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US House Democrats Unveil a Health Care Plan
gollum123 sends in this piece from a political blog in the NY Times. Here is the text of the bill in question (PDF). "House Democrats on Friday answered President Obama's call for a sweeping overhaul of the health care system by putting forward [an] 852-page draft bill that would require all Americans to obtain health insurance, force employers to provide benefits or help pay for them, and create a new public insurance program to compete with private insurers — a move that Republicans will bitterly oppose. ... But the chairmen said they still did not know how much the plan would cost, even as they pledged to pay for it by cutting Medicare spending and imposing new, unspecified taxes. The three chairmen described their bill as a starting point in a weeks-long legislative endeavor that they said would dominate Congress for the summer and ultimately involve the full panorama of stakeholders in the health care industry, which accounts for about one-sixth of the nation's economy. ... House Republicans, who have had no involvement in the development of the health legislation so far, quickly denounced the Democrats' proposal as a thinly disguised plan for an eventual government takeover of the health care system. ... The House Democrats' plan is one of three distinct efforts underway on Capitol Hill to draft the health overhaul legislation. In the Senate, both the Finance Committee and the health committee have separate bills in the works, and in recent days those efforts seem to have stumbled."
I ain't registering for a goddamn thing
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Oh jeez this sounds like tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy theories. Require. Force. Government Takeover. Give me a break!
every _exit() is the same, but every clone() is different.
Surprised the Repulicans would find this totally unacceptable ... NOT ... unknown costs are only acceptable when it comes to war, killing and torturing foreign coloured untermenschen.
"If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it's free."
Itâ(TM)s no secret that the healthcare system (Along with the education system) is broken and needs work, but weâ(TM)re in a deep recession here and now isnâ(TM)t the most appropriate time to start spending billions. The primary goal should be to repair the economy first and then when everythingâ(TM)s kosher start disquieting about the other stuff; you canâ(TM)t do everything all at once.
If only the Obama administration wasnâ(TM)t so pedantic and feels like it needs to play God.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
"But the chairmen said they still did not know how much the plan would cost..."
I'm not sure the politicians care how much it's going to cost since it's not their money.
Healthcare is screwed up because of the various regulations and monopolys the govt has created.
If we had a free market instead of the quasi-socialist/fascist system in place now, the market would set fair prices.
No one ever talks about health care in laize-fair jurisdictions. Last time I was out of the US I paid $65 for a doctors visit and two prescriptions TOTAL. Open system. No govt price fixing. No government subsidies. My friend had a tooth extracted there, cost $150. My father just had the same in the US, cost $800.
Get the government the hell out of my life!
Will this bill stop the pre existing condition BS? Let you buy any plan that you want? UN tie it from your job?
How about having a Bankruptcy that is just for Health stuff and does not show up on any back round check?
Not let people ask about you medial history before offering your a job?
Make it so you can not be dropped by a insurance provider.
It seems obvious from this look into the early stage of a house bill that 'democrats' and 'republicans' are acting as either side of a polar debate, one proposing knowing it's plan leans far too far one way, confident that the other side will try as hard as possible the other way, reaching a stalemate.
it's kinda like the game my brother and I would play as children splitting a piece of cake , one cuts - the other chooses.
Of course, what happens when there is more then two ways to look at a problem, i don't know.
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
I can't believe this was released in the same week where the government sponsored VA hospitals were sticking dirty anal scopes up veteran's asses and giving them hepatitis and AIDS.
I guess cleaning the ass scope isn't that fun so they decided to only do it once at the end of the day.
This is why I'll steer far clear of government run health care.
Is that the House Democrats are essentially following the blueprint for Healthcare provided by Republican Mitt Romney in Massachussetts. So far, the Massachusetts model has pretty much worked, in that, they did reduce the number of uninsured significantly. However, costs for the state provided side of the plan have come in way more than anyone either promised or expected. Quite frankly, the expansion of the health insurance pool did not increase the economies of scale and drive down costs for everyone. Now everyone just has procedures that they cannot afford done.
The other irony is that Obama's said to be considering the McCain plan's idea of taxing health care benefits and requiring employers to purchase it.
This is my sig.
BS? What makes you think it's BS? Oh that's right, you don't want to pay for it yourself, as long as someone else does...
I suspect congress will look at all the examples of socialized medicine around the world and end up picking the worst elements from each of them.
Socialism - Good on Paper, Not in Reality...
An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had failed very few students but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said, "Ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism."
"All grades will be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade meaning, obviously, no one will receive an A." They all agreed to this. After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a C. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.
But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too, so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F.
The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. To their great dismay the professor failed them all. Then he sent all of them this note: "A socialistic government will also ultimately fail - because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed."
The question you have to ask yourself is, do you think access to health care is a right or do you think that it is just another commodity to be bought and sold. If you say health care is a right then you have to be willing to pay for everyone to have it, it will be expensive, very expensive. If you think it's a commodity then you need to admit that poor people don't deserve to see doctors, or deserve a substantially lower quality of care from understaffed and overwhelmed free clinics.
I happen to think health care is something society needs to provide to everyone equally. I know where the money can come from without raising taxes too. I have my eye set on the bloated defense budget. Cut the military fully in half (by dollars spent) and we'd still have the best armed forces in the world for DEFENSE of the nation and we'd have the money to take care of every sick and injured man woman and child.
There are other things we can do to reduce costs as well such as approve the use of drugs that are already available in Europe and Canada and have been proven safe, and reform the liability insurance system.
which is private providers who are paid by the Canadian government out of a health tax. If the United States had a single payer system we could save $350 billion a year. It would be a huge boost for small companies.
Even if Canada, England and the rest of the countries with modern health care system were spending 1% or even 0% covering everyone if would still be considered and abomination by right wing people in the US.
Even the suggestion, let alone reality, of a poor minimum wage worker or homeless person getting access to universal health care is abhorrent.
That's just not how things are supposed to work.
Poor people are supposed to be...poor.
Wasting the massive overhead costs on insurance companies and the rest of the garbage that makes the US is worth it for right wing people in the US.
Will this bill stop the pre existing condition BS? Let you buy any plan that you want? UN tie it from your job?
Actually, no the bill won't do any of that. Are you sure you are not asking for someone else to pay your medical bills? I agree that employers should be untied from medical care and all insurance should be
privately purchased. But I think if you have a pre-existing condition you should be shuffled into a government program that covers your costs since you most likely cannot cover them yourself.
Take, for example, HIV treatment. Most people probably couldn't afford the cocktail that keeps them alive. But I don't think its too terrible to throw in a couple bucks of year in taxes per person to help another guy stay alive, as long as he doesn't bitch about Republicans, in which case, I'd vote to cut him off.
How about having a Bankruptcy that is just for Health stuff and does not show up on any back round check?
Nope. Why should it? I would think that, as a lender, paying back your health loans first would be the thing that they look for... you know, do the logical thing and pay the people to keep you alive.
Not let people ask about you medial history before offering your a job?
Quite frankly I think any credit check should be off limits when applying for a job or a place to live.
Make it so you can not be dropped by a insurance provider.
That would throw too many programmers out of work. Besides, the whole point of insurance is about risk management. If an insurance cannot manage the risk, it cannot operate as a company. Quite frankly the thing to do would be to deregulate all the coverage provided by insurance and get rid of all the various state mandates that make it more expensive.
This is my sig.
Government run schools suck. Baltimore is not safe, because the government cannot provide basic safety. We fight unnecessary wars. We have terrible copyright laws. Government granted cable monopolies. Etc... etc... etc... Our government is going to "fix" health care? ROTFLMAO Call me when our moronic government can get the basics right.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
That way they have money for the plan, and they don't have to work on some Rube Goldberg cap-and-trade scheme later on for climate change.
That probably won't raise enough money by itself, so slap Pigovian taxes on other negative externalities, and if still more is necessary, levy land value taxes (land in the economic sense, including natural resources, radio frequencies, and of course land itself).
This suggestion isn't because I like taxes, but because taxes on negative externalities and on inelastically-supplied goods -- like land -- have a far less harmful effect on economic activity than taxes on labor, capital, or trade.
The whole point of insurance is to have other people pay for your problems, you dumbass. If insurance doesn't do that, it is a scam that takes everyone's money and does not help people when they need it.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Can anyone point out for me the mechanism that is going to require ALL citizens to buy health care coverage? I can't seem to find it. What happens under this plan of someone does not?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
If anyone had any questions why the US health care 'system' continues to be a complete joke compared to the rest of the Western World just read this single post from this fucked in the head wacko.
Miserable little fucks screaming about people getting a free ride while wasting their own 'precious' money on more than 50 percent extra on health care costs in the US compared to every other modern aka 'Socialized' health care system.
Democracy's fatal flaw. Too many people are just fucking stupid like jstork.
We see what you are doing here. Government provision of services, by definition, is the exact opposite of free market competition. When you take money from people by force and give it to others, that is NOT competition. Please stop saying that it is.
would still cost much less than what we spent on banksters.
First, it appears to requires universal coverage. This is good. I remember a long time ago when universal coverage was not the norm for automobiles. All these irresponsible people would drive around, damage other peoples property, and then not pay. What was more they often continued to damage other peoples property with little consequence. This meant that those who were responsible had to pay higher premiums. Now everyone has to have proof of financial responsibility. One consequence of this is that I can get coverage against the irresponsible motorist for very little money. The benefit of health care should be similar. No more irresponsible people going to the hospital without health insurance. This should mean that those of us who actually pay for medical treatment, instead of expecting others to cover the bills,
Second, there will be a public option. Auto insurance in many states has the same option. Most of us do not use the public option. Most of us still pay private firms to carry our insurance. The public option is used by those those who cannot or chooses not to afford private insurance. Sure this public option costs money, but not nearly as much as having some irresponsible asshole crash into your house in his SUV, then discovering he has no insurance or assets because all his or her income went to pay the note of the truck. Every uninsured person costs us money. The public option will insure that hospitals and doctors get some money for every patient, so they do not have to gouge the rest of us.
Third, and this is what I hope, that they reform payments and set standards for care. For instance, it make no sense to pay 80% of a standard cost for a procedure, when in most cases doctors charge double the standard costs. Pay 100% of the standard cost, and don't worry about co-pays. The co-pay is built in with real and opportunity costs. Likewise, set minimum standard for diagnostics. Hospitals are spending money on proton accelerators rather than prene care. We can live without proton accelerators and other machines that go beep. What we need is care.
And this is what I think many people are afraid of. That medicine is going to go back to giving care, rather than huge returns on investments for the HMO or funding for lavish and extravagant building and equipment that rich people can then put their name on because they paid half. Or, as mentioned, we might be concerned that in the US we have a higher infant mortality rate than Cuba or Hungary, the worst in the developed world.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I've been paying for my own medical insurance out of my own pocket since I was 23, now 36. A few months ago, my automatically deducted premiums jumped from $290ish to $530ish a month. Why?
Because Medicare sent my HMO (Group Health) a message indicating that I was on Medicare, and so they automatically combined the billing, without notifying me. I'm not even on Medicare! I may get a refund in Mid-August... meanwhile, I'm scraping by, because I saved some money for emergencies... having this happen during my regular period of unemployment (MSFT contractor 'break') makes it extra painful.
Make healthcare more affordable, so more people will choose to have it. NOT mandatory, involving buerocrats that'll screw it up even worse. Offer tax incentives, etc to businesses to cover their employees, don't cram it as another effective mandatory tax.
