Obama "Confident" Congress Will Accept Cost-Cutting Plan
(AP)
Speaking from the White House Friday, Mr. Obama said he has given Congress a proposal that should "bend the cost curve so we're not seeing huge health care inflation."
"I'm actually confident they may adopt these proposals," Mr. Obama said.
The White House has proposed establishing an independent, non-partisan commission of doctors and other health experts to oversee the costs of Medicare. White House Budget Director Peter Orszag described the proposal in a letter (PDF) Friday to Pelosi and other Democratic leaders.
An existing group called the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission already produces yearly reports with ways to bring down costs, but the group's report is only advisory and "ends up sitting on a shelf," the president said.
"We want to force Congress to make sure they are acting on these recommendations to bend the cost curve each and every year," Mr. Obama said. "We need an independent group that is empowered to make these changes, and that's something we've proposed."
"I'm confident if we work with the foremost experts in the field we can find a way to eliminate waste (and) slow the growth of costs," he added.
The president also reiterated today his commitment to keeping health care reform deficit-neutral. "Health insurance reform cannot add to our deficit over the next decade, and I mean it," he said. He repeated himself for emphasis.
While health care legislation has already passed out of two of the three committees it must go through in the House, negotiations have slowed in the Senate, with six moderate senators signing a letter today asking for more time to "achieve a bipartisan result."
"Now is not the time to slow down," Mr. Obama said.
He said that "unprecedented progress" has already been made coming to agreement on issues like preventive care, the need to simplify insurance forms, the need to prevent the denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, the establishment of a health insurance exchange, the need for patient choice, and the need to ensure coverage in the event that a patient changes or loses his or her job.
Washington has achieved "a level of consensus over health care reform that we've never seen before in this country," he said.
Without these reforms, he said, the nation would be "consigning our children to a future of skyrocketing premiums and crushing deficits."
Mr. Obama said those who were skeptical health care reform would be accomplished this year are "badly mistaken."
"We're going to be putting in a lot more hours," he said. "There are going to be a lot more sleepless nights."
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See all 40 CommentsWhat a liar !
ObamaNation is striking again.
Please......we're all waiting for your false republiCON rhetoric!
and add all of their retirement plans to ss to help get it out of debt
than we will see how many of his cronies vote for him
"Congress doesnt want it for itself. Why would they!!!! Ever been to a DMV."
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Apparently you are not a citizen or have a green card, since most American citizens already know that each state has its own DMV and the congresscritters have no say whatsoever on this state's rights issue!
Please go back to your own country and take your illegal relatives with you!
Put enforcement teeth in - penalties for failure, and rewards for positive-results.
These measurements should target non-value-add activity; wasteful practices - such as ruling-out the most 'obscure' reasons for medical conditions, instead of ruling-in the statistically highest one first; unnecessary repetition (eg. multiple med tests); and have high-level goals to flesh out hidden costs & unwarranted greed. Follow the money, see where it leads, and measure it!
Place incentives into contracts with scaled percentages of greater rewards, for how fast wide-scale implementation of positive-measured improvements occur.
An example of how well these methods work has already been established, by our Interstate Highway System construction in the '50's & '60's.
Obama should take a lesson from this history, and combine it with modern computerized Business Intelligence measurement methods.
The measurements should start at the feeder industries of medical supply, and then up to drug companies, hospitals, insurance chains, etc.
TRUE costs should be determined at all levels with a goal of Cost+5% profit. Any "normal" company would be quite happy with 5% profit. The entire medical industry is puffed and bloated with their prevalent equivalents of $1000 hammers. This has to end, NOW!
It's time to "truth-table" the entire medical system, eliminate unwarranted greed, and restore the medical industry focus back to healing.
I was all for these programs by way of the descriptions given but the results of the stimulus have been by its very description an unequivocal failure. The plan changes on a daily basis. Now this same entity that was responsible for the stimulus, its description for cure that has done nothing but acerbate our problems is now saying trust us again? Only this time we, the American people have generations staked to the outcome of these programs. Had we been told the stimulus would kick in fourth quarter 2010, at least we would know where we are with the plan but that didn?t happen unfortunately. Outstanding plans, disastrous implementation. Nope, with the stimulus going south, Cap & Trade and Healthcare are going to meet a bitter end and will not happen IMO.
