Landrieu Offers Support for Health Care Legislation

In response to Joey (#22) -Believe me, if I could purchase health insurance, I would. Unfortunately, I have various preexisting conditions that make it totally impossible – until I become eligible for Medicare at age 75+. Sadly, a protracted bout of malignant narcissist hypochondriasis NOS (it’s a new ICD code) forever marked me as a high-utilizer in the eyes of the insurance companies, whom as we all know secretly swap information about risky patients in flagrant violation of the law. Also, the only way I made it to American Samoa and back was by using every last one of my frequent flyer miles – accumulated over many years spent traveling weekly to/from my government contractor job (I do audits), all the while generating an obscenely-high carbon footprint about which I still feel guilty, thus accelerating my deteriorating mental health. Finally, American Samoa is the very last place on Earth someone would go as a tourist. Considering it’s in the South Pacific, it has absolutely no tourism whatsoever. Mind-boggling. Not a single dive shop or casino. No cruise lines stopping in. . . nada. Not even a single spa focused on rigorously conditioning the out-of-shape with daily yoga regimens.

“For months, Louisianians have heard the poll-tested one-liners, false claims and disingenuous rhetoric from opponents of this effort. “Obviously she needs to change ‘opponents’ to ‘proponents’ in her quote. Actually, she should change it to BOTH!

Senator Landrieu’s views make it clear that we can’t afford to delay reform of health care. Healthcare cost s are today unaffordable to the public and to businesses! If the legislation before the Congress fails to pass, the health care cost crisis will still be there. Unless The Nation deals with this cost crisis, it will drag down businesses, individual citizens, and the country as a whole. In my opinion there is not time to start from scratch, delaying reform for another two years or so. The Nation needs healthcare reform now. There are hundreds of studies about various means of reducing costs, so we don’t need to put reform on hold to conduct more studies. What we do need to do is to cooperate and act. This will require that both Republicans and Democrats in Congress get acknowledged for their positive contributions to creating a superb health care bill. If partisan politics remains center stage, both parties deserve a severe reprimand for their failure to serve the public. In the next Congress, stagnation is not apt to diminish and could get worse. If Republican’s take control of The Senate or The House, Democrats will give back exactly what the Republican’s have been handing out for the past year. Moreover, should the Democrats only barely retain control, one can anticipate continuation of the status quo. Meanwhile, the health care cost crisis will more and more dominate the economy. This in my view is clearly untenable. We’ll all just go down the drain together, each pointing fingers at each other as we drown. Bad way to go, yes?

I don’t have insurance either. If I had the cash to travel to American Samoa, I would have used it to buy the insurance I need, rather than expect someone else to take care of me after I got sick.

It’s about time. Does Ms. Landrieu really want the party of George W. “You’re doin’ a heckuva job, Brownie” Bush and Dennis “Why should we even rebuild New Orleans” Hastert back in the majority for her Louisiana constituents?

Sen. Landrieu, just who is supposed to pay for this? Everyone in the US has access to healthcare. Not everyone has access to healthcare INSURANCE. Thanks, but I am having a hard enough time putting food on my family’s table and clothes on their back to make sure everyone in LA has heathcare INSURANCE. Tell your residents to go to the public clinic. In LA, like in TX, healthcare at a public clinic is either free or at a greatly reduced cost.

I’m one of the 50 million Americans without health insurance. On a recent trip to American Samoa, I got sick after eating a fast food hamburger. The territory offers its residents no healthy food choices, grows no food locally, and imports only the lowest grades of food, items which cannot be sold in the mainland. As a result the population is the fattest in the world (93% overweight/obese) and has the highest rates of diabetes (20% of adults) and related complications of any US public health jurisdiction. In the first month after opening it’s doors, this fast food chain sold over one million hamburgers to a population of 60,000 people. My case of food poisoning developed into a nasty case of pharyngitis. Upon returning to NYC, I saw a specialist at a local Manhattan hospital, who prescribed me an inadequate course of antibiotics, hoping I would return a week later for a second billable visit. As a result, the infection was only partially treated, and the drug-resistant bugs are making a comeback even as I write this. I can’t afford a return visit on my current budget, as I am still waiting to be paid for work I did last year for a project with a State that due to budget problems could not pay it’s bills. I paid out-of-pocket to get lab work done during this visit, but I cannot get my test results. Because of the enormous oversupply of hospitals in the NYC area, the hospital is concerned I’ll take my health records it’s competitor across the street. I have a friend in Tijuana who is ready to mail me the necessary antibiotics, but I need my microbial culture and sensitivity results to know what I should take next. Please, Mr. Obama, please try to figure out who owns my health information before the contagious spreads any further!

For those of us watching this debate from other countries, Canada in my case, Senator Landrieu makes a lot of sense. Universal health care, as we have, is not perfect but it makes it a right just as education is for K-12 in virtually every developed country and many underdeveloped. We have the same debates about costs as you are having. The system is only partly funded by the premiums we pay monthy and those premiums vary from province to province. Income levels also factor into the premiums in my home province and most others. Age does not. The majority of the funding comes from general government revenues.

This is just laughable. ObamaCare will be unconstitutional in the unlikely situation that it passes the House. It doesn’t look to me (or the Democrat majority whip) that Pelosi has the votes to pull this off. We would be better off to scrap the current bill and start over with more modest reforms that most of us agree on. It’s silly to force people to buy health insurance from private companies.

