i would be very interested to know the actual authors’ names, backgrounds, and stories.

photoboy74 on August 17, 2009 at 2:19 PM

remember the SAddam set of playing cards? That’s what we need on this one.

private insurance, not surprisingly, is more affordable the more one makes because you are paying directly for a commodity that competition in the private market provides. my wife and i figured out that the more money we make, the more we would pay for public insurance than equivalent, or better, private insurance. however, the public option is a good deal for those on welfare or not earning a “living wage.” but the stimulus to get off of public insurance is there by making public insurance TOO expensive the more you make. that makes people want to go to private insurance. add the fact that appointments with a specialist are much easier to get and private insurance is a booming business.

the only downside is, non-income taxes are extremely high. the vat is a whopping 19%. it generates a huge amount of money. the gov’t understands the public insurance option / falling fertility rate / less future tax-payers ratio and is trying to address that.

good luck america!!! i hope you get it right or not at all. p.s. even though a congressman’s name appears on H.R 3200, does anyone actually know who wrote all 1,000+ pages? i would be very interested to know the actual authors’ names, backgrounds, and stories.

We now see a pattern: first Biden had “misspoken” when he said people shouldn’t go on vacation or on trains because of the swine flu. Then administration officials had “misspoken” about the projected “saved or created” job creation potential of the Porkulus. Then Obama himself had “misspoken” when he lied on National Television about AARP’s support of this disaster of a healthcare bill. Then they admit that some “third parties” had “misspoken” and breached the privacy of hundreds of private citizens when Axelrod blasted his astroturf call.

On the first weekend that the president goes on vacation we have a powerful combination of the administration admitting a breach of faith with their own base and then yet another attempt to pull their hand out of the cookie jar by insisting that not one but SEVERAL leading administration representatives had all “misspoken” about their spinelessness on National Television.

Everyone on the right needs to exploit this opening MERCILESSLY during this news cycle. Absolutely everyone. This administration has now shown how flimsy and irretrievably damaged HR3200 in the eyes of its chief sponsors and we need to press home the fact about how both the left and right have become unhappy with it. We need to press home how even the president’s far left base has become embittered about this plan.

We need to make it abundantly clear that this bill is rapidly becoming an orphan in the chambers of congress and the only folks sponsoring are the hapless constantly-misspeaking amateurs in the white house.

Not ONLY is it an opportunity to kill HR3200 and kill it permanently, but it’s an opportunity to hold the president to task for his repeated campaign promises of “holding the negotiations on CSPAN”. It’s an opportunity to expose the cynicism and petty opportunism that went into the exhorbitant pork spending in the stimulus, the 3AM amendments in cap and trade and the vicious “rahm-it-through” mentality of the Pelosi-Reid-Waxman cabal.

Best of all, we can introduce GENUINE free-market based healthcare reform that’s based on individual responsibility and sound fiscal policy. The republicans can lead with the GOP’s healthcare proposals that (thanks to the MSM) most folks aren’t aware even EXIST. While we expose the Administrations credibility collapse we can introduce sound and PROVEN free-market alternatives that have reduced cost, improved quality of care and empowered individual choice and responsibility all at the same time.

Behold Waterloo! If we press hard on this while the administration is unbalanced (and out of town) it really COULD mean the death of this bill. Yes, we CAN kill HR3200.

You can’t even use a calendar for the expiration on their promises, you need a stop watch.

The latest term of art is health care co-op.

just heard on Fox and Friends that the White House is saying Sebelius misspoke. That happens a lot with Obama administrations officials.

Terrye on August 17, 2009 at 6:32 AM

N ow they must send out fibbs and tell us what she meant to say.

She must have had a senior moment.

The key issue here in prevention, as Charles Krauthammer put it last week, is how many people need to be treated or screened in order to prevent one occurrence of the disease? This is termed “number needed to treat to benefit” or NNTB. In heart disease, we may have to screen 1,000 people to find 200 with high cholestorol, treat all of them to prevent 1 heart attack. How much does that cost to screen and treat those people versus simply paying the cost of treating the 1 heart attack?

The second issue, as the Guillain Barre Syndrome is showing, is the ugly side of healthcare prevention. This is “number needed to treat to cause harm” or NNTH. Early evidence has shown that 25 deaths have resulted from swine flu vaccination (GBS related) and that those deaths exceeded the number of deaths as a result of the swine flu itself. Hence, the cost of treatment in this instance appears to be greater than the cost of the disease itself in terms of mortality alone. That says nothing about the cost of researching, producing, and administering the vaccination.

Some things are better left alone. These types of analyses help reveal how to answer these questions.