Senate Parliamentarian Makes A Ruling

[IDBillzFan]

Not really. Actually, I am not taking much pleasure in this at all. This if far too important, and dangerous to our economy if it is allowed to proceed.

This is the truth for me, and to be honest, I'm surprised that more people don't realize and react to the fact that this is not some simple law that can easily be repealed at a later date. This is a massive, massive entitlement program that will do NOTHING to address the cost issue of health care, and yet saddle us and our kids and our kids's kids for years upon years to come. Once it takes grip, we will NEVER get it off the books. Ever.

 

I understand the far-left idiots wanting this because their excessive compassion and need for someone to take care of them cradle-to-grave makes them too stupid to govern responsibly, but I'm surprised we don't hear more loudly from the rest of the country...not just conservatives, but where are all the people who sit on their ass all day blabbering on and on about how both parties are to blame and they're smarter than everyone for seeing this? THESE people need to get into the fight on this because when this piece of crap bill becomes law, and we have no way to repeal it, simply sitting around complaining again and again that both parties suck isn't going to cut it.

 

This bill is bad. Really, really bad. And it's a rat's asshair away from becoming law. If you're not an idiot liberal of the Bishop Hedd, Bad Lieutenant, Conner mold, you should be crapping purple twinkies over this, and sitting around thinking you're somehow smarter than everyone else because you choose to be neither Liberal or Conservative isn't going to make the financial burden on you and your family any easier to carry.

[OCinBuffalo]

OC, I swear to God, I don't want this thing to pass. However, 59-41 it is not. You know this, I know this. It's 59-41 FOR. In reality, I would LOVE for us to have a real debat about health care. Unforutnately, all we'll get is soundbytes. I think, no, I know, you know this.

ahh but 59 votes is not enough for cloture...so, no, 59-41 = fail. Epic fail if you are Obama.

 

From the political perspective? They lose either way, but, they have a choice of taking the much lesser evil here. If they pass this, the political consequences are deadly. OTOH, time heals all wounds. If they were to back off, now, and try again, they have enough time to limit the losses they will take in November. The smart political play is to start over, and then do a series of one liner, gotcha bills like "no pre-existing conditons, yes or no", and then kill all those who vote yes. Rinse and Repeat.

 

From the real world perspective? So far none, exactly 0 of the health care bills/presentations/websites I have read have any hope of cutting cost. Medicare fraud? Really? Do people understand that the main reason for the "fraud" is bad regulations in the first place?

 

Consider: you have 3 nursing home residents, with the exact same health history in the same place. One is private pay, one is on Medicaid, one is on Medicare. You run the home, and you have to pay all the bills/your people/yourself. You get ON AVERAGE $80-120 per day for the private resident(low end). You get $65 a day for the Medicare resident, and $28 a day for the Medicaid resident. Your cost for each bed is $40 per day. Not cost to run the home on the whole(no indirect costs), just to run that bed. What's obvious here? Don't take Medicaid residents, right? Or, if you do, replace them with private pay people as soon as they become available.

 

Ahh, but that's where the dopey government regs come in. IF you have an empty bed, you lose money. So, you take medicare patients to fill those beds. BUT, Medicare patients are only entitled to 6 months of nursing home care per year. And, if you take Medicare residents, then you HAVE to take Medicaid residents. GOTCHA! Also, for fun, once you take a resident? You can't get rid of them unless: they die, they choose to leave, or they do something bad...and that requires a big long legal process = $. What else? Medicare patients that have a medical reason to stay turn into: Medicaid patients, if they can't pay. Most elderly are "poor"(because they give all their money away to their kids, voluntarily or not), so they automatically turn into Medicaid patients. BTW, Medicaid was intended to provide health care for young workers who got severely hurt or were severely disabled. 90% of it is being spent on the elderly who are neither young or working, and you wonder why I talk about liberal-generated unintended consequences so much?

 

Now you just got yourself into losing money all over the place in your home, because filling a few open beds seemed like a good idea...5 years ago.

 

So what do you do? You charge your private pay people MORE! You cover your losses. And, I haven't even gotten into how reimbursement really works. We have just been using averages. However, you can't keep raising your private pay rates...you will eventually have no private pay people. And, btw, you have to GIVE THE SAME CARE to private play people as everybody else, and fines/loss of licenses will occur if you don't. So, you have to provide services that cost the same, for people who are paying differently. Yeah, that makes sense.

 

Finally, you have to squeeze out money from each resident as best you can, so, you have your nurses constantly check for anything, however small, that can upgrade reimbursement. But, they rely on $6 an hour employees to tell them what they are doing at 3am on a Saturday, and, these nurses have most of their time chewed up filling out mountains of absolutely useless government regulated forms/care plans and a host of other crap. So, they spend more time of government enforced paper pushing than the do with the residents. And, the government has gone out of its way to make a reimbursement "instrument" that makes the simple complex, the complex arbitrary, and ignores all reason. For example, you get more money for passing a food tray to an independent diabetic amputee(5 min task), than you do for dressing/helping an otherwise healthy dementia resident(may take as much as an hour, could take much longer).

 

Meanwhile, the state regulators, who are private companies that get paid by how much they "getcha" run around fining people for untied shoe laces and "dirty sneakers", and telling everybody that "there's tons of fraud out there!" Jackasses hear that and say: AH HA! That's where we will save money! It's the FRAUD!

 

You want a debate? HA! That's the current medicare system, pal. It's bad enough we subject our elderly and everybody else involved to Medicaid/Medicare. Now you want to extend that to everybody?

 

Not much of a debate now is there?