Public Plan Pits Democrat Vs. Democrat

(AP)  It'll be Democrat vs. Democrat as lawmakers go back to work on health care Tuesday.

The Senate Finance Committee is expected to consider whether the government should offer its own insurance plan for the middle class in competition with private carriers. A public option is the top goal for liberals, but it has no Republican support and moderate Democrats say the Senate will never go along.

So Tuesday's debate is expected to pit Democratic liberals against moderates.

Although the public plan isn't expected to get a majority of the panel, supporters say at least they'll know where everybody stands.

Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., is already in the hot seat - accused of being lukewarm, if not downright hostile, to the government option.

Two liberal groups are launching a hard-hitting television and Internet ad featuring a young father from Montana. Bing Perrine, 26, in need of a heart operation, uninsured and deeply in debt, looks straight into the camera and asks Baucus, "Whose side are you on?"

Read CBSNews.com's complete coverage of the health care debate

The ad is sponsored by Democracy for America and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, who say Baucus is too cozy with insurance and health care interests that have contributed to his campaigns and oppose the public option.

Baucus aide Tyler Matsdorf said the ad falsely implies that Baucus doesn't care about the plight of people with pre-existing health problems. It's just that Baucus would address such problems in a different way from what the liberals want, Matsdorf said. For example, his plan calls for nonprofit co-ops to compete with the insurance industry independently of the government. Insurers also oppose co-ops.

Senators will have at least two Democratic alternatives to choose from - and maybe a compromise from a moderate Republican who is keeping all her options open.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., is proposing a public plan modeled on Medicare, in which the government would set what it pays doctors, hospitals and other medical providers.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is proposing a government plan that looks more like a private insurance company and negotiates payment rates with providers.

"Win or lose, it's clear that the strong public interest and support for a public option will be well represented by the supportive senators," said Gerald Shea, a top health care policy expert for the AFL-CIO. "My sense is that our message about how vital the public plan is to the critically important issue of cost control is beginning to break through the bubble that has surrounded Finance for months."

The wild card in the debate is Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. Aides say she's considering offering a compromise that would use the public option as a threat, to be deployed only if private insurers fail to keep premiums in check after a reasonable period of time.

If there's a final bill this year, it's possible that Snowe's idea will be the one to carry the day.

[MichaelMooreFan]

Washington (AP) -- Just moments after delivering a fiery address to the government watchdog group Public Citizen in Washington yesterday, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, director of three of the five highest-grossing documentaries of all time, clutched at his abdomen, groaned loudly, and steadied himself on a nearby railing.
All of what followed is still unclear, although witnesses say... http://wp.me/pENnF-d

[Bernardcraig20]

That was hilarious!

http://www.goldcoinsgain.com

[Mortarman29]

James Madison was right when he suggested, "All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree."

Thomas Jefferson warned, "The greatest calamity which could befall us would be submission to a government of unlimited powers."

[doc_holliday76]

by Mortarman29:
Thomas Jefferson warned, "The greatest calamity which could befall us would be submission to a government of unlimited powers."
--------------------------------



Yep, just like the bushevik dictatorship after the GOP UNpatriot
Act was passed during anthrax attacks on Dems, and the republican't FEARmongering led to endless illegal WARmongering for OIL.

[Mortarman29]

Dr. Robert Higgs, senior fellow at the Oakland-based Independent Institute, penned an article in The Christian Science Monitor (2/9/2009) that suggests the most intelligent recommendation that I've read to fix our current economic mess. The title of his article gives his recommendation away: "Instead of stimulus, do nothing -- seriously."

Stimulus package debate is over how much money should be spent, whether some should given to the National Endowment for the Arts, research sexually transmitted diseases or bail out Amtrak, our failing railroad system. Dr. Higgs says, "Hardly anyone, however, is asking the most important question: Should the federal government be doing any of this?" He adds, "Until the 1930s, the Constitution served as a major constraint on federal economic interventionism. The government's powers were understood to be just as the framers intended: few and explicitly enumerated in our founding document and its amendments. Search the Constitution as long as you like, and you will find no specific authority conveyed for the government to spend money on global-warming research, urban mass transit, food stamps, unemployment insurance, Medicaid, or countless other items in the stimulus package and, even without it, in the regular federal budget."

By bringing up the idea of constitutional restraints on Washington, I'd say Dr. Higgs is whistling Dixie. Americans have long ago abandoned respect for the constitutional limitations placed on the federal government. Our elected representatives represent that disrespect. After all I'd ask Higgs: Isn't it unreasonable to expect a politician to do what he considers to be political suicide, namely conduct himself according to the letter and spirit of the Constitution?

