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Hey Dems — What’s Wrong With Public OPTIONS? As In PLURAL?
Okay Dems (and G.O.P.’ers if you wish to learn something) — listen UP. We have a very SERIOUS problem with our current healthcare system at this time and we don’t need anybody losing heart simply because President Barack Hussein Obama has seemingly waffled on the specific term, “Public Option” doesn’t mean he has given up on the idea, nor does it mean public OPTIONS would not be considered in a bipartisan Congress and/or Senate. According to Rasmussen, this is leading to a jumping of the proverbial “Good Ship Obama” by his fellow Democrats. Hold up, Dems — take a “chill pill”. It’s not over yet.
Allow me to relay a true story just under two weeks old — a story nobody’s going to be reading or watching in the mainstream media (“MSM“)…
Early last week, my mother called to tell me my father’s best friend’s daughter had been diagnosed with the swine flu (H1N1? Really?) at the local “free” clinic for low-wage families. They had just moved back to Mobile, Alabama from Jacksonville and they actually had insurance. Unfortunately, no doctors or hospitals in this town (they smiled and dialed all day long to learn this fact) recognized or accepted their health insurance, which is why this family took their 5-year old child to the public clinic in the first place. Swine flu was the diagnosis and because the free clinic didn’t carry drugs, they gleefully wrote her prescription as well as a prescription for the mother and the father of this child (three weeks for the child; two weeks for each parent for their exposure to the virus).
This family took their prescriptions to be filled at the local Wal-Mart (if I recall correctly), waited around for an hour or so, then went to pick them up. Price tag for the swine flu medication? Well over $1,300.00 for all three of our friends; prescriptions to be purchased. They didn’t have the kind of money Wally-World required for them to help stop this so-called “worldwide pandemic” in its tracks. Back to my parents they went, to smile and dial through the Yellow Pages again — hoping to find a governmental agency to help them save the life of their young daughter and possibly their own lives by giving them at least an AFFORDABLE option for their anti-swine flu prescriptions. NO LUCK.
They then turned back to private companies and were able to eventually find a place who’d charge them three hundred bucks apiece after taxes. The father, a military veteran with VA benefits chose to take his own chances — had his swine flu exposure medications filled on the cheap and gave the meds to his wife, deciding to take his own chances. For their daughter, on the other hand, they sold some valuables to come up with the other three hundred dollars. THIS, folks, is how America under its current, completely capitalistic system of medical care deals with A PANDEMIC. Had they not had three hundred dollars in liquid assets, little “Charlie” would be either dead right now or spreading the swine flu virus around as a carrier, therefore, obviously ENDANGERING THE LIVES OF POTENTIALLY THOUSANDS OF OTHER FELLOW AMERICANS. While we can argue all day long about what the intent of our Founding Fathers was when they all agreed a primary role of the federal government was to “promote the general welfare”, it’d be hard to argue they wouldn’t have unanimously considered this particular situation to EASILY fall within these parameters. Oh, and there’s a somewhat “happy ending” here — little “Charlie” has recovered.
BOTH parties — the Republicans and the Democrats seem to agree our healthcare system is broken and needs some sort of Congressional oversight — that’s a given. In my opinion, the above demonstrates the need for some public options if not A “public option” and one can call it “ObamaCare” if they think it’ll win some political points but just remember this — little “Charlie” was being shuffled around town with the swine flu in the “Reddest” of the “Red States” in America, which means the screaming mental cases at the townhall meetings of Republican persuasion around here — many of them — have been exposed to the H1N1 virus because of the very thing they protest…
Two TRUTHS one simply can’t dodge in life amongst many other truths — karma and Darwin.
