DUDE, WHERE'S MY HEALTH PLAN?

SHAME ON YOU ANDY HARRIS!

GOP frosh: Where's my health care?
By: Glenn Thrush
November 15, 2010 09:54 PM EST

A conservative Maryland physician elected to Congress on an anti-Obamacare platform surprised fellow freshmen at a Monday orientation session by demanding to know why his government-subsidized health care plan takes a month to kick in.

Republican Andy Harris, an anesthesiologist who defeated freshman Democrat Frank Kratovil on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, reacted incredulously when informed that federal law mandated that his government-subsidized health care policy would take effect on Feb. 1 – 28 days after his Jan. 3rd swearing-in.

“He stood up and asked the two ladies who were answering questions why it had to take so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care,” said a congressional staffer who saw the exchange. The benefits session, held behind closed doors, drew about 250 freshman members, staffers and family members to the Capitol Visitors Center auditorium late Monday morning,”.

“Harris then asked if he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap,” added the aide, who was struck by the similarity to Harris’s request and the public option he denounced as a gateway to socialized medicine.

Harris, a Maryland state senator who works at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and several hospitals on the Eastern Shore, also told the audience, “This is the only employer I’ve ever worked for where you don’t get coverage the first day you are employed,” his spokeswoman Anna Nix told POLITICO.

Under COBRA law, Harris can pay a premium to extend his current health insurance an additional month.

Nix said Harris, who is the father of five, wasn’t being hypocritical – he was just pointing out the inefficiency of government-run health care.

Harris hammered Kratovil on health care throughout a bitter fall campaign, despite the fact that the conservative Democrat voted twice against the reform package backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), a close Kratovil ally.

“Although he voted against Obamacare, Mr. Kratovil refuses to commit to its repeal. Dr. Harris understands that the Obama-Pelosi-Hoyer agenda threatens to pull the plug on America's long-term health," Harris said in an Oct. 30 statement. “"In Washington, I will never vote to raise taxes, I will fight to repeal health-care reform, and I will work to balance the budget."


© 2010 Capitol News Company, LLC

THE FACTS

If I had the congressman's health plan, I might think the US has the best in the world, too.  If John Boehner had my high premiums and lousy benefits on the only health plan I can get, he might reconsider.  Here's what David G Markham thinks:

JOHN BOEHNER is wrong.  America does not have the best health care in the world.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2010

The Facts - Boehner is wrong - The US does not have the best health care in the world
I am tired of the lies. It's time that Americans of which Brockporters are a local contingent know the truth.

In spite of what John Boehner new Republican speaker of the house says, health care in the United States is not the best in the world. In fact, it leaves a tremendous amount to be desired.

As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said one time, "People are entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

From now on there will be a new category of posts on this blog tagged simply, "The Facts"

From the New England Journal of Medicine on January 6, 2010

"It is hard to ignore that in 2006, the United States was number 1 in terms of health care spending per capita but ranked 39th for infant mortality, 43rd for adult female mortality, 42nd for adult male mortality, and 36th for life expectancy.3 These facts have fueled a question now being discussed in academic circles, as well as by government and the public: Why do we spend so much to get so little?"
Posted by David G. Markham at 7:38 PM  
Labels: The facts

FOLLOW THE LEADER, by Tom Toles, Washington Post

TOM TOLES POLITICAL CARTOON

A Modest (Very Responsible Centrist) Plan to save America from the Muslims

Here’s The Most Fun Aspect Of John Boehner’s Health Plan!



Now now, liberals, you can no longer smugly declare in political arguments, “the Republicans don’t even have a health care plan,” because they do! John Boehner released the GOP alternative plan a few days ago, and the CBO scored it, to much fanfare. It is but a modest (Very Responsible Centrist) plan to save America from the Muslims. One of its central tenets — and the health care thing you’ve been hearing Republicans blab on about most, after they’ve exhausted tort reform — is to allow consumers to purchase health care plans across state lines. Doesn’t that sound nice, for competition and pricing? But what if… what if many of the health insurers then set up shop in the “state” of the Northern Marianas, where there is not a single law against anything?

No one really trusted the Republicans when they claimed their plan would introduce new regulations regarding coverage of people with pre-existing conditions, elimination of lifetime caps, etc. This might be one reason why (sorry if it gets wonky, THIS STUFF IS IMPORTANT, THE GOP PLAN MIGHT PASS!):

Under Title III ‘State’ is defined as the fifty states, D.C., Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Marianas (p.122). Insurers are allowed to designate any ‘State’ as their ‘Primary State’ which if we go back to p.199 is defined: “the term ‘primary State’ means with respect to individual health insurance coverage offered by a health insurance issuer, the State designated by the issuer whose covered laws shall govern the health insurance issuer in the sale of such coverage under this part”. On page 121 we see that ‘covered laws’ include such ‘laws, rules, regulations’ governing among other things the ‘offer, sale, rating (including medical underwriting), renewal and issuance of individual health insurance to an individual’.

