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I called 202.225.6616 and thanked him. So should you!
This is patient, real, unglamorous work. Not showhorse MR. SUBLIMINAL Alan Grayson but workhorse.
Again, yay!
Printer-friendly version... keep the heat on!
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Per capita health care spending (2007):
United States: $7290
Switzerland: $4417
France: $3601
United Kingdom: $2992
Average of OECD developed nations: $2964
Italy: $2686
Japan: $2581
-- Bob Somerby
The text of HR676 (Medicare For All) as PDF (30 pages). The FAQ. Compare HR3200 with HR676.
Medicare for All would save $350 billion a year (study in New England Journal of Medicine).
In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, "I am a proponent of a single-payer universal healthcare program*." -- Bill Moyers.
* Medicare For All.
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Comments
yay!!!!!!!!
this is going to be big!
if they score it honestly it'll be damn near unstoppable
and this is what I asked my Congressman for, months ago. The form letter I got back didn't even mention Congressman Weiner, just "my constituents overwhelmingly reject a government takeover of healthcare."
Oh, and then about two weeks ago we had an announcement. My Congressman had been diagnosed (early, and successfully treated a couple days later. Who says power and money aren't a big part of longevity in the USA?) with prostate cancer.
So, Mr. Congressman, why is it fair for you to get this class-A healthcare and my next door neighbor, who drives a truck for a living, not to be able to afford an annual checkup, and should it find such a problem, exactly the same life-saving care on exactly the same life-saving pace, with exactly the same out of pocket expenses, as you?
Why, 'cause his name's Gonzales, not Neugebauer, of course.
(stomps off, swearing ....)
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18
none of the bills have been scored honestly
the cbo has been scoring only for fed budget impact. nothing cost to private sector (households and employers) or state and local govs. as a result we don't know how much obamacare (or rather any of the bills now under consideration in congress) is going to add to total national healthcare expenditures (i expect it's going to be a lot) -- or how much hr 676 could save compared to obamacare.
i just can't believe this is by accident - the cbo does what the congressional leadership request.
btw, in the last few days i've corrected chris bowers on this point three times (he keeps referring to the fed costs scored by cbo as "total costs." but, to no avail or even response. it's a really important point because when the cbo scoring comes in for hr 676 if it's done in the same way, it will probably look very bad (because the financing all goes through the fed gov instead of those nasty insurance companies).
Yes, the score will come back "unacceptably" high
because all of the cost of single payer is on the federal government and that's the only part that gets scored. The overall savings to Americans, who would pay less in taxes to cover single payer than they pay to insurers, is "irrelevant" to the CBO.
I do think we're getting this because single payer activism is having an impact. It's just that the results will be a high CBO score that they can use against single payer. It's not designed to help us, but to hurt us.
Although I'm beginning to believe that they are fucked in the long run on this issue because you can't fake healthcare policy. Anything that doesn't lower Americans' costs is going to be a huge political FAIL. So let them bring it on. We're the only ones offering the one thing Americans truly want - lower healthcare costs. And the demand for that isn't going to go away because of the piece of shit they're looking at passing.
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. " - Eleanor Roosevelt
As a matter of process and due diligence, it should be scored
Period. That's part of single payer being "on the table," so it should have happened in the beginning.
* * *
Now, what is really wanted is a full analytical study! So, that's what we point out and demand, and on it goes.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
cbo scoring
isn't normally done on a bill until it passes out of committee and becomes eligible for a floor vote, which is one reason why pelosi's offering to give single payer a floor vote was a win for our side. while there is much back and forth tealeaf reading on whether she punked weiner with this move, it did effectively move hr 676 out of committee, which is the first time that's ever happened.
technically a bill doesn't have to make it all the way out of committee, any congresscritter can request a cbo score at any time, but that doesn't usually happen unless a bill has at least a very good chance of coming up for a vote.
Well, it should have come out of committee, period
The whole process was illegitimate from the word Go, even if you leave out the secret deals Obama made.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
No response from Mr. Bowers? I'm shocked
Could you post the links? We might need them for later.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
links per request
in chronological order:
http://www.openleft.com/diary/15570/cost...
http://www.openleft.com/diary/15622/heal...
http://www.openleft.com/diary/15626/pelo...
cbo scores
are honest [even though, at best, they're really only educated guesses].
their immediate purpose is for the congress critters to get an estimate of how much their proposed legislation will cost the federal government. this is so that they'll know whether [and if so, by how much] they'll need to raise taxes to pay for whatever laws they pass.
i'd like to see this talk of honest/dishonest cbo scores go away.
respectfully disagree
i have no reason to doubt the actual numbers from cbo, or the results as they report them. it's the way the numbers are being used -- by congress and reporters -- because the fed costs are almost always taken as total costs. it's not just about knowing how much taxes are to be raised, it's also being used as a way to compare different plans or how much it's going to cost to insure people.
when used in those ways (other than to plan for taxes), the overall effect is imo dishonest because it is misleading. all congress has to do is request the cbo report more fully, or alternatively make clear when they talk about the cbo reports that they don't know total cost (and component details), the report is only fed cost.
i am really curious how much obamacare is going to increase total national healthcare expenditures. if $2.7 trillion and 17% of gdp is a problem (or whatever the current data is, i've lost track), shouldn't we care how reform may impact those numbers?
as far as i can tell, the cbo did more complete reports during the clintoncare debates. some of them are listed here:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/23/746091/-CBO-Analysis:-How-Much-Would-Single-Payer-Cost-(updatex2)
.....
anyway, hipparchia, if you have any alternative suggestions for me on how to discuss the issue -- something that both conveys my outrage and avoids the use of "dishonest" -- i'd be happy to reconsider.
You might try to evolve a formula like...
"As usual, CBO scoring is used to mislead..."
"The usual suspects conflate CBO scores with total costs...."
The scores can be honest, while the process in which they are embedded is deeply dishonest.
I'd try to rework CBO into a clever acronym. like Cost Before Obfuscation, but it's too early.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi