Protect Insurance Companies PSA

[Joy Honey]

Apologies if this has already been posted - y'all talk too much :p

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/041b5acaf5/protect-insurance-companies-psa?rel=player

[Weedy]

Funny stuff.

It's amazing how a little parody can speak directly to the point.

[Stankleberry Sullivan]

Communists.

[Sally Rosebud]

Too funny. This pretty much goes with the Billionaires for Wealthcare.

[Cocoanut Koala]

This is the one where the richer-than-shit actor says CEO's shouldn't make that much money?

:coco:

[Mulch]

do you really think the actors make MORE MONEY than insurance ceos, :coco:?

[Richard Waveington]

This is the one where the richer-than-shit actor says CEO's shouldn't make that much money?

:coco:


yes, that's the one.

actually, no, it's where they act as normal people calling for the public option.

[Cocoanut Koala]

do you really think the actors make MORE MONEY than insurance ceos, :coco:?

Yes? No? They don't?

If they make less, does that mean that making as much as they do is okay?

It just doesn't quite work for me to have rich people griping about other rich people, regardless their relative levels of wealth, and regardless of the motivation.

:coco:

[Richard Waveington]

Yes? No? They don't?

If they make less, does that mean that making as much as they do is okay?

It just doesn't quite work for me to have rich people griping about other rich people, regardless their relative levels of wealth, and regardless of the motivation.

:coco:

They're acting.... it's their job.

[Cocoanut Koala]

Oh. I thought they meant it.

(Bea Arthur/Dorothy Bzornak quick comeback:)

OF COURSE THEY MEANT IT.

[Richard Waveington]

Oh. I thought they meant it.

they probably support the cause, otherwise they wouldn't be in it. perhaps they actually care about others besides themselves?


ps, Ferrell is a Legend!

[Weedy]

This is the one where the richer-than-shit actor says CEO's shouldn't make that much money?

:coco:

No, it's the one where the richer-than-shit insurance companies will have you believe that fascism, communism, socialism, racism, death panels, tax hikes, bury with Kennedy, are coming.

[VictoriaK]

they probably support the cause, otherwise they wouldn't be in it. perhaps they actually care about others besides themselves?


ps, Ferrell is a Legend!


I might agree with you if I could see what kinda shelters they have in their tax returns.

Way to often people are passionate about a cause, as long as it doesn't negatively affect them.

Not saying these folks don't walk the walk, but I'm highly skeptical they don't have high priced tax lawyers pouring over there returns making sure they pay the least amount possible.

[Weedy]

Not saying these folks don't walk the walk, but I'm highly skeptical they don't have high priced tax lawyers pouring over there returns making sure they pay the least amount possible.

Skeptical of a handful of comedians and actors. Fine.

They make up about one one hundreth of one percent of Wall Street execs and CEOs, who put the world economy in the shitter.

[Cocoanut Koala]

No, sorry, I'm just not going to listen to some rich actor telling me that I should sacrifice and do with less, when he himself will be able to go anywhere and pay whatever for any health care he likes. The Hollywood rich will always have access to the best, so who cares what we peons get stuck with, or what coverage we lose?

Hey, they don't care!

Kind of how I'm not just REAL moved by politicians lecturing us about how we need to get used to not driving our cars or running the air conditioner or eating as much as we want, and so on, when they put no such restrictions on themselves. They continue to do whatever they want, live however they want, and fly whenever they want and wherever they want, for the most frivolous of reasons.

Hey, they don't care!

Presumably because as people, they are simply more important than the rest of us. Like wealthy actors in that respect, I suppose.

Not impressed.

:coco:

[Weedy]

No, sorry, I'm just not going to listen to some rich actor telling me that I should sacrifice and do with less
:coco:

Looks like you are still peaking on the koolaid.

That's just an assumption that you and your "party of no" would have everyone believe.

[Cocoanut Koala]

For the fuckteenth time, I don't have a party.

:coco:

[Cocoanut Koala]

Yes, made to do with less. Quite a bit less. Just to name one thing, I'm personally heading at what seems like warp speed into Medicare territory, and they are trying to cut out Medicare Advantage.

All those old people at the tea parties aren't crazy about it, either.

Maybe, though, Will Farrell can get them mad enough at insurance companies that they will be perfectly happy to get crappier health care!

Yeah, that'll work!

