Hillarysworld

Hi, there you are!  I wondered how come the great bloomer is missing. Well, I have been misisng a bit so that may be it.

Yes, my friend, you did it!  It is quite simple to post your good finds. 

The rest is all embellishment, and you can learn it as you go along.

I would make the title and quote a small except as follows.  There is no need to repeat the title inside the body of the post.

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"Obama includes Grassley health idea (update 2x)" (Jeffrey Bruner, DemoineRegister.com 3/3/10)

Excerpt:

"
Obama has agreed to increase reimbursements to Medicaid providers, an issue that Grassley raised. It’s one of several GOP ideas that Obama is including because he wants to show he listened to Republicans before passing health insurance reform without any GOP votes.

He’s not going to get the support of Grassley, who told the Associated Press that there are other things more important, like its lack of caps on liability damages and its inclusion of an individual mandate. That’s probably not a surprise — no one is expecting Grassley to vote for Obama’s bill.
"

Jeffrey Bruner is DemoineRegister’s wire editor and online political editor.
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My comment about the article:

I am glad to see at least some GOP ideas getting into the bill.  But it will be a hard sell for the GOPers. In the end, I think it will still go through the 51-vote reconciliation process and the Dems will call it a bipartisan bill even if it does not get GOP votes.

Actually, Medicaid reimbursements are not that far below those of private insurance companies-I guess depending upon the individual state. I don't think the main issue is to get more money into the hands of the providers. In fact, the exorbitant charges by medical providers and drug companies are part of the problem. I happened to be at someone's home recently who had CNN on the television (imagine my disgust!). I saw a brief segment on the outrageous fees some hospitals charge for medication, bandages, etc. The reporter said that in one case over $1,000 was charged for a single Tylenol, and in another $45.00 was charged for one pair of latex gloves. Hospitals have always charged outrages fees such as this. There are plenty of other cases in which some (obviously, not all) providers take unfair advantage of Medicaid and the insurance companies.

I agree with Grassle's assessment that there should be caps on law suit awards, and some kind of regulation. Back a few years ago when one of the many prescription weight loss drugs was found to be causing major health problems, some people were taking gross advantage. One county in my state is known to award huge sums in medical law suit cases. Because they were awarding so much for the weight loss drug suits, people who lived as much as 10 hours away and four states over were obtaining prescriptions for the questionable drugs, then driving the full day to this particular county where they would purchase the minimum amount of the prescription allowable by the pharmacy, in some cases buying only ONE pill. Once the pill was purchased in this county, the individual was entitled to get a share of the funds from the law suit settlement. It's just ludicrous the amount of money wasted in such a manner. And, that's only a tiny portion of the amount of ligitation that takes place around drug issues.

Several important issues such as tort reform, outrageous drug charges, and other such issues should be fully addressed before the Dems pass health care reform.

Thanks for posting this, Bloomer.


-- Edited by freespirit on Thursday 4th of March 2010 06:39:25 AM