In response to Republican Senator Lamar Alexander’s contention that premiums will go up under reform, the President cites the Congressional Budget Offices report that his proposal will lower costs for individuals by between 14 and 20%. President Obama cites some of the Republican ideas he’s included in his proposal and makes it clear that he welcomes additional Republican ideas to contain costs.

angol here :: People are entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts. Saying you don’t believe something will not change the fact that it is true! Hope is back!

In a discussion of insurance market reforms, President Obama asks Republican Senator John Kyl to move away from talking points and focus on finding common areas of agreement. The President responds to Kyl: “Any time the question is phrased as ‘Does Washington know better?’ I think we’re kind of tipping the scales a little bit there, since we all know that everybody is angry at Washington right now it’s a good talking point, but it doesn’t actually answer the underlying question, which is do we want to make sure that people have a baseline of protection?’”

angol here: I believe that what’s mostly said in Presidential forums can be classified as ”

“It’s a good talking point, but it doesn’t actually answer the underlying question”

“

I can guess that we probably have a high coverage rate in the Philippines. This is because unlike the US in the Philippines if you have work you have PhilHealth,SSS and GSIS. This leaves two groups of people out. The rich people who don’t “work” (own business , etc), and the very poor who can’t but it. Of the rich, they obviously have cash to burn but I suspect if in the USA one of the major causes of bankruptcy is medical emergency/conditions then the rich of the Philippines may not have it any much better. The poorest of the poor have healthcare if they live in Makati and Muntinlupa and during elections government officials such as the soon to be former president distribute PhilHealth Cards.

What I’m trying to say is that during the happy moments that my mind wanders towards the Philippine Government I see PhilHealth, SSS and GSIS, without the same kind of fight that the US encountered in trying to enact them. What I see is a Davao where I saw less people smoking because of too many restrictions (that I agree with). What I see is a Makati where Jejomar Binay is showing the Philippines what can be done by the local government for it’s constituents. What I see is a President (GMA) who has shown just how powerful the presidency can be with the right incentives.  We have a people whose trying to learn about the candidates.  We have the BIR harrassing Shell which shows we aren’t as controlled by corporations as the US (Although I don’t agree with what they are doing, this is almost extortion).

There is hope. The Philippines is not that far away from where it could be!!!

pointer from here: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2010/02/25/what-you-see-is-what-they-buy/

this is nice , hope we advance enough to be able to do this!! Manny Villar (Vista Land) ,  Noynoy Aquino (ABS-CBN, Ayala Group of Companies), Gilbert Teodoro  (Government???), Eddie Villanueva ( His followers?) , Jamby (Meron ba?)

Happy to have hope back in action. Now we just need hope for the Philippines? Noy? Gibo? Gordon? Perlas? Villanueva? (Alphabetical Order)

The Obama Plan: Stability & Security For All Americans

“It will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance. It will provide insurance to those who don’t. And it will lower the cost of health care for our families, our businesses, and our government”

-President Barack Obama

If You Have Health Insurance

More Stability and Security

• Ends discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions. Over the last three years, 12 million people were denied coverage directly or indirectly through high premiums due to a pre-existing condition.  Under the President’s plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny coverage for health reasons or risks.
• Limits premium discrimination based on gender and age. The President’s plan will end insurers’ practice of charging different premiums or denying coverage based on gender, and will limit premium variation based on age.
• Prevents insurance companies from dropping coverage when people are sick and need it most. The President’s plan prohibits insurance companies from rescinding coverage that has already been purchased except in cases of fraud.  In most states, insurance companies can cancel a policy if any medical condition was not listed on the application – even one not related to a current illness or one the patient didn’t even know about. A recent Congressional investigation found that over five years, three large insurance companies cancelled coverage for 20,000 people, saving them from paying $300 million in medical claims – $300 million that became either an obligation for the patient’s family or bad debt for doctors and hospitals.
• Caps out-of pocket expenses so people don’t go broke when they get sick. The President’s plan will cap out-of-pocket expenses and will prohibit insurance companies from imposing annual or lifetime caps on benefit payments. A middle-class family purchasing health insurance directly from the individual insurance market today could spend up to 50 percent of household income on health care costs because there is no limit on out-of-pocket expenses.
• Eliminates extra charges for preventive care like mammograms, flu shots and diabetes tests to improve health and save money. The President’s plan ensures that all Americans have access to free preventive services under their health insurance plans. Too many Americans forgo needed preventive care, in part because of the cost of check-ups and screenings that can identify health problems early when they can be most effectively treated. For example, 24 percent of women age 40 and over have not received a mammogram in the past two years, and 38 percent of adults age 50 and over have never had a colon cancer screening.
• Protects Medicare for seniors. The President’s plan will extend new protections for Medicare beneficiaries that improve quality, coordinate care and reduce beneficiary and program costs.  These protections will extend the life of the Medicare Trust Fund to pay for care for future generations.
• Eliminates the “donut-hole” gap in coverage for prescription drugs. The President’s plan begins immediately to close the Medicare “donut hole” – a current gap in its drug benefit – by providing a 50 percent discount on brand-name prescription drugs for seniors who fall into it.  In 2007, over 8 million seniors hit this coverage gap in the standard Medicare drug benefit.  By 2019, the President’s plan will completely close the “donut hole”.  The average out-of-pocket spending for such beneficiaries who lack another source of insurance is $4,080.