:coco:

[Weedy]

For the fuckteenth time, I don't have a party.

:coco:

Yeah, well you sure toe the party line.

Especially without a single shred of tangible evidence that your benefits will cost more and give less.

You already pay twice as much than you need to when compared to other countries who have universal healthcare.

Being content to pay more so others can go without is about as unhumanitarian as it gets.

[Weedy]

All those old people at the tea parties aren't crazy about it, either.

Maybe, though, Will Farrell can get them mad enough at insurance companies that they will be perfectly happy to get crappier health care!

Yeah, that'll work!

:coco:

You just don't get it do you?

Insurance companies are not going to be obsolete if universal healthcare is enacted. In fact, they will thrive by providing extended care to employers.

In Canada, we have lots of insurance companies, who thrive providing this service.

If you lose your job, you'll only lose "extended" benefits, not basic coverage.

What is so hard to understand about that?

[Cocoanut Koala]

Yeah, well you sure toe the party line.

Especially without a single shred of tangible evidence that your benefits will cost more and give less.

You already pay twice as much than you need to when compared to other countries who have universal healthcare.

Being content to pay more so others can go without is about as unhumanitarian as it gets.

Unhumanitarian? You DARE to talk to me about unhumanitarian?

Old people don't count? POOR people are on Medicare! Including poor people in remote areas where Medicare Advantage is all they can get!

What is unhumanitarian is throwing old people to the wolves not only with abandon, but with academic papers "proving" that it is the right thing to do!

Oddly enough, old people beg to differ.

coco

By the way, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the Democrats were the ones who used to be protective of Medicare.

Now that they are in charge, though, it's all of a sudden perfectly all right with you and others to take from the old people what they have paid all their lives into.

Edit: Without a single shred of credible evidence? I just told you - and have been telling you for some time! - about Medicare, and Medicare Advantage.

Why else do you think all the old people are up in arms?

[Weedy]

Unhumanitarian? You DARE to talk to me about unhumanitarian?

Old people don't count? POOR people are on Medicare! Including poor people in remote areas where Medicare Advantage is all they can get!

What is unhumanitarian is throwing old people to the wolves not only with abandon, but with academic papers "proving" that it is the right thing to do!

Oddly enough, old people beg to differ.

coco

By the way, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the Democrats were the ones who used to be protective of Medicare.

Now that they are in charge, though, it's all of a sudden perfectly all right with you and others to take from the old people what they have paid all their lives into.


You are hellbent on stopping healthcare reform in it's tracks at any cost.

Seniors deserve better, that's why Obama is putting his foot down at wasted spending. All you teabaggers scream "costs", yet when someone actually attempts to cut costs, you put seniors out as cannon fodder for your fight. That's shameful and yes UNHUMANITARIAN

[Lum]

The US is the only industrialized nation (socialist, capitalist, whatever) that does not ensure health care for all its citizens.

The US is the only industrialized nation where people go bankrupt due to health care.

There is no justification for either of these facts. None. The greatest country in the world is BETTER than that. The fact that we allow this should be a national disgrace.

[Cocoanut Koala]

You are hellbent on stopping healthcare reform in it's tracks at any cost.

Seniors deserve better, that's why Obama is putting his foot down at wasted spending. All you teabaggers scream "costs", yet when someone actually attempts to cut costs, you put seniors out as cannon fodder for your fight. That's shameful and yes UNHUMANITARIAN

I am hellbent on stopping this bill and the godawful Baucus plan at any cost.

And the cost will be . . . doing something else instead. OMG! What a cost! Can't have that!

No, no, let's rush this thing through without even enough time to put it on the web for people to read, because it is a frickin EMERGENCY even though it won't go into effect for a couple of years. Hurry hurry! Let's not talk about it or READ IT, much less let our constituents read it. Cause then you get things like the August Town Halls.

They aren't just cutting waste, Weedy - which, by the way, could have been done long ago, except that it costs money to keep an eye on fraud, which the private companies do much more of than the government does.

They want to cut more than can be accounted for by fraud, even if you didn't spend the money to keep an eye on it in order to do it. It is simply not possible to cut Medicare and keep the same services, much less improve them.

For example, they want to cut Medicare Advantage. Now old people may be old, but alas and alack, they really aren't stupid or clueless blobs just waiting to be "misled" by their intellectual superiors.