Every vote counts to pass health reform and Ms. Landrieu support is a vote for all the voters in the US who have lost health coverage and cannot afford to pay the sky rocketing cost of health insurance. As she has New Orleans in her state, not having heath insurance on top of Katrina would make her struggling constituents really be grateful for her vote for health reform. Cathy Jo Cress www.agingfamily411. com/index. html

Sure she wants to move forward with the La. purchase in her purse she is all for destroying the fabric of American society through bankruptcy of the American financial system and the taking over of health care through Government run Euro-Socialist implementation. I think health care reform should take place but not with this Euro-Socialist bill. Let the government regulate or introduce a bill that the insurance companies cannot cancel a preexisting insurance policy when someone has developed a debilitating disease and the government offers an insurance policy for those who are born with a debilitating disease. That would solve some of the problem with health care issue. I hope that make some sense but know liberals they will come out of the blue with some obscure issue and idiot Opinion without thinking about the issue. You know they are good with that stuff. And yes, there are other issues we can address about health care.

The author may have confused a strong opinion for a strong case. Nearly everyone recognizes the longstanding and urgent need for reform. It is the Democrats’ solution that is being criticized. This physician wonders: how can anyone honestly argue that this bill is budget-neutral? The bill apparently costs too much to include paying the physicians to provide the care. The “doc fix” is somehow not part of the cost of healthcare. This point is simply ignored by the Democratic leadership, but ignoring it will not make adding up the real numbers any easier.

Of course she supports it! Obama is leaving the 0 Million “Louisiana Purchase” deal that Reid bought her vote with, intact in the final bill.

She is taking a risk because most Americans are happy with their coverage, Democrats are putting out false expectations for this legislation and on top of it all the average person is still going to see regular and substantial increases in their costs. In addition, nothing except higher taxes will happen for at least four years. How is Congress going to explain that?Major changes are needed but this legislation is not a good deal for the 255,000,000 Americans who have coverage because it does not address the cost issue. Subsidizing high premiums does not make health care affordable. Http://www.quinnsOpinionary. com

Mary, you want to put the health of Louisianans first, very admirable. But how can you say with a straight face you are looking out for peoples economic livelihood (unless you are only interested in seeing it decline)?You dismiss as political rhetoric some pretty serious facts- like the fact that if we give more benefits and more insurance policies out, somebody will have to pay for this. There simply aren’t enough taxpayers or Chinese creditors willing to soak up the costs of hundreds of useless entitlement programs, or willing to dump up to BILLION into the IRS so it can administer the fines and taxes to those who either end up with no insurance or “good” insurance. You foolishly ignore plenty of real facts- after Obama rammed through his trillion-dollar-plus stimulus “bailout” last year and it has yet to help people get back to work, citizens have rightfully realized our top priority ought to be tackling the entitlement programs whose liabilities are growing and growing, consuming every tax dollar from working americans rich and poor to support make-work federal and state jobs that won’t help the economy. You conveniently ignore the burden being dumped on our young, what with the combined unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security which primarily subsidize health care and pensions for the elderly are now 7 trillion, seven times the current GDP. Do you really think a single Louisianan would want to trade in private insurance for Medicaid, a joint federal-state health insurance program that consumes 21 percent of state budgets, Louisiana’s single biggest expense (even before this bill dumps another 16 million people into this medically and financially failing program). Whether you get another gift from the president for your vote or not, expanding the Medicaid population by 25 percent will destroy the budgets of countless states. New York has had to impose billion dollar retroactive surcharges on it’s health insurance providers, then cry to the press that the premiums are going up!Beyond that, state and local government have promised their employees a trillion dollars more in pension and other benefits than they have funds to deliver. You claim to be worried about your citizens livelihood, please!This plan is wrong, we can’t afford to ignore the dozens of proven fixes available (thanks to published studies already paid for with our tax dollars) that could be passed, one at a time, with true bipartisan AND CITIZENS support that would stop the losses that are forcing businesses to close down or send jobs overseas. There is only one explanation for your supporting this bill that promises to put a huge chunk of the US economy under federal control, wasteful as that is, and send the bill to our kids and grandkids. Perhaps you need another gift, a new calculator?

Sen. Landrieu’s info is simply superb. She attacks and destroys the myths that the Republican party has created in putting politics above the interests of the American people. President Obama should hire her speechwriter.

WOW. . the hubris of this administration is unparalleled. . they take the morale high ground on one side. . . while Obama and his Gangster White House cut seedy deals in the back rooms of union leaders offices after midnight. I am horrified by this administration. Worst since Nixon.

I don’t suppose being bribed by Harry Reid with 0s of millions of Medicare dollars for your state had anything to do with changing your mind. It’s really obnoxious how little you and your fellow Congressmen think of your constituents. We’re really not that stupid, wave a red flag in our faces and we can usually figure it out. So get down from your holier than thou platform, give the money back and vote the way your constituents want you to vote, not the way the socialist troika want you to vote.

As an ardent supporter of Health Care reform I applaud Senator Landrieu for tackling the mis-information about this bill. I think the Democrats need to be proud of the bill and need to get it passed. As a citizen of our country it will be very hard for me to hear about people in our country who will not be able to get the health care they need if this effort fails. It needs to happen now.

We will be seeing several more leading Democrats making similar statements in state or national media. The Republican fear-mongering has lost its bite. And the idea that this will kill the Democrats in November just doesn’t hold First off, who knows what’s going to happen in November, secondly most people won’t see any change and finally, those whose health care changes will see it as for the better. There will probably be an impact in November, but it could easily be one that mitigates Democrat losses.

hann4478 to Health Insurance