Text of Obama's speech to Congress on health care reform

[Seshmeister]

The gov't is not a "monolith" of unity or oneness. It is a disorganized and vast collection of cellular and compartmentalized structures with different, often conflicting agendas...

British officials who are now retired who were there are saying that when Blair was over visiting Washington your State Department used to grill his team trying to find out what the Pentagon was planning. Apparently the two weren't talking to each other at all at that time.

These days people constantly mistake government incompetence and fuck ups as being part of grand conspiracy plans.

[Nitro Express]

Just to show the comparison in case not everyone here follows the gold market, 3 years ago it was around $550 per ounce. 10 years ago it was about $265 per ounce.

China just gave permission for it's citizens to own gold and a company in Germany had gold bullion vending machines. The world is scared the dollar is going to tank. China knows if US paper goes worthless they will have revolution there and so they have to throw the people a bone. Putin also encouraged his people to own gold. If people lose everything these politicians have trouble and they know it.

[standin]

U R rgt, nitro.

They are actually making and selling drinks that have gold in them, so you can piss gold. Which is a good idea, it will encourage recycling, bring the value up of piss and the ammonia can be stock piled for weapons to safe guard homes.

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[standin]

Noam Chomsky on Health Care

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[Nitro Express]

It's all about them controlling the healthcare and then deciding what you get and if you don't play their game, you get nothing. So it's all a scam to erode your freedom of choice and take more of your money. It will also run independant small business out of business because they will be forced to pay fees and taxes they can't afford.

[Nitro Express]

Obama is all about consolidating all the assets. What's ironic is he's saying his plan will break monopolies while he's just merging the government with the corporate monopolies.

[ULTRAMAN VH]

Obama's Health Care Plan: Put Up And Shut Up
Shikha Dalmia, 09.10.09, 06:50 PM EDT
The president's speech was the policy equivalent of the middle finger.

For several months now, the American people--as if exhorted by the ghost of William F. Buckley (no particular hero of mine)--have been standing athwart the Democratic agenda of socialized medicine, yelling, "Stop!" But President Barack Obama showed them the policy equivalent of the middle finger Wednesday night.

If there was anything bipartisan about the speech it was that he embraced every bad big-government idea from both sides. If he prevails, the American public won't get "choice and competition" as he proclaimed, but a one-size-fits-all government-prescribed health care plan that it dare not refuse and dare not challenge.

Perhaps the most striking--and disturbing--thing about the speech was the unblinking confidence Obama exuded while breaking key campaign promises he made to voters. He had raked poor Hillary Clinton over the coals for admitting that her road to universal coverage was paved with an individual mandate. "Everyone would be forced to buy coverage, even if you can't afford it," warned Obama in an ad. "You pay a penalty if you don't."

Yet, there he was last night scolding "individuals who can afford coverage but game the system by avoiding responsibility." Never mind that the prime gamers are not the uninsured (whose unpaid bills cost "the system" less than $40 billion every year) but the underinsured covered by Medicare and Medicaid (whom private insurers cross-subsidize to the tune of over $90 billion annually because the government refuses to pay the full cost of their care). Still, he hectored: "Improving our health care system works only if everybody does their part."

Obama didn't say exactly how he would make "everyone do their part"--a question he posed repeatedly to Hillary. But his buddy Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., has some rather well-developed ideas on that score. Baucus has proposed a bill that would force the uninsured to pay fines on a sliding scale of income, with those making 300&#37; of the poverty level having to cough up as much as $3,800 a year. In short, Americans would have to pay Uncle Sam for the privilege of remaining uninsured. If there were truth-in-labeling laws for Congress, it would be required to call this bill TonySopranoCare.

Which brings us to the second promise Obama broke Wednesday night: That he would impose no new taxes on anyone making less than $250,000. The penalties that the uninsured--all of whom, I would wager my grandma's life support, make under $250,000--would face are certainly a tax.


Maybe you should ask yourself why this needs to be done. Virtually all modern civilized countries have some form of universal health care. The American worker is highly expendable...Corporate America....


Read All Comments (41)Comment On This StoryHe also endorsed a business tax--err, fee--on employers who don't provide adequate coverage that, under a House bill, would be about 8 % of payroll. They will pass this on to their employees in lower wages. And he signed up for an excise tax on high-end insurance plans--many of which are enjoyed by plain union folk, not those rich and famous making over $250,000. Under the Baucus bill, this tax would be as much as 35% of the cost of the plan. One would have thought that if the shame of breaking an explicit promise didn't prevent Obama from imposing this last tax, then the logical absurdity of trying to reduce soaring insurance costs by taxing insurance plans would.

It gets worse. In exchange for these bitter tax pills, Obama promised Americans would get eternal health care "security and stability." To deliver that, he would of course ban insurance companies from denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions--tantamount to forcing fire insurance companies to write coverage on a burning building. He would also prohibit insurers from putting any limits on the coverage they offer and cap what they can require patients to pay out-of-pocket.