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Other notable bloggers weigh in: Conor Clarke, filling in once again for THE Andrew Sullivan of THE Daily Dish disagrees with me apparently; Allahpundit of Hot Air praises the Blue Dog Democrats for the impasse; Meanwhile, our Yellow Dog Democrat buddies over at the Drudge Retort are discussing Blue Dog Democratic National Committee (“DNC“) leader, Howard Dean’s proclaimation that “no public option means no peace” between the parties…
@GTL – No offense, but did you see the bill for $1300? I’m thinking typo, or wrong drug perscribed. H1N1 tends to run $10 a dose. How could “one size fits all” Wal-Mart charge so much on that particular item? Something isn’t adding up about this story. Wait, this is one of your Green Onion type stories, yes?
Ok, I have to back peddle a bit. $10 per dose multiplied by 3 people multiplied by two weeks and one person for another week. Even with my figure, that would come to $450. I was thinking like a “vaccine type senario” with just one dose and done. Yeh, adds up pretty fast, still the $1300 still seems off.
This may explain some of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9k_nAbsNfI
That looked like quite the production for a comedy skit.
The Onion usually does a pretty good job. This was actually one of their weaker efforts.
Upon further reflection..GTL! Didn’t it take 400 billion dollars just to help the elderly afford their medicine? Now what is the government saying it is going to cost to fix the entire health care system? The difference now is the Chris Dodd, Charles Rangles of today are so much more ethical than the Bush crowd of 2003, so much more intelligent, and don’t forget oh so much more efficent. Look! There’s Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown to kick it. Go kick the football GTL! This bill will bring affordable medical to all and we all lived happily ever after.
Mike, you are a BAD MAN! I am going to have that mental image in my head all day. Guns in his Niners helmet flying though the air, and Nancy van Pelt, Um, Lucy van Pelt, grinning as she watches him.
Is this a new flu treament for H1N1? I hadn’t heard anything, so I must have missed it. As far as I know, it’s the same as any other flu virus (just a new variety), so the symptoms should be relatively the same. Now, if they’re having a certain severity of symptoms, that’s another story, and I can see where they might require treatment for the symptoms… Of course, I can also see how if there’s NOT a new treatment that drug companies might use this wonderful opportunity to swindle folks out of a good chunk of money for some aspirin equivalent.
Otherwise, you can buy most everything you need to treat any type of flu symptoms over the counter (Tylenol/Advil for fever, etc.).
Okay, I did a Google search and found this:
http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/recommendations.htm
Apparently, there are a few different antivirals out there currently being used. I just skimmed, so I didn’t see any pricing guidelines, but it does show a dosing chart and schedule.
@Alabama Moderate — Thanks for the link, my friend. I’m not sure if there was another option or not for our little friend but nobody, government, private or otherwise seemed to know of any other options for this family after hours of smiling and dialing…
@Joe & Mike — Heh… thanks for the analogy and the fine laugh, my friends
I don’t have an issue with the concept of OPTIONS. But the moment it becomes a requirement, I feel those hackles going up. And I really really don’t like it when I’m informed that if I try to change from one work-related policy to another, I’m going to have to sign up for the public option instead of going with the new policy at work.
Also, I’m not too keen on the idea of being taxed because I opt out of the public option.
I see a lot of right wingers here NOT LISTENING to what GTL wrote.
Apparently, the story is funny. Or because your Wal-Mart charges less, the whole story is false.
Unless GTL is lying, and he hasn’t yet, the story is accurate.
Either say you think it’s acceptable for that family to go through this, or get in the conversation on how to fix the problem.
To put the question more simply:
Suppose a terminally ill person has private insurance but a life-saving treatment is denied on a technicality–say, they believe his illness is caused by a pre-existing condition. He can’t afford the life-saving treatment on his own. Do you think he should die?
Try to answer this simple question simply, without reciting any propaganda. A simple yes or no will do, and why. Social Darwinists, raise your hands!
Any takers?
