The House Public Plan, Yes its worth it

I don't think it is worth it. Duh.


steph

A little forced competition will be good for the market...

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/...ic_option.html

November 07, 2009 The Price of the Public Option



"Here we have this industry whose products go up and up in value but down and down in price...yet it still turns a profit. What does electronics know that health care doesn't?:

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/11/12/...medicare-cuts/

. . ."In 1997 Congress included in the formula for calculating Medicare physician payments a provision — called the “sustainable growth rate” (SGR) — designed to limit the growth of spending on physician services in Medicare. The SGR was designed to work as follows:
Medicare set the per-service fees it would pay doctors. However, if doctors provided more services to Medicare patients — thereby increasing Medicare spending above Congressionally set targets — the per-service fees paid by Medicare would be cut to keep total Medicare physicians spending in line. Furthermore, by embedding this arrangement in the physician payment formula, Congress made the future cuts automatic so as to insulate itself from political pressure to keep increasing entitlement spending.
The only problem was that it didn’t work. . . ."

...."Case in point. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the health care legislation passed last Saturday in the House would result, over ten years, in $1.3 trillion in new spending, plus $29 billion in tax cuts (mostly new tax credits to small business that offer coverage), offset by $767 billion in new taxes and fees, and $693 billion in spending cuts, mainly in Medicare.
But if Congress won’t enforce its previous Medicare cuts, how realistic is it that they will actually enforce these new Medicare cuts?"

Here's an interesting look at all this deficit talk ...

http://www.salon.com/news/healthcare.../deficit_hawks

Another less obvious answer is ignorance sown by skewed reporting.

The health bill's expenditures are typically described by reporters in 10-year, $1 trillion terms while defense spending is described -- if at all -- as a one-year, $636 billion outlay. That can lead citizens to think the healthcare bill will cost more than defense -- when, in fact, the 10-year comparison pits a $1 trillion healthcare bill against $6.3 trillion in projected defense spending.

But even that's not apples to apples. Political headlines of late have all been some version of Dow Jones newswire's recent screamer: "CBO Puts Health Bill Cost At $1 Trillion." That's as true as an Enron press release touting only one side of the company's ledger. Though the bill's expenditures do total $1 trillion, the CBO confirms its other provisions recover more than that, meaning headlines should read "CBO Says Health Bill Saves $110 Billion."

Not surprisingly, the media distortions are being trumpeted by the same congressional hypocrites simultaneously backing bigger Pentagon budgets and opposing health reform. Their dishonest arguments were summed up by Sen. Joe Lieberman in a Fox News interview last week. Ignoring CBO data about the health bill and the deficit, the Connecticut lawmaker (who voted for the bloated defense bill) insisted health legislation must be stopped because it will rack up "debt (that) can break America." (by David Sirota)