Obama to Challenge GOP on Healthcare Costs
By Paul Bedard, Washington Whispers
The administration has begun a prespeech campaign to frame President Obama's healthcare address to a joint session of Congress next week. Among the highlights: The prez will switch the theme to health insurance reform, note that there is 80 percent agreement among the several reform bills before Congress, challenge the Republicans to provide alternatives or explain why doing nothing is OK, and suggest that cable footage of angry town hall meetings missed the real story of financial hardships families face to pay medical bills.
"The goal is to begin to control the message over the weekend and, in addition, float some trial balloons, see how things play with the public," said one Democratic official who is involved in the prespeech campaign spin. "This is sort of the start of that effort to arm us with information and see how it plays," added the official, referring to themes and talking points provided by the administration to supporters in Washington.
One version shown to Whispers says that the healthcare debate has entered a "new phase" after a summer during which those town hall meetings were highlighted on cable TV. Obama may take a slap at those images, suggesting that they do not tell of a larger story of Americans meeting around kitchen tables to discuss high costs or losing coverage. "While cable news may have replayed over and over a few of the protests that took place over August," lawmakers also heard horror stories about high costs, says one of the theme papers.
The president also is expected to challenge Republicans to "either propose their own plan" or tell Americans why it is all right to "do nothing" to cut crushing premium costs or watch as families lose coverage.
The talking points, however, suggest that Obama will stick to a largely nonconfrontational approach that focuses on reforming health insurance, cutting costs, and helping find insurance for those without it. For example, he is expected to note that in all the reform bills before the House and Senate, there is about "80 percent" agreement on some elements that he also supports. He'll suggest that lawmakers focus on that to begin "pulling together" strands of the bills to produce "a final product that reforms our health insurance system."
Tags: Congress | healthcare | Republicans | Barack Obama
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My Health Care Solution
Health Care For The Rest of Us
Health care, a major element of our economic heartbeat is stressed! My Loose Penny Program, a capital injection, will start to repair our muscle, but mission critical diplomacy is required.
The president needs to bring our fast foods, supermarkets; Target and Wal-Mart CEO’s to the Rose Garden, to ink the deal. Barack Obama went to Cairo. He can meet with KFC. Our pocket change can make the critical health care diff rinse.
Every chain must participate in our Loose Pennies Program, regardless the size of their enterprise. Our purpose: an additional two-cents in their cash registers. For every item registered we want two pennies extra, tacked as patriotic gratuity.
This is not a government mandate. A patron can refuse to pay the voluntary two cents. Burger, fries and a drink total six extra cents, pennies off the pavement. Regardless what we purchase at the market; we are only pitching in some loose change out of pocket. 40 items at the supermarket could easily add up to $150. Does 80 cents inhibit your generosity?
A worker chosen by the workers to represent them can meet with the managers to approve the total pennies for everything out the door the week before, dividing that total by everyone’s hours worked.
Then we include up to $2 dollars extra for every hour in the worker’s paychecks. We could deduct 5 % for a medical mal-practice pool, but employers are exempted from matching, so sticker prices won’t be raised to cover any additional cost of doing business. Fast food chains and supermarkets won’t be harnessed by charges from our two-pennies program!
The worker’s pay raise doesn’t come out of management’s pocket, but work place production will increase. When someone quits, the crew might ask the boss leave them to pick up the slack, so they earn more money!
The overage, beyond $2 dollars hourly extra in every pay, goes to interest bearing medical savings accounts, with the worker's name on his or her portion. President Obama can ask everyone on the low end of the economic chain to divide their bounty, or he can order the take home half in cash, with the balance going to grow their medical savings accounts.
The medical savings account, as a health care solution beats health insurance! Insurance companies are dedicated to making money, not protecting the sick from financial disaster. When an insurance company cancels your policy because you have an expensive disease, they don’t refund your premium. But with a Health Assurance Savings Account, when you quit or get fired from the job, your medical savings account goes with you!
After a year behind the fast food counter, a 40-hour per week worker could have more than two grand in their Health Assurance account. Ten million uninsured people at the bottom of our economic food chain might not have health care insurance but all would carry Health Assurance. TPM Daily Beast for more michaelslevinson dot commie
republicans and health care
What everyone needs to realize now, is that you can't expect republicans to propose solutions right now. They just aren't capable of figuring out solutions to problems. They argue, they yell, they complain, they feign outrage, but the republican party of 2009 just doesn't have the ability to figure out solutions. And we ought to quit expecting it for a while.
Health Care Reform should:
1) Include health care coverage for all people from conception until natural death, and continue the federal ban on funding for abortions;
2) Include access for all with a special concern for the poor;
3) Pursue the common good and preserve pluralism, including freedom of conscience; and
4) Restrain costs and apply costs equitably among payers.
Abortion is not Health Care.
Abortion is slaughter of human life.
Abortion is not Love.
Love Life
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