@GTL: You have been Trojan Horsed, dude. Rasmussen is a conservative who publishes conservative-slanted surveys. Can I show you some online polls Daily Kos does on its website for its visitors? As far as research validity, they’re roughly equivalent in value. I suggest you avoid covering Rasmussen in any way unless you point out it’s a conservative research group that produces data favorable to conservatives and their causes. My two cents…
Bad Dog: I agree with you. A couple of somebodies need to reread what Guns was writing. The family’s main problem seemed to be that even though they had health insurance it was from another state and Alabama didn’t recognize it and refused to accept it. Then add the fact that antiviral meds can be very expensive and then add in the fact that the swine flue seems to be killing the very young and the middle-aged more than in any other age group and you have a family in trouble.
I repeat the family had health insurance that was unacceptable only two states over. This is one of the problems that the reform bill proposal is trying to change. But no one bothers to read that, they’re all too excited about the death panels.
Thank you very much, Gaia — in fact, this would count as “heresay” by most folks’ standards (the story about little “Charlie”) but readers will have to take my word for the fact this story came from a couple of loud, proud, self-described “teabaggers” — my mother and father to be exact. To which I cited this as a PRIME example for WHY healthcare reform was an emergency issue to which even THEY agreed. Still skeptical about a public option but no longer skeptical about the fact this country needs reform and needs it ASAP. It had to hit close to home before they’d even stop screaming about how much of a socialist Obama is and admit there’s a “problem” after all
I think perhaps I wasn’t understood. I wasn’t accusing GTL of lying. I just found the information incredible that something I understood to be $10 was priced at $1300, thinking there was a possibility of some type of error. My second post I clarified part of my own error in my calculations, but it still struck me as abnormally high. The humor I saw had nothing to do will a deathly sick child. The humor to me was trusting a government that had just spent $400 billion obstensibly to help with the cost of medicine. 400 billion later and problems like the one GTL describe still exist. Of course 2003 had bad Bush, 2009 has benevolent Bama, but there are a whole lot of old incumbants around in congress that wasted all that money the last time without much positive impact. How many times are we going to trust these same guys?
@Mike300: Gaia would know better than me, but I think the family in this case did not qualify for the lower-cost drugs per the recent pharmaceutical legislation, so your criticism against government spending may not apply here. I’m not very familiar with that law, as at the time it was passed my own family had some major priorities, but that was my understanding.
Anybody got a link?
@Mike300: By the way, what is your answer to the question I posed in #12? Do you think the guy should suffer and die because he can’t afford his treatment?
And: Do you think people with less money are less important as human beings? Are their lives worth less? Let’s make another hypothetical: If you had to choose to save two people from a burning people–a rich man and a poor man–who would you save?
@Mike300: By the way, what is your answer to the question I posed in #12? Do you think the guy should suffer and die because he can’t afford his treatment?
Yes.
And: Do you think people with less money are less important as human beings? Yes.
Are their lives worth less? Yes.
Let’s make another hypothetical: If you had to choose to save two people from a burning people–a rich man and a poor man–who would you save?
The Rich guy. He might give me a reward.
@B.D. for your yes or no question on if the person should die. Answer: no
Reason why: Because all death is bad. Even if I was a zillion years old and in a lot of pain, sure death might be a welcome relief from the pain, I don’t begrudge anyone relief from pain. But God created us to live forever, it wasn’t His intention for any of us to die. He did want us to be free willed beings, and our ancestors chose disobediance and sin which opened the door to pain and death. Perhaps that doesn’t qualify as a Darwinian answer, but it is my answer, I didn’t get it from Rush Limbaugh.
Mike I understand. Sixteen years ago I might have had your reaction but 15 years I learned how to hate our messed up health care system. My Mother had cancer, her doctor gave her chemo that she could take at home and after a few days the blood tests started coming back good, the bad cells were dying. The only problem was so was my Mother, The chemo was causing such bad nausea that she was losing a pound a day. The doctor tried several different meds and none of them worked. Finally he gave Mother was he said was her last chance but he apolozied when he gave it to her. He did give her the first pill in the office. When we tried to fill the RX for it we found out that it was $700.00 per pill. Not a typo. And she had to take one a day. We managed to scrap up enough cash for three days worth and that was it. Remember this was 15 years ago. So I reverted to my old hippie ways and came up with some green of another type and baked magic brownies. They worked and Mother started gaining weight again and went into remission. But only because she had a daughter willing to walk off the edge of the law. And that’s when I started to hate our health care system.