While Americans, through ignorance or purpose, show contempt for our Constitution, I doubt whether they are indifferent between a growing or stagnating economy. Dr. Higgs tells us some of the economic history of the U.S. In 1893, there was a depression; we got out of it without a stimulus package. There was a major recession of 1920-21; though sharp, it quickly reversed itself into what has been call the "Roaring Twenties." In 1929, there was an economic downturn, most notably featured by the stock market collapse, after which came massive government intervention -- you might call it the nation's first stimulus package. President Hoover and Congress responded to what might have been a two- or three-year sharp downturn with many of the policies President Obama and Congress are urging today. They raised tariffs, propped up wage rates, bailed out farmers, banks and other businesses, and financed state relief efforts. When Roosevelt came to office, he became even more interventionist than Hoover and presided over protracted depression where the economy didn't fully recover until 1946.

Roosevelt didn't have an easy time with his agenda; he had to first emasculate the U.S. Supreme Court. Higgs points out that federal courts had respect for the Constitution as late as the 1930s. They issued some 1,600 injunctions to restrain officials from carrying out acts of Congress. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned as unconstitutional the New Deal's centerpieces such as the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act and other parts of Roosevelt's "stimulus package." An outraged Roosevelt threatened to pack the Court, and the Court capitulated to where it is today giving Congress virtually unlimited powers to tax, spend and regulate. My question to my fellow Americans is: Do we want a repeat of measures that failed dismally during the 1930s?

A more fundamental question is: Should Washington be guided by the Constitution? In explaining the Constitution, James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, wrote in Federalist Paper 45: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce." Has the Constitution been amended to permit Congress to tax, spend and regulate as it pleases or have Americans said, "To hell with the Constitution"?

[doc_holliday76]

by Mortarman29:
"Part of the reason our founders created two houses of Congress was to have another obstacle to majority rule. Fifty-one senators can block the designs of 435 representatives and 49 senators."
------------------------------------------



WRONG yet again!

It only takes 41 senators to block any legislation from moving forward, and I challenge YOU to find fillibustering in Our Constitution.
------------------------------------




by Mortarman29:
"So? The Congress is free to set up its operating rules. That is not unConstitutional."
----------------------------------------





So? First off you were WRONG, since it only takes 41 senators -- hardly a majority out of 100, but a minority -- to stop legislation in its tracks.

Secondly, the Congress was given the authority to pass laws for the people of the U.S. by Our Constitution, and that most certainly could and would be any laws governing health care, i.e. Medicare in 1965.

[Mortarman29]

Sorry, you are wrong again. Congress was given the power to pass laws by the Constitution ONLY in the enumerated powers outlined in the Constitution. Thus, their laws could only be within the context of the powers given to them. Those powers are clearly laid out in the Constitution.

If you think differently, you are arguing with the guys who wrote the thing. And it is probably a good thing to side with the guys who wrote it on what they meant it to be, then to side with your version of what you want it to be!

[Mortarman29]

The New England Journal of Medicine had the following results from a study it did:

The median waiting time for an initial orthopedic consultation was two weeks in the United States and four weeks in Ontario. The median waiting time for knee replacement after the operation had been planned was three weeks in the United States and eight weeks in Canada. In the United States, 95 percent of patients in the national sample considered their waiting time for surgery acceptable, as compared with 85.1 percent in Ontario. Overall satisfaction with surgery ("very or somewhat satisfied") was 85.3 percent for all U.S. respondents and 83.5 percent for Canadian respondents.

[Mortarman29]

And if you add this together...the results of the waiting times from a person calling a doctor's office to set-up a consultation to having their surgery is as follows:

U.S. = 5 weeks from start to finish

Canada = 12 weeks from start to finish

[Mortarman29]

After further looking at these numbers, it shows that about the time the Canadian sees the doctor...a week after, the American has already seen the doctor and had the surgery! The Canadian must wait another 7 weeks after the American has his surgery to get theirs.

[Mortarman29]

A great study on waiting times for cardiovascular care in the U.S., in the VA and in some socialized medicine countries like Canada. Very interesting!

http://download.journals.elsevierhealth.com/pdfs/journals/0735-1097/PII073510979400442S.pdf

[Mortarman29]

The top technologies today and who developed them:

Technology Country of Origin

MRI USA and UK
CT USA and UK
ACE inhibitors USA
Balloon angioplasty Switzerland
CABG bypass surgery USA
PPI inhibitors USA and Sweden
SSRI inhibitors USA
Cataract extractions USA
Hip/knee replacement USA and UK and Japan

[Mortarman29]

Fact No. 10: Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations.[13] The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single developed country.[14] Since the mid-1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to American residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined.[15] In only five of the past 34 years did a scientist living in America not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.[16]

[Mortarman29]

Fact No. 9: Americans have much better access to important new technologies like medical imaging than patients in Canada or the U.K. Maligned as a waste by economists and policymakers naïve to actual medical practice, an overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identified computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade.[11] [See the table.] The United States has 34 CT scanners per million Americans, compared to 12 in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has nearly 27 MRI machines per million compared to about 6 per million in Canada and Britain.[12]

[doc_holliday76]

by Mortarman29:
"Fact No. 9"
------------




Take your "facts" with your conservitard ideology, and shove them where the sun don't shine! "YOU LIE," as joey wilson would tell you!