Just posted this link to a NYC public radio talk show comments thread on whether the last two years of Dem governance will be a good thing in the long term (note, of course, that in the long term we’ll all be dead).

Will Satelan thinks it will be good and make people happy! And Pelosi and Obama will come out ahead…in the long run.

How high will the uninsured numbers go by 2012??

Remember folks-if you don’t have health insurance and get sick, please have the decency to die quickly. It’s so much less embarrassing for the powers that be in Washington.

The thimble-sized amount of good accomplished by this POS bailout of the Health Care industry is not worth keeping, period. Democrats and Obama had a fucking mandate to fight the price-gouging sleaze merchants of the for-profit insurance industry; it’s what they campaigned on to get elected. They not only broke every promise made to we the people, they bent over backwards to throw money at an industry that should be put out of business.

Hell yeah, it should be repealed…but it won’t. Republicans will fall in love with the individual mandate – its soooo pro-business.

Repeal the now admittedly Republican HCR bill.

More proof that republican policies, the one embedded in the HCR bill, do not work.

Here’s my $100. Health Insurance premiums will rise, due to the need for ever increasing revenue for the insurance companies while their subscriber base continues to shrink.

I downgraded my health coverage during the last open enrollment. The premiums were becoming too expensive and the plan I used to have was not covering as much, percentage-wise, as it used to.

But, now, I’m afraid of owing a lot in taxes next year, since those premiums were a bit of a tax shelter and my new HMO costs a whole lot less.

And, of course, the tax breaks are probably going to expire at the end of December. I have little hope that they’ll be extended.

If people think that the best Democrats can provide is 59 million uninsured and rising costs, they’ll listen to whatever nonsense the other side has to offer.

Which is why continued support of ACA by Obama and the Dems is suicide.

In 2012 Obama will have to run against himself. How will he do it? Talk out of four sides of his mouth?

AND rates, co-pays and new-pays (things not prior co-pays) INCREASED for US already “insured”, As ILL! Obamanibly SiCKO, indeed!

Spot on. Who cares if it is repealed or not? The entire cumbersome, corrupt superstructure is teetering and about to fall. Let it. Only crisis spurs change in this nation of idiots.

Health Insurance premiums will rise, due to the need for ever increasing revenue for the insurance companies while their subscriber base continues to shrink.

Good let it rise. The higher it rises the more people are thrown off their company health insurance plans and the less they can afford insurance when they are on their own. It’s a truly vicious cycle and it is brutal but that is the only thing that the great cow-faced American intellect responds to.

As OilyBumbler dithers more people are falling into poverty and losing their health insurance. Criminal negligence. Disgusting.

If the Congressional Democrats were smart (HA! yeah, I know), they’d hold their fire while the Republicans bring up repeal. The Republicans want a vote on repeal to please the base, knowing it won’t actually be repealed. So the Democrats should just STFU, let them bring up repeal for a vote, then voter overwhelmingly to repeal. Give it veto proof majorities, and kill it.

Run in 2012 on single payer.

That would be the smart play.

So no chance in hell it will happen.

Among adults age 18-64, and in case you didn’t know that’s the voting age, 22% are uninsured. Half of the uninsured have incomes over the poverty level. 40% of them have one or more chronic diseases

This is disgusting. Welcome to Third World America.

With three and one-half more years for HCR to be completely in place, bend over and smile while insurance companies rake in profits from the last of their golden egg…. Smile :-)

Who coulda anticipated.

As I’ve typed before, O has an extreme talent in his eleventy mention chess for finding the sweet spot guaranteed to piss off all sides to the maximum degree.

I think Margaret said it best the other day. Placing something sweet on a cow pie doesn’t make the cow pie edible.

…this is about not being able to afford health insurance.

so they’ll really love it when the fines kick in, and they get a bill from the IRS, for not buying junk insurance at rates set by the obscenely profitable, greedy, payment denying insurance cartel.

I can picture folks opening up the envelope and saying “Thanks, Democrats!”

