Bill Clinton Quotes

Before Obamacare was passed, insurance companies could unilaterally decide who gets health insurance and who does not. Even after they allowed a person to have health insurance, they could then cancel it in many cases after someone got sick. So they determined who could or could not get health insurance,

This notorious quotation was the first time anyone had ever used the term "death panels". As Wickipedia says,"Death panel" is a term that originated during the 2009 debate about federal health care legislation to cover the uninsured in the United States. Sarah Palin, former Republican Governor of Alaska, coined the term when she charged that proposed legislation would create a "death panel" of bureaucrats who would decide whether Americans—such as her elderly parents or children with Down's syndrome—were "worthy of medical care." When Palin was challanged to show where in the proposed Obamacare bill, there was any mention of dealth panels or anything like them, Palin's spokesperson pointed to Section 1233 of bill HR 3200 which would have paid physicians for providing voluntary counseling to Medicare patients about living wills, advance directives, and end-of-life care options. But there was absolutly nothing about withholding medial care. Just the opposite Obama care guaranteed medical care to many millions more Americans regardless opf age or medical condition. However, the bill was ovr 2000 pages long and very few people had read most of it, including the members of Congress who voted for and agaisnt it. A number of conservatives repeated the false accusatuins (See Congresswoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) Quotation 644139. One poll showed that after it spread, about 85% of respondents were familiar with the charge and of those who were familiar with it, about 30% thought it was true and Palin's new term won the dubius distinction of winning the "Lie of the Year" award. Despite the fact that it was totally false, in order to win Obamacare be a single vote, the President had to eliminate the part of the bill that allowed payment to physicians to take the time and explain to patients and/or their families, the various options of palliative treatment during the last months of life. Many people thought that the doctors would form death panels.

While ObamaCare prohibited insurers from discriminating against individuals, they were allowed to discriminate against regions if the State Insurance Regulators would allow this. In Tennessee they did under the theory that “one size does not fit all”. However what the insurers did was set up separate insurance corporations to service the rural areas which were very poor in Tennessee, and very poorly educated and malnourished as typically goes along with poverty. So the insurers tailored insurance policies which while affordable, for low income workers, would not protect the insured very much for any serious disease and therefore, did not protect the families from medically caused bankruptcy. When Obama Care set minimum basic coverage requirements on all insurance policies, these insurance companies preferred to close down rather than comply, and the State Insurance Regulators had not required all companies serving the wealthier communities to cover all communities as existed in most other states or where those other State Regulators set strong minimum standards of coverage. Tennessee did neither, so the insurance companies could cherry pick the best communities and avoid pockets where there were more health problems.

An argument was given that if poor people would get government subsidized health insurance, the health insurance rules would place limits on what payments could be made for the different kinds of medical services. That in turn would limit the amounts that medical specialists could charge for their expensive procedures which in turn would lower their income and salaries.

At the time in America, the insurance companies only paid out less than 80 percent of all the money they took in for health insurance. More than 20 percent went into their high overhead and profits. In contrast, to the 20 percent or more that it costs with insurance companies to administer health insurance payments, the agency that performs the same function for Medicare doe so with only a 6 percent cost Sanders argued that by getting rid of the insurance companies, the nation could save about 14 percent of the entire insured medical bills for the nation—many billions of dollars which would reduce average health insurance premiums by 14 percent. Opponents argue that the would be a socialist system and give too much potential control of individual health matters to a government operated or government controlled organizations. Politicians, in order to look good with the voters, would lower premiums and also pay out less either shortchanging doctors and hospitals or rating medial care somehow.

Sarah Palin, former Republican Governor of Alaska, coined a new term when she charged that proposed Health Care legislation would create a "death panel" See Palin Quotation 644138. It was an absolute lie totally made up by Palin. However a number of conservative members of Congress then repeated the prevarication in Congressional Debate and elsewhere. One poll showed that after it spread, about 85% of respondents were familiar with the charge and of those who were familiar with it, about 30% thought it was true and Palin's new term won the dubius distinction of winning the "Lie of the Year" award. Despite the fact that it was totally false, in order to win Obamacare be a single vote, the President had to eliminate the part of the bill that allowed payment to physicians to take the time and explain to patients and/or their families, the various options of palliative treatment during the last months of life. Many people thought that the doctors would form death panels.

The Republicans were trying to repeal the first national health reform since Medicare. But the part was split over what they would replace it with. Many wanted to give the health insurers more power and profits, but other Republicans like Cruz did not want to see the helath insurance premiums increase. Ironically, most members of Congress at the time agreed with Cruz's focus on lowering or at least holding health insurance premiums steady, but this was vert hard to do without heavily regulating the insurance companies or adding a public insurance program to compete with the insurance companies or eliminate the rights of the individual states to regualte and control; insurance in their state. And no majority could be found for any of these.