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GORDON DUFF: “YES WE CAN” PROVIDE DECENT HEALTHCARE FOR AMERICANS
THE MOST EPIC PIECE OF LEGISLATION IN OUR LIFETIME…IT’S ALL ABOUT FREEDOM
ABSOLUTELY NO LOSS OF BENEFITS TO ANY RETIREE OR VETERAN AND LOW COST HEALTHCARE
FOR MANY VETERAN’S FAMILIES NOT COVERED BEFORE
By Gordon Duff Senior Editor
Many Americans, we don’t know how many are wailing at the prospect of being able to provide for their families as is done in every other advanced nation on Earth. Health care is not a product or commodity, it is a human right. The attempts to represent it otherwise are going to leave a stain on those who chose this tack for the rest of their lives. As more Americans look at what has been accomplished, those who truely understand will feel a weight lifted from them. Americans will no longer lose their homes, their retirement savings because of illness. No longer will workers be stuck in hated jobs because of “preexisting conditions” or have to read insurance policies with a lawyer and an accountant next to them.
A bill has passed, flawed, incomplete but an admission that America is a genuinely free nation, in theory and now in practice. This is a good day. Today I was called an “Obama lover” by the same sort of people that were spitting on African American members of Congress. I am not sure how big an Obama fan I am every day but today he has helped make me a very proud American.
So much for my political opinion. I travel extensively and have learned that what has been said about medicine in Canada, Britain and across Europe is, for the most part, false. Too often, I have seen veterans in America, in hospitals that cost millions receive health care vastly inferior to that offered free in Britain, free with NO wait. If the new law doesn’t serve the needs of our veterans, we will lobby endlessly until it does.
OUR JOB AT VETERANS TODAY
As this bill takes hold, we will be advising our readers on how best to deal with the changes. This far, retirees and totally disabled vets are not impacted. However, other vets may qualify now under Medicaid and some who are at higher income levels but under financial pressure should qualify for other extended benefits tied to the bill.
For now, we will look for a final version and try to get accurate information out there. Thus far the things that were being warned of, destruction of Tricare/ChampVA and other issues are not proving out. This is no longer a political issue but is going to be one of vital importance that our veterans community is getting the right information.
As of now, wait, study and keep in contact with us. We look forward to comments and discussions that are meant to benefit our readers. I suspect every loophole and error in the current bill to be found by one or another of us. We have work to do and a community to serve.
SOME OF THE BASICS FROM VT EDITOR
Here are ten benefits which come online within six months of the President’s signature on the health care bill:
1. Adult children may remain as dependents on their parents’ policy until their 27th birthday
2. Children under age 19 may not be excluded for pre-existing conditions
3. No more lifetime or annual caps on coverage
4. Free preventative care for all
5. Adults with pre-existing conditions may buy into a national high-risk pool until the exchanges come online. While these will not be cheap, they’re still better than total exclusion and get some benefit from a wider pool of insureds.
6. Small businesses will be entitled to a tax credit for 2009 and 2010, which could be as much as 50% of what they pay for employees’ health insurance.
7. The “donut hole” closes for Medicare patients, making prescription medications more affordable for seniors.
8. Requirement that all insurers must post their balance sheets on the Internet and fully disclose administrative costs, executive compensation packages, and benefit payments.
9. Authorizes early funding of community health centers in all 50 states (Bernie Sanders’ amendment). Community health centers provide primary, dental and vision services to people in the community, based on a sliding scale for payment according to ability to pay.
10. AND no more rescissions. Effective immediately, you can’t lose your insurance because you get sick.
MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
For the first time in our nation’s history, Congress has passed comprehensive health care reform. America waited a hundred years and fought for decades to reach this moment. Tonight, thanks to you, we are finally here.
Consider the staggering scope of what you have just accomplished:
Because of you, every American will finally be guaranteed high quality, affordable health care coverage.
Every American will be covered under the toughest patient protections in history. Arbitrary premium hikes, insurance cancellations, and discrimination against pre-existing conditions will now be gone forever.
And we’ll finally start reducing the cost of care — creating millions of jobs, preventing families and businesses from plunging into bankruptcy, and removing over a trillion dollars of debt from the backs of our children.
But the victory that matters most tonight goes beyond the laws and far past the numbers.
It is the peace of mind enjoyed by every American, no longer one injury or illness away from catastrophe.
It is the workers and entrepreneurs who are now freed to pursue their slice of the American dream without fear of losing coverage or facing a crippling bill.
And it is the immeasurable joy of families in every part of this great nation, living happier, healthier lives together because they can finally receive the vital care they need.
This is what change looks like.
