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Discuss the US Presidential Election & Health Care
Yesterday we discussed the war and how foreign policy will matter in your decision next Tuesday. Today our series of election discussion pieces continues with Health Care. With an obesity epidemic, a failing economy, and ballooning health care costs, which candidate has the best answers to making sure that Americans are able to stay healthy without America being bankrupted in the process?
One of the better arguments I've seen for fixing the current health care crisis can be seen here
Of course, the insurance companies (who have very powerful lobbies) will attempt to shoot this plan down as they stand to lose. Though it really can be forcefully argued that insurance companies really do bring nothing to the table in terms of health care. Fundamentally, the idea is a good one when constrained. However, insurance companies have become too powerful and they now function as parasites on the system, making it less efficient and more expensive for the end user. Ask yourself: "what product do insurance companies offer in terms of health care?" What do they create? How do they contribute to health care? When it comes down to it, health insurance companies are not in business to provide health care or help you pay for health care. They are in business to provide insurance, collect money, minimize any payout and answer to their shareholders who expect the system to turn a healthy profit. Any reduction in what they have to pay out is money earned for them.
Which candidate will be better positioned to answer the problem? It will be the one who is able to make some hard decisions and stand up to powerful lobbyists. It will be the candidate who is able to apply creative thought and novel solutions to problems that we've been creating for ourselves for decades now. it will be the candidate who is able to rationally apply logic and recruit, retain and manage in their administration, unbiased and reasoned people who are willing to work hard on solutions that will benefit Americans and the wider global population.
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With an obesity epidemic... which candidate has the best answers?
That isn't something that the government should be dealing with, or even give a damn about. If people (and this includes me, I'm a big guy, so I'm not just picking on others here) are too damn stupid or lazy to manage their weight properly, that's their own fault. Our government has WAY more important issues to deal with than trying to coax some fat Americans into improving themselves.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
All I can really say is the obvious: That people don't believe that government is there mostly to just protect rights anymore (if that ever was really the case), so socialized healthcare will be a reality whether we (or I) like it or not,
and that once you get government in healthcare, the incentives to cut costs in places that aren't immediately visible and to pass laws that limit what we can do (and eat, and so forth) are even more likely to go into effect to keep costs low. Expect more restrictions on things like fast food if this goes into effect. People, apparently, cannot take care of themselves, so we need "Democracy" and mass opinion to do it for us. Some people might get the shaft and lose things they love, but in a democracy you sometimes gotta break a few eggs to make an omlette, right?
It's not really even close here... McCain wants to privatize and deregulate. Imagine your social security benefits in the hands of the people McCain trusted so much that he felt that less scrutiny and transparency was necessary. Now imagine your health care benefits managed the same way.
Which seems to distill to "We can't risk helping people in case we accidentally help some people we don't like."
Universal Coverage
Cost Containment
Unlimited Services
Pick 2. Period. That's it.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Obama has decided that health care is a right. I completely disagree with this position. People need to be responsible for themselves. The government should not forcibly take wealth from responsible individuals to pay for health care for irresponsible citizens.
Who gets to decide on the definition of health care? Is the government going to take my money and use it to buy Viagra and give it to the homeless? Will my tax dollars be used to pay for abortion services?
Sorry, health care is not a right, keep the government out of it.
If we take a look at the costs of manufacturing in the US, there is one expense that manufacturers (such as the auto makers) pay here that they don't pay pretty much anywhere else - health insurance. For every new American-built car sold, a staggering portion of the price of the car goes to cover health insurance.
Yet our country spends more per capita on health care than just about any other country on the planet, thanks at least in part to our for-profit system. In other industrialized countries, the workers are still paying for health care, but it comes out of their paychecks in the same way taxes come out. And in the end those other countries can make similar products at a lower final manufacturing cost (even after paying to export to the US).
If people are so certain that the US system is great, then please answer one question. How can we make American manufacturing competitive on the world market again while paying the highest health care costs in the world?
