The GOP is completely without compass at this point. They are so tied in knots from the layers of lies and false fronts – like defending Medicare… – they don’t understand the aircraft is going down not up. Some 13 state Attorney’s General, filing suit within 8 minutes of the bill signing “it’s,
uhm - unconstitutional!”

You could only do that if you believed the bogus “polling” floated by Media Inc. that the reform “isn’t popular”. No, people wouldn’t want guaranteed coverage if they lose their jobs (or work wage jobs with no insurance), and they don’t mind insurers locking them out because they are sick…

What a joke. And emblematic of how corroded their brains are at this point. The GOP regimes of these states are going to find to their shock
that these reforms are popular, and their refusal to accept the electoral and legislative process that led to the bill finally passing, is going to mobilize their in-state opponents.

Jeff, simply a great add there with the signing ceremony vid. If you can watch Biden and Obama there and still oppose this, you’re never going to understand why this bill happened and why it had to.

And a great snapshot of (U.S. House Speaker) Pelosi in the pic below. Looking giddy – and she earned it. That Progressive veteran, put the votes together when GOP demagogues, TBag bullies and Media Inc. were all saying “No You Can’t”.

Built-in boost for job creation by small employers, new jobs for tens of thousands of needed healthcare workers, and pay-as-you-go with the expiring and failed 2001 Bush tax cut to wealthiest Americans. If your wealth is not going into new operations, you need to incur a tax increase beyond the expiring cut as a matter of fact. (Financial crisis and all, brought on by reckless failure to properly regulate the financial system in the Reagan/Bush era. …hey, remember when Reagan deregulated the Savings & Loans, and then they imploded and had to be bailed out? ;^)

And now for the big lie of health reform through “Tort Reform”, excerpted from an email I just sent someone;

As I tried to indicate, omitted by Fox of course, some states have already done it. In some states doctors are protected already / limited savings results, if any.

Do the math that Fox will never do for it’s sheep audience;

Let’s say you pass the strictest tort law – doctors will face no malpractice judgements / zero dollars ever awarded.

Golly. Hey, now doctors and hospitals can bring down their prices because their malpractice premiums are lower!

Really? Astronomical provider costs will come down? How much?
50%?. No. 30%? No. Maybe 10-15%. Maybe.

And since doctors charge less, honest upstanding insurers will charge less. Free market at work!

So the providers cut rates 15%, and then insurers hand every dime of it back to policy holders?
No.

And even if they did, it’s 15% off a policy that 100 million un & underinsured can’t come close to affording anyway. Clank!

The concept fails analytically, and is absurd.

“Tort Reform”, already tried as it is, is a diversion tactic for the corrupt GOP to fool working people into thinking that guaranteed health insurance, is not necessary and not in their interests.

Republicans do not want healthcare reform, as I spelled out in the last email. You cannot simply regulate the insurers to accept everyone and stop at that. The healthy and young will decline to buy policies until they are sick. Insurers will have only the sick on their roles, and will fail. Everyone must have a policy for health reform to work in a private-insurer system.

The GOP/Fox objective is to kill all reform. It is obvious from their present lock-step opposition, and from their history. They tried to kill Medicare in the ’60’s, and have opposed every attempt at national health insurance since Truman.

They might as well oppose child labor laws, or the prohibition on slavery. Same kind of profits-over-morality position.

See below how this lie of a solution, is failing in IL…

—–

Illinois top court strikes down medical malpractice caps

Says not moved by Washington health care reform effort

By Bruce Japsen Tribune staff reporter
10:41 a.m. CST, February 4, 2010

The Illinois Supreme Court struck down the state’s medical malpractice law today, saying it violates separation of powers by allowing lawmakers to interfere with a judge’s ability to reduce verdicts.

The much-anticipated ruling, which challenged the constitutionality of damage caps for doctors and hospitals, is being watched closely by the health care industry and employers that see caps on damages as a way to tame rising health care costs.

The ruling could figure in the national health care debate of stalled health care legislation. In the U.S. Senate where Republicans have opposed existing health care reform legislation, the GOP has been vocal about the need for tort reform and caps on damages.

State lawmakers in 2005 passed legislation, which was signed into law by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, that established caps on noneconomic damages of $500,000 in cases against doctors and $1 million against hospitals. Illinois followed other states, such as California, that capped damages years ago.

But Justices writing said they were not persuaded by arguments used in other states. “That ‘everybody is doing it,” is hardly a litmus test for the constitutionality of the statute,” Justices writing for the majority opinion said.

