Rooster's Advice To cpaptalk Members on Healthcare Debate

[roster]

If only our President and Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, would speak as honestly to you as this doctor, you would know what they are planning to do to you.

I have been away for a few days attending two football games, visiting families for the holidays and catching another beautiful day for some hiking in the mountains. What fun we had and both of our favorite teams won key football games.

But I did not quit thinking and talking about this healthcare debate. My thoughts are now clearer than ever. Now you know how I feel about the socialist path we are walking down which is, it is a big mistake. But I must warn those of you who want to go down this path, you are about to get screwed.

First, I would like to restate what you told me you want over the last six months.

• You believe healthcare is a right for all citizens.
• You believe in equality of healthcare – all should get the same care regardless of ability to pay.
• You believe the greed of for-profit insurance companies is evil and a detriment to your healthcare.
• You want to use the doctors and hospitals of your own choice.
• You hate fighting insurance companies who are denying your treatment and rationing your care. You hate dealing with the paperwork.
• Premiums, deductibles and coinsurance are too expensive.
• You believe preexisting conditions should be covered by insurance.
• You want simple, clear and total reform of the entire healthcare industry.
• You want it now before you are bankrupt or dead.

I know that is what you want, because you have stated it many times here.

Now bend over, because here it comes! The House bill and the Senate bill do not give you even one damn item out of those eight! In fact, they take us further from achieving a single one.

These bills are a dirty deal between the politicians and the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. The bill is a bloated 2000-page, incomprehensible, monstrosity, bailout of insurance companies, with a puny public option!

Now some specifics.

• The Senate bill will not take effect until 2014, the House until 2013.
• The Senate bill will leave at least 24 million uninsured, the House 17 million.
• “Medical bankruptcies” will continue.
• High premiums, high out-of-pocket costs and uncovered services will continue.
• Healthcare will be criminalized. If you have no insurance you are a criminal and will be fined as much as 2.5% of your income.
• The number of uninsured will increase, the cost of premiums will increase and the cost of public insurance will be higher than private (From personal experience, I know this is already the case in NC.)
• There will not be equality in healthcare. The less premiums you can afford, the less healthcare you will get.
• There is no control of costs in the bill and spending will increase. An additional layer of administration must be dealt with and paid for. New regulations on insurance companies will be very difficult to monitor and enforce.
• To help people purchase defective insurance policies, $600 billion of public money will be transferred to those “evil, greedy” private insurance companies – “the bailout”.
• Like innocent lambs to the slaughter, the government will deliver 25 to 60 million new customers to those “evil, greedy” private insurance companies.
• The pharmaceutical companies’ profits are protected in this nasty deal. They have already raised prices 9% this year in a deflationary and very weak economy. The new bill will grant them 12-year patents on new products.
• Premiums will continue to be discriminatory. Older insured will be charged premiums two times what the young pays.
• Puny public option: 1% of public will use it on Senate plan, 2% on House.


This is a system designed for failure.

One statement that struck me as particularly funny (and sad) was Obama is always telling you, “If you like your current employer-provided insurance, you will be able to keep it.” Now I understand that most of you hate your current employer-provided insurance because you hate all insurance companies, but Obama doesn’t tell you the rest of the story, which is, “If you hate your current insurance, well tough shit – it will not get any better, but it will get more expensive.”

Much of what I just told you came from a good liberal friend who traveled with me. If you want more information and information from a source more authoritative than Rooster, check out –

http://cspan.org/Watch/Media/2009/11/25 ... rence.aspx

http://pnhp.org/

The first link is a video. It is an especially good view of the socialist position and is well worth investing 75 minutes to watch. (Guys, that Dr. Margaret Flowers is worth watching with the audio off if you don’t like her political position.)

It is time to get yourself educated on the current debate – what you have said in the forum in favor of the bill, compared to what you say you want, proves you do not know what the bill will do to you!

[Muse-Inc]

...This is a system designed for failure...

I've come to same conclusion. This will end up a boondoggel for insurance and pharma and we'll all be paying thru the nose for less and less healthcare. I'm disgusted with the whole batch of congresscritters, puppets of big biz and special interests

[Linus]

rooster: Great post

Looks like the 1930s New Deal all over again. History shows those programs prolonged the depression. I guess we get to be part of this economic experiment again. The new government medical bureaucracy will be hard to take down after it has started and failed. I bet the benefits will be rolled out to battleground states near election time.

