So what's everyone think of Obama's healthcare reform actually being a secret liberal plot to euthanize the elderly? If the govt sold tickets I bet we could all get another tax cut.

There is a pilot program for euthanizing the elderly, it's called the VA.

It's a secret?

just like cash for clunkers

Not too many of my parts will be worth much!

Maybe. There's probably a lot of titanium in those knees, hip joints.....

I'm kinda surprised the tweakers haven't hit them first!

I know CanyonMan could probably re-sell a few of the fake limbs....

"Two of them were brighter than you"

Ummm.....the goal is to NOT have your patients come out glowing. Remind me to avoid you.

People complain about insurance companies and how they are fleecing the US for big money and denying claims etc. etc.

A government subsidized solution is in the works and people complain about that like they were happy with the insurance companies untill Obama came and forced socialism down everyone's throat...

Truth is, this is a response to the past 15-20 years of pissing and moaning... so what does it produce? Pissing and moaning...

Either some people just want to complain about the president or all the Bush supporters were hiding under rocks during his administration and once a Democrat president comes along they dust off the soap box and start talking about the socialist plot and the good ol days.

Health Care Realities
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 30, 2009
At a recent town hall meeting, a man stood up and told Representative Bob Inglis to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.” The congressman, a Republican from South Carolina, tried to explain that Medicare is already a government program — but the voter, Mr. Inglis said, “wasn’t having any of it.”

It’s a funny story — but it illustrates the extent to which health reform must climb a wall of misinformation. It’s not just that many Americans don’t understand what President Obama is proposing; many people don’t understand the way American health care works right now. They don’t understand, in particular, that getting the government involved in health care wouldn’t be a radical step: the government is already deeply involved, even in private insurance.

And that government involvement is the only reason our system works at all.

The key thing you need to know about health care is that it depends crucially on insurance. You don’t know when or whether you’ll need treatment — but if you do, treatment can be extremely expensive, well beyond what most people can pay out of pocket. Triple coronary bypasses, not routine doctor’s visits, are where the real money is, so insurance is essential.

Yet private markets for health insurance, left to their own devices, work very badly: insurers deny as many claims as possible, and they also try to avoid covering people who are likely to need care. Horror stories are legion: the insurance company that refused to pay for urgently needed cancer surgery because of questions about the patient’s acne treatment; the healthy young woman denied coverage because she briefly saw a psychologist after breaking up with her boyfriend.

And in their efforts to avoid “medical losses,” the industry term for paying medical bills, insurers spend much of the money taken in through premiums not on medical treatment, but on “underwriting” — screening out people likely to make insurance claims. In the individual insurance market, where people buy insurance directly rather than getting it through their employers, so much money goes into underwriting and other expenses that only around 70 cents of each premium dollar actually goes to care.

Still, most Americans do have health insurance, and are reasonably satisfied with it. How is that possible, when insurance markets work so badly? The answer is government intervention.

Most obviously, the government directly provides insurance via Medicare and other programs. Before Medicare was established, more than 40 percent of elderly Americans lacked any kind of health insurance. Today, Medicare — which is, by the way, one of those “single payer” systems conservatives love to demonize — covers everyone 65 and older. And surveys show that Medicare recipients are much more satisfied with their coverage than Americans with private insurance.

Still, most Americans under 65 do have some form of private insurance. The vast majority, however, don’t buy it directly: they get it through their employers. There’s a big tax advantage to doing it that way, since employer contributions to health care aren’t considered taxable income. But to get that tax advantage employers have to follow a number of rules; roughly speaking, they can’t discriminate based on pre-existing medical conditions or restrict benefits to highly paid employees.

And it’s thanks to these rules that employment-based insurance more or less works, at least in the sense that horror stories are a lot less common than they are in the individual insurance market.

So here’s the bottom line: if you currently have decent health insurance, thank the government. It’s true that if you’re young and healthy, with nothing in your medical history that could possibly have raised red flags with corporate accountants, you might have been able to get insurance without government intervention. But time and chance happen to us all, and the only reason you have a reasonable prospect of still having insurance coverage when you need it is the large role the government already plays.

Which brings us to the current debate over reform.

Right-wing opponents of reform would have you believe that President Obama is a wild-eyed socialist, attacking the free market. But unregulated markets don’t work for health care — never have, never will. To the extent we have a working health care system at all right now it’s only because the government covers the elderly, while a combination of regulation and tax subsidies makes it possible for many, but not all, nonelderly Americans to get decent private coverage.

Now Mr. Obama basically proposes using additional regulation and subsidies to make decent insurance available to all of us. That’s not radical; it’s as American as, well, Medicare.

exactly, so why are so many reflecting back on denied claims by insurance companies and $60.00 band aids on your ER bill like some sort of Norman Rockwell painting and acting like having a government subsidized ALTERNATIVE as the first step toward bread lines?

Well the R's have had pretty good ideas about health care in the past too... they've made sure that all 18-28 year olds with no pre-existing medical conditions are covered.

It worked out very well for them, I mean, those yachts and Bentlys don't pay for themselves ya know and the county hospital works for illegals and crackheads, whats grandmas problem anyway?

They should be thanking the D's for setting up another program they can whore out the funds for next time they take office...

It's always imporant to remember that insurance companies are in the business of collecting premiums, not paying claims regardless of what type of insurance it is.

TFF...spend some time in the ghetto and see how happy homeboy is wit hiselfs helfcar.....free cab rides to 1st and Jackson for a hookup and the friggin' cab doesn't even wait while the deal goes down....then Abdul gets his turban all chewed out by Achmed and homey gets his pickup so's he can gets to his dialysis appointment 4 hours late.

See?...the system works perfect for losers and democraps....but I repeat myself.

At least 95% of all Americans will see NO increase in their income tax and should in fact see a reduction in the taxes they pay...all the while providing health care for all....phugging amazing.

We are better at making our RWWJ's snap. It skews the numbers.

WA ranks #15 in life expectancy overall so I guess that just shows that the people of WA forget to die?