What's in the House healthcare bill?

This bill is an insurance company bailout.

Also-- good to know that Anthony Weiner supported a Single Payer system right up until the moment that it really mattered.

From the article, which remember, is from the WSJ owned by Rupert Murdoch.

"Insurance companies: They're probably losers. The bill forces them to abandon some of their most profitable practices without any guarantee the tens of millions of new customers they'll likely get would make up the difference.

Insurers couldn't charge an older customer more than twice as much as a young one for insurance. They face caps on how much they spend on administrative costs. Since some of the requirements take effect as soon as next year, insurers say it would throw off contracts they're locking in right now during employer open enrollment for policies."

Asherp can you provide evidence from this article or any other that backs up your claim that this bill is a bailout for insurance companies? Mandatory insurance includes the option to buy government insurance.

To illustrate a potential resolution to the abortion prohibition in the House bill, let us consider the scourge of limp-dick disease in the context of current and House-proposed healthcare law. To show that the cost of an abortion will drop dramatically under the House bill and it will not matter so much as to who is paying it.

The headlines this morning should read: Nancy Pelosi Cures Limp-Dick Disease!

Because that is precisely what the House bill will do. Limp-dick is a fabricated disease. Limp-dick occurs because we eat poorly and doctors practice bad medicine to correct the consequences of eating poorly. We eat fake food causing obesity, type II diabetes, cardiac disease and even asthma. These conditions lead to circulatory insufficiency. Which leads to an inability to pump up the one-eyed trouser snake.

Under the current healthcare law our interests are not the same as the doctors' interests. We want to stay healthy and stiff. Doctors want us to eat poorly and turn into a stream of frequent, brief, billable visits. Because that is how doctors get paid.

Pelosi's bill will change this by first aligning the interests of the payers with the interests of the patient: to stay healthy in the first place.

Insurance companies make money by collecting premiums and keeping them. Right? Under current law the best way to keep the premiums is to deny coverage. In effect, the insurance companies can eliminate sick patients by denying or cancelling coverage or capping reimbursement. The House bill prohibits eliminating patients by denying or cancelling coverage or capping reimburesment.

So, since the insurance companies cannot eliminate the patient, they will have to eliminate the disease.

Under the House bill, if enacted, insurance companies will use doctors, sophisticated public relations and economic incentives to keep keep us away from fake food, thus eliminating the source of the majority of the diseases that now consume our healthcare dollars. Insurance companies will enjoy record profits while we enjoy the benefits of unfettered penile erections.

As to costs, once the frivolous causes of disease have been eliminated, a lot of healthcare professionals are going to be without work. The House bill creates an excess capacity in healthcare services. The supply of healthcare will exceed demand. Healthcare costs will drop.

Including the costs of an abortion. During my surgical products days I participated in an engineering time/cost analysis of dilation and curettage which involves opening the cervix and removing the contents. Abortion. Wipe out the unnecessary economic complexities associated with current healthcare law (which the House bill does) and the end result is that about $50 of supplies, 30 minutes of one doc's time and a good nurse will produce a safe, effective abortion. Today the cost of an abortion is probably measured in thousands of dollars. Right? $2500? Who knows? It should cost about $200.

So, Nancy, thank you. No longer do I have to live in fear of the scourge of limp-disk disease. And the abortion issue is one that can truly be managed by the private individual involved rather than those who seem to think their role in life is to regulate the lives of others.

-Uncle Joel

all i's on Capitol hill.

I wish the article mentioned the bill's effect on abortion and other family planning. Will women be able to get abortions or plan B under the public option? What if you have private insurance?

I heard a story about people protesting the bill. One woman was shouting about taxpayer dollars funding abortions, and that the bill is "killing the unborn." Well she was obviously a dumb christian, because the public option is being funded by premiums, not taxes. (Also, some priest laid down in front of his rep's door until he was carted off!).