If you look at our top trading partner (that would be Canada), you'll see that their workers make comparable wages for equivalent jobs to those in the US. Yet numerous auto manufacturing facilities have been moved to Canada to save money. Where is the savings if the workers make similar wages? It is in health care and pensions, both managed by the state.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
There seems to be something of a misconception amongst most Americans that I speak to, that your only options are the current system or some kind of filthy commie healthcare system where government employees carry out open heart surgery with rusty cutlery.
The current system in the UK, for example, offers both private and state healthcare, with the NHS free for all and private healthcare available if you want to pay a bit of money for a TV in your hospital room and a shorter wait for your elective surgery.
If you don't want or can't afford private healthcare then you can use the NHS, which is perfectly adequate for most people and certainly doesn't have huge waiting lists for essential treatment as some people seem to believe. Yes, there are the fringe cases, but for the mostpart the NHS is no worse than any of the private medical services when it comes to patient care.
As a result of this system, the private healthcare providers have to charge reasonable rates, because they know that people will simply abandon them for the NHS if they don't appear to be offering good value for money any more.
Americans seem to be terrfied of any kind of government provided or subsidised healthcare at any level, almost as if they see it as a "gateway drug" to communism - as comical as that appears to the rest of the world.
Disclaimer: I currently contract for the NHS, making me far more cynical about it then I might otherwise be.
Huh? Since when it it a Constitutionally delegated power of the Executive branch to "make sure" that Americans are "able to stay healthy," while also meddling in their finances?
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nd now I don't have to pay for as much of it because my employer provides...
What you don't realize is that your company doesn't pay for any of it. The money they "pay" for your healthcare is actually money they could've paid to you if the laws did not compel them otherwise. So, in effect, you're still paying for your healthcare coverage, you just don't get much of a choice as to how it gets spent.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Walk into any Emergency Room lobby and you'll see a sign saying "you will be treated regardless of your ability to pay"
Which encourages a mentality of waiting for health problems to become emergencies and discourages any sort of preventive measures to maintain health.
How's privatization and deregulation worked for the stock market? Even Greenspan admits this was doubleplus ungood.
How's privatization and deregulation worked for the public with energy companies? [cough]Enron[/cough].
We are better off trusting Congress than health and insurance companies - because the damage doesn't come from Congressfolk not being "experts" in medicine and medical billing. They can hire experts. No, the damage comes from companies hiring experts in BS to rip us off.
And Congress simply has less of a vested interest in ripping us off on health care. That's the simple reality of it.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
"Yet, we already spend more money per student in public school than nearly all other Western nations. Specifically, we spend 35% more than the Germans. "
And yet we still fall behind...
It's not a money problem, I'll agree. It's a cultural thing. There are some smart black people (think like Malcolm X and MLK types) around today, it's just that they tend to be the ones who actually lived through the Civil Rights era. I admire any smart person, whether black, white, or whatever.
Modern youth culture is, itself, a detriment to education. Instead of "work hard!" it's "fuck the right people over!"
Speaking as a 19 year old college student.
You just proved that nationalized health care would be better than state-based right after saying state-based would be better.
New York's current problems come from a heavy reliance on NYSE for income. If health care were nationalized rather than localized, New York would be weathering this problem a lot better. It would be nice to have our federal taxes come into our own state rather than go to another state for once.
And FYI, you have to be pretty broke or in trouble to get Medicare.
I deliminate with tabs. Get used to it.
Here in Aus we have both nationalised AND privatised healthcare. Yes we are the country of moderation, never going to one extreme or the other.
I've made use of our public hospitals in my life for:
1. A severely broken leg (emergency).
2. A radio frequency ablation (serious but not urgent) in and out in a day, by one of the leading heart specialists in the world.
3. My sons birth...single room for the Mrs, very quiet, great midwives and a nice experience. Funnily my other half is from the UK and MUCH prefers our system and hospitals. Though more stuff is covered over there apparently.