They know what it will mean to go without Medicare Advantage. They know what it will mean to reimburse doctors even less for services than they are being reimbursed now, and they already know how hard it is to find doctors who take medicare as it is.

And whereas the rest of us can make up, or try to make up, for any higher costs of health care or cutting of services, they really can't. They can't just start over. This was what they paid into and thought they were getting, and budgeted for.

They don't want to lose it now, and I don't think they should.

And finally, I can't emphasize enough that it's not a "he" - it is a "they." It is Congress doing this. Obama just advertises it, whatever they come up with. None of it is his plan. And what they have come up with is crap.

And listen, nobody is "putting seniors out as fodder for your fight." How very dismissive.

Who do you think is AT all these things about the spending?

I mean, people can't have it both ways. They can't mock the tea parties, town halls, and health care meetings by saying, "oh a bunch of old people," "oh lookie, they have an average age of 62.7" (or whatever age it was Carville said mockingly, and him no spring chicken himself) and then claim these old people are being used as fodder.

Fodder. Can't think for themselves.

Really, old people aren't nearly as dumb as a lot of people seem to think. These are our parents and grandparents, who raised us, worked all their lives, invented things, fought wars, taught school, and everything else, and have traditionally been the most consistent and caring voters.

Now all of a sudden they are just doddering old souls who don't know what is best for them?

If THAT'S true, maybe Pelosi and Reed are the ones who are senile.

coco

[VictoriaK]

Forgive me Mulch for cutting and pasting.....

So, the "One that came before her" is concerned about our seniors?



This week the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced it was investigating Humana for providing “misleading” information regarding the Administration’s proposed cuts to Medicare Advantage policies-and prohibited other Medicare Advantage plans from providing similar information on how Democrat health “reform” could take away their current coverage.

Yet the Administration’s edict prohibiting plans from communicating with their beneficiaries failed to include AARP, which sponsors a Medicare Advantage plan but has been a prime advocate of Democrats’ government takeover of health care-quite possibly because AARP has been supporting a health care overhaul from which it stands to gain overall handsomely. Even as AARP advocates for cutting Medicare Advantage plans by more than $150 billion, an analysis of the organization’s operations reveals that it stands to receive tens of millions of dollars at the expense of seniors’ medical care-with Democrats’ full approval:

* The Congressional Budget Office has previously estimated that the cuts to Medicare Advantage plans proposed in Democrats’ government takeover of health care (H.R. 3200) would cause millions of seniors to lose their current plan and enroll in government-run Medicare.

* Because the government-run Medicare benefit is less generous than most private health plans, the independent Medicare Payment Advisory Commission found in June that more than nine in ten seniors not in nursing home settings utilize some form of Medicare supplemental insurance. While many of these individuals currently rely on Medicare Advantage plans for the extra benefits they provide to seniors, many would be forced to purchase supplemental Medigap policies should their existing Medicare Advantage plans be taken away from them due to Democrats’ government takeover of health care.

* A review of its financial statements finds that in 2008, AARP received more than half a billion dollars in revenue from selling products like Medigap supplemental insurance policies-$652.7 million in direct “royalties and fees,” and an increase of more than 31 percent from the $497.6 million in similar revenue AARP generated in 2007.

* Royalty revenues now comprise more than half-60.3 percent-of all AARP revenues; a Bloomberg news analysis published in December found that in 1999, royalties comprised only 11 percent of the organization’s total revenues.

* The Bloomberg article-which highlighted what one observer called AARP’s “dirty little secret”-profiled seniors who felt betrayed after paying hundreds of dollars above market price for AARP-branded coverage. One noted that “AARP has great buying power, and people should be able to get the best deal….This is unconscionable, what AARP has allowed to happen.” Another disillusioned senior wrote to the organization’s leadership asking whether AARP had a “‘special relationship’ with [insurance carriers] by which it receives commissions, incentives, rebates, or dare I say ‘kickbacks?’”-and when he arrived at AARP headquarters for a tour, was promptly escorted out of the marble-covered atrium.

* While H.R. 3200 would place strict price controls on Medicare Advantage plans-requiring them to pay out 85 percent of premium revenues in medical claims-Medigap policies face a far less strict 65 percent requirement. In other words, under the Democrat bill, seniors could pay as much as 20 cents more out of every premium dollar to fund “kickbacks” to AARP-sponsored Medigap plans than Medicare Advantage plans.

