…unlike NFL picks. Handicapping and making predictions can be quite fun, but try to check expert……

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1) medical schools need to have larger classes or new medical schools.
2) Doctors only need 2 years of undergrad and after that should go straight into medical schools.
3) Primary care doctors work very long hours for a lot less money than say interventional cardiologists.
4) 10 – 14 billion for community health centers – sounds more like a feel good, local empowerment money hole unless these centers are placed where there are no other health care facilities. Are these centers in direct competition with private urgent care centers or private medical practices?

uh huh

she WILL, before it's all said and done, wind up in a straight jacket in a Sanitarium somewhere in this country.

ps- weren't you supposed to be away from computers for the next week?

withdrawal already?

LOL

So it comes down to the caps, and the tax I will have to pay even if I already have insurance. If you read the bills, you should get the picture: we're paying more taxes, period. The caps are based the poverty line, so middle income folks will pay the middle rates. We're screwed. No new Prius for my wife until I can talk her into having some more deductions (kids I mean). No one has shown me, in the bills, how this really saves middle-income-me some money. Maybe because they can't.

Over the last six years, health care interests have spent $394 million on contributions in states around the country; about $73 million of that went to those 14 states. Of that, health insurance companies spent $18.2 million.

Overall, at least 21 states have indicated a desire to opt out of federal health care reform or block fundamental features of the reform bill, including mandatory health coverage. While Arizona, is the only state legislature to place an opt-out measure on the 2010 ballot, a significant number of gubernatorial and state legislature candidates across the country have also said that they are strongly “leaning towards” opting out of reform.

Lawmakers in Wyoming, New Mexico, Montana, Kansas, Texas, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Arizona, Alabama, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, West Virginia, Louisiana, Alaska, Minnesota, North Dakota, Georgia Illinois and Florida have introduced ballot measures to protect their states from reform legislation or promised to spearhead such efforts if reform is enacted.

While it’s unlikely that conservatives and their health care industry allies could repeal health care reform, (they are more likely to water-down certain elements of reform), a successful challenge would devastate the populations suffering from the most pronounced health care crisis. A back-of-the envelope analysis conducted by ThinkProgress suggests that on average, the repealing states have experienced very substantial premium increases, high rates of uninsurance and annual percent growth in health care expenditures and higher insurance market concentration:

– 42% (9 of 21): have an uninsurance rate higher than the national average of 15.4%.

– 62% (13 of 21): have an average annual percent growth in health care expenditures that his higher than the national average of 6.7%.

– 62% (13 of 21): experienced premium increases of more than 75% between 2000 and 2007.

– 90% (19 of 21): are dominated by two insurers that control more than 50% of the health insurance market.

The effort to repeal health care reform “began at the conservative Goldwater Institute in Arizona” and was latter “picked up by the American Legislative Exchange Council [ALEC], a business-friendly conservative group that coordinates activity among statehouses.” As the New York Times points out, “five of the 24 members of its ‘free enterprise board’ are executives of drug companies and its health care ‘task force’ is overseen in part by a four-member panel composed of government-relations officials for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association of insurers, the medical company Johnson & Johnson and the drug makers Bayer and Hoffmann-La Roche.”

Health Care Industry Coordinating Effort To Opt States Out Of Health Care Reform