All of these cost me nothing up front, service in all cases was great.
That includes the midwives, the bulk billed GP visits, etc.
Now the cost. I pay ~$600 a year on the 'medicare levy', that's how much it costs me in taxes. That's full cover (except dental, public doesn't cover most of that) for $600 a year for top notch service. There's more than that, but as a tax paying citizen, I'm happy for a portion of my taxes to be alloted to public healthcare.
My mate pays a little more than that for private health insurance. He fell off his ladder a few years ago and totally mangled his wrist, nasty business, many breaks. After years of putting into his private insurance...he ends up in the public system anyway. There was nobody available to operate on him in the private hospital we took him to. Total waste of money.
My father had his ankle fused in the private system, his treatment was no better than the public system. Except he got to pay a $3000 premium for the effort.
I'm happy to pay ~600 a year to the government for 'health insurance', it's money well spent.
I hear of Americans paying in the thousands a year for cover, I have to ask...why? Surely your hospitals can't be that inefficient, or are you all just very sick?
I like our system, it works well. You can have the best of both worlds if you find the right balance point, going to one extreme or the other with total nationalisation or total privatisation seems silly.
It's possible that there are no "direct answers for simple questions"; probably because the useful questions are not simple*.
I'm going to play devil's advocate and say that I have some sympathy for the modern American politician. They appear to be stuck in a bind since any complex answer to a complex question will be chopped up into sound bites and used to attack him or her. This is especially a problem in this "Age of Outrage" where the easiest way to start a news article is to interview some screaming nincompoop who is incensed that the politicians haven't waved a magic wand to provide them with eternal happiness.
- - - - - -
Here's a complex question: should a 70 year old retired male with a history of drinking problems but is currently a non-drinker get a liver transplant covered by Medicare?
Here's another one: a different, retired 70 year old male is wealthy enough to afford a liver transplant on his own, should he be in line for the next available donor organ before or after a 40 year old working male without health insurance?
* Douglas Adams taught me this. "What is the meaning of life?" is a simple but useless question.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Any Presidential candidate who throws out a planned date on something that needs to first go through Congress is just blowing smoke. Detailed numbers on such plans suffer from the same problem. Congress holds the ultimate authority on writing the final plan.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Mobility among states is common now. It's not unusual for someone to grow up in one state, go to another for college, go to another to find work, and retire to another. People expect things to be basically the same across states. It's not like it was 200 years ago when few people moved out of their county.
"My personal health is my responsibility. If I want to smoke, drink, and eat fatty foods until I die of a massive heart attack, that's my business. Nobody else should be concerned with it. If it can't afford to pay for the health problems I've brought on myself, nobody else should be required to pay one red cent to cover me."
I agree. But what if the heart condition is hereditary and you can't afford to pay? Then you have a serious problem.
Look, I hate the thought I my money going to people who don't want to work, who don't want to take care of themselves, etc. There will always be people gaming the system because they're deadbeats and lazy and scammers, etc.
The the reality is, if I were to become homeless, I would want food, shelter, treatment until I got back on my feet. If I were unemployed, I would want food, shelter, medical treatment until I found a job. If I got some disease and couldn't afford it, I would want treatment. Just because some people refuse to find a job, or pick themselves up by the bootstraps doesn't mean the system is completely out of the question.
That costs money. At some point, you have to suck up the fact that some people game the system and will get my something for their nothing. That's life. That's taxes. That's school levys. That's fire/police. That's Social Security. In the end, YOU will need those things.
This country, including myself, needs to change it's me me me me me me me me attitude, or we're not going to make it long term. I'm a firm believer that karma is one hateful mistress when you ignore her.
However their governments regulates they must offer a single price without age or pre-existing considition differentials. This pretty much how US employer insurance operates. Seems to work OK.
Side A : Let's give healthcare to all of you so that the tens of millions of you who can't afford one can have one rather than work two jobs while you're dying of a cancer you can barely afford to cure.
