Republican National Committee runs new radio ad on Herseth & Health Care

“Dangerous experiment?” That’s pathetic. Republicans need to get with the program and realize that a majority of Americans support a public health insurance option. But Republicans won’t admit that because they are being funded by the health insurance industry. Shocking, I know!

I hope Stephanie doesn’t fall for this nonsense.

But I do want to give that ad some credit. They didn’t include the lies Republicans have been spreading about this health care plan “secretly trying to kill old people.” So good for them for not sinking that low.

Herseth, keep the Gov out of my healthcare. No DC resident should be making my healthcare decisions. Changes like better access to medical savings accounts, but anything the Gov runs is second class except for the military and roads!

If you DC reps think Gov run healthcare is so great, you should be the first to sign up. But you will exclude yourselves just like Social Security.

Anon 4:18, everyone in Congress already has government run healthcare. And, from what I hear, it’s pretty good too. My grandfather was a mailman and my grandma uses his government healthcare plan and it’s working wonderfully for her. Also, our veterans seem to get pretty decent government healthcare at VA hospitals. And let’s not forget about Medicare, which is government run and pretty good and astonishingly popular.

Republicans keep trying to say that government run healthcare would be bad. But the examples we have of successful government healthcare programs contradict that.

John, if the majority of Americans want a public option, why can’t the Democratic majority in the House and the filibuster proof 60 in the Senate pass it?

I am guessing that the poll you cite is misleading. I have little doubt that a majority of Americans would respond positively to a public option if it is presented as a mere competitor to all the existing private plans out there. However, we know that a public option would slowly but surely run the private plans out of business due to government subsidy. It will be cheaper to go with the gov’t plan, so people will move to it and the private sector will get crowded out.

John you can have your Gov run healthcare, look at the VA, I will keep my own Dr.

Be careful of what you ask for, you think it is expensive wait until it is free. Ever heard of ration? When you get older or are handicapped, look out.

Doc @ 4:50, well to get that majority the Democratic Party got conservative and moderate Democrats elected. It’s the conservative Dems (aka Blue Dogs) who are fighting reform as much as Republicans are. I would love it if having 60 Dems meant us liberals would get all our dream legislation, but that’s not going to happen unless we work with the Blue Dogs. So Dems don’t actually have 60 votes. They probably have over 50 votes which is why they’ve talked about reconciliation (and since when is getting a 50+1 majority not good enough to pass legislation?).

And of course you think the polls I talk about are misleading. I’ve noticed that conservatives tend to not believe any poll that disagrees with their views (though, to be fair, liberals sometimes do that too). FiveThirtyEight.com is really good at looking at polling data, so I trust them with poll analysis. Check this out:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/public-support-for-public-option.html

Also, I’m not interested in your conspiracy theories about public insruance driving the private insurers out or whatever. Though, personally, I think a single-payer health insurance system would be the best possible option for this country. But I realize that the best we’re probably going to get right now is a public option.

I’d like to say you can beat a fake Republican like Herseth but she’s going to win yet another term. Pinning Obama’s health care plan on her is a load of crap because she’s distancing herself from it just like she did cap and trade. Then she’ll suck up to labor with card check and suck up to the pro-abortionists and do the Houghton Two Step by saying she opposes gay rights. How many members of her family are gay? Who will she stab in the back just to get three more votes?

Steff is cagey. Too cagey to dangle her tush in harm’s way. She’s got one or two more House victories in her, and then all bets are off.

Does the ad mention the first Presidential Candidate to campaign for national health care… Teddy Roosevelt?

did John Tune get a million from the health industry for his past campaigns.
.

N.Y. Times/CBS poll
69% believe healthcare reform will hurt quality
73% believe it will limit access to tests and treatment.
62% believe it will require them to change doctors
73% believe reform will lead to higher taxes
77% believe reform will lead to the rise in healthcare.
That does’nt sound like a majority of people that support healthcare reform. Do,nt let facts get in the way of the truth John.

Ivan, first I really like the “77% believe reform will lead to the rise in healthcare” poll. I would also like to see a rise in our healthcare.

Second, check out that FiveThirtyEight.com link I posted above. Nate Silver, the guy who runs the site, looks at the details of a variety of polls to see what’s really happening in this country. Just mentioning one poll doesn’t give an accurate picture of what’s really going on because that one poll might have been an outlier with a bad sample or bad questions. For example, how does this Times/CBS poll compare with other polls during the same time frame? And how does the “73% believe reform will lead to higher taxes” compare to last week’s NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showing 68% believing raising taxes and families making more than $1 mil as an “acceptable” option for pay for this plan?

