Landmark Health Insurance Bill Passes House 1698
theodp writes "A hastily-crafted amendment imposing tough new restrictions on abortion coverage in insurance policies helped pave the way for the House to approve the Democrats' bill to overhaul the nation's health insurance system. 'It provides coverage for 96 percent of Americans,' said Rep. John Dingell. Rep. Candice Miller disagreed, calling the legislation 'a jobs-killing, tax-hiking, deficit-exploding' bill. The 1,990-page, $1.2 trillion legislation passed by a vote of 220-215 and moves on for Senate debate, which is expected to begin in several days."
Update — 11/08 at 13:45 GMT by SS: Changed vote totals above to reflect the actual bill vote. The 240-194 number was for the abortion restrictions amendment.
Re:Bill Itself: 220-215 (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:What's in it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't forget ... privacy destroying (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm of the opinion that even the current system of private coverage is fundamentally a violation of doctor-patient confidentiality. You've got these insurance companies just itching to monetize any piece of data they can get from their paying customers, such that the half-assed nature of HIPAA really provides no assurance that your medical information won't be used in one way or another that is ultimately against your well-being.
The only way to be sure your information (any info, not just medical records) won't be systematically abused is to make sure it isn't entered into a file or a database in the first place. Unfortunately, there seems to be a real focus on doing just the opposite with these healthcare changes - some sort of magical computer worshipping cargo cult thing where too many people think that if they can just get all our personal info into a database it will be the best thing since sliced bread. I'm tired of sacrificing privacy for the promise of increased efficiency and convenience and I am doubly tired of those promises failing to pan out in the long run. But that's exactly what I expect is going to happen here too.
*Sigh* (Score:1, Interesting)
->Rep. Candice Miller disagreed, calling the legislation 'a jobs-killing, tax-hiking, deficit-exploding' bill.-
*sigh* Why does my representative have to be such a moron? I've been trying every time I vote to get her out of office....
Michigan has been in a recession since 2001. Lots of people are out of jobs and can't afford to get health care (let alone the basics: food, shelter, clothing). And she thinks it's a job-killer? The only thing that's killing jobs in Michigan are the representatives who aren't doing anything about trying to create them.
Amount Covered (Score:2, Interesting)
Considering only around 12 million US citizens aren't covered today (4%) (the same that isn't covered in this bill) it seems all that happened is Government took further control of the system.
The supreme cout will rule it unconstitutional (Score:3, Interesting)
Just my prediction, but I think it will be taken to court and ruled unconstitutional (since the court is still majority conservative)
Re:What's in it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Bill Itself: 220-215 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:12 million people excluded? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Seems like the european socialist are out in fo (Score:3, Interesting)
Except in this case, measurements of consumption and production are very obscure.
People will 'consume' healthcare when they go to the hospital or see a doctor. Yes, there is a small hypochondriac percentage of the population that will abuse this privilege, but for the most part, people will only go to the hospital when they are sick. I can't imagine wanting to disrupt my schedule to go sit in a waiting room just because I don't have to pay for it. That's absurd.
The population becomes more productive as a whole when they don't have to worry about the day-to-day problems of food and shelter. It's Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
If the default state of people was "sick," then yes: they can certainly consume more healthcare than they produce. For an example of this, consider the disabled and the elderly. However, the default state of most of the population is "healthy." This means that when you do get sick, treatment can be had and you can return to your default, healthy (productive) state quicker. If you're sick, and your insurance doesn't cover your condition, you can't return to work until you've had it treated. If you can't afford treatment, then you're an unproductive member of society, no matter how badly you want to get back to work.
This is why nationalized healthcare works. Everyone pays taxes to support the health care system, but not everyone is sick all the time. When you are sick (on occasion), the taxes you have paid and that others have paid cover your costs. When you are healthy (most of the time), you're providing the same safety net that you enjoy to everyone else. And before everyone screams "socialism," note that socialism is not all bad. Military, fire, police, community centres, libraries: all of these are iconic images of American life, and all of them are funded by the idea that collective payment benefits everyone eventually, if not immediately.