The thimble-sized good that the POS bill is doing is standing between my family and financial disaster. You treat it with cynicism if you like. I prefer to grasp any straw I can against a darkening sky. Maybe if you had a real medical financial mess to contend with, you’d have a more mature attitude and we’d have a better health care bill. But I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. Repeal this bill and I’m sure a few people will die, because there are provisions of the bill that have gone into effect right now that are forcing insurers to cover people that would not be covered otherwise, and would be too expensive for themselves or their families.

Have at it, cold heart.

Obama plans to run on “likability.” But as more and more folks associate him with high unemployment, the mortgage mess, rising health insurance premiums, etc., the less “likable” he will become.

In any event, his failure to lead on any issue of importance to voters will overpower any “likability” he has left. Americans hate weakness.

I have heard that the economy and jobs were the deciding factor this election. Maybe. But just imagine what a progressive implementation of medicare for all would have done to inspire voters. One thing at least that our government was trying to do for us, the people.

I’m with the Republicans on this. It was a horrible giveaway to insurance companies and it won’t do anything but collapse of its own bloated and ineffective weight.

Is anyone other than the insurance companies in favor of it? Anyone?

You know, its just amazing how oblivious many people are to all this. I have 2 friends, one who is wealthy and the other who works in a prosperous company and handles the books. They both don’t give one damn for all the people who get sick and go bankrupt and then die because of no insurance/ under insurance/ insurance that won’t pay up. It’s a classic case of I got mine and tough luck for everybody else. Since they have red carpet medical insurance they don’t want any part of the status quo tampered with. You can argue until you are blue in the face and they just won’t hear it. Nothing sways them. Not the death or the suffering or the children or the bankruptcies or the harm to the economy.

When Democrats spend 16 months on a landmark health care law, and the first data after passage is that the ranks of the uninsured went up, it threatens public support for the law, already at a low level.

It also threatens public support for Democrats generally. They brought it on all by themselves. What failures.

With so many Blue Dogs gone, why is Steny Hoyer still considered part of the leadership?

After the losses in the Senate, why isn’t Schumer fighting to get rid of Reid? Reid failed to get the level-playing field public option into the Senate’s version. He’s to blame for Senate Democrats’ losses. Why not kick his sorry ass out of the leadership?

…there are provisions of the bill that have gone into effect right now that are forcing insurers to cover people that would not be covered otherwise, and would be too expensive for themselves or their families.

Could you elaborate on those provisions, please?

You answered my question, so I will answer you. That graduated progression towards medicare for all should have put you in the first tier, along with the children that the bill we have, and those who were not being served because of pre-existing conditions. It could have been done so that none of the folk who really need services were being left out. Pay for it? Tax those hugely rich blighters, tax them out of their skins!!!!

Yeah, the US of Amnesia was from the beginning screwed up because of the Puritans and their fucked up ideology. We’ve never matured past that cromag stage. Bunch of children. But we will learn our lesson one day. You can’t run a country like this and expect it to survive. Depraved indifference only takes you so far.

Indeed! He is the master. Who’s left? A few increasingly stupid looking Obamabots and the African-American population who I kind of feel sorry for in that the 1st black President has turned out to be such a pathetic joke.

I sympathize with your situation, but you should also consider that most of the country is a single medical emergency away from financial disaster. A car accident, or an injury at work, or a simple fall. That’s the end, welcome to bankruptcy. Say goodbye to your home (if you haven’t already, and were fortunate enough to have one in the first place). Say goodbye to any savings you may have.

I can’t go to the doctor, because I can’t afford health insurance through work, but I’m over the income limit for medicare and medical. If anything were to happen to me, my family would be ruined as well.

This bill, as promised by Obama, was supposed to help ALL OF US, ondelette. Not some of us, all of us. Instead, it made my health insurance unaffordable while helping you. Can you see why it would make sense to me and mine if this bill were repealed?

And if we don’t repeal it, a lot of people will die.

