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Health care debate starts ugly
November 7th, 2009, 9:10 am · 28 Comments · posted by Dena Bunis, Washington Bureau Chief
Opponents of health care reform rallied in the shadow of the Capitol this week.
The House of Representatives descended into procedural chaos and contentious partisanship this morning as historic debate started on the health care debate.
One by one the women Democrats of the House lined up to make one sentence statements about their support for health reform and women’s health. But Republicans continually objected and tried to hold up the proceedings.
Lawmakers talked over one another and Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the longest serving member of the House, tried in vain to get the Republicans to let the Democrats state their support for the bill.
“Because I support health care reform that invests in a health care workforce dedicated to the needs of all women I ask unanimous consent to advise and extend my remarks,’’ said Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Santa Ana.
“The chair would suggest to all members that we respect each other’s rights,’’ Dingell pleaded – to deaf ears.
This is the start of what will likely be a long day and evening that could spill over into tomorrow and perhaps Monday as this contentious health care issue is debated on the House floor for the first time in decades.
In the House, debate is limited on individual bills and often the procedure of stating a “unanimous consent” request is used by lawmakers to get a statement inserted in the Congressional Record as a way of circumventing the limited time available.
Sanchez, for example, doesn’t sit on any of the committee that worked on health care and likely wouldn’t have been able to get time on the floor to make an extended statement about the health care bill.
The GOP wants to have an extra hour be added to the debate but such a request is not allowed under the rules.
So after the Democratic women finished their remarks, Republicans lined up at the mike to begin theirs. There were no objections from the Democrats.
Sanchez, for example, doesn’t sit on any of the committee that worked on health care and likely wouldn’t have been able to get time on the floor to make an extended statement about the health care bill.
So far none of the Orange County Republican members have come to the floor this morning.
Yesterday, Rep. Gary Miller went to the House floor twice to talk about his opposition to the bill.
Miller, R-Diamond Bar, called into question the support of the American Association of Retired Persons ands the American Medical Association, support that President Barack Obama has been touting this week.
Miller said those endorsements did not reflect the rank and file members of those groups.
“You can’t support this bill and say you support seniors and you support doctors who represent their patients,’’ Miller said.
All of this is going on as Obama is on Capitol Hill meeting with House Democrats, trying to help Speaker Nancy Pelosi round up the 218 votes she needs to get this bill passed.
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DENA BUNIS, Washington bureau chief, 202-628-6381 or dbunis@ocregister.com
CHRIS KNAP, Politics team leader, 714-796-2240 or cknap@ocregister.com
BRIAN JOSEPH, Sacramento correspondent, 916-449-6046 or bjoseph@ocregister.com
JENNIFER MUIR, County government reporter, 714-796-7813 or jmuir@ocregister.com
MARTIN WISCKOL, Politics reporter, 714-285-2867 or mwisckol@ocregister.com twitter.com/MartinWisckol
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In order for any decent “change”, the “THREE STOOGES” (obama, pelosi and reid) need to be out of the show. Their “Marxist” attitudes are corrupting the country I love and fought for.
You fough in WW2 MarineVet?
Um, in order for any actual change to policy that doesn’t only favor insurance companies, the 3 people you mentioned have to be involved. Otherwise, we’d be stuck where we are now.
I couldn’t agree more, marine
**What do you call decent “change?” The pathetic health care bill brought by the republicans? What is marxist about forcing insurance companies to stop gouging the American people?
Lets not put all the blame on the insurance companies. The doctors, hospitals and medical faculities are gouging the insurance companies big time! One reason could be because they need to recoup their losses from treating the illegals that has become a burden on our medical faculitites.
I see my medical statements for procedures that will list two or more doctors that I didn’t even see or touch base with. So I don’t think it’s so much the insurance companies thats ripping me off…but the medical faculities!
You can see what happened when this administration put in lightweight regs on the banking system…they took the TARP money, bought up other banks to prevent competition, stripped their customers of their credit limits and jacked up the interest on credit cards before the February deadline. That’s what is going to start happening now with health care premiums. AND NOT A PEEP FROM OBAMA.
Since my son graduated from college I have been paying his COBRA premium to keep health insurance on him…and guess what, just got a letter telling me they were jacking his monthly premium from $330.00 to $364.00! The Insurance Companies are going to get their money no matter what…we’ll just be paying ten ways to Sunday for ourselves and EVERYONE else, including Illegals…BEFORE this even goes through.
