http://www.star-telegram.com/242/story/1467465.html

Obama claims he wants to keep private insurers honest, but he’s not being honest himself.

We have finally found one area in which Obama is consistent.

That being, his lack of honesty.

That myth is based on fuzzy math, the program’s own laxity, and the fact that it gets to hide its costs elsewhere in the federal budget.

Not to mention they get to arbitrarily set the price they will pay, no matter the actual cost to the provider.

ginaswo on July 8, 2009 at 6:58 PM

Remember the junior high teaching of relative values when they made students decide who would be allowed in the life boat of a sinking ship? Well, it has run full circle. Ezekiel Emanuel,MD (Rahm’s brother) must have remembered it too, so now he wants to put it into practice! Remember, paraphrasing Lincoln, the brainwashing of the school room in one generation will be the brainwashing of the government in the next. Both an argument against Obamacare and an argument for home-schooling.

It’s worth noting that Jacob Hacker, the guy whose plan Obama adopted and who is still the leading figure at HCAN, has been using this line for a couple years at least. There are several videos of him saying it available on You Tube, so I have no doubt that is where Obama got it. But as you say, like everything else about the plan, it’s essentially dishonest.

Personal experience: My Medicare Advantage Plan, administered by Coventry, gets a fraction (in the range of 80% or so) of what Medicare would spend on me out of my (real) Medicare Premiums plus the (fantasy) Medicare Trust Fund.

For this, Conventry provides Medicare A and Medicare B…PLUS Medicare D (drug) coverage…at NO ADDITIONAL COST!!! And somehow Coventry makes a profit doing this.

This starkly illustrates that it is the PRIVATE INSURANCE INDUSTRY who should be investigating and rooting out the fraud and waste in the GOVERNMENT INSURANCE program….not the other way ’round!!!!

This is why Liberals hate “Medicare Advantage” plans: they starkly and unambiguously expose the big lie about private health insurance costs vs the government’s ability to make anything more efficient!!!

Official Medicare administrative costs simply exclude what most companies must include. No administrative cost savings exist in the public plan, and the true costs will never be counted because they’ll be hidden in the federal budget.

My county, Fairfax VA, has higher taxes than I like. One of the ways it spends the money is on subsidized county gyms. I would rather have the money back, but I use the gyms. A couple of years ago I told people at the gym that it was highly subsidized. Most people refuse to listen to arguments similar to those above. They simply refuse to think. The nominal admission cost of the gyms pays for a few marginal costs like utilities and wages but not some bigger costs.

from the Hill

Greg Sargent flags an interesting op-ed that Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) wrote in today’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Lincoln, who has previously expressed doubts about a public option (opponents call it government-run healthcare) as part of healthcare reform, seems very open to the idea now:

Health care reform must build upon what works and improve inefficiencies. Individuals should be able to choose from a range of quality health insurance plans. Options should include private plans as well as a quality, affordable public plan or non-profit plan that can accomplish the same goals as those of a public plan. [emphasis added]

ginaswo on July 8, 2009 at 6:58 PM

Yep, scary indeed! According to that graph I have about 9 more years and then I’m no longer very useful and not worth saving…I can picture myself at 60 laying on a stretcher with one arm reaching up to the sky screaming…”soylent green is made from people…!!!”

doesn’t this explain oboobi’s whole administration and everything it attempts to do?

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that the health-care reform bill now pending in Congress would garner very few votes if lawmakers actually had to read the entire bill before voting on it.

“If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes,” Hoyer told CNSNews.com at his regular weekly news conference.

Emanuel’s CV here pdf , courtesy of Tollhouse, another savvy commenter on BelmontClub. Notice it is LONG on academics and ethics boards and short, in fact almost totally devoid of any actual practice in caregiving. Many scholarly articles, on managed care in cost containment, and a majority of articles on ..surprize EUTHANASIA!! The end of the circle of socialized medicine rationing and early death. Good Gawd, call your critters. Notice on the chart of care under their ’soopergenius’ rationing system below, theBAMABOT voters age group is ensured the most treatment, coinkydink or planning? You make the call, to your CongressCritters!

And vote… getalife is digging up husband Harry Dick as we speak.

Upstater85 on July 8, 2009 at 6:55 PM

LMAO! Ah get-a-clue, I really miss clubbing that troll over the head with her idiotic and deluded ideology…good times…good times!

here it is

Hilights, or lowlifes as I call them:

Because none of the currently used systems satisfy all ethical requirements for just allocation, we propose an alternative: the complete lives system. This system incorporates five principles: youngest-first, prognosis, save the most lives, lottery, and instrumental value. … When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated … the complete lives system is least vulnerable to corruption. Age can be established quickly and accurately from identity documents. Prognosis allocation encourages physicians to improve patients’ health, unlike the perverse incentives to sicken patients or misrepresent health that the sickest-first allocation creates.

Under this system, patients would receive scarce care according to the graph shown below.

[Look at that the graph -- it's terrifying]

What part of the “Chicago Way” didn’t everyone understand before the election………?

Seven Percent Solution on July 8, 2009 at 6:23 PM

The 52%ers just thought it was a tasty way to cook pizza.

Heritage is right, OMB is wrong..

Medicare costs more to administer

private plans cost a high amount in states like CA and NY that have so many state mandates it requires manual adjudication of every claim….

the numbers of OMB are fudged and do not accurately reflect Claims Administrator and Fiscal Intemediary for Medicare at the states level, administrative costs…

Dead people are no longer a drain on SS.

Jeff from WI on July 8, 2009 at 6:41 PM

Plus, they can be taxed!

ROCnPhilly on July 8, 2009 at 6:51 PM

And vote… getalife is digging up husband Harry Dick as we speak.