My gratitude tonight is profound. I am thankful for those in past generations whose heroic efforts brought this great goal within reach for our times. I am thankful for the members of Congress whose months of effort and brave votes made it possible to take this final step. But most of all, I am thankful for you.
This day is not the end of this journey. Much hard work remains, and we have a solemn responsibility to do it right. But we can face that work together with the confidence of those who have moved mountains.
Our journey began three years ago, driven by a shared belief that fundamental change is indeed still possible. We have worked hard together every day since to deliver on that belief.
We have shared moments of tremendous hope, and we’ve faced setbacks and doubt. We have all been forced to ask if our politics had simply become too polarized and too short-sighted to meet the pressing challenges of our time. This struggle became a test of whether the American people could still rally together when the cause was right — and actually create the change we believe in.
Tonight, thanks to your mighty efforts, the answer is indisputable: Yes we can.
Thank you,
President Barack Obama
g
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=22602
Posted by Gordon Duff on Mar 21 2010, With 0 Reads, Filed under Vet News, Veteran Service Organizations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
COMMENTS
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Health care that relies upon assumptions that govt will become suddenly more efficient; end fraud, waste and abuse in the current government health care programs (MediCare and MedicAid) over the next 20 years; forces people to buy insurance; and relies upon further taxation of those making combined incomes of over $250k (who already pay some 40% of the tax bill while some 40% of so-called taxpayers do not pay a dime in taxes) is a recipe for fiscal disaster.
Our children and children’s children will pay dearly for our selfishness and lack of will to address the growing deficits and out of control expenditures that require ever more in taxes to feed.
I’d rather donate 50% of my income and my personal time to charities that have less than 10% administrative overhead and who provide directly to those who most need health care and other services than give another penny to a bloated, mediocre, and inefficient government that may possibly get only 60 cents of every tax dollar where it is needed. Relying only on the government to do what is right is the worst way to care for the sick and needy.
You talk about Health Care as a basic human right and you’re going to trust government to fairly and responsibly administer such? The same government that can’t balance the budget, spend wisely within its means, or stop health care waste, abuse and fraud over the past four decades? The best use of our money is to invest in those activities and institutions that have a solid record for providing what is desparately needed not only here in the U.S. but elsewhere in the world. The Shriners, Knights of Columbus, Catholic Charities, the Mormons and others all provide better and more personal services for health, sickness and need than any government. These organizations are at the forefront of human rights, up close and personal unlike the impersonal, hide behind the regulations, bureaucratic morass the government has become and will become even more now.
Come on, in the Marines we did things with very little budget and for the most part used our brains, brawn, and paltry funding as best we could to get the best bang for each buck. Something Congress and the Federal Government as a whole should learn from.
So I ask you, what have we truly accomplished here? Not much unless you count a Trillion more dollars in debt an accomplishment.
Semper Fi,
A.M. Tang
MSgt USMC Retired
MOS 0311, 0241, 0231
Tang,
If you have lived overseas, you know how good national healthcare is and how terrible ours has become for everyone except the richest American…terrible for veterans in particular.
g
I’ve lived ten+ years overseas. Most of it in Japan, Hong Kong, and Okinawa as both a civilian and as a Marine. My late wife was Japanese (actually Okinawan) and I am intimately familiar with the Japanese health care system (my wife’s father died of throat cancer and her mother is a lung cancer survivor). What you fail to realize is the tremendous tax burden on its people this cradle-to-grave health system is. I also know that certain procedures and technologies are not available at any price so many go on ‘medical vacations’ to the U.S. for procedures and tests.
To say the least, I was at times appalled at the condition and lack of hospital services for the average Japanese citizen. Okinawa, being the poorest prefecture in Japan, had only one major hospital of note that could do an MRI and that was the university hospital there. Of course that was 1994 but I bet it hasn’t changed much if any since then.
Medical innovation in technology is behind the U.S. and their hosipitals for the average Japanese are a poor cousin to ours unless you are near one of the University hospitals or in a big city.
As to health care for Veterans at VA hospitals . . . I received great care at the DC VA hospital’s oral surgery department for two implants that resulted from having no oral surgeon available to take care of my teeth the last two years before I retired.
Yes there could be better care at the VA hospitals but that is a function of how much the government wants to spend on them and to recruit and attract good medical staff. So your logic that the government will miraculously provide good, sound and fiscally responsible medical health insurance and care is discredited by your very example of the VA hospitals!
Semper Fi, A.M. Tang
A.M. Tang, You are very wrong about what this bill does. It does not empower the gov to administer health care. It does regulate the private insurance companies who do, health crats in whom you seem to place your conifendence.
Do you really love the health insurance industry that much?
