Bill Moyers message for Obama re: health reform

Pokersloper is actually on the right track with this one. Obama's problem is that he's trying to negotiate with Republicans as if they're negotiating in good faith. They're only at the table to weaken whatever plan comes to a vote and then they're going to vote against it anyway. He should have cut them out of the process and brought a real plan with a public option to a vote (as an interim step to single payer insurance once people realize how much better the public option is than a for-profit plan).

Carnivore wrote: Pokersloper is actually on the right track with this one. Obama's problem is that he's trying to negotiate with Republicans as if they're negotiating in good faith. They're only at the table to weaken whatever plan comes to a vote and then they're going to vote against it anyway. He should have cut them out of the process and brought a real plan with a public option to a vote (as an interim step to single payer insurance once people realize how much better the public option is than a for-profit plan).

Even Bill Maher has come out and said that some of the Republican ideas are better than Obama’s ideas. Yeah sure, a handful of Republicans are acting like idiots, but so what? A handful of Democrats, some in very powerful positions, are as much or more in Obama’s way then Republicans. Health care reform is a democratic initiative (supported by an overwhelming majority of the country) being blocked and sunk by Democrats.

I was out with a French couple this weekend (Obama voters) and they were making the case that if there is ever a case for state’s rights, health care reform is it. Many republicans get this and more and more “liberal” commentators like Robert Sheer get this. If we want health care like they have in France, we have to start acting and thinking differently. Obama and the democratic party has the mandate but not the courage to make change.

eggcream wrote: We also need Tort Reform but the left is silent on that.

No they're not. Seen plenty of left-leaning editorials in favor. I'm a Radical and I support anything that reduces or limits litigation.

If the US institutes a federal sales tax / VAT / GST, and hands it back to the states to pay for health care, then there's no reason why you can't organize it at a state level. Australia did that and it worked pretty well. But the latest plan there is to move health back to the federal level, because a huge federal bureaucracy still has advantages of economies of scale, uniformity of implementation and equity of access, over many medium-large state bureaucracies.

I just waited two hours in my doctor's office. A friend without health insurance recently waited 24 hours in the emergency room at Methodist and he didn't see a doctor so I don;t know how much worse things can get, but Gsus.

doctorj wrote: [quote=eggcream]We also need Tort Reform but the left is silent on that.

No they're not. Seen plenty of left-leaning editorials in favor. I'm a Radical and I support anything that reduces or limits litigation.

Who in President Obama's admin. is for tort reform? President Obama himself said no tort reform.

A Doctor's Plan for Legal Industry Reform
My modest proposal to rearrange how lawyers do business.

9/3/09

By RICHARD B. RAFAL

Since we are moving toward socialism with ObamaCare, the time has come to do the same with other professions—especially lawyers. Physician committees can decide whether lawyers are necessary in any given situation.

At a town-hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., last month, our uninformed lawyer in chief suggested that we physicians would rather chop off a foot than manage diabetes since we would make more money doing surgery. Then President Obama compounded his attack by claiming a doctor's reimbursement is between "$30,000" and "$50,000" for such amputations! (Actually, such surgery costs only about $1,500.)

Physicians have never been so insulted. Because of these affronts, I will gladly volunteer for the important duty of controlling and regulating lawyers. Since most of what lawyers do is repetitive boilerplate or pushing paper, physicians would have no problem dictating what is appropriate for attorneys. We physicians know much more about legal practice than lawyers do about medicine.

Following are highlights of a proposed bill authorizing the dismantling of the current framework of law practice and instituting socialized legal care:

• Contingency fees will be discouraged, and eventually outlawed, over a five-year period. This will put legal rewards back into the pockets of the deserving—the public and the aggrieved parties. Slick lawyers taking their "cut" smacks of a bookie operation. Attorneys will be permitted to keep up to 3% in contingency cases, the remainder going into a pool for poor people.

• Legal "DRGs." Each potential legal situation will be assigned a relative value, and charges limited to this amount. Program participation and acceptance of this amount is mandatory, regardless of the number of hours spent on the matter. Government schedules of flat fees for each service, analogous to medicine's Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs), will be issued. For example, any divorce will have a set fee of, say, $1,000, regardless of its simplicity or complexity. This will eliminate shady hourly billing. Niggling fees such as $2 per page photocopied or faxed would disappear. Who else nickels-and-dimes you while at the same time charging hundreds of dollars per hour? I'm surprised lawyers don't tack shipping and handling onto their bills.

