Obama Promoting Health

[Winter_123]

Obama has started searching around for all sorts of new ideas on how to provide incentives to follow healthy habits andl lifestyles.

How about maybe he proposes a health care financing system that provides substantially lower rates for people who are in better health. Wait, nevermind. That only seems radical to those of us in guaranteed issue states. Scratch that idea. That is not change we can believe in.

Obama wants skinnier feds

 

[Freddie]

Obama has started searching around for all sorts of new ideas on how to provide incentives to follow healthy habits andl lifestyles.

How about maybe he proposes a health care financing system that provides substantially lower rates for people who are in better health. Wait, nevermind. That only seems radical to those of us in guaranteed issue states. Scratch that idea. That is not change we can believe in.

Obama wants skinnier feds

He is following the UK playbook to a T. I could list about 12 things the Labour Party did in the UK to destroy the country plus Islamification.

On healthcare you will get SEIU (illegal aliens union & sister org to ACORN) to unionize all healthcare workers.

Unions in the UK destroyed the car industry in the UK with the death of British Leyland. Ford is still there and GM Vauxhall will probably die. The unions in the UK destroyed most of the manufacturing there.

So far the UAW has killed Chrysler and GM. They will try to kill Ford next.

BTW - if you are looking for a real conservative in the GOP it is Rep. Michelle Bachmann of MN who is like Sarah and probably even better.

 

[Winter_123]

BTW - if you are looking for a real conservative in the GOP it is Rep. Michelle Bachmann of MN who is like Sarah and probably even better.

I am not really all that conservative. I believe radical Islam is trying to kill us and take over the world. I believe that before you even get to any discussions of distributing wealth that the country should at least preserve the means of creating some, and I believe that the government should have some rational plan for paying for any expenses that it creates. With regard to abortion, I do not take a position on the early phases but once a child has been born, I am dead set against the infanticide that Obama and NOW support regardless of what it does or does not do to the mothers choice or health. Just dont care. The infant is now a United States citizen.

However, I woke up one day and the entire country had seemingly gotten in a bus and gone to Venezuela making me and others like me look like ultra-conservatives. That is a complete crock. In San Francisco any man who keeps his pants on is considered to be a Puritan these days. Once again, a crock. Don't let these pinkos convince you that if you are not with Obama and Pelosi that you are KKK material. You might just be normal, which is a radical concept these days.

 

[Norwayguy]

I was watching cspan last night and a caller was saying the fix to health care is to take the profit out of it...Its funny whenever someone says profit and healthcare they only mean the insurance companies and insurance agents...They seem to forget the otherside of healthcare the doctors, hospitals and pharmacist and big pharma...okay big pharma is on the list too...Can you imagine make doctors,hospitals,pharmacist and the pharma industry government controlled with strict pricing controls and see how quickly we have no doctors getting in to the profession and how long it will take to get your MRI and cat scan because only1 hospital in the northeast will have these machines....I mean it can't be profit that allows hospitals to buy million dollar technology or for doctors to suffer through college, med school and residency.

 

[alexander]

I tend to agree that a free market in health care would be best but as we've seen with the financial industry, we do not actually have a free market in health care so costs do NOT currently get driven down as they would in a true free market scenario.

Your posts ring out the same as the "de-regulate" finance crowd which was code for transfer power to a few oligarchs that hold a vast advantage in the markets.

The fact is that to obtain a "free" market you either need zero regulation or good regulation.

Health care in America is a complete mess because of big-pharma and insurance groups lobby groups driving administration costs of health insurance up to over 33% of all costs.

We currently DO NOT have anything close to free market health care but have POOR REGULATION vastly favoring big-phara and insurance as real people die!

There are 2 possible approaches:
1. Create GOOD REGULATION and a fair playing field - think financial markets.

2. Remove ALL regulation. Not the important of ALL. This would include government regulation such as DRUG PATENTS. Without the protection of ridiculous patent protection regulation, drug prices would drop drastically. An please spew the R& D stuff because that is not true, every great drug researcher I know does it out of passion and not pay, only the lawyers and CEOs of big-pharma will lose the big pay-days, and that IS CAPITALISM.

I do not see #2 ever happening in America - unless there is some libertarian revolution - there is no path back to capitalism in America. Currently we have corporate class system.

So #1 is actually the better alternative, good health care regulation by the federal government to break the curernt heal care oliarchy is a posititive step.

 

[alexander]

Now I do believe in the free market ideal but after searching for individual insurance in the "free" market I've realized that health ins in the US is at least as screwed up as finance.

Many of your anti-Obama this and that posts sounds exactly like the finance "de-regulation" crap. De-regulation in finance had NOTHING to do with free markets but was simply CHANGING regulation and WEAKENING regulation to favor a few powerfull players over the individual - often called oligarchs. This HURTS AMERICA, all of us, anyway you look at it.

Similar structures seems to appear for health insurance, you get big-pharma and insurance with control of lawmakers, FDA all lined up. Then you get insurance brokers that get paid to navigate a broken market (think mortgage brokers) on behalf of the insurance firms and not the consumer - because you get paid by insurance firms, no brainer, no free market.

The mistake you all make is to think today's market is a "free" market. A free market is impossible unless there is some libertarian revolution in American. For example, there would be no patent laws in a free market and no FDA so drug costs would be drastically pushed down.

