Congress to Pass Health Insurer Profit Protection and Enhancement Act of 2009

So now we are going to be more like Europe and less than China. Thats ok with me.

the insurance bill is nothing like Europe. In Europe, they have single payer.

Well, at least we'll get tyrannical top-down control of the health care industry. I'm gonna love filling that new mandatory insurance section on my 1040 under penalty of perjury. Mr Obama's goal of course is the destruction of the private health insurance industry and single payer. So whatever form this bill takes is irrelevant as it will be an incremental step to be "fixed" later.

660- I honestly cannot tell if you are being sarcastic or not.

This bill is looking to be a massive fail. I loathe Lieberman.

Hi MM, sorry sarcasm is one of my traits. But seriously, in my opinion this bill has little to do with its lofty intentions. It has to do with power & control.

Mr Obama's goal is single payer and destruction of the private health insurance industry. This is well documented.

Regarding mandatory insurance, it will be a matter of law under penalty of fines. There are subsidies and exemptions for low-middle class, medicare/caid, and so on which have to be handled and documented some way for every individual in the country. So let's say you make 25K/year and don't quality for Medicaid but do qualify for a health insurance subsidy. How would one claim the tax credit? How do you claim current credits now as in Earned-Income tax credit, or the $8000 first homeowner tax credit, or $1500 credit for enegry efficient home improvements? Ah yes, the 1040 tax form.

Our friend from Connecticut is quite a loser but I'm not sure if we agree. As a conservative Democrat (Independent...whatever) he has conservative instincts... he opposes Medicare@55 and the public option on the obviously ruinous fiscal results. But he's not a *Conservative*; he's still basically supportive of the current Democrat agenda and this top-down control of private industry. So in that respect, yes, he's a loser.

but i don't think that's your problem with him though ;)

why blame lieberman? he's a known commodity--an asshole. i'm starting to lose faith with obama--at some point, the attitude that any health care bill is better than none is going to backfire if it hasn't already.

Oh, for my part I'm not blaming Mr Lieberman. Nobody should be voting...for any of these bills. Show me some tort reform; work with the states to increase insurance competition across state lines; advocate better health, diet & exercise on the part of the public, wean the younger generations off medicare.

Columbia... yeah... i'm getting scared...they are making suasage.... I dont' know if i wanna eat the end product....

660 - usually my sarcasm detector is pretty good but with you I was unsure. I wish Obama's end goal was single-payer but I don't really think so.

Lieberman IMO is probably one of the most self-serving 2faced politicians in recent memory (I'm younger than 30 though). He was all for the medicare for 55+ not even 3 months ago.

He serves the insurance industry (huge in CT) and his goal with this reform is just to water it down as much as possible and to get revenge on the liberal dems for supporting Lamont.

Obama and the dems better get their act together, otherwise there will be a lot of seats lost next year.

What does "wean the younger generations off medicare" mean?
IF you want to save $$ allow the healthy younger generations (such as myself) to buy into medicare to make it more cost-effective. And if people are so against public insurance let them buy into private insurance.

I have to head out unfortunately so I cannot continue this discussion further.. It was obvious to many, including myself, that Lieberman would do something like this. I don't know why Reid wasn't prepared. Lieberman is a snake and not to be trusted.

Hopefully next year we'll be getting a more effective majority leader, who hopefully is a dem and not McConnell.

>> Obama and the dems better get their act together, otherwise there will be a lot of seats lost next year.

i can only hope (about the lost seats). MM, rest assured that Mr Obama's advocates single payer and the destruction of the private insurance industry as evidenced by his speeches in front of private leftist audiences: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpAyan1fXCE

Not that he's above lying about it in public though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDAPLb-HVcM

>> What does "wean the younger generations off medicare" mean? IF you want to save $$
>> allow the healthy younger generations (such as myself) to buy into medicare to make
>> it more cost-effective. And if people are so against public insurance let them buy
>> into private insurance.