Here are ten benefits which come online within six months of the President’s signature on the health care bill:
1. Adult children may remain as dependents on their parents’ policy until their 27th birthday
2. Children under age 19 may not be excluded for pre-existing conditions
3. No more lifetime or annual caps on coverage
4. Free preventative care for all
5. Adults with pre-existing conditions may buy into a national high-risk pool until the exchanges come online. While these will not be cheap, they’re still better than total exclusion and get some benefit from a wider pool of insureds.
6. Small businesses will be entitled to a tax credit for 2009 and 2010, which could be as much as 50% of what they pay for employees’ health insurance.
7. The “donut hole” closes for Medicare patients, making prescription medications more affordable for seniors.
8. Requirement that all insurers must post their balance sheets on the Internet and fully disclose administrative costs, executive compensation packages, and benefit payments.
9. Authorizes early funding of community health centers in all 50 states (Bernie Sanders’ amendment). Community health centers provide primary, dental and vision services to people in the community, based on a sliding scale for payment according to ability to pay.
10. AND no more rescissions. Effective immediately, you can’t lose your insurance because you get sick.
You miss the point entirely sir.
It’s all about the cost and how efficient and effective such asystem will be. A Bill that’s over a thousand pages can’t be that efficient or effective much less a fiscally responsible law. So why did it take so many pages to say what you said in your 10 points?
If that’s what the Health Care Bill is supposed to do then why wasn’t it written that way? If your ten points had gone to the House and Senate as written, I bet there would have been Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats who would have voted for it. Then again, you didn’t mention how it was going to be paid for so maybe not.
Semper Fi, A.M. Tang
Mr Tang,
Here in Ohio, the VA will not do implants, bridges or root canals, any major dental procedure for the very few who qualify for such, ony POWs and 100% disabled vets. Typical treatment is a pack of ibuprofen and being sent home, diabetes, malaria or worse.
Cradle to grave healthcare? Of course, this is a human right. Our current “commercial system” has outpaced inflation by between 400 and 1000 percent per year for decades and has helped drive all industry out of the US. Even still, tens of millions of Americans now qualify for nothing, no “free care” nor any type of aid. They give up their homes, their cars and their savings when a child is ill. OH, in case you didn’t know, the uninsured pay twice as much for the same care as insurance companies. A procedure that is 75 dollars to an insurance company costs a low income uninsured worker 150.00 or more, sometimes much more. Learn more about health care. We do this full time here with two MSN’s on staff with decades of experience.
g
I absolutely concur that the flow of corrupting monies and the dispensing of tax monies by Congress (like the princes of kingdoms) has and will continue to erode our Republic. Both parties are to blame and share in this ‘fine tradition’ of small and large corruptions.
For those who have any sense of history I would say that there is a distinct sensation in the pit of their stomachs that we are following a road very similar to the Roman Republic. We are voting for dependency on the government and emptying the treasury to pay for our increasing entitlements. The only question will be how soon will we have the first American Ceaser?
2200 Pages….
Congress went into a feeding frenzy, Primarily Republican but many Dems also, when the insurance industry began flooding DC with bribe money. This grew the bill and inserted many things any honest government would omit. How do we criticize the first honest thing the American government has done in 45 years? So, it has the stink of Washington on it, worse than Medicare certainly. For decades, bilking Medicare has been the lifeblood of many medical practices.
With the addiction to money that exists in Washington, even those running charities now all have a benchmark just shy of the private Gulfstream but close, a culture of theft is going to poison everything. We could always attack the disease, get rid of Congress, and fix the law ourselves. That would require some serious changes to the Constitution, a document with far more flaws than the healthcare act. The founding fathers made far more “adjustments” to secure the influence of the rich and greedy than was done here. However, as we glory our error with mythology, we only have 27 Amendments instead of a new document which would be 5000 pages long and turn America into a slave state.
Maybe the mythology was right, our founding fathers, half British spies, many smugglers, whiskey peddlers, speculators and thieves may still, on average, be much better people than the group we have around now.
g
I absolutely concur that the flow of corrupting monies and the dispensing of tax monies by Congress (like the princes of kingdoms) has and will continue to erode our Republic. Both parties are to blame and share in this ‘fine tradition’ of small and large corruptions.
For those who have any sense of history I would say that there is a distinct sensation in the pit of their stomachs that we are following a road very similar to the Roman Republic. We are voting for dependency on the government and emptying the treasury to pay for our increasing entitlements. The only question will be how soon will we have the first American Ceaser?
Yes, we need to provide health care and or insurance to the less fortunate, but this bill is not the way.