After a few pages of excruciating bureaucratese we come to the following on page 126: “The covered laws of the primary State shall apply to individual health insurance coverage offered by a health insurance issuer in the primary State and in any secondary state,” And this is backed up by some mandatory disclosure language on page 130 that warns insurees that their new policy is not subject to any laws of the state in which it is purchased including those which might require “SOME SERVICES OR BENEFITS MANDATED BY THE LAW OF THE STATE”. “ADDITIONALLY THIS POLICY IS NOT SUBJECT TO ALL THE CONSUMER PROTECTION LAWS AND RESTRICTIONS ON RATE CHANGES OF THE STATE”. (CAPS in original).

Now this language is followed by a bunch more pages setting out rules about lawsuits and appeals but the bottom line is pretty clear: should private insurers choose they can officially choose the Virgin Islands or the Northern Marianas as the governing jurisdiction for all their individual insurance policies and their [sic] is basically nothing the states of California, New York or Washington can do about it.

This is not to suggest that there aren’t endless streams of loopholes in every Democratic bill. But probably not nearly as many! Sometimes it takes 1,990 pages to weed them out.
Sweatshop Insurance: O’Boehner Care & the Northern Marianas [MyDD via Think Progress]


Read more at Wonkette: Here’s The Most Fun Aspect Of John Boehner’s Health Plan!

John Boehner wants to sit on my Death Panel?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/08/AR2010110804894.html

Boehner's health delusion
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, November 9, 2010;

With a John Boehner speakership fast approaching, I dutifully read up on the man. I learned he is a Midwestern fellow, born (like us all) into the virtuous lower middle class, one of 12 siblings and a man whose early career, in an unironic homage to "The Graduate," was in plastics. What I did not know - what was missing entirely from my reading - is that he might be French.

Or Japanese. Or Finnish or British or even German. Whatever the case, this much is clear: No American, certainly not one about to occupy a leadership position in our government, could possibly call the American health-care system "the best health care system in the world." Boehner did just that last week. He was having an out-of-country experience.

For statistical refutation, we need only refer to the CIA's World Factbook (no lefty think tank, to be sure) and check the health statistics. The United States is 49th in life expectancy. Our proud nation bests the Libyans in this category but not Japan, France, Spain, Britain or, of course, Italy. You not only live about two years longer in Italy, but you eat better, too.

The same doleful situation applies to infant mortality. This is the saddest of all categories since it relates to infants who don't make it to their first birthday. The CIA tells us that the nations that do the worst in this category are, not surprisingly, mostly in Africa. Then comes much of Asia and parts of South America, but when you start getting up there a bit, Cuba does better than the United States and so do Italy, Hungary, Greece, Canada, Portugal, Britain, Australia and Israel, among others. This should be an embarrassment to us all - but, clearly, it is not. To Boehner, these figures - infants dying before they can get a cupcake with a single candle - don't exist. Rather than improve the situation, he might want to cut the CIA's appropriation.

Looking elsewhere - think tanks, etc. - Boehner might come across a category that health-care expert and former Post reporter T.R. Reid labels "avoidable mortality." Among the richest nations, the United States is 19th of 19. America is awful at treating asthma, diabetes and kidney disease. If you have any of these, it's just your bad luck that you're not Japanese or French . . . or, really, anything other than American. The United States does do well with breast and prostate cancer, but these are represented by politically potent lobbies. See, we can do better when we want to.

Boehner's Panglossian sentiment is shared by Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader who has vowed to roll back the Obama health-care program. If McConnell thinks America has the best of all health systems, who can blame him? When in 2003 he underwent heart bypass surgery, it was at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. This is a government facility staffed by government employees - what is sometimes called socialized medicine. His heart did fine, but he left the hospital untreated for Rampant Endemic Hypocrisy, a communicable disease that has swept the GOP and left it vulnerable to irrationality. Michele Bachmann, who peddled the absurdity that President Obama's overseas trip was costing $200 million a day, stands in mortal peril of succumbing to it.

Almost 51 million Americans lack health insurance. They postpone treatment, seeking it at the last minute from emergency rooms - never a pleasant experience, never a cheap experience and often too late. Obama's health-care bill was meant to address this problem, among others. It was not a perfect bill and it may turn out to be the wrong way to go. But a difference in approach, even a difference in ideology, cannot change the need for reform. The United States spends upward of 17 percent of its gross domestic product on health care. European nations spend about 8 percent - and their citizens are actually healthier. Republicans oppose Obamacare. Fine. But where is their plan? Not the lauded status quo. As we can see, that's a terminal disease.

For Democrats, there's hope in Boehner's chirpy pronouncement. It shows a GOP out of touch with reality, a party of Marie Antoinettes, babbling total nonsense about health care. The same swing voters who used the election to hurt the Democrats might learn that America's health-care system is No. 1 only in health-related bankruptcies. It is best in the world only for the rich and the amply insured. Everyone else can crawl away, unseen by the next speaker of the House of Representatives - a jolly, detached fellow who thinks he lives in another country entirely.

cohenr@washpost.com

WTF?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpOUctySD68&feature=player_embedded
Why doesn't the new House Speaker want me to have a health plan?