If they want additional insurance coverage they must pay for it themselves.

Why is no one screaming that congress must use the same plan as they are offering the rest of us?

If any of you really doubt the trajectory Oba-mao wants to take, read that piece.

lgm, you may fool yourself. You might possibly even fool others.

You won’t fool anyone here, nor anyone else with a brain.

Some of the health care reform bills floating around would replace the insurance company bureaucrat with a government bureaucrat making that call. The difference is that the insurance company is interested only in its own profit.

No. That is another raft of stupid, and transparent lies.

Insurance companies do not make “quality of life” decisions. They make contract decisions. They make “likely benefit” decisions.

Insurance companies, like all market enterprises, do not make a profit by pissing people off wholesale. You get to do that once. They make a profit by pleasing people, and offing them products they willing buy.

An insurance company bureaucrat and a government bureaucrat are not interchangeable units. They have, and respond to, completely different incentives, and they have completely different sets of consequences they face when they are in the wrong.

You think profit is evil. I think it is a wonderful prod to production and efficiency. You are delusional. I am happy to show you centuries of proof that I am rational.

If grandma needs a hip replacement, and Octopus Insurance Co. will not pay for it, grandma has several options, including fighting the insurance company (I do that), firing the insurance company, or doing nothing relative to the insurance company (since they still will provide her other care). She still, in each case, has the option of getting her hip replacement.

None of those would be options if Oba-mao gets his way.

People who are too old don’t get hip replacements. Doctors take quality of life judgments. Insurance companies make them.

People who are old are not denied a hip replacement by their doctors. That is is lie.

You’re right. Doctors recommend against, but insurance companies deny. Some of the health care reform bills floating around would replace the insurance company bureaucrat with a government bureaucrat making that call. The difference is that the insurance company is interested only in its own profit.

Dr. Stephen Parente of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management says that the CBO used outdated models to determine short- and long-term costs of Barack Obama’s health care reform package. Newer and more applicable models that the CBO declined to use show that the actual cost will be more than double the CBO estimates (via Newsbeat1):

The CBO is actually being kind to the would-be reformers. Its analysis likely understates—by at least $1 trillion—the true costs of expanding health coverage as current Democratic legislation contemplates. Over the last few months, my colleagues and I at the consulting firm Health Systems Innovations have provided cost estimates of health-care reform to both Republican and Democratic members of Congress, and we’ve posted these estimates on our website as well. We believe that the Democratic bills currently under consideration in the House and Senate would cost $2.1 trillion and $2.4 trillion, respectively—much higher than CBO’s figures.

Yeah, well, I think we all know that any government social program is underestimated on the “selling it” end, and usually by a multiple of five.

Oh, and reference VA medical care, lgm, it is obvious you never were under their tender care, otherwise you would never speak highly of them.

And, for another great model of government run health care, check out health care provided on Indian Reservations.

I should scare you to death.

“This is wrong. A private person can enroll with any insurance provider, public or private.”

My employer is reviewing dropping medical insurance. Why? because if it comes to pass and there is a “government option” then why should the company pay the lug for carrying medical insurance? There is no incentive to do so.

So, while lgm and Dear Leader say people can keep their insurance, they know very well that in a short time there will be NO private health insurance.

Oh, and reference VA medical care, lgm, it is obvious you never were under their tender care, otherwise you would never speak highly of them.

With the war that has been going on, and the brave men serving and hurting, the VA has been forced to improve because of the outrage of the people when they discovered the pitiful facilities, uncaring GS-6 dolts that can’t read and holler at patients in waiting rooms, lack of HIPA rights, no choice in doctors for care continuity, few and far between facilities, etc. . . .I choose private health care as my right, but because of the Dear Leaders plan, my private option will quickly disappear.

If you resist, I’ll break your legs.

Or have my SEIU thugs do it for me.