Too Expensive

by: Natasha Chart

Fri Jun 19, 2009 at 08:12


Barry Ritholtz shows us how expensive the bailouts are compared to other large, inflation-adjusted, historical events. Go look.

Then consider that healthcare costs are expected to rise 9 percent in 2010, a cost that will also be shouldered by the same worried taxpayers who bailed out the financial companies.

However, even if we can find cost savings, the Senate says it's too expensive to provide a public healthcare option. Rural Democrats have in many cases sided with the health insurers on this one, in spite of the fact that the small business and self employment base of the rural economy (pdf) faces significant healthcare infrastructure hurdles.

It's shameful the way these legislators have completely abandoned their constituents. Who acts like this?

Stand with Dr. Dean and ask your representatives where they stand on a public option.

Natasha Chart :: Too Expensive

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Too Expensive | 14 comments
Healthcare and politicians (0.00 / 0)
More and more I think so many of our "systems" and institutions are "gamed" ..... there is so much money on the greed side of the equation it is a steep climb.
like some guy once said (4.00 / 2)
The system is rigged because corporations have too much power in Washington, and it won't be enough to replace corporate Republicans with corporate Democrats.  

Join the Iowa progressive community at Bleeding Heartland.
[ Parent ]
Good wording (4.00 / 2)
Gamed sounds like fun.  Rigged sounds crooked.  The system is only fun for the crooks.  The basic problem is that corporations have discovered that "investing" in political influence routinely pays off by increasing profits 10 times the "investment" or more.  The "investment" in Harry and Louise and anti-reform was IIRC a then staggering $150 million. That sure paid off many times over.
[ Parent ]
Actually... (4.00 / 3)
...he's probably right that the public option would cost too much. Let's go to single-payer, which can be completely paid for with existing Medicare/Medicaid money and modest new taxes.
Join Dr Clark Newhall MD JD in his single-payer efforts (0.00 / 0)
The range of activism spans phone calls to White House, e-faxes to Senate and Dem committees, and participation in the coming rally, June 25, in D.C.

Sign on and donate if you can, so that Health & Justice can keep the pressure on. New e-faxing campaigns evolve as the targets arise, from Sec Sebelius to Daschle.

Explore the site because there have been some interesting insider reports, such as the one from doctoraaron on June 5 reporting on the San Francisco fundraiser for Sen Baucus that he managed to attend. This story deserves to be told wide and far. (It took some effort to retrieve by keyword only, but here it is.)  

[ Parent ]
Oops - had been posted on Kos (0.00 / 0)
But the number of responses was low - 76.
[ Parent ]
define "too much" (4.00 / 2)
We are spending more on obsolete weapons systems than it would cost to implement a public option.

Join the Iowa progressive community at Bleeding Heartland.
[ Parent ]
Great point (4.00 / 2)
We spend more on "defence" than everybody else in the world put tpgether.  This defence spending is a burden that keeps us lagging behind other countries (See "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" for proof of how defence spending kills great powers).  The Blue Dogs are either terminally stupid or (more likely) terminally corrupt.
[ Parent ]
What were those rural Dems thinking? (4.00 / 4)
All I hear from my rural members is crabbing about their insurance plans - or lack thereof. The only exceptions are - wait for it - the union folks.

Visit Street Prophets to talk about faith + politics!
It Won't Take Voters Very Long to Figure Out Just How Badly They Have Been Screwed (4.00 / 2)
by their elected representatives on health care and the bailout.

Everybody knows that a single payer system is by far the least expensive and most effective of all the alternatives, and that the U.S. economy and American taxpayers cannot afford to retain a private insurance industry that adds enormous unnecessary costs to health care.

But the most effective comparison is between the cost of health care reform versus the cost of the unnecessary bailout of banking and financial institutions that should have been temporarily taken over by competent federal agencies and broken up, re-organized and re-capitalized.

When the banking and financial system collapsed, the nation's lawmakers did not hesitate to step in and put the American people on the hook for $12.8 trillion to bail out insolvent institutions that should not have been allowed to continue to operate, much less given $12.8 trillion in taxpayer dollars to do so.

But the Congressional representatives and White House appointed officials who exhibited such extraordinary generosity towards failed bankers could only muster up $787 billion for a government stimulus package to create real jobs in the real economy to fight the recession that the failed banks triggered when they collapsed.

The whole story of lawmakers' responsibility for the collapse of the economy and the middle class, consumer buying power, and the banking and financial system is there for all to see.

As taxpayers realize they are being forced to forgo the basic necessities of life, especially a single payer health care system, because their influence peddling elected representatives have sacrificed their needs and vital interests to those of their campaign contributors, they will realize that the corrupted American system of government is as much a calamity as the economic and financial calamities it has caused.

There will be no choice but to throw the rascals AND the system out.

Lawmakers' dereliction of their duty to put the needs of their constituents before those of their campaign financiers will have poured all the fuel needed to fire up the Progressive Revolution.  

 

Kagen (WI-08) is a no go (4.00 / 1)
From his House website: "We do not need socialized medicine, nor do we need more government control of our personal health."
Nobody Is Going To "Throw" Anybody Out (0.00 / 0)
Whatever health-care program gets through Congress will be hailed as the best thing since free porn.

It will be hailed as the biggest VICTORAY EVAH! For the PEOPLE. Over the Greedheads.

But NOTHING WILL CHANGE...

and the Dims, by planning to tax existing health-insurance recipients to pay for the alleged fix, will effectively sabotage the prospects for the party to remain in power, howsoever weak, meek, and mild they will inevitably be...

Some change (4.00 / 4)
Medicare added about three years to the life span of Americans.  That is a significant change.  The simplest changes could have a similar effect (at least combined):

Universal health care for children.  We are coming darn close to that with the two SCHIP programs and Medicaid.  Lack of treatment during pregnancy and childhood has long term consequences that cost much more down the road.

Pre-existing illnesses.  Get rid of that insurance company scam.  It makes it difficult for many people to work and inflates /transfers costs.

The cheapest and most effective plan is universal single payer health care.  Just by eliminating the middle man the insurance side would shrink by 20%.  That does not include all the monrey spent by doctors and hospitals to comply with the current schemes.

As for Dr. Kagen (aka representative Steve Kagen), he owns a chain of clinics in Wisconsin.  Insurance plans pay more than Medicare.  Changing to single payer would hurt Dr. Multi-millionaire in the wallet.

You win the plushy toy (0.00 / 0)
"Pre-existing illnesses.  Get rid of that insurance company scam."

Yes. Bingo. What you said.

[ Parent ]
Too Expensive | 14 comments
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