It’s also when I developed a real hatred for our drug laws.
Only now, fifteen years later, are the authorities admiting that mj does have legit medical uses. But in my state I would still be arrested if caught.
BD Thanks for your confidence but I really don’t know much about the new bill except for the fact that if a person can’t afford a prescribed drug, that person can go to the drug companies web site and apply for help.
@ Braindead-thanks so much for the help in answering questions for me, I feel so pressed for time at work. I can’t give these responses the time I feel they deserve. I feel honored to have an unpaid personal assitant.
@Gaia’s child- I follow what you said, my belief is that God’s plan not only was absent of death but absent of sickness or pain. But sadly we humans chose a different path.
@GAIA- I know “platitudes” don’t help your situation, I’d like to answer more but hard to get out an answer at work.
@Braindead: Thanks for your honesty and for letting us know what kind of person you are.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a Republican.
@Mike300: If you believe a person in that situation should not die, then you believe healthcare is a right and that society has an obligation to make sure he gets the life-saving treatment he needs.
In other words, you are a liberal and you are in favor of public healthcare.
Sorry.
But hey, at least you have real principles. You don’t make “culture of life” a marketing slogan, you actually believe in it.
Gaia- As bad as the health system may be now, what evidence is there that anything the government passes will make things better? The last major law that was suppose to do any good related to medicine was this pharmacutical bill. If it takes 400 Billion to only help out some people (questionable how much it actually helped but that’s a sidebar)..if it takes that much to help just a part of our population, how much does it cost to help everyone? Well if you believe SOME of the same legislators that passed that last bill, it costs NOTHING. All, but a few still falling through the cracks will get affordable health care that pays for itself with its own premiums. YES, I strongly would support that, IF I believed them, I simply don’t believe what they are saying. Sounds like they MIGHT be starting another Ponzi scheme with some future generation catching the damage. That’s my opinion, how they can so accurately predict repercussions 8 years down the road when they don’t do so well estimating (sorry, admitted talking points here) the unemployment rate or the demand for clunker cars money,gives me zero trust in their prediction of what their legislation’s impact will have. In fact, to be honest with you, it is less than zero, I have no clue if it will cause shortages, or not really change anything, or what, but my wild guess is it will make things worse. P.S.- I’m a closet supporter of cash for clunkers, I know the sales number pick up is just a fizzle and it will drop back down again, but those poor car sales people can really use a moment of relief before it is back to no sales again. Shhh! Don’t tell anyone I told you that, might stain my mean spirited credentials around here.
B.D.- let me try to say this nicely: You! hush your mouth too!
The Cash for Clunkers program saved an estimated 1200 jobs and is credited with generating $1.9 billion in sales. Not bad for a $3 billion stimulus program.
source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090821/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_cash_for_clunkers
Mike: Sorry, the bones gave out and I went to sleep.
As far as I’m concerned the pharmacutical bill should never have been passed even though seniors needed help with their RX”s. It was a bad bill from the start because, as usual, it protected private health insurance and the pharmacutical industry at great cost to the taxpayers. The bill also wasn’t funded. The Medicare tax should have been raised to cover the costs of this bill but of course it wasn’t.
So you ask why should I trust these same clowns on either side of the aisle, well I don’t and I don’t see any reason to trust them. Which is why I’m for single payer. If congress passed single payer they would have to go on it too so we would get a good bill. Or at least a much, much better bill than it looks like we’re going to get.
Single payer does not have to kill off the private insurance companies. France and the Swiss both have universal coverage and private health insurance. If I have understood what I’ve read, France has single payer, tax paid, for basic health care needs, then the individual can buy private insurance for whatever extended coverage they want or can afford. The Swiss do their universal health care compeletly through private health insurance.
