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POPSObama's Health-Care Gamble Amazingly this is coming from Newsweek's Howard Fineman. He goes on to say: "The effort to jam the bill through Congress made the public dubious. Most Democrats voted for a version of the bill on the first round without having read, let alone digested, its thousands of pages. As the Christmas Eve vote approached, desperate last-minute stocking stuffers appeared in the small print, such as a $1.2 billion payoff to the state of Nebraska that secured Sen. Ben Nelson's reluctant vote." There's much more and it's indeed very telling. Get a grip Capitol Hill and "start over". Nobody wants it as is.
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POPS14th AMENDMENT-Equal Protection clause. Besides the systemic ban, a key component of ObamaCare may also run afoul of the Constitution. The "individual mandate" for citizens to buy health insurance seems to violate the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. In The Washington Post, attorneys David Rivkin and Lee Casey assert: The otherwise uninsured would be required to buy coverage...for no other reason than that people without health insurance exist. The federal government does not have the power to regulate Americans simply because they are there.
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POPSCapitalism again proves to the the source of the problem
This article is a must-read. The unfair capitalist healthcare system causes a glut on doctors in rich areas where they can earn more, and a sparsity in areas where they would earn less, like poor communities. Do people still think that America can get by without reforming Healthcare? Doctor's salaries need to be standardized, so a doctor working in a dirt-poor area of Arkansas is going make the same amount (by scale of skill) as a doctor in Malibu, California. 50 million uninsured Americans, and another 50 million underinsured Americans are too many people to be excluded from proper, complete healthcare. It's criminal, and amoral. C'mon, all you right-wingers! Don't you think that women and newborn children dying from perfectly preventable causes during childbirth is more important that wondering if federal money is going to perform abortions? Don't you think that people ending up losing limbs or eyesight due to lack of care for their diabetes is more important than getting all work
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POPSThe US is a Failed State In any failed state, the greatest threat to the population comes from the government and the police. That is certainly the situation today in the USA. Americans have no greater enemy than their own government. Washington is controlled by interest groups that enrich themselves at the expense of the American people.
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POPSPublic Health Plan Covers FEW
"The public option is a significant issue, but its place in the debate is completely out of proportion to its actual importance to consumers," said Drew Altman, president of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. "It has sucked all the oxygen out of the room and diverted attention from bread-and-butter consumer issues, such as affordable coverage and comprehensive benefits." The Democratic health care bills would extend coverage to the uninsured by providing government help with premiums and prohibiting insurers from excluding people in poor health or charging them more. But to keep from piling more on the federal deficit, most of the uninsured will have to wait until 2013 for help. Even then, many will have to pay a significant share of their own health care costs. The latest look at the public option comes from the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan economic analysts for lawmakers. It found that the scaled back government plan in the House bill wouldn't overtake
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POPSGenius: Mortgage Program Will Spend $3,000,000 per Loan Repair 
Three million mortgages are believed to be eligible for HAMP with 500,000 in a trial phase. The trial was supposed to last three months, but it has since been stretched to five months . The Doctor believes that many of these "repaired" loans will simply re-default. Why? For one reason, the underwriting (courtesy of TurboTax Tim) for the program uses "stated income", not verified income. These are the very same "liar's loans" that helped trigger the mortgage meltdown! Examining the chart, of the 50,130 trial modifications entered into in May, only 1,711 (or only 3%) resulted in a permanent modification! As The Huffington Post reported a few days ago, the low number of permanent modifications is still appallingly low ("HAMP will come nowhere close to keeping up with foreclosures"). Among the reasons for the low conversion rate: failure to make timely payments (doh!), failure to assemble necessary documentation (like income verification), and other . . .
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POPSInsurance Industry Audit Says Insurance Premiums Will Increase Faster with Senate Baucus Bill America's Health Insurance Plans engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to examine the impact of four components of the health reform bill being proposed by the Senate Finance Committee as introduced. These include: # Insurance market reforms and consumer protections that would raise health insurance premiums for individuals and families if the reforms are not coupled with an effective coverage requirement. # An excise tax on employer-sponsored high value health plans (or "Cadillac plans") that in a few years could also raise premiums for some moderate value plans. # Cuts in payment rates in public programs that could increase cost shifting to private sector businesses and consumers. These changes are expected to more than offset the potential reduction in cost shifting resulting from providing coverage to the uninsured. # New taxes on health sector entities that are likely to be passed through to consumers.