Too bad all the people that voted for “change” didn’t have a clue how much that change was going to cost them. All the poor & middle class people that liked all that “take from the rich and give to the poor” malarkey are going to get hit much, much harder in the wallet than the rich, especially if the new, more power hungry big brother makes health insurance coverage mandatory.
I hope Loretta Sanchez votes Yes. Then we use this vote and combine it with her Yes vote on the Stimulus (which she didnt even bother to read) as an excellent reason to toss her out in 2010.
KoolAid drinkers Ugly in LA and greylox probably would like the government to subsidize their toliet paper usage. WHat a bunch of losers.
Stinging condemnation. Then again, you might be a little bit more effective if you tried to explain WHY their position is wrong, and yours is right.
Does anybody proof read these stories? This was down right painful. It’s so bad my eyes are bleeding!
I’m going to pose a simple question here:
Who likes Medicare? (raise your hand). Ok, now raise your hand if you oppose a public option health insurance plan (raise your hand).
Ok, so my questions is: why? The are fundamentally the same- government controlled insurance. In fact, Medicare is even more “socialist,” because it functions as a single-payer system.
How can these two opinions be consistent?
Whoops - I guess my proofreading is about as good at OC Register’s.
Comment on Medicare… currently the system runs a deficit and covers a fraction of the people. Medicare also pays less for things that doctors and hospitals make up on higher fees to the rest. Seems ‘fair’ if everyone was on Medicare, right? Putting everyone onto a Medicare system will not necessarily bring solvency but it would cap and decrease the amounts paid for care overall. Anytime you cap the price paid for something, you get a shortage.
I was talking about Medicare in an ideological sense, not an operational sense. Most people that oppose a public option do so because they don’t want the government to be in charge of health care, period. Yet it seems that many of those same people are also angry about potential cuts to their Medicare services… which is a government-run health care system…
The problem with all the talk of ‘reform’ is that it ignores the elephant in the room: trial lawyers. If (and a big if) there was meaningful tort reform that provided real malpractice-cost relief then the cost of being a doctor would decrease. Until then you will have a system caught between the insured sick person and the insured doctor fighting each other in court with only the lawyers making money.
When will the pay czar take on the lawyers?
The CBO ( Congressional Budget Office) released a report showing that malpractice reform would likely save about 0.5% of our annual health care costs. Sure, that’s something, but the claim that malpractice reform would solve all our problems is ridiculous.
We have no clue, because you didn’t state what plan, what that CBO report covered.
It may be that the tort reform that is necessary to affect the total health care costs in a big way isn’t what you were looking at. The Democrats NEVER have accepted Tort reform in any measure because they are beholding to the trial lawyers, who are huge donaters to politicians.
Don’t be surprised that any lawyer reform in any bill would be very weak intentionally.
Of course your stated 0.5% of a trillion dollars is still a lot of money.
One form of the reform needed is to reduce the number of tests and procedures deemed necessary to analyze every ailment. The extra tests are needed to protect the doctors and their practices from excessive rewards and constant lawsuits which are a product of the trial lawyers!
When you refer to “Marxist” attitudes what are you trying to state?
I’m for health reform based on economics. The health care system is totally out of control and is increasing the pressure on large companies, small business, and individuals.
To do nothing will only continue the economic sprial down.
The CBO showed the GOP plan will virtually do nothing to help. The GOP should have known this and came up with a better plan.
4th Quarter postings are almost always low or down but without reform and gaining control over this whole industry we will see more and more businesses simply go out of business.
Economic reform Debbie? Great plan….
First get Republicans out of my bedroom, Democrats out of my doctors office and illegal aliens out of the waiting rooms.
1. Save money by moderating the attorney fees on malpractice cases. The wronged patient may need $10 million to lead a better life alter the mistake but there is no need for attorney’s to get 33% of that.
2. Allow us to buy insurance form out of state carriers; more competition = lower costs.
3. End the practice of state governments demanding certain services be covered under all policies sold in that state. You probably didn’t know that Sacramento runs the show and special interests, like chiropractors are included by law. Why must my family pay for maternity coverage? No way on Earth are we having more kids!
Make Health Savings Accounts easier to get and available to the employees, and larger tax deductible deposits too.
HSA’s use higher deductibles to discourage running to the doc for a runny nose but annual exams are free. The money you bank is yours to spend on health care TAX FREE. Your deposits carry over every year, TAX FREE and when you go on Medicare you keep all the savings TAX FREE.