In today's market there is NO competitive mechanism to push down drug costs through compitition because of big-pharma, congress, FDA, ... protections on the big boy oligarchs.

The argument about R&D spending is a lie, because the actual scientists that do the work will always be there, they do it out of passion not money, the lawyers and big-pharma CEOs will lose thier big paydays - this is CAPITALISM.

Ask a famous scientist is she/he could patent and FDA approve a drug out of his/her garage and sell it directly? LOL

So the only real option is:

IMPROVED REGULATION - same as for the financial industry.

Today we have a system of corporate oligarchs in America, nothing to do with free markets AT ALL. A free market is NOT a de-regulated market, that is non-sense.

Fact is ALL of our markets are regulated - Patents, FDA, ...

The question is should the regulations be drawn up for the individual American (as I believe) or for huge corporations.

Obama knows it and congress is fighting him, republicans and democrates - big-pharma owns them both just like wall-street pays off both sides and gets bailed out rather then regulated.

Terms like capitalism, socialism in today's America are just noise - Obama is by far the best thing going for America today - if you are protecting you own sales in Health Insurance over what is best for your own country and nieghbors as many of these posts sound like - then you are pathetic, anti-American, coward, ect..

What needs to happen is to get rid of the old school, 20th century democrates and republicans that built thier careers by taking bribes from big lobby groups -

it amazing me when I see small time health insurance guys makting thier 200K a year and trashing America in favor of corporate oligarchs that pull in 200 million a year - there skills have nothing to do with capitalism by the way.

 

[Insuranti.com/south]

I am glad that he's not going to raise taxes! Thought I was going to have to give up my Cigs, Caffeinated beverages and Life Insurance. Oh, my bad, Think I did give up the cigs (almost $1 pack tax increase) Beverages are gonna go up .15 and he is looking at taxing life insurance to pay for his 1 trillion dollar health care plan.
Something good came out of it though, I quit smoking. But my back is starting to hurt from carrying folks. Maybe I will quite selling insurance, get free health care and sell my food stamps to buy cigarettes.

 

[Paradigm]

Now I do believe in the free market ideal but after searching for individual insurance in the "free" market I've realized that health ins in the US is at least as screwed up as finance.

Many of your anti-Obama this and that posts sounds exactly like the finance "de-regulation" crap. De-regulation in finance had NOTHING to do with free markets but was simply CHANGING regulation and WEAKENING regulation to favor a few powerfull players over the individual - often called oligarchs. This HURTS AMERICA, all of us, anyway you look at it.

Similar structures seems to appear for health insurance, you get big-pharma and insurance with control of lawmakers, FDA all lined up. Then you get insurance brokers that get paid to navigate a broken market (think mortgage brokers) on behalf of the insurance firms and not the consumer - because you get paid by insurance firms, no brainer, no free market.

The mistake you all make is to think today's market is a "free" market. A free market is impossible unless there is some libertarian revolution in American. For example, there would be no patent laws in a free market and no FDA so drug costs would be drastically pushed down.

In today's market there is NO competitive mechanism to push down drug costs through compitition because of big-pharma, congress, FDA, ... protections on the big boy oligarchs.

The argument about R&D spending is a lie, because the actual scientists that do the work will always be there, they do it out of passion not money, the lawyers and big-pharma CEOs will lose thier big paydays - this is CAPITALISM.

Ask a famous scientist is she/he could patent and FDA approve a drug out of his/her garage and sell it directly? LOL

So the only real option is:

IMPROVED REGULATION - same as for the financial industry.

Today we have a system of corporate oligarchs in America, nothing to do with free markets AT ALL. A free market is NOT a de-regulated market, that is non-sense.

Fact is ALL of our markets are regulated - Patents, FDA, ...

The question is should the regulations be drawn up for the individual American (as I believe) or for huge corporations.

Obama knows it and congress is fighting him, republicans and democrates - big-pharma owns them both just like wall-street pays off both sides and gets bailed out rather then regulated.

Terms like capitalism, socialism in today's America are just noise - Obama is by far the best thing going for America today - if you are protecting you own sales in Health Insurance over what is best for your own country and nieghbors as many of these posts sound like - then you are pathetic, anti-American, coward, ect..

What needs to happen is to get rid of the old school, 20th century democrates and republicans that built thier careers by taking bribes from big lobby groups -

it amazing me when I see small time health insurance guys makting thier 200K a year and trashing America in favor of corporate oligarchs that pull in 200 million a year - there skills have nothing to do with capitalism by the way.

The problem isnt the insurance companies its the medical delievery system. Medical Inflation ie: doctors, pharma, hospital raise cost hence the insurer must absorb those cost and then raise premiums accordingly.

R&D passion perhaps for the scientist but scientists dont fund research corporations and foundations do.. ie big money and the guilt of those who have big money.

Government intervention always increase exponentially and it's a slippery slope of totalitarianism.

Remember accepting government assistance means you surrender your rights.

 

[Mr. Bill]

I kinda sorta thought that Obama was doing what he actually wanted the rest of us to do: smoke cigarettes. The taxes are amazing, it shortens life expenctancy significantly, and the faster we can get people of the social dole of welfare and social security, the better! Now, if only Obama can subsidize some chemical to add to cigarettes to make them even more toxic than they already are, so there isn't any lingering effect of disease prior to death.

Not that you see many pictures of him "doing it" in the White House...he must be slippin $20s around the press corps photog lists these days...