Side B : OMG no don't you understand! The world divides in two sides, the capitalist side, and the communist side. Universal healthcare is socialism, and socialism is in our minds some sort of watered-down communism, which is anti-capitalism, therefore universal healthcare = anti-American!
God I'm glad we still get to choose between our Cold war-era ideological remanents of antagonisms vs. black babies dying. God bless our ideological free-for-all that is Capitalism as American conservatives and libertarians see it! The bad guys are commies, and the good guys are capitalists, therefore it's perfectly safe and healthy to be as capitalist as we possibly can!
You just got troll'd!
It seems to me, and I might be wrong (I'm not)....
That John Mcain, a Navy brat, turned lifetime public servant who has had "socialist" government provided healthcare for his entire 72 years on this planet. Probably doesn't know sweet FA about an the average persons health care, outside of what he reads and the health insurance lobbyists tell him.
It's kind of ironic that the guy who's suckled at the government teat for his entire life, calls other people socialists.
Has he even ever been to a job interview? Or even had to ring an insurance company to get cover?
I'm a health care provider. I've been in the field in various capacities since 1981 and as a licensed professional since 1990.
When we talk about the "health care system" in America we have to be very clear about what we are talking about. There are two halves to this system- health care providers and health care finance. The main problems in the US health care system are in health care finance, since this is what determines access to health care.
National health care insurance is an inevitability and IMHO will be driven from the Right not the Left. The driving force will be lobbying from large businesses (GM, for example) that will be rendered noncompetitive by health care costs; they will either go bust or leave the US for countries with a national health care plan. IIRC nearly $1500 of a GM auto's sticker price is health care costs for current and pensioned employees. The creation of a national health system would allow GM and other large companies to offload much of the cost of health care insurance for current employees but also for retirees. This would be a major gain in the bottom line for companies struggling under these costs and other market forces, and would put them on a more-equal footing with most European and some Asian competitors. It would also be a major gain for small businesses (like my Dad's, like the company I work for, etc.) as it would reduce payroll costs. The losers, of course, would be private insurance companies and their CEOs, employees and shareholders.
For the individual, national health care coverage would mean greater freedom to move between jobs to improve one's lot in life and greater flexibility in managing care for children or dependent adults (e.g., aging parents).
The creation of a national health care finance plan would be able to leverage economies of scale unavailable to private insurance companies. The removal of the profit motive would reduce overhead from an industry average of 10-30% to closer to Medicare's 2%- a savings of hundreds of billions of dollars per year right there. With universal coverage, every person in the US could obtain preventive, clinic based care (which is the least expensive way to receive care) rather than letting problem go unaddressed and eventually seeking care in an emergency room (the most expensive way to receive medical care). With universal coverage, health care providers would not face defaults on payments for services which would allow a reduction in the cost of care. Rationing of health care would be reduced through the elimination of provider networks and access restrictions imposed by insurance companies. And finally, authorizations for services would not be influenced by the need to protect the profit margin.
From the provider side, it costs money to get paid. Someone has to prepare a bill and send it out. For many of my patients, payment comes from two to four sources and I have to send a bill to each in turn according to an order of precedence. Each bill costs $3-5 to send, and then there are the costs of tracking reimbursement to collate all the payments, figuring out who gets money back if the bill gets overpaid (which happens frequently because the insurance companies don't understand their own systems very well). Being able to do single payer billing would save an average of $10 per patient in my clinic, which means either more profit or the ability to lower costs for services. Imagine the cumulative savings if the cost of every health care service in America could be reduced by an average of $10.
That all sounds like a panacea and of course no such thing exists. Every health care finance system would have problems. People worry about where the money would come from and the only possible answer is taxes, since that is the only source of government revenue. However, we already pay that tax and then some. Like most people, I get my insurance through my employer. I chose the cheapest plan, which is a high-deductible plan. It costs $512 per month, 50% out of my po
McCain's plan:
McCain's not talking about how he plans to pay for the health insurance tax credit - by taxing employees for their employer-based plans, for the first time in history.
