What do you think of Grandma's Chances with Obama's health care plan?

That's 100% wrong. Nothing is changing with Medicare, and Grandma's health care will go smoothly along as usual. Please don't post inaccurate crap from viral emails. The "page 16" is a dead giveaway because it's been posted a million times today. The emails are saying page 16 is proof that people won't be able to add private insurance after the new plan starts. This comes from a sentence under the heading "grandfathered insurance: definition"! What it really means is if you start your private insurance after the beginning of the new insurance plan, it won't be considered "Grandfathered insurance" if you decide to switch back. It has nothing to do with Grandma whatsoever. Thus we see the dangers of ordinary people trying to understand legalese.

Actually, that's not what it says at all...nice of you to point out the fact that we should expect many more GOP-parrot postings from you in the future.

Great more loony conspiracy theorists. I think you need to visit your mental therapist. Read page 16 and see how wrong you are for yourself.

She's a goner.

So Grandma is immortal with private health insurance...awesome.

Lower. Obama looks soulfully into our eyes and says medicare benefits won't be cut. He demonizes this concern by ridiculing those who think he would 'pull the plug on Grandma'. However, he doesn't explain how $500 billion in cuts to an already insolvent Medicare fund, and dropping of service provided to a 'cost effective standard' can help but drop service. He vaguely mentions 'efficiencies, fraud and waste' but the CBO gave the savings provisions in the plan credit for reducing only 1 billion in costs. So where does the other $499 billion come from? - romare is right that page 16 (or section 102 depending on your pagination) deals with a DIFFERENT dishonest communication by Obama. It says you can keep grandfathered plans, as Obama says dismissively in his speeches. Also, as Obama does NOT tell us, it says those plans can never take new people, and the tax section gives a huge financial incentive to employers to drop current plans. Further, all plans expire, and if they are 'changed' except in very minor details, they have to be new 'qualified' plans which bring in detailed micromanagment provisions by government including a compensation scheme to enforce provider adherence to the recommendations of a 'best practices/cost effective' procedures Committee to be purposely insulated from Congress to give it the moxie to refuse coverage to procedures. Before this became a public issue, discussion was quite frank on this point. You can google it. No one will have their old plan very long unless it is an unusual form of plan, such as a union plan or Congress's plan. Given this exemption from Obamacare for unions it is doubly ironic that he has called on them to go to Town Halls as supporters of the plan. - Many of those supporting this are doing so because they trust Obama and aren't questioning what he says and the talking points they are given. They see those opposing it as just 'the other side' to be fought. However, polls that show the majority oppose Obamacare also show that the more you know about it the less you like it. As someone who voted twice for Bush, even not liking him, because I never considered third party alternatives, and at a basic level I just (wrongly) 'trusted' him more than Kerry, I have to wryly consider that what goes around comes around. Unfortunately, until they get a wake up call of their own on Obama, they are pushing programs that are disasterous for this country.

I think you're misinformed.

Grandma is going to continue to be just fine. The death panel thing is ficticious. Palin has done it again.....in April 2008,Gov. Palin endorsed some of the same end of life counseling she now decries as a form of euthanasia. In a proclamation announcing “Healthcare Decisions Day.” What's up with that? She was for it, now she's against it? Of course we all know... ... The Right to life ends after birth. And death panels already exist in private health insurance. You bet'cha!