Go back to playing World of Warcraf, watching reality TV shows, or whatever the fuck you waste your life doing.
Leave the grown up issues to the grown ups.
If the goal is truly to do some good for the country, then the place to start is the FDA. They need to seriously rethink their views on health and nutrition and what should be allowed in the foods sold in the U.S. There are nations with a fraction of the health issues (per capita) of the U.S. and they also have better policies regarding the contents of food. The corn syrup has GOT to go for starters and they should take with it all of the aspartame and any of the dozens of other things that do not belong in our food. And let's not get into farming, dairy and livestock practices or we'd go on for days. Monsanto has GOT to go. Hormones and antibiotics on "healthy animals" have also got to go.
There is so much wrong going on in with U.S. food system that it just makes me sick... it makes us all sick. Get rid of that stuff and we will see a LOT less need for healthcare and a lot less obesity.
"Take, for example, HIV treatment. Most people probably couldn't afford the cocktail that keeps them alive. But I don't think its too terrible to throw in a couple bucks of year in taxes per person to help another guy stay alive, as long as he doesn't bitch about Republicans, in which case, I'd vote to cut him off."
You are so right!
Those fucking Democrats want to take our hard earned money and give it to fags to keep them alive. Fucking godless socialists and communists.
Fox News
As a graduate student without support, I basically have no income...I don't have health insurance because I can't afford it. How can you force everyone to buy health insurance? What about people like me? If this is really how it is then I'd like to take back my vote for Obama :(
Let's require that whatever bill they propose, that all of the US government, especially congress & house, have to operate under that bill for one year before it can be forced on the rest of us. Whatever plan they currently have is gone. They are not allowed to work outside of their proposed system. They have to use only what their bill contains, and the funding has to come as a deduction (tax) out of their salaries. The money used to provide their health care services must come from whatever they paid in, and if (when) it runs out, nobody gets any more services until more funding is available. Also, any government employee who goes outside the system must declare it on some specified national forum, so we can know about its deficiencies before it takes effect on the rest of us.
This will show us if it is a viable plan, and that it is has enough money coming in so that extra funding is not hidden in additional taxes. Let's see how they like their own plan before we're forced into another stupid plan.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
There are two sides:
1. The entire modern world that has low cost universal health care
2. The Democrats and Republicans on the other side with Republicans off in 'teh free market' la-la land and Democrats too fearful of the 'Insurance' company lobbying/campaign contribution dollars to propose any real long term solution
How is this geek centric news?
Just give me one Government program that works, isn't in a shambles, isn't broke, or isn't full of corruption, and I will go for this. I am sick of the Government mentality that we are too stupid to think for ourselves. Several are, but not me. Please let me choose.
Not only is it high time that we assure complete health care for every citizen it is also a life and death issue for American business. Just how can our factories compete when the health care is attached to the employer in America while overseas health care is provided by governments? It is absolutely vital that we get employers out of funding employee health insurance.
And as far as social justice is concerned it is far better to have the rich getting a little less health care than they are used to than to allow one hundred million or more Americans to get little or no health care at all.
One topic that is being avoided is regulating the fees that doctors, hospitals and the health industry in general are allowed to charge. Today insurance companies compel providers to charge less but those without insurance are paying ten times more for identical care. For example without insurance one medication I used cost about $500. per month while with strong insurance it costs me nothing at all and the insurance company pays $35. for the exact same script.
It's late but change is still welcomed.
Have you seen all of the nightmare stories about the Veterans' Administration hospitals? This is how we in the U.S. treat our heroes -- imagine what health care will look like for the rest of us if we allow the government to ram *this* turd down our throats?
At last glance, the Constitution has no language about a federal health care system, and if that document doesn't explicit tell the federal government to do something, then the responsibility devolves to the states.
The surest way to see if this plan is worthwhile is to force all legislators, senators and government employees to be covered by this health plan and have to pay for it in full. What's that Senator? You say you won't be forced to take substandard health insurance let alone have to pay it because the government already pays your healthcare out of the taxpayer's wallets? I thought so.
You are so right!
It wasn't that the guy was gay that made me suggest not paying taxes for his healthcare, it was that he was a Democrat with a disease that happens to be terminal.
But here's the flipside. What if we sponsored a plan to provide taxpayer funded abortion clinics but only opened them in areas that were heavily Democratic. The idea would be that you would try and get Democrats to abort themselves out of existence, but you could always sell it as providing a service for the needy or something like that. How could any Democrat argue that this would be a sort of a genocide, when they say that abortion is not killing at all?
This is my sig.
But that would require getting rid of the tariff on sugar! And that will never happen because Iowa is full of corn farmers and Iowa is an important state in Presidential primaries!
Let me tell you a story. There once was a presidential candidate that went to Iowa and told the corn farmers that ethanol subsidies were a wasteful giveaway. That candidate's name was John McCain.
Don't expect integrity. We already voted against it.
I like Singapore's system, and would prefer to start there. We already have people using Flex Spending Accounts, and could gradually shift there over a 3-5 year period. http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/01/singapores_heal.html
http://takingnote.tcf.org/2008/07/health-care-in.html
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
What you really need to have is a health care center that works more like the DMV does in Delaware. Basically, everyone goes in and gets a ticket. There are separate lines for separate things. you might have some nurse look at you and determine if you are obviously dying, and have a special line for that. Then, you have a line for people with colds and coughs and stuff, and so forth. You wouldn't need to schedule an appointment, everyone could walk in, just, if you walked in for a stupid reason, you would wait a long, long time.
This is my sig.
1. Socialized medicine is bad
2. Canada has socialized medicine
Therefore, Canada has bad medicine.
QED
It's not that difficult to grasp.
Not that anyone really cares what you have to say since you're Canadian.
How about instead of regulating companies, people take care of their damn selves for once. If you're 300lbs and eat twinkies all the time that persons healthcare should go up, not mine, the guy who takes care himself by going to the gym 2-3 times a week and eating decent. Any kind of government regulation scares me these days because when the government controls your healthcare, they control you.
Sig? No thanks. I don't smoke.
I had a spinal cord injury in april 08. I had insurance through my employer. Well, when you break your spine and can't use your legs its hard to drive a truck. I lost my job, and insurance.
Being a paraplegic, you require rehab with physical therapy. I got 20 days. Thats all. In the UK an average stay for a paraplegic is 3 months. I was denied a decent wheelchair, I was denied a special cushion to curb problems with pressure sores.
My story isn't uncommon, and maybe...just maybe this will change this.
Cant wait to hear from people with government provided, free health care, how government provided health care is bad and no one should want it.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
The beloved health care in GB is great.. as long as you don't get seriously ill. What bean counter is going to say "you sr are not worth a kidney transplant" and "no, we do not need to buy our Alzheimer's sufferers medication that will improve the quality of their lives". source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1581576/Author-Terry-Pratchett-attacks-the-NHS-over-Alzheimers-policy.html
The government is not a moral actor, it is a utilitarian actor. If it where moral we would have no war. If it where moral then I could trust it not to come to Orwellian conclusions after it controls medicine.
I mean, there has to be some disadvantage to being poor, right?
Even Obama says we can save money in health care, for example, "by reducing excess medical tests". That's brilliant - we can save money on something by purchasing less of it! So there you go.
Look, "medical care" is a scarce resource. (When you call your doctor for an appointment, does he say, come on in, I'm not doing anything right now! No, it's "see you 3 weeks from next Tuesday".)
The time honored way of allocating scarce resources is by putting a price on them. Those who can pay for them get them.
The definition of being poor is having little money. Ergo, they will have less of anything that costs money.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
And as a way to redistribute money, insurance is pretty lousy. If insurance was a tax, it would be a very regressive tax and burden those with lower income a lot more than those with higher incomes.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Here are the real differences between a single payer public health care provider plan and the hodgepodge private health care/insurance system we have now:
1) under a public plan, your health care is decided by a government bureaucrat sitting in a government office. While in a private system, you health care is decided by corporate bureaucrat sitting in a corporate office.
2) under a government plan you, or your employer would send hundreds of dollars in tax money each month to the health a agency to cover care. Under private plans, you or your employer must send hundreds of dollars each month to insurance companies each month to get coverage.
3) Under a government plan you a guaranteed coverage. You are not under private plans.
4) Under a government plans you are essentially covered for life. Under private plans you are limited in the number of claims you can make.
5) From what I have seen, government plans overseas control costs by focusing on preventative care and reward doctors who get patients to quit smoking and lose weight for example. Insurance companies in the us drop patients and increase deductibles.
6) Under a government plan, you and your doctor would have to fill out government paperwork to get benefits paid. Under the private system, each insurance company has it's own form to fill out which requires staff, meaning non-medical overhead, to proper fill out and file the forms in the proper manner.
There, those are are the real differences.
Basically, there are some problems the private sector is poorly equipped to solve. Medical care is one of them. Medical care is less of a free market choice and should be thought of more as an essential public utility. Market forces do not work very well do to the complexity of medical care and the urgency of catastrophic cases making comparison shopping impossible.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
At last glance, the Constitution has no language about a federal health care system, and if that document doesn't explicit tell the federal government to do something, then the responsibility devolves to the states.
What's with the adamant clinging onto the constitution? Wasn't it drafted, like, hundreds of years ago - in times when people aged forty were considered old? Doesn't it make more sense to rely on modern standards and current knowledge when trying to resolve the problem of health care in the twenty-first century?
I'm looking forward to this...
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I lost my job. My wife was pregnant. (She has since given birth to a beautiful baby boy.)
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Apparently pregnancy is a "pre-existing" condition. Birth in a hospital, prenatal care, all the myriad ultrasound tests, bloodwork, and everything else can easily exceed $100,000.
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Thankfully there's COBRA. But that's setting me back $1,200 a month -- While I'm unemployed! When COBRA expires, I'm looking at $1,500-$1,800 a month for less coverage! It makes the mortgage payment look small. Costs are up and coverage is less as I'm no longer part of the "big company" negotiated plan. Individuals are treated poorly! Plus transitioning over means whatever they can define as "pre-existing" won't be covered.
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Oh, and that $1,200-$1,800 a month while unemployed... I can only deduct what lies over 2% of my IRS AGI (Adjusted Gross Income) on federal income taxes only. Vs deducting 100% on federal, state, & local taxes while employed.
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It creates situations where folks tolerate bad jobs at large companies just for the benefits.
Interesting, a waitocracy.
Table-ized A.I.
So basically, instead of bringing the US health care system up to the same low cost universal coverage every other modern nation has we should all suffer just because idiots like you and your fucked in the head right wing ideology?
The sugar tariff is because of the US sugar producers, not Iowan corn farmers. The US sugar industry makes a profit with the tariff in place. They would not if the tariff goes away. Therefore, they are incented to spend money, even large portions of their profits, to keep the tariff in place. The rest of the country spends small amounts more and does not notice any individual expense, so is not strongly incented to demand the end of the tariff. Thus, the tariff remains. Oddly enough, Johnny Mac did not propose ending the sugar tariff, and he received large donations from the US sugar industry. Yay, integrity!
Long? What do you mean the signature at the bottom of every comment I post on Slashdot is too lo
Just an aside to the editors: this is not science.