See those are the questions we need to ask. Unless we’d rather just throw polling data at one another and say “Ha! A majority of this country agrees with ME! Take that!”

I think Obama was right in trying to do something about health care. I think the dems were wrong not to inculde the reps in the debate and to get them to buy into fixing it. Now it is a us verus them issue which is so dumb. Why hasn’t anybody brought up tort reform as part of the health care fix?

Personally, I couldn’t care less if the so called public option ran most of our current crop of private insurers out of business. But, that probably won’t happen.

If government subsidized products and services ran private industry out of business, explain bottled water, FedEx and UPS to name a few.

Anon 4:18 Members of Congress pay into Social Security like virtually everyone else, despite whatever bogus crap you read or heard or made up.

Our healthcare system is great. But it could use some “fixing” for example do you ask how much is it going to cost? Or call around and go to the cheapest Dr.?

I don’t think a complete government run healthcare system is the answer.

So feasant, you’re going to comparison shop for medical care. In what practical sense does that work? You call a clinic and say my tummy hurts, how much to fix it? And the receptionist says what…no really, she says what!!!!

Sure, if you know the procedure you need, maybe you can get a quote. But in general, there are too many unknowns and variables for anyone to be able to predict treatment costs for a given ailment. And we’re told one of the things that drives health care costs is over-testing done in the diagnostic phase of treatment. No one knows how many tests may be needed, or “wasted” to diagnose a given problem and no doctor is going to guess at that and give a cost estimate.

I would declare the public option dead. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) said as much in his USA Today op-ed:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/08/opposing-view-my-compromise-works.html?loc=interstitialskip

I find this plan by a group of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate to be interesting:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/04/AR2009080402523.html

It basically combines McCain’s plan of ending the tax breaks for employer-based insurance and giving personal income tax deductions instead with the concept of an individual mandate so everyone has to have insurance. Probably the best compromise I have seen.

Ivan Goetz @12:11am,

Could you supply a link to that poll, please?
When I google N.Y. Times/CBS health care poll I get very different numbers than what you show.

For example, at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/health/policy/21poll.html

for example;
“72 percent of those questioned supported a government-administered insurance plan — something like Medicare for those under 65 — that would compete for customers with private insurers. Twenty percent said they were opposed.”

That was June 20, 2009 – what date was the poll you cite, please?

oldguy,

From the start, President Obama has wanted to work with Republicans and wants to run a bipartisan government. But Republicans have been very hostile to everythying the Dems have wanted to do. I also think there was hostility on the Dem side (like the incorrect belief that they didn’t need Republicans to pass legislation) that also hurt any bipartisan efforts. I guess not even President Obama can change the way Washington operates. I agree with you that I don’t want to see this as an us vs. them thing.

By all means, Republicans should be working with the Dems to try to get a healthcare reform bill that everyone can like/ The problem is that liberals and conservatives want very different things out of healthcare reform. Tort reform, like you mention, is more of a conservative concern. The time to address that was when they had the majority but if they think that’s an important part of healthcare reform, they should be fighting to get it in the bill. I’m not sure I’ve heard many Republicans talk about it during this healthcare debate. The Republicans have offered an alternative bill, but it seemed to mostly be $700 billion in tax cuts for the insurance industry.

There is some bipartisan work still going on, like with Sen. Baucus in the Senate Finace committee. But I’m not sure what good that will do. The liberals will rebel against anything that doesn’t include a public option and the Republicans Baucus is working with are not likely to vote for the bill anyway.

John, you say your family has gov’t run health care/insurance because they were federal employees? WRONG!

My better half is retired from a federal job. His insurance is a private Blue Cross policy, offered thru the gov’t along with other private insurance plans which we can choose from. It is NOT a gov’t public option or anything like it. It is NOT gov’t run health insurance or care. It is simply private insurance offered by an employer (fed gov’t in this case). And it is very good!

Doc, I disagree with Sen. Conrad. Co-ops are a dumb idea that is not going to work.

But that new bipartisan effort you linked to was very interesting. I still think a public option is best, but that plan is interesting. I hope they get to debate the merits of if vs. a public option on the Senate floor.