So it is a complete canard that we would have to kill off private insurance in order to have universal coverage. Just another lie like the death panels. This is why we only hear about Canada and Great Britian, two systems that we don’t want. We don’t hear about the good systems that give universal coverage at much less cost, giving better care and still involve private health insurance. For some reason a small percentage of our population does not want universal care and has the money to spead lies every minute of the day.
Mike, we don’t have to have a Ponzi scheme to have good health care at a reasonable cost. But we do have to have a Ponzi scheme in order for the pharmacuticals, the hospitals, the doctors, the labs to make the profits that they make.
And I didn’t tell my story for a sob story. Life, disease and death are a fact. I told it to show that even fifteen years ago our medical costs were out of wack and that the average person can do little about fighting the system. I had to go outside the system, way outside, in order to get my Mother the care she needed at a cost she could afford.
@Gaia and Mike300: Gaia said: “If I have understood what I’ve read, France has single payer, tax paid, for basic health care needs, then the individual can buy private insurance for whatever extended coverage they want or can afford.”
That’s also the Canadian system.
@Gaia’s child- between my thoughts and your thoughts, I wanted to defer the last word to you, but this is to acknowledge I read your post. Thank you for sharing.
I’ve mentioned the system in Switzerland before on this site as a good potential model for revising the U.S. system. It requires that everyone have health insurance but does not mandate how that is accomplished, and it is not a single payer system. The government subsidizes insurance for those who can’t afford it, but all insuring is done by private companies. It allows for freedom of choice for individuals to choose their insurance company, doctors, etc., but regulates costs and insurance policy conditions. All in all it appears to be a very good system that the vast majority of people are very happy with.
Cash for Clunkers ends soon. We need to wait and see what happens to auto sales after it is over. It’s like a shot of adrenaline, things are revved up now (pun intended), but it is likely that auto sales will collapse very quickly after the program ends. We really won’t see sustained increases in sales until car dealers start rebuilding their (extremely depleted) inventories.
“Saved Jobs” is a very funny concept. Exactly how are “saved jobs” measured? The fact is, in a press conference a few months ago, when pressed on the issue, Robert Gibbs gave a very vague description of how the administration measured “saved jobs”. Of course it became quite clear why the Obama administration was so reluctant to explain how they were measuring “saved jobs” . . . when you apply the same calculations to the Bush Administration, about 25 million jobs were “saved” during President Bush’s two terms.
F & B- Car sales being very low prior to cash for clunkers will be even lower after the program ends. I’ll bet the works on that. But that being said, I would say it probably has kept quite a large number that were on the brink of leaving or being laid off to stay a while longer. The thing is how much longer, the answer most likely is an immediate exodus at the end of the program. Like I said in a previous post, I hate to admit it, but I kind of like the clunkers program. I believe it will give a lot of commissioned based sales people a little boost in their final check to help them with their transition from sales to dishwasher or whatever. Deposit and moving expenses to an apartment from the house they are losing. I know about them, I’m talking to them every day about their mortgages.
@FandB, who says, “I’ve mentioned the system in Switzerland before on this site as a good potential model for revising the U.S. system.”
Nobel prize-winning liberal economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says that’s exactly where we’re headed with the Democratic plan:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/opinion/17krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
So glad to see you admit the Democrats are right.
Gee, I have to ask, have you read the 1,000-page healthcare bill? Have you read it? Have you really read it? But did you read it? Did Obama read it? What about his wife and kids? What about Congress? What about every man, woman and child in America? But what about you? Did you read it?
Let it crow, let it crow, let it crow.
@Mike300, who says, “Like I said in a previous post, I hate to admit it, but I kind of like the clunkers program.”
You big lib, Mike! Great post in 36, agreed with every word.
@BD you missed the tiny print I put in post #36, if you magnify it you’ll see it says: “It is all Clinton’s fault.”