The health care industry is presently 1/6th of the US economy. Without significant changes it will double in 30 years to 1/3 of the economy. Its size is due to the involvement of the government sanctioned Ponzi schemes and cash flow tidal pools known as insurance companies. Contrary to the report generated by the government that is being used as the rationale for the "improvements" in the health care industry, forcing the insurance companies to take on even more will result in more and faster growth. By 2040 health care would be around half of the US economy.
A government run operation that competes with the commercial enterprises won't improve things. We already have that in Medicare/Medicaid. The mandated low payments and customary federal employees' gross mismanagement only result in more costs passed to patients and insurance companies as well as denial of services as more providers opt out of accepting these. The growth of these programs has resulted in increases in taxation without concominant increases in service. With growth unchecked, and with the demographic bubble of baby boomers draining it outnumbering the younger work force, by 2040 it will require the younger people to have 2 full time jobs just to pay the taxes that keep those programs afloat.
The US pays more now for health care than most others, without better results or satisfaction. This will only get worse as the present system grows, and will get worse still if it is forced to grow even faster. The only rational solution is to remove the middleman carcinoma from the health care industry. That is, get rid of insurance and mandate reduction in the artificially inflated medical care costs that they promote.
My advice is to drop any insurance and keep the money. If you need care, either get the same rate from a provider they offer to insurance, or if they refuse, get care and don't pay. Become medically indigent. That will help cause the present system to collapse, the sooner the better, the later the greater damage to the rest of the economy. That advice came to me from the professor and hospital administrator teaching history and systems of the health care industry for my master's in health care administration. He also told us that by the time we got our degrees that we may not have jobs, and even if we do, we probably won't retire from the same industry, since the present system is not sustainable. For me this became academic, because by the time I graduated I realized I had too much conscience to be able to hold peoples' health hostage with a protection racket.
On a more recent note, if you think insurance companies are the sort of responsible entities to be tasked with self-oversight and watching out for your best interests, look back a week or so in the news and find out how many of those companies have invested how many millions of dollars in tobacco companies. That only looks like conflict of interest. Their real interest is in handling your money when you get sick, so they'd just as soon you get sicker sooner, so in this instance they are being entirely responsible to those to who they exist to be most responsible to -- their shareholders.
Trying to fix this problem by requiring those responsible for the problem to take an even greater role is simply shooting the economy in the foot. I have to drive 70 miles one way to get medical treatment at the closest Veterans Administration facility, and do so several time a month. And I'm glad to, so that I don't have to participate in the travesty called the health care "industry". God love the care givers, they deserve all respect, but God damn the "industry" that helps create the problems it makes money from supposedly solving.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
One possible solution is to split treatments into "standard" and "enhanced" (for lack of a better word). The pool of money for the enhanced treatments would be fixed. For example, let's say it's 50 billion a year. Those waiting for enhanced treatments would be reviewed by a panel to see if they qualify for a treatment that would be funded from that 50 billion.
It's not perfect, but at least it's clear how it works, who decides, and what's at stake. Fuzzy procedures are more likely to piss people off and seem like a sea of red tape.
Table-ized A.I.
no, you dumbass. The whole point of insurance is to have other people pay for your problems "under uncertainty". If you problem is 100% sure and you still force others to pay for your problem, it is robbery.
Public healthcare, while seemingly free (most people do pay for it in the end) but I'm not sure such a lawsuit friendly country can handle being told you have to wait months for treatment or that you can't have a certain treatment because it's not cost effective.
People just assume that free healthcare means everything stays the same except it's free. That's not true.
Granted, the healthcare I receive in the UK isn't bad. My local doctor definitely has room for improvement but my previous doctor was perfect. I just hope I don't have to deal with cancer in the UK. Despite probably being in one of the better areas as far as the whole post code lottery ordeal goes, it's always a concern I'll be told "tough luck, we're low on cash".
When I was in the US, despite not being jobless, the hospital and state government (PA) was actually quite helpful and I only had to pay a tiny fraction of what it would have cost. Even for someone in a transitional job, which was low paying, it was quite easy to pay off. Certainly better than the $20,000+ I would have had to pay if I didn't seek help from the state and hospital.
My case might be slightly biased since I was in a decent area of the state and the hospital doesn't deal with a load of poor people begging for free care but even with free healthcare, being in a poorer area of the UK can mean not getting a treatment someone else would get in a better off area.
I just hope people realise that neither system is perfect and going to free healthcare will not solve everyone's problems.
First of all the easy comment: you do realize that the best result you can get as a company on a free market is to create a monopoly? That alone should make you think twice when talking about "freeing" up certain basic needs.
Second.. You're also ignoring the impact which money can have when performing medicine on a free market. Certain companies will not hesitate to hand out expansive "freebies" to certain pharmacies (can't find the right word: places where you'd go to pick up your subscribed medicine) in order to ensure them that their medicine does exactly the same as "that other product" and that they really should push brand Y forward whenever a patient comes instead of brand X.
And that my friend will result in a lot of grief, pain and worse when such "free market" approaches aren't carefully dealt with. And if you don't believe me; look at what is currently happening in several European countries. It goes to such a scale that a lot of people actually look back at the times when the government was pulling all the strings!
Yes, "government control" isn't always the best available, but in most cases it is the best you have. IMO the problem here is that people always go for extremes. "Full government control" or "fully free market". Personally I think both are bad; one should look for a solution in the middle instead. The government should in control of lots of things, but it also shouldn't try to regulate every single pill so to speak. And once you can set that up you've come a long way IMO.
Ban all forms of Medical Insurance, even malpractice insurance. Insurance is the elephant in the room. Costs for medical care didn't begin to skyrocket until medical insurance began to cover all points of medical costs. That meant that there was a payer that would always pay no matter what the cost and when you have that much money to throw around, you have inflation. Amazing and unlimited inflation. If you take away the money, costs would be forced down because otherwise, they would lose all their costumers. Of course there will be a lot of waling and nashing of teeth from the Insurance companies if we did this.
Note the voting pattern of Hispanics, Asian-Americans, etc. These non-Black minorities serve as a measurement of African-American racism against non-Blacks. Neither Barack Hussein Obama nor John McCain is a non-Black minority. So, Hispanics and Asian-Americans used only non-racial criteria in selecting a candidate and, hence, serve as the reference by which we detect a racist voting pattern. Only about 65% of Hispanics and Asian-Americans supported Obama. In other words, a maximum of 65% support by any ethnic or racial group for either McCain or Obama is not racist and, hence, is acceptable.
If African-Americans were not racist, then at most 65% of them would have supported Obama. At that level of support, McCain would have won the presidential race.
At this point, African-American supremacists (and apologists) claim that African-Americans voted for Obama because he (1) is a member of the Democratic party and (2) supports its ideals. That claim is an outright lie. Look at the exit-polling data for the Democratic primaries. Consider the case of North Carolina. Again, about 95% of African-Americans voted for him and against Hillary Clinton. Both Clinton and Obama are Democrats, and their official political positions on the campaign trail were nearly identical. Yet, 95% of African-Americans voted for Obama and against Hillary Clinton. Why? African-Americans supported Obama due solely to the color of his skin.
Here is the bottom line. Barack Hussein Obama does not represent mainstream America. He won the election due to the racist voting pattern exhibited by African-Americans.
African-Americans have established that expressing "racial pride" by voting on the basis of skin color is 100% acceptable. Neither the "Wall Street Journal" nor the "New York Times" complained about this racist behavior. Therefore, in future elections, please feel free to express your racial pride by voting on the basis of skin color. Feel free to vote for the non-Black candidates and against the Black candidates if you are not African-American. You need not defend your actions in any way. Voting on the basis of skin is quite acceptable by the standards of today's moral values.
How is this insightful?! I am from a place where there is no schedule system. You have to visit the doctor by walk in. Everyone has to spend a day in the hospital for almost any treatment, unless you know some doctors well and can skip the lines. would you rather spend 1 day or 30min by schedule?
Note the voting pattern of Hispanics, Asian-Americans, etc. These non-Black minorities serve as a measurement of African-American racism against non-Blacks. Neither Barack Hussein Obama nor John McCain is a non-Black minority. So, Hispanics and Asian-Americans used only non-racial criteria in selecting a candidate and, hence, serve as the reference by which we detect a racist voting pattern. Only about 65% of Hispanics and Asian-Americans supported Obama. In other words, a maximum of 65% support by any ethnic or racial group for either McCain or Obama is not racist and, hence, is acceptable.
If African-Americans were not racist, then at most 65% of them would have supported Obama. At that level of support, McCain would have won the presidential race.
At this point, African-American supremacists (and apologists) claim that African-Americans voted for Obama because he (1) is a member of the Democratic party and (2) supports its ideals. That claim is an outright lie. Look at the exit-polling data for the Democratic primaries. Consider the case of North Carolina. Again, about 95% of African-Americans voted for him and against Hillary Clinton. Both Clinton and Obama are Democrats, and their official political positions on the campaign trail were nearly identical. Yet, 95% of African-Americans voted for Obama and against Hillary Clinton. Why? African-Americans supported Obama due solely to the color of his skin.
Here is the bottom line. Barack Hussein Obama does not represent mainstream America. He won the election due to the racist voting pattern exhibited by African-Americans.
African-Americans have established that expressing "racial pride" by voting on the basis of skin color is 100% acceptable. Neither the "Wall Street Journal" nor the "New York Times" complained about this racist behavior. Therefore, in future elections, please feel free to express your racial pride by voting on the basis of skin color. Feel free to vote for the non-Black candidates and against the Black candidates if you are not African-American. You need not defend your actions in any way. Voting on the basis of skin is quite acceptable by the standards of today's moral values.
The problem with the US health system is that there is no negative feedback of any sort to control costs. Places like Massachusetts actually made it worse because the state has become the policeman for the insurance industry. I have heard comparisons of health insurance and car insurance. A car is optional. Health is only optional if you are dead.
Another point people are confusing is health *care* and health insurance. They are completely different beasts (even though they overlap a bit).
I believe most people (in congress) who preach free markets have no idea that a free market system should have some negative feedback somewhere in the loop. The few proposals which have cost controls will not make it anywhere (sigh).
It has nothing to do with 'hating' dimwit. It has to do with The Great Chain of Being. Still very much believed in to this very day by the right wing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chain_of_Being
'Socialized' medicine is a direct assault on The Great Chain of Being. It means nothing that other countries have universal coverage with massively cheaper costs and better care. Flattening the hierarchy so that those at the very bottom have the same access to quality health care as those on the top is a direct assault on The Great Chain of Being.
I read a bunch of slashdot comments, and the only logical conclusion i can find is that all healthcare systems suck and don't work for shit. I wonder if this means we need a completely new healthcare model. Or slashdotters just like to argue. Either way.
Thank you SO MUCH for not saying "incentivized" or "incentivised." Sorry for the off-topic, grammer/spelling oriented comment. But I just had to say it because I hate the word.
You don't get it. People will never take care of themselves beyond what is there in front of them and what they have time and energy for. Furthermore, the fact that people will not take care of themselves is a tremendous weight on you and me and people who actually do take care of themselves. You really need to accept that people at large will not do the right thing or the thing that is good for them. They just won't. And the sooner you accept that fact, the sooner you can begin to see ways to solutions instead of sitting around blaming people for having "human nature." The best solutions are the ones that accept people for their faults and works within the framework.
