AMERICAblog: Insurance industry front group admits nearly 120m Americans would prefer federally-run health care
shano
· 5 months ago
I live in the reddest county in McCain territory and everyone is talkiing about the possibility of this public health plan. Shop clerks, gas station guys-people who you would not think would be for a 'liberal' program. It is amazing.
Maybe it is not a liberal/conservative issue at all. maybe it is a insurance industry/campaign funds issue. I think the 'Republicans are really going to hurt themselves on this issue. And the Dems if they cave one more time on an issue that affects every single person in this nation.
Because people are fed up with paying and not getting benefits, being ripped off by their health care, or not having healthcare or being able to afford to go to the dentist. Fed up. And tired of the lies.
ChrisSF
· 5 months ago
I love how these free market conservatives are all for competition except when companies actually have to compete. If private insurers can deliver a better product at a better cost than the government program, people will be free to choose those plans. If they can't build a better mousetrap, they deserve to fail. That's just good old fashioned capitalism at work.
Jophus
· 5 months ago
I know this is not the place to post this, but if you are intrested in the DHS report and right wing extremists actions lately you have to watch this clip from hardball, posted on firedoglake.
Joan Walsh rips apart the right wing in an insanely hilarious way. I literally laughed at her delivery for like a minute solid. She is really affective the whole time though. Grab a joint then watch this video.
KerrynowCampau
· 5 months ago
Great reason to smoke a bowl! Thanks for posting that
Jophus
· 5 months ago
It takes someone with real talent to get on tv and tell 20 percent of america they've "gone off into crazy nut-job land, you're off the charts crazy." Check out her hand motions when she says it. I laugh over and over because she makes you feel like you've been complemented or something. I love this woman.
Malcolm
· 5 months ago
I'm fervently in favor of single-payer government health care, but folks, in arguing for it, please get your facts straight. Government workers and officials don't have government health care. They have a choice of several government-negotiated private health insurance plans, such as BCBS, all much more favorable than those available to us from the same insurers.
Scottsdalian
· 5 months ago
One VERY CRUCIAL point to make:
Repubs keep trying to scare us by saying a "bureaucrat" in the govn. will be making our healthcare decisions. CRUCIAL POINT - our healthcare decisions are ALREADY being made by bureaucrats - CORPORATE bureaucrats. And they are more dangerous than govn. bureaucrats because they are protecting their corporate profits. Govn. bureaucrats have NO PROFITS to protect.
ShirleyGoodnessanMercy
· 5 months ago
Good point. And corporate bureaucrats are more likely to get undeserved pay bonuses and take trips to Las Vegas at your expense.
Jophus
· 5 months ago
How do you type in bold? Sometimes I need to italicize but I don't know how, so I type with caps. That is just uncivilized.
Thank you from me, too! I didn't know how to bold and underline at the same time. I wanted that combo for the faxes I sent to DC about a public option plan.
threadmonitor
· 5 months ago
Here's something even better!
Instead of i or b (forget "center" as described on the link - it doesn't work on these threads), type: blockquote.
You'll get this.
Use this feature for quoted material, either from a news source or from another person's comment or from the post itself.
html tags are fun
edit: Oops. "Center" does work. But "blockquote" is more fun to type. :)
benb
· 5 months ago
Oh man, a little googling shows what whores they are, the Lewin Group. On Oct 8---just before the election---Lewin released a study favorable to McCain but failed to reveal who owned their asses:
"Ingenix’s name, not Lewin’s, is embedded in they study's PDF metadata—a mistake at the printer's, say company officials. But they refuse to name the print shop in question."
Ingenix is a unit of UnitedHealthcare and is described thusly:
"Investigators at the New York Attorney General’s office believe Ingenix manipulated medical billing software to under-reimburse doctors, sticking patients with higher bills. “Ingenix is nothing more than a conduit for rigged information," said chief investigator Linda Lacewell."
Republicans and their corporate owners and handlers just can't stop lying. It must be genetic or something or other. What this clown is trying to cover up is the fact that private corporate- greed-based insurance companies will be losing 120,000,000 customers to a not-for-profit federal government public option health insurance plan.
Soundboy_jeff_meanie
· 5 months ago
part of the reson they underfunded 'no child left behind' I guess... they're hoping that kids of the future will be dumb enough to vote them back into power.
if you can't read you'd believe them... they have a report that says so!
/snark
PeteWa
· 5 months ago
Count me as one of the 120 million.
Soundboy_jeff_meanie
· 5 months ago
me too, and my Husband... we've got good coverage (not great), but we're paying $720 a month for it. And that's NOT including what my employer is paying for the plan.
and it does go up every year.
PeteWa
· 5 months ago
I'm self employed... very small business, pretty much in the same boat as John A. Every year, pay more, get less... what a scam.
Bubbles
· 5 months ago
Flip to this study, over on page 13, top graph, shows:
American Govt expenditures per capita for health care ALREADY EXCEED FRANCE'S.
That means that basically the government could give us all single payer tomorrow (or medicare for all) and it wouldn't cost us one damn dime more in taxes.
Here's what Obama should be advocating.
Not a public payer option, but a private payer option.
Tomorrow, give us medicare for all. If you still want to keep your private health plan. Fine. By all means do. But then you'll have redundant coverage.
And if you want, on Monday, you could go to work and tell your employer you'd rather have the benefit monotized into your salary.
The added purchasing power will get us out of the depression.
Interesting how it's all coming together, now that Bush-boi is gone!! Republicun redding comprension is down after years of "every chile left behind"!!