If repealed and replaced with single payer, it’s ALL IN, with no one left behind.

And it CAN be done as single payer is approved by a majority of Americans in poll after poll after poll.

So don’t play the cold heart card so fast. I’m worried about the 45,000 that will die every year between now and the time we get real healthcare.

On edit, paragraph two should have read “MediCal”, for California’s state insurance.

But why can’t we all just learn to accept that the system is a little less shitty and that we’re getting a few more crumbs with no more real savings for crappy care?

Thank you, Democrats. Oh, thank you.

After the losses in the Senate, why isn’t Schumer fighting to get rid of Reid? Reid failed to get the level-playing field public option into the Senate’s version. He’s to blame for Senate Democrats’ losses. Why not kick his sorry ass out of the leadership?

That might upset the “comity” of the Senate.

Hopefully when things really go to hell, Canada will take us as refugees. Then we can have real health care.

FULL DISCLOSURE: BTW, this is NOT about me. I’ve already got the best health care in the world, free. You mentioned it personally affected you so it’s probably best I give that disclosure. But I’ve got family and friends that are without coverage, including my only son.

That might upset the “comity” of the Senate.

Now that would be tragic…

it’s already too expensive – there’s a reason few, if any now covered by the law are signing up and it aint just abjectly flat footed messaging – who in the hell thinks struggling families in AL can pay $500+ a month. and oh never mind that anyone who does sign up makes them ineligible for the exchanges in 2014.

you like to tout what it has done to date, but fail to point out the law as currently written does nothing in the way of regulation or oversight other than to pass responsibility on to already cash strapped states

and for you to scold us all ’cause you got yours even if means Hyde is now codified says a lot about cold hearts

Jane has a fresh cross-post up: Catfood Commission Presser Livestreaming at 1pm ET

The uninsured are rising. Commodity prices are rising. Unemployment is high and unmoving. Govt’s are cutting back workers and services. More people in shelters and soup kitchens, tossed out of their homes.The super rich are becoming the hyper-super rich. Europe is getting wobbly again. The entire world hates America because of its endless unwinnable wars and foolish economic bullying.

Criminy, this is getting to be JUST like the Great Depression only this time it isn’t a nation of ag based self reliant survivors. It’s a nation of spoiled post- prosperity brats with guns!

I’m sorry, I’m just feeling crabby this morning.

I notice he just fairly leaped at the chance to elaborate on what provisions are so good in this pos. Not.

Repeal the now admittedly Republican HCR bill.

The Republicans are so good they passed the HCR bill without one Republican voting for it.

What does that say about the Democrats?

Frankly we’d all be better off with repealing Obamacare completely except for the (“high risk pool”) pre-existing condition insurance plan and then pass Ron Paul’s “private option” bill that puts the cost of all of premiums, deductibles and payments onto the US Treasury (ideally, it would be refundable even when premiums exceed taxes paid, but even Paul’s bill “as is” would be a vast improvement over the status quo).
http://www.ronpaul.com/2010-05-27/ron-paul-introduces-the-private-option-health-care-act/

That would use Republican legislation to socialize medical costs, it wouldn’t take too long for the all the wasted billions on insurance overhead to lead directly to a single payer Medicare for All bill.

but, but, but Obama said he gave the nation health care in our time.

What Democrats?

Republicans are pit bulls and Democrats are Rags, the robotic dog in Woody Allen’s “Sleeper”.

Politics is a zero-sum game. HCR was such an enormous positive for the Republicans politically (and economically, in terms of benefiting their healthcare lobby allies), it was by equal measure an enormous negative for Democrats. Its astonishing, really, what can be achieved when incompetence and mendacity join forces. I have no doubt that if you gave him a couple hours, Michael Brown of Hurricane Katrina fame could have come up with more progressive healthcare legislation than Baucus and Obama did.

Let’s face it, if the Obama team were in charge during World War II, America’s main export today would be Japanese Army comfort women.