If you've seen the debates, you've heard the statistics. McCain's plan would give a working couple a $5000 credit on the one hand, and take another $12000 in NEW taxes back from the same couple. Honestly, wtf is that?
But even worse, McCain's plan doesn't address the real main reason US health care costs so much - it's the insurance companies themselves, in the middle providing no services AND charging everyone involved - the patients, the doctors AND the hospitals themselves.
Obama:
Costs are basically paid through ratcheting back the insurance companies - who have doubled what their charging without any sort of increase in their costs.
As for catastrophic illness, that's defined as "severe illness requiring prolonged hospitalization or recovery; usually involves high costs for hospitals and doctors and medicines". Basically, something that comes along which has in and of itself the possibility of killing you, that takes a long time to heal from. Covering this is the most expensive kind of insurance. Obama's plan will have the government step in to help employers cover this part of the insurance, so that overall insurance costs to employers would be lower.
My personal preference would be for single-payer healthcare. This was what made Edwards my first choice as a candidate. Since he lost and then screwed his political future by not keeping it in his pants, Obama's plan is the next best thing.
It doesn't take anything ingenious to help fix our health care system. It just takes reducing the power of insurance companies, and creating pooled health care without insurance companies as the middle men - which is done by every single other first world nation, and most second and third-world ones that have any health care at all.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
Insurance companies suck, I'd love to find one that acknowledges that there is a difference between a 2 person family and a 6 person family.
As of right now if I wanted employer healthcare for me and my spouse it would cost me exactly the same as my co-workers healthcare for him, his spouse, and his 3 children.
As two generally healthy adults we cost a lot less to cover than 3 children. But we pay the same amount. That sucks.
Of course, healthcare isn't the governments business any more than housing, cars, or clothes are. If you believe the government should be providing you healthcare then you should also believe that the government should feed, clothe, and house you since those are more fundamental needs than healthcare.
So, please stop your dirty socialist whining.
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Based solely on performance: Does anyone want the morons in Washington to have a say in your health care? That is one scary thought and very appropriate on Halloween.
Remember, I have renamed Congress the "Thundering Herd of Dumbass" for a reason (19% approval rating shows I'm not alone).
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
I can't tell from your post whether this is your opinion, but I keep hearing this mantra: "the government wants to regulate things and take away your freedom." (I'm a Brit living in the US.) In this case, it's: "the government wants to prevent you from eating the food you like".
Frankly, this argument is weak. Regulation and freedom are not opposed, nor are they aligned - they are different things. Regulation can sometimes lead to loss of freedom, and can sometimes protect and enshrine freedom.
Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the reason that many people like fast food is that fast food corporations are currently free to bombard 4-year olds with the message that if they have a Big Mac, they will be happy?
There are many ways to tackle the obesity/fast food conundrum at the supply side. Now there's an argument that should appeal to Reaganites.
I think the primary flaw in your thinking is that you are seeing the results of government intervention (well over 50% of healthcare spending is from/through the government, and it is heavily heavily regulated), and instead of understanding that the chaos and dysfunction is a result of government intervention, your conclusion is that more intervention is needed. This is how the snowball got started, and it's still rolling along, crushing anything in its path.
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On July 1, 1966, millions of Americans lost all financial responsibility for their health-care decisions thanks to Medicare and Medicaid. In 1973, Senator Kennedy said 'I believe that the HMO is the best idea put forth so far for containing costs and improving the organization and the delivery of health-care services.' You can see the result of twenty-five years of government intervention into the health insurance/health care market. The 110th Congress just performed the same type of market manipulation on our financial system. You do not have to be a laissez-faire economist to realize that the government should stay out of markets.
I point out to everyone I know that under McCain's plan, I'd still have no health insurance. Why? Because they won't sell it to me.