Sorry, but MORE OF THE SAME by moronic republiCONS is not an option!
We need to address both of these huge problems immediately, and none of the foxnewsus propagandus is helping!
Uh, now correct me if I'm wrong here, but didn't President Obama insist the Stimulus Bill should be passed without reading it, as it was needed so desperatly ?
And now he doesn't want to examine Health care properly.
Git' ah rope.
"Uh, now correct me if I'm wrong here...."
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You're always wrong and pushing all the failed CONServitard policies and ideology that gave us the bush/cheney depression!
YOU HAVE TO LOOK AT THE BIG PICTURE!!
BUT NOW OBAMA HAS BEEN IN OFFICE LESS THAN 7 MONTHS AND IT'S ALL HIS FAULT??? This blind stupidity is why we are where we are today. with the good old boy's pulling the strings nothing is going to change. America could be done if we don't open our eyes.But the good old boy GREED NETWORK may destroy any chance our Children or Grand Children have to a live half as good as what we have had.
GOD "BLESS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA"
You are right that many people in the US have acted on their greed.
You are wrong to suggest that Obama isn't part of the problem.
Why do you think that Obama shoved a $700 Billion stimulus plan through before anyone could review it?
Why do you think that pork was found inside of that plan?
If the stimulus plan's timing was so important that it needed to get shoved through right away, why is it that the actual spending of that bill is still in the single percentage points? (Its like me telling you 'Quick, hand me that fire extinguisher!' And 12 hours later, you notice that I haven't used it yet.)
Why is it that our deficit will reach $2 Trillion dollars, if Obama isn't being greedy? Why didn't he just give $1 Trillion back to the people, and let us spend the money?
Yes, its Obama's fault. If you don't realize that its his spending that caused the $2 Trillion of deficit, do the research. If you can't understand how he let homeowners off of the hook for their dumb greed, read a business newspaper.
-And if you don't understand that his concept of health care reform means that your children will be paying for their own birth (through the deficit caused by 'universal' care), then you have blinders on.
It is well past time for physicians and patients to be making the important health care decisions instead of GREEDY for-profit insurance companies, giving us the 37th ranked health care in the world!
"37th health care ranking has been debunked.....other countries dont rate it the same way."
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Sorry, but that particular study wasn't done by individual countries, but the World Health Organization, and has hardly been debunked!
You would look more creditable with proof instead of silly rhetoric, but we know how moronic republiCONS just spew more propaganda!
The U.S. ranks at the bottom of the list in health care when you compare it to 19 industrialized countries, despite spending twice as much per person.
Health care in US ranks lowest among developed countries:
"The United States ranked last across a range of measures of health care in a comparison of 19 industrialised countries, despite spending more than twice as much per person on health as any other of the countries, says a report published last week."
www.bmj.com
U.S. on List of UNICEF's Worst Countries for Kids : NPRFeb 14, 2007 ... The United States fared worst of all 21 countries in health and ... "We've failed to invest in child health, in child education, in child care," Bradshaw says. ... worst countries in the industrialized world in which to be a child. ... happiness put the U.S. and Britain at the bottom of a list of 21 ...
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7407245
Abstracts: Primary care and health: a cross-national comparison ...A study of health care in 10 industrialized nations looked at primary health ... of other countries, the United States ranked at the bottom of the list. ...
www.faqs.org/.../Health/Primary-care-and-health-a-cross-national-comparison-How-healthy-are-US-children.html
Also the dem talking point saying that if you like your coverage, you can keep it is total BS with the single payer provision.
The bottom line, with single payer my health coverage will get worse, along with my care and my taxes will go up.
Whats the big hurry Messiah, are you worried the more time people have to actually read these bills the harder it will be to pass.
Independent Cuss
"Until cbs, nbc, abc, etc. start giving Americans un-biased reporting.."
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Sure....and stupidgary proves he is just another foxnewsus propagandus homosapien subspecies guzzling the republiCON Koolaid as fast as possible, railing against all other news sources except the worst!
2) Premature babies, cancer, diabetes, and AIDS are ALL much more treatable because of the advances of the US medical community. That's your 'broken' system... the one country that has made all of those things survivable, and you want to turn it into the same as the countries which are not as good at curing those diseases?
3) When you look at the list of Nobel Prize recipients in medicine for the past 10 years, the US has 14 winners from 1998 to 2008. Why do you think that is?
