Can someone explain to me how this is going to cause private health insurance companies to go out of business?

As for as I understand it...
A) there is no public option.

B) by requiring that everyone sign up for health care, they're giving MORE business to the insurance companies. (And for the people who can't afford it/under the 14k income line, the government subsidizes the payments).

It can be argued that this is an incremental step. Also, considering that insurance companies will not be able to discriminate upon pre-existing conditions and that payment caps are raised or done away with, as well as premiums capped, none of that fits in with the insurance business model. Keep in mind that people can simply choose not to get insurance and pay the lower penalty tax until they decide they need it. This seems to fit in with the President's idea to slowly get to the single payer system he advocates.

A lot of folks love to bash the UK's NHS but within my circle of friends and family it has never let any of us down.

My dad had a heart attack around two years ago, he was rushed to hospital, kept in hospital for 2-3 weeks, underwent surgery and now has regular checkups, cost to us, zero (other than the National Insurance he has paided his entire life). My mum also had to have emergency surgery some time back when I was younger for something I can't remember.

There are similar examples for other members in my family and friends, in every case no one has had to spend any of their own money and were treated quickly and professionally. In some situations they have had to wait 4-6 months for non-critical operations, but in those cases it never stopped any of them working, it was just stuff like knee operations to help them do sport/dancing, which is far enough in my opinion.

Also no one else has mentioned (whether it's relevent or not) but nearly 10% of the UK population is also covered by private healthcare, my grand parents have been on it for years and they've made very good use of it combined with the NHS, they also aren't rich, just worked hard their entire lives and are enjoying their retirement.

There are issues with the NHS for sure, espeically within cities where the demend probably outstripes the capacity, but if you asked the average person over here whether they would take the (old) american system over ours, when told the truth about the costs involved and not what they see on the TV, I doubt any would take the old US system...

I don't pretend to know a thing about what the recent bill has done, but just skim reading through the wiki article on your healthcare system, it doesn't sound pretty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States



And considering your spending the US ranks very badly on life expectancy and child motality rates.

Like I said, I don't know what the bill does, but from an outsider looking in, something needed to be done because whatever you had before was cleary not working.

These things are rarely done right the first time around and with government piss arsing around it'll probably take another 10-15 years to fix the problems embedded in the first bill just so that it would pass. But don't start bashing the thing before you've seen it in use or know first hand how it works.

Where exactly did that term come from? I didn't understand it the first few times I see it and I still don't get it (I know forms Obama's initials, but why basset hound orphan in particular?)

I know most people here seem to have an aversion to Ann Coulter but on a whim I decided to glance at her website today. I found her most recent column to be one of the least offensive I've read of her's, although there is, of course, some of her to be expected humor.

[quote=Ann Coulter]MY HEALTH CARE PLAN
by Ann Coulter
March 17, 2010

Liberals keep complaining that Republicans don't have a plan for reforming health care in America. I have a plan!

It's a one-page bill creating a free market in health insurance. Let's all pause here for a moment so liberals can Google the term "free market."

Nearly every problem with health care in this country -- apart from trial lawyers and out-of-date magazines in doctors' waiting rooms -- would be solved by my plan.

In the first sentence, Congress will amend the McCarran-Ferguson Act to allow interstate competition in health insurance.

We can't have a free market in health insurance until Congress eliminates the antitrust exemption protecting health insurance companies from competition. If Democrats really wanted to punish insurance companies, which they manifestly do not, they'd make insurers compete.

The very next sentence of my bill provides that the exclusive regulator of insurance companies will be the state where the company's home office is. Every insurance company in the country would incorporate in the state with the fewest government mandates, just as most corporations are based in Delaware today.

That's the only way to bypass idiotic state mandates, requiring all insurance plans offered in the state to cover, for example, the Zone Diet, sex-change operations, and whatever it is that poor Heidi Montag has done to herself this week.

President Obama says we need national health care because Natoma Canfield of Ohio had to drop her insurance when she couldn't afford the $6,700 premiums, and now she's got cancer.

Much as I admire Obama's use of terminally ill human beings as political props, let me point out here that perhaps Natoma could have afforded insurance had she not been required by Ohio's state insurance mandates to purchase a plan that covers infertility treatments and unlimited ob/gyn visits, among other things.

It sounds like Natoma could have used a plan that covered only the basics -- you know, things like cancer.