Re:A progressive measure. (Score:2, Interesting)
When the people fear their government, it is said to be tyranny. When government fears the people, it is said to be liberty.
That said, I'm in favor of a single payer system, one which even covers dental. But this notion that I'm a servant to my government is going overboard. I won't give up my freedom that was won fair and square in such a manner. I'm not my government's pet. I'm my country's law abiding citizen, and liberty is afoot.
Re:Let's see.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Strikers Vow (Score:5, Interesting)
Presumably, in the same way that any other tax evasion will. Does the police force, military, court system, fire brigade etc. enslave people?
Re:Strikers Vow (Score:2, Interesting)
The Post Office.
Currently operating at a loss thanks to market inefficiencies, high labor costs and rising prices forcing people to seek other means (why spend 44 cents to mail in my bill when I can do it online for free? Ditto for a letter and whatnot. People use the net more, USPS raises its prices in response, which causes people to use the net more).
Road/Highway System
Falling apart in most states as the money is diverted to other projects. Bridges are collapsing, levies fall down and many federally funded highways are simply falling apart due to neglect and disrepair.
The Coast Guard.
Guarding the borders are a mandated federal responsibility. Shall we consider the many other ways border control is messed up?
The FBI (though some may debate this).
You already admit its debatable, but you list it in your enumeration of government programs done right... I'd say you're reaching
Cash for Clunkers was successful; if it made things BETTER is a bit unclear.
It pushed up sales at a cost of billions of dollars. Those sales won't come over the next few years now, meaning the jobs will dry up anyway. As an added bonus, we took perfectly good used cars off the street, driving up the cost to get to work and the doctor for the working poor, students, etc. Definitely a WONDERFUL program. /cough
Schools.
Seriously? The US has some of the worst schools in the first world despite the fact that it costs significantly more to educate children here.
Just off the top of my head. I don't know why people so love the idea of being under the finger of faceless cartels of multinational companies, who not only make their decisions completely in private, but don't even pretend to let you have a say in what they do, over having an elected government with at least some oversight provide the basic necessities to living a productive life. Why is it we cannot use the same system that has worked just fine for the majority of Europe, when ours has clearly failed?
Just off the top of my head. I don't know why many people so love the idea of being under the finger of faceless bureaucrats and Congresscritters (you know you're 1 of about 650k other faces in the best scenario, right?), who not only make their decisions completely in private (see the closed door meetings on health care), but don't even pretend to let you have a say in what they do (see people like Rep Eric Massa (D-NY) who said he will vote for the health care bill even if his constituents don't support it), over having an elected business (you vote with your dollars) with at least some ovresight (government, you, interest groups, etc) provide the basic necessities to living a productive life (so you're giving me a free house, a $50-100k salary, a vehicle, etc too right?). Why is it that we cannot use the same system that has worked just fine for the majority of Europe (where France has people rioting because they can't get jobs, the UK tells people that they're too old/sick to get needed health services, etc), when ours has so clearly failed (since adopting more and more European philosophy over the last century)?
Didn't we fight a war to separate ourselves from Europe so that they couldn't dictate our way of life to us?
Re:What's in it? (Score:4, Interesting)
What is really sad is that it had NOTHING TO LOWER COSTS. We are in need of tort reform (how much money is paid out for lawsuits); costs of the docs eduction; costs of the drugs; costs of the hospital; etc.
What is amazing is that the neo-cons passed a monster drug bill to help buy old votes. Part of it required the feds to pay TOP DOLLARS for the drugs. Here is the American gov who passed a bill that would make the US federal gov the single largest buyers of drugs in the world, and the neo-cons forbid negotiations for LOWEST PRICE. This is expected to costs something like 400 BILLION dollars, instead of 50 BILLION over the ten years that it was looked at. This is a nice and easy 350 billion dollars to be save. So, did the dems include that in this bill? Nope. They are leaving us at paying the TOP DOLLARS for this.
