The point I’m making should be clear. We don’t want the gov’t to take any more ground in the healthcare industry, than it already has. Go back to your 6 points above and I’ll give you regulations based on #5 only. The other points involve gov’t entities running the show, and I am dead set against it and I’ll stand against any RINO Republican who goes for it like Sen Snowe.

In answer to your other concerns about the uninsured, there are viable consumer based, market driven approaches that we discussed above that will cut costs and insure all, or almost all. None of the current HC bills in Congress insure everyone. 83% of the American people who are now satisfied with their current healthcare, per Rasmussen polls, is a good starting point. Not perfect but getting there. Have faith in the ingenuity and wisdom of the ordinary hard working majority of American taxpayers to get the job done, hopefully with less of a tax bite in future administrations.

My point is the ideas i mentioned are republican ideas which I believe are good ideas, also the ideas which you talk about are for the most part also good ideas. But my point is what about other ideas from the democrats. Why isn’t that included in your pool of ideas. For example;
1. Having a health insurance exchange for individuals and small employers to comparison shop.
2. Having a public option within the exchange for those who can not afford current insurance
3.If no public option having cooperatives provide competition
4. Employers having the option of either providing insurance to employees or contributing funds on their behalf.
5. No more exclusion based on preexisting conditions.
6. Having a trigger to a public option if reforms to not work out
etc

Also another question for you. Should the cost of insurance be a barrier to people seeing their doctor? What i am trying to get to is this notion of the democrat proposal overruning doctors with more patients. Remember this debate is about the provision of Health INSURANCE not govt delivery of medicalcare. Democrats for the most part are proposing the govt to be one provider of insurance not a provider of medicalcare e.g. private clincs, hospitals will still deliver care. a government option doesn’t tell you what you can have. It tells you what it will pay for. You can buy whatever you want with your own money. And any well-designed plan would allow people to purchase private insurance to cover things the government plan doesn’t.Because remember the end game of both democrats and republican ideas is affordable insurance. So from both republican and democrat proposals if insurance is more affordable more people take it and more people will go see doctors so either way the healthcare delivery system gets overrun. Because your argument from TennCare seems to be this… Let’s not get the uninsured insurance because if they do doctors will have more patients to care for than doctors. Wouldn’t the appropriate solution be let’s train more doctors/make medical school more affordable/get more primary care providers/more nurses etc As someone mentioned It is a sad fact that the bottom line should be medical care but the rhetoric and talking points are about insurance. Personally i don’t support a government operated healthcare system where doctors are government employees but a govt health insurance option does not equate to cheap medical care.They are not the same thing.

I am concerned, very concerned, for all of the above reasons discussed here, and elsewhere on my blog.

Where will we go when we need care and there are not enough doctors to provide it (without America)?

Where will we go when the government dictates some kind of equation that looks like worth x age = care (without America)?

And the very last thing I want is to have the government telling me what I should eat, drink or smoke for that matter, it’s none of their business.

When the tax payer starts footing the bill for everyone’s health care see how quickly elected officials will regulate and tax everything from soda to chips.

If the socialists have their way, soon they will be monitoring your carbon footprint, how many kids you have, how often you use your electricity, water.

The prospect is scary and I wish it would stop!

Also as far as state experimentation with Tort Reform, it’s being already tested sucessfully in Texas and other states. Texas introduced a cap on frivilous (pain and suffering) components to medical lawsuits and premiums plumetted over 20% in 4 years. Some premiums report a 70% drop. 1000′s of Drs. are flocking to Texas to set up shop as the leave NY, NJ and other states, esp OBGYN Dr’s who can’t afford the malpractice premiums and close up shop or move south to Texas.

Talk about incubating these ideas in the states, the public option plan has been tested already in Tennessee, called TennCare and failed miserably almost bankrupting the state in the process. As more and more people left their private insurance and the uninsured rushed into the Tenn gov’t public option, which was designed to be competitive and drive down costs of private insurance, the system collapsed from the overleoad and ultimatley 100,000′s of people were terminated. Some horrific stories of people being terminated mid-surgery since the state couldn’t cover the skyrocketing bills.

