Today will mark the 34th time the Republicans in the House will vote to eliminate the new healthcare law, one they love to call Obamacare. As with the other 33 times it will fail in the Senate. Wouldn’t you think by now they would have offered an alternative.
I am proud our president took the bold move and is trying to do something about our wrecked healthcare system; perfect it is now, needs some tweaking, but it has a lot of good parts and the bill is a start.
It is easy for someone to be negative about legislation, but it is difficult to step up to the plate and offer alternatives. That is what the Republicans have been doing during the entire 3.5 years of the Obama administration.
It’s time for the Republicans and their candidate for the Oval Office to shit or get off the pot and tell the American voters their plan for a better America.
Frank Calio's Blog (www.frankcalio.com) 
Right on Frank! It’s so much easier to be negative than offer well thought out positive ideas.
The first step to a solution for a problem is admitting that you have a problem! The house, although not offering an alternative, has obviously admitted that there is a problem! Why won’t the senate and our dictator just admit that they made a mistake. I know a gentleman that has been married almost 30 years, unhappily because he said he would rathar die than admit he made a mistake! So sad !!!!!!
John you’re off subject again; the story is, if the bill is so damn bad, and the Republicans have tried to repeal it 34 times, why don’t they offer an alternative instead of wasting valuable time ignoring legislation that could strengthen this county on legislation they know is going to die in the Senate?
They are just trying to stir up shit before the election; they don’t care about healthcare.
Tort reform and opening up competition beyond state lines have been out there for awhile….that would be two very good places to start
If it is such a great plan why has this happened.
The Department of Health and Human Services has granted a total of 1,372 waivers from ObamaCare insurance mandates since the law’s enactment, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.
The waivers are for so-called mini-med plans that offer annual coverage limits. They were outlawed by ObamaCare and are scheduled to be regulated out of existence in 2014.
However, such plans are often the only form of health insurance available to workers and without the waivers most would no longer be available.
“The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), which became law in March, 2010, generally prohibits health insurance issuers and group health plan sponsors from imposing annual limits on the dollar value of ‘essential’ covered health benefits beginning on January 1, 2014, but allows restricted annual limits, as defined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), on the value of those benefits until that time,” the GAO explained.
Because these new regulations would end up denying health insurance to millions of Americans, HHS began issuing waivers so that people could keep their health coverage despite the new mandates.
“To mitigate a potential impact on individuals’ access or premiums for existing plans with benefit limits below these amounts, HHS established a waiver program based on the statutory requirement.”
HHS in fact established a new government office to process and evaluate the tide of waiver applications submitted by companies and unions trying to keep their health plans from being eliminated by ObamaCare.
“To implement various provisions of PPACA, including those related to annual limits, HHS created what is now called the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO).”
Because of the waivers, 3.1 million people will not see their insurance plans regulated out of existence.
The GAO found that HHS generally only granted waivers to plans that would have seen a 10 percent or greater increase in premiums, generally denying applications from those below that level. However, HHS did not have any specific criteria for granting or denying a waiver application.
“CCIIO granted waivers on the basis of applications’ projected significant increases in premiums or significant decreases in access to health care benefits,” the report said. “Officials told us that they could not exclusively rely on specific numerical criteria to define a significant increase in premiums or a significant decrease in access to benefits.”
“Nevertheless, officials said that applications with a projected premium increase of 10 percent or more tended to be approved while applications with a projected premium increase of 6 percent or less tended to be denied. Applications with a premium increase between 7 and 9 percent were subjected to a closer review.”
Of a total of 1,415 applications received as of April 201, HHS denied only 65, GAO reported.
Dy my post said the bill was not perfect, needed tweaking; a waiver is not a new word in the vocubalary. Topo me it shows they are tweaking the bill and trying to help small businesses get through this bill. The thrust of the post was the bill is a start; if the Republicans don’t like it, saying it’s bad for Americans, then why haven’t they used their energy to bring up a better alternative instead of voting against the bill 33 times?
I don’t know if there is a way to do this that will actual benefit all. Other countries have tried that have less diversity geographically and culturally and it has failed and the cost just continuously grew. Spain and Greece are both failing financially and they had healthcare coverage ( not the sole reason they are in trouble), Germany is maintaining, but they re-did there unemployment and welfare benefits. Canada has it and people come here for medical procedures. I think Universal Healthcare or a coverage for all is a good idea, but Obama care is bad, we tried to re-invent the wheel, instead of looking at the countries that have it and see where they went wrong. Our elected idiots made a thousand page law that they admitted they never read.
Just thought that it was interesting that 10 Democrats joined the Republicans on this vote!!!
Jim, I’m assuming you are talking about Obama’s 2008 campaigning, correct?
So, Frank, what are you going to say when the House passes an alternative to Obamacare and the Senate will not consider it? See my e-mail referencing Congressman Broun’s House bill 4224 on healthcare.
Brian is right, opening competition beyond state lines would make a huge impact on health ins costs. I have never understood why this has never been done. Let the free market do what it does best.