If You Don’t Have Insurance

Quality, Affordable Choices for All Americans

• Creates a new insurance marketplace – the Exchange – that allows people without insurance and small businesses to compare plans and buy insurance at competitive prices. The President’s plan allows Americans who have health insurance and like it to keep it.  But for those who lose their jobs, change jobs or move, new high quality, affordable options will be available in the exchange.  Beginning in 2013, the Exchange will give Americans without access to affordable insurance on the job, and small businesses one-stop shopping for insurance where they can easily compare options based on price, benefits, and quality.
• Provides new tax credits to help people buy insurance. The President’s plan will provide new tax credits on a sliding scale to individuals and families that will limit how much of their income can be spent on premiums.  There will also be greater protection for cost-sharing for out-of-pocket expenses.
• Provides small businesses tax credits and affordable options for covering employees. The President’s plan will also provide small businesses with tax credits to offset costs of providing coverage for their workers.  Small businesses who for too long have faced higher prices than larger businesses, will now be eligible to enter the exchange so that they have lower costs and more choices for covering their workers.
• Offers a public health insurance option to provide the uninsured and those who can’t find affordable coverage with a real choice. The President believes this option will promote competition, hold insurance companies accountable and assure affordable choices. It is completely voluntary.  The President believes the public option must operate like any private insurance company – it must be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects.
• Immediately offers new, low-cost coverage through a national “high risk” pool to protect people with preexisting conditions from financial ruin until the new Exchange is created. For those Americans who cannot get insurance coverage today because of a pre-existing condition, the President’s plan will immediately make available coverage without a mark-up due to their health condition. This policy will offer protection against financial ruin until a wider array of choices become available in the new exchange in 2013.

For All Americans

Reins In the Cost of Health Care for Our Families, Our Businesses, and Our Government

• Won’t add a dime to the deficit and is paid for upfront. The President’s plan will not add one dime to the deficit today or in the future and is paid for in a fiscally responsible way.   It begins the process of reforming the health care system so that we can further curb health care cost growth over the long term, and invests in quality improvements, consumer protections, prevention, and premium assistance.  The plan fully pays for this investment through health system savings and new revenue including a fee on insurance companies that sell very expensive plans.
• Requires additional cuts if savings are not realized. Under the plan, if the savings promised at the time of enactment don’t materialize, the President will be required to put forth additional savings to ensure that the plan does not add to the deficit.
• Implements a number of delivery system reforms that begin to rein in health care costs and align incentives for hospitals, physicians, and others to improve quality. The President’s plan includes proposals that will improve the way care is delivered to emphasize quality over quantity, including:  incentives for hospitals to prevent avoidable readmissions, pilots for new “bundled” payments in Medicare, and support for new models of delivering care through medical homes and accountable care organizations that focus on a coordinated approach to care and outcomes.
• Creates an independent commission of doctors and medical experts to identify waste, fraud and abuse in the health care system. The President’s plan will create an independent Commission, made up of doctors and medical experts, to make recommendations to Congress each year on how to promote greater efficiency and higher quality in Medicare.  The Commission will not be authorized to propose or implement Medicare changes that ration care or affect benefits, eligibility or beneficiary access to care.  It will ensure that your tax dollars go directly to caring for seniors.
• Orders immediate medical malpractice reform projects that could help doctors focus on putting their patients first, not on practicing defensive medicine. The President’s plan instructs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to move forward on awarding medical malpractice demonstration grants to states funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality as soon as possible.
• Requires large employers to cover their employees and individuals who can afford it to buy insurance so everyone shares in the responsibility of reform. Under the President’s plan, large businesses – those with more than 50 workers – will be required to offer their workers coverage or pay a fee to help cover the cost of making coverage affordable in the exchange. This will ensure that workers in firms not offering coverage will have affordable coverage options for themselves and their families.  Individuals who can afford it will have a responsibility to purchase coverage – but there will be a “hardship exemption” for those who cannot.

via The Obama Plan: Stability & Security For All Americans | The White House.