Soundboy_jeff_meanie
· 5 months ago
great minds think alike? didn't see your post before I wrote mine.
charly
· 5 months ago
I'll tell you what is truly laughable about the Republican outrage over Healthcare reform. Remember how John McCain was saying that turning over our Healthcare to the US government would ruin it? Doesn't John McCain and every other Republican senator and representive actually have government run healthcare? Don't we, the taxpayers, pay for them and their families healthcare? I haven't heard any complaints about how horrible it is from them, have you? No, they seem to like it just fine. But of course, they want us to go without as long as they get their government run healthcare.
condew
· 5 months ago
McCain is a military brat, then military himself. So he's been in a government-run plan his entire life. Guess he just doesn't want us to get what he got.
AdmNaismith
· 5 months ago
That's half the population of the US. Half.
And the other half would follow along withibn a year of seeing how the other half lives.
ShirleyGoodnessanMercy
· 5 months ago
Tomorrow's elections in Iran could prove to be the most important world event of the year. I am surprised not to see anything about it on Americablog today. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/11/eveni...
Jophus
· 5 months ago
To be honest I feel that way about a lot of the international developments lately. This north korea bananas is directly related to the Iranian elections too. Two huge stories you barely read anything about.
Õ¿Õ
· 5 months ago
Corporate money pays for the reich's "think tanks." (They learned their lesson back in the 70s.) They pay for thousands of amoral people to scour every single thing that happens to put on an industry's spin and further promote the reich's ideology. That's all they do all day long (and probably around the clock-3 shifts) because that's their job and they're very well paid. The left has nothing comparable. That's why it seems overwhelming. All we have to counter it is the internet and the fact that their policies don't work and harm people who begin to fear for their lives and vote them out.
m.
· 5 months ago
It's not a bombshell that people will respond positively to something phrased appealingly.
easily that many americans already have federally-paid healthcare access. many more do if you count partial funding.
but then the results would be quite different if you reported that americans were quite unaware that many of them might well already be receiving federal, 'public option' healthcare (and the numbers would be quite high if you included state and city/county/regionally funded healthcare in the 'public' tally).
we already have government-funded healthcare at all levels. the honest question is whether to expand this situation in some way or reduce the fairly high level of publically-funded healthcare.
that's the bombshell we never hear reported-- that americans already get tons of locally/state/etc publically-funded healthcare and yet they for some reason don't feel it is 'great benefits' at 'lower cost' (even when in some instances it actually is).
All Comments
Maybe it is not a liberal/conservative issue at all. maybe it is a insurance industry/campaign funds issue. I think the 'Republicans are really going to hurt themselves on this issue. And the Dems if they cave one more time on an issue that affects every single person in this nation.
Because people are fed up with paying and not getting benefits, being ripped off by their health care, or not having healthcare or being able to afford to go to the dentist. Fed up. And tired of the lies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgJmYne36kI
Joan Walsh rips apart the right wing in an insanely hilarious way. I literally laughed at her delivery for like a minute solid. She is really affective the whole time though. Grab a joint then watch this video.
Thanks for posting that
Repubs keep trying to scare us by saying a "bureaucrat" in the govn. will be making our healthcare decisions. CRUCIAL POINT - our healthcare decisions are ALREADY being made by bureaucrats - CORPORATE bureaucrats. And they are more dangerous than govn. bureaucrats because they are protecting their corporate profits. Govn. bureaucrats have NO PROFITS to protect.
http://www.pageresource.com/html/textags.htm
Instead of i or b (forget "center" as described on the link - it doesn't work on these threads), type: blockquote.
Use this feature for quoted material, either from a news source or from another person's comment or from the post itself.
html tags are fun
edit:
Oops. "Center" does work. But "blockquote" is more fun to type.
:)
"Ingenix’s name, not Lewin’s, is embedded in they study's PDF
metadata—a mistake at the printer's, say company officials.
But they refuse to name the print shop in question."
Ingenix is a unit of UnitedHealthcare and is described thusly:
"Investigators at the New York Attorney General’s office believe Ingenix manipulated medical billing software to under-reimburse doctors, sticking patients with higher bills. “Ingenix is nothing
more than a conduit for rigged information," said chief investigator Linda Lacewell."
from:
http://www.epinews.com/LEWINGROUP.html
if you can't read you'd believe them... they have a report that says so!
/snark
and it does go up every year.
very small business, pretty much in the same boat as John A.
Every year, pay more, get less... what a scam.
American Govt expenditures per capita for health care ALREADY EXCEED FRANCE'S.
That means that basically the government could give us all single payer tomorrow (or medicare for all) and it wouldn't cost us one damn dime more in taxes.
Here's what Obama should be advocating.
Not a public payer option, but a private payer option.
Tomorrow, give us medicare for all. If you still want to keep your private health plan. Fine. By all means do. But then you'll have redundant coverage.
And if you want, on Monday, you could go to work and tell your employer you'd rather have the benefit monotized into your salary.
The added purchasing power will get us out of the depression.
http://www.olis.oecd.org/olis/2009doc.nsf/LinkT...
And the other half would follow along withibn a year of seeing how the other half lives.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/11/eveni...
easily that many americans already have federally-paid healthcare access. many more do if you count partial funding.
but then the results would be quite different if you reported that americans were quite unaware that many of them might well already be receiving federal, 'public option' healthcare (and the numbers would be quite high if you included state and city/county/regionally funded healthcare in the 'public' tally).
we already have government-funded healthcare at all levels. the honest question is whether to expand this situation in some way or reduce the fairly high level of publically-funded healthcare.
that's the bombshell we never hear reported-- that americans already get tons of locally/state/etc publically-funded healthcare and yet they for some reason don't feel it is 'great benefits' at 'lower cost' (even when in some instances it actually is).