[Wulfman]

Now bend over, because here it comes!

That's the point I've been trying to make all along (only in fewer words and details).

I mean, who do people think actually WROTE this thing? (answer - the insurance and pharmaceutical companies)

It's just like when the repealed "Glass - Steagall" in 1999. That was put together (by both the R's and D's) to benefit the investment banks and commercial banks. We know how THAT turned out. They gambled the money away on derivatives, lost trillions of dollars, got bailed out and received huge bonuses.


Den

[roster]

BTW, Those links I gave you, those socialists have their own bill which they say is "only 30 pages, clear and simple".

As I understand it (haven't read it), it is just adding all citizens to Medicare. If you want to socialize medicine, why not just add everyone to Medicare? Seems a lot simpler and gets rid of layers of administration.

Eliminates the need for that stupid mess the current Congress has compiled.

G'night.

[Jay K]

Although some on the radical right like to say the New Deal programs prolonged the depression repeating the mantra does not make it true.

[Autopapdude]

Rooster is full of crap. He's presenting opinion as to what HE thinks about health care, without any facts or substantiation. Remember, everybody with OSA. YOU are walking "pre-existing conditions." If you did not have employee coverage under a group policy, you would be uninsurable, no matter what he says. Moreover, remember that national healthcare is NOT Socialism--that is a distortion started by the Republicans to obfuscate the debate on health care. Health care is a SOCIAL PROGRAM, not a political idea--just like public libraries, public police and fire protection, and public highways. He's using the same scare tactics that the health care industry is using, and you know they are making BILLIONS. They stand to lose huge profits if we get universal health care. So remember that when you read his inflammatory garbage, and realize we have always had social programs (NOT SOCIALISM) to protect and serve the public greater good.

[Muse-Inc]

...They stand to lose huge profits if we get universal health care...

This bill does not appear to do that, that's what makes me so disgusted with the crew we elected. They are so afraid of competion, they've invested a huge amt of $ to make everyone fearful of losing what they have.

...realize we have always had social programs (NOT SOCIALISM) to protect and serve the public greater good.

Agree 100%. I have come to the conclusion that healthcare is best handled as public issue, not individual. If other countries have figured out how to make it work even with challenges, are we Americans so stupid we can't come up with a reasonable plan?

[-SWS]

those socialists

NOT SOCIALISM

Word or political tactic for the day: cacophemism. "Socialism" in the above context is largely employed as a very intentional political cacophemism. Its political intent is to insult.

When there's no political agenda at hand, countries with national healthcare like Canada, Austrialia, and the U.K. are most often not referred to as socialist by those inclined to employ the word "socialism" as a cacophemism. Yesterday those three countries were all our capitalist allies...

But socioeconomic truths be damned for today's political purposes: so today they are all implicitly "socialists" for psychological effect and political agenda.

[Julie]

You know, as a Canadian, and as a long time forum member, I have to say (even though I'll probably get blasted) that I'm getting awfully sick of Rooster and his blowhard ways. Rooster - you post so much, so often, and with such a pseudo-authoritarian voice, but do you understand that the rest of us (whoever agrees, of course) may just not want to be bombarded so much with your rhetoric and ideology when all we're trying to do is survive with a built-in condition forcing us to deal with whatever medical system is in place on a given day, and be as glad of it's existence as possible, vs living someplace with NO good system at all? Without up to date regulated medical equipment, knowledge, or access at all? Get off your soapbox for a while can't you, and let us get back to what this forum is about (and incidentally cease and desist from insulting other countries with your diatribes)!

[PST]

Now you know how I feel about the socialist path we are walking down which is, it is a big mistake. But I must warn those of you who want to go down this path, you are about to get screwed.

It is amusing, if nothing else, to watch Rooster argue the other side and explain why the pending bills aren't socialist enough. He cites to the arguments and web sites of those who want a single payer system, like Canada's. In a different world, that might present an interesting choice. In the world we inhabit, single payer systems are not on the table. To pass a healthcare finance reform bill in the Senate will take 60 senators to enforce cloture and bring the bill to a vote, because the Republicans have promised to filibuster. There is only one potential Republican dissenter, Olympia Snow, and she says that she too will filibuster if the bill contains a public option. At least two of the Democrats, Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson, have said the same thing, as has one of the Independents whose vote is also needed, Joe Lieberman. So in the real world, not only is it inconceivable that Congress could pass a singer payer plan, it may not be possible to pass a plan with any public option at all. It will actually be a remarkable achievement to get the 60 votes necessary from senators with opinions as varied as those of Bernie Sanders and Ben Nelson.