Plus, I'd now be out whatever percentage of my taxes went towards providing tax deductions to everyone else who bought health insurance.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Just to put that $5,000 tax credit into scope, the year my son was born I was an LTE employee of the State. I had worked there for a year (college job) so I was elligible to enlist in the benefits plan, but I would not recieve employer contributions until I hit 1.5 years on the job. For family coverage I had to pay $980 every month. My take home pay at the time was just under $900. $5000 wouldn't cover 1/2 a year's worth of insurance.
Not to mention that a $5,000 tax credit isn't money in the hand. At that point in time my wife and I were already tax exempt due to our low incomes and write offs. The tax credit would have done absolutely nothing for us.
And on top of that, McCain's taxation of medical expenses would wind up increasing service costs, which would cause an immediate rise in insurance premiums.
Not that I'm all that keen on Obama's plan either, but McCain's plan smells worse than a used douche on a shit sandwhich. It might help a very narrow range of the young/healthy middle class, but it screws the old, the sick, and the poor.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
It seems to me, and I might be wrong (I'm not)....
That John Mcain, a Navy brat, turned lifetime public servant who has had "socialist" government provided healthcare for his entire 72 years on this planet. Probably doesn't know sweet FA about an the average persons health care, outside of what he reads and the health insurance lobbyists tell him.
It's kind of ironic that the guy who's suckled at the government teat for his entire life, calls other people socialists.
Has he even ever been to a job interview? Or even had to ring an insurance company to get cover?
After a career in the Navy and a career in the Senate, it is doubtful that Senator McCain has interviewed for a job, unless you consider reapplying for his job in the Senate every six years is an interview of sorts.
But, seriously. "Suckled at the government teat"? Really? I'm not voting for McCain, but this is just unfair. Senator McCain's father served in the Navy, thus earning his pay and his benefits (including health care). Senator McCain served in the Navy, thus earning his pay and his benefits (including health care). After serving in the Navy for decades, Senator McCain has served in the Congress, thus earning his pay and his benefits (including health care). C'mon. Suckling at the government teat? That's just not a fair assessment of what Senator McCain has been doing for 72 years. Complain about his inability to offer an coherent, consistent message. Complain about his plan to freeze government spending levels. Complain about his plan to tax health care benefits. I'll even grant you that he doesn't know much about the health care insurance of average folk. Just don't deny that the man has earned his health care for 72 years.
Life is short; think quickly.
When I go see the doctor, I don't actually see a doctor. I see a Nurse. She's very good. She admits when things are out of her area, and best of all, she listens to ME.
I was on some meds that were making me feel "odd", and I found an obscure article detailing that one of the side effects of the medicine was exactly what I was experiencing. It wasn't a common side effect, only 1 out of 150,000 or so, but there it was.
I broght the article in, and in less than two minutes, had a prescription for another med, that hasn't giving me any side effects.
My solution for medical healthcare insurance hospital crisis is this. Get rid of the stupid monopoly of having to see an MD for sniffles and scrapes.
Start offering NURSES to deal with the daily care of regular patients, directly. Let them prescribe certain classes of meds for common problems.
Second step of my plan is to eliminate insurance "discounts" for proceedures. One price for ALL for everything. By this I mean no pentalty for going to a hospital and paying "cash", and no charging less for insurance companies. We can accomplish this if people getting the services had to fill out the insurance claims based upon the hospital bills, rather than the hospitals and insurance companies being in collusion and hiding the cost from the patients.
Lastly, I recommend changing the TORT laws in regard to medical care. We have to realize that SHIT happens, and even the best care providers screw up from time to time. When OBGYNs are leaving the field due to tort lawsuits (Thanks alot John Edwards) there is a problem not with the doctors, but with the lawyers. First thing I'd do to reform "tort" laws, the punitive portions are not going to the victims, but to the state into a "victims fund". AND lawyers don't get a piece of that either, 100% goes to the state. Tort reform should start at getting rid of the "lottery" effect.