German speaking American comfort women.

I can’t afford health care with my pre-existing conditions,it’s not offered by my employer, and many of my friends and relatives are in the same boat I’m in…if I and mine get truly sick we will die, most likely horribly and in pain… I’m happy that it does some good for your family and that you can afford it, but frankly you know as well as I do that these “reforms” where half-assed and not enough by half to address the problem….so please go stuff your sanctimonious guilt trip where the sun don’t shine.

Health Care is a right…not a privilege…oh wait I forgot, that only applies if you can afford it.

65 million at a guess.

The Republicans are so good they passed the HCR bill without one Republican voting for it.

Don’t often agree with you alan, but, WOW, you really nailed it.

Ha! ha! what happened to the 36 million who never had coverage but supposedly now have coverage…..This is what the Obama sycophants like to herald as his crowing achievement.
Can someone tell ‘em that you have to actually have “coverage” what the Prez says on TV is not coverage,that’s trying to cover the gaping hole in his ass with words.

Seems like that starter house that we bought is now a out-house.

High-risk pool insurance has gone into effect. It may not seem like a very big provision, it doesn’t affect huge numbers of people, and it isn’t cheap, since it’s individual health insurance, but compare huge payments directly for medical costs to high monthly payments for insurance costs, and the insurance still works out much lower.

“Half of the uninsured have incomes over the poverty level …”

Which means the other half doesn’t, making many eligible (eventually) for Medicaid. It is already difficult to find a doctor willing to accept Medicaid. The numbers bandied about at the time ACA was passed suggested that Medicaid would absorb about 1/3, 12 to 15 million, of the uninsured expected to be included under Obamacare.

I said at the time that with unemployment trending as it was that the Medicare eligible number would like balloon to 18 – 20 million. The statistic cited above suggests that the Medicaid eligible number may already be 25 – 30 million.

With too few doctors willing to take medicaid, the poor and indigent will continue to flood the emergency rooms only now they will have taxpayer funded insurance. This eventuality is unsustainable for even a short time.

Is it any wonder that Texas is already looking to opt out of Medicaid? And I wouldn’t be surprised if the republicans try to shut down Medicaidd altogether.

You’re ignoring something. What I’m talking about is someone who was in worse shape than you who was faced with something even less affordable than what you’re describing that the current health care bill made cheaper. Shove that in your whiny description and put it where the sun don’t shine. At least you’ve got an employer.

Well technically you’re correct of course. Before someone with really bad conditions couldn’t buy insurance. They were 100% “uninsurable”.

So now they have the option of paying $5,000-$8,000 (depending on state) a year for insurance instead of paying out of pocket.

Now the point I think you’re missing is that for most folks living paycheck to paycheck, that extra $5,000-$8,000 a year is just as equally out of reach as paying out of pocket for the care is.

If you’re one of those that can take advantage of it, great, I’m happy for you. And for the few others that it’s helped. And I sincerely hope the new community health clincis helps others.

But overall, most folks are right where they’ve been all along, unable to afford care unless their employer, out of the goodness of his/her heart, offers it as part of their compensation. Even then, many can’t afford care due to the co-pays and amount they’re responsible for since hardly any employer pays 100% of the premiums anymore.

This bill does NOTHING to control costs. Nothing. It leaves in place the same for-profit insurers that have been denying care all along. And all it does is mandate (and helps some with subsidies) the purchase of new policies. The health insurance industry will still have the final say over what they cover and what they won’t. And that part doesn’t kick in for years.

If we repeal this POS, run in 2012 on single payer, win, and get it passed first thing 2013, then by 2014 when this POS was about to take effect, the real deal can take effect.

And I hope that happens, and will whatever I can to ensure that happens. Because even when this POS kicks in, there are no cost controls, so as premiums go up the subsidies will cover fewer and fewer people, and all it provides is an insurance policy. An insurance policiy that lots of folks might find just as useless as no policy at all if they can’t afford the deductibles, co-pays, and fees.