Hello Patriots!
The Tea Party movement is taking to the streets against MD Representative Kratovil! A self-defined “conservative democrat,” Kratovil voted for Cap and Trade (without reading it), for the “Stimulus” package (without reading it).
Let’s show him that we are not going to sit by while he votes to destroy our children’s future with higher taxes and more government programs! Join us in a protest and picket at Kratovil’s Bel Air office on August 11, 2009 from 4PM-6PM. Bring a sign or picket!
People will also be picketing tomorrow, on Tuesday July 28, 2009 from 11:00AM-1:30PM. If this suits your schedule, come out!
If you can’t make it, click this link to get in touch with Kratovil. His phone number is listed, as well as his address and a contact form!
http://kratovil.house.gov/contact/index.shtml
Maybe if we express our opinions loudly enough, he will vote against the House Health Care bill! We need reform, but not government-run medical care!
See you then!
Patrick McGrady
How do you know Rep. Kratovil did not read the bills? Also, when did Rep. Kratovil actually vote to raise taxes? What exactly are we picketing him for – trying to get the economy moving again and actually attempting something to stop global warming? Isn’t getting things done why we elect people in the first place?
Gee Ryan, great questions. He didn’t read the bills because they weren’t printed in final form until after the vote was taken. He voted to raise taxes by voting for these two bills, each of which cost money that does not currently exist. Unless our Congress is going to hold a bake sale they have to raise funds by confiscating our money. What the hell does any of the stimulus bill have to do with getting the economy moving? Gifting a few very select folk at Citibank, Government Motors, etal does absolutely nothing to stimulate the economy. I’m afraid Kratovil, like Obama is not just naive but economically stupid!
To quote Walter Williams, the stimulus package can best be visualized by thinking of going to an Olympic pool and taking out a bucket of water at the deep end, then running like hell to dump it into the shallow end in order to make it deeper. Smoke and mirrors and hating rich guys does nothing
!
we need health care so that insurance companies won’t keep on inflating prices, and denying benefits as well as turning people down for insurance. The cost of the uninsured is now being paid by highter premiums by everyone that’s insured.
More and more employers are chooing to not offer family coverage to their employees. Its just too costly. Insurance companies charge too much. We need to get the profit motive out of the equation, instead create a system of billing for quality services provided. Thousands of people in Maryland are losing their insurance due to layoffs, higher premiums, or lack of adecuate insurance to cover dependents.
We don’t need govt run insurance either. Fixt the system so that insurance companies don’t gauge the consumer. Blue Cross, a non-profit turns a large profit every year. They charge too much, for a so called non-profit (more like tax evassion than non-profit) and they have an unfair advantage in the marketplace .
Let groups, pretty much like credit unions form to purchase affordable health care for their members. Let there be competition for specialized services, and a cost disclosure so that consumers know how much a procedure or a hospital stay can cost cmpared to other service providers.
And let there be a program that forces everyone to purchase some type of insurance, so that the one’s that have insurance don’t pay for everyone without it because they choose not to have insurance.
Offer tax credits, income deductions for the full cost of insurance, and offer an affordable alternative to those who can’t afford insurance.
I know that there is no constitutional right to insurance, but we make everyone who drives have auto insurance, so if there is an accident, we don’t pay for their loss. Shouln’t we have something similar for health care?
Exactly how much of the increase insurance premiums are due to the rise in Malpractice Insurance Rates?
How much of the increase is due to the state of Maryland’s insurance mandates?
The Council for Affordable Health Insurance has this to say:
“While mandates make health insurance more comprehensive, they also make it more expensive because mandates require insurers to pay for care consumers previously funded out of their own pockets. We estimate that mandated benefits currently increase the cost of basic health coverage from a little less than 20% to more than 50%, depending on the state and its mandates.”
They compiled a very interesting chart of all the states and the mandates (insurance coverage) they require. Maryland is the highest as 63! These mandates drive up the cost of insurance. Why can’t I just pick and choose the coverage I need. One size does not fit all.
http://www.cahi.org/cahi_contents/resources/pdf/HealthInsuranceMandates2008.pdf
Rocco – you make some good points. Let me add that there are groups out there that purchase health insurance in a “pool” (so to speak) that you can buy in to. Their not terribly expensive, but the problem is the types of “pre-existing conditions” that they won’t cover.