The problem is the inefficiencies being built into, and the "routing around" the problems that are taking place. Insurance companies SKIM off the top, Lawyers scrape the muck at the bottom, and everyone else gets "less" services for what they are paying for in the process.
Government can't help this other than require processes that streamline and produce "fairness" in the market place.
We can fix this, if we toss out the corruption that is causing the problems in the first place. Lawyers and Insurance companies are gaming the system for their gain.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Amendment X to the United States Constitution:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Federally mandated socialized medicine is unconstitutional, and therefore illegal.
Since I am right now paying off a $15,000 hospital bill because my appendix had the audacity to attempt to burst 3 months before insurance started at my new job, I'll agree with you here.
The original bill was $39,000 from the hospital, but I got their "assistance" and it was reduced to $15,650. I still had $3,000+ of other bills in addition (surgeon, anesthesiologist, radiologists...).
The part that pisses me off is I used to work in a doctor's office, I saw the fee schedule.
For some MRIs (for example) a patient with no insurance would be charged $1500+. Blue Cross would have to pay $1,000. Medicaid would give us three hundred bucks.
The only reform I want to see is to insist that everyone is charged the same amount for the same services. I don't want the amount to be dictated, but each hospital/doctor can figure out what to charge, and make everyone pay THAT.
Then there could actually be competition and comparison shopping (shocking, I know).
---- Watch out for snakes!
You do understand that the low infant mortality rate in Cuba is also directly tied into their extremly high abortion rates, almost double the US.
Simply put if a fetus is seen to have any defects it is often aborted before birth thereby drastically reducing difficult births and mortality statistics. Of course that doesn't stop the fact that almost 3 times as many women die in childbirth in the health care nirvana of Cuba than the US.
In the US, people try to take care of their children, even if they know they won't be perfect.
So which system do you prefer again?
Numbers don't always mean what you think they mean, and a hospital system in which patients are routinely advised to bring in their own sheets and food to avoid lice and parasite infested 'hospital' bedding is not what I would call a shining example of modern medicine.
Much of the difference in expected living is the fact that when people are free to do what they want, as they are in western societies, they tend to do stupid things; drive fast cars, each unhealthy foods, bungee jump, hang glide, etc..; all types of activities that puts a persons life at risk outside of whatever type of health care you receive. So you could choose to move to Cuba, where those choices really aren't available to you and live till you're 75, or you could remain in the US (presumably) and live however you like.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
Paul Krugman is also a raving anti-Republican pundit who has been predicting an economic disaster of every type since the day Bush took office. And since even Clinton foresaw this mess developing while he was still in office, his predictive abilities are not all that amazing.
And yes, the average family does pay more than $12,000 for a plan, $12,106 to be precise, by the Times own reporting. Still much less than the over 14k a top bracket earner would have to make to not receive a credit under MCCain's plan (once again from the Times own reporting).
As for the impact of the removal of state borders I'll use the summary from your above linked 'realistic comparison' article:
And finally, anyone who thinks deregulation and not government interference to control the mortgage markets (though the use of Freddie and Fannie) was the cause for this whole mess is seriouly deluding themselves. And I believe it was McCain who attempted to put controls on Freddie and Fannie a few years ago by co-sponsoring legislation, while it was Obama who wrote a letter only after the market started to collapse. Even then the latter had no details or suggestions over and above, "maybe we should talk".
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
The NHS is underfunded, but it's not inefficient, by far. Compared to the US system, it's awesome, ... in that respect.
Of course I'm implying that you mean inefficient when you write inefficient. In physics, it's defined as
efficiency = useful_output / input
Usually input is the raw energy, such as the chemical energy in the gasoline, and the useful_output is the energy you can actually put to use. IIRC a typical gasoline engine is at 0.20 efficiency while a combined cycle gas turbine can reach 0.70.
BTW a heating system (not heat pump) can be seen as having 0 efficiency or 100%, or NaN.