LoL, I was wondering when that old chestnut would reappear.
Good point Gaia. People should look outside of the US. Some of the best mortality rates in the world, are from here comes a scary word “socialized medicine”. I guess we should not expect to live longer when we spend far more for health coverage, but are not getting any returns. That’s how the free market works right? All we have now is a series of monopolies in disguise.
BD: “So glad to see you admit the Democrats are right.” — No, democrats are just gullible and naive. They buy anything their god-king antichrist Obama The Indonesian tells them they believe, and as a rule are incapable of forming a coherent, independent thought on their own.
BD: “Nobel prize-winning liberal economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says that’s exactly where we’re headed with the Democratic plan:” — Krugman is a lefty’s lefty, obviously. There are many Nobel prize winning economists, and none of them agree on anything, so that particular point is meaningless. If you have read HR 3200, then you would understand that Krugman is wrong. There are specific points, including the “public option” that make HR 3200 radically different from the Swiss plan (the two of you may be mistaking Switzerland’s health care system with Sweden’s system). Also, the fact that private plans have to provide everything the “public option” provides, and after five years people will not be allowed to enroll in private plans unless all the government criteria are met (aka a poison pill), will eventually push everyone toward the public option. This is not the case with the Swiss plan, everything is private. Krugaman is wrong. Bad Dog is wrong.
Yes, I have read HR 3200, I can’t speak for Obama or his family. Based on your parroting of Krugman, I have my doubts that you have.
Mike300 – You may be right, but consider this… My company does a great deal of business with the auto industry. In good times it is in excess of 40% of our overall business in the U.S. This year it has been running at about 20%. In the past few weeks our orders have skyrocketed, to the point where we are running overtime trying to keep up. We are about 3 months back in the auto supply chain, so parts we are producing today are not a part of the cash-for-clunkers program. They will have to go to rebuilding inventory after the program is over. I made the comment that when auto retailers (and manufacturers) start rebuilding inventory we will start seeing a sustained recovery. Based on a few events over the last 24 hours, I am beginning to think that at least some of the auto supply chain has started to rebuild their inventories – not just replace cars sold in the clunkers program. Part of this will depend on how the banks handle an increase in demand for credit (you do you part now Mike300!), but the slow growth we have seen over the past 3 months may be picking up a little steam and continuing at least for a while longer.
@FandB, who says, “If you have read HR 3200, then you would understand that Krugman is wrong.”
Let’s see. I have a right wing ideologue saying one thing, and a Nobel-prize winning liberal economist saying the opposite. Hm. Who is actually wrong?
Obama read and so have I. But have you? Have you actually read it? Did you really? Did you sit down and look at it and read one page and then the next and then the next until there were no more pages? Did you actually read it? Because unless you read it, you don’t know what you’re talking about. And it’s obvious that you haven’t.
Let it crow, let it crow, let it crow!
@FandB, who says, “No, democrats are just gullible and naive. They buy anything their god-king antichrist Obama The Indonesian tells them they believe, and as a rule are incapable of forming a coherent, independent thought on their own.”
P.S. Since you favor the Swiss model, I’m so glad to see you admit the Democrats are right.
Re #44; how old are you? Three?
Re #45; I have not heard of any democrats favoring the Swiss system. Maybe before you try to read HR 3200, you need to research the Swiss health care system. Then if you read HR 3200, you’ll see that it is quite different from the Swiss system, especially in the way it handles the ‘public option’.
If you have trouble with all the ‘legalese’, maybe you can get your mommy to read it to you. Or maybe BrainDed can help you with it.
Caw, Caw, Caw. They’re waiting…
@FandB: Auf Wiedersehen … Sayonara … Ciao … Au Revoir … Adios …
Great blog, reading it through RSS feed as well
Sorry for the double post, just wanted to let you know that i think something is wrong with the RSS feed of your blog and you might want to check it out, thanks