I have been laid off in the last two years and was able to purchase into one of these groups at about the same rate I was paying while employed. The problem was they wouldn’t cover my husband because of an open heart surgery he had. The State of MD had a plan that I could purchase just for him, at a fairly reasonable rate, but when you put the two together, it became too costly to afford.
The problem isn’t that the options don’t exist. We’ve been duped into this. The problem is that the prices that are being charged to both individuals and health insurance companies by both doctors and pharmacies are exorbenant.
For example, my husbands echocardiograph… it was a 15 minute procedure with a technician (not the doctor) on a machine that had obviously been in service for the last 8 or 10 years. We were charged $472 for this. This was the same type of procedure as a sonogram, but also had an EKG strip running at the same time. Are you kidding! The contract rate to my insurance company was $245, so the doctors office had to eat the difference. The insurance company then turned and applied that $245 to my deductible saying they don’t cover those costs even if the doctor says it’s medically necessary because it’s too high priced a procedure.
Ok, so let me see here. I pay $144 per pay for health insurance that covers some stuff, and gets me a discount on others?
There are a couple of problems in this scenario.
1) why is this procedure so high priced to begin with. That machine has been paid for at least 200 times over in the last ten years, not to mention that the cost of one procedure per day probably pays that poor technicians salary.
2) if I’m paying for the health insurance, and the doctor says that this checkup once a year is medically necessary, why do I have to pay this out of pocket rather than the insurance company covering it.
This is indicitave of the problem with our health care system. Then lets discuss medications – a diabetes med that cost $2.00 per tablet. Who are we kidding?! Why is a diabetes med so expensive? Because the pharmaceutical company is not a non profit, they’re sending their salesmen out to the doctors every day with all sorts of special “incentives” – or let’s just call it what it is – BRIBES – to perscribe the latest and greatest so they can turn a huge profit for the years where they hold sole patent and no generic can be manufactured.
The reforms don’t need to be in a government run program – the government can’t keep track of anything, I don’t want them deciding whether I get medical care or not. What we need is some limitations on the following:
1) profit per tablet a pharma company can make
2) percent markup on a procedure when taking the salary of the tech and cost of equipment into account
3) doctors with numerious malpractice complaints should have their licenses yanked and have to find a new career. ie. if they can’t do the job the need to be tossed from the career – like disbarring an attorney. This will help with the amounts being awarded in malpriactice suits and the cost of malpractice insurance.
4) health insurance companies need to be held accountable to non-profit regulations. Their boards of directors need to have caps on their salaries.
5) pharmaceutical companies need to be monitored in their dealings with doctors. All special deals between doctors and pharama’s need to be made just as illegal as any other corporate exec accepting a bribe. There needs to be an SEC audit or something here, just as there is on other big businesses.
The problem does need to be tackled, but as usual we are going about it all wrong. The folks cheerleading the federal initiative on this make it sound like there are no alternatives or programs out there for folks who have no health insurance, which is absolutely untrue. What is true is that greed has so inflated the cost of procedures and meds that we’re being bled dry in order to satisfy the ever growing minions of doctors, pharma, insurance, and hospitals who are tapping and feeding off of the “captive audience”.
I am going up to Kratovil’s office at 202 Main Street, Bel Air. I am vehemently opposed to the Federal gov’t having any control over my health care. The proof is in the evidence at the VA hospitals, Medicare and even the Soc. Security system. The excessive forms, waits, invasion of privacy and the lack of common sense that exists in the execution of the afore mentioned agencies’ missions.
Hope to see you there.
Ms. Pat McGrady
I hope you never use medicaid or medicare when you get older!
We know he didn’t read it because this was distributed by his office in a document called “Myths and Facts about the American Clean Energy and Security Act. I uploaded a copy of it and it is available here: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcc2h6xn_108t8czjdq
Now, if we look at the following snippet taken from the piece, we see that Kratovil didn’t read the bill.
“MYTH: This bill was published just hours before being voted on, and no one in Congress knew what was in it.
FACT: The American Clean Energy & Security Act was introduced on May 15, six weeks before the floor vote took place. The legislation was then debated extensively in the Energy & Commerce Committee, which approved the measure three weeks later. After that, the Agriculture Committee held additional public hearings on the bill, in which Congressman Kratovil participated. Rep. Kratovil also read extensive, detailed section-by-section analysis of the bill and has sought out neutral, unbiased sources to better understand its provisions. While there were extensive negotiations on the agricultural provisions of this bill right up until the night before the vote, Rep. Kratovil was an active part of these negotiations and was intimately familiar with the substance of these agricultural changes prior to the final vote. ”
————–
Now, let’s think about this. If Rep. Kratovil had read the bill, this would say that he did. Instead, it explains that he “also read extensive, detailed section-by-section analysis of the bill” and was making deals so that he would support it.