For health care costs, all depends on what you mean exactly. You could define the useful output as the money that gets in the pocket of health professionals and pharmaceutical companies, and the input as the premiums and out of pocket expenses.
With that definition, having no insurance at all is 100% efficient: you pay exactly what gets to the doc/pharmacy. But obviously you probably don't want that. The private US system is at 0.70 efficiency basically, with 30% going to advertising, buying out congresscritters, CEO yachts & country club memberships, suing customers and armies of claims-denying call center drones. Public systems, including the NHS but also Medic(aid|are), are at about 97% efficiency.
That's not the end of the story, obviously. Some advantages can be argued for a private system; such as a more rational allocation of ressource, better handling of fraud and such. (The truth is, the more a health insurance market is regulated, the less the insurers get to waste money on useless advertising and such. ) But that's not part of the efficiency equation.
Parent should be modded up. Many are screaming that any kind of progressive change to the health care system would be socialistic. Yet they all refuse to recognize that nearly the entire system we have is already heavily regulated and in no way represents any kind of free market. I assert that excessive regulation and the insurance companies are a huge part of the problem. Unless a new adminstration is willing and able to tackle these issues nothing will change.
One of my job responsibilities is to support a Home Health Care system's application and I have a lot of experience with supporting them. The percentage of effort and expense put into keeping up with constantly changing regulatory mandates is truly staggering. I personally don't understand why people continue to get in the business anymore because they are constantly squeezed between increasing costs, and shrinking revenues. A major portion of the cost increases are due to administrative overhead a substantial portion of which is dedicated to ensuring regulatory compliance. I'm not generally a proponent of deregulation, but in the case of health care the government and industry both have made a huge complicated mess of the entire system.
The problems with our current 'private' insurance system have already been well articulated in other posts here. There's also the topic of legal liability which I won't even start in on. Bottom line is that we all need to be willing to start rebuilding the system from the ground up if we truly want change.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
McCain hasn't "suckled" at any government "teat."
He has governemnt coverage. That you don't like the words used doesn't mean it isn't true. He has had socialized medicine for his entire life. We pay taxes into a fund that he gets coverage from. That's socialism to everyone but Republicans.
Learn to love Alaska
Yo this is a shout out to my EBT. You stamps were there for me when I was down and out! Man, nothing takes the edge off of being broke and unemployed like the US government food assistance program. Once you have access to the food you need, you can focus on other things like getting a job.
This is unmitigated bullshit. I've spent a good part of my life in Northern Ontario in a tiny town far from any major population centre. I had some health challenges, including experimental reconstructive surgery. I received superb care every time and have no complaints. Similarly, my friends and family have had much better luck than yours. One friend was released, in the opinion of his family, too soon. Providing a sufficient level of care for him at home for a couple of weeks cost his son and daughter some holidays. A longer-term disability would have qualified for home care.
Anecdotal evidence, both mine and yours, count for very little in the overall scheme of things. The numbers prove, time after time, that the Canadian system works. Among other things, it puts about twice the amount of constant dollars (US or Canadian) that go into the system into doctors, nurses, equipment and facilities as the American system. In other words, it uses a lot less of the money in administration and paperwork.
If you'd like to get some idea of how it works, check out infant mortality in Canada and the United States. That's a good, objective statistic that it's hard to manipulate.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
He is not covered by health insurance like everyone else. He is covered by a governemnt plan that is not dissimilar to a mix of VA and Medicare (with Congressional perks), and both of those have been called socialized medicine, or a foundation for socialized medicine. If it isn't socialized medicine, and instead some "private" plan that is open to everyone, how much do I have to pay to get it? Oh, I can't get it at any price? Then it isnt like every other employer's plan in existance. It's a government plan for giving health care to select individuals. Opening up that plan to more is socialism. Leaving it with those few is a foundation for socialism, and depending on your definitions (the governemnt taking money from everyone to redistribute it to the "needy") it is exactly socialism.
Learn to love Alaska