There are lots of reasons for the high fructose corn syrup and the other crap that goes into our highly processed foods and most of it has to do with maintaining a long shelf life, getting more out of less, or otherwise filling the foodstuff with extra fluff and fillers that make food less healthy and boosts various profit margins.
"I disagree only partially here. If you kick out private insurance entirely then you get some of the horror stories Canada grapples with. "
Oh please. I don't know what you've heard but it's probably on the order of the things we hear about the states, that is, if you walk any street at night you'll be mugged there.
I've in the states for a decade and the rest in Canada. There simply is no comparison. It's overpriced lunacy down there, the embarrasment of the world.
I'm sure you can find people that feel hard done by by the Canadian system. And for each of those there are a plethora of problems with the American system. It's so bad poeple makes movies about it.
Last year in the US the health sector spent $3.4 Billion lobbying, the only sector that spent more was the finance sector. That's 5X than defense lobbyists. They don't want to kill the gooose that lays the golden eggs.
Cite: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=c
Need Mercedes parts ?
...w/out health insurance.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/19/AR2009061902334.html
"Although 70 percent of insured Americans rate their health-care arrangements good or excellent, radical reform of health care is supposedly necessary because there are 45.7 million uninsured....About 21 percent -- 9.7 million -- of the uninsured are not citizens. As many as 14 million are eligible for existing government programs -- Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, veterans' benefits, etc. -- but have not enrolled. And 9.1 million have household incomes of at least $75,000 and could purchase insurance."
rounding...
46 million
- 14 million (qualify but don't act)
- 9 million (income > 75k w/out insurance)
- 10 million (illegals)
------------
13 million
Why not just increase the minimums to qualify for govt health insurance and instead focus on making the current system more efficient? If I had a way of "carrying" my medial history w/me, I wouldn't have to fill out endless paperwork everytime I see a new Dr / dentist / optometrist. Less paper work = less paper pushers = cheaper insurance.
That's not the job of the FDA. The FDA is just to decide what medications are and are not fit for human consumption, they do not force it on people. Furthermore, there is really no good evidence that the FDA is any better or worse than similar agencies in other regions. There are issues, but it's with congress not the FDA.
As for the hormones, there is no evidence that the hormones have any effect of any sort of milk. There are issues of animal wellfare involved, but none of safety. To date there has never been a test devised which could tell natural milk from hormone enriched cow's milk.
As for aspartame, it's completely safe, there has never been any research which suggested anything else. Aspartame when taken in massive quantities by rats has somewhat increased the incidence of cancer. There is absolutely no evidence that humans get cancer from consuming quantities of aspartame that one might actually be able to ingest. In fact it's safer than sugar, since aspartame doesn't cause diabetes.
The big issue is that the FDA ought to be segmented up into Food, Drugs and Supplements and then let those handle the items that come into their jurisdiction.
ER's pretty much already do that- It's called triaging. The only thing is the lines just look like chairs around the room and your name gets called.
Hospitals and doctors offices have been having to absorb the costs of treating illegal aliens for years. This drives up the costs for paying citizens. If we'd send them back to their respective countries or make them pay, you'll see medical costs come down. Another thing is to stop electing these stupid politicians that cater to lawyers and insurance lobbyist. Regulate insurance companies so they stop gouging consumers. Getting fair insurance practices would help not only help reduce health care costs, but also home, auto and life insurance rates, allowing people to keep more of their hard earned money. Another way to "fix" health care would be to cap non-economic damages in malpractice lawsuits. The average doctor pays (on average) over $30,000/year in malpractice insurance costs, while insurance for specialist can go as high as $65,000/year. These are operating costs that the doctor has to pass on to patients. Fixing health care just needs some common sense, not more bureaucracy. How many government run programs are successful? Social security, Fanny Mae/Freddie Mac, welfare? Letting the government sink its teeth into health care would be a mistake that would not be easily undone. If it passes and makes things better, then great, but if it decimates whatever quality health care we currently have, there would be no going back. It's a lot easier to give up freedoms than it is to get them back. Make sure you're 100% on board with the legislature before you give it your support.
If 25% of those who can afford to pay do not, it dumps their costs and a higher portion of the costs of those who cannot pay onto me. Why? Because in the end, you're going to get the care either way.
Your freedoms do not include the freedoms to burden others.
The only debate then, is over denying all care to those who do not pay their own way. As a society, we have long since decided that isn't acceptable. Show up at an emergency room, and you'll get care. It will be the most expensive, least long term successful kind of care, but it will be care.
Unless you plan to argue that this should also be stopped, my only response is quit whining and pay your part.
Oh -- and PLEASE don't give me the "nobody helped me, I'm a self made...." like of crap. We live in a society where it is POSSIBLE to be successful only as a result of the sacrifice of all those who came before and all those around you sharing in the building of such a society. Taxes are how you pay for the upkeep of that environment in which you excelled. Consider it greens fees.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ever hear of the Economy Act? It's meant to prevent just this sort of government takeover of free country.
Nationalize the car companies.
How can Ford possibly compete with US Govt Cars when they just write off their losses?
Nationalize financial insurers.
How can an insurer compete with US Govt Insurance when they just write off their losses?
Nationalize banks.
How can a bank compete with US Govt Bank when they just print what they need?
Nationalize healthcare insurance.
How can an independent insurer compete with US Govt Insurance when they just write off their losses?
Nationalize healthcare.
How can a private hospital compete when the US Govt Hospital is paid for by the taxpayer?
For those that say "people will stay pay for premium service", I disagree. They won't be permitted to because very quickly US Govt regulation will prevent care by non-US Govt entities.
If you want a "government of the people, by the government, for the government", then rewrite the Constitution.
Otherwise back the hell up.
Which is, suprise!, how emergency rooms work in Canada: a nurse sees you and assess the priority your cas shall be given. (It’s called “triage”, for the word “trier” [tree-ay], which means “sort” in french).
"Healthcare Industry" = Bloodsucking industry in your country, united states. what does it take to understand that something does NOT work ? eternal damnation ?
Read radical news here
i am a successful geek. rich, now. but it wasn't always the case.
i was tormented to the brink of suicide when i was in school. i missed out on a lot of things many take for granted. heck, i didn't even go to the prom! my life was hell, and no one -- absolutely no one -- did anything to stop it. they did nothing to help. they could not force others to be kind to me.
essentially, socialized medicine is forcing me to be generous to others. and i ask one simple question: why? why is someone else's quality of life more important than mine? socially, they are probably in excellent shape! i wasn't. how is that right? how is that equitable?
dont talk if you havent actually encountered the costs of your healthcare system yourself idiot.
one of my clients had to go see a doctor because of some pain in his back, and it took $500 for the doctor to tell him that 'he had something'. it turned out later that it was a kidney infection.
so, you get minor surgery for $1000. in which united states and in what alternate dimension ?
Read radical news here
Thank you SO MUCH for not saying "incentivized" or "incentivised." Sorry for the off-topic, grammer/spelling oriented comment. But I just had to say it because I hate the word.
Yes, that word leaves me positively incensed.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
and your medieval healthcare system practically KILLS poor by neglect, or treatment that arrives somehow too late ?
Read radical news here
Which is, suprise!, how emergency rooms work in Canada: a nurse sees you and assess the priority your cas shall be given
They have triage everywhere but its not designed to include routine health services. I'm talking like, anything you would schedule a doctor's appointment for, go to one spot.
This is my sig.
Wrong. Insurance helps to distribute high cost, low probability risks among a group. On average, each insurance customer is paying for themselves.
Slashdot, insightful? Really? I need to stop reading the comments.
Both offer lower quality service, with rationing, and less access to innovative procedures.
Does your insurance company pay for innovative procedures? Mine doesn't. They won't pay for anything experimental or unproven. I don't know of many that do. Perhaps you mean Canada and the UK practice standardized medicine, adopting new procedures as they become standardized. Nothing stops anyone in either of those companies from going out to get experimental treatments. You're not going to get them here unless you can afford to pay for them, or get your insurance through being a member of Congress. They get great care.
The way to reduce health care costs is to find waste in the system and eliminate them through process improvement.
It's been 40 years, why hasn't it happened? I build medical software, we improve process continuously but the prices never go down. The doctors eliminate jobs, keep more of their clinic billing but the costs still keep going up.
There is continuous process improvement in our health care system now. Our little ER in the local hospital has to call in a doctor. It doesn't get much more efficient than that. Not even a doctor on staff. But the prices never go down. The hospital charges more, does the same job with fewer people, the insurance company pays less, ships their call center overseas, efficiency happens but the prices keep going up. Service keeps going down. Your way doesn't work.
We tried it your way the last generation and it's a dismal failure. Keeping the system we have now is not an option. People who oppose health care reform remind of when my brother tried to take my toddler nephews dirty old blanket away from him. It was filthy, tattered and torn but he still threw a tantrum when they tried to replace it with a new one. I've never seen such a bunch of whiny, fearful, change resistant people in my entire life. Take a deep breath, it'll be okay. You'll get a brand new binky.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Something like this.
I've not needed to use one, so I don't know how it works in practice.
(You can also phone 08 45 46 47 to talk to a nurse at any time, or use the online self-diagnosis thing, or go to a local doctor (or request a home visit), or go to a hospital if it's an emergency, or call an ambulance. I have done all of these, and so far can't fault the system in any way. But I'm only 23.)
And that's 78 years with British Food!
he best commentary I have read on this issue is this: ÃoeEvery choice (whether to have private or socialized medicine) leads to other choices. So if what the media tells us is true, that Ãmost people favor socialized medicine,Ã(TM) then what theyÃ(TM)re really saying is most people would rather be dead than bankrupt."
If we were really going to be honest about the whole thing, we should dispense with this notion that health care in the USA is either socialized or not. Health care is already subject to so many regulations, regarding manner of coverage, rates, who can be in or not be in, that's its almost more fascist than it is free enterprise.
This is my sig.
I support "Universal Health Care" but I will NEVER support "forced health care" UNLESS the GOVERNMENT is providing it. None of this turning health care into as much of a chore as car insurance crap.
"Kill'm All!" is the order of the day.
"Health Care" has morphed into Gitmo. When you're sick -- you're sent to "Health Camp."
At "Health Camp" yor're introduced to "Water Boarding with instructor Dick Cheney"!
Everyone enter, no one leaves!
Perfect!
The "enterants" signed a document that gives all their wealth to .... the bank account of President Barak Hussian Obama.
How economical!
How convienent!
Why did not the Genius George Warlker Bush or his "Condie Thang" Condioliesia Rice never "jack up" such an idea?
Despite all the common rhetoric, the welfare system, the social security system, and the medicare system do generally work fairly well.
There is of course, fraud. There are of course, abusers. Those cases make great news and are easily found and pointed out. What doesn't make the news much is what a small percentage of the overall programs that abuse and fraud actually represents.
I would be 100% in favor of specific funding for heath care and social security being held outside the general fund. I won't hold back support without that provision however.
It is my believe that the one thing we're best at in the country, is creating wealth through small business and the employment of our vast numbers through those start up ventures. Unfortunately, our health care system has held that power back for decades now. Small business owners (like me) will not hire people. Potential entrepreneurs cannot start businesses because they can't leave their big-corp jobs for fear of becoming uninsured.
