Chad asked:

President Barack Obama says requiring people to get health insurance and fining them if they don’t would not amount to a backhanded tax increase. “I absolutely reject that notion,” the president said.

Blanketing most of the Sunday TV news shows, Obama defended his proposed health care overhaul, including a key point of the various health care bills on Capitol Hill: mandating that people get health insurance to share the cost burden fairly among all. Those who failed to get coverage would face financial penalties.

Obama said other elements of the plan would make insurance affordable for people, from a new comparison-shopping “exchange” to tax credits.

Telling people to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase, Obama told ABC’s “This Week.”

“What it’s saying is, is that we’re not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore,” said Obama. “Right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase.”

Obama faces an enormous political and communications challenge in selling his health care plan as Congress debates how to pay for it all.

He told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he will keep his pledge not to raise taxes on families earning up to $250,000, and that much of the final bill — hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10 years — can be achieved from savings within the current system. Coming up with the rest remains a key legislative obstacle.

Obama put his support behind the idea of taxing employers that offer high-cost insurance plans.

“I do think that giving a disincentive to insurance companies to offer Cadillac plans that don’t make people healthier is part of the way that we’re going to bring down health care costs for everybody over the long term,” Obama said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Obama’s network interviews were taped Friday at the White House. He became the first president to appear on five Sunday network shows in the same morning, an extraordinary effort to build public support for his top domestic priority.

The goal is expand and improve health insurance coverage and rein in long-term costs.

Yet despite so many weeks of speeches, town halls and interviews, Obama said he has found it difficult at times to make a complex topic clear and relevant.

“I’ve tried to keep it digestible,” Obama said. “It’s very hard for people to get their arms around it. And that’s been a case where I have been humbled and I just keep on trying harder.”

Obama told Univision’s “Al Punto” (”To the Point”) that the strong opposition to his plan is part of a political strategy.

“Well, part of it is … that the opposition has made a decision,” he said. “They are just not going to support anything, for political reasons.”

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Obama doesn’t understand Republicans’ opposition.

“I don’t know anybody in my Republican conference in the Senate who’s in favor of doing nothing on health care,” McConnell said. “We obviously have a cost problem and we have an access problem.”

But he told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the Democrats’ plan is simply too rushed.

7thchild asked:


by Ron Spangler

As Congress debates a plan to save the financial markets on wall street, it appears speculators are leaving the stock market and returning to the commodities market especially in the oil market. After it was announced the oil market was under investigation and some speculators were found to be illegally manipulating the market, they retreated to the stock market and began short selling. As a result the price of oil began to fall. This was by no means the sole reason for the drop in the price of crude oil but it did play a role.

Now while Congress is busy with the Paulson bailout plan and short selling has been temporarily banned, speculators have returned to oil and the result is ever increasing prices for a barrel of oil. Since the current crisis began the price of oil has steadily increased from a low of $91 to the current opening of $109. Most people will attribute the increase on hurricane Ike and the disruption of the supply of oil from the Gulf Coast area. They will also point to OPEC’s decision to cut production. I would argue both have played a minor role in the increase for the simple reason that America’s demand for oil has decreased dramatically.

The real culprit is nothing more than greed. Across the Southeast there have been increased complaints of price gouging at the pumps. As soon as hurricane Ike landed the price at the pump went as high as a dollar more per gallon. The reason given at the time was speculation that we would see gas shortages nationwide. Contrary to some media reports it didn’t happen. Some gas stations have posted signs they are out of regular unleaded gas but are selling higher grade gas at you guessed it, ridiculously higher prices. Reports are coming out that these stations are really closing their lower grade less expensive pumps not because of a shortage but instead they are holding back in order to push the sale of their more expensive fuel. Employees have reported they were told to shut down their less expensive fuel pumps even though the storage tanks were full. As State Attorney Generals around the Southeast and Midwest started investigating these claims the price of fuel went down and overnight stations that didn’t have regular unleaded miraculously received delivery and began selling the less expensive gas. Like short sellers and speculators these people succumbed to the greatest sin of all, human greed.

Speculators and unscrupulous business people have no respect for what is in the best interest of the country, instead they are guided by their own self interest. Their daily quest for more and more dollars have blinded them as to the effect their greed is having on the everyday citizen and their country. As Congress debates the Treasury Secretary’s plan to save us from the upcoming disaster they must back away from party partisanship and for once consider what is best for the country. They must finally do something to free us from foreign oil, like passing a real energy bill that will allow drilling without all of the restrictions and limitations. They and the regulators of the markets must keep an eye out for the greedy speculator and CEOs that have little or no concern for their country. Our future depends on what this congress does in the next couple of days. If they continue on as a Do Nothing Congress concerned only with winning an election, then our future is grim at best.

More can be found at State_of_America

Chad asked:

When Cary Hicks lost his group health insurance earlier this year, he was floored by how much an individual policy could cost him because he is a diabetic.

“I was looking for anything,” said Hicks, who runs a small construction company. “I didn’t have insurance. I couldn’t afford any.”

That’s when Hicks discovered a new public health insurance program created by the North Carolina legislature. He now pays $550 a month in premiums — not cheap, but one-third of what a similar policy would have cost him in the private market.

As Congress debates how to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, North Carolina has dipped its toe into the public-option debate. Those who can’t find affordable health insurance from private companies because they have cancer, heart disease or other ailments now have the option of buying insurance from a high-risk pool set up by the state.

The program, called Inclusive Health, is little known. It has enrolled 2,050, only half of the number expected. But an estimated 1.4 million North Carolinians don’t have health insurance.

Inclusive Health is aimed largely at helping middle-class people who wake up one morning and find themselves without health insurance. Enrollees have either been turned down by private insurance companies, have lost their jobs or don’t have access to Medicare or Medicaid.

Hicks, 54, of Garner, said he had never given much thought to health insurance before this year. He was covered under his wife’s policy until January, when her employer, Corporate Press, a 40-year-old Raleigh printing company, went out of business. His construction company, which mainly builds fences, was too small to afford health insurance.

Bad luck sometimes comes in bunches. Hicks, who had not been hospitalized in 12 years, got an infected elbow in March, and the infection spread to his bloodstream. It put him the hospital for a week — a $12,000 out-of-pocket expense.

After a taste of being uninsured, Hicks went shopping for a health insurance policy. But because he is a severe diabetic, and therefore viewed as a high risk, the cost was prohibitive. Hicks said the state’s biggest insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, which has 86 percent of individual health insurance policies in the state, offered a policy with a $1,648 monthly premium. Hicks said that was unaffordable at a time when his household had gone from two incomes to one.

“We’ve got to eat, and we’ve got a house payment,” Hicks said. “It was just too much to handle.”

He saw a brief item in The News & Observer about the start of a new state health insurance program. Within a month, he had enrolled in Inclusive Health. His premium is $550 per month, and it covers his three daily shots of insulin, his blood pressure medicine and other medical costs.

North Carolina became the 35th state to create a high-risk health insurance plan in 2007, after a decade of debate in the legislature. It began offering insurance policies in January.

The measure had the backing of health groups, physicians, hospitals and insurance agents.

Adam Searing, a health-care consumer expert, said North Carolina’s high-risk pool is relatively industry friendly compared with those in other states. It includes a restriction that the risk pool charge premiums 175 percent of what private insurers charge, so as not to compete with private markets. And it provides no subsidies for the poor.

While it helps middle-class people without insurance, it is of little use