Rep. Kratovil is an attorney. He should know better than to sign a bill without knowing and understanding the contents. Would you sign a contract worth billions of dollars without being sure of the contents? Along these lines, check out this video of Rep. Conyers. http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/checker.aspx?v=GduzuzqGqG
There were a half dozen citizens at the intersection of 22 and Main with signs against Congressman Kratovil for voting for bills he didn’t read and for attacking Health Care. One sign read “Leave My Healthcare Alone” and another implied that Kratovil would be kicked out of office. There was heavy foot and vehicle traffic.
Tuesday morning, July 28, 2009.
I have a feeling the people who are vehemently opposed to any form of government healthcare will be the same ones first to whine when there’s no more Medicaid or Medicare.
I believe we do need some form of government sponsored healthcare. Private insurance denies too many people for too many pre-exisisting conditions and charges too many high premiums. I can’t get any medical assistance unless I’m practically homeless, have children, or pregnant. My job right now offers no medical benefits, but that is going to change in a few months. Right now I have MHIP and I’m lucky that it’s pretty decent.
I heard that if we eventually get a government option, you aren’t going to be forced into using it. If you already have private coverage or employer-sponsored coverage, you don’t have to drop that. At least that’s the idea right now.
You can protest all they want, but down the road, you’re going to look like a bunch of cry-babies who will picket every little thing if it doesn’t suit you, and you aren’t going to be taken seriously anymore. I think you should pick your battles very carefully.
How do we suddenly get to the fact that there is no more medicare or medicaid? The logic is a bit slippery or maybe even non-existent. I am so saddened by the tone of the argument about health care. I read simplistic statements like “it’s all the fault of the greedy no good insurance companies” or “it’s nothing but the lawyers fault” or how about “the pharmaceutical companies are ripping us off”. Or any of a dozen other repeats of some crap you heard on the evening news. To a certain extent all of the above are true. Rocco began well but then headed into the world of idealistic thinking. The first fact to come to grips with is that there is a problem, but no one has defined it. What is the problem statement we are attempting to solve? I know for a fact that you cannot solve a problem until you have bounded and defined it. If you try you will repeat the crap that came out of Washington in the 60s under big ears. Forty years later we will have spent three times 100 times the GDP and still have the same problem because you can’t keep throwing money at stuff and expecting it to get better. I sincerely doubt that any of the 535 people in congress who participated in the demise of all that is good will ever solve our :health care crisis. Get Washington out of my pockets! And then keep them out.
I agree Dave we need to define the problem. But the “talking points” are being espoused by both sides. The senior scare is truly ironic because most of them have govt. run healthcare already. I think we need to look at the real problem and not try to just fix it. But some people are still denying there is a problem.
Cdev you and I probably agree on about 99% of the issue. The fact of the matter is that medicare is truly not a very good health plan. Why for example should Bill Gates go onto medicare and be cared for at taxpayer expense? Why do the retired military guys and gals who were promised “health care for life – just sign here boy” get forced into medicare? The VA is not a very good example of quality health care.
We have great health care in this country. That is to say that the facilities and people are the best in the world. So why fix health care? The medications in this country are, for the most part, the best in the world. Why else would the companies stay in business? So why fix pharmaceuticals? The lawyers are protected by the best government that money can buy. so why attack the lawyers?
Sincerely folks, tell me what the actual problem is here. I can’t imagine another big eared president having the solution to “health care”. Stop these folks before they do any more damage.
I think the real issue is that class of people (who is small) who falls into that group that holds a job and then….Bam they get cancer and can not work anymore thus can not afford a health plan. Yet now they have a big set of medical bills and no way to pay for it. That is the group that needs something set up for them not everyone.
Not all retired military uses the VA some still have their Tri-care.
But I agree we are rushing to solve a problem which is not clearly defined and BOTH sides are scaring the ignorrant and uneducated into believing “this will fix everything” or “Obama wants to take my healthcare away.” This while make a bad attempt to solve a problem worse.
Dave,
I hear your points, i am not for govt administering my health care plan. I point to soutions regarding the actual cost of care as opposed to the mark up cost of providing these services.
