My 3 Top priorities for the Democratic majority congress:

[fuzzyball]

1. Single payer health care system.

Health care costs are out of control, running more than twice
as high as CPI. It boggles my mind how many support people have
to be employed in every medical office to process paperwork.
These workers spend hours and hours trying to reconcile insurance
payments, patient claims, slow payments by insurance companies etc.

We also need to get a handle on prohibitively high cost of mal-practice
insurance. The result is many small towns can't find doctors, especially
OB-Gyne.

Other reforms the new congress can look at are negotiating a price
with the drug companies. With a single payer system, there will be
enormous leverage to accomplish cheaper prices.

2. Get out of fighting civil wars in other countries. Iraq is the
immediate example. I don't see how we can reconcile the enimity
between the sects in Iraq which goes back several centuries. It is high
time to reduce our role there drastically. At most we should station some
troops there so Iraq is not overrun by Iran. Note that we still have
troops in South Korea and germany after 60 & 70 years! It is high time
we reduce our troops there decades after fighting has ended.

3. Reduce government size.

A flat tax will eliminate need for IRS. And myriad of tax preparation
lawyers and costs.

Making all strret drugs legal and sold through regulated outlets will
eliminate the need for thousands of court personnel, jail guards,
lawyers, and most of all reduce street crime by estimated 50% committed
by drug addicts. We have not been able to stop peddling of drugs inspite
of millions of dollars (may be more like Billions), and the drug cartel
is making all the profits. Why not collect tax on drugs sold through
regulated outlets.

And there are dozens of other areas for cost reduction.



3.

[msongs]

1. and eliminate the personhood status of corporations nt

[elocs]

2. There is only one priority for many here and it is:

1. Impeachment
2. Impeachment
3. Impeachment

I think the Americans who voted for Democrats might expect them to actually do something.

[fuzzyball]

5. Besides giving a lot of emotional satisfaction, it won't change my

life one iota. I hope the new congress gets involved in more
productive venues.

[onenote]

11. In which elections was impeachment an issue?

I think the Americans who voted for Democrats might expect them to do the things that they ran on, not the thing that they didn't run on...

(I'm assuming that when you refer to "many here" you aren't referring to yourself and thus I think I'm agreeing with your post)

[elocs]

16. You are agreeing with my post.

The well-informed voter would know that many Democrats would bring up impeachment if they won, but impeachment was not made a primary issue by Democratic candidates as a rule. Now it seems to be the only issue for many, but not for me because I believe that the American voter expects Democrats to do something on and about the issues on which they ran.

[Old and In the Way]

3. #1 is fix voting reform (machines and illegal voter suppression)

Then, concurrently-

#2 universal health insurance
#3 Executive Branch investigations
#4 Wind down he Iraq War, ASAP
#5 Energy independence

[John Q. Citizen]

4. My reply to your agenda items.

1. Single payer fee for service universal health care is the cheapest way to deliver quality health care to all. We already spend far more than enough to achieve that.

1a. Just 5.1 percent of doctors account for 54.2 percent of the malpractice payouts, according to data from the National Practitioner Data Bank. Of the 35,000 doctors who have had two or more malpractice payouts since 1990, only 7.6 percent of them have been disciplined. And only 13 percent of doctors with five medical malpractice payouts have been disciplined. Until doctors and regulatory boards move to weed out the bad apples, good doctors will be stuck paying excessive amounts for mal practice insurance. Also, what insurance companies charge for mal practice insurance bears little relationship to the amount insurance companies pay out. Insurers are gouging doctors and thus gouging the public. One of the biggest expenses awarded to victims of mal-practice is continuing medical care as a result of there injuries. If we had a single payer fee for service system, this would eliminate the number one cost of mal-practice payouts. Tort reform is a scam to limit ordinary citizen's rights to go to court to right a wrong. Don't fall for the tort reform scam.

2. Wars enlarge the size of government and are very expensive. The Shiites and the Sunnis lived in relative peace, intermarried, shared schools, neighborhoods, and jobs before we invaded Iraq. We instigated the civil war there. Let's stop Preemptive and elective wars, whether in Iraq or Iran. Iran has never in it's long history invaded other countries. It neither wants to nor will it invade Iraq. It will exert influence in economic and cultural spheres, because Iran and Iraq are now both Shia run states.