It has been said that the perfect is the enemy of the good. What we can get is guaranteed issue, with subsidies where necessary, and coverage for pre-existing conditions. Those who would like radical reform and a single payer plan can either work for what is actually achievable or hang onto their dreams and end up keeping a status quo no one likes. Rooster's presentation of what he calls the socialist position reminds me of the big Republican donors who gave money to Ralph Nader in 2000 and 2004 in order to split Democrats. It's like his earlier argument that we shouldn't rush into this thing, since we've only been working on it since January. The opponents of reform know that to delay or divide on something this difficult is to defeat.

One statement that struck me as particularly funny (and sad) was Obama is always telling you, “If you like your current employer-provided insurance, you will be able to keep it.” Now I understand that most of you hate your current employer-provided insurance because you hate all insurance companies, but Obama doesn’t tell you the rest of the story, which is, “If you hate your current insurance, well tough shit – it will not get any better, but it will get more expensive.”

The Congressional Budget Office issued a report today, in response to a request from Senator Bayh, that concluded the opposite. For those in small groups (fewer than 50 employees), it estimates that by 2016 the average premium will be somewhere between an increase of 1 percent and a reduction of 2 percent, compared to what it would be with no new law. For those in larger groups, it will be a decrease of between 0 and 3 percent. Rooster, what's your source on this?

[timbalionguy]

There are a lot of us on this list who do not want to give up FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS in return for free health care. You can bet that the government will become involved in NEARLY EVERY ASPECT OF OUR LIVES in return for this so-called 'free health care'. Get rid of the greed in the current system and make the whole health care system wide open for competition. That will drive health care costs down so much that we will not need 'socialized medicine'.

BTW, all of the countries with Government health care are already considerably more socialist than the US.

[Jay K]

Is "socialist" really the best pejorative you guys can come up with to attack health care reform? Why not instead call the health care bills "communist"? That would be an even more persuasive argument, don't ya think?

[cotech50]

A 2000+ page confusing full of interpretive language document is not health care reform. Look at Amtrack every ticket sold results in a loss. The postal service LOSSES, look at Medicare and Medicaid just eliminating FRAUD and Beuracacy could save millions/billions every year. Then there is Social security, how much money has been robbed from this over the years and not paid back. These examples prove that POLITICIANS are incapable of doing this. They cannot even manage the programs I spoke of. Do changes need to be made YES! Go online and start reading any version you can find and honstly ask yourself is this the language you want someone interpreting for your healthcare. Changes need to be made but reforms and streamlining that has been available to Washington for years has not taken place and I just do not see how a confusing document will fix this, and look at how all this is being handled by these people. Think what you want but to me Washington is a LARGE TOILET THAT NEEDS TO BE FLUSHED AND NOT WITH A 1.6 GALLON FLUSH BUT WITH A GOOD OLD FASHIONED ONE!!!!!

[Hawthorne]

Rooster, there is no reason to try to negate the Canadian health care system because you think that the US might be getting a Socialistic health care system. You know little or nothing about our system except what you read on the web or see and hear through the media. That is a definitely biased opinion. I can say I prefer our system to the US system (what little I know of the US system), even if ours needs work.

I, as a Canadian, know little or nothing about the US health care system or the proposed changes, nor do I want to.

Furthermore, I come to this forum to get and give help to people who have sleep apnea and are using cpap equipment.

This is not a political forum! Furthermore, this is an International forum and the people who come here, for many places in the world, do not come to read about a US health care system debate. I expect they come for the same reason I do.

The only reason I even looked at one of your many threads on this subject, is because you titled it - feeling sorry for your Canadian relatives and friends. I assumed this had something to do with sleep apnea or the equipment. It was just another way for you to get on your soap box about the proposed changes to health care in the US.

If you have issues about the proposal, leave Canadians out of it and keep it out of this forum.

Just my opinion.