Health Care Reform Debate-Megathread

[Shellhead]

Some Democrats are so conservative that they are practically Republicans on certain issues. Olympia Snowe is a moderate Republican who is willing to vote with the Democrats under certain circumstances. I wish there were more moderates like her, then voters might get better results than veering between the extremes of either party.

[Titan76]

Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.) has heard racist talk at town halls.

Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.) — one of the GOP’s top targets in the midterm elections — says race played some role in the vehement opposition to President Barack Obama’s health care reforms that he encountered during raucous community meetings over the summer.

Perriello — who seems to be far less afraid of being unseated than other Dems in red districts — told Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he overheard racist remarks during a series of highly contentious town halls over the summer — and sometimes those comments went uncontested.

“What do you think of Nancy Pelosi’s recent comments about the concern that this could bring us back to another time where things were very violent and that this could go in a bad direction, the discourse?” Brzezinski asked.

Replied Perriello: “I conducted over a hundred hours of town hall meetings in my district in central and Southern Virginia, and the vast majority of them were civil; people disagreed passionately on ideological grounds. And there were the rare cases where very racist remarks were made. Sometimes they were called out by neighbors in the audience; sometimes they weren’t. Clearly, race remains a factor in America, but there’s also a lot of disagreement here that is genuine and not based on race, so I think we have to have both conversations.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee pooh-poohed, with a little swipe at Perriello’s Yale education: “Much like Jimmy Carter and Nancy Pelosi, Tom Perriello is mistaking genuine opposition to the president’s agenda for bigotry. These insulting remarks are yet another indication that Perriello’s Ivy-bred elitism is impeding his ability to represent everyday Virginians.”

[Titan76]

I don't know if anyone has shown this clip else where, but this is the first time I've seen it and its very disturbing.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) tells a crying women who's husband has a brain injury, and who's insurance was canceled while he was in a nursing home, and that he cannot even eat or drink properly as a result of not having coverage to pay for care, to ask help from her neighbors because Government isn't the solution to our problems. The clip is at the bottom of the article if you want to watch it.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/ted-k...h-care-debate/

[Titan76]

Some Democrats are so conservative that they are practically Republicans on certain issues. Olympia Snowe is a moderate Republican who is willing to vote with the Democrats under certain circumstances.

The thing is though, 58% of the people in Snowe's own state support a public option and she opposes it. I don't see how she, or any other Senator or Congress man/woman, is supporting the people that voted them in when they say they want a public option and then they(Congress) say, they won't vote for it.

[Shellhead]

I don't know if anyone has shown this clip else where, but this is the first time I've seen it and its very disturbing.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) tells a crying women who's husband has a brain injury, and who's insurance was canceled while he was in a nursing home, and that he cannot even eat or drink properly as a result of not having coverage to pay for care, to ask help from her neighbors because Government isn't the solution to our problems. The clip is at the bottom of the article if you want to watch it.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/ted-k...h-care-debate/

Coburn is ignorant. That man qualifies for Social Security due to his permanent disability. He almost certainly qualifies for Medicare and Medicaid as well.

[Shellhead]

The thing is though, 58% of the people in Snowe's own state support a public option and she opposes it. I don't see how she, or any other Senator or Congress man/woman, is supporting the people that voted them in when they say they want a public option and then they(Congress) say, they won't vote for it.

Her voters can decide how they feel about that when she runs for re-election. Snowe is very influential in the Senate because she has demonstrated the ability to cut deals and make compromises. Her more rigid colleagues, on either side of the aisle, are trapped by their past positions on the issues. For the majority party, that isn't much of a problem, because they can stick to their ideological stances and still get legislation passed. For the minority party, it's a waiting game to see if they can last long enough for the balance to swing back in their favor. Or they can take a moderate stance like Snowe and still retain influence.

[Acecool]

So a bill that reduces the sized of the debt still cost too much now.

[Iangould]

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion...IULUeGAisyo07I

So do doctors hate this idea or not?

The poll is from the same people who claimed Stephen Hawkings would have died if he lived in Great Britain. And whose pre-election polls showed McCain beating Obama by a hefty margin.

I read something from a professional pollster explaining that this wasn't a random sample - it was poll of the members of a specialist medical organisation that had already come out against healthcare reform and had a miniscule response rate - less than 10% IIRC.

If you like I can find that piece and provide a link.

Other, more reliable, polls show a majority of doctors support the Administration's proposals.

Edited to add: Nate Silver on the IBD poll.

[Iangould]

Other, more credible polls come up with quite different results,

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Steve Inskeep is on assignment. I'm Renee Montagne.

Doctors, by a large majority, support adding a government run health insurance program that would compete with private insurance. That's according to a new survey. What's been called the public option continues to be one of the most contentious issues in the health care debate, but the survey shows that doctors are already used to dealing with government run insurance.

NPR's Joseph Shapiro reports.

JOSEPH SHAPIRO: In the survey, nearly three-quarters of doctors said they favor a public option. Co-author Dr. Salomeh Keyhani is a researcher at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Dr. SALOMEH KEYHANI (Researcher, Mount Sinai School of Medicine): The results of the study demonstrated that the majority of physicians support a public option in the United States of America.

SHAPIRO: That included the 63 percent who say they'd like to see patients get a choice of public or private insurance and another 10 percent who favor a public option only. They'd like to see a single-payer system. When the public in general is surveyed, support for a public option has run between 50 and 70 percent.

link

[dupersuper]

Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.) has heard racist talk at town halls.

I hate those ivey leaguers...like W.

[Gnarl]

I was just thinking the same thing. A link and article about the chart would be nice.

Sorry, forgot I had posted in this thread. The image can be found at:

http://globalhealthnet.com/WasteDoub...althCosts.html

[Alex]

This is really small for a megathread.

[The Black Guardian]

This is really small for a megathread.

It's been sick... and doesn't have health insurance.

[Loren]

I can't say that I usually agree with Mike Smash on an issue like this, but he mentioned a health care proposal on Facebook that was new to me, and which we both wholeheartedly agree is a bad, bad idea:

Atheists oppose "faith healing" provisions in health care bills

The Senate Finance Committee has taken up the America's Healthy Future Act of 2009 which has an amendment titled "Religious Non-discrimination in Healthcare." The provision bans insurance companies from denying patients "benefits for religious or spiritual healthcare." Similar legislation, the Affordable Health Choices Act, has already cleared the U.S. Senate, and has a similar provision.

Assuming this actually translates to covering faith healing (as opposed to, say, counseling), spending taxpayer money on non-evidenced-based medicine is very troubling. And going beyond the scope of this singular proposal, it makes me wonder: what other non-evidenced-based medicine is Congress considering paying for? Acupuncture? Reflexology? Homeopathy? After all, they're lobbying to be covered.

[LtMarvel]

A new law helps ill college students keep coverage. It went into effect today.