The higher prices charged by AARP plans, and the organization’s increasing dependence upon revenue from “royalties,” provide tangible evidence why AARP would support cuts to Medicare Advantage that would likely increase their “kickbacks” from Medigap plans

[Weedy]

They know what it will mean to go without Medicare Advantage.

coco

This is where you refuse to get it.

So what if Medicare Advantage is scrapped? That does not mean they will go without anything. It will be replaced with universal health care, provided at a more cost-effective method.

If you give me a ten dollar bill and then I give you two fives, it's absurd to claim I took ten dollars from you.

[Weedy]

Now all of a sudden they are just doddering old souls who don't know what is best for them?

coco

This is typical of your twisting bullshit and putting words into people's mouths.

YOU are the one suggesting seniors are getting screwed, not me.

[Joy Honey]

So, can I just ask this? I heard this one from my sister today.

Our mom believes in the "death panels" and such. She also told my sister that they're going to give adults cyanide pills (I don't know if she meant old people or just adults). WTF?

[Cocoanut Koala]

This is where you refuse to get it.

So what if Medicare Advantage is scrapped? That does not mean they will go without anything. It will be replaced with universal health care, provided at a more cost-effective method.

If you give me a ten dollar bill and then I give you two fives, it's absurd to claim I took ten dollars from you.

I don't believe it works that way.

First off, there is not going to officially be any universal health care, if by that you mean, everyone is on a government plan.

As it stands you will be on Medicare, or on private health plans, or on a combination. Many are on Medicare alone.

This would remain true even if there were a government option, which there was, then there wasn't, now there will be again, or heads will roll by Pelosi, or maybe that's changed again, I don't know.

If you are on Medicare, you will still be on Medicare, you won't suddenly be on a public option, much less on a universal health care. You get Medicare if you are old, and it will be separate.

It's not six of one and half a dozen of another. It's basically gutting Medicare in order to prove they can afford the rest of their plans.

coco

[Cocoanut Koala]

This is typical of your twisting bullshit and putting words into people's mouths.

You are the one who said seniors were being used as fodder, not me.

coco

[Weedy]

You are the one who said seniors were being used as fodder, not me.

coco

No, no, no. You are the one who suggested seniors will go without healthcare entirely if Medicare Advantage is scrapped.

You refuse to accept that "universal" means everyone including seniors

[Cocoanut Koala]

No, no, no. You are the one who suggested seniors will go without healthcare entirely if Medicare Advantage is scrapped.

You refuse to accept that "universal" means everyone including seniors

I never said seniors would go without healthcare entirely if Medicare Advantage is scrapped.

I said that a lot of seniors are going to be worse off if Medicare Advantage is scrapped, and they know it.

I'm trying to tell you that universal health care, which means everyone, like in Canada, and same for everyone, is not what they are talking about in Congress, and is not included in these plans.

The closest coming to it is the public option, which is dead in the water, except Pelosi has decided she wants it back again, last I looked, though that changes moment to moment. And no, seniors won't get that, is my understanding of it.

coco

[Weedy]

I never said seniors would go without healthcare entirely if Medicare Advantage is scrapped.

I said that a lot of seniors are going to be worse off if Medicare Advantage is scrapped, and they know it.

I'm trying to tell you that universal health care, which means everyone, like in Canada, is not what they are talking about in Congress, and is not included in these plans.

The closest coming to it is the public option, which is dead in the water, except Pelosi has decided she wants it back again, last I looked, though that changes moment to moment.

coco

Seniors already have it pretty bad. I have a few senior friends from the USA who often come to visit while buying prescriptions in Canada. I don't mind them doing that, but I think it's shameful they have to do it in the first place. They even have private health insurance, yet still need to go out of country. If anything, universal healthcare will help them get their prescriptions at home, not the opposite, which is the status quo, as we know it.

I will conceed however, the Dems are doing a pretty good job of watering things down. Not because it's right, but because it's been corrupted by the insurance lobby too, coupled with a whole lot of fence-sitting for the voters next election.

A "public option" would be illegal in Canada, because it leads to a "two-tiered" system, which is not compatible with the concept of universality.

[Richard Waveington]

shameful shit:

YouTube - Rachel Maddow Exposes 'Blue Dog' Democrat Mike Ross