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POPSCanadian Doctor Shares True Pros & Cons of Canadian Health Care
Canadian doctor Michael M. Rachlis shares the truth about the Canadian Health Care system in hopes of dissolving propaganda and confusion. The Los Angeles Times posted and Op-Ed article by Canadian doctor Michael M. Rachlis. The whole thing is well worth a read and will provide a much better understanding of not only the Canadian health care system, but that of the U.S. as well. There's been a vast debate regarding a public option in the U.S. and most of it seems to be based on misinformation and fear tactics. Unfortunately, there's been a shortage of informed opinions and solid facts. I think it would be a good idea of many people who enjoy the benefit of universal health care in other countries would come forth and share their experiences. With the vast number of uninsured Americans, and the fact that insurance companies can and do deny coverage on a very arbitrary basis, there seems to be a need of some kind of major overhaul to the American health care system.
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POPS400 Richest Americans Lined Their Pockets with $30 Billion Taxes were high back in the 1950s because people understood that constraining wild extremes of wealth would make our country stronger and prevent another depression. (Well, what did those old fogies know?) Had we kept those high progressive taxes in place, instead of removing them, especially during the Reagan era, the Forbes 400 might each be worth "only" $100 million instead of $3.9 billion each. So let's imagine that the rest of their wealth, about $1.53 trillion, were available for the public good. What does $1.53 trillion buy? It's more than enough to insure the uninsured for the next twenty years or more.
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POPSWhat next...............Tax on toilet paper. House Democrats are struggling with getting their 10-year, $1 trillion-plus bill down to the $900 billion price tag Obama prefers. Major cuts could be required, but Democrats want to protect the subsidies their plan offers to low-income Americans to help them buy coverage. Those subsidies are the most costly part of the bill.
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POPSThe Reality Of Our Current Health Care System. But do we care about our fellow citizens or is it a matter of "I've got mine and if you don't have yours, too bad, how sad for you? I understand the "philosophy" presented by the opposition, but I've found that life and death transcend philosophy. Another thing missing from the debate is a sense of urgency to help those who will soon die from the lack of health care. They need health care now.
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POPSHealth Insurance Bankrupts Americans
A Harvard study found that 50 percent of all bankruptcy filings were partly the result of medical expenses. Every 30 seconds in the United States someone files for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem. Consider the plight of David: David had to stop working as a truck driver after he was diagnosed with kidney cancer and has since been struggling to pay for COBRA during the two-year Medicare waiting period. His wife, Gloria, is his full-time caregiver and cannot work outside the home, and the couple has had to use much of their savings and borrow from friends and family to pay for their COBRA premiums. David cashed in his 401K at a 24 percent loss so that they will be able to continue to pay the COBRA premium until he is eligible for Medicare. Gloria tried to apply for Medicaid, but she learned that their income is too high. "There is not any help for people like us. We are not considered poor enough, but we don't have the money to pay it on our own," Gloria sa
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POPSAmericans Must Back Up This Good Man Cheap, Selfish, Dirty Politicians are pushing up all over the world like mushrooms in season. Only once in a blue moon people get a man of the people in the high seat. If People let him down now through lethargic in-action they will get another Junior George Bush. And they would certaily deserve the scoundrel.
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POPS40 million? 15 million? Which is it? Smith concludes: The number of Americans who are poor, sick, and uninsured for a lengthy period of time is a relatively small number, about 4 million individuals, adding that the 46 million figure also includes about 12 million illegal aliens. Now this leads me to another question. If 4 million is the more accurate number, then the cost of $1.2 TRILLION seems even more exorbitant! We can’t find a way to help 4 million Americans so they can get health care without spending $1.2 TRILLION! There is absolutely no way to justify this kind of spending for just 4 million people, especially in light of the many alternative plans out there like the Republican plan and the plan by Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey.
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POPSDepressed Democrats: Don’t Understand Why Americans Condemn Socialism Poor liberals. Instead of looking for change in the right direction with tort reform and other non-Socialist idea’s they dug in their heels and said “Socialism or bust!” Well, we choose bust. Now, we do want health care fixed by other means. We want tort reform, we want small groups to be able to band together and form larger qualified groups, ….there is plenty of things that can be done to lower the cost of health care. But Socialism is not the answer.
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