[QUOTE=Beth Witten MSW ACSW;19032]Again, if this plan is so compassionate and wonderful, why are not Obama, Fancy Nancy Pelosi, Reid and their families not subjected to this plan?..What made these idiots more important than the average citizen? We simply do not have the money to indulge this man child in all of his wishful spending. Talk about people who live in fantasy land of delusion.
According to what I’ve heard, under the Senate bill, coverage would be provided to those who are eligible to take it by nonprofit insurance companies. The Office of Personnel Management would oversee those companies, just like it oversees the insurance companies that provide coverage to federal employees and our elected officials under the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan. Pelosi, Reid, and Obama are exempt from the plan because they’re insured under FEHBP. The idea is that those who have insurance keep it and the plan proposed in the Senate bill would be for people who don’t have health insurance.
If you’ve read the email circulating on the Internet that says that the Health Choices Commissioner will make coverage decisions for those that get the plan overseen by the OPM, it will make sure that insurance plans are complying with the regulations so far as the basic coverage they’re supposed to provide. Here’s the Pulitzer Prize winning St. Petersburg Times’ Politifact Truth-o-Meter article called “Health Choices Commissioner does not decide your health benefits” that grades the information in the chain email as a “Pants on Fire” lie:
Why in the world do they not have to wait for their cancer treatments and Wendy has to wait?
Read Wendy’s message again. What she said was:
I am also aware that the reason I am still here is because I have received immediate treatments or diagnostics always. I have never had to wait the long delays that I know others have had to bear for their treatments with other insurance company red tape or governmental backlog.
I don’t know where the notion of government backlog comes from. Anyone I’ve known or worked with who has received health care through Medicare has gotten treatment right away (or as right away as anyone else) by any hospital or any doctor in the U.S. that they’ve wanted to see.
When I mentioned that most patients don’t pay for dialysis, I meant out of pocket themselves. I’d be willing to bet that what people pay for premiums for employer plans or even premiums for Medicare and Medigap plans comes no where close to what those plans pay for dialysis care. And what is withheld from each paycheck for Medicare (1.45% of gross income per employee matched by the employer) is a drop in the bucket to what Medicare pays for dialysis and other healthcare needs of people with ESRD (around $70,000/year). Rather than questioning my knowledge of economics, be thankful that Nixon (yes, a Republican) signed the bill to extend Medicare coverage to ESRD otherwise, people would be paying that $120,000/year themselves or dying like most who didn’t have good insurance dide before Medicare covered dialysis.
According to the United States Renal Data System which tracks and reports data related to ESRD (www.usrds.org), the government thought that kidney failure was a rare disease and that only about 40,000 people a year would need treatment. In 2007 (the latest data year) over half a million people were receiving dialysis or had transplants and most receive it under government sponsored programs (Medicare, Medicaid, VA). The truth is that “life or death committees” decided who lived and who died before Medicare covered dialysis and the patients selected in those days were usually working age otherwise healthy males who were wealthy or had really good health insurance. People with diabetes and children weren’t offered dialysis. I know people who were selected for dialysis and are still living today to talk about what that experience was like. I don’t think anyone wants to go back to those days. And before you say it, I don’t believe for a minute that healthcare reform will make us do that.[/QUOTE]
In case you have not noticed, in the current climate, health insurance companies are regulated to death. This is why people who are diabetes and on dialysis cannot obtain insurance, with over 2,000 mandates. Do you believe that more regulation will improve the plight of dialysis patients? Now, who is going to decide what treatments that the government, i.e. the taxpayer will insure? Will it be a health commissioner, a health board, a combination of the two? At some point, someone from the federal government will be making decisions on what they will or will not cover. Look at any other Federal program, thousands upon thousands of pages with regulations, regulations have been increasing year after year. If you like read the Federal Register, not very complex to figure out that Federal programs are loaded with regulations to the smallest detail. Obama and his crowd want to regulate the level of profit earned by the insurance companies. How do you believe that if a health insurance company is making a 2%-3% profit per year, a very small margin, that they will be able insure everyone who comes to them with a chronic illness? How do you add millions of people and cut costs, this is done by waiting lists and rationing. Basically, Obama and his cronies are going to “kill” the health insurance companies with the death of a thousand cuts. Then, what choice with the people have, if you guessed the Government, you would be correct. When people are forced into the government plan, this is when the control freaks who want to regulate every aspect of your life, will take over. Do you want a Big Mac, No, you are too fat. I need surgery, No, you cannot have it, you are a diabetic. I need more dialysis, No, we are not going to cover those extra treatments. Yes, you stated that Obama, Fancy Nancy, and Harry Reid are exempt from this mandate because they are in the Federal benefits program, yes, I have been well aware of that fact for years. So, after they force everyone else into a govenrment system, why should they be exempt from the system? Watch what they do, not what they say. I know, the rules are for us and not for them.
Another example of wonderful hypocrisy is New York Times Colummist Thomas Friedman, another big time member of the Left. Tom thought going to Copenhagen was a great thing and that the United States was in the Stone Age. Tom loves the planet so much that he bought a plane ticket and polluted the air from the United States to Copenhagen. Tom, if you love Copenhagen so much, do not let the door hit you on the way out. Oh that is right, Tom, you married into your wealth, you live on a wealthy estate with acres of land, you mean you do not live as you tell us to live, so hard to believe! I know your good friend Michael Moore has millions in corporate stocks and does not have any one on his staff who is African-American, more do as I say, not as I do. Well, Tom and Mike will not have to worry, they will have private treatment with their wealth, while the rest of the poor souls will be herded like cattle into the government plan.
The reason that Wendy has not seen anyone with Medicare denied treatment is because the private insurance plans are keeping the offices and the clinics afloat financially. Under a total govenrment system, clinics, hospital, and physician’s offices will go bankrupt. Yes, that is the problem with government planning, they thought only a certan amount of people would need dialysis, they tend not to be to forward in their thinking, private companies have to be to survive. Economically, Nixon was awful, If you had my system, you would not have to worry about people not having insurance.