Obama Zeroes In on Health-Care Coverage With Stimulus Signed

[Guest guest]

I don't do drugs, but I don't need too anyway when I read articles like this. Where is he going to dig up the money to make this work?

Highlights in Yellow.

Comments in RED.

Administrator

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103 & sid=aVHy6pjldYw0 & refer=us

Obama Zeroes In on Health-Care Coverage With Stimulus Signed

By Aliza Marcus

Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama will use the budget proposal he submits to Congress next week to outline how to pay for expanding medical coverage to all Americans, said an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Obama, on Feb. 24, will speak to a joint gathering of the House and Senate. Two days later, he will submit his budget plan to lawmakers.

The push from Obama will help Congress get to work on the overhaul, said Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat. The president is acting without a Health and Human Services secretary and chief aide for health policy, positions A. Daschle were supposed to fill before his withdrawal over questions about his taxes. Wyden said Obama's readiness to move the week after he signed a $787 billion stimulus measure shows the importance of health care to economic growth.

Or it could be that without a naysayer to discourage him, he can shove through whatever he wants to do regardless of how ill-conceived it is.

"What the president is saying is you can't get the economy back on track until you get healthcare on track," said Wyden, a member of the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over U.S. government health programs, and sponsor of a coverage proposal. The budget will help "set the table for health reform," he said in an interview yesterday.

Faulty logic here. If the economy was on track, no healthcare program would be needed because ideally, everyone's workplaces would have coverage. The key is to get businesses up and running and then give them incentive to give their workers healthcare coverage options.

On the other hand, no one can work if they are dead, dying, or maimed, so perhaps this healthcare thing is a good idea. As has been shown in countries like Canada and also the UK, national healthcare systems don't cover lost causes or expensive cases. In fact, they pull the plug on them faster to save money. So with more people killed off in our country, which has ten times the population of Canada, that means more jobs available to the ones still living.

Obama campaigned on a promise to expand government health programs and give people subsidies to help them afford coverage. He also proposed creating a public plan to compete with private health insurers and taking steps, such as putting more health records in digital form, to help reduce costs.

Putting health records in digital form means that they can share your information with other government departments and collect more data on you.

Have Asperger's? Your local police will know it now, so when you call 911 for an intruder alert they will respond with a SWAT team to shoot YOU if YOU get out of control while they search for your intruder.

Health Insurance, Costs

One American in seven lacks health insurance, according to the Census Bureau. For those with coverage, the price rose an average of 5 percent last year, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation in Menlo Park, California, reported in September.

The reason health care coverage costs are rising is threefold:

1) Frivolous lawsuits, or lawsuits with big payouts costing those in the medical profession big bucks.

2) Rising costs at the research, development, and production levels of equipment manufacturing, the expense of paying more and more specialists for what general practitioners used to do, etc.

3) With more people losing coverage, those who remain have to pay more to cover the costs incurred by those remaining in the system.

From a purely statistical standpoint, the majority of people in a Health Maintenance Organization will not often incur expenses beyond general office visits and minor procedures. People buy insurance on the off chance that they will incur a major medical expense, such as a cancer operation or heart surgery. These things do not happen as often when people are young. But the older folks in the system tap it out, and that is why people who have health insurance these days are paying more: To support those folks who rack up the bills.

Obama said during his campaign that covering everyone might cost at least $65 billion a year. His then-Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, now secretary of State, estimated her plan would cost about $110 billion. Clinton's plan included a requirement that everyone have health insurance. Obama's didn't.

Sloane, a lobbyist with AARP, the advocacy group for older people, said determining who pays is critical.

"Given all other spending priorities and economic peril, there's a lot of uncertainty whether they can find savings elsewhere to offset this," Sloane said in a telephone interview on Feb. 19.

And that is why I asked where the government would get the money to pay for this. The economy is going to squeeze people dry. they will not be able to afford buying into the plan even though it exists, and I am sure the provisions attached to a government subsidy for these people would make it so that they would be loathe to buy into it. And really, chances are it will be as muddled as the prescription drug plans are.

Obama's plans already got a boost in the stimulus package, which he signed Feb. 17. The measure allocates $20 billion to encourage adoption of computerized records and gives $1 billion to research the comparative effectiveness of medical treatments. Both may save money later on, according to the Congressional Budget Office, an arm of Congress.

There are warehouses full of brand new computers that were never used and now they are saying that computerized records are a good thing? How would they make it work?

Bush's Footsteps

President W. Bush successfully used his budget to push a new health program. He devoted two sentences in his fiscal year 2002 budget proposal to create a program to subsidize prescription drug coverage for people in Medicare, the U.S. health insurance plan for the elderly and disabled. Congress approved it in 2003.

Senator M. Kennedy, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee, have been working on legislation to overhaul the health system.

Jennings, a Democratic consultant who was a senior staffer on former President Bill Clinton's health-care task force, said Obama may try to focus on health care when he gives his speech to Congress.

Last Updated: February 20, 2009 16:22 EST