Comments about ‘Galactic answer to health care is 41’

that tort reform must be addressed in any healthcare reform legislation, or else doctors will be forced to continue to practice self-protective medicine in a constant fear of a bankrupting lawsuit.

This is one of the huge elephants in the room that no one is willing to talk about.

So we have either the nirvana-of-obstructionists on one hand or the nirvana-of-socialism on the other.

Dr Cramer, might I remind him of that hippocratic oath thing, at least the part that makes the rounds in political circles - First do no harm!

Socialized medicine will fail. Plain and simple. And yes, I know gajerkistan, or some country does it and it works perfectly. Over the years it was Canada (shot down), then England (shot down), then France (shot down), then Sweden (shot down), etc, etc. For the hundred plus magically high performing socialist states none of their nirvanic states of bliss equate to our misreable little semi-free health care system.

The funny thing about socialists is that they never have to account for their failures. Kill 70 million people in Mao's Cultural Revolution. crickets chirp. Hyper inflation in dozens of African socialist nirvanic states, crickets chirp. Along comes health care debate, and we even listen to what the socialists have to say???

Yes, because crony capitalists have tag teamed with the socialists. The unholy alliance.

PS The nirvana of obstructionism once again fails to take into consideration free speech. Socialists hate free speech.

In my opinion Dr Cramer is totally off on the wrong tangent (like the rest of to the people who see this as mearly a 'political_problem').

The "answer" is not getting enough votes to Cram this down the rest of the American's throats, OR to get the magic number of votes to stall it.

The answer is NOT to use the "Persuasion of Power". The answer IS... to EXPLAIN the legislation to the PEOPLE in a way that they can understand it and understand clearly how it will affect them in simple and non-ambiguous terms.

Explain out_in_the_open what the RESULT of the bill will be, so we can decide IF it is something we want. Explain what the goal is (in simple terms) so we can decide IF we support it's passing and so when it passes we can judge for ourselvs, if it was successful in achieving it's goal or not.



Bottom_line...
The key is NOT just getting the_magic_number of votes needed to force this plan down the public's throats.

The key, is getting bypartisan_public_support for the plan through a more open_debate and some REAL acknowledgement of the public's remaining concerns.

We do have great healthcare. We have a broken delivery system. We also have a higher rate of mistakes than many countries.

The GOP plan which had been proposed only inceased insurance coverage for 3 million, barely keeping up with population growth. Therefore little to no net gain according to the CBO. The CBO said the House GOP plan would save $68 billion over 10 yrs while the Democratic plan would save $104 billion over 10 yrs. Therefore, the Democratic plan would cover 12 times more people and save $36 billion more than the Republican plan. Tort reform saves $54 billion, a public option between $110-$150 billion over 10 years.

Republicans aren't even in the ballpark of reality.

At least in the Senate, there was a strong effort to work with Republicans. How did Republicans react? Well, we know Hatch simply quit. Senator Grassley went home to Iowa and proceeded to perpetuate the lie of "death panels." Olympia Snowe, after being involved in MONTHS of negotiations complained it was moving too fast.

All evidence shows Republican's goal is to delay and kill any healthcare reform.

"as long as they continue to talk nothing will get done." Beautiful! That is exactly what our country needs right now - for nothing to be done! We need to stop all bills and spending and get on top of our debt or we will fail as a nation. So, let them talk and let them figure out how to stop spending like we have anything to spend.

I like your emphasis on bi-partisanship, but I'm afraid it is naive. Republicans smell blood in the water for the election of 2010, even their leader in the Senate said "we can break this president!"

Additionally, the ideal GOP health care proposal is essentially inaction, to protect their special interests in DC. Otherwise something would have been done when the GOP had Congress & the White House.

Watching the healthcare reform process carefully, it was evident in the Senate the GOP strategy was to obstruct the process, at every point, giving the special interests time to chip away at the effort, via lobbying & adversizing. (Remember Humana getting slapped for inaccurate & misleading Medicare D ads?) Orrin Hatch is incredibly hypocritical, though that shouldn't surprise anyone.

Bottom line - the GOP won. Nothing is going to happen. Zip. That is the plan.

Instead of some behemoth of a law, the results of which no one can really predict, we just need to take this one step at a time.

One law to address tort reform and defensive medicine.

One law to deal with companies denying people due to pre-existing conditions and other such problems.

One law to deal with small business and self-employment package conundrums.

One law to deal with insurance for those in poverty (well, we have that in Medicaid I guess, but maybe tweaking is in order).

THE FIRST ONE IS KEY, BECAUSE IT ADDRESSES COST STRUCTURES THAT DRASTICALLY AFFECT THE REST OF THE ISSUES!

By far the biggest impact on lowering malpractice litigation is MDs simply admitting when they make errors. Some hospitals have established this policy and litigation has dropped dramatically. Many people just want an acknowlegement that a mistake was made.

Sure, tort reform is part of the equation and could drop costs some modest amount, but just getting MDs to admit to mistakes would largely eliminate this problem.

If I was Obama I would put tort reform on the table. Based on what happened when the Public Option died, I wouldn't expect ANY movement in GOP support. None.

Eliminating pre-existing conditions denials has exactly no chance of happening. If there is no accompanying insurance mandate, people can avoid buying insurance until they get sick, which will skyrocket premiums for everyone else.