This Medicare thing is sorta like an office that has free coffee and bottled water. Some people *never* drink water and only have a cup a day. But when you supply unlimited amounts of a thing for free...damn, people drink like 5,6, 10 bottles of Evian a day and the 3-4 cups of coffee. It's unsustainable.

mmarquez110, with respect you don't understand how Medicare works. Every payroll check in the country has 2.9% deducted for Medicare. It's actually split btwn you and your employer. So assuming you have a job and pay your taxes you ARE paying into it you see? That money goes into some absurd "fund" that doesn't even exist.

It's all a very big lie inflicted on you you see?

Medicare and SocSec aren't in the budget, they are "off-books" obligations that Congress just writes a check for every year. And don't try to cash that check as there's no money in the bank...it's all debt or simply printing money. That sounds great, but every dollar you print or borrow makes the dollars you have worth less. So once the inevitable inflation explodes you won't appreciate paying $4 for an apple when you still make about the same money.

While younger generations need to be adults about the situation, our leadership should not be treating them like children. The money and benefits won't be there so pick an age like...i dunno..21, 30, 40? I dunno. You say to them that we made a big mistake with these mathematically unsustainable entitlements and that the benefits will never be there. That will give younger generations the chance to prepare is all.

In summary, when I say "ween", I say that the younger generations need to plan for their retirement. And they can't plan if our leadership is perpetuating lies and otherwise encouraging ignorance about their benefits that won't exist. It's not right.

so...the younger people continue to pay in with no hope of ever receiving a benefit when they're older?

Hi Columbia; is that like Chatham NY Columbia County? Nice country up there. Anyways...I can't tell the future but I'm basing my assertions on basic math....

At inception Medicare had 6 workers paying in to every 1 recipient getting benefits. Now there are btwn 3 and 4 paying in and the ratio is getting worse over time in terms of shrinking relative contributions. The current published unfunded mandates reported by the Social Security and Medicare Trustees exceeds 110 Trillion Dollars.

$ 110,000,000,000,000.00

That's 5x our combined GDP and National Debt. So if the system exists at all I don't know what it can possibly provide in terms of services. It's plainly unsustainable. Do you have an opinion?

It's bad bill, an unwieldy mess with mixed up incentives, Start over, please.....

The entire approach to this legislation has been peculiar. The leadership got out in front of themselves making promises, and they have been trying to jam what might be the single most expensive piece of legislation in history through in the midst of one of the worst recessions, while the government is already hemmoraging cash, with little exploration of what it really means, what it will provide, what it will cost, or how it will be paid for. The dems are acting like republicans, banging the table and insisting each knows what is better for everyone. In their current form, these proposals have no hope of success in reducing costs -- layering more bureacracy will only add to overall medical cost and waste. Instead of spending a few trillion on health insurance, maybe the government should buy a few of the large healthcare and hospital chains, and for $50 billion or so they could be up and running providing a "public option" in delivering health care, rather than delivering health insurance.

As a complete aside, it will be an interesting question for law school final exams around the country as to whether the idea that, from birth, a person must pay for health insurance whether they want it or not is a permisible topic of federal legislation.

660: lets kill the entire defense budget first and then if there's no money left, I can live with that. but i continue to find it amazing that afghanistan and iraq dollars are off the table.

Hi Columbia, nice concept but not realistic, no? The Iraqi Adventure aside, the security provided by our forces do play a critical role in ensuring our prosperity here at home. No? Also note that the military is expressly mandated by the Constitution and essential. So I don't have a problem with it in principle.

what prosperity? do you have any idea what it would take for the average citizen to finance their own retirement medical expense? what is the figure for the average retirement savings for baby boomers? $25K? how long would that last if they had to pay for their own medical care? then what? send them to iraq?

by the way...i missed the part in the constitution mandating $780 billion for the military? can you show us the citation?

So a better concept is that we pay for your SS and medicare and then do not get our own? Talk about unrealistic. Geez, we're already going to be paying for all of the bailouts.

Sure CC. Article 1, Section 8 enumerates the powers of Congress. Among those are: "To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years"

and the reference to the $780 billion? where's that?

Sir, are you serious? I hope you are not being childish. There is nothing required of our system to specify dollar amounts for expenditures. Our federal government is empowered to do many specific things regarding money including raising revenue through taxes, coining money, borrow money, and so on.

The concept of separation of powers in our system puts the purse strings squarely in Congress' control. The manner of which is specified in Section 7 "All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.". section 8 and 9 enumerate Congress' powers and restrictions respectively.

Amendment 16 also empowers Congress to raise revenue through income tax.

so...why not cut the military budget down to a couple of hundred million? no problem with the constitution in doing that, right?

Nothing at all, from a constitutional perspective.

c'mon CC you know as well as the rest of us that if we don't spend billions on developing the newest and most powerful weapons, then the rest of the world (especially the Chinese and the Mexicans) will steal our precious bodily fluids.

the way things are going, the chinese won't be stealing anything....just collecting on what we owe.

I wanted, I want Obama to succeed. But , come on humans living in America, it's just sad to see all that promise whittled down to pushing this screwed-up bill, with ludicrous arguments. Everyone, even the supporters, know it is a mess, and the Dems are in an internal debate about whether it is better to pass a mess or risk delaying even longer.

i'm just happy they're turning down the volume on commercials. alleluiah!!!!

>> what prosperity? do you have any idea what it would take for the
>> average citizen to finance their own retirement medical expense?

Alot of money for sure. But you seem to trust a system that is 110 trillion in the hole on future obligations to work out well. Newsflash, it's not. The current federal system will have to ration care eventually...there's no way around it. As Mr Obama said "we're broke, there's no money left".

And I object to you making some nexus between the military and federal health care expenditures. Fine...cut the pork out of military spending. But then give me my money back thank you. If there's some workable way to have government-run coverage I'd like to see it in state governments that have to run on a budget like private industry. Let states do their thing and then we learn from the different models. But central planning, yuck.

i have no idea where you have come up with the figure of 110 trillion but...how will individuals come up with the money for their medical care? sounds like you'd put 'em in camps and shoot them.

and by the way, he's president obama, not mr. obama.

Sorry, no disrespect intended...just a language thing on my end. I use "The President" or Mr Obama interchangeably (been reading too much Economist). I find "President Obama" very wordy and formal for everyday use but I'll accommodate.

but calling me, "sir," you find that chatty and informal?

Just being polite :)

>> i have no idea where you have come up with the figure of 110 trillion

SocSec and CMS have trustees that produce annual reports here http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/2009/ and here http://www.cms.hhs.gov/reportstrustfunds/downloads/tr2009.pdf.

But it has to do with the fact that since 1970 Medicare growth has outpaced GDP and wages by about 2-3% per year. So they're out of control fiscally. These are off-books meaning we haven't budgeted for them at all. So when you take the projected growth trend of 2-3% over GDP and wages out to the horizon you get a very ugly number out towards 2060/2070 that is 110 trillion in today's dollars.

but your answer is to shut it down.

my answer is to shut down the defense budget first.

by the way...how old will you be in 2070?

Okay so your figure of 110trillion is an extrapolation over the next 50-60 years, right? If we instituted some good reforms today, there is an excellent chance that over that half a century we could significantly close the gap between the actual funds and the obligations.

but it sounds so much better to say we're in the hole for 4 trillion billion million.

Do you think googolplex is going to make a come back soon?

no sir, i do not.

CC, come on that's not me. When the system collapses fiscally because we don't take responsible action now...that is "shutting off". What I advocate is a gradual and less-painful weening-off of the younger generations. That's different. And keep in mind that I'm not the one making promises I can't keep on the backs of our future generations...it's our government.

But to your question.... 97.

hey CC, want the same thing as you I think but disagree with you on whether it's possible. Certainly disagree with President Obama's current methods. Good conversation though, later.