TexasCHLforum.com

If you believe the Grand Unified (Socialist) Theory, this is the first big step to socializing the country, and the hardest one to undo once it is done. Once passed, everything will be regulated as a "health" issue: Guns are bad, because they can hurt you. Gas-powered cars are causing asthma, so you must buy a hybrid or electric. Greenhouse gases are bad, so we must do wind and solar, no more coal-fired plants, and so on, etc.

Pres. Obama has said over and over that he favors "Single Payer" health care, which is the government providing coverage and doing all the stuff your current insurance company does (choosing doctors, allowing/disallowing coverage/procedures, setting amounts of copays and premiums), only not as well as the current business does it.

The R's have said over and over that health care needs to be fixed, and most of it could be done by allowing insurance companies to sell coverage across state lines. If every company was able to sell insurance in every state, competition would drive the cost down (how much is debatable). They include tort reform along with that, because a few percent here, and a few percent there eventually adds up to a big savings (hopefully).

The D's have waffled between a version of the R's stuff and some version or full acceptance of "ObamaCare", whatever that is. None of the details have been released. There is a Senate bill and there is a House Bill, but both have to be 'reconciled' so that both houses agree, so what we've heard so far is likely to change some.

03lighningrocks is correct in a sense that we are not allowed to see it. All the negotiating has been behind closed doors (contra the campaign promise), except for that farce of a meeting a couple of weeks ago where the D's said how wonderful the plan was, and the R's complained about how bad it was.

On the one hand, they say it will be just like the plan the members of Congress have, yet the members of Congress are apparently exempt from having to buy in. There are fines you must pay if you don't buy coverage, but you may not qualify for the coverage the government offers. Even if it does pass, only half of the current uninsured in the country will wind up being covered by it, so why bother? (I was one of those for a while - while young and newly married, we didn't have insurance, we were indestructible. The few times we went to the doc was nowhere near what premiums would have cost us in those days)

The weird thing I read a couple of months back was that insurance companies will be compelled to not refuse coverage because of pre-existing conditions, yet, the government plan would have a waiting period for pre-existing conditions. Have cancer? Sorry, you have to wait 6 months to get covered.

Again, the Grand Socialist Theory is that this plan, if it passes, will drive the insurance industry out of business, because they would not be able to afford to cover everyone for the rates the government would allow. This would cause people to be uninsured, and they would then have to join the government plan.

I'm tired of hearing both sides bicker and whine about it, but I am truly worried that if it passes, things like we see in England will happen here: a guy waits 4 months to get his broken arm fixed, 25 year old with a family history of cancer dies of cervical cancer because the gov't bean counters would not allow a scan, and so on. Then there was the Canadian (MP of Nova Scotia?) who came here for heart surgery, because they can't even do what he needed in Canada.

Have you noticed how well they do with Medicare? Heard the complaints about the VA hospital? That's what I worry about on a much larger scale.

Other folks - have I conveyed the jist of it? Is this what you've seen so far?