I read, or tried to read parts of the bill and the language was so thick and verbose that after reading for about a 1/2 hour, I got a headache and still had not understood what in the hell it had said.
The bill is over 2,000 pages long, and a lot of it was written by the same health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies that have been gouging the American public for decades.
That bill must have so much pork written into it that it’s dripping bacon grease.
A simple bill to expand Medicare, that was only 30 pages long, was introduced back in January of 2009 and it died a quick death on the House floor.
Why?
The US Constitution is a beautifully written document, about 12 pages long, written in a language a 6th grader could understand that has withstood many an assault over the past 220+ years, yet the health bill is a Godzilla size 2,000 pages long?
I hope I’m wrong, but when you force people into buying a product, creating a bigger monopoly than the one already existed, the new cartel will most likely drive up, not reduce costs.
The reason most people can’t afford healthcare IS government itself and taxes. If
you eliminate every agency that violates the Bill Of Rights or is not listed in
the Enumerated Powers section of the Constitution we would have more money to
spend on healthcare, homes and other priorities. Stop all foreign aid as well.
“More taxes will solve everything” is a lie.
Repeating GOP/Tea Party nonsense does not constitute facts.
Which clause of the Constitution, which article of the Bill Of Rights is violated?
Taxes on whom; the super-rich? Good.
Read it again carefully. There is nothing in the Constitution or Bill Of
Rights that PROVIDES for health care. The rights listed are for what
government should not be doing. Progressive taxation is not just for
the “super-rich”. If you believe that you need to educate yourself. Why
not take away the tax-funded healthcare for Senators and Congressmen?
Do you seriously think they give a damn about us “little people”?
nor slavery nor for women voting nor nor nor nor
find something in the constitution that prohibits health care?
g
What about the 10th Amendment that says powers not specifically
given under the Constitution are reserved for the states? I am
not against healthcare. I just don’t want some beauracrat telling
me what I “have” to buy.
Wes,
Long ago, the insurance and drug industry got together to tax America into a grave. Rigging gasoline profits has nearly finished the job. We only made an initial step to protect our freedoms from a vicious pack of gangsters. This isn’t health care, its law enforcement. We have simply criminalized crime. Insurance companies were allowed to destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans each year, in fact healthcare is the primary reason for bankruptcy in America. Now that will end.
g
From the article: Health care is not a product or commodity, it is a human right. I agree. There are some good elements of the new healthcare legislation, however I am not a big fan of of it.
There is this:
On June 10, Physicians for a National Health Program advisor Walter Tsou told the House Education and Labor Committee:
“Attempting to reconcile the dual imperatives of universal coverage and cost control through alternative methods besides single payer is an exercise in futility. When some congressional leaders declare that single payer is off the table, they are in effect saying that insurers will be protected, leaving the pain to patients, taxpayers and health care providers.”
Kucinich hailed its importance in saying:
“There are many models of health care reform from which to choose around the world – the vast majority of which perform far better than ours. The one that has been the most tested here and abroad is single-payer. Under (it) everyone in the US would get a card that would allow access to any doctor at virtually any hospital. Doctors and hospitals would continue to be privately run, but the insurance payments would be in public hands. By getting rid of the for-profit insurance companies, we can save $400 billion per year and provide coverage for all medically necessary services for everyone in the US.”
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Very well stated Mr. Duff. Sadly it seems, decisions based on reason and morality have become few and far between in our society. As a Vietnam Vet I wonder how many of the detractors to this bill would ever risk their lives for this country? Why should they, they already have a national health plan, and all the lobby money they can spend. Why should they when they can spend billions of our dollars to send our men and women all over the globe to be killed and mutilated to protect their so called freedoms. And while they’re at it, just throw what money we have left back to the people that screwed us in the first place?
These politicians can vote to do all this, but would rather die than spend a friggin cent on helping people in their own country live a better life or even live at all?
Maybe the jungle was a better place after all.
So, who pays from the time TRICARE runs out at age 23 for college students, 18 for not, up until 26? I mean, you guys are the experts, right?
Geez Gordon,
This is precisley what is wrong with our country. It seems we have grown into a sense of entitlement here. Everybody gets a trophy. What ever happened to earning what we want? We don’t even drug test our country’s less forntunate for their welfare check. If we keep giving them more they will never change.
So Gordon you think the good ol USA can’t take care of it’s VETS…well that is a government run health care system. What makes you think this new law will enable all those suffering to obtain better health care? I see what your saying though…lets make everyone suffer. Let’s punish the hard working Americans because these lazt SOBs can’t get off their DUFF…pun intended!
Dan Garza, SFC
U.S. ARMY 1983-1994
RANGER CLASS 13-85