Shocker: The U.S. Will Have 100% Universal Healthcare in 2010

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday December 21, 2009 · 10:34 PM PST

2009/12/21 · 22:34

Here's a secret that almost everyone has missed in all the gnashing of teeth about this reform bill. If the bill passes, we won't have to wait until 2014 or 2020 for universal health care. We will effectively have it in 2010. It won't be pretty, but it will be there.

How? It's all about the clause that you can't be turned down for pre-existing conditions starting in 2010, a policy called guaranteed issue. The full guaranteed issue policy won't kick in until around 2014, but until then there will be a special government-run pool set up that will take all comers and with premiums capped at 125% of the standard rate in a given state.

If I develop a condition that needs coverage, including cancer, diabetes or heart disease, then as soon as I apply for insurance to cover my condition I will get it. But here's the kicker: I don't need to have been insured in the run-up to getting sick. I only need to get insurance once I know I'm going to have high medical costs. In other words, I don't need to pay rates that are too high for me while I'm healthy.

If you ever wanted a way to screw insurers, your golden opportunity might come in 2014.

jd in nyc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday December 15, 2009 · 9:05 PM PST

2009/12/15 · 21:05

As we all know, Joe Lieberman said he would veto any bill that includes Medicare buy-in or the public option. Citing data that shows that leaving people uninsured will result in over 150,000 extra deaths over 10 years, Ezra Klein responded that Lieberman is willing to cause 150,00 deaths to satisfy his desire for revenge on liberals.

Klein was right, give or take some thousands of lives. But that's going to make your head explode, twice.

jd in nyc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday September 11, 2009 · 5:01 AM PDT

2009/09/11 · 05:01

Flash back to the dog days in the run up to the Iraq war, when it felt like we were plunging into a dark age. We were fed dubious rationales for invasion from a Know-Nothing, faith-based president. Hyperbolic, paranoid conjectures were presented as though they were the shrewd conclusions of deliberate people. When I discovered Howard Dean in May 2003, I devoted 9 months of my life full-time to try to elect him and to help give Democrats back their backbone, and so that I wouldn't have to say "I did nothing."

Flash forward: The "debate" over the public option today is depressingly similar, but this time both the Left and the Right are working themselves into a self-righteous fervor using discredited premises. Anti-government paranoia and bigoted hatred from the Right need no introduction here, nor am I going to improve on what has been written already on dKos. Instead, this time I have to speak up against misinformation from the Left.

I am an old-timer on Daily Kos and I expect this diary will flop. This is not red meat. This is vegetables. If you want to eat your vegetables, follow me below the fold.

jd in nyc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday September 18, 2007 · 8:12 PM PDT

2007/09/18 · 20:12

What do prostitution, pot and private insurance have in common? They all coexist peacefully in the Netherlands. In legalizing prostitution, the Dutch also controlled it in a way that dramatically reduces the disease and violence associated with it in most nations, while allowing consenting adults the freedom to pay for sex and to get paid for it.

In regulating private health insurance and aligning its incentives with those of the people, the Dutch have managed to keep costs low, quality high, and give everyone coverage. And it isn't just the Dutch who do it. So do the Germans, the Swiss and other nations to one degree or another. Their costs are slightly above those of single-payer nations, on average, but they have fewer access problems (like wait lists for elective surgery).

So how do they do it, and why are so many on the left convinced it can't be done? And why do all the top tier Democratic candidates propose systems that are like those of Germany and Holland (multipayer) rather than England or Canada (single payer)? Despite the earnest arguments of good diarists like bonddad, I have come to tell you that you have nothing to fear from multipayer universal healthcare.

jd in nyc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday June 21, 2007 · 7:52 PM PDT

2007/06/21 · 19:52

There are some truths we hold self-evident: the Iraq war is a moral and tactical failure; George W. Bush is a wretched catastrophe of a president; the working class is getting screwed economically; HMOs are blood-sucking profit mongers.

I have nothing new to add to the first three truths, fine sentiments all. On the last, though, I have a question: just how big are those HMO profits? Are they pretty big, or obscenely big, and how much of American health care goes to pay for these profits?

After having spent some time doing research, I have answers to share below. But what I really want to do is poll the dKos community to see what the general sense is. Poll, and answers, follow...

Poll

54 votes Show Results

How big are HMO (health insurance) profit margins?

54 votes Vote Now!

How big are HMO (health insurance) profit margins?

0%: None, these guys are saints

1 vote

1-2%: Slim, like a discount retailer on hard times

0 votes

3-5%: Modest, same as the hospital industry

9 votes

7-8%: Average, same as American industry in general

3 votes

10-12%: High, same as durable medical equipment makers

4 votes

15-20%: Obscenely high, same as banking and big pharma

14 votes

30-40%: Apoplectically high, same as healthcare REITs in a good year

6 votes

45%+: Sky high, bring on the Apocalypse!

17 votes

Surprising and Good: War Support Highest Among Youth

jd in nyc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday April 18, 2007 · 3:42 PM PDT

2007/04/18 · 15:42

The NY Times conducted a poll recently that shows the people most gung-ho about the war in Iraq are under the age of 30. Apparently this happens with every war, including Vietnam. The young support it far more than those who have experienced wars, even though it is the young who fight and die.

