PLEASE CALL THIS pprick now

Barrasso, John – (R – WY) Class I
307 DIRKSEN SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-6441

people will suddenly forget they’re elected politicans run-of-the-mill hacks and nutjobs.

Fixed it.

EPUed from last thread

Reply
ThingsComeUndone February 24th, 2010 at 10:44 am
54
Has anyone run the numbers on Obama’s tax cut vs the 2% of yearly income fine vs the cost of private insurance yet because the Righty blogs certainly will.

WAXMAN is killin em!

Ok Dick but what is the GOP plan free markets status quo when the insurance companies are increasing rates? Please GOPers say that on TV.
Between the GOP *cough* plan and the Obama plan the only real choice is National Healthcare now.
Lower costs better results the French live longer pay less per person and eat, drink and smoke like we do plus unlike the untested Obama plan or the GOP’s plan nobody likes this plan has been working for years.

We need to hammer in the idea Government, Private Insurance who cares who takes my money I want the plan that costs less and lets me live longer.
French style National Healthcare beats Obama and Private Insurance.

When was the last time any of these “doctors” practiced? Do they see patients on the side during their lunch break? In the House/Senate medical office? Have any of them been trained in the new CPR techniques?

Whats the difference between Government Death Panels and Private Insurance Death Panels? Well Sarah choose a Government plan for her kid:).

Let’s face it, none of this nonsense would matter or resonate with anyone if Obama had been true to his campaign rhetoric and been a leader. Obama’s betrayal and weakness has given these gasbags more fuel than they ever could have hoped for.

Will Glen Beck call out Sarah…naw its OK If your a Republican. If Private Insurance is so great I want the Obama plan to force Congress to get Private Insurance or pay the 2% of yearly income fine.
If a Private Insurance plan is not good enough for them its not good enough for me.

Agreed!

Meanwhile, we just got our renewal notice from Kaiser and our health insurance plan just got jacked up 10%. We will now officially pay more for health insurance than for rent. Not including the costs of doctor visits, medications, and other medically necessary equipment for our asthmatic child.

I think the Dem plan all along was to wait until we stopped paying attention then pass in the middle of the night this crap bill.
To bad we won’t stop paying attention.

I wonder if the Congressional Budget office has studied how much consumer spending would drop if Private insurance keeps raising rates? If the Obama plan takes away our cash so the insurance companies can invest in a still unregulated financial market where hugh losses can occur because its a ponzai scheme?

Please Welcome James Fallows, and Host Jim White in a book salon: FDL Welcomes James Fallows, How America Can Rise Again

No kidding…think how much cash would be floating around the economy if a fraction of the money spent on junk insurance went into consumer goods instead. Then consider how many jobs would be created if there was universal access to healthcare. It’s mindboggling.

Barasso, Coburn in the Senate. Broun in the House. The docs who were in Med school when Medicare was passed don’t want their incomes hurt.

And Morris, another member of the GOP Dick Army raises his ugly head again.

Well, we know Bill Frist was still practicing on the side while in Congress–remember his brilliant long-distance Terry Schiavo diagnosis?

With the ideas these bozos have about evolution, it’s a wonder any of them could pass Gross Anatomy.

Saw Dick Morris on a cable cooking show. He was making his famous toe jam.

Heh. Yeah…I’d trust Bill Frist with my life after his diagnosis of Schiavo. Good reminder of why R doctors are not to be trusted.

Seriously, I wouldn’t go to the likes of Tom Coburn for a hangnail. First off, he probably charges out the nose in the name of “free enterprise.” Second, as bizarre and outdated as some of his ideas are, I’d be worried he was going to break out the leeches.

Beat me to it. Frist was all up in arms about Sciavo & how her husband had no rights to make decisions bc Frist could “see all” from wherever it was that he was standing (and god told him, so there). then when the diagnosis came back after Sciavo’s autopsy: crickets from Frist, the Catholic Church, and all those rightists who insisted it was outrageous to remove her feeding tube.

And wasn’t Tom Coburn an Ob/gyn who was advising Senator ScrewAround Ensign in some medical capacity?? WTF? Ensign has Ob/gyn “issues”? Well, don’t answer THAT questions, but seriously… what a laugh that these Repukes know anything that makes them some kind of “expert” in anything except ripping citizens off and doing a piss-poor job.

anyhoo, Dick Morris is always fulla sh**, so there’s no there there.

The Doctors were or are experts in collecting money from the system. When did they become experts in paying into the system?

The whole meme is bullshit.

None of these ‘bills’ will do anything to lower the cost of health care. As long as hospitals charge over 100 bucks each for a Tylenol.
My little sisters kid is a doctor and he went into cosmetics. I asked why not general medicine and his reply was only a chump would take less than 500k a year and I deserve the million five after taxes I make.
Also if Microsoft used the same markup the drug companies do a copy of Windows 7 would cost over 300 thousand dollars.
Yes the health insurance cartels are greedy and imho everyone that works for one should be unemployed and replaced by a sane single payer system. But even if we did Medicare for all tomorrow there is no way the poor and middle class could afford it unless we deal with all of the greedy people getting fat off the misery of their fellow man.
I think people in the medical field should make a good living. Where I live 50k makes ends meet in a very good way but 1.5 million is a tad much and that mindset needs as much reform as blue cross does.
Thanks for letting me vent
ld

And yet, Morris has a point. There is not a more respected profession in this country, thanks in large part to the billions the federal government spends training doctors– every residency slot in the United States is funded by Medicare– and the tough licensing regulations that state governments set for the privilege of practicing medicine, but I digress. The point is if a lawyer and a doctor disagree about a medical issue, its a tough sell for the lawyer to win that public debate.