• Legal "death panels." Over 75? You will not be entitled to legal care for any matter. Why waste money on those who are only going to die soon? We can decrease utilization, save money and unclog the courts simultaneously. Grandma, you're on your own.

• Ration legal care. One may need to wait months to consult an attorney. Despite a perceived legal need, physician review panels or government bureaucrats may deem advice unnecessary. Possibly one may not get representation before court dates or deadlines. But that' s tough: What do you want for "free"?

• Physician controlled legal review. This is potentially the most exciting reform, with doctors leading committees for determining the necessity of all legal procedures and the fairness of attorney fees. What a wonderful way for doctors to get even with the sharks attempting to eviscerate the practice of medicine.

• Discourage/eliminate specialization. Legal specialists with extra training and experience charge more money, contributing to increased costs of legal care, making it unaffordable for many. This reform will guarantee a selection of mediocre, unmotivated attorneys but should help slow rising legal costs. Big shot under indictment? Classified National Archives documents down your pants? Sitting president defending against impeachment? Have FBI agents found $90,000 in your freezer? Too bad. Under reform you too may have to go to the government legal shop for advice.

• Electronic legal records. We should enter the digital age and computerize and centralize legal records nationwide. All files must be in a standard, preferably inconvenient, format and must be available to government agencies. A single database of judgments, court records, client files, etc. will decrease legal expenses. Anyone with Internet access will be able to search the database, eliminating unjustifiable fees charged by law firms for supposedly proprietary information, while fostering transparency. It will enable consumers to dump their clunker attorneys and transfer records easily.

• Ban legal advertisements. Catchy phone numbers such as 1-800-LAWYERS would be seized by the government and repurposed for reporting unscrupulous attorneys.

• New government oversight. Government overhead to manage the legal system will include a cabinet secretary, commissioners, ombudsmen, auditors, assistants, czars and departments.

• Collect data about the supply of and demand for attorneys.Create a commission to study the diversity and geographic distribution of attorneys, with power to stipulate and enforce corrective actions to right imbalances. The more bureaucracy the better. One can never have too many eyes watching these sleazy sneaks.

• Lawyer Reduction Act (H.R. -3200). A self-explanatory bill that not only decreases the number of law students, but also arbitrarily removes 3,200 attorneys from practice each year. Textbook addition by subtraction.

Enthusiastically embracing the above legal changes can serve as a "teachable moment" and will go a long way toward giving the lawyers who run Congress a taste of their own medicine.

Dr. Rafal is a radiologist in New York City.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574387021307651050.html

eggcream wrote: [quote=doctorj][quote=eggcream]We also need Tort Reform but the left is silent on that.

No they're not. Seen plenty of left-leaning editorials in favor. I'm a Radical and I support anything that reduces or limits litigation.

Who in President Obama's admin. is for tort reform? President Obama himself said no tort reform.
The idea that tort reform would significantly impact health care costs is a myth.

http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/would-tort-reform-lower-health-care-costs/

pokersloper still sticking to your claim that Obama's a failure as a president, huh?

Subject: Healthcare

You can hope for the best, but do you REALLY want the government deciding the what and when you can see a doctor or get treatment?? Anyone checked the wait time in Canada to see a specialist (it's 3 months.) Won't do you much good if it's a progressive disease that needs immediate attending.

And they can't run the post office which is nearly bankrupt and made a mess of the paperwork in Cash for Clunkers. Do you truly believe it will be better cause it concerns your health records and life or death needs??

You know, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus.

pokersloper wrote: [quote=Boygabriel]pokersloper still sticking to your claim that Obama's a failure as a president, huh?

Unemployment is up, the economy is in the pits, and Obama chose to dive in with health care. Obama clearly read his own party all wrong and has clearly done a very poor job of selling a popular idea. Obama has shown very poor judgment this first year so I can only judge him on what he has done (which is not much) and on what he hasn’t done (a lot).

I just posted this in another thread, but it deserves a repost here. I saw this great analogy on reddit the other day:

cultured_banana_slug wrote: It's like if you entered an eight-year lease with a bunch of other people for a house. There's a pool of money everyone contributes to, but only a few people decide what it's to be spent on. They decide that it's far better to spend it on beer and hookers and cocaine, because everyone likes that kind of stuff. When the rent comes due and the electricity gets shut off because of lack of payment, the people in charge start borrowing money to pay off the bills, while still buying hookers and beer and cocaine. When the next guy comes along that's in charge of the next eight-year lease (because people got tired of the electricity being shut off and thought how nice it'd be if the roof got repaired and the toilets flushed without having to use a bucket,) he's faced with a bill for everything the previous guy did. He's also faced with hookers and drug dealers who have fat contracts with his house, contracts that are very difficult to get out of quickly. He ALSO has to figure out how to fix all the problems that crept up because the previous guy was spending money on hookers, rather than on the house.