We started a HSA two years back. Our deductible is $4K but we have $6K in the account, next year we’ll have $9K. If we ever exceed the deductible the insurance covers everything up to $6 Million.
Look for better deals and you may be surprised what is out there and it should be easier to get.
out of the waiting room? so you want this country to routinely deny care to people and let them die in the gutter, eh? we don’t even do that to animals.
They can receive care, just as everyone else. But they must also pay what everyone else does. No free (or taxpayer subsidized) coverage for illegals. Because it’s only free for them, not for us taxpayers who cover their ‘free’ care. If they qualify for insurance, fine. They can pay the same premiums the rest of us do. And Emergency Rooms should be for emergencies, not for colds or flus.
Medical attention is a fundamental right. But how is medical insurance a right?
amazing some wingnut uses “mcarthyite” as a pejorative when he not only was a republican, but a republican that fellow wingnuts like mann coulter praise as a hero. these people couldn’t make a coherent argument if their lives depended upon it. what’s even sadder is that when you compare mccarthy as a statesman to today’s crop of republican “leaders” it is clear they couldn’t hold his jock strap. the percentage of people who self-identify as republicans is around 23% and when you look at the behavior at these rallies and the constant limbaugh/hannity/savage/palin/beck/bachman noise, it’s shocking that it’s even that high. every passing day, admitting you are a republican becomes closer to admitting you’re a klansman…a lobotomized klansman at that. in time, it may come to pass that the klan is in fact MORE tolerant of non-white and/or non-christian people, than the republican party.
allowing people to buy insurance “across state lines” is a plan that seeks to do to health care insurance what the laws have done to the credit card industry. once enacted, some state or territory will basically take bribes and allow the health insurance industry to write all the applicable laws and control their enforcement. all the companies will incorporate their health insurance subsidiary in that state/territory. then they can do whatever they want, screw you six ways from sunday and there isn’t a thing you, or anyone in your state can do about it. the practices will be 100% legal. extreme deregulation like this is just a license to screw consumers and fatten insurance company coffers. the industry has so many people paid off that brazen attempts at theft in broad daylight no longer concern them. they’re pretty sure they will get away with it. the right wing of the gop hasn’t made a positive contribution to health care reform in decades. they have no interest in the subject. they don’t even acknowledge there is a problem (just like how 1 yr ago the recession was “mental”). the party is intellectually bankrupt.
Facts, Facts, Facts! Where are the facts?
Was there an independent study made that would make recommendations as to the best approach would be? What is the goal here? The best cost effective delivery of medicine?
How did we arrive at the conclusion that a government run health system is the best solution. What professional organization made the study?
If we are going to save billions on eliminating waste, why do we have to use the savings to move the medical system under government rule when the waste is occuring under the government system. Why not just lower the price altogether, get the facts/recommendations from a conprehensive study and choose what kind of system would be more efficient.
All arugments so far are political/emotional statements. Please be careful about making decisions just because someone is calling your emotions if you don’t insure the 24 million that don’t currently have insurance. They are just playing an emotional chess game with you.
Those behind this manipulation are sociopaths that want you to belive their lies. Their ultimate goal is to move you into a system that will expand government over your everyday life with no regard to cost.
Keep drinking the KoolAid
Actually, the FACT is that a disproportionate amount of health care money is spent by INSURANCE COMPANIES to pay, among others, their lawyers to help them deny coverage to people who paid their premiums, thereby turning a large profit from us. If the government acted as everyone’s insurance company, that huge administrative cost would disappear, and there would be no profits to be had since government workers wouldn’t benefit from denying coverage to anyone, further lowering cost. This translates to driving costs of coverage down.
People think that there’s competition among insurance companies because you can choose you’re own plan, services and doctors, but really, you don’t have a choice. If you’re sick or worried about you or you’re family getting sick, you don’t have the luxury of choice. It’s not like buying a TV where you can hold out and look for better deals or choose to not buy one at all. Health care is not, in the least bit, optional, so insurance companies have no incentive to make it better for us. The fact that they regularly deny coverage (they pay their lawyers a lot to do this, it’s not a rarity) for people who paid their premiums is an atrocity, and there’s no possible way the administrative costs from the government could come close to that of insurance companies.
Also, publicly provided health care paying all doctors saves on administrative complications. No more “my doctor doesn’t accept that plan” or “I have Mass Health so I have to drive out an hour to see a doc because no one accepts it here”- Can you say doctors following the population, reducing distribution disparities?