In other words, Obama would encourage unlimited health care consumption by patients while eliminating the last vestige of price consciousness. But the reason America is facing unsustainable health care cost increases is precisely because its third-party system of insurance doesn't encourage prudent consumption by patients. Indeed, if Obama really can tame health care costs by making patients even less cost-conscious, I have an even better idea for him: Simply pass a law banning anyone from falling sick and mandate good health for all. If he can suspend the laws of economics, perhaps he can also transcend the laws of physiology.

The fact of the matter is that not too many health care underwriters will survive such crippling mandates. Many of them will fold, causing further consolidation in the insurance marketplace--not more competition and choice. Last night the president declared--in the spirit of grand compromise--that he would be willing to wait a few years to give private insurers a chance to make more affordable plans available to all Americans. Only if they fail would the so-called public option, the government-run insurance plan so beloved of the left, be triggered. But that's a rigged deal: The same legislation that sets up the trigger is putting in place the conditions that will eventually pull it. Obama is not backing off on his goal of eliminating private insurance--only offering a brief deferment.

The one Republican idea that Obama did endorse--caps on medical malpractice awards or tort reform--will actually hurt rather than help patient choice. Big medicine has long blamed the unnecessary tests and procedures these awards encourage for rising health care costs. But several studies have shown that this so-called practice of defensive medicine is a smaller driver of costs than excess physician salaries. By capping these awards, Obama will leave patients even less recourse against physician negligence--hardly the American way.

Obama lambasted the critics who claim his reform plan amounts to a government takeover of the health care system. But the plan he laid out Wednesday night will control every aspect of the medical transaction. It will tell patients when, what and how much coverage they must buy; it will tell sellers when, what and how much coverage they must sell. This is not a government takeover of health care? Then Tony Soprano is just a decent, hard-working businessman.

Shikha Dalmia is a senior analyst at ReasonFoundation and a biweekly Forbes columnist.

[ULTRAMAN VH]

It's all about them controlling the healthcare and then deciding what you get and if you don't play their game, you get nothing. So it's all a scam to erode your freedom of choice and take more of your money. It will also run independant small business out of business because they will be forced to pay fees and taxes they can't afford.

Which will in turn strike a fierce blow on the private sector and further strengthen Obama's growth of government. Notice the only area that had job growth was Government.

[Seshmeister]

It's all about them controlling the healthcare and then deciding what you get and if you don't play their game, you get nothing. So it's all a scam to erode your freedom of choice and take more of your money.

Yeah it could erode your choice to have your insurance canceled because you got sick. Erode your right to pay far more than any other country for health care but have one of the worst.

[standin]

It's all about them controlling the healthcare and then deciding what you get and if you don't play their game, you get nothing. So it's all a scam to erode your freedom of choice and take more of your money. It will also run independant small business out of business because they will be forced to pay fees and taxes they can't afford.

What is this? Some Thursday night Theocratic study practice?

You know for a fact it will help small business.
When was the last time you pounded the pavement for a small company.
I am not talking about some quick jump-start funded with millions.
A real God's honest small business.
A mechanic shop, a carpentry shop, a metal shop, a welding shop, a day care, a florist, a bakery, a butcher. a plumber, a septic service, a well service?

These are small business. These are the small business across America.
Not some dot business whose main goal is to go public. Or raise capital, get up and running then sell.

When was the last time you went to a small town across America and stayed for a couple years?

When was the last time you went to a city and lived in a working class neighborhood for a couple years?

It is the tailors, the dry cleaners, the vending machine routes, the corner store, the secretarial service, the accountant, the computer repair place.

These are small business.

[ZahZoo]

China just gave permission for it's citizens to own gold and a company in Germany had gold bullion vending machines. The world is scared the dollar is going to tank. China knows if US paper goes worthless they will have revolution there and so they have to throw the people a bone. Putin also encouraged his people to own gold. If people lose everything these politicians have trouble and they know it.

Well there's one small problem with flooding the public market with gold... Once you start spreading it so thin it will devalue just as quickly as paper.

As with any form of "money" or something considered of value it either has to be backed by something or be a precious comodity to hold a high value. Gold holds it's vaue because it was once considered rare... but given how much of it is around and today's mining capabilities... it's losing "precious metal" ranking. Once it becomes so common place the perception of it's worth will drop quick and fast.

[Fuct Jup]

Fact-Checking the President on Health Insurance

Attention to details Obama...

In his speech to Congress last week, President Barack Obama attempted to sell a reform agenda by demonizing the private health-insurance industry, which many people love to hate. He opened the attack by asserting: "More and more Americans pay their premiums, only to discover that their insurance company has dropped their coverage when they get sick, or won't pay the full cost of care. It happens every day."

Clearly, this should never happen to anyone who is in good standing with his insurance company and has abided by the terms of the policy. But the president's examples of people "dropped" by their insurance companies involve the rescission of policies based on misrepresentation or concealment of information in applications for coverage. Private health insurance cannot function if people buy insurance only after they become seriously ill, or if they knowingly conceal health conditions that might affect their policy.

