The U.S. Senate votes 60 to 39 for health care debate

Say -- when The Mob comes around to shake you down for a hefty percentage of your annual income, don't they always try to sweeten the pill by telling you that you are just buying a little 'insurance'?

Just axin' ...

I really don't know what the outcome of "health care reform" will be. However, I do know that passing any bill that removes 400 billion from medicare is sure to equate to a change in party domination in both the House and Senate. I would think that the majority party has managed to get themselves into the old expression of "between a rock and a hard place". On one side they have the people without health insurance, on another the seniors on medicare and lastly, the insurance industry. Witch's brew? The majority under 50 vote when it pleases them. As a group, ALL of the seniors vote ALL the time and the lobbyists are there ALL the time, usually with campaign money support. Interesting thoughts? If Obama and Pelosi think that they have problems - wait. A worst case scenario is that the whole thing bombs and they don't even satisfy the first group. The put more time into Glass Steagel and that, plus a little Libertarianism courtesy of the three musketeers, brought us to where we are now.
The time is ripe to bring back Constitutional Amendment 18
and really make everyone happy.

Mr.Lindblad,

The 18th Amendment, wasn't that Prohibition? What's that got to do with health care?

You've always been one for solutions, so what is your solution to the Health Care Crisis?

Things that nobody wants to hear, but even so:

Not all problems have solutions -- Superman does not generally arrive in the last reel to save the cast from the consequences of their own habitual, long-continued behavior.

Not all 'crises' can be successfully resolved; certainly not with a flourish of the pen and a wave of taxation -- and definitely not by allowing one bunch of crooks to muscle in on the corrupt mess another bunch of crooks has created.

Last year everyone ran around screaming "The Republicans are BAD -- give us Democrats!"; now it looks like next year we'll all be running around screaming "Democrats are BAD -- give us Republicans!"
And so on until the end of recorded time. But since today's "two-party system" is simply pro wrestling on a grand scale, with the two "deadly opponents" laughing in the locker room after the bout about the yokels they just clipped, while they split the take and decide where best to dine that evening, bouncing back and forth between the two is futile at best.

Ever hear of the old Good Cop/Bad Cop routine? Yeah, well, all that happened in the last election was that the two cops switched roles for awhile.

"The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter."
-- Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade in "The Maltese Falcon"

When in doubt, don't.

Clikdawg,

I hear you.

But health Insurance Company executives are making multiple millions while the price of health insurance grows beyond the ability of most business to afford it. (cf the [former] Big Three Automakers). Those w/o health insurance can't get treatment outside of Emergency Room care and that is slow in coming, hurried when arrived, and a huge financial drain on the Hospitals. Doctors refuse to treat those w/o insurance. Even for my annual (deleted) exam. The first words out of the Receptionists mouth are, "What Insurance do you have?". Once on a dare, I said I didn't have any & they threw me out.

Now I'm not saying that the eventual Health Care Plan won't create new problems of its own. I am saying that the current situation is unsustainable. We need to do something and the fact that the Republican Party has suggested nothing beyond saying "No" to every proposal is beyond disappointing.

Dan --

And I hear you.

But the plain fact is that those "multiple millions" the insurance execs are pocketing will simply be pocketed, post-"reform", by corrupt politicians; you will simply be replacing one group of profiteers with another -- and when it is the government (by whichever party) that is doing the profiteering, brother, there will be no one to turn to for redress.

To hope (!) that because one or another of these parties SAYS they will not use "reform" to enrich themselves at public expense, they actually will not do so is, in my opinion, an exercise in the most un-constructive wishful thinking imaginable; it flies in the face of everything we've learned over the past half-century about pigs at the trough of the culture of corruption.

Is the health care system rotten (and let's face it, none of the bills addresses that; only who will control the money which stems from health insurance -- who will benefit and who will lose)? Is it about to tumble? Maybe. Is insurance out of control? Certainly. But were there 600 Barack Obamas, each of them as clean and honest and wholesome as he claims (permit me to doubt), they could not oversee or police every transaction, every under-the-table deal, every perversion inherent in any exercise by any party in a business being run by the highest governmental authority in the land.

If it runs amok (and it will, always has, history proves that it is the very nature of the beast) who ya gonna call?

Any government should and must regulate, fairly and stringently for the good of the entire commonwealth; beyond that any move it makes will bring on a worse plague than that which such a move seeks to redress.

It maybe shouldn't oughta be like that, but it is. The same temptations which have led to the present situation operate on political animals as well as capitalists, because both types are, in the final analysis, just men and nothing more.

And until that has been demonstrably proven to have changed, no speech or speaker will change my mind on this issue: The cure will be worse than the disease.

Again, when in doubt, friend, don't.

There is no "simple" solution to health care. I do wish that there were - but it is not there.
The "Universal" systems in place in the U.K., Denmark and Canada for example, all have problems too. Contrary to what Mike Moore tried to push and parody - they are far from perfect solutions. However, some of these systems seem to do the job cheaper. The U.S. is on the high end of cost, but way down the list when it comes to being effective. I mean cure/satisfaction. For all the latest use of all of the most effective devices that are intended to save lives and prevent disease we have went backwards on the initial goal. All that has been accomplished has been to increase cost.
And that Dan, is not a Congressional issue. I don't know why we have it either. One good guess is that the reliance on the equipment has overshadowed the Dr's. In many case the device results are read and interpreted by much lesser trained techs. Another (real) problem is medical malpractice insurance. It adds so much cost to the system that there should be torts. It also makes the Doc's do extensive (and frequently unnecessary) testing just to cover their backs. Again, none of this is going to addressed by current legislative consideration.
If I had to solve this problem, as you suggest I would first improve competition between the insurers and allow all to compete on a national level. I would than address the malpractice issue. We have precedent on torts existing in the auto insurance arena as this too, was in runaway mode. If anything, this approach did make positive inroads. Like Franklin said, it is far from perfect but the best we could do. Improving Dr./patient relationships is something that will always be on an individual level.
IF we as a people could adopt the above, than we could move forward on how much government involvement is required to insure those who cannot afford/acquire health care coverage. This is a darn complicated issue since it encompasses citizen and non-citizens alike. There are many just too poor. There are many with existing conditions. There is the abortion issue.
It would prove easier if we would attack the main problems first. Allowing competition and getting torts would reduce cost levels. It would not however remove the small but ever present level of incompetence. That has always been in the realm of the AMA and politically, off limits. Fortunately, it's always been small and not much of a problem - unless YOU are seeing one that qualifies.

I forgot to add:

Makes three that are at least on the same wave length.

The 18th remark was intended as sarcastic - drinking has a history of not improving tempers.