3. A flat tax is regressive. It means that someone making a hundred million a year is paying the same tax rate as someone struggling to put food on the table. Taxes should be based on ability to pay. I do agree with tax simplification though. That could be accomplished with a graduated income tax and the elimination of complex tax shelters, loop holes, and such.

4. I agree the war on drugs is as stupid as the war on terrorism. It hasn't worked, and a harm reduction model makes a lot more sense.

5. One thing you don't mention but that I would like to see done is pay at the pump basic auto liability insurance. No more uninsured drivers. The state adds a nickel or dime a gallon at the gas pump and creates a state run basic auto liability insurance pool. Anyone with gas in their tank is insured. Those who want or need comprehensive auto insurance can buy it the old fashioned way.

6. I also strongly agree with the other poster we need to end Corporation personhood.

7. We need to fix our elections so they are hard to steal and easy to catch when someone does try to steal them.

8. We need to practice accountability by investigating the crimes of the bush administration and their cronies.

9. We need a new and real investigation into 9/11.

[fuzzyball]

6. Agree on all items in your post except 2,3 & 6

2. Your stats about 5% accounting for 54% are probably accurate,
but note that the punitive awards are enormous, and the cost of
those awards is shared by 100% of the doctors via insurance risk
sharing, thereby raising every one's medical bills.

3. I agree completely about 3 or 4 flat rates. But the myriad of
tax deductions must be eliminated to make tax calculation simple.

6. I am not clear on what he means by corporation personhood.
Actually I think if corporate taxes are eliminated, it will be
MUCH LESS regressive. Note that every corporation is owned by
individuals. Those individuals as owners should pay taxes, not
the millions of Joe-6-packs who own stocks. Corprate taxes are
simply passed on to the consumers.

All your other items I agree with.

[John Q. Citizen]

7. As to #3,

One reason awards are very expensive is if someone is badly messed up by a doctor (say one who is drunk during surgery) the person is often awarded money to cover their future medical costs for life. What would you suppose that might cost?

Our current insurance company driven health care system often doesn't want to pay for tests that would also eliminate mal-practice suits. Many suits are brought because of non- or misdiagnosis.

The overall and complete cost of mal practice on the entire system is less than on half of one per cent. If the bad medical practitioners were eliminated we could cut malpractice pay outs by over half, right off the bat.

And of course, the cost of insurance is excessive because the insurance industry are rip offs.


As to what the other poster means about Corporation Personhood, It means at present, that Corporations, have the same political rights as a person. Yet they of course never die, and are able to amass far more power and money than a person. Currently, like a person, corporations have the right of free political speech. Let's leave the speech and the rights up to the individuals in the corpororation, and the stock holders, not to the corporations as a whole. Currently, our political system is completely distorted by the political power of Corporate personhood.

[fuzzyball]

9. My MD brother-in-law disagrees with you...

He said doctors order 3 or 4 times as many tests on patients
simply to cover their behinds in possible future litigations.
According to him, there is no other reason than that to order
expensive tests. Have you included the cost of these tests in
your statistics?

[John Q. Citizen]

12. How does your brother in law arrive at his 300% to 400% statistic? Does

your brother in law work for an HMO or is he free to order tests as he sees fit?

And I believe that doctors covering their ass is probably a good thing. That means patients asses are probably covered as well, so it's a win win.

The Republican mantra of so - called tort reform is a red herring. If you look at states who have enacted this so called "tort reform" you will see that doctors in those states aren't paying appreciably less for their insurance coverage, and that healthcare costs aren't lower in those states as a result

The only winners are the insurance companies and the big losers are patients who have restricted access to the courts.

Don't get me wrong. I believe that baseless lawsuits whether mal-practice originated or Corporate originated need to be seen as exactly what they are. But tort reform is directed at blocking access to courts by individuals. And that's not a good thing.

[fuzzyball]

14. Not HMO, he has family practice in Grand Rapids, Mich.

And I am just requoting what he has opined based
on his experience with others in the profession. He
has to do the same thing probably.

I have nothing but contempt for doctors who are grossly
negligent in their duties. And they should be tried and
put in jail. That would act as a better incentive to
practice better medicine than a huge jury award to the
victim and the doctor keeps practising albeit with higher
premiums.

