Politics

Kaz, I apologize for the articles apparently disappearing. I can only assume they delete their pages after a day or so. I cannot be for certain. I'm not sure what you mean about the AP source. I did not provide a source from AP showing anything. As I have said before please read what I type. I did not at any time say "full protection" for children would begin this September. I said that this September children would no longer be excluded from coverage based on a pre-existing condition.

H.R. 3590 is a totally separate bill from H.R. 4872, but they are inexplicably linked by several provisions. This is why I told you about the fact that one is an extension of the other. Basically, H.R. 4872 contains most of the provisions and amendments that democrats feared would not be supported by republicans from the previous bill, H.R. 3590. These were added to H.R. 4872 because President Obama knew if he could not get republican support for the bill he would just use enough democratic support to push it through Congress by way of Reconciliation.

Consider it like this. When the Articles of Confederation failed to work and lost support of our founding fathers they decided to "re-write" the Articles. Using it as a basis, adding amendments, and taking several provisions out they created a document they felt better served the American people. The Constitution of the United States.

The note at the bottom of H.R. 4872 does not make H.R. 3590 irrelevant, but it does "correct" some of the terminologies, programs, and issues that did not work as effectively as President Obama had wanted in the first place.

That's fantastic that you didn't rely on the page count from a regular website. I apologize for the assumption. The link you used in that paragraph led me to believe that the page count there was what you assumed to be the correct bill page count. That's okay, but remember I did say that it was H.R. 4872 that I was making my references toward.

Kaz, I know you believed you were correcting me, but I'm afraid you need to pay better attention. The information I provided is absolutely correct. Like I stated before please read what I typed. I made no mention of H.R. 3590. H.R. 3590 (The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) was introduced to Congress on September 17th 2009, passed by the House on October 8th 2009, Senate on December 24th 2009, and signed by the President on March 23rd 2010. The only bill to which I referred to was H.R. 4872 (Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010). It was introduced to Congress on March 17th 2010. Passed by the House on March 21st and the Senate on March 25th 2010. President Obama signed it into law on March 30th 2010. I know very well that one is the extension of another. All amendments made to the previous bill are included in H.R. 4872 with the exception of a singular last minute amendment by the House. That still does not bring the total to 2,517 as you would LIKE to claim. At best the bill reaches a total of 2,319. That's it. I have pulled up and downloaded both PDF files on H.R.'s 3590 and 4872. I have not relied on a page count presented by the website of a Congressman. I suggest you not do the same.

I am still reading both bills and comparing them as I read them so I try to catch any amendments or provisions that effectively render the previous as useless.

Although I agree it is high time that Congress stop creating bills that look more like Tolstoy's War and Peace than a piece of legislation, the truth of the matter is that every one wants to add something to a bill so they feel like they have made some sort of contribution. Unfortunately you just end up with a bill that's 2,000 pages long when it should have only been 500 at the most.

I'm sorry, but I still have to disagree Kaz. I'm afraid you guys should really read this bill a little further or better. You stated just as Big Ben the same incorrect view that children with pre-existing conditions will not be covered until 2014. That's simply just not true. Did you read any of the sources for which I provided? Not to mention the bill itself!

I apologize for a misuse of the word "coverage" in the last word of paragraph 4. The sentence reads "Which means by the end of September of this year no child will be excluded from being able to acquire insurance coverage due to a pre-existing coverage." The last word "coverage" should actually be the word "condition". Once again I apologize for the mistake.

"There's a difference between compassion and enabling someone to do nothing with their lives." Did you really just say that? Do you think people aspire to not being able to take care of themselves? The total absence of compassion that I've seen from the people opposing this, the anger and violence that's come out of a bill designed to help fellow Americans is so frightening. Yes "fellow Americans" these people you think we are "enabling to do nothing with their lives". There's no compassion in anything you've said. You don't get to lump them all together and label them, what makes you think you're qualified to do that? As far as the elderly, do you still think there are death panels? Is that what you're worried about? The only thing wrong with this bill is the single payer system was left out. Hopefully this bill opens the door enough for that to become a reality.

Mama Kaz. I don't mean to be crass about your statement that "When our leader tells you that you can keep your own doctor and insurance he is lying to you...", but really. You said you would tell us why you believe this, but your explanation after that statement doesn't really seem to explain much of anything except a belief that rising medical costs are due to those who have insurance through a government funded program. Is that really your basis for the previous statement? Because I have read several parts of H.R. 3962 and have seen no indication of losing provider care or doctor simply because of these reasons? Do you have any actual proof of this statement? Just curious. I'd like to read it if it does exist.

Meanwhile I would like to cite a few problems with your latter statements beyond losing your doctor and insurance. I'm not really sure how you come to believe that a single payer system would be the downfall or collapse of the entire system. Canada, for example, with a single payer system has been operating under such conditions since 1970 and has shown significant improvements in the overall health of their nation. Before 1970 when Canada had a health care system much like our own their health statistics almost mirrored our own, but after adopting a single payer system their statistics have changed dramatically. While the average life expectancy of an American is around 77 years of age, Canadian's average life expectancies have risen to 80 years of age. In addition to that fact the per capita cost for Canadian citizen's health care coverage is around $3,000 dollars while American's per capita cost per patient is almost twice that. They also have a lower infant mortality rate. These figures are all found in statistics run by the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control just in case you're wondering where I saw them.

Considering just those few facts above I also noticed a study done by the University of California at San Francisco that showed the United States could save well over $161 Billion dollars every year in paperwork alone if we were to convert to a single payer system. And that figure is not abstract amounts deducted from a federal budget, it's actual dollars we would not pay out of our own pockets to cover the cost of normal insurance paperwork. Literally meaning that Americans would get to KEEP that money.

Now, as for the statement you made about for profit insurance companies and doctors who supposedly can not afford to operate with such low rates that they have to pass on their costs to the insurance companies, you might want to take a look at the following statement and study done by doctors and researchers.

There are two criteria used to judge a country's health care system: the overall success of creating and sustaining health in the population, and the ability to control costs while doing so. One recent study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal compares mortality rates in private for-profit and nonprofit hospitals in the United States. Research on 38 million adult patients in 26,000 U.S. hospitals revealed that death rates in for-profit hospitals are significantly higher than in nonprofit hospitals: for-profit patients have a 2 percent higher chance of dying in the hospital or within 30 days of discharge. The increased death rates were clearly linked to "the corners that for-profit hospitals must cut in order to achieve a profit margin for investors, as well as to pay high salaries for administrators."

“To ease cost pressures, administrators tend to hire less highly skilled personnel, including doctors, nurses, and pharmacists…,” wrote P. J. Devereaux, a cardiologist at McMaster University and the lead researcher. “The U.S. statistics clearly show that when the need for profits drives hospital decision making, more patients die.”

I personally find this to be reprehensible, that the American dollar has a higher value than the life of just one human being.

I will support the single payer system to my dying breath, which if I'm lucky under that system will mean I'll live a little longer than under the current one, then so be it. It's ridiculous that one would worry that a doctor might not be able to afford the new Lexus he has had his eye on because of such low rates and overhead. In this system of Me, Me, Me, when will we ever start to think of others? I too will fight to the bitter end to make certain that every one I know knows just how awful of a system we currently have, and that we can not simply try to provide for "just me". That's just a very selfish and mindless way to think and behave toward our fellow Americans. In this society we must learn that when we help others, we in turn help ourselves. When the only person to benefit is just you, the rest of us simply do what? Suffer? I want to believe that I'm more compassionate than that, and I would expect others to do the same.