Health Care Summit

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Axis

Guest
Just watched it.

It was stupid. The Democrats were again insinuating that Republicans don't care about lowering prices. The Republicans were treating it like a campaign debate, tossing out talking points with no substance. President Obama was the only one doing what this was intended to do. Rep. Paul Ryan got some good points/ideas in, but he only got to talk for like 2 minutes. I think they should have done something similar, but FAR fewer people. Just do Obama, Baucus, and Pelosi from the Left and Ensign, Snow, and Ryan from the Right. McCain and Biden in particular need to stfu.

Anybody else check it out?
 

noumenon

Guest
I haven't seen it but from what I heard they were all too busy arguing about general politics to actually touch upon anything of importance. You'd figure with an idea of this importance put forth on the table for once people would be able to shut the fuck up and discuss the matter at hand instead of personal vendettas and politics. Oh well...
I seriously can't imagine what it's like for people not having coverage. I know a friend of mine was sent to an ER a few months back for being in a car accident and just now got slapped with about $15,000 in medical bills...insanity.
So essentially no progress was made huh?
 

Axis

Guest
Pretty much. One guy did bring up a really great point though. He essentially asked, "Has anybody noticed that big projects never get done in Washington D.C. Whether it's immigration, Social Security, health care, gay marriage, or abortion, sweeping legislation has historically crashed and failed. His point was that the United States is simply too complex of a nation to try and create solutions centrally. Progressives have always had more success working on a local and state level, because people within regions are far more homogeneous than people are nationally.
 

noumenon

Guest
Absolutely. I heard someone had proposed something at one time that each individual state have its own unique health care package (kind of like I believe they do in Canada? not sure). Was that brought up at all? I mean, that would obviously create problems in itself and have people flocking to whatever state provided the best health care.
Hell, they've broken stuff like abortion and gay marriage down into state issues they may have to settle to do the same with health care. This is really too important of an issue to just let get swept under the rug.
 

Axis

Guest
The problem with making it state-based isn't that people will flock to states with better health insurance. It's that the insurance companies will flock to states that allow for better business. For (a fairly accurate example), Massachusetts has far stricter laws about who can buy what insurance, what companies can charge for, how much they can charge, etc. The government have a lot more control over the market. On the other hand, Utah has a more less regulated health care market. Your intuition may tell you that people from Massachusetts pay less than those from Utah, but that would be false. The freer markets in Utah attract more companies, which increases competition, and drives down prices. Individuals in Utah pay about $1,700 less a year on health care, per capita, than in Massachusetts. So, the current policy pretty much is that of state control, but the states with upped regulation cry about it because their costs are high, despite the fact that it is because of their very own regulation.
 

noumenon

Guest
Yup, sounds about right. I was never too in depth with politics but I will follow along on the bigger issues. I honestly have never even voted because I've never seen a candidate who impressed me enough to do so. It's just mind boggling that we can't even get out shit together on health care. We're probably the only non-third world nation where people need to worry about seeing a doctor when they're sick.
 

Italian Outsider

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bump.
Haven't read news for a while. What happened to this health care shit?
 

Axis

Guest
Lots of options on the table right now. Theoretically, the House of Representatives could vote on the Senate bill, word-for-word, and pass it with a simple majority. However there's a lot of language in that Senate bill that Reps don't like, and so it likely wouldn't pass. So, the House could pass another bill and send it to the Senate to pass under Reconciliation (a process which requires only a simple majority and bypasses a filibuster). Recently there's also been talk about the House doing a weird legislative move where it passes the bill without even voting on it, but I'm not sure of the details on how that works. Next week should be interesting.
 

Axis

Guest
That's when it's expected, yeah. I just read that President Obama is expected to go to Capital Hill on Saturday for one final rally call to everybody.
 

Italian Outsider

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Good. On purely academic basis, I'm curious to see medium-long term effects of Obama's plan.
Btw Axis may I ask what are you studying? If you do obviously.
 

Axis

Guest
The CBO plan came out, but those are pretty much garbage because predicting what future Congresses do is all but impossible. And I'm studying Economics with a minor in statistics.
 
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