That was a lame ad. I don’t know who is writing this stuff. Let’s use quotes from the dems not some paid voice who sounds concerned.

on a scale of 1-10 i give this ad a 3.

Springer, I’ll have to double check on that. I thought my grandma had government-run insurance, but I could’ve missunderstood. But I’m not going to just believe what you say without checking because I think you’re wrong a lot.

But that doesn’t negate what I said about Medicare or the VA or the insurance our people in Congress get. That government-run is very good and we should look at supplying that kind of excellent care to all Americans.

I don’t disparage the VA. I worked for the VA for years and my brother is service connected for medical problems and has gotten good care back East. Veterans desereve care by the gov’t. That does not mean I believe the feds should be in charge of all health care. Veterans have earned that free or mostly free care; many of them or their insurance does pay for parts of their care at the VA.

Go ahead and check on the govt employee insurance. Verify. I believe in that myself. We have choices, freedom to make those choices, and options with our fed employee health insurance, and I do not want to give up these freedoms.

Doc 9:07 The insurance industry will crush coops and then continue to consolidate and raise rates. It takes 60 votes for cloture, and 51 to pass legislation. If any Democrats vote against cloture, they are a disgrace. And the fact is, they can pass reform through reconciliation and if necessary, they should.

The tax credit/tax insurance plan also is just a pass-through to the insurance industry.

If the dems use reconciliation there will be a revolt!

John and myleftfoot, thanks for taking a look at the plans by Sen. Conrad and the bipartisan group of Senators. I didn’t post Conrad’s for is proposal as much as I did for his statement that a public option will not get 60 votes.

We can probably agree that the idea of 50 Republican Senators (plus VP Cheney) instituting the “nuclear option” to get judicial nominees through by a simple majority would have been a bad idea. I would also say that the filibuster should not be skirted by reconciliation on this matter. The minority has power in the Senate for valid reasons.

Finally, I would note my tentative support for the bipartisan group’s plan of individualizing health insurance. The tie to employers is a nonsensical outgrowth from WWII era policies. The individualized tax credit to purchase private insurance coupled with the individual mandate to get insurance is a decent compromise.

John;
This wasn’t jsut the reps being hard to work with I remember the Speaker saying the reps were being excluded and Reid doing the same as a matter of fact he is telling Baucus to get it done NOW. The point is the dems are just as bad as the dem. If they want to get something done it needs to really be bipartisan. remember when what ever party is in control at least 45-50% or on the other side. All my Dr. friends say tort reform needs to be part of this overhaul.

Doc – isn’t reconciliation how Bush got his tax cuts through?

Springer, you were partially right about my grandmother’s insurance. My grandma has private insurance, but the government helps pay her premiums. So the cost goes up every year like all of our insurance, but it’s a lot cheaper than other people get thanks for the government. So I admit to being wrong in saying her insurance was like a public option.

P.S. Sorry about being hostile in my previous post.

John you can keep your Gov run anything. If you think the VA is good you should ask around.

Feasant I am sure some people have had problems with the VA but I have to tell you my dad is 85 and has had nothing but good care at the VA.

va WONT LET PRIORITY 8 VETERANS IN IF YOU MAKE OVER 30 GRAND YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GET IN THE VA SO MUCH FOR THUNE GETTING MANDATORY FUNDING FOR VETERANS PASSED tUNE YOUR OUT OF TUNE WITH SOUTH DAKOTA VETERANS.

John, the gov’t does help pay the premiums for retired federal employees, and admittedly it is a good deal. But the gov’t is paying part of the premium based on the fact that they were the employer, not as part of any gov’t plan. I think other employers also pay part of premiums after retirement for their private plans.

I just don’t believe that the gov’t running my health care is good for anyone, except the current administration which seems to like power. Fix the problems themselves, just don’t throw out the whole system and remake it in a system proven not to work as well as the one we have now. That is what has all the people upset. And now that we are speaking up, the gov’t is blaming us, trying to silence us, cancelling town hall meetings.

What gets me is that someone is stating that the people against health care are all being manipulated by Armey or others and being told to get in their face as regard their reps and senators. But…Obama is on record saying the exact same thing during the campaign, telling his supporters to get out and get in the face of people not supportive of him. No one is telling me to speak out; it’s my idea based on my beliefs, and I think that goes for just about every single person now standing up against this so-called reform.

Moses why do you even post on here as it is always the same. Thune Thune Thune Thune I think all the people got your feelings the 1st few dozen of times.