Traditional practice, governed by decades of common law, statute and regulation is for insurers to rely in underwriting and pricing on the truthfulness of the information provided by applicants about their health, without conducting a costly investigation of each applicant's health history. Instead, companies engage in a certain degree of ex post auditing—conducting more detailed and costly reviews of a subset of applications following policy issue—including when expensive treatment is sought soon after a policy is issued.

This practice offers substantial cost savings and lower premiums compared to trying to verify every application before issuing a policy, or simply paying all claims, regardless of the accuracy and completeness of the applicant's disclosure. Some states restrict insurer rescission rights to instances where the misrepresented or concealed information is directly related to the illness that produced the claim. Most states do not.

To highlight abusive practices, Mr. Obama referred to an Illinois man who "lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found he hadn't reported gallstones that he didn't even know about." The president continued: "They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it."

Although the president has used this example previously, his conclusion is contradicted by the transcript of a June 16 hearing on industry practices before the Subcommittee of Oversight and Investigation of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The deceased's sister testified that the insurer reinstated her brother's coverage following intervention by the Illinois Attorney General's Office. She testified that her brother received a prescribed stem-cell transplant within the desired three- to four-week "window of opportunity" from "one of the most renowned doctors in the whole world on the specific routine," that the procedure "was extremely successful," and that "it extended his life nearly three and a half years."

The president's second example was a Texas woman "about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne." He said that "By the time she had her insurance reinstated, her breast cancer more than doubled in size."

The woman's testimony at the June 16 hearing confirms that her surgery was delayed several months. It also suggests that the dermatologist's chart may have described her skin condition as precancerous, that the insurer also took issue with an apparent failure to disclose an earlier problem with an irregular heartbeat, and that she knowingly underreported her weight on the application.

These two cases are presumably among the most egregious identified by Congressional staffers' analysis of 116,000 pages of documents from three large health insurers, which identified a total of about 20,000 rescissions from millions of policies issued by the insurers over a five-year period. Company representatives testified that less than one half of one percent of policies were rescinded (less than 0.1&#37; for one of the companies).

If existing laws and litigation governing rescission are inadequate, there clearly are a variety of ways that the states or federal government could target abuses without adopting the president's agenda for federal control of health insurance, or the creation of a government health insurer.

Later in his speech, the president used Alabama to buttress his call for a government insurer to enhance competition in health insurance. He asserted that 90% of the Alabama health-insurance market is controlled by one insurer, and that high market concentration "makes it easier for insurance companies to treat their customers badly—by cherry-picking the healthiest individuals and trying to drop the sickest; by overcharging small businesses who have no leverage; and by jacking up rates."

In fact, the Birmingham News reported immediately following the speech that the state's largest health insurer, the nonprofit Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama, has about a 75% market share. A representative of the company indicated that its "profit" averaged only 0.6% of premiums the past decade, and that its administrative expense ratio is 7% of premiums, the fourth lowest among 39 Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans nationwide.

Similarly, a Dec. 31, 2007, report by the Alabama Department of Insurance indicates that the insurer's ratio of medical-claim costs to premiums for the year was 92%, with an administrative expense ratio (including claims settlement expenses) of 7.5%. Its net income, including investment income, was equivalent to 2% of premiums in that year.

In addition to these consumer friendly numbers, a survey in Consumer Reports this month reported that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama ranked second nationally in customer satisfaction among 41 preferred provider organization health plans. The insurer's apparent efficiency may explain its dominance, as opposed to a lack of competition—especially since there are no obvious barriers to entry or expansion in Alabama faced by large national health insurers such as United Healthcare and Aetna.

Responsible reform requires careful analysis of the underlying causes of problems in health insurance and informed debate over the benefits and costs of targeted remedies. The president's continued demonization of private health insurance in pursuit of his broad agenda of government expansion is inconsistent with that objective.

Mr. Harrington is professor of health-care management and insurance and risk management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Scott Harrington: Fact-Checking the President on Health Insurance - WSJ.com

[Nickdfresh]

Mr. Harrington is professor of health-care management and insurance and risk management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

So he's basically a lobbyist for the health insurance industry. I guess he's an unbiased expert on this topic!

[Seshmeister]

You are spot on Nick he takes on nice big consultancies from the insurance companies.

Recent Consulting
Vertical integration by automobile insurers into collision repair; Liability insurers’ obligations in asbestos-related bankruptcies; Interpretation of general liability insurance policies; Disparate impact and business necessity issues in insurance pricing and underwriting

Imagine how much you would want to punch his dumb grinning face as he stood as a witness for big insurance in a court case explaining the technicality on why your insurance was canceled when you are dying of asbestos poisoning...

[Seshmeister]

Attention to details Obama...

The woman's testimony at the June 16 hearing confirms that her surgery was delayed several months. It also suggests that the dermatologist's chart may have described her skin condition as precancerous, that the insurer also took issue with an apparent failure to disclose an earlier problem with an irregular heartbeat, and that she knowingly underreported her weight on the application.

Fuck off Harrington you grinning cancerous prick.