Further, Justices said that what the statute allows for amounts to a “legislative remittur.” Chief Justice Thomas Fitzgerald delivered the judgment for the seven-member court and was joined in the opinion by Justices Charles Freeman, Thomas Kilbride and Anne Burke. Justice Robert Thomas took no part in the decision, the ruling said.

Justices Lloyd Karmeier and Rita Garman dissented on certain points of the decision and expressed sympathy to providers of medical care, citing President Obama’s recent address to a joint session of Congress that the justices said “admonished” the nation’s collective failure to enact health care reform.

“We have no business telling the General Assembly that it has exceeded its constitutional power if we must ignore the constitutional constraints on our own authority to do so,” Karmeier wrote.

Justices in the majority, however, said their decision was not made with health care reform efforts in Washington in mind, saying the “Obama administration’s health care reform efforts are not the backdrop against which we have decided the constitutionality.”

The law came after more than two years of political battle in Springfield between trial lawyers and providers of medical care and their insurers. Doctors blamed the lack of malpractice reform for an exodus of physicians from the state, particularly neurosurgeons and obstetricians who had higher insurance premiums.

Though state lawmakers took steps to ensure the law would not be struck down by narrowing the scope of the legislation, doctors and hospitals have been worried about how the Supreme Court would rule.

Twice before in state history, Illinois lawmakers have adopted caps, and both times the Supreme Court eventually nixed them.

Physicians were naturally upset with the Illinois high court’s decision this morning.

American Medical Association president James Rohack said patient access to medical care worsened in Illinois after the court overruled the state’s previous cap on noneconomic damages in 1997.”

“Severe problems with patient access to care emerged as the unrestrained excesses of the state’s legal system forced Illinois physicians to limit services, retire early, or move to other states where liability premiums were more stable,” Rohack said. “Without a cap on noneconomic damages from 1997 to 2005, Chicago physicians saw their liability premiums increase an average of 10 to 12 percent each year. When the cap was reinstated in 2005, premiums for Chicago physicians stabilized and even began to shrink.”

But trial lawyers disagreed, saying malpractice insurance companies are trying to blame patients who have been harmed by medical errors. They say insurance reform is what is needed to spur competition and keep physicians and hospital malpractice premiums low.

The case before the high court came on appeal from Cook County Circuit Court. In 2007, Cook County Circuit Judge Diane Larsen decided that caps on malpractice awards violated the Illinois Constitution’s “separation of powers” clause, in effect ruling that the state Legislature can’t interfere with the right of juries and judges to determine fair damages. Larsen’s ruling falls in line with a 1997 Illinois Supreme Court decision that overturned a 1995 law implementing caps on personal-injury cases.

The first case to test the law was that of Abigaile LeBron, a 13-month-old girl who suffered a severe brain injury during birth at Gottlieb Memorial Hospital in Melrose Park.

Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune. Don’t repost on Balkingpoints…

Nice to make your acquaintance.

In 1992 when Bill Clinton was running against incompetent incumbent Bush Sr., he was gathering lots of support for what eventually became Hillary’s single-payer plan of 1994. Which would have put America past this barbarism. Bush Sr., suddenly finds and proposes all kinds of money he never ponied up before, for tax credits for working Americans to be able to afford policies.

Think about that for a moment. 18 years ago, private insurers already had it jacked up beyond the reach of wage/hour Americans. If you weren’t getting it through your employer, too bad for you! Between jobs, tough luck.

The problem being of course, that these tax credit schemes – even if the nation could afford them without levying new taxes on those few who became very wealthy during the Reagan/Bush era – are always half-baked and wholly inadequate.

A few thousand dollars – hey, great! Guess what? Go try to buy your own policy on that. Even if you are healthy…

If you aren’t healthy, again you are screwed – and Republican officials aren’t at all worried about it. They have their government insurance, and defend to the death the rights of private insurers, to exclude the sick through pre-existing conditions clauses, and renewal increases so high you just can’t buy it anymore after you’ve filed claims. Which they most likely denied, and you and your doctor had to fight them on to even pay out.

Their business model, is to insure the well and exclude the sick. That is how they profit. And Republicans kick and scream to keep it all legal. Both are corrupt, and their current objective as in 1994, is to kill all reform.

Here again is Cigna VP whistleblower Wendell Potter, under oath about this exact corruption of his former industry. Watch or read;

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/profile.html