Another question: why are people calling this an insurance industry bailout? I thought they were a veritable monopoly raking in the dough at the expense of the poor's health. Their formula is so simple: collect high premiuns for which you promise care. When someone gets sick, break your promise. That sounds like the last industry that needs a bailout.

Lets hope it goes throught the senate, change is manditory.

In 2010 their smiling happy socialist asses will be voted the fuck out.

Americans overwhelmingly want Healthcare Reform, but for some reason the media and conservatives are playing the card that half of americans dont want it. The truth is that polls show around 70% want Healthcare reform and 20% dont, its just that most dont approve of how its being handled. I saw an add today saying that with the new HR bill if you dont get insurance Obama will fine you on everything. There was more to it and it was one of the dumbest ads but unfortunatly people fall to fear and so I'm sure it will pursuade the masses.

The governments job is to improve this nation of ours, and to do so it must spend. So stop yelling "ahhh he wants to spend", because we cant rely on CEOs to use their private money to improve this nation; its up to the government that is elected by the people to do it. Your tax money might be spent, but most of the time the that money is spent its being used on things that bring this nation up.

This bill by Nutty Nancy and Wacky Waxman is an absolute train-wreck. It is a crass power-grab by the Federal government and everyone knows it. No one that I know is in favor of it and I don't exactly live in a hotbed of right-wingery (Santa Cruz County CA) I was in Napa Valley this weekend and there were large street protests against Obamacare in Downtown Napa. Again, not exactly Fox News territory. Every doctor I talk to absolutely hates this bill. Sure, they have co-opted the current president of the AMA, but the past two presidents of the AMA are absolutely opposed. This bill does NOT have a lot of public support, in fact it has a LOT of very vocal opposition. People know how much freedom they will lose forever if the House bill becomes law.

Congratulations, dems. You've just created a new classification of citizen: the deadbeat non-insured. We all know that there are going to be hundreds of thousands of us who can't afford to become a new customers for the insurance industry. We're called the working poor. Hell, most of us can't afford one more monthly bill. Well, thanks to our representatives (yeah right), we will now be labelled as criminals for not patronizing these insurance fucks. And we will constitute a new class of citizen. One more segment of our society which can be looked down upon and blamed for all the ills in our culture. You can see the slight changes in peoples' rhetoric already. Witness the so-called progressives here at current who want to sweep this particular issue in the healthcare debate under the rug. They say: "Oh, the working poor will be covered under the public option. We need everyone to buy in so that "we all can save."" They sound more and more like the greedy teabaggers that they rail against. "Oh, we have to make YOU the fall guy so that OUR insurance is cheaper."

Please,read the bill. Do the math. The public option is only available for those who earn less than 150% of the federal poverty line, that's a little over $16,000/yr. Also, your premiums must represent more than 12% of your monthly income for you to be eligible for subsidies. Do you earn minimum wage, maybe slightly more? Do the math. Get prepared to become an outlaw.

Anyone who is a low-income earner currently lives month to month as it is. So what is to become of those of us who make just slightly more than the cutoff amount? What is to happen to those of us who will simply refuse to sign up for a product which we cannot afford? Well, now we're all criminals and we are to be shunned, ridiculed and jailed because our lack of income is now responsible for why these other so-called progressives have high insurance premiums. Start looking for that 3rd job, or 4th. Or just be prepared to go on the lamb. Congratulations, dems.

Could we have answered this question before voting on it?

Pork, more Pork and then some.
Decades of debt and pandering.
Wow, the dems really out did themselves.
Good job on transparency and end the culture of corruption.

This is hope and change?

This house bill is just like Rocko, the mafia enforcer, coming to your mom and pop store and saying, "You're going to buy protection, mom and pop, whether you can afford it or not. Get what I mean? We're gonna PROTECT ya."

Simple extortion.

i have a god awful feeling the one in red is running the country .. i really do .. cant fool me

I refuse to believe the wall street journal did a good job of analyzing or reporting anything what so ever. let alone something that they are clearly against from square one.

Is implementing the individual mandate actually constitutional?