The money pool is empty, as the last guy spent it all before he left. So, the new guy has to borrow money to pay back the electric company, get the water working properly again, fix the toilets, fix the roof, and put food in the fridge (which has been empty a long while, as there was no money for food.) He also has to keep buying hookers and cocaine, because you don't just jump ship on those kinds of people without serious repercussions.

The old guy and his friends get pissed. After all, they were booted out for borrowing way too much, and now this new guy goes and does the same thing!

After the first few months of the new guy in charge, people start wondering if he's just as bad as the old one. Mainly because the old guys and their friends won't quit complaining.

Carnivore wrote: I just posted this in another thread, but it deserves a report here. I saw this great analogy on reddit the other day:

[quote=cultured_banana_slug]It's like if you entered an eight-year lease with a bunch of other people for a house. There's a pool of money everyone contributes to, but only a few people decide what it's to be spent on. They decide that it's far better to spend it on beer and hookers and cocaine, because everyone likes that kind of stuff. When the rent comes due and the electricity gets shut off because of lack of payment, the people in charge start borrowing money to pay off the bills, while still buying hookers and beer and cocaine. When the next guy comes along that's in charge of the next eight-year lease (because people got tired of the electricity being shut off and thought how nice it'd be if the roof got repaired and the toilets flushed without having to use a bucket,) he's faced with a bill for everything the previous guy did. He's also faced with hookers and drug dealers who have fat contracts with his house, contracts that are very difficult to get out of quickly. He ALSO has to figure out how to fix all the problems that crept up because the previous guy was spending money on hookers, rather than on the house.

The money pool is empty, as the last guy spent it all before he left. So, the new guy has to borrow money to pay back the electric company, get the water working properly again, fix the toilets, fix the roof, and put food in the fridge (which has been empty a long while, as there was no money for food.) He also has to keep buying hookers and cocaine, because you don't just jump ship on those kinds of people without serious repercussions.

The old guy and his friends get pissed. After all, they were booted out for borrowing way too much, and now this new guy goes and does the same thing!

After the first few months of the new guy in charge, people start wondering if he's just as bad as the old one. Mainly because the old guys and their friends won't quit complaining.

The money it would take to get health care reform working is a drop in the bucket. Man, don't you read or listen to "liberal" media? Slate, NPR, Bill Maher, Huffington, etc, and so many media outlets have pointed out that the money is not the obstacle here, Bush is not the obstacle, the obstacle is Obama and the democrats in the senate and house. It seems that the loudest critics now of Obama are the Bill Mahers and the Ariana Huffingtons. Sure, a handful of republicans are talking about “death panel” crap, but the Democrats don’t need anyone’s permission to pass legislation now. So why don’t they? It is all so silly. The democrats get elected on a platform of change and “yes we can” and then they stall out.


MOD NOTE: fixed your tags for you
-C

Carnivore wrote: [quote=pokersloper][quote=MeredithB]I just waited two hours in my doctor's office. A friend without health insurance recently waited 24 hours in the emergency room at Methodist and he didn't see a doctor so I don;t know how much worse things can get, but Gsus.

I do. Voting for a president and a party preaching real healthcare reform and "yes we can" only to find out "no they can't" and "let's blame the republicans for democratic bickering.”
No one's blaming the repugs for democratic bickering- the repugs are doing exactly as anyone would expect them to do (read my scorpion and the frog link above).

As far as doing this at the state level instead of nationally, did you watch the robert reich video above? A truly national plan would have enormous power to negotiate the best deals with drugs companies, hospitals, doctors, etc. Smaller groups like states wouldn't be able to take advantage of the economy of scale that a national plan would, and wouldn't be able to get as good a deal.

Well, that is a good point, and both national and state/national plans would have their pros and cons. Perhaps the drug company leverage could be one of the issues dealt with at the national level and passed down to the states.

The convenient fantasies of President Obama
By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst
September 9, 2009

this person sides with Glenn Beck regarding the Jones appointment and resignation. enough said.