alright, so im in debate club at school, and one of the topics im debating on is Obama's health care reform plan, i am against it. i am using internet sources but they can be sometimes unreliable, so i figured id ask different opinions. It would be greatly appreciated if i could get a Democratic and a Republican view of this plan.

Or if you want you can submit a web site you trust


Any help at all would be greatly appreciated!

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I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk...

The only thing I can throw in without taking up an hours worth is that so far I think everything he said he was going to do he has come flying out of the gate trying to get these things done. The medical coverage issue was one of the key issues during his election run and now a lot of people dont want it. I just dont understand that. It is not going to effect the coverage that people who are already covered in the least bit so give the guy a chance. He walked into a giant mess, did everyone think it would get cleared up over night. I am glad his approval rating is about 50%. For once I would not like to see a guy with an 85% rating after 8 months then wind up near 30. I rather see him start slow and leave office at 80%. Plus think of the extra burden of stress if things go bad for him you will not see another president of color for 100 years. So I believe he is more interested in achieving his goals and how he will be viewed by history.

i'm with you in being against obama's health care plan.
1: sure you can keep your current health care, but your taxes will go up as a result of this plan. so not only are you paying for your own healthcare, but also someone else's.
2: like canada and britain, a government run healthcare system will not take care of the elderly or very young. it peaks at about 25, and goes downhill from there.
3: the government won't want to pay too much. say you're 50 years old and go to the hospital, where they tell you you have cancer. when you try to get treatment, you might find that because you broke your leg when you were 15, the government will refuse to dish out more money for you. and if you are able to get treatment, you'll be waiting for about half a year. in that time you could easily die.

that's all i have for now. if i think of anything else, i'll post it. hope i helped!

-Jake

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"I don't care how good you are, how fast you are. You ain't good enough no lessin' you got the soul." -Hubert Sumlin

Here's the short answer: Read this and see whether you can find anything that authorizes any federal programs of this sort:

The Constitution of the United States

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I really like all them "Aster" guitars. You know, like the Stratoc, Telec and Jazzm.

Creating a whole new health care plan ... in my opinion ... is like taking off your shoe laces with a chain saw. The big driver to rising health care costs is the skyrocketing mal-practice insurance, which we have because of the the trial attorneys. And they sue every practictioner involved in a particular case because they do not want to inadvertantly omit potentially the at-fault doctor due to an already passed statute of limitations. Because of this, innocent doctors commonly are sued for mal-practice, which results in sky-high insurance, which they ... rightfully so ... pass on to us.

If we could fix this ONE problem, health care costs would be reasonably in check and there would be no health care problem. But ... the trial attorneys are an extremely powerful lobby ... so we won't. Last I checked, this issue has only been barely addressed. Everything else is window dressing ...

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Laughing out loud with fear and hope, I have a desperate plan ...

On the, "You'll be able to keep your existing health care."

That simply isn't true. I know they keep saying it, but it simply is not true.

First, the deductive part, meaning reasoning. You may, of course, disagree here, it's opinion based on reality: What employer, corporation or municipality will continue to suffer the expense of offering private insurance to its employees when they can dump them on the government dole? I mean, let's be realistic. The company will simply say, "We do not offer that benefit any longer." -And you're out.

Next, the objective part, meaning it's fact, and how one feels about it really doesn't matter: Even if an employer was so benevolent that they continued to absorb the cost of offering private insurance, the very instant anything changes with your insurer (and stuff changes all the time) you're out. *

So, your co-pay went from $18 to $20? -You're out and into the public "option." Just like that. Change in referral procedure? -You're out. Generics become okay/not okay? -You're out.

So, let them tell me again how I'd be able to keep what I have. Right, I'll be able to keep what I have if my employer chooses to pay for it instead of not having to pay, AND as long as absolutely nothing changes with my provider.

And that's just a single basic point. You could hit things like this all day.



* http://docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf

First, familiarize yourself with what a private health care benefit plan (erroneously called 'insurance') is, how it is set up, and administered, and where the money goes. Having done that, examine whether or not that 'can of worms' has truly been spoken to by the executive branch.

As a practitioner who is married to a retired personal injury/med mal attorney, I see the tort issue from several points of view but will not argue them here other than to say that your understanding of the content of the first paragraph should give you insight as to where and how practitioners might be increasing the cost of care, or being more careful, whether or not you would prefer them being so, and what the potential impact on this might be.? Remember....when doctors and malpractice attorneys close the door to their offices at the end of a busy day, they become 'everyman' and potential users of the system. I can speak to that personally, for both myself and my wife, on more than one occasion, and for some pretty serious s--t!

Also examine the track record of the Medicare/Medicaid programs, and also examine The Veteran's Administration program as an example of the Federal Government's track record in operating a health care delivery system.

The hard questions are really not being asked, nor are they being placed in the hard light of day of the public forum.

In this debate, you're going to have to pick your fight.

Doc

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"Another day in paradise!"

Two questions in my head regarding health care and reform:
1. If fixing health care is so urgent, why do most of the provisions in the health care bills being floated now not take effect until 2013?

