news-record.com

"... a bipartisan majority..." This made me laugh so hard my orange juice went up my nose.

Lakeahia, you're basically "on target!" Applause! Sincerely.

Left or right, if the House version of the healthcare bill passes, why is it going to cost more me to have healthcare insurance than I'm currently paying? That doesn't seem like reform to me.

Mike

Peter Schiff is an economist (now running for the Senate in Connecticut) who vaulted to prominence in the past couple of years after relentlessly ridiculing housing market boosters on business channels during the giddy years before the housing market collapse. A collection of the Schiff clips skewering his hapless opponents has 1.6 million hits on youtube:

Peter Schiff vs. Assorted Wall Street "Gurus"
(ten minutes of video clips from 2006-2007):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw

Here is Schiff in a video produced a couple of weeks ago on the Senate's healthcare reform bill. In a nutshell forcing insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions coupled with low penalies for NOT buying healthcare incentivizes healthy people to wait until they get sick to get coverage. This will quickly bankrupt insurance companies AND any "goverment option." This will mean a genuine government monopoly "socialized" healthcare system:

Peter Schiff: Healthcare Reform = Socialized Medicine
(November 19, 2009, 10 minute video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfGjqmG47cU

Micheal Barone, on the political agenda at work in support of health care "reform":

"Yet the congressional Democrats who are pressing to expand federal health care spending do not seem much fazed by the prospect that, as Winship writes, "the level of taxation it would require to meet projected spending needs is far higher than anything the country has ever seen-slash-tolerated."

That suggests that, at least for some Democrats, huge looming budget deficits are not a bug but a feature. Just as Ronald Reagan hoped that cutting taxes would force politicians to cut spending, these Democrats hope that increasing spending will force politicians to increase taxes to levels common in Western Europe. Never mind that those economies have proved more sluggish and less creative than ours over the long haul."

http://www.aei.org/article/101353

Here are some other problems the health care "reform" cheerleaders don't like to talk about:

Where will we find the medical staff to handle more patients?

"A comprehensive strategy for growing the physician workforce – as well as other allied health professionals such as nurses and physicians' assistants – should be developed and supported with a federal investment at the same time health insurance is expanded to cover millions of additional people.

Without this, gaining access to prompt medical care for all patients will become even more difficult. There will be longer wait times for appointments, less face time with a physician and, in all likelihood, delayed diagnoses leading to more expensive treatment and increased risk of complications. One need only look at the experience of Massachusetts, where the adoption of universal health coverage has intensified the physician shortage."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870443180457453990162510268...

Favored Dem/Lefty/"Progressive" affinity groups will get rewarded for their loyalty under "reform":

"Despite representing only about 7.6 percent of private sector employees, unions are poised to gain significant privileges, authority and financial windfalls from health care reform. Coming at the expense of tax-paying patients and businesses, these specific benefits would do little or nothing to improve our health care system, says Kevin Troutman, chairman of the Healthcare Practice Group of Fisher & Phillips LLP."

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18692

The Pelosi Care version of the bill is neither safe nor effective:

"•This product will reduce the quality of your health care. America's health care sector is often inconvenient, poorly coordinated, and makes less use of information technology than your local supermarket. Research shows that medical errors kill as many as 100,000 Americans per year.

Markets would solve those problems, but government thwarts doctors and entrepreneurs who try to improve quality. Medicare – by far the largest purchaser of medical services in the world – actually penalizes doctors and hospitals that reduce medical errors.

The House bill would cement those deficiencies in place with yet another massive government program, and create new quality problems, like insurers skimping on care and customer service for the sickest patients.

•This product probably won't make you healthier. The House bill would expand coverage, but at a steep cost and with zero evidence that doing so is a cost-effective way of improving health.

Little research supports the notion that broadly expanding insurance coverage makes people healthier. Medicare established near-universal coverage for the elderly, yet research shows that program didn't save a single life in its first 10 years of operation. Whether it has had any subsequent impact on mortality rates – positive or negative – remains an open question."

http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/health-219257-bill-product.html

The list of reasons why the currently proposed "reform" is a horrible idea is almost endless. And none of it will change the minds of those who are blind and deaf to the obvious.

We have only to read some of the cheerleaders' letters to the editor and comments here to understand that.