The third sentence of my bill would prohibit the federal government from regulating insurance companies, except for normal laws and regulations that apply to all companies.

Freed from onerous state and federal mandates turning insurance companies into public utilities, insurers would be allowed to offer a whole smorgasbord of insurance plans, finally giving consumers a choice.

Instead of Harry Reid deciding whether your insurance plan covers Viagra, this decision would be made by you, the consumer. (I apologize for using the terms "Harry Reid" and "Viagra" in the same sentence. I promise that won't happen again.)

Instead of insurance companies jumping to the tune of politicians bought by health-care lobbyists, they would jump to the tune of hundreds of millions of Americans buying health insurance on the free market.

Hypochondriac liberals could still buy the aromatherapy plan and normal people would be able to buy plans that only cover things like major illness, accidents and disease. (Again -- things like Natoma Canfield's cancer.)

This would, in effect, transform medical insurance into ... a form of insurance!

My bill will solve nearly every problem allegedly addressed by ObamaCare -- and mine entails zero cost to the taxpayer. Indeed, a free market in health insurance would produce major tax savings as layers of government bureaucrats, unnecessary to medical service in America, get fired.

For example, in a free market, the government wouldn't need to prohibit insurance companies from excluding "pre-existing conditions."

Of course, an insurance company has to be able to refuse new customers with "pre-existing conditions." Otherwise, everyone would just wait to get sick to buy insurance. It's the same reason you can't buy fire insurance on a house that's already on fire.

That isn't an "insurance company"; it's what's known as a "Christian charity."

What Democrats are insinuating when they denounce exclusions of "pre-existing conditions" is an insurance company using the "pre-existing condition" ruse to deny coverage to a current policy holder -- someone who's been paying into the plan, year after year.

Any insurance company operating in the free market that pulled that trick wouldn't stay in business long.

If hotels were as heavily regulated as health insurance is, right now I'd be explaining to you why the government doesn't need to mandate that hotels offer rooms with beds. If they didn't, they'd go out of business.

I'm sure people who lived in the old Soviet Union thought it was crazy to leave groceries to the free market. ("But what if they don't stock the food we want?")

The market is a more powerful enforcement mechanism than indolent government bureaucrats. If you don't believe me, ask Toyota about six months from now.

Right now, insurance companies are protected by government regulations from having to honor their contracts. Violating contracts isn't so easy when competitors are lurking, ready to steal your customers.

In addition to saving taxpayer money and providing better health insurance, my plan also saves trees by being 2,199 pages shorter than the Democrats' plan.

Feel free to steal it, Republicans!

COPYRIGHT 2010 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL UCLICK
1130 Walnut, Kansas City, MO 64106[/quote]

i hate political parties, and i hate health care reforms, in fact, i hate most of what humanity does

were such a dumb species, aliens are welcome to conquer us

Because I refer to the president by his three letter initials, as I do the previous president. It is assumed that I do so to emphasize his middle name so it was added to the swear filter to be replaced with "basset hound orphans".

That Ann Coulter article is terrible and I daresay offensive to those who are actually sick right now.

I'll single out one part as a good example, the part about pre-existing conditions:



Of course that's how insurance works. But she fails to understand a few problems here:

A. This isn't the "oh well sucks for you, you should have had insurance before you got sick". This is the "I can't even switch plans because no one else will cover me now that I'm sick".
B. Are we really willing to just say "well, I guess you die then if you can't afford it"? Because that's what she wants. Is it right to expect health insurance to become more like universal, where it covers everything? No, but the alternative is unacceptable.

Insurance companies are now prohibited from dismissing a client if they develop a persistent illness.

I suspect you'll never see anything like that in any bill, because that kind of legislation is literally impossible. I'll sell you my Econ 101 textbook if you want.

Ding dong the witch is dead, I guess?

False dichotomy.

No you don't. Money is fungible. When they pass tax laws and the politicians say "Uh yup, uh huh, we're collecting this money to pay for [x]" they are telling you a lie. They are lying to you.

Yes, that's exactly what I said. Medicare has a revenue of 0, so it's always in the red. Tautology.