Health insurance needs should not be driving the economic decisions of our entire workforce. If we can make health care equally available to anyone willing to pay at the same rate as anyone else willing to pay -- that alone would re-ignite the powerful economic engine our small business community. The only way to do that, is to make the pool truly universal. If you don't do that, then the "public" pool becomes tainted by virtue of having only the most expensive and difficult to insure. It creates two classes of citizen. Those who are insurable (which ties them to corporate jobs) and those who are not (which then must be taxpayer funded as a disproportionately high risk).
I can't say yet if I support the currently proposed plan -- because frankly nobody has read it yet. I do look forward to SOME plan.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Like, what the whole thing would cost the taxpayers, how many billions we'll have to pay to fund everything. Not what each person who joins up would pay individually.
Unless you were being facetious, in which case, carry on.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
What a poor excuse for a human being. It is astounding to me what compels somebody to abuse anonymous commenting to spout such bail. Probably ruined every relationship in his live and can't tolerate the fact that others found lasting love.
Let's close 2/3rds of the law schools and turn them into medical schools. The only thing broken in the us health care system is costs. The costs are high because there are to many lawyers, not enough doctors. The third problem is two many rules to protect the privacy of gays and slutty women, hipaa almost doubled the cost of healthcare just to make sure nobody found out when someone had aids or an abortion.
Everyone has to make compromises in life. For me, I had a big compromise when I said "I do." I'm a staunch Republican. My wife is a staunch Democrat. We glower at each other in line at the DMV, which has motor-votor registration. And sometimes we try and rip up each other's voter cards. One year we found out that we were donating equal amounts of money to George Bush and Al Gore, then, after swearing that we'd never do it again, expressed great surprise that we were donating to George Bush and John Kerry...
Anyway, I have to say that this is the finest thing I have ever done. I have enjoyed so much being married to a liberal wife, and having that hard difference of opinion. I am not only happy but I am grateful to the stars above that I've had the opportunity to meet all her liberal friends, and she my conservative ones. It's a great life, to discover your liberal wife is a better shot with an assault rifle than you are! I've gotten hammered with all of her nutty liberal friends and I have to say that I am better for it. When you leave politics out the window, we're all pretty much the same, and yes, that includes gay couples too.
Now, the great compromise we have, of course, politically, is over single payer health care. Our deal is thus: My wife will always buy American products, but I will have to come around and support single payer health insurance. SO here goes.
It is utterly foolish for Democrats to support the kind of health care reform they are proposing. Single payer is completely the way to go.
1) People prefer simplicity. No longer will people believe that health insurance companies will somehow give a better service than government. After the last twenty years, they cannot give a better service than anybody. With single payer, I don't have to do a damned thing, but see a doctor when I want. That's pretty powerful.
2) It makes American companies more competitive. One of the chief reasons that GM went belly up is because their interiors of their cars were not as good as their foreign counterparts. Why the difference? Well, GM had to pick up a $1000 difference per car and that translates to health care costs. IF we had single payer, corporations would not have to pay for health insurance. There would be no need for corporate plan administrators, and so forth.
3) More privacy. There's no need for your corporate boss to know about your health care.
4) Better risk management. We've watched insurers merge one after the other, to get better economies of scale and also to have a better risk pool. Size matters in insurance and the chief complaint against any federal plan is that health insurance won't be competitive. Geez, that's some argument. Its one thing to say that government sucks and isn't as good, but its quite another to say that private people have some right to not compete against the government when the delivery of a service is at issue. If UPS can win against the Post Office, then Aetna needs to quit whining about an expanded Medicare.
5) Rationing should be democratic. We all know that ultimately we, me, you and I, are driving health care into the ground. We're Americans and when one of our loved ones is dying, we don't say, gee, that's too bad. WE grab the doctor by the throat and say "save him!" Our desire to save everyone we know, regardless of the cost, is what makes us a great people. Even if we cannot, we are better for having tried, because, as we try, we learn, and some day, we will. In the meantime though, there are sometimes that we must say no, and it is more fare that such times should be held to a vote among all of us, rich and poor, citizens all, than, some stuffy boardroom with insurance doctors picking random things that stuff the balance sheet.
6) Government is not evil. You cannot say that you think Government is evil when you support our military. Our Army is socialized weaponry, and they kick ass. We got 4300 empty helmets on rifles in Iraq, of people working for the US Government. Show me the p
This is my sig.
Didn't Hillary take about $850K to drop her push for universal health care around 1994? That is Michael Moore tells us, any Mikey is not exactly a right winger.
My guess is: the health care companies will give Obama a pile of money, and that will be the end of it.
It is not a dem vs repub thing (both parties are corrupt, IMO), it's just the way things work in the USA.
Lobbyists literally write the bills, which congress will rubber-stamp after the appropriate "speaker's fees" or "service fees."
It's an easy correlation, dipfuck. Malpractice caps are a reaction to insanely high medical costs. That explains the correlation very simply, doesn't it? Go cry in the corner.
Now, for your assertion that the .5% methodology holds, and the experience of every doctor I've talked to is wrong (besides the GP, and everyone else who's talked to doctors) If we assume, probably correctly, that a lot of the cost of health care is that people don't go to their GP because health care is too expensive, then tort reform will have a disproportionately large affect.
Why? Small offices (GP's) bear a huge liability insurance burden. If that goes away, the cost of preventative medicine goes down. That, in turn, means that fewer people will need hospitalization, reducing the total expense of health care. QED.
You're still an asslicking fucktard.
Robert
I don't agree with socialized medicine, but if the government pushes this through I'm cancelling the health coverage for my employees because it cost to damn much to keep. I'm not the only small business to think about this ether just ask around, providing health care is a huge pain in the ass, and employees don't even understand how much it costs to give coverage to families and all the other BS the government makes you do. I'll go out on a limb and say independent health insurance companies won't make it 5 years after this goes through.
... there is fair and level playing field?
This oughtta be rich!
I hope you're not suggesting sugar, in and of itself, causes diabetes...
The problem with a state run insurance plan is that that the state has never made anything more efficient. Ever.
Except perhaps the fire department, post office and schools. In the last two cases, we have private and semi-private solutions competing against state based solutions, which seems to work well enough. I guess that means that one solution doesn't fit all situations.
On another note, it costs 11x as much to treat a broken leg in the USA than in Canada, purely from a billing perspective. Clearly the private insurance companies don't have sufficient incentives to keep prices low - perhaps because of a conflict of interest. So it seems that once again laissez-faire economics can introduce inefficiencies.
I'm 100% pro free-market, contingent upon when it works better. The history of public and private institutions shows that private institutions work better most of the time, but not all of the time. I thus support public schools, fire departments, police, libraries and health care. It's not perfect world.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Insurance (of any kind) is an exchange where you pay a higher average (i.e. expected value) in exchange for a smaller variability in the outcome (statistical variance or standard deviation).
For example, suppose that each year one out of ten people one will incur a $10000 medical expense while the others incur no expense. The average cost is $1000, but there is a wide variability ($0-$10000).
Now suppose an insurance company charges $1100. If you take the insurance your average costs would be $100 higher. However, you have also eliminated variability. You no longer have to worry about being surprised by a $10000 bill. Instead you know exactly how much you will have to pay each year.
For things that have only a small amount of variability (e.g. utilities), insurance does not make sense. However, for things (e.g. house burning down) where there is a small but very real chance (e.g. 1 in 10000) of a very high cost (e.g. $100,000), insurance decreases the risk of financial ruin in case you happen to be the unlucky 1 in 10000.
It's not irony. That's just being open minded. If MA's plan worked in MA, then why not try it out on a bigger scale?
I would rather have single payer. There. I said it. I would rather have single payer. Part of it is because of a political deal I cut with my wife and part of it is because I think health insurance companies are dicks anyway, but I think single payer is the way to go.
This is my sig.
What is their diet and exercise habit? Where is your study that compares the same economic-socio groups.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So basically, instead of bringing the US health care system up to the same low cost universal coverage every other modern nation has we should all suffer just because idiots like you and your fucked in the head right wing ideology?
So basically, in thinking that the government is somehow going to magically make the cost of medical care go down if we just hand our lives over to them, you fell victim to one of the classic left wing ideological blunders! The most famous is never be seduced by the illusion that government institutions are more efficient than free market ones. And only slightly less well known is this: never argue with a fool, it might be hard to tell you apart.
You should be more concerned about education, particularly English spelling and grammar.
Slashdot = Sarcasm
You're all forgetting one thing. . . do you really want to put your health in the hands of the federal government? I don't know how many of you are veterans but have you been to the VA Hospital lately?
We have a health care system to overhaul??
It's still 2009 isn't it?
under the current us system, if you are poor, there are plenty of robust failsafes like medicare, medicaid, state programs, etc, that guarantee your health at no or very little cost
if you are rich, well, you're rich: you can pay for your healthcarte
but, and here's the big one: if you are middle class, and you get a major health problem, you have to declare bankruptcy. and even if you are well, you have nothing but grief: cobra has a time limit, preexisting conditions deny your healthcare, horrible deductibles, bureaucrats denying your claims (i love the argument that govt run healthcare will mean your healthcare will be decided by bureaucrats: HEY MORONS, WHO DECIDES YOUR HEALTHCARE DECISIONS RIGHT NOW? CORPORATE BUREAUCRATS!)
from a completely cynical point of view, healthcare reform makes simple political sense because the american middle class are being shafted in the current system, and they hate the current system. it makes simple obvious political common sense to address how much the american middle class hates their current healthcare system. that's really the bottom line here. the current system is politically indefensible... unless some lobbyist lines your pockets of course
represent the people, washington dc assholes, not the lobbyists. and the people's desires are loud and clear: govt run healthcare, a vast improvement over our current system
no matter how many problems you can find with govt run healthcare, our current system SUCKS FAR WORSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/health/policy/21poll.html
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Love the quality and dedication of any govt run bureaucracy? The stellar care you get at a VA hospital? Newsflash, when the govt runs things, they inherently create inefficiency and indifference. Most govt employees in these huge bureaucracies dont give a shit. They draw a paycheck, often are unionized (and hence difficult to fire without some sort of overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing), and basically just want to hang on, do minimal work, and get public retirement. And you people want to turn over the healthcare system to CONGRESS???
In other words, we should force people to stop doing something because a forwarded email written by some woo-woo kool-aid drinker said that, facts be damned, it's bad? Brilliant health care plan you've got there.
I think the larger point is that health care is so expensive that we cannot afford to pay for it ourselves, and that, if an insurance company cannot operate profitably, it means probably that health care is too expensive for society as a whole.
I think it's possible that just as rising home prices were driven by rising practice of purchasing on credit, medical care costs may be getting more expensive in no small part because insurance makes them that way. It means that it's possible to charge costs higher than a market without it would bear.
Not that health care is much of a "market" really. It's darn near impossible to find out how much anything beyond an office visit and very simple procedures even cost, much less make comparisons and estimates of quality of service. I'm not sure if this is again a function of insurance, or if it's that the demand for care greatly outstrips supply, but it doesn't seem health care providers actually compete for patients.
Tweet, tweet.
Hey AC, why aren't you paying for slashdot? Oh right, you don't want to pay for it yourself as long as someone else does...
And that's right, I don't want to pay a crapload for health bills, nor a smaller amount for Slashdot.
Face it the reason the US doesn't have public health care is because the political system is corrupt and panders to every big corporate group in existence. The will to make a profit over rides the health of the population. It is a model for a pandemic.
Canada's health care costs are skyrocketing. Canada will not be able to afford providing universal health-care within a decade or two. To add insult to injury, we have people dying in waiting lists. You wait 9 months for an MRI here. No joke.