The statistics: 48% of those 18-29 support the invasion of Iraq while 45% think it was a mistake. In stark contrast, only 28% of those over 65 support the invasion, while 67% think it was a mistake.

What does this mean? And how should those opposed to the war respond? Two thoughts: 1) this is very, very good news for the 2008 elections. 2) strategies for swaying more of public opinion should aim more squarely at those under 30, but don't expect much. More below.

jd in nyc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday September 26, 2006 · 6:12 PM PDT

2006/09/26 · 18:12

It is no secret that the American health care system is a mess. Iraq gets the headlines, but the real blood and treasure is spent and squandered on health care, making it arguably the most important economic and political issue America faces today.

The financial dimension alone is enormous: 16% of our entire economy is devoted to health care, which came out to $2 trillion in 2005. We now spend over $6,000 per person per year, which is twice the average for developed nations and about $2,000 more than the next closest country, Switzerland. And what do we get for it? Lower life expectancies than most other developed nations, and over 50 million who are either uninsured or poorly insured, compared to almost none in our peer nations. Those numbers point to one central fact to guide our thinking about health care reform: one-third to one-half of our expenses can be cut without any loss in the overall health of the American people Read More

Deja Vu All Over Again

jd in nyc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday November 27, 2005 · 9:02 PM PST

2005/11/27 · 21:02

Taken from an AP story today titled "Iran Leader's Radicalism Angering Allies." I thought the story sounded familiar. I think you'll agree once you read it in light of my minor edits [in brackets]. In fact, it's rather stunning how just substituting "Bush" for "Ahmadinejad", "America" for "Iran" and so on can create a story that you would never guess wasn't about our president.

You can find the original article on Iran's new leader here: http://news.yahoo.com/...

[Washington DC, USA] - Critics say the 1980s-style radicalism of ultraconservative President [George Bush] is hurting [America] at home and abroad... Read More

With Frost Out, The Times Calls It for Dean

jd in nyc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday February 01, 2005 · 7:52 PM PST

2005/02/01 · 19:52

Good news all ye faithful. Only Fowler remains in serious opposition, and perhaps "serious" should be put in quotes. Personally, a burden has been lifted from my shoulders, and I'm sure those of thousands of others who toiled for months on Dean's campaign. It's good to see our efforts bear fruit, even if not what we intended at first. The Times story is here. Read More

Wrestling the Colossus: A dKos Proposal

jd in nyc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday November 03, 2004 · 5:58 PM PST

2004/11/03 · 17:58

We've had 24 hours to process our disbelief, anger, and despair that a president who by most measures isn't simply bad, but one of the least competent in American history, has been elected by a majority of those who bothered to vote.

One of the worst things that we could do now is to retreat to the comforting belief that we understand these people, at least to the point of knowing that it isn't our fault we didn't reach them, because they are unreachable. If you truly believe that, why not just start packing your bags for New Zealand, or buying weapons for your Kamikaze run on the battleship of American culture? Read More

Hussein on the Brain: 3 Bush debate blunders

jd in nyc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday September 30, 2004 · 9:23 PM PDT

2004/09/30 · 21:23

One of the best "gotcha" moments of the debate occurred when Kerry caught Bush conflating between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Bush said that "we were attacked" and so we had to respond by invading Iraq. Kerry not only pointed out that it was not Hussein that attacked us, but did it in a dramatic way that no one could miss.

However, did anyone else here notice that afterwards Bush showed his Iraq obsession two more times? In a discussion of Al Qaeda, Bush began to speak about going to "Ira..." then stopped himself knowing that he wanted something else. So he switched to a person and actually said "Saddam Hussein" before he corrected himself and finally got it right with "Bin Laden." I think this was after Kerry's gotcha moment, and he still couldn't keep them straight!

Any other Bush bloopers that people noticed?

The House Interferes with Accounting Reform

jd in nyc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday July 20, 2004 · 1:54 PM PDT

2004/07/20 · 13:54

Overriding the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and acting against the recommendations of the Big Four accounting firms, Alan Greenspan, and a host of good-business advocates like Warren Buffet, the House today voted against requiring firms to expense their options to employees.

That means, essentially, that the millions in lost revenues to companies that come with stock giveaways don't enter into the books of those companies. In short, employees are paid millions but it isn't recorded as a cost.

What's the big deal? Read More

Newer
Older

RSS

Shocker: The U.S. Will Have 100% Universal Healthcare in 2010

Do Not Read Or Your Head Will Explode

Breaking Through Public Option Nonsense

Multipayer Universal Healthcare: Why It Works

Poll: HMO Profits

Surprising and Good: War Support Highest Among Youth

Health Care Is the Bomb in Your Living Room

Deja Vu All Over Again

With Frost Out, The Times Calls It for Dean

Wrestling the Colossus: A dKos Proposal

Hussein on the Brain: 3 Bush debate blunders

The House Interferes with Accounting Reform