Republicans Performed Beautifully at Health Reform Summit

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To a degree you're right, public tax dollars have subsidized such an inflated cost of medicine. The free market should prevail with drastic wage cuts to all doctors. The AMA has limited med schools to drive up the cost of medicine to the point where there aren't enough doctors in this country to take care of everyone. So these days a majority of new doctors are immigrant labor coming to fill the gap and to collect the ridiculous high compensation here found in no other country in world. Doctors as a whole need to take a big pay cut, be put on salary, and quit buying the astronomical priced med-tech devices that get pushed off on patients as treatment rather than what they are - capital investments to generate income. Medical inflation in this country had been an absurdity perpetuated by profits without conscience. Its one of the reasons why we pay the most of any industrial country and have the worst healthcare of any industrial country - worse than Cuba.
End result, Americans will be going to foreign countries for medical treatment, seeing overseas doctors over the internet for regular care, and another industry will be off-shored and killed off by the monopoly protectionist policies we have today. Stick that in your teat and suck it.

Jake of PA 2:35PM March 06, 2010

Ever read Paul Starr's "The Social Transformation of American Medicine." It shows how we got where we are now. Professor Starr would never be in favor of going back to market based health care (before Medicare) but it would lower costs and I don't think quality would suffer.
In 1965 Medicare detractors warned that the true costs of Medicare were being hidden. 1965 Government estimates for 1990 Medicare hospital costs were off by a factor of 7. Medicare now has $50 to $100 trillion in unfunded liability. Does anyone really believe Obama, Reid and Pelosi are going to save us?
The best thing that happened this week was the 21% Medicare physician fee cut. A definite move in the right direction for a broke treasury. But it's already been delayed by Congress 1 month even though the cut is part of the savings in Obama's plan.
Physicians and the public need to start weaning from the Government teat NOW.
http://bittersweetmedicine.com/

Bob of SC 7:46PM March 03, 2010

“Madoff was major Democratic campaign contributor”
CNN) –” Alleged Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernard Madoff has been a major political donor, directing hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic lawmakers over the past two decades.”
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/12/17/madoff-was-major-democratic-campaign-contributor/?fbid=Xb9wsCytYZ5

Bill Hedges of MO 3:40AM March 02, 2010

“Top contributors to Obama and McCain are big banks”
http://noworldsystem.com/2008/10/06/top-contributors-to-obama-and-mccain-are-big-banks/

Bill Hedges of MO 3:31AM March 02, 2010

Someone differs with you… Note:“Democrats acknowledged that at the moment they did not have the votes for the reconciliation maneuver, which is intended to avoid the threat of a filibuster and the need for a 60-vote majority in the Senate.”
“Accordingly, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, Democrats in the House and the Senate have begun work on a bill that they hope could be passed in the Senate by a simple majority“.
“Under the tentative plan sketched by Ms. Pelosi and other Democrats, the House would pass the health care bill approved in December by the Senate, and both chambers would approve a separate package of changes using a parliamentary device known as budget reconciliation. The legislation would revise the Senate health bill to reflect compromises between House and Senate Democrats and suggestions by Mr. Obama.”
“Democrats acknowledged that at the moment they did not have the votes for the reconciliation maneuver, which is intended to avoid the threat of a filibuster and the need for a 60-vote majority in the Senate.”
“What you call a complicated process is called a simple majority,” Ms. Pelosi said. “And that’s what we’re asking the Senate to act upon.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/health/policy/27health.html

Bill Hedges of MO 3:12AM March 02, 2010

All your idiotic nonsense won't change the fact that Health Care Reform already passed the Senate with a super majority and the House already passed a health care bill, too.
Done deal, all that's left to clean up the difference in reconciliation, just like Bush passed his unfunded tax cuts - that's right through reconciliation.
Welcome to democracy where majority rules.
Time to finish health care reform and let's get on the the other massive reforms needed to yank the country out of this economic depression.
Now all you America-haters can move on to opposing financial reform and go back to supporting your bankers and Madoffs out to screw this country.

Randy J of TX 11:36PM March 01, 2010

Saturday, August 08, 2009
“Did Sarah Palin say Obama's "death panel" might kill her baby?”
“Here's the full text of her(Sarah Palin) Facebook post. Excerpt“:
“The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
“She doesn't say that the government will kill disabled (or elderly) persons directly, but that death will occur as a result of the decisions of cost controlling bureaucrats with the power to determine who can receive various treatments. I don't know why "level of productivity in society" is in quotes, nor do I know whether it is the plan to ration care on this basis. Those are actually serious matters, and I'd like to know the answers. What Kleefeld is doing is trying to sweep Palin aside as a big crazy wacko.”
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2009/08/did-sarah-palin-say-obamas-death-panel.html
“Death Drugs Cause Uproar in Oregon
Terminally Ill Denied Drugs for Life, But Can Opt for Suicide”
“The 64-year-old Oregon woman, whose lung cancer had been in remission, learned the disease had returned and would likely kill her. Her last hope was a $4,000-a-month drug that her doctor prescribed for her, but the insurance company refused to pay.”
“What the Oregon Health Plan did agree to cover, however, were drugs for a physician-assisted death. Those drugs would cost about $50.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=5517492&page=1
“Oregon health plan covers assisted suicide, not drugs, for cancer patient”
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/oregon_health_plan_covers_assisted_suicide_not_drugs_for_cancer_patient/

Bill Hedges of MO 3:22PM March 01, 2010

it's just sad how people put profits above life and health. This is not the America I thought I was fighting for. I'm so ashamed.

kev of IN 11:55AM March 01, 2010

The GOP got to lie and grand stand for seven hours, stuck to talking points and offered no real soultions. They could care less about the uninsured or the defict.
Let the 30 million uninsured eat cake!

Tyson of TX 11:38AM March 01, 2010

"Our" U. S. House speaker has just issued a statement that I almost agree with. She says in effect that doing her will now might cost her fellow congressepeople their jobs,but it will be worth it to win the "I" president and her a VICTORY. wELL LET ME TELL THEM BOTH THAT THEIR SUMMIT may have allowed the former closed doors to have a small opening and she could get part of her wish. Transparency had not been used anywhere except in campaigning. Keep talking, Nancy.

Jack Gourley of NC 8:31AM March 01, 2010