I understand your emotion but the fact that your rational understanding of the issue conflicts with and contradicts your emotional response is something that is probably not lost on you. Having had a close family member that battled severe illnesses I understand the emotions. I personally came to the viewpoint that corrupting the entire system to theoretically benefit a minority doesn't make much sense. Real reform should focus on the minority that find themselves in relatively impossible positions. Believe it or not, I could actually fully support wide ranging nationalized universally paid for health care if that were going to be the only national social entitlement. But that would require wide ranging government reform that I won't even try to start explaining that would have a snowball's chance of ever happening.

Actually, could you do us all a favor and send that to the capitol?

Ann Coulter is a fantastic woman.

She simultaneously lambasts unregulated private healthcare by equating it to Social Darwinism, and mocks all of the people who don't understand economics by suggesting that health insurers (who don't pay) aren't natural monopolies.

Universal covers everything?

Man, I should go get those implants I've always wanted.

Ann Coulter fails to understand a lot of things. I agree w/ Wookie that her article is less offensive than usual (that's not hard to imagine since she's one of the most offensive people on the planet) but it's still rather offensive for the reasons that CM stated. Isn't she overdue for another pie facial?

Disregarding for a moment the cost to the country of bill, it is a net benefit for the availability and potentially the cost of healthcare in this country. It is not without major flaws, but its provisions are, on the whole, good ones.

The cost is very large. The CBO says that the increase in the defecit will be offset by savings, but I guess only time will tell. I don't have a lot of faith in economic predictions. I also feel that the bill fails to address some fundemental issues with the current system.

The way this whole process has unfolded has had a negative impact on my opinion of both Democrats and Republicans. I'd hoped that the decline of the neocons would bring a better Republican party, but they immediately embraced a different sort of crazy in the Tea Partiers. I'm not yet sure which is worse. The filibuster was never meant to be the default state in the Senate. I was surprised at how inept the Democrats proved in passing this (their ultimate success in passing a bill doesn't change that). Obama could have done a lot better last summer in helping them; had he taken the lead on what a bill should contain, we might not have had dozens of versions flying around. I also feel like a lot of time was wasted attempting bipartisanship; it is very good in theory, but I think Republican unanimity was clear early enough that we didn't need to spend all that time empowering the Tea Partiers with endless town hall meetings. I'm particularly angered by the loss of the public option because my senator (Ben Nelson) was one of those most responsible for its removal.

You know what I mean.

It sounded boring, so I've decided to just cheat on my taxes and forget about it.

Hopefully you can avoid the 16,000+ iRs agents this bill hires to enforce compliance!

Meanwhile Canada sits happily atop lolamerica.

I got a free inhaler once.
I didn't actually need it, but hey!

Of course, lovely quebec's free healthcare does include having to sit 11 hours waiting while you have terrible pain in your testicles, only the have the doctor poke your testies, have you inhale a couple times and tell you its a sprain and it'll get better in a few days. A few years later you find out it was testicular torsion and that one of your testicles might be dead!

WOOT!

...How do you sprain a testicle?

I'm probably not translating right A pulled muscle in the leg maybe?

Of course, because we all know the chances of YOU actually straining, let alone spraining, a testicle are pretty slim.

but hey, at least you get to keep your house

oMg, what Canadians lose their house in order to treat their testicles?

Canadians have testicles?

Yeah, maybe in a museum somewhere.

I'm going to be very upset if you get 'OMG' turned into OSWALD MORNINGTON GOOSE or something.

vs. the US where you can get the exact same thing, only you need to pay a whole lot of money for the privilage.

lOl

Canada's testicles travelled South a couple of centuries ago.

That sounds awesome

Well, my stated policy is to emphasize the middle initial of any acronymn I post now but I sometimes choose not too. Kind of like a member of congress, I don't always adhere to my stated principles in this matter.

OSWALD MORNINGTON GOOSE BASSET HOUND ORPHANS WELSH TONSIL FORMALDEHYDE!

Now you have to transcribe: lOl!

OMG

You remind me of someone trying to speak a language in a foreign land. The emphasis is totally in the wrong place.

Bahahaha.

The government can't enforce a damn thing. They have to get on their knees and beg us to fill out their silly little forms so they can count us. Now they're adding a bunch of bloat and expect to be able to enforce compliance with sheer asininity? I thought this bill was supposed to help the uninsured and not punish them. It stands to reason, however, that the government would not understand the concept of a personal budget since they don't give a **** about theirs.

As opposed to conducting the census through force?

Are you suggesting that over the next 4 years people will be more resistant to file/pay their taxes because of this bill?