Now, why wasn’t the headlines Manny Villar in statistical tie with survey commissioned by ally (Ronnie Puno).

I’m calling BS on mr Jerrie Abella.

Noynoy leads in survey commissioned by ally

JERRIE ABELLA, GMANews.TV

02/21/2010 | 10:21 PM

Liberal Party (LP) standard-bearer Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III regained his lead in the latest polls for the presidential race, but the camp of his closest rival, Sen. Manny Villar, shrugged off the results as mere “psywar.”

A national survey by London-based Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) showed Aquino leading by 11 percent over Villar of the Nacionalista Party.

The survey, commissioned by LP’s senate slate campaign manager Sen. Francis Pangilinan, was conducted from January 28 to February 3.

“The results of the survey confirm our long-standing position that our people yearn for real change in their lives and aspire for a new direction for our nation,” Pangilinan said in a statement.

via Noynoy leads in survey commissioned by ally – Nation – GMANews.TV – Official Website of GMA News and Public Affairs – Latest Philippine News.

People are judged not by what they wanted or intended to do but rather what they accomplish!

Hope is back!!! Welcome back Hope!!! Healthcare Reform Now!

Remarks of President Barack Obama

Weekly Address

February 20, 2010

The other week, men and women across California opened up their mailboxes to find a letter from Anthem Blue Cross. The news inside was jaw-dropping. Anthem was alerting almost a million of its customers that it would be raising premiums by an average of 25 percent, with about a quarter of folks likely to see their rates go up by anywhere from 35 to 39 percent.

Now, after their announcement stirred public outcry, Anthem agreed to delay their rate hike until May 1st while the situation is reviewed by the state of California. But it’s not just Californians who are being hit by rate hikes. In Kansas, one insurance company raised premiums by 10 to 20 percent only after asking to raise them by 20 to 30 percent. Last year, Michigan Blue Cross Blue Shield raised rates by 22 percent after asking to raise them by up to 56 percent. And in Maine, Anthem is asking to raise rates for some folks by about 23 percent.

The bottom line is that the status quo is good for the insurance industry and bad for America. Over the past year, as families and small business owners have struggled to pay soaring health care costs, and as millions of Americans lost their coverage, the five largest insurers made record profits of over $12 billion.

And as bad as things are today, they’ll only get worse if we fail to act. We’ll see more and more Americans go without the coverage they need. We’ll see exploding premiums and out-of-pocket costs burn through more and more family budgets. We’ll see more and more small businesses scale back benefits, drop coverage, or close down because they can’t keep up with rising rates. And in time, we’ll see these skyrocketing health care costs become the single largest driver of our federal deficits.

That’s what the future is on track to look like. But it’s not what the future has to look like. The question, then, is whether we will do what it takes, all of us – Democrats and Republicans – to build a better future for ourselves, our children, and our country.

That’s why, next week, I am inviting members of both parties to take part in a bipartisan health care meeting, and I hope they come in a spirit of good faith. I don’t want to see this meeting turn into political theater, with each side simply reciting talking points and trying to score political points. Instead, I ask members of both parties to seek common ground in an effort to solve a problem that’s been with us for generations.

It’s in that spirit that I have sought out and supported Republican ideas on reform from the very beginning. Some Republicans want to allow Americans to purchase insurance from a company in another state to give people more choices and bring down costs. Some Republicans have also suggested giving small businesses the power to pool together and offer health care at lower prices, just as big companies and labor unions do. I think both of these are good ideas – so long as we pursue them in a way that protects benefits, protects patients, and protects the American people. I hope Democrats and Republicans can come together next week around these and other ideas.

To members of Congress, I would simply say this. We know the American people want us to reform our health insurance system. We know where the broad areas of agreement are. And we know where the sources of disagreement lie. After debating this issue exhaustively for a year, let’s move forward together. Next week is our chance to finally reform our health insurance system so it works for families and small businesses. It’s our chance to finally give Americans the peace of mind of knowing that they’ll be able to have affordable coverage when they need it most.