4) -And finally... how is it that Obama is going to make health care CHEAPER by spending A TRILLION DOLLARS on it? Are you that gullible that you'd buy something for a Trillion dollars more, and believe that you were getting it cheaper?
"We must fix America's health care problem that is bankrupting so many individuals and families....."
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Absolutely, with health care costs that have risen 130% over the past 10 years, the for-pofit insurance companies have been cutting a fat hog for decades, not caring one iota for the average American.
Today, lawyers posing as insurance claim's supervisors are making the important decisions that should be reserved for physicians and patients!
President Obama is absolutely correct in addressing this major problem in America, since the government already controls about 50% of all health care today, and with the 80 million baby boomers getting ready to retire over the next 2 decades, we must reform our for-profit health care debacle now, or costs will bankrupt our nation even more than the bush monkey did to us with "trickle-down" economic lunacy for the wealthiest Americans and endless WARS for the military/industrial complex!
We must reform health care now for ALL Americans!
"Obama isn't trying to solve a 'crisis'. There is no crisis."
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Only moronic republiCONS cannot admit to the health care CRISIS we are currently experiencing, a $2.5 Trillion cesspool of waste and abuse, or 18% of our GDP. If nothing is done like the non-visionary republiCONS propose, we will be looking at a doubling of expense to $5 Trillion or 36% of GDP in just 2 decades as 80 million baby boomers retire!
The current for-profit health care debacle is unafordable and unsustainable in its current state, and anyone that says it is not a CRISIS is totally in DENIAL and voting for America to fail.
ss they would change their tune real fast
Earlier today on Fox News, RNC Chairman Michael Steele was asked whether Republicans would borrow from President Clinton?s famous catch-phrase during the 1992 campaign, ?it?s the economy stupid,? in the run-up to the 2010 election. Steele proceeded to launch into a rambling answer that used fuzzy math to assert that, in only six months, President Obama has added ?10 trillion dollars? to the national deficit, while President Bush is to blame for only ?a trillion?:
STEELE: They love going back to George Bush and his deficit that was inherited. Great. I?ll take George Bush?s deficit right now of a trillion dollars over the 10 trillion dollars that this administration has created in just six months.
Steele is clearly confusing the difference between our national debt, which stands at roughly $11.4 trillion, and this year?s budget deficit, which just exceeded $1 trillion.
To help jog Steele?s memory, here?s a bit of a deficit recap: Bush inherited a budget surplus of $128 billion in 2001. Budget experts projected a $710 billion surplus for 2009 when he came into office. But the deficit soon exploded, thanks largely to the Bush tax cuts ? which accounted for 42 percent of the deficit. When Bush left office, he handed President Obama a projected $1.2 trillion budget deficit for this year, the largest ever.
As for the debt, when President Bush took office, it was $5.73 trillion. When he left, it was $10.7 trillion.
Just last month, an examination from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. The report, which examined federal spending stretching back almost a decade, found that Obama ?is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits?:
About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.
Mr. Obama?s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies ? together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama ? account for 20 percent of the swing.
About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama?s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.
Try as Steele might, this is blame shifting that just won?t work ? especially after the Bush administration made it clear that ?deficits don?t matter.?
"STEELE: They love going back to George Bush and his deficit that was inherited. Great. I'll take George Bush's deficit right now of a trillion dollars over the 10 trillion dollars that this administration has created in just six months."
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Of course the math and economically-challenged republiCONS continue to spew the same LIES and INUENDO to their foxnewsus propagandus homosapien subspecies Koolaid guzzlers, since LIES are all they have!
They simply cannot admit that the bush monkey is the $5 Trillion bozo, doubling our national debt in 8 short years, and handing President Obama a $1.3 Trillion budget DEFICIT on Jan. 20th, 2009.
The national debt today stands at $11.3 Trillion, an increase of $600 Billion over the bush monkey's $10.7 Trillion national debt -- which means that steele and the rest of the republiCONS are total LIARS!
The CONServitards are still living in the past afraid of any change which America desperately needs, and have NO VISION for our future!
The republiCONS can only push more FEAR and empty rhetoric on the American populace, since they have NO SOLUTIONS or NEW IDEAS for anything -- just MORE OF THE SAME failed policies and ideology like "trickle-down" economic lunacy for the wealthiest Americans!
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