2. When did providing health care become such a profit making big business arena? When I grew up, you had a family doctor (who made a pretty good living but not lavish) and most communities had a community based non-profit hospital. And there wasn't an MRI or CT scanner in every doctors office. Or doctor owned specialty hospitals (where the doctors not only get paid for the their own procedures but for referring patients to their own facility!). And my family got pretty good health care....

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Ignorance IS bliss - and I am the happiest person here!

Answer: In the early '70s when legislation allowed the creation of an HMO (which was lobbied hard by Kaiser to get through).

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong on this.

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Laughing out loud with fear and hope, I have a desperate plan ...

it's about up, not down.
voted "YES" in the Should congress be required to have the same health care plan like the rest of us ?

I'm fairly certain my health care is as good if not better than at least all of the dead politicians, who have died coincidently from many of the same illnesses that i have, at least to this point, survived. Governments and government bureaucracy's are run and created to run by politicians and to our advantage our politicians run one the most well run governments on the planet, they are kidding (about health care), doctors and medical technicians work best at medicine, i would'nt trade my health care or doctors for anything suggested by politicians or anyone else for that matter. and, oh yes, i have'nt had health insurance for the last ten years, i'm good at taking direction sometimes, the actor in me.

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you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

So true. My wife grew up in Canada and two of her Grand parents died waiting for healthcare. Now, when her family needs something major done, they come to the states.

[i][b]......Likely when health care benefits became an employment perk. Individual, fee for service models can't work when you look at the costs for providing what science and technology is bringing to the table in terms of possibilities of care. You have to pool resources into a 'group'.
Think of a health care benefit plan provider as a restaurant offering one or more different kinds of menus in which they will provide dollars, all or in part, for a scheduled list of services, on the part of an employer.
A premium is calculated for each plan according to the services scheduled and the dollar amount. The employer chooses the benefit plan they wish to provide. It could be bare bones, or fat and muscular.

Sophisticated actuarial analyses for the proposed group establish the anticipated payouts (the coverage). costs of administration(the infrastructure which manages the plan) and [i][b]'profit'. . Of course, the lower the rate of utilization, the higher the 'profit', given that administrative costs will change as with any other business model.

So Peter pays Paul, Paul keeps a piece to run the show and pay himself a bonus as well, and then Paul pays you, if and when you need the cash, hoping against hope, that you never will. [/b][/i]The profit is directed towards income generating investments for Paul's advantage.[/b][/i]
[
i]What a public option should really do, if done correctly, is provide the people the best damn health care benefit on the planet and put the private sector into competition with it, or go out of business. That's what the insurance lobby is fighting against and why the industry, in general, has the biggest poliitical clout in politics. It's the profit from unspent premium dollars that matters.[/i]

Several years ago, in the season when we had some really serious hurricane damage the insurance industry was speaking out of both sides of its mouth, both declaring a record profit year and crying the blues about losses.

Much of the debate in all of this involves not only cost control, but protecting private interests. There's plenty of brain power out there with the knowledge of how to run a high quality system which takes care of people's needs, on the cutting edge of technology which people from all over the world come here to take advantage of, at reasonable adminstrative costs. .

The outfit I work for (a union) used to manage its own plan with the dollars it received from the employers of its members. Their expansion became such that it became clear that it would be more cost effective if they moved out of their own self-insured program to one of the regional, well known groups which, many years ago, was not-for-profit, but that ultimately changed when they advised NYS that they would have to leave because the juice was becoming not worth the squeeze.

In another example, a professional organization I belong to had a self-insured plan which was becoming bankrupt because the rate of membership of younger non-users was not sufficient to keep up with the increasing costs being incurred by the users who were a large group of rapidly aging individuals. Thus, they also moved into a large group.
to spread the risk.

It is not, by any means, a simple matter to resolve. but could be if one solved the profit issue in the equation. and leaned on those areas of living which are killing us.

But talking about something like putting big tobacco out of business is a topic for another day.

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"Another day in paradise!"

You took on a doozy of a topic. When I was young, I never thought about my health plan much. But now that I'm older, it's very important. My wife and I both need it now. I have diabetes and she suffers from the progressive form of MS. Even though we have a health care plan... the co-pay for the medication alone costs over $300.00 a month. And that's using the companies 90 day "discount" perscription service.

She needs a wheelchair, which we had to buy ourselves because they would only help us out with a standard model, which she cannot use because the MS robbed her of her upper arm strength. The only way they would pay would be if she was bed-ridden...

But, even with that... would I like to see everyone with a health plan?...Yes. Would I like to see less expensive plans?... Yes. Would I want the government involved in anyway?... uh, no thanks.

I think that the President's heart is in the right place. But, he's not going to solve it. He should concentrate his efforts on getting the economy back on it's feet.

If you are against the Obama's plan, find that first so you know what the other debater is going to say. Then, you are going to have to find out who's against it, because it's not just Republicans... Then, you need to read the proposals from each of those people. Because, there are several of those too.

Tough topic... I wish you luck, man...

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"...The final truth is, there is no truth..." - (from "Nice n' Neat" by the Boomtown Rats)

haha yeah i had to do this to for my government class. i just needed to find 3 facts so instead of using the internet i asked peoples opinions on it and yeah got some good info

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