Kennedy Circulating Health Reform Plan

You mean the Massachusetts Health plan whose cost has gone up over 85% above projections, includes multiple mandatory coverage items which push up the costs of insurance to twice the average of the other 49 states, which Massachusetts Governor Patrick has described as having "unsustainable costs", and which is attempting to control costs by slashing doctor reimbursements, causing some doctors to refuse to pick up new patients?

Maybe the Kennedy's would like to pay for this fiasco. Just talk to anyone from Mass. It is a disaster and a cruel hoax for residents of the state!

actually Paladin, reports of unsustainable costs have been greatly exaggerated. FYI… New Study: Massachusetts Plan Shows Signs of Success The early returns on Massachusetts's health-care-for-all program indicated it was an unsustainable budget buster. But a new analysis of the cost at the three-year mark challenges that conclusion. (MA Taxpayer Foundation) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/healthcare_mass_doc.pdf

If you would like to help pressure Congress to pass single payer health care please join our voting bloc at: http://www.votingbloc.org/Health_Bloc.php

What a complete joke this is. And Tom D. the Senator from SD has his pawprints all over this.

Healthcare Reform The insurance industry has geared up to influence health care reform. They will bombard Congress with political contributions and lobbyists. The media will enjoy a huge increase in ad revenues. I would like to suggest another approach. What if President Obama by Executive Order made Medicare payment schedules user friendly public information. HCFA can publish CPT schedules in a format that patients and doctors can readily understand and utilize. The President can ask medical providers to agree to accept Medicare pricing for the service provided, if the patient will pay the doctor directly at time of service with a medical credit card issued by either hospitals, banks or insurance carriers. One advantage is that all medical bills (hospitals, doctors, drugs and medical equipment) would be tracked on one database. Most importantly, doctors would no longer have the enormous back office costs of filing a claims form with various insurance companies on different forms and waiting months to get paid. Their financial savings would be enormous. Patients would soon be able to decide if 1st dollar insurance policies are really cost effective. They may well switch to high deductible catastrophic policies, which is really what insurance is supposed to protect against. Patients with verifiable low incomes can have the government pay their credit card bills on a sliding scale based on their income. This could eliminate Medicaid. The implications of this simple change are enormous and it can be done with little cost to government. Medicare pays doctors far less than insurance companies pay and far far below what an individual without insurance is billed. Doctors today, when they see a patient, do not even know when or how much they will be paid. All they know is that they have been forced to combine into group practices because of the enormous financial cost of filing claims and fighting with insurance companies over billings and procedure approvals. This is such a simple solution. Doctors know their patients, put them back in charge of their patient’s well being.

If you are uninsured and does not have insurance, you should check out the website http://UninsuredAmerica.blogspot.com - John Mayer, California

Obama during the primaries strongly criticized Hillary's plan, requiring people to purchase health care insurance, if they lacked coverage. The subsidies in Massachusetts are quite limited, especially for those in the middle class. President Obama is likely to abandon his previous opposition to an individual mandate, if so he will show he is just a typical politician, saying one thing to be elected, then doing the opppsite when elected.

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