Here's the unconscionable Republican plan to repeal in toto the Affordable care Act. This is a horrifying document. There's little or no replace in this, it's all about repeal.
If the Republicans pick up the Senate in 2012, (they're four votes away) reelecting President Obama, like it or not, is the firewall for so much of what we cherish.
This memo makes it as clear as the nose on your face that if Republicans have their way, pick up the Senate and God forbid the White House, insurers will be able to deny you coverage based on pre-existing condition exclusions.
Banning preex condition clauses is counterproductive, because it raises premiums and causes coverage to be dropped. It’s also unnecessary, because federal and state laws already offer significant protections, and there are (as we just noted) better ways to help the small group (1 percent) of Americans who face a genuine barrier.
Here's one piece of the memo, we can all agree with, this is why, we must talk about what these barbarians are planning every minute of every day.
Every day Washington talks about health care is a good day for reformers.
If this isn't bad enough, on Wednesday, Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.), chairman of the House Appropriations health subcommittee introduced an amendment to the Republican spending bill to defund the ACA.
The bottom line, as the memo makes clear, is to turn the major health entitlement programs from defined benefits (where coverage is guaranteed) to defined contributions (where only a certain amount of funding and coverage are guaranteed). Individuals would be at risk for rising costs and cuts in coverage. The goal, as the memo explains, is "to save our government from bankruptcy."
In fact, it has little to do with bankrupting the government. Lowlifes like Dick Armey have long advocated thoroughly discredited notions like vouchers and high deductible (re-Christened consumer directed) healthcare, which they say give more freedom of choice to patients. Wrong, it's a lie. What vouchers and consumer directed healthcare does is shift the costs from the for-profit insurance corporations onto the shoulders of healthcare consumers. It's got a name: Cost Shifting. Also, doctors and hospitals, as the memo states, would have "a right to be paid for their services, at market rates."
And if a patient can't afford market rates, even with the vouchers? Charity.
In a free society, the moral way to help those who are less fortunate is through private charity — or failing that, through targeted subsidies — not mandates and regulations.
Along those lines, the plan also calls for ending Medicare price controls and what it refers to as "rationing," by allowing hospitals and doctors to charge more than Medicare pays, with patients being required to pay the difference.
Currently, doctors who want to charge above Medicare rates must leave the program.
Ezra Klein has a fascinating if horrifying analysis of Boy Wonder Paul Ryan's plans to give seniors "less money to purchase more expensive private insurance" in place of traditional Medicare.
Republican's better start telling the truth about what they’re up to.
They better tell cancer patients with crushing medical costs that they plan to reinstate annual and lifetime benefit limits that will force them into bankruptcy and deny them the care they need. They should let young adults know they have to quit their parents' health plans. Each Republican member of Congress should go door to door in their districts and tell thousands of seniors to cough up the $250 donut-hole checks the new law provided to help them buy prescription drugs. The Republicans should tell seniors they’re ending the 50% discount on brand-name medicines. Oh, and tell Americans that insurers can legally deny them insurance based on a pre-exisiting condition.
Like many of you, I have a lot of problems with the policies of the Obama Administration. But truly, at the beginning, middle and end of the day, for better or worse, Obama is our firewall and despite my grave misgivings about the ACA, some people are being helped.
This is a very moving video you might want to watch.
Angry? Here's what you can do.
1. You can join or follow (just click the heart) the Daily Kos single payer group.
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Does everyone know that in Canada, single payer began at the provincial level in Saskatchewan and then eventually, as more provinces embraced universal health care, the federal government got on board. This is how it will happen in the United States, but it will take all of us.
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