Posted on 08/17/2009 9:00:40 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
When a cop and a professor got out of control, Barack Obama defused tensions with a beer in the garden. But the way health reform opponents have flown off the handle, nothing less than a fistful of Xanax and some medical marijuana could possibly calm things down. I kid, angry mob, I kid because I love! Please don't send me to your death panels, no one is seriously suggesting silencing you with a cocktail of recreational drugs.
ObamaCare isn't worth all the shouting. It's not an ambitious proposal. It doesn't change health care as we know it. Not even the industries that will be most effected are that worked up about it. The health insurers won. UnitedHealth , Aetna ( AET - news - people ) and Cigna ( CI - news - people ) will maintain hegemony. Most people will still get the health insurance that their human resources managers pick for them. Pharmaceutical companies like Merck ( MRK - news - people ) and Pfizer ( PFE - news - people ) will not have to contend with the federal government using its purchasing power to bring down prices or with re-imported drugs from Canada. For that, the pharma lobby might accept slightly shorter patent protection so that generic drugs can be manufactured more quickly--a minor concession for which the industry won two major victories.
The most radical of Obama's suggestions, that the government should provide a strong public option to private insurance is history. It's not happening. We're getting co-ops instead. Co-ops. The last co-op I saw was an organic grocery store where you had to spend hours stocking shelves and ringing up customers just for the privilege of buying produce that's cheaper and better at a farmer's market. It'll be worse with health care.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
We're getting co-ops instead. Co-ops. The last co-op he saw was an organic grocery store where you had to spend hours stocking shelves and ringing up customers just for the privilege of buying produce that's cheaper and better at a farmer's market. It'll be worse with health care.
The co-ops will be small, regionally based nonprofits that will be open only to people with incomes at three or four times the poverty line or for people who are not offered insurance by their employers. The co-ops would be seeded by the government but will have to be self-financing soon after. They won't take business away from private insurers because, by design, insurance company customers won't be allowed to switch to them. Even if people had a choice, they'd likely not pick the co-ops because they won't have the scale that big insurers do.
So, Co-ops won't be as big a deal as the government option.
“So, Co-ops won’t be as big a deal as the government option.”
Famous last words.
Co-ops. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Sherly, you jest.
pretty crazy bs for forbes
why does steve let this garbage on?
Anything the government puts money into, the government runs. GM, for instance.
o doesn’t want to sell cars either, remember?
It’s the framework upon which they will push for a public option.
However, the author is making the mistake is saying that this is what we are getting. We’re not getting anything.
Compromise is the first stage of defeat.
When you compromise, you have to give something up to get something. Well, the Loony leftards and white-guilt ridden Liberals didn’t want to give up the public option. Obama p***ed them off.
Obama’s plan is going down in flames because his own base turned on him.
Life is good.
Obama = “
“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. “
Garbage in, garbage out. Opinions are opinions. I can’t post mine.
This is why I don't care about politics.
Some of this sounds like sarcasm, but mostly air-headed and stupid. This guy, obviously, hasn’t read the bill.
Is this a typical commentary from Forbes?
What, like Social Security? THAT was supposed to be insurance.
Not to mention they robbed it blind.
how is it possible that Obama with his filibuster proof senate and house has to give up on anything?
Within 6 months, Communist healthcare will be in place.
I guess he forgot who is President, or he is obtuse.
In the (last) words of the mayor of Hiroshima, “It’s just one B-29; just one, lone B-29”.
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