The lesson from this is that the gov’t cannot run something as mammoth and personal as healthcare, and we should leave it to some of the good market consumer based reforms you and I proposed above to drive down costs and insure the uninsured. The market approach with minimal gov’t interfernece in something as personal as our healthcare would be vastly superior to gov’t run approach, I’m sure you’ll agree.

The current gov’t plans provide a textbook case of how gov’t solutions lead to massive fraus, bankrupsy and failure. Medicare and Medicaid are nearly bankrupt and with the baby boomer influx, will never be able to sustain the costs and will default without increased taxation, extreme rationing, borrowing and skyrocketing deficits. They are so frought with waste fraud and abuse that the NYT reported $19 billion is paid out annually in fraudulent claims in NY State alone. The national figure is many time more. Let’s fix the current failing gov’t plans before starting brand new gov’t plans which take over even more of our healthcare system in America.

The gov’t run public option is a menace that must be stopped and like Raquel says, don’t trust the politicans on Capitol Hill to do right by the American people. Burn down their phone lines and vote them all out in 2010 if they vote for any measure of a gov’t option in healthcare reform. I am calling my Representatives (Schumer, Ackerman and Gillibrand) every day.

Again I’ll pose the same question I posed to Phill, please describe to me what a bi-partisan healthcare bill would look like in your own mind that incorporates both Republican and Democratic ideas. The bill from the finance committee incorporates the following republican ideas:

1. Cross-state sales of insurance to individuals and small businesses: The Baucus bill would allow two or more states to form “compacts” that would allow individuals to buy policies from insurers in the other states. The insurers would be subject only to the laws and regulations of the states in which the policies were written. In a separate measure, insurers could create national policies with uniform, federally set benefits that could be sold in any states in which the companies are licensed. The policies would be exempt from state benefit rules.

2. Medical malpractice: The legislation says Congress should consider creating state demonstration programs to evaluate alternatives to the current litigation system. Republicans had called for creating special malpractice courts and limits on damage awards so this is along those lines.

3. High-risk pool for people with pre-existing medical conditions: Within a year of the enactment of the legislation, a high-risk pool would be set up for people with pre-existing conditions. The pool would continue until 2015, when the new state insurance exchanges would be up and running and insurers would be required to sell policies to all who apply, regardless of their medical conditions.

4. Prevention and wellness incentives: Medicare beneficiaries would become eligible for annual “wellness visits” with their doctors, paid for by the government program (again this was part of the genesis of the death panel bruhaha). They no longer would have to pay out of their pockets for certain tests and treatments, such as flu vaccinations or diabetes screening. Financial incentives also would be offered to beneficiaries who completed certain “healthy lifestyle” programs targeting risk factors such as high cholesterol, diabetes or smoking.

Reggie, I disagree with you that Republicans will not support anything that comes from the Democrats. I just think that what the Democrats have come up with (with or without the public option), are all disasters.

The proposals are all way too much government involvement, way too many taxes and fees, and way too much infringement on personal liberty. I think this type of control hampers innovation as described above by Mitchell.

With regard to the CBO numbers, two prominent and outspoken Republicans Dick Morris and Karl Rove, have explained that the current CBO numbers are based upon 7 years of collecting money without offering services. If this is true, and I have no reason to believe it is not true, the calculations do not reflect real time costs.

I am not doubting the CBO’s sincerity, what I doubt is the vague legislative language and maneuvers that the Democrats have engaged in so that the CBO can conclude a certain dollar amount. Obviously, these are all estimates based on a concept.

The bottom line is health care is expensive. Doctors, nurses, ect. ect. have to be paid for services. I think it is disingenuous for commentators to conclude that covering an additional 30 to 40,000 citizens will not result in a whole lot of money. Money that the government just doesn’t have anymore. We just don’t have it Reggie, we cannot afford to take on this huge entitlement program that may not even work properly.

With respect to insurance abuses I think that the free market handles these issues better than the government. So if the government is going to keep the insurance companies honest, who keeps the government honest??

As far as I’m concerned, the whole thing stinks!