I know a lot of Canadians who swear by our health care. Guess how many of them have ever had more than a cough? ... Take it from someone who has actually had to rely on the system for something like serious like surgery: it's very poor. My wife was on a 2 year waiting list for major back surgery because (in her doctor's words) "there are people in front of you who have already become paralyzed while waiting for surgery. You simply have to wait your turn." Excuse me for not wanting to become permanently crippled.
In Israel, all citizens must be covered by a health care provider. There are four national providers to choose from that must provide the same basic services at the same price. Providers differentiate themselves by offering locations, doctors, and premium services (dental care, etc) for whopping cost of $10 a month. You don't need to pay for any of this because basic health care is more than enough.
In short, you end up with the benefit of national health care with the low prices of a competitive market. Israel's health care is one of the few in the world that provides first rate service without the associated skyrocketing prices. Oh, and did I mention that if you walk into the hospital with an emergency you'll be seen within 30 minutes? It's 8 hours on average in Canada.
The health insurance situation in the US can be vastly improved with one simple change: Make it ILLEGAL for any group (usually employers) to get preferential pricing from health insurance companies. Insurance should cost the same for any two people in the same situation, including taxes. I have my own business so I have to pay a lot more for health insurance. I know companies pay part of employees premiums, but the total of employer contribution plus employee contribution plus taxes is a lot less than it is for people who are self employed or work for a small business.
This one simple change:
1. makes health insurance companies compete - people will shop around instead of just getting a provider chosen for you by your employer.
2. makes everyone realize what they are really paying for heath care. When things come out of a paycheck like taxes, people seem to accept it more than if they had to write out a check for it each month. If people realized how expensive it is they would be outraged and more likely to shop around or get involved politically. Most people don't need the low deductible, cover-everything plans some of employers offer at low costs - they would probably lower their coverage if paying for it out of pocket. Anytime people aren't paying with their own money costs skyrocket (just ask politicians). "Oh look, he has good insurance, let's run this test and this treatment too, your insurance will cover it"
The issues of pre-existing conditions and people who can't afford any form of health insurance are different. If you let anyone get medical treatment without paying, and cover pre-existing conditions, then you are no longer talking about INSURANCE which is a hedge against unforeseen problems. Then you are talking about government-run health CARE, which would likely be the end of the private health insurance industry as we know it. Whether or not that a good thing is an a different argument, but with all of their lobbyists I don't see it happening anytime soon, so let's start by fixing health insurance, and go from there.
Open Source is Common Sense: http://groovix.com/
40% of white people didn't vote for Barack Obama because of the color of his skin.
If Barack Obama were white he would have gotten 95% of the white vote. The other 5% are just the ones with a slutty flight attendant fetish.
paintball
Republican Leaders, you are not welcome and you are a joke in every sense of the word. Want proof? Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4Syk09MSsc
I'm tired of the games, the lies, the deceptions. People's lives are on the line and the republicans and some democrats have the fucking nerve to play politics as usual and treat us as if we're their little children they distract with lies and misdirection.
FUCK OFF REPUBLICAN LEADERS... You're a joke. These are serious times and we need SERIOUS PEOPLE WITH SERIOUS SOLUTIONS.
Enough really is enough.
Personally, I would rather have Single Payer Universal Healthcare but the democrats lack the balls to stand up for whats right. Call em up and call them out.
Its time to chip away the fat from washington one liar at a fucking time.
Get rid of that stuff and we will see a LOT less need for healthcare and a lot less obesity.
Yeah, we'd lots of starving and dead people.
Moron
Yes, I am afraid he is. And that is the kind of misinformation that just makes things worse... worse that the people who think we have the best there is. Even Fricken Mexico has better Coca-Cola than we do in the U.S. (Just so you know, HFCS {high fructose corn syrup} isn't something the human body can process well. Sugar is definitely better for you.)
So add to the list of serious requirements in addition to reforms in the FDA, we need some serious education and unbiased research. We don't need the dairy counsel recommending higher and higher USRDA for milk every year as we do now. (Seriously, milk people recommend we drink more milk!! Can you imagine that?! The same guys who have been lobbying the FDA to change the definition of "organic" because their milk doesn't fir the description!)
I just watched that movie "Idiocracy" tonight... accidentally. But its message was clear -- what happens when business runs/owns government. Business interests aren't what's best for the people. The government is supposed do what's best for the people and at the moment, we have "immortal corporate persons" receiving pretty much whatever it wants at the expense of the people. It's a mess.
The FDA has the power to regulate what food stuff is sold to the public and so far they are getting rid of certain kinds of oils used for frying. It's progress but a LONG way is still ahead. It doesn't mean we don't get our junk food and crap. The junk food made in the past was a LOT healthier than the crap we are eating today... healthier and more delicious on top of it. We need to go back to the good stuff... well, a lot of it anyway. (not all)
Stop. We know you're lying.
The Canadian system doesn't work. We know that because we've been told so by our politicians , and they should know because they get a lot of contributions from the health care system and go to a lot of cocktail parties. And we've been told it so many times that we know it's true.
The approximately 20% growth health care stocks showed for at least a decade, back when I paid attention, was because they were so amazing and efficient and wonderful, not because they were siphoning off more and more of our healthcare dollars.
The paperwork is good because it generates jobs. Jobs we NEED. The American system is the best in the world. A Canadian-style system would cost us a fortune and kill us with crappy care. You won't get to choose your own doctor. You'll wait for surgery, the hospitals will fall apart and no one will ever become a doctor again. You should know all that. Haven't you been watching TV?
I think the important thing is that that waste is OURS. We pay for that waste. So it ought to be the people who get the waste, not the investors of a corporation.
We pay $50. We get $20 worth of healthcare. The companies waste $20 and pocket $10.
If the gov gives us $20 worth of healthcare and wastes $20, it still only costs us $40. We get to keep the $10.
I'm a little tired of paying $50 for some disposable blue paper slippers in a hospital. I want the profit on that crap to go back in my pocket.
You are absolutely correct. And to add to this, those uninsured people only come in when they're critical, when it costs buckets of money to help them. They never come in for preventative care or advice. The system is designed to financially screw us and to keep them alive with lowest productivity. Perfect.
... will we be able to cancel it and go back to a free market system? If the answer is 'no', let's not do this. I only gamble when I'm in Vegas, not with the other 99.999999% of my life.
Someone tell me how a huge, wasteful new American bureaucracy won't result from this? That's not a good thing! I'm not arguing that US health care isn't expensive, nor that we don't need REFORM. But, why rush into the waiting arms of the government when they're just going to hug the life out of us?
I dunno, universal health care in the unique case of **THE UNITED STATES** just seems foolish. We are unlike the UK or Canada in so many respects.
Oh, and by the way, when you decide to grow the government, you grow ALL of the government including the parts you don't like. Don't like war? You'll be allowing that to happen more with this big move...
There are several problems with introducing a govt. mandated health insurance scheme here in the US, and many of the comments here seem to reflect huge misunderstandings in what we have now.
We already have govt. programs to cover the poor and the elderly. These are the main cause of overall health expense increases.
Half of all medical expenses occur in the final months of life when treatments are of generally little use. 90% of expenses are for those over the age of 62 and covered by medicare in part.
Seniors in the US have the longest life expectancy in the world. Life expectancy at birth is actually a lousy statistic to use to compare things. Life expectancy at age 21 is better.
Our open borders provides incentives for poor immigrants to come in to the US for welfare and medical coverage that other countries don't provide.
Americans have poor health habits in general and require more health care on average. Americans of equal wealth, age, race and education have lower life expectancies than their counterparts in Great Britain. No one is sure why.
Americans are not used to rationing and self-restraint and will demand coverage for many conditions and tests that are currently denied in other countries. This will make a govt. program for the middle class (which is what we are really talking about) very expensive.
This will require cutting back on military spending that other countries do not have. We also provide lifetime coverage for veterans, btw.
We have very limited tort restrictions, which makes malpractice insurance very expensive. This is not going to change.
Bankruptcies due to medical bills are largely orchestrated to obtain more medicare coverage for the elderly because nursing home care is not covered unless you demonstrate that you are poor. Thus, the elderly sell off their assets to become poor in order to be covered. It's something of a scam. The remaining cases are largely the result of paying for cancer treatments that are not offered in other countries and often serve little or no purpose medically.
While you can lump together other countries and say they have single-payer systems, they are hardly identical. What model should we adopt?? The Canadian model that forbids private coverage? This would be unconstitutional. The British model that has a mix of govt. and private services? The French model of govt. sponsored health insurance?
From an economics point of view, any superior system should win out in a market-based test. For example, were the Canadian system that much superior to the US system, the Canadian govt. could open up it's own hospitals here in the US and sell insurance at Canadian tax rates to Americans. Americans can thus have Canadian health care here in the US--provided to us by Canadians! Why are they not able or willing to do this? The same is true for the British, French, German, etc. systems. The British are willing to send some of their patients to France because NHS hospital backlogs are so long, and some treatments so hard to obtain in the UK, that British courts have ruled they must pay to have the services done regardless, even if it means sending citizens overseas.
If you watch Prime Minister's Question Time on C-Span, half the questions in some weeks are about the wait-times for services provided by the NHS or about the unavailability of NHS hospital service in some areas. The British system is two-tiered, with the well-off getting private care and the poor or middle-class getting NHS care.
Doctors in the US are the highest paid in the world, and this accounts for a lot of our extra expense. This is not going to change.
This is the kind of bullshit socialism you get for putting Democrats in charge.
Reading input after input of this here debate I must admit that I thank God that I do not live in the US. I live in Denmark, Europe, and we have had socialized medicine since the early 1900' And you know what?? It works just fine. AND we pay for it by our taxes, amongst other things.
Now I read a lot about what's going down in the US. And I can't stop laughing every time I read an American claim that we in Europe still live in the dark ages. We don't. We, at least in Denmark, live in at highly sophisticated society lead by a conservative government, regulated by some laws in the EU, much like your own system with congress and House of Parliament.
I Denmark no one has to live with the fear of being denied treatment on a hospital, or by a general practice doctor. The only thing needed to be changed in the US to obtain universal health care is your way of thinking. We call it solidarity with your fellow human beings, and true Christian behavior. To us you Americans have but ONE God: Money. Every thing you do is measured by how much money it gives you. Not the satisfactory of helping a fellow human being in need of it. But who am I to judge you? I hope the very best for all of you. God be with you.
I just had a relative in another country die, waiting for their national healthcare program to call and say they had space/resources available to help them.
National Healthcare is NOT the job of our Federal Govt!
WAKE UP AMERICA! Obama is NOT your friend and can hardly be called an American!
The problem, as you point out, is with the Department of Agriculture's policies, not the FDA.
I'm pretty sure that if you were born in this country, that makes you an American, whether or not you agree with that person's policy positions.
Also, I don't see how a national healthcare system would keep anyone from obtaining private healthcare. If the gov't can't treat you fast enough then pony up and pay for treatment like you would have had to in the first place.
Don't you have something better to do with your mod points than systematically modding down all of my posts as "offtopic" or "overrated" even when they're spot-on? What did I ever do to offend you so badly that you're obsessed with harassing me? Seriously, get a life you dimwit.
I'm 100% pro free-market, contingent upon when it works better. The history of public and private institutions shows that private institutions work better most of the time, but not all of the time. I thus support public schools, fire departments, police, libraries and health care. It's not perfect world.
