Two Linchpins To Bipartisan Health Reform

The goal of the Obama White House is to come up with a health care plan that can attract bipartisan support. The president has told visitors that he would rather have 70 votes in the Senate for a bill that gives him 85% of what he wants rather than a 100% satisfactory bill that passes 52-48.

There is good reason for that preference. When you are changing the way one-sixth of the American economy is organized and altering life for patients, doctors, hospitals and insurers, you need that kind of a strong launch if it is to survive the inevitable vagaries of the shakedown period.

But getting agreement of Democrats and Republicans on such a volatile issue will not be easy. Republicans and their business allies killed the Clinton effort at health care reform. And even the optimists in the White House acknowledge privately that it will be hard to collect more than a handful of GOP votes in the House, where most of their efforts focus on negotiating agreements between liberal and conservative Democrats.

The two senators who can speak with the greatest authority on framing a bipartisan health care bill are Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, and Bob Bennett, a Utah Republican.

In the last Congress, Bennett, a staunch conservative, delighted the more liberal Wyden by volunteering to become the lead co-sponsor of Wyden's Healthy Americans Act. Together, they rounded up the largest bipartisan sponsorship of any major health care bill — eight Democrats and six Republicans, among them three members of the GOP Senate leadership.

Their bill — in simplest terms — would have guaranteed portable, affordable health insurance to every American. It would have required individuals to purchase private health care policies, with subsidies as needed from employers and government.

When PMOs came in, there was, at that time, a transfer of wealth of +/- $8 billion to the ‘managed care’ entities, the monies coming out of the doctors’ pockets.

With the fees for malpractice insurance what they are, there is no reason for a doc to go deeply into debt to pay for an education that will not pay to cover the loans & costs of doing business.

I know someone who is coming to the end of his medical career. He tells me that he has never worked harder in his life, and he has worked hard a long time.

What Republicans don’t seem to get and Democrats are sure happy about it because they can go on piling lie after lie to prove we need universal health care is this.
The difference between the US and countries with socialized medicine, is the difference between health care and health insurance.
We may have people who do not have access to health insurance but we do not have people that do not have access to health care. No one is turned away (except at Michelles hospital in Chicago) if they do not have health insurance.
Where in Britain, everyone has health insurance, but most Britians do not have access to health care and if they are lucky to be put at the head of the line because of necessary surgery, they might die from lack of care in the hospital or santization problems.
I have a few questions that need asked -

Should individuals be forced to buy and carry health insurance? Forced Insurance becomes a tax. If those that do not choose to have insurance become ill or have an accident, should tax payers be forced to help pay for it or should Hospitals be forced to fund it?

Should the poor and handicapped who are on welfare, be given better health care than those who are paying for it?
No deductable, 2.00 prescriptions, covers many things private insurance either doesn’t cover or charges 50% for.
Those who have life threatening illnesses such as MS and can’t work are one side of the coin, those who are on welfare are a different side of the coin.

If a study was done,that compared those who work and have health insurance but make less than 40000 a year and they compared the amount of money paid out by insurance companies to them against welfare recipients who make about 45000 a year when all the freebees are counted into the mix, I bet the payments are strikingly different.

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