I think you lie like a rug. AP Fact Check: Distortion Rife in Health Care Debate WASHINGTON (AP) - Confusing claims and outright distortions have animated the national debate over changes in the health care system. Opponents of proposals by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats falsely claim that government agents will force elderly people to discuss end-of-life wishes. Obama has played down the possibility that a health care overhaul would cause large numbers of people to change doctors and insurers. To complicate matters, there is no clear-cut "Obama plan" or "Democratic plan." Obama has listed several goals, but he has drawn few lines in the sand. The Senate is considering two bills that differ significantly. The House is waiting for yet another bill approved in committee. A look at some claims being made about health care proposals: CLAIM: The House bill "may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia," House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio said July 23. Former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey said in a July 17 article: "One troubling provision of the House bill compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years ... about alternatives for end-of-life care." THE FACTS: The bill would require Medicare to pay for advance directive consultations with health care professionals. But it would not require anyone to use the benefit. Advance directives lay out a patient's wishes for life-extending measures under various scenarios involving terminal illness, severe brain damage and situations. Patients and their families would consult with health professionals, not government agents, if they used the proposed benefit. CLAIM: Health care revisions would lead to government-funded abortions. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council says in a video, "Unless Congress states otherwise, under a government takeover of health care, taxpayers will be forced to fund abortions for the first time in over three decades." THE FACTS: The proposed bills would not undo the Hyde Amendment, which bars paying for abortions through Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor. But a health care overhaul could create a government-run insurance program, or insurance "exchanges," that would not involve Medicaid and whose abortion guidelines are not yet clear. Obama recently told CBS that the nation should continue a tradition of "not financing abortions as part of government-funded health care." The House Energy and Commerce Committee amended the House bill Thursday to state that health insurance plans have the option of covering abortion, but no public money can be used to fund abortions. The bill says health plans in a new purchasing exchange would not be required to cover abortion but that each region of the country should have at least one plan that does. Congressional action this fall will determine whether such language is in the final bill. CLAIM: Americans won't have to change doctors or insurance companies. "If you like your plan and you like your doctor, you won't have to do a thing," Obama said on June 23. "You keep your plan; you keep your doctor." THE FACTS: The proposed legislation would not require people to drop their doctor or insurer. But some tax provisions, depending on how they are written, might make it cheaper for some employers to pay a fee to end their health coverage. Their workers presumably would move to a public insurance plan that might not include their current doctors. CLAIM: The Democrats' plans will lead to rationing, or the government determining which medical procedures a patient can have. "Expanding government health programs will hasten the day that government rations medical care to seniors," conservative writer Michael Cannon said in the Washington Times. THE FACTS: Millions of Americans already face rationing, as insurance companies rule on procedures they will cover. Denying coverage for certain procedures might increase under proposals to have a government-appointed agency identify medicines and procedures best suited for various conditions. Obama says the goal is to identify the most effective and efficient medical practices, and to steer patients and providers to them. He recently told a forum: "We don't want to ration by dictating to somebody, 'OK, you know what? We don't think that this senior should get a hip replacement.' What we do want to be able to do is to provide information to that senior and to her doctor about, you know, this is the thing that is going to be most helpful to you in dealing with your condition." CLAIM: Overhauling health care will not expand the federal deficit over the long term. Obama has pledged that "health insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade, and I mean it." THE FACTS: Obama's pledge does not apply to proposed spending of about $245 billion over the next decade to increase Medicare fees for doctors. The White House says the extra payment, designed to prevent a scheduled cut of about 21 percent in doctor fees, already was part of the administration's policy. Beyond that, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the House bill lacks mechanisms to bring health care costs under control. In response, the White House and Democratic lawmakers are talking about creating a powerful new board to root out waste in government health programs. But it's unclear how that would work. Budget experts also warn of accounting gimmicks that can mask true burdens on the deficit. The bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says they include back-loading the heaviest costs at the end of the 10-year period and beyond. August 14, 2009 False ‘Death Panel’ Rumor Has Some Familiar Roots By JIM RUTENBERG and JACKIE CALMES WASHINGTON — The stubborn yet false rumor that President Obama’s health care proposals would create government-sponsored “death panels” to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to arise from nowhere in recent weeks... But the rumor — which has come up at Congressional town-hall-style meetings this week in spite of an avalanche of reports laying out why it was false — was not born of anonymous e-mailers, partisan bloggers or stealthy cyberconspiracy theorists. Rather, it has a far more mainstream provenance, openly emanating months ago from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were central in defeating President Bill Clinton’s health care proposals 16 years ago, including the editorial board of The Washington Times, the American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey, whose 1994 health care critique made her a star of the conservative movement (and ultimately, New York’s lieutenant governor).