Then I applaud you. That is easily the most rational attitude I have seen toward the free market on slashdot.
The reason that rare animal known as the political moderate is more often right than ideological hard-liners, is because moderation is unburdened with dogma. To say the free market always works best, which is the view of the economic right-wing, is as incorrect as to say it never works. "Always" and "Never" are usually wrong when applied to economics, or indeed reality as a whole beyond a very basic level.
Insurance companies are profit making entities. Yes they can save you sometimes. But their goal is to screw you anyway possible for a buck. After all, we are not their customers. Are employers our.
Before you think my views sound extreme let me give you some background.
Example I just paid $750 for care 7 months ago and I was insured. Why? My wife's former employer switched PPO's during the time of treatment. Each one cited it was the other ones problem and refused. I am trying to sue for damages in a small claims court. The paperwork says company X is responsible. Company X claims company Y handles all calls due to the contract and hangs up. Company Y says I was not part of their coverage yet so it was company X. My wife quit work 2 months later so company x is trying to comp out saying oh well she doesn't work for them anymore so we just wont pay.
Anyway this has been going on for months where one will hang up on me and hte other will say you were not covered by us yet. Turns out the billing for the services also involve 3 outsourced companies that much approve everything and one just bills the other depending on the care. Its a mess.
How many homes destroyed in New Orleans had insurance pick up the bill? 0. The insurance company claimed it was a flood while the flood insurance company claimed it was a hurricane.
Insurance companies hire tens of thousands of people each year to figure out clever ways to screw people by not paying what they claimed they are bond to cover. They even let people die by withholding life saving procedures until its too late. If the patient dies then they do not have to pay it.
They are a totally evil entity.
http://saveie6.com/
Are you implying that either the VA or Medicaid is GOOD?
Well don't that beat all.
The main reason for future in increase in health care spending is not the uninsured. It is the ageing population. In coming decades a smaller workforce has to pay for everything. Spending will increase significantly. For some info see I.O.U USA.
However there is a way to combat this. A shift in attitude is needed and it won't be easy. Here is my two cents:
People in the US need to pay more taxes. Don't kill me yet, I will explain.
Ever since the Reagan era election slogans have revolved around cutting taxes. This has made paying tax a larger mental burden than it is in most other countries. As the US used to be the land of milk and honey everybody believed that the US should have all basic social commodities usually associated with a industrialized state. The feeling however was that this could be realized without footing the bill. Now it is abundantly clear that nobody picked up the check and instead a needlessly money draining system is in place.
Looking to other industrialized countries with lower or similar GDP spending on health care and a more comprehensive health care system, the difference is obvious. These countries have higher tax rates. In these countries the notion that if you want to enjoy certain benefits like (infrastructure, health care, pensions etc.) they have to be paid for. I'm not saying people like paying tax, but it is not such red flag in front of peoples eyes.
In addition to paying more taxes a major overhaul of the system is needed. The free market principle doesn't have a humanitarian earmark. For services as health care this is sorely needed. As most would agree it is insane if in the US people would die in the streets just because they couldn't afford health care. This does not constitute a wealthy industrialized nation which upholds basic human rights. No sense in preaching freedom as a basic right when other basic rights are neglected.
Enough ranting. For a more eloquent discussion look up some of Jeffrey Sachs's views on the subject.
I thought the whole point of insurance was to protect me if something unforseen randomly happened, like getting in a car crash, that would really be a big financial strain.
Or like death, something that certainly will happen. Of course, insurance companies and libertarians may prefer to make sick people pay more, but just as well stores would prefer to get customers' money without giving them products. The world does not exist to provide them revenue, they exist to serve sick people.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The biggest problem that I have with nationalized health care is that it effectively guarantees that we're stuck with paying for health care using the insurance model for the rest of our days. The trouble with insurance is that, in theory, less money is supposed to be spent than is put in. This guarantees that there will always be profiteering and "waste" - that's why insurance works. If we didn't already legislate the insurance model so thoroughly already, market-based innovations like interest-bearing health savings accounts might be able to take a better hold.
In an ideal world, I'd like to see all health care spending be tax deductible. If my employer wants to spend money on insurance for me, great. If my employer wants to put money in an interest-bearing health account, like a 401k or something similar, so much the better, provided it's portable from job to job. Heck, if my employer just pays my bills directly - sweet! Let them earn their tax credit either way, and if I choose to do the same, well, let's encourage that, too. It'll never happen, though, especially if this bill gets passed. Besides, all of the market-based innovation in payment methods in the world isn't going to change one basic, simple fact:
Health care is scarce.
There is a finite supply of people willing and capable of being doctors and, due to generational constraints (fewer people in the younger generations than during the Boomer generations), there are fewer and fewer of them than there used to be. Meanwhile, more and more people are consuming more and more health care. This isn't just a case of the Baby Boomers getting older, though that's a big part of it. The other part is that the health care industry can do far more than it could in, say, 1950. In 1930, if you had an infection, they gave you sulfates and told you to start praying. Nowadays, we have books that list nothing but types of antibiotics. We can transplant organs, cure most kinds of cancer if we catch it soon enough, cure nearly any imaginable infection, and on and on and on. If I get an ingrown toenail now, I see a doctor (possibly even a podiatrist - specialist rates!). If I got an ingrown toenail in 1930, I probably would have grabbed a bottle of whiskey and a pocketknife. Simply put, the health care industry can provide far more services than it could years ago, increasing demand, while also seeing fewer and fewer people willing to provide the services. As long as that dynamic is true, it won't matter how we pay for health care. If we try to make it cheap, there will be increased scarcity, which means longer waits for procedures. If we try to make it plentiful, such that nobody has to wait, it will be expensive. That's just the way it is.
If you really want to make health care affordable, you need to loosen up who provides non-emergency health care. This might involve getting nurses involved, but they're nearly as scarce as doctors right now. This might involve robots - heck, Japan's been playing with them in health care for years. This might involve computerized quizzes - fill in some blanks (I have the sniffles but I don't have a fever) and receive a diagnosis (You have a cold or mild allergies). In short, think of it sort of like IT. You don't need to throw a CCNA or MCITP/MCSE at every infected workstation - why should you throw a doctor at every minor ailment? Yeah, I know - when you're holding a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, but there's some wisdom here.
In the end, no matter how you shuffle the cards around, it will never change the fact that, as long as health care is as scarce as it is (and there's no reason to suggest it won't be anytime soon), it will be expensive, one way or another. There isn't a Republican or Democrat sponsored piece of legislation in the world that will ever change that.
Comprehensive universal healthcare is a basic human right.
I find it unbelievable that the United States is willing to borrow massive amounts to fund its imperial foreign policy, yet it won't provide proper healthcare for its own sick.
Even many Third World countries have a better overall standard of healthcare provision.
Medical costs will have to be brought under control. Firstly, the private sectors blatant profiteering needs to be reigned in. Look at the profits of some of these companies! Secondly, patents on drugs need to be abolished. They are leading to artificial scarcity, and stifling innovation and competition. This will lead to more collaborative and open development of new drugs, and accelerate progress.
I'm just happy that I don't live in America.
If this passes and it makes health care mandatory doesn't that hurt the economy. This bill is going to cost the people about 1.5 trillion dollars. Forcing employers to insure their employees is going to hurt small businesses and may even bankrupt them which in turn will cause a loss in jobs. What about the people that will be forced to get a health care plan that in the governments eyes can afford it but in reality can't and on top of that with 1.5 trillion coming from tax paying citizens they are being hit twice once for paying for their insurance and again for the people who can't.
My COBRA coverage got pulled at about the 1/2 point because my old company was small and both of the spouses had coverage, so at the annual renew time, they just stopped offering health.
After talking with an Insurance rep that I have used for company insurance at a few places, it became clear that my family and I would NEVER get personal health insurance. Currently, I suffer from chronic foot pain (for the past 6 years), my oldest son suffers from depression and bi-polar disorder (for the past 4 years), and my wife gets migraines (from childhood). You can see why an insurance company would not want to touch us, but we still need insurance.
As my COBRA ran out my agent tried to get us on a temporary plan. We know that if we claim the meds that my son and I require, $2,000 to $3000 a month, we will also not be allowed to re-up the temp plan. We decided that we would not claim any of the chronic things that we have to deal with so that we have the plan if we have a major issue, but once we do, we no for sure that we will not be allowed to re-up.
For the temp plan we went with a carrier that haven't been covered by for over 12 years. But we were denied coverage by this carrier because they had on record that...
1) My wife had been treated for headaches.
2) One of my 2 sons had been treated for a sore throat.
OVER10 YEARS AGO!!
Those 2 reasons were all that it took to deny even temporary coverage.
We had to find a carrier that had never insured me and my family before just to get temp insurance.
We are still looking for a permanent option, but as we do our savings are being drained rapidly as we try and cover our ongoing issues. We need to minimize claims to preserve our temp insurance in case of a major issue. Because of that none of us are getting any ongoing treatment, so no one is getting any better. Were stuck with little chance at improving medically, and at this point we have not found an insurer who will offer us insurance at any price.
If you have now, or have ever had anything more that a minor medical issue, your chance of getting coverage as an individual are effectively 0%
I have been looking for work for 2 years, sending out, and following up on at least a dozen job openings ever month (12 is my self imposed min). While the economy is bad I have no idea if I will be able to get a job, and while I am in this catch 22 I am spending more and more of my time trying to find coverage.
In the mean time, I have one of my cars for sale, family jewelry is listed, and while our house is not under water, real estate is not exactly booming either.
I dunno. Does my government really want me to be broke, unemployed, and perhaps homeless, before I can get health care for my family?
Or can they come up with some way for people to purchase coverage, to allow them to get healthy, before they loose everything?
Eschew Obfuscation
And here I thought I was blocking Politics.
The FDA is the gateway to mass consumer food. If there was one organization that could ban the sale of "X" to consumers in the U.S., it would be the FDA. Surely, the Department of Agriculture could play a role, but that would take cooperation and result in even more finger-pointing. The FDA is the single gateway. If the FDA says you can't sell it, the Agri-industrialists would have to comply or else grow for export only.
The brilliant health care plan is based on what causes people to have the massive problems we have in the U.S. today. Problems, mind you, that do not exist in significant quantities in nations that ALREADY regulate in the ways I am suggesting. If by some amazing feat, obesity and diabetes is reduced to being rare and unusual conditions, it would wipe out nearly every other commonly-linked health condition under the sun including common forms of cancer.
The fact that neither I nor my family haven't been sick since we've been more aware of what we take in could be merely coincidence and possibly even genetic. But when you see other nations practicing regulations that do not yet exist in the U.S. with nation-wide similar positive results, you have to sit up and take note.
When the vast majority of health problems we see today are closely tied to being overweight or obese, you have to start looking for a cause rather than looking for hundreds or thousands of separate cures and treatments. We are NOT going to be successful at adapting the human body to better handle the food we eat, so we will have to simply handle the food we eat better.
I have reviewed your posting and comment history and it is clear you're simply thoughtless and snarky. If it means changing or even considering anything other that "common thought" you have little that is nice to say. How's that for name calling? If you want to say "facts be damned" how about stating a few that counter my arguments?
If you don't like the duties of the federal government spelled out in the constitution - amend it. Don't ignore it.