With respect to the Bush admin. might I remind you that the President was busy prosecuting two wars and an enemy unlike we have had before. I give Bush E for effort, he tried to reach across the aisles, with No Child Left Behind and the Prescription Benefit program for Seniors.

Quite frankly, when you are anyone else premise their argument with the blame Bush mantra I become skeptical. Bush is not President anymore. There comes a point in time when anti – Bush people have to start holding the current President accountable for his actions.

Hey Jim, I must admit I agree with you, and when our peaceful protests fall on deaf ears, hopefully the American people will react at the polls next year and in 2012 for that matter.

If Obama keeps ignoring us and playing partisan games, secrecy and intimidation, he will be a one term President.

Also you are telling me that both parties do not have deep idealogical differences that no matter what compromises the Dems make republicans would not vote? So you are saying let’s say the finance bill had no individual mandate that republicans would vote for it?? That will NEVER EVER happen. There are 4 other bills in the house and senate without a mandate are republicans supporting that?. NO. Of course they will say those bills have a public option. Democrates for the most part believe that another entity e.g. government option or coops need to provide competition to private issurers and they see it as an essential element of healthcare reform. So what in your mind is a compromise bill huh? No coop, no public option, no mandate, if that is so what do democrates get in this compromise or bi-partisan bill??? So phil please in your words describe to be me what a bi-partisan bill would look like which incorporates democrates and republican ideas? Baucus and Harry reid saying it will pass before christmas menas some version of a healthcare reform bill will pass with enough compromises to get 60 votes.

The GOP has in fact enumerated numerous plans to cut costs and insure the uninsured, but the pissant media chooses to ignore it and claims the GOP brings nothing to the table. To say that they just oppose the Democrats becuase they didn’t vote for the Baucus bill is totally nonsense and misinterprets GOP positions. Grassley stated the GOP opposition to the Baucus bill plain as day. The individual and employer mandates that the gov’t forces you to buy healthcare or the IRS is empowered to tax a family $1500/yr is unconstitutional and a reckless idea to all but the most progressive liberals, those wealthy hypocrites who want the best for the great unwashed.

Sen Grassley was in fact trying to negotiate a bi-partisan bill in the Finance committee, but the Whitehouse stopped it, becuase they wanted to push their own “concept” bill throught the Senate committee, so they can re-introduce the public option later behind closed doors when they re-write it in legislative legalese. Don’t be so naive, Reggie. They are intent on ramming the bill with the public option down Americans throats whether they want it or not. Harry Reid says by next month, Ramm Emmanual says absolutely before Christmas, public opposition be dammned. Bi-partisan support, are you joking? How about reconciliation? That’s a 60 vote fillibuster proof majority!

What gets me and many others so disgusted is their downright arraogance and contempt for the opinions of the American people, since the GOP is a minority in Congress now, they think they can walk all over the majority of the voters. You can see that in the language they use describing the Tea Party protesters as “astroturf” and “political terrorists,” etc. But the voters will speak at the polls in 2010 and the Dems will be signing their death warrants if they ram this socialist healthcare agenda through Congress.

There are in fact some very interesting races to watch this year for 2009. The message of the voters will be delivered at the polls. Of course, the NJ race with Chris Christie is one to watch. The upstate special election of Doug Hoffman as well. I am especially interested in this one. It will be a baromter of republican thought processes, since the weak liberal candidate Dede Sacazofazza (or however you spell it) was given the GOP line and not the strong conservative Hoffamn, who is running on the conservative line. I hear that many Repubs are crossing over for Hoffman. The most telling race is Dan Halloran for NY City Council (19) who is poised to win running on 4 lines, against an unknown staffer of Gary Ackerman. I am focusing my efforts on this race since a win for Dan would send shock waves through the Dem machine in NY and make Ackerman, (his newspaper he founded, the Queens Tribune did a disgusting hit piece on Halloran attacking his religion) and his complacent minions sit up and take notice. It will be payback for the townhalls and rallies he never attended.

Now I think someone like Mitch who really thinks outside the box, should run for public office!! Cool idea about globalizing HC!