Frank Pallone Jr.

I hoped they listened...good job!

Did you testify about the benefits of keeping health care private?

Sure bc there's benefits in letting fat corporate pigs decide on whether I need brain tumor operations or cancer treatment. I know those corporate whores will worry about my health over their pockets right? Excellent job Congressman.

Thanks for promoting food safety Congressman. Can I make one more suggestion to you--- I think the legislation needs to be more dramatic--- watch the movie Food Inc and you will see why. Keep up the good work

Please reject the Senate bill. We need a public option; what we don't need is to force people to buy into private insurance plans on pain of being fined. It's better to pass no bill than that one. Please keep the public option and oppose ANY fines for those who cannot afford to buy insurance and any giveaways to the insurance companies.

go for the public option. it will go down in flames in the senate. you're better off passing the senate bill and then once the government puts the private insurance companies out of business in a few years you can get your public option. oh and good luck in an election year with 17% u-6 unemployment trying to pass a massive tax hike on those of us who are left working

KEEP FIGHTING FRANK, WE ALL KNOW HOW HARD YOU WORK FOR US.

Best wishes for a happy & successful New Year!!

Unintended consequences. OOPS!

Mayo Clinic in Arizona to Stop Treating Some Medicare Patients By David Olmos

Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little. ... See More

jim - why was the lot redone? more jobs? more commuters into the city or newark? or was it because government needed to pay someone to dig a ditch and fill it...public works jobs are a sham. roads are needed to allow smoother efficient commerce not to put someone to work...same with a train station parking lot.

also, private company investment is... See More done with one goal...to make money for the company and shareholders. government takes money from one class of people and pays others to go to work on some un-needed project in a state/district based on political patronage. if the average shareholder wants to not own a company if they dont like the R&D they can sell the stock. can i opt out of funding BS public works projects or anything else? i cannot unless i want to serve jail time.

major difference...i hope you see the difference

public investments come from tax dollars, that you are FORCED TO PAY. there is no choice in the matter. and to think that we know where money is going is a fantasy! we can not even find out who added pork amendments to bills that go through congress, who does the public know to vote out?

you say i have a mythical vision of investment, but you ... See Morecontinue to advocate investing money into systems that do not produce better than the private sector, and at the sametime run extremely high deficits. that sounds like sound economic policy to me.

hmmm. ty profitability to actual health outcomes? arent the doctors and patients incharge of the outcome when the INSURANCE company is in charge of funding the care?

how can you ty them together? 2 separate entities

jim - why cant we get government out of healthcare? why is "force of government action" the only solution that leftists can think of? why not let the market decide prices and let people choose what they want to be covered for? isnt that freedom? if you give government an inch of power, before you know it they will take a foot, and then a yard, and then it will be a total takeover and you will be a slave to the recipient class

why not 2010? b/c that is how the administration cooked the books. were paying taxes/penalties for 10 years but only get 7 of service, that is why the cbo numbers add up to be neutral. the problem is the second 10 years, where do costs go then?

oh yeah, single payer systems are awesome!! i love standing in line waiting 2 months for MRI's that is so sweet. i mean god, it takes like a whole 2 days here in the US. i mean, who would want service that is that quick???? MRI's arent even that important anyway!! I mean, what are they even looking for when they use them things????

JA: I'm getting tired of pointing out that insurance companies hate the idea of interstate competition and will fight it as hard as anything they fought (and mostly won) in the current bills. Big companies do everything they can to stifle competition; it's a simple as that. They have wired the phony market they way they like it, and they don't ... See Morecare about you and your ideological preferences, or me and mine. So unless you have some libertarian magic to perform, please don't waste our time on chasing unicorns.

DM: I agree; another point is that state insurance regulators are all we have. If we have interstate competition, we need federal insurance regulation (and Jeffrey et al hate that idea), or companies from the states with the crappiest, most consumer-unfriendly regulation will dominate.

why do people think the government will succeed at successfully managing 300m+ health insurance plans when they have bankrupted social security, medicare, medicaid, amtrak, and every other "private" market product?

jim - the only think the federal government can do in an interstate competition scenario is protect the consumer from collusion/price ... See Morefixing etc. the market will compensate for everything else including the plummeting or prices. states with overbearing regulations will have no policies sold there...for instance, NJ state sponsored insurance companies would be bankrupt in 6 months b/c the price is double what i would have had to pay in Kentucky (i buy my own and i have researched)

Thank you for your support in Armenian issues!!!

And I was glad to be a part of it (from tabbycat331). I hope you do this again because I felt safer there than I did at the town hall in Red Bank

You're on the cutting edge of new technologies and new public policies that improve the lives of everyone. No one does it better. Thank you.

Congressman Pallone, you're the best!

I can sum up the debate in 4 characters: yawn

I don't know if this was discussed, but what is the status of the efforts to extend the ARRA subsidy for COBRA payments?