What’s being tested here is not just our ability to solve this one problem, but our ability to solve any problem. Right now, Americans are understandably despairing about whether partisanship and the undue influence of special interests in Washington will make it impossible for us to deal with the big challenges that face our country. They want to see us focus not on scoring points, but on solving problems; not on the next election but on the next generation. That is what we can do, and that is what we must do when we come together for this bipartisan health care meeting next week. Thank you, and have a great weekend.

via Weekly Address: President Obama Says it is Time to Move Forward on Health Care Reform | The White House.

If machinery wins National Elections (I’m acutely aware that local elections can be won by a better party machinery) then Pichay should be a senator now. Obviously he isn’t. QED.

Wish people really call BS on these politicians. We would have a shorter news cast.

I have heard it said that Teodoro played a central role in formulating the NPC platform and he himself has been saying things that suggest familiarity with a draft platform. This has been particularly true in recent weeks, coinciding with the period work on a platform has been taking place, as Magno mentioned. The term “subsidiarity” that he mentioned at a recent forum is a vintage Christian Democratic one and is, surely, a hint of what the Lakas-Kampi-CMD platform might put forward. This inability to publish a platform means the ruling coalition believes Prospero Pichay’s statement that their candidate will win because of party machinery and not public sentiment.

via The Long View: Invisible platform : Manuel L. Quezon III: The Daily Dose.

This makes me a bit envious, hope the next president can have a cabinet of people with intellectual, depth and curiosity, partnered with actual success in management of large institutions.

The new cabinet in Chile

E. Barandiaran notes in the comments:

You may want to know about the qualification of the new cabinet of 22 secretaries. There are 6 economists with graduate studies in the best US universities: Felipe Larraín will the secretary of the Treasury (Felipe is well known as the co-author with J. Sachs of a macro textbook and also got his Ph.D. from Harvard), two a Ph.D. from Minnesota and three a Master from Chicago. There is only one laywer but with training in law and econ in Harvard. A few others have degrees in public policy or MBA, and most of the others are engineers, all with graduate studies abroad. Most have been related as students, professors, and deans with Universidad Católica. Thus, Sebastián Edwards knows well the six economists (they studied there in the 1970s and were my students and/or assistants). Most have already long, successful careers in private enterprises and close relations with important NGOs. Quite a cabinet.

via Marginal Revolution: The new cabinet in Chile.

I used to not care that much about the “Population Scare” this is because especially for our country we have tax rates that rival that of the more successful countries and countries that have substantially better social safety net. For me the Philippines problem was the money going into the coffers of the government is not used in a way that would help increase Investment and Capital, money/pork barrel/ira allotments were used for projects that were less helpful to the economic engine of the Philippines.I even defended in a blog post Sen. Manny Villar’s stance that population is not the problem, opportunity is. I believe this because we are doing so little to help people achieve what they can achieve.

What has changed since then to convince me of the importance of RH bill?

Two things:

• The increasing likelihood that there would be an HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Philippines
• Studying/Reading the lecture notes of Brad Delong on Industrial Revolution and Malthusian Economics etc.

I’m basically convinced that the Black Death/Wars/Spanish Influenza has helped in increasing the household wealth of Europe. This allowed consumption to rise and thus there was money for what industry produced.This started a virtuous cycle that has produced the stellar growth of world wealth that we enjoy today.

What this means is that I’ve basically given up on any help from the government to increase investment in useful industries and hope that the virtuous cycle of investment, and growth can be jump started by increasing the household wealth available to Filipino households and by creating pressure to increase wages because of a smaller population.

What this means is that people who oppose the RH bill are in essence ok with the status quo.

Anti RH Bill people are ok with double digit unemployment rates.

Anti RH Bill people are ok with us being an OFW nation. (The effects of which are still not truly apparent)

Anti RH Bill people are ok with people getting HIV/AIDS.

The problem is the asymmetry of the supporters. The Pro RH bill people must be heard. They must make themselves heard or the bullying few will get their way!!!

When the House reassembled on January 18, however, RH had disappeared from the Speaker of the House’s list of priority bills. Inquiries by proponents of the bill produced evasive replies from the House leadership. When the House adjourned for the elections on Feb 3, RH was dead. The reason, however, was painfully obvious.

In December, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) instructed the electorate not to vote for candidates who espoused RH. Alongside this decree had unfolded a massive campaign that involved systematic disinformation about the bill. Among the malicious allegations that were spread was that the bill imposes penalties on parents who do not allow their children to have premarital sex. Another was that the bill promotes the use of abortifacients or methods of contraception that induce abortion.

via How Mona Lisa Died – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.