical services."

All of us who have been saying to ourselves, "I'm covered through my work, so this debate doesn't really affect me" take note.

And since the committee is group work, and the Senate is group work, he'll mostly get the grade the people actually, you know, doing the work in the best group will get.

I hated group work in school.

OK, this may be simplistic, but sometimes, I'm a simple-minded guy. The story claimed that subsidies were being set so that no one would pay more than 13% of their income in premiums. First of all, that seemed really high to me. Based on the upper-end figure of $88,200 in income reported in the story, that translates into premiums of $955.50 per month.

I have wondered throughout this entire debate what some of the final numbers would look like because no one has defined what "affordable" health insurance actually would cost.

Right now many of the employer subsidized rates I am seeing are $250 per month for family coverage (which includes dental). Deductibles have now risen the $500 per person, $1500 per family. Which means that basically, you are out $4,000 before anything is covered (except covered preventive services).

In my world, this is not "affordable" by any stretch of the imagination.

Like the Iraq War, Medicare Part D, various oil and agricultural subsidy programs--this is just another structured transfer of wealth from taxpayers to corporations. I can pretty much guarantee that nothing I see coming out of this "reform" process will do ANYTHING to lower health care costs for individuals. It will just lock us all into a higher price scale---the rules will be set so that out of pocket costs will remain the same as they are now, but taxpayer $$$ will be used to put more people into the system in order to subsidize insurance company profits.

We have reached the point where our economic system has become a kind of Bizzaro Socialism where government does NOT control the means of production, but where the forces of government are used primarily to control the flow of SPENDING from private citizens to corporations.

If the Democrats want see a revolt, let them pass a mandate requiring everyone to buy a POS private plan that covers next to nothing.

I think this is about as good as could be expected from Max Baucus. Let's face it, none of the proposed health care plans even begin to put a dent in the massive redistriution of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich that has occurred over the last few decades.
Frankly, I'm pleased that the poor are not being asked to subsidize the rich. Of course, we haven't seen the final bill yet...
Some how, some way, we need to figure out how to get to those who would benefit from universal health care but have fallen for the the right wing disinformation campaign. Logic and reason have not worked too well.
I sure hope health care reform includes mental health. Perhaps all the wacko stuff is some kind of a plea for help.

Could see this coming. Can't wait to vote Green or Worker's Socialist or something besides lying Democrat next time around. Then I'll have no horse in the race as our (lol) government turns this country into a legalized plutocracy.

There is no doubt the public option would be best. However if a compromise is necessary why not both a trigger public plan AND seed money for health care cooperatives. If the combination of private insurance and health care coops don't meet the objectives of 95% coverage by 2013 then the public option kicks in.

The Max Baucus plan is some of the weakest shit i've read in a long time. It's so bad the REPUBLICANS could of written the bill.

Why not just change the Presidential Seal to a white flag? Let's not stand for or fight for anything substantial whatsoever. Wow, to imagine I once was excited at the prospect of this man's presidency.

My prediction about the Democrats: now that everyone seems to be caving in and declaring victory about having a ill-defined TRIGGER for an OPTION for health care insurance, we'll have to have a phased in DELAY of the TRIGGER for the OPTION to appease the minority party. Pathetic.