Obama could have avoided this to some extent by appointing a physician as HHS Secretary and letting them take the leading oar on health reform. If he wanted a politician he could looked to Congressman McDermott or Governor Dean. Of course there are plenty of capable nonpolitician docs he could lhave ooked to– me, I’d vote for Ken Kizer, the Clinton VA Undersecretary who reformed the VA healthcare system and made it into the best medical system in the country. Since Obama is basically pushing a Republican reform plan anyway, he might as well have picked a Republican doctor to be HHS Secretary, say, Bush’s CMS director Mark McClellan.

Sooner or later we’re going to have to move to a tax-based single payer system, the employer-based coverage system is breaking down and the individual coverage system is already broken. To get there, Obama (or whoever’s president by then) will make it happen sooner by getting the doctors to buy in. That may mean increasing Medicare reimbursements (or some kind of wage insurance plan) so that doctors won’t have a financial conflict of interest if they support a Medicare for All plan. It will also mean that Uncle Sam takes over the cost of malpractice claims. Currently, VA and Community Health Center doctors (only the former are govt. employees) don’t have to pay malpractice insurance premiums, any lawsuits are defended (and covered) by the US government.

Last year, Congressmen Tim Murphy (a psychologist) and Phil Gingrey (an OB/GYN) sponsored an amendment that would extend the same malpractice indemnification to doctors treating Medicare or public option patients. It was rejected and wasn’t included in the House HCR bill. After the current HCR mess keels over and dies, the Murphy-Gingrey amendment should be used as a bargaining point to get physician support for a Medicare for All bill.

So a handful of GOP docs overrule the AMA?

Less than 15% of the Doctors in this country belong to the AMA. When former members were asked why they left the AMA…they replied that the organization is corrupt and has done nothing positive for the medical profession.

It is not just the AMA:
Below are the largest physicians organization, in order, with estimated membership numbers based on their own websites (or other sources when the Web Site didn’t have them).

All are YES on reform with Public Option and supporting the House Bill, with some points of contention, but generally have endorsed it.

1. AMA 240,000
2. ACP 126,ooo (Internists and many medical subspecialists)
3. AAFP 94,000 (Family Practice)
4. ACS 76,000 (surgeons)
5. AAP 60,000 (pediatricians)
6. ACOG 52,000 (ob-gyn)
7. ASA 43,000 (Anesthesiology!)
8. AOA 40,000 (osteopaths)
9. APA 38,000 (psychiatry)
10. ACC 37,000 (cardiology)

Further, according to surveys of physicians published in the New England Journal of Medicine late last year, “Overall, a majority of physicians (62.9%) supported public and private options. Only 27.3% supported offering private options only.”

AND

“a large majority of respondents (78%) agreed that physicians have a professional obligation to address societal health policy issues. Majorities also agreed that every physician is professionally obligated to care for the uninsured or underinsured (73%), and most were willing to accept limits on reimbursement for expensive drugs and procedures for the sake of expanding access to basic health care (67%).”

http://cmhmd.blogspot.com/
Cheers,

I had the experience of testifying in front of the GOP Doctors Caucus last month.

The gory details and my opening statement are here:

http://cmhmd.blogspot.com/search/label/GOP%20Doctors%20Caucus

Cheers,

Exactly what I was thinking: are any of these doctors related to Bill Frist, the genius who diagnoses via video? And why is anyone still listening to Dick Morris?

Mr. cmhmd I just read your blog post about your meeting with GOP doctors and one thing struck me as weird and I keep hearing it.
Private insurance pays more than Medicare. Sorry I have to disagree. This last July I had a mild stroke. I got out all the billing paperwork from that day at the hospital and looked.
I am on standard Medicare and have very good blue cross through my wife’s employer. On the CT scan the hospital charge started at 1,200 dollars blue cross paid 400 and Medicare paid the other 800.
Through out the bills its the same on almost everything Medicare is picking up over twice what blue cross does.
Again great blog and thank you for going toe to toe with the golf is more important than people crowd but again I have to disagree with the notion that private insurance pays more than Medicare.
have a great day
ld

AMA shut Public Health Care down back in the forties on Harry Truman’s watch. Now we got all these wanna be Republican Wall Street Elitists chumming it up with our new largest industry in Amerika- namely Health Care since the seventies, mixing it up with elitist doctors that’d probably just like to have a General Practice, but got to specialize in skin tags or some other modern phenomena gimmick to make ends meet. There’s is only so much money the FED can print to keep these greedy Capitalists happy. Earth resources are going TILT, TILT, TILT. How many Toyota Tundra’s can we buy to make the balance of payments in our favor?

Thanks!

In your case, medicare is the primary payer, and thus picked up the majority of the bill and your secondary insurer, blue cross, picked up the rest.

Whether medicare pays more or less than a private insurer depends upon both your specialty and where you live.

Medicare pays more or less the same around the country for the same service, within a few percent, except Alaska. (Thanks to Sen. Ted Stevens.)

Now, having said that, where the real variation occurs is in what the private insurers pay the docs. For example, in my area, Pennsylvania, our Blues pay only a bit more than medicare. In other areas they pay a lot more than medicare and in some areas they are even or medicare even pays better in a few places.

So, when docs complain of how little medicare pays, it is usually because they live in areas (think red states) where the blues pay significantly more than medicare. And sometimes it is because their particular services are reimbursed. Consider the Primary care doc and orthopedic surgeon both working 50 to 70 hours a week, the latter making 3 or 4 or 5 times what the PCP makes. You might think medicare sucks in that case, too!