Daschle tells Stephanopoulos: "No question both Republicans and Democrats have used" reconciliation

Gee, how ominous. Shades of Glenn Beck. Ooh...consequences.(ellipses added for emphasis)
Tell us, were you this worked up while the previous administration foolishly changed our relationship with the government?

The Republicans could really get out ahead of this and make some political hay, proudconservative. All they have to call for is the repeal of Medicare and Social Security. Do you hear them doing that? What happened the last time they even suggested either of these things?

Face the truth that -all- insurance is a form of collectivism, whether run for profit by private insurers or the government. It's a pooling of risk and resources, in which the greatest number of good outcomes should be the goal.

I find numbers help me think about things, sometimes, so let's get some numbers, shall we? Let's say a population of one million people will need one billion dollars worth of health care over an average year. As an insurance company, our overhead (which will include payroll) means that, rather than needing $1000 from each person to cover these costs, we will have to charge $1200. That extra two hundred dollars does things like buy office stationary, pay dividends to investors, and provide multi million dollar executive compensation.

If this was the end of the story, we wouldn't even need reform. But, what has happened in the last fifty or sixty years is this. Of those million people, perhaps 5% will have dramatic health care needs. 20%-30% may not need any health care at all. What the insurance companies have done is raise the premiums on those who didn't need their insurance at all, while dropping the 5% that have the highest costs. They have, by this strategy, denied coverage or dropped the policies of those who this whole system was ultimately set up to protect: those with catastrophic illness. They have become obscenely rich by letting people die for lack of the coverage they agreed to provide.

The public option for health coverage will not cost $1200, because the overhead is lower. Civil service is generally nowhere near as lucrative as the private sector, as far as paychecks go. So, with less overhead, the cost can come down to %1050, with 5% overhead. That savings will initially prompt people to flock to the public option. Once they have lost enough customers, the insurance industry will be forced to try to compete, by lowering pay to top executives, by increasing efficiency, in short by doing everything they can to bring their costs down. This means that costs will fall for both private and public option insurance customers.

Those companies who succeed in bringing costs down to a competitive level will remain in business. Those who don't will fail. The free market, and the American population, will ultimately benefit from this. Add in the fact that the proposed legislation will no longer allow the insurance companies to drop people from their rolls, or forbid pre-existing conditions, and it turns out that the people who most need to be covered, those with the worst problems, will once again be covered, and I fail to see what the objection truly is.

Insurance was started because we could no longer afford to pay for sudden and catastrophic medical bills. We pooled our money (paying premiums) and counted on the insurance industry to keep enough to operate on while still paying our unexpected medical bills. They've decided that they would rather just keep the money we pay them, and we can fend for ourselves if we ever need health care while they grow rich. This is the system you are defending, proudconservative: Allowing the rich to get richer through the deaths of fellow Americans.

Tort reform helps, but will not solve this crisis. Remember when gas was $4.50 a gallon? My local Wal-Mart store raised prices, and rightly so, because their costs had gone up. Then, just in time for the elections, gas fell back to less than $2.00 a gallon. I have a question: Do you think the prices at my local Wal-Mart store came back down, or did they just pocket that extra money?

The government isn't going to be any more intrusive than the insurers currently are. They will set standards that all insurers must meet, however. From the sturm und drang that accompanies this debate, it sounds like plenty of people will insist, as a point of principle, on keeping their current coverage. They are allowed to, as it is grandfathered in. If you need to change jobs or insurance, your new policy must be purchased through the government exchange, guaranteeing that it meets certain minimum requirements. However, both public and private insurance options will be available.

The cost has been projected as $1 trillion for the next ten years. The additional burden to the government has been placed closer to $250 billion over the next ten years. To be honest, these both sound like huge figures to me. $25 billion a year sounds like money the feds ought to be able to come up with, though, especially considering we were spending around half that much per month in Iraq. And while these costs may seem high, the cost of doing nothing will quickly mount to unsustainable levels.

The Republicans are wrong on this, because they are listening to the insurance industry and not the American people. We want this reform, overwhelmingly. We need it, financially. We will have it.

Public Health Insurance is a smart change in an individual's relationship to health insurance.

And it's already the result of consequences, it's a consequence of us kicking your butt to the curb.

Bring it on repug. One thing you can count on as far as repugs are concerned, COWARDICE.

Really DAWUSS is getting two thumbs-downs for pointing out a clerical error? No wonder the cons think we're blind and rabid defenders of whatever MMFA does.

You are major a joke