[DuaneBidoux]

8. Here are mine:

1) Raise minimum wage. It will help as many people as quickly as possible and earn the Dems immediate political capital.

2) Fix the corruption problem. NO MORE must we allow companies to write their own regulations and laws for their own and no one elses benefit.

3) Repair medicare. Get it so the government can negotiate with drug companies and plug the donut hole. Again, like 1, this will gain us a lot of quickl political capital and help many people very easily.

4) One important meme: fix social security. It is a PIECE OF CAKE to fix. Raise the cap, increase the retirement age 2 years (over about 15 years), and means test so that those who are extremely well off and don't need it don't get it. Again, fixing this would gain the Dems tremendous politcal capital, and it's so much easier than anyone actually says.

5) I would love to see universal health care. I don't believe at this moment it is possible. The entrenched medical industry is incredibly powerful and incredibly huge. Instead we should, as a stop gap try and do something like Medicare for those who are not covered now. That is a policy that is layered over the existing system. Is it ideal? No. My preference? No. But I do believe it could be doable and at least these people that are not now getting coverage would get it in fairly short order.

I appreciate the sentiment that goes into those wanting a flat tax but it is incredibly regressive, and as it is we have been shifting ever more tax burden away from corporations and rich folks and toward poorer folks. That ust stop! The problem with the current system is that it IS very complex and needlessly costly for the country as a whole thus I am for looking at some alternatives as long as the following is the result: taxes for anyone 50,000 and under dramatically reduced, taxes for those 50 to 100+- don't go up or at the least go up very little, and the tax burden starts to shift back toward very wealthy and corporations (where it was for most of the last half of the last century).

[fuzzyball]

10. Nice post Duane....some more of my reflections..

The flat tax does not have to be regressive. All the congress
has to do is exempt all income from taxes below a floor level
of say $50,000. And that will be the only deduction for higher
incomes. So the tax starts at incomes above $50,000. So if you
make $60,000 your taxable income is only $10,000. If the flat rate
is fixed at say 15% for incomes below $100k and at 20% for incomes
above that, the $60k earner pays $1500. A $500k earner will pay
(500,000-50000)=450,000 taxable income with tax of 15% on first
100k and 20% for the remainder 350k = 15000+70,000=$85,000.

You can't tell me that is regressive in any shape or fashion.

As for a means test on social security, I have a problem of fairness.
Those who paid into the system should get their fair share back.
Otherwise you are drifting towards income redistribution & socialism.

[John Q. Citizen]

13. I too have a problem with means testing on social security, but not for the same reasons.

Social Security isn't and shouldn't be made into welfare. It's a retirement fund funded by employees and their employers, or by the self employed.

Means testing is expensive. It requires a whole level of beauracracy to implement, do, and to investigate/prosecute those that attempt to defraud the means testing.

An example of the cost of means testing is to compare the overhead to administer Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare, which has no means testing is available to everyone after age 65. It has an overhead of about 1 to 2%. Medicare (which is means tested) has overhead costs of about 5%.

Private insurance, it should be pointed out, has an overhead of from about 15% -25% (gotta pay all those sales people, advertizing, scyscappers, and executives their big buck, plus the stock holders.)

Money that goes to overhead doesn't go to healthcare.

[LWolf]

15. Those plus:

election and campaign reform
a fairness doctrine
elimination of corporate personhood

[opihimoimoi]

17. If we Dems want to strike a stake to the Pubs Heart...we should look to solve the Iraqi Mess

in a way the Fighting slowly stops, Peace and Hope are resurrected, and Positiviness returns to the area.

War is not an option here for the solution///war is only neccessary for control until the Iraqis are given that aspect sometime in the future.

Peace is where its at and the sooner the Dems use it the better....even if only in attempting...

[benEzra]

18. My priorities...

Repeal the Patriot Act. Now.

Figure out a reasonable way to fix the U.S. health care system without compromising quality of care or the authority of the patient to direct her/his own care. (My son is a special-needs kid, so I understand that issue pretty well.)

Figure out how to get out of the Iraq quagmire without screwing up the region.

Stay the HELL out of our family's gun safe.