I swear, The only thing worse than a GD democrat is an elected republican. The republicans are about pure greed and corrupt. The dems are stupid. America is in serious trouble.
Re:Strikers Vow (Score:3, Interesting)
OK. Let's bet on inflation-adjusted DOW (using the Nov 1 value as a base), my offer still stands.
Re:Fixing all the WRONG problems (Score:2, Interesting)
I wouldn't lay the blame for any of these at the feet of an executive who lacks the power to do more than sign or veto any such laws. Rather highlight that all of these massive expenditures have been approved by our locally elected members of congress.
Why do we allow incumbents so much lee-way? Why hasn't there been a strict call for term limits from the people? Why do we tolerate gerrymandering? Why are the campaign laws so difficult that one needs the support of a national party in order to run in a local election? What's the magic of '435' members for the house; why do some represent millions while others thousands?
If we want to be mad about anything, it shouldn't be who signed what in the Oval Office. We should be mad that the people who are supposed to represent us don't.
We rank 37th in infant mortality (Correction...) (Score:5, Interesting)
We rank 37th in infant mortality
The US ranks 37th in *reported* infant mortality. The main difference is what is considered a live birth vs. still birth. Most countries don't count it as an infant death if the baby dies within 24 hours of birth, and in countries with less capable neonatal intensive care that happens a lot. Premies simply die and don't get counted, except in the US.
Re:What part of recent events (Score:1, Interesting)
"freer markets are recovering and us Keynesians are still bleeding jobs."
But you do not want to be an employee in a market that is so free your employer can get away with paying you 14 cents per hour, and have you work 12 hours per day.
Re:I think I can I think I can (Score:2, Interesting)
>>>"The United States ranks 31st in life expectancy (tied with Kuwait and Chile)
>>>
Correlation is not causation. The reason Americans die young is because they are so damn fat, and die of strokes or heart attacks. THAT is the cause. If Europeans were as fat as Americans they too would die early. Also consider these stats which *are* directly related to the health system:
UK HEALTHCARE WAITING TIMES (note the US wait time is typically 1/2 month)
8 months - cataract surgery
11 months- hip replacement
12 months- knee replacement
5 months - slipped disc
5 months - hernia repair
SOURCE - The BBC, May 2009
PROSTATE 5-YEAR CANCER SURVIVOR RATE
100%- United States
90% - Canada
77% - United Kingdom
*this* is just one example of why people say the U.S. has the best healthcare in the world, because the cure rate is soooo much higher than in countries where care is monopolized by the government. MEP Daniel Hannan said in early August, "The worst thing to be is elderly under the UK Health System..... you will be denied care and left starving in wards."
Re:Is mandated health care constitutional? (Score:4, Interesting)
You hide that "general welfare" part behind the Interstate Commerce clause in your sentence so well! It almost makes it seem like it has nothing to do with establishing laws that affect the general welfare of the people. I bet a lot of people who read it actually stop and have a wtf? moment, which makes them miss out on those two little important words!
You are trying to make it seem as if Congress has no power to do anything other than that which is explicitly granted in the Constitution, which is comically untrue. It makes me wonder why we don't just fill all 535 seats of Congress with printed copies of the Constitution.
The answer to your question, then, is "never", at least for a legitimate challenge. It may be "challenged" in court, wherein someone will ask that very same question ("where does the Constitution authorize Congress ..."), which is when the judge will probably have the very same response as Mrs. Pelosi.
Re:Public option, or public mandate? (Score:2, Interesting)
You sound like my 80-something mother.
"How can it be optional if they are going to fine you when you say no???" She comes from the World War 2 generation, when freedom actually meant something. I don't think today's Generation Hippy, Generation X, or Generation Me have any idea of the concept. Many of them think if they want something, it's okay to ask the government to raid their neighbors' wallets and get it.