Why does the US have a national health service, like say here in the UK? It's a bit of a joke that one of the most powerful countries in the world falls so far behind when it comes to the health of it's poor and impoverished, can America really see this situation extending to the next century, and can't it see that so many of it's social problems stem from the simple fact that certain parts of it's "society" (look up that word) can't even have their health care guaranteed by the state which is supposed to look after their interests?
What actual use is a government if it can't guarantee the most basic and important facet of living, people's health??
That's effectively how it works in Canada. You go into ER, the triage nurse sees you, checks your vitals, takes your case history, and tells you to sit down. You get seen based on available resources (if you are having issues with your pregnancy, no sense handing you off to the cardiologist.
If you're there for stupid things, you're gonna be waiting for a while. That encourages you to see a doctor instead, as it should be.
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
That about sums it up.
Worst case scenario. Take what you currently pay for health insurance. The most reliable figure would be for a plan you pay for yourself. In my case, a plain-vanilla 80/20 from Blue Cross costs me $344 a month. Multiply that by 12 and then by 300,000,000. That gives you 1,238,400,000,000. That's 1.2 trillion dollars PER YEAR!!! And that doesn't even cover 100%. Okay so they say roughly 42.6 million are uninsured. That alone would be 175,852,800,000. $175 billion. Every year. Forever. That works out to over $586 in extra taxes that all 300 million of us would have to ante up just to cover the uninsured. But that assumes that every American pays taxes which we all know they don't. You could probably safely double that number. Figure around $1000 in taxes JUST TO COVER THE UNINSURED. That's a pretty scary number to me and that doesn't include the inevitable fact that government programs always balloon way beyond their initial projections. So you do the math. How would you like it if someone came up to you and told you that you'd have to fork over an extra grand every year for life? Show me where in the Constitution it says that you are entitled to free health care and I'll then suggest you read the 10th Amendment.
Slashdot readers will remember that I was victim of medical malpractice in Quebec. If anyone wants to read my story, I posted it on ratemds.com.
because that would require ratifying by the people, and they cannot be trusted to vote for the correct option.
Poor people. There will always be poor people. Even in Soviet Russia, Cuba, and other government-centric nations there have always been poor people. The difference between the US and the rest of the world is OPPORTUNITY. You have the opportunity not to be poor. You have the opportunity to choose your profession, to pursue an education, to work multiple jobs and to MAKE CHOICES. Every time the US Govt takes over an industry, it destroys choice. If you say otherwise, you are ignorant. Stop watching CNN and Jerry Springer, read a book (or several hundred).
If you want innovation, if you want new and wonderful drugs, therapies, and treatments, an open and competitive society is the BEST way. If you want "a goverment of the people, by the government, for the government", rewrite the Constitution. Don't slip it into unconstitutional legislation. Ever hear of the Economy Act? Ever actually read the Constitution?
You have no right to free healthcare, you have no right to handouts, you have no right to a federal government that will wipe your whiny butt. You have a right to LIFE, LIBERTY, and the PURSUIT of happiness.
I'm so sick of liberals who had their mommy and daddy pay their way through college, or got a federal grant, decide that they know best for everyone else. The backbone of a free society is liberty and a work ethic. YOU are responsible for YOU.
If you want to take care of everyone else, do it with YOUR OWN MONEY. It's not charitable or ethical to take my money and give it to others and declare yourself virtuous.
I propose an alternate system I call "open healthcare" which basically amounts to "make health care like every other industry" There are 4 parts:
1. Forbid employers from sponsoring health care.
2. Eliminate enrollment periods
3. Eliminate tax breaks, or make them consistent
4. Require accurate labeling
5. Reasonable scope of coverage
Let me explain:
1) Forbid employers from sponsoring health care.
Employers don't sponsor cell phones, cable bills, car insurance, ... so why health insurance? It gives large companies a competitive advantage, and puts individuals at a disadvantage. People who switch jobs frequently, such as younger people, students, contractors, or low-skill/wage workers are penalized when the only affordable health care is via their employer. Employees are told that they will pay $100/month for health insurance -- but then when they switch jobs they find it was $500/month, with the employer paying $400 of it, and now they are stuck with really expensive health care that they didn't need. Part of that is caused by enrollment periods when they switch jobs.
It also makes it difficult to compare jobs. I just met a new hire who switched jobs for the benefits -- only to realize that in reality, he will be paying more. :-(
2) Eliminate enrollment periods
- Businesses often only offer health insurance benefits if the employee has been there for a month, 6 months, or a year. This means that if someone switches jobs, they are stuck with their old plan, but without the employer paying for part of it. So they either pay a fortune (under a system like COBRA), go uninsured, or get their own private insurance
- Individuals often can't get insurance without waiting for an enrollment period. Some people don't even realize that you CAN get individual insurance. But insurance companies are setup to work with groups, so they are often reluctant to offer it. Imagine for a moment if you went to a store and took a can of peas up to the register, and then were told that unless you were already signed-up, you would have to wait until the enrollment period (3 months from now) before you could sign-up to buy the peas. That's silly, and that supermarket would go out of business. But this is how health insurance works, and they get away with it because there are very few alternatives, and all the companies do it.
3) Eliminate tax breaks, or make them consistent
- Employers get tax breaks for providing employee health care. Yet individuals do not. That's not fair to individuals and small businesses.
4) Require labeling
- Imagine a grocery store with no prices anywhere. You must go to the counter, then give them $100 per item. Then, at the end of the month, they return the difference between what you paid, and the actual price.
- Capitalism only works if the consumer can compare products and services accurately. Labeling laws achieve this in other sectors, and those should be extended to health insurance companies. They must be required to provide accurate, detailed, pricing information in a form that can be comparatively shopped. They need to provide enough information that someone can put together a scenario and know the cost. "Suppose I join today, then get XXXX performed next week, then YYY performed the next month, then I come down with ZZZZ and need AAA medication -- what will that cost?"
- Scott Adams calls health insurance a confuse-opoly. Health insurance companies do not disclose their costs accurately -- even to doctors! For example, they say they will pay 75% of covered services - but not tell you what services are covered. And 75% of what? The insurance company has a fee schedule, and a doctor must adhere to that fee schedule, but even the doctors aren't given a copy of it! They have to bill a higher amount, then see how much the insurance company provides!
5) Reasonable scope of coverage
- Insurance companies should be required to provide
>>Bad news: your 15% figure is out of date. We're now spending 17% of our GDP on health care, and if the trend of the 2000s continues, we'll be at 30% by 2020.
Independent of the rest of your post, your rising healthcare cost trend made me wonder how much of that is caused by our aging 'baby boomer' population. And on a related note, I am curious if other industrialized nations have the same phenomenon, and if so, if it is as pronounced as it is here in the U.S.
Can anyone shed some light on this for me? Does France, Canada, Japan, et al. have an aging boomer population that is also raising the healthcare percentage of their GDP?
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
How about this for a reason not to support the "plan"...
THE DEMOCRATS/SOCIALISTS DON'T HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO DO IT!
Nowhere in the Constitution of the United States is medical care listed. The 10th Amendment specifically states that ONLY those powers SPECIFICALLY granted are allowable, the rest are left to the States and Individuals.
I also saw several reasons for the lower cost of (superior) care:
Think global, act loco
Why do you think this? Insurance companies profit by denying coverage and accepting premiums. What is the benefit to the government in denying coverage? I lived in Europe and this shit just never happened.
Think global, act loco
To preserve funds, just like insurance companies.
But I think if you have a pre-existing condition you should be shuffled into a government program that covers your costs since you most likely cannot cover them yourself.
So insurance companies will keep the profits from healthy people, while transferring unhealthy people to the government program? Ever hear the phrase "keep costs public and profits private?"
Take, for example, HIV treatment. Most people probably couldn't afford the cocktail that keeps them alive. But I don't think its too terrible to throw in a couple bucks of year in taxes per person to help another guy stay alive, as long as he doesn't bitch about Republicans, in which case, I'd vote to cut him off.
So people should give up their free speech if they want healthcare?
Doctor: Here is your life-saving pill, but first, what are your feelings about Republicans*?
Patient: Ummmmm
* If you still don't understand, substitute: Democrats, The Green Party, Progressives, Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, Italians, Chinese, Iraqis, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Koreans, Women, Homosexuals, The Poor, The Rich, The Pretty, The Ugly, The Intellectual, The Uneducated, The Crippled, The Famous, The Selfish, Your Employer, The Homeless, Your Neighbor. If you think you're open-minded, seriously, try inserting each of those groups in your original sentence, and remember that if you answer wrong your healhcare will be cut off.
House Resolution 676 has more than 200 sponsors and calls for free, universal health care for Americans. It gets no press and will languish while these "reform" measures will pass with lots of media hubbub. Meanwhile, I (and 46,999,999 other Americans) won't be any closer to being treated like human beings instead of walking bags of money when we enter a medical facility.
To the libertarian f*cktard who will inevitably say "keep the government out of my medical decisions": Are you happy with bean-counters in a New York office deciding whether you qualify for coverage?
I lie awake at night, wide-eyed with fear over a slight stomachache, not from hypochondria but from the potential of financial ruin before I'm 30.
If you do not enroll in a "qualified" health plan (and do not assume that your current health plan will qualify) and submit proof of enrollment to the federal government (i.e., IRS), then you'll be tracked down and fined (sections 3101, 6055). The fine will be enough "to accomplish the goal of enhancing participation in qualifying coverage" (section 161). Oh, and if you think the pain will be shared equally with the ruling political class, think again. Congress and federal employees are exempt from the tight, HMO-style controls in this bill (section 3116). Any American citizen who supports this bill as health care progress has to be either suicidal or filthy rich.
Where in the Constitution does the Federal government derive the authority to require & provide universal health care for citizens of the 50 states?
10 seconds in Google will show this the parent post is wrong.
Your tone sounds like you want to make medical care like the DMV, but visits to the DMV have shown me that I want nothing of the sort. I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or stupid.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
That, and we don't just let the idiots die. It's really expensive to keep an idiot alive.
This falls in line with what I often hear about laws mandating "perks" for employees: "OMG, what about capitalizm? Requiring businesses to spend money on their employees will hurt employers!"
NO.
By allowing companies to treat their employees like shit (no insurance, no sick days, no leave), we are actually creating an incentive for employers to treat their employees like shit, because it's cheaper. If we were to require all employers to give a minimum insurance, sick days and vacation time we wouldn't be upsetting the balance, we would actually be LEVELING the playing field by removing the ability to edge up the bottom line at the expense of workers.
Porquoi?
The difference between Obama and Clinton in the primaries was that he wanted to be sure every American has the chance to buy health insurance at an affordable price, and she wanted to force every American to buy health insurance whether they could afford it or not. Clinton wanted to fine employers who didn't provide insurance, and individuals who chose not to have it.
Clearly the Democrats favor the Clinton approach, and are intent on forcing another mandated lack of choice on the citizens, and if the cost of health care means you can't afford food or housing, at least you can get medical treatment.
The thing everyone seems to ignore is that even if you have insurance now, in many places you can't get health care! With great coverage and the means to pay cash if needed, an expensive trip to another part of the country may be needed to get care in a timely fashion. Any plan which doesn't include a means to increase the supply will only make thing worse. A plan must have funding to train doctors (not import them), stop closing hospitals in the name of cost control, and some incentive for people to participate in preventative care, like increased co-pay for those who don't.