A complete non-starter, an incredibly cynical ploy by anyone on the right advocating this.

Will preventative care finally be rewarded, or will we still pay for the million dollar heart cases and not the hundreds of dollars of blood pressure or tension management? Will the states and individuals be set free to solve their own problem? I have to take exception to Dr. Cramer's analogy here. When some elite entity decides what the best course of treatment may be based on the current scientific fad. i.e. Oat bran will lower colesterol, diet and exercise will cure diabetes, BMI is the only way to measure physical fitness even though most top athletes don't meet the standard, we have a problem. Medical treatment can not and should not be a one size fits all system. Doctors spend thousand of dollars to learn their profession so they can provide the best possible advice to their patients. Patients seek doctors who can tailor a treatment plan to that individuals needs. They are free to choose to follow the doctor's direction without some third party applying a standard that may or may not be appropriate to the individual patient's condition and proposed outcome.

33 states have some sort of tort reform.

The CBO estimated tort reform would save $54 billion over 10 yrs.

Would Republicans support 60% of Democrat's healthcare plan if Democrats included 40% of Republican ideas?

Once again it is my calling and august pleasure to joust with the mindless conservatives regarding the meaning of Socialism.

Socialism is simply the sharing of effort, ownership resources and results, of a governmental entity that responds to the will of the people of the group that created it.
It can be as small as a family and as large as a nation.
It can be as simple as the county trash service or a complicated as national health care.

Socialism does not kill people,
Socialism does not ration it’s services or products,
Socialism does not enslave it’s creators.
Socialism is neither evil or holy.
Socialism is social and mixes well with other group systems.
Socialism does not prevent the free exercise of rights or freedoms, that’s government’s job.

However, good and bad can happen in Socialism, just like the good and bad in Capitalism, Religion, and any other group efforts that human beings create.

And it is unlikely that Socialism has killed any more people than Capitalism, since all wars are fought for economic reasons.

Malpractice insurance companies are like every other insurance company. When malpractice rates skyrocketed--doubling--between 2000 and 2004, claims payouts by insurance companies only rose 6%.

Whether it is health insurance, malpractice insurance, home insurance, etc. insurance companies seek to maximize profit and minimize costs. And they way they do it is by raising rates and denying claims. Denying a claim might be damage done to your home by a hurricane, fire or refusing to pay for your chemotherapy because, unbeknowst to you, you had pre-existing gall bladder disease.

It's hard not to conclude that Tort Reform is merely a ruse by the obstructionist GOP, who seem to calculate the Dems won't accept it.

If Obama & the Dems embrace Tort Reform, the goalposts would probably move (again) and we'd still have nothing. This is their objective - no action, none.

I'd love to be proven wrong.

The GOP future for boomers: little or no health care period (unless you're wealthy), shorter lives, and medical cost bankcruptcy unless you kick off promptly.

What Do Conservatives And Republicans Want on Health Care?

Seeing they get their's for free - nothing, paid by us.

Was this all the GOP could get together to run our Country?. Nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails that Todd Palin exchanged with state officials, which were released to msnbc.com and NBC News by the state of Alaska under its public records law, draw a picture of a Palin administration where the governor's husband got involved in a judicial appointment, monitored contract negotiations with public employee unions, received background checks on a corporate CEO, added his approval or disapproval to state board appointments and passed financial information marked "confidential" from his oil company employer to a state attorney. While 1,200 separate e-mails were released this week, 243 others were withheld by the state under a claim that executive privilege extends to Todd Palin as an unpaid adviser to the government. Still, just the subject lines of those e-mails provide a glimpse of the ways the Palins divvied up their responsibilities when she became governor in December 2006, less than two years before Republican Sen. John McCain pulled her onto the national political stage.

The plaintiffs bar is the second largest contributor to the Democratic party after labor unions. Tort reform will never pass as long as this congress is in power. Democrats have been bought, paid for and delivered. They are captive puppets.

@Will 12:50

But when the GOP ran they show, they didn't change it either. They share part of the blame.

Insurance holds us hostage | 8:38 a.m.

How does THIS legislation change the DELIVERY system? It doesn't. It also doesn't change the COST problem. It just addresses INSURANCE.

I agree private_insurance needs to change, but I just have to scratch my head when people say the biggest problem is COST or availability of healthcare and assume THIS BILL will fix it. It doesn't. Look into it.


And how do you figure, "we know Hatch simply quit"??? He was part of the "Gang_of_7"... who were HIGHLY involved and contributed ideas (which were 100% ignored by the Administration).


I don't agree with the Republican's plan of doing nothing. But I also don't see how THIS_legislation changes the main problem (ie cost, delivery, quality, etc). It doesn't. It just sets the stage for the government to "have to" swoop in and save us... after they DESTROY private_insurance.


Maybe Private_insurance NEEDS to be destroyed. I don't know. But PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, don't destroy it until there is a replacement plan in place (like a public_option). Otherwise we are just ASKING for a national_crisis government won't WANT_to, but will HAVE_to save us from.

@jmt

Socialized medicine was shot down in Canada, France, England, and Sweden? You might want to double check that.

And socialized medicine here will fail? Like Medicare and Medicaid?

I love how you equate the filthy socialists with mass murder. And the Dems.

Your insanity is not constructive.