It's a lot like how the Roman Empire's government operated.
Re:Strikers Vow (Score:2, Interesting)
Really? This is got to be the most pervasive, and dangerous bit ideology in our culture. The idea that an individual, alone against the world, can provide for themselves is ridiculous. You live in an interconnected web of people. Because you can't see through this ideology I assume you benefit from it greatly. You eat cheaply and well because of farm subsidies, underpaid and abused farm laborers, and a failure to realize all of the costs in our current agricultural systems. The government or your parents paid for your education. Giant corporate subsidies and a trillion dollars worth of bail out money are the only reason we still have enough of an economy to keep you employed. What ever "contribution" you make to the world, it in no way justifies the discrepancy between your lifestyle and that of those who work in the factories and the fields that supply your cheap goods. You rely on a construct of your imagination to keep you blind to the fact that your existence is entirely dependent on the blood, sweat, tears and goodwill of billions of other people.
Are you being sarcastic here? My detector's busted.
More seriously, we have plenty of counterexamples. Most of humanity provides for itself in that they work and the payment for that work pays in turn for their needs and wants. Sure, almost nobody is self-sufficent in that they make everything they use. But it's a great, long stretch to go from that observation to claiming that we need a nanny government. The contribution I make to the world is paid for by the people it benefits. Same goes for those factory and field workers. Why should we think that those people are motivated by "goodwill" to pick beans or monitor an auto line rather than by a steady paycheck?
Further, your statement about giant corporate subsidies and a trillion dollar bailout are made in complete ignorance. For example, during the Victorian/Gilded Age, such bailouts and massive subsidies were unheard off and bank crashes commonly inflicted as much damage as occurred in the recent real estate and financial crash. But somehow the economies of the world continued to exist and people continued to work. My view is that you can't even claim that these bailouts and subsidies are actually helping. It's probably correct to say that in the short term there are more people employed than there would be in a more laissez-faire government. But in the long term, we are damaging the future economic capability of the developed world.
All the businesses and people who need rescuing this season, will need it again when another economic mess occurs. And they'll likely be the cause as they were this time. Much of the developed world is turning into nations of delicate children, unable to think or provide for themselves ruled by fools who keep making the same basic mistakes over and over again.
Re:Strikers Vow (Score:3, Interesting)
you run your own health insurance company?
Oh. So I guess you rely on you to provide for you, except when you rely on other people to provide for you.
I don't run my own space program. Or my own race car circuit. Does that mean I'm not providing for me?
And as an aside, anyone and I do mean anyone who doesn't pay insurance is self-insured. In other words, they run their own health insurance company.
Re:Strikers Vow (Score:3, Interesting)
Not really, the meaning of "self sufficiency" is fairly clear. "Self sufficiency, apart from the bits where I make use of other people's labour" doesn't really follow.
Since self sufficiency is quite impractical, we devise systems for how to manage the division of labour. Capitalism is one such system, but not the only possible one, and I don't see why making use of a government resource is any less self-sufficient than hiring someone to do a job for you. There's no reason to believe that the outcomes of free market capitalism (which needs government to work in any case) are fundamentally the correct ones in terms of moral worth and rewarding the right people for their contributions - and quite compelling evidence that they aren't. It works fairly well in practice, but that's a different issue entirely.
Re:What's in it? (Score:5, Interesting)
I once tried to switch to a less expensive plan, but Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona would not let me switch. I have never had any significant health problems, other than being somewhat overweight and having very slight high blood pressure. It was only during the last year, that I finally needed to start taking a mild diuretic to lower my slightly high blood pressure. I am a non-smoker in good health who walks 45 minutes per day, wears my seatbelt, and does not eat junk food. Despite that, I need to pay 1/3 of my net take home income (after taxes) on Medical insurance. How much would I have to pay if I had more significant health problems?
I would like to see more willingness for Congress to ignore the lobbyists, and work on the causes of it being so expensive such as tort reform, big pharma, and the insurance industry.
Is this bill going to make my insurance less expensive, or perhaps subsidise my insurance?
Our government is already spending way more than it collects for taxes, so is this something which our country can afford without having to inflate our money supply more or borrow even money from China and elsewhere? I seem to recall Nancy Pelosi claiming that they had found some way to pay for it all. I have not really been following the news closely enough to know about those details.
Re:What's in it? (Score:1, Interesting)
I agree with everything you said.
Except this:
That won't happen of course since the US is so desperately afraid of actually letting their government do anything actually productive with their tax dollars like actually offering halfway decent public services and would much rather pay for guns or bailing out wall street millionaires, but at the least this new system might not screw over people who just have bad luck.
The problem is that the government will still do those things and charge it to the national credit card, which is already nearly maxed out at $12,000,000,000,000.
Let's do a thought experiment: tomorrow one of the government bean counters comes out and says, "You know what, I've been making a terrible mistake and hitting minus on the calculator when I should have been hitting plus. We actually have a $12 Trillion surplus instead of a debt."
If that happened, and the President and Congress came out and asked, "Hey, we found a lot of money in the couch. Health care for everyone?" you'd probably see 95% support. And if he continued, "And, I think a manned Mars colony would be pretty keen." You might see 80% support. "While we're at it, let's build 500 nuclear power plants and give everybody a double scoop of ice-cream."
People would go along with these things because we could afford it. This monstrosity costs $1 trillion over a period of time, and will increase from there. We can't afford it now, and the money that will be used will be in the form of higher taxes, more borrowing, and/or inflation (because, that's the only place the government can get money: from you, from other countries, and/or printing it).
I agree with you that a universal system makes sense, provided that it is fiscally sound. But this is like having a massive credit card bill and, instead of paying it off, deciding you really need digital cable. And a subscription to your favourite magazine. For all 304,059,724 of your closest friends. Government, pay off the debt first and then we'll talk about it.
Re:Unconstitutional (Score:2, Interesting)
The constitution says that a black person is only worth 3/5 a white person. What's your point?
We can't pay (Score:2, Interesting)
We are in two wars that we can't get out of and can't pay for. Medicare and Social Security are two huge bills from generations past that we can't pay for. We have a financial system that is on an unsustainable course and the viability of our currency is in question. The numbers used to estimate the costs of this health bill came from the very people who promote it. It is most likely the same type of bill that we have seen for at least since the DMCA was passed with a voice vote in the House and unanimous consent in the Senate.
If anyone really thinks this bill is going to benefit people beyond big pharma, unions, lawyers, Wall Street, K Street, banks, and insurance companies, they're high on crack. It's the same game, same players, bigger steaks.
Re:I think I can I think I can (Score:2, Interesting)
-Oz
Re:What's in it? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm happy they are here, but they followed the proper procedure of filling-out a Visa. Anyone who does not follow that procedure should (IMHO) be jailed and deported, the same way you arrest an intruder you find in your living room. The intruder does not belong.
I hope you never find yourself in a desparate situation in which you have to leave your family and travel accross the globe in dangerous conditions to try to make them some money because they are living in misery or in a war torn situation. It is easy to sit back and judge people from your comfortable computer. But the reality is that many "illegal" immigrants would much rather stay home with their family and children then go away in dangerous conditions to try to get their family out of misery.
I know several people in this situation. Even "legal" immigrants. They rather stay home with their families. The problems that cause people to take these desparate steps go beyond stupid local legislation in the US. And the dumb little laws people set or don't set in the US don't have a great effect over this. However, working with other countries to improve the situation back home and recognizing the importance of immigrants to the US economy (even guest workers) is a step to releiving the conditions that cause this problem.
Americans are fortunate to live in a country were hard work is rewarded. That is not the case in a lot of Latin American countries and other countries around the world where people face prejudice because of social class. Just as most US citizens came to the country escaping unfair or disadvantageous conditions back home, current illegal immigrants do so as well.