Health care as is being run today works like this…you have an insurance plan that pays a negotiated rate with your provider, but you as the consumer have no say or can shop around for the best price because all the consumer wants is their problem fixed. There are no incentives for the consumer to lower the cost of care. with auto insurance if you get no points, citations, or accidents… your cost can actually go down. How about discounts if you get an annual check up, practicing good habits that increase your health awareness. the insurance industry is not in the business of lowering costs because as is they just increase premiums to pay the claims plus their administrative costs and profit built in.
Imagine if you could purchase “grocery/food insurance” as implemented under the present system, you should be able to go to the most expensive supermarket and purchase the most expensive beef, shrimp, crab meat, etc., because your insurance is paying for it and you have already paid your premium. The present system offers no incentives for providers and consumers to lower costs, and the insurance companes work on a model where 50% of the premium pays claims, 30% pays administrative (high salaries, bonuses, and perks. This includes great amounts on “marketing” and advertising) and 20% is pure profit every year.
I believe a better regulated system would squeeze out the 30 to 40% in profit and wasted and actually reduce premium costs in half of what is currently being paid.
There have actually been many cost studies on the delivery system of care and it consistently shows these ranges.
I by the way, do work in administering health care, just won’t say for whom, but there are deep pockets in the medical, biomedical, research and legal entities that do not want to have their golden goose killed.
My parents live overseas part of the year, my mother’s medicine costs 60% less abroad than here. The difference the price is regulated abroad and not here. Same medicine, same drug maker, same quality, but different cost. the american patient is paying for R&D for the rest of the world to obtain affordable prescriptions. If drug companies did not make money abroad, they would leave that market, since they don’t have a moral obligation to provide medications for less than their are willing to charge. But this is not happening.
In the end cost disclosure, incentives to reduce costs, tax cuts to insurance companies that actually reduce costs and premiums, and regulation of prices should be implemented so that a fair return is exacted, but insurance companies don’t gauge the consumer. T
Here is how I define the problem of health care.
Is not medical care and innovation…we are a world leader is this area.
Is not a lack of innovative surgical procedures and techniques…we are a world leader in this area.
Is not an uninformed consumer….we have access to technology and information to make wise choices overall….we lead the world in this area.
Is not the lawyers……sadly we do lead the world in these.
Is not the doctors…….they are highly qualified……..we have more doctors per capita….we lead the world in this area.
Is not lack of facilities and emergency services…..we lead the world in this area.
We lack “effective cost controls” that now allow medical costs to increase at rates effectively double the cost of inflation every year. At this rate only the upper middle class with have effective and affordable health insurance.
the lack of cost control, lack of disclosure and lack of incentives to lower the cost of care….we do lead the world in cost per capita.
Meanwhile the cost does not equal overall results. We are in the top 25 lower infant mortality, while we lead in cost, innovation, doctors, and facilities. Something is lacking here.
rocco interesting point. Esentially if supply and demand was to apply we have a greater supply of docs for our demand and yet they cost more?
I call BS. Nobody’s children are having their futures ruined with higher taxes. With one third of the money we’ve spent on Iraq, we could convert entirely to alternative fuels in only a decade. It’s more a case of having futures ruined by what our money is currently being spent on, not taxes being raised (which hasn’t happened, by the way).
You’re worried about the government having any kind of say in your health care. Don’t you hate the current situation? In the early 90’s, forward-thinkers saw that the health insurance companies wanted to move to managed care (where they can tell you where, when, and what care you can get). Clintoncare would have allowed this system with many protections for consumers. Republicans attacked and prevented reform. Managed care came anyway, so now we’re stuck with that without the protections.
I would prefer to not have anyone, especially for-profit “health” companies, managing my care. Having a for-profit health company managing your care is sort of like having a fire department make money by allowing the city to burn. We pay the fire company to keep us from burning, but it costs them money to actually do that, so they prefer to just allow us to burn.
From 2000 to 2007, health care premiums went up 90 percent. Over the same period, the profits of the 10 largest insurers went up 428 percent! A huge insurer has a monopoly in most markets around the country. What Americans want is choice. If we can have a “government option,” most Americans (over 60 percent of them) want it. However, if that option would put private insurers out of business and decrease our choices, less than 50 percent of Americans want it.
DAve –
A government takeover would cause private options i.e., private insurers to close up shop eventually have a supra dominant government option single-payer.
The government plan does not effectively address the cost of health care, but does ensure the vast majority of Americans will get less for more money.
The slogan should be “its healthcare competition stupid”.
Joe