one payer health care

[sodderboy]

My Canadian and French friends can pay extra for "care" above the promised mediocre.  Can people do the same in other countries with socialized medicine?  Probably, even if it is slipping a fiver to the phlebotomy scheduler for an appointment within a month.

Your argument makes my point.  You do not strive for mediocre, and neither do most people.  You actually point to mediocre within wealthy.  So your startup does not strive to be the best in their field.  Their goal is mediocrity?  The owners meet with clients and promise the average?  When you record the lawyer, is your goal to do the best mix possible, or just like, whatever?  Does the lawyer not do the best possible "Mac the Knife"?  If you promised to do the average mix, you would not get any referral gigs.  I work sessions like that, and if the goal is not excellence, then the experience just sucks.  And mediocre is what you get with socialized medicine, except for the wealthy who will buy the best internally anyway or travel to the US for major care.  Oops, not if the US goes universal.  Then where will people go?  India maybe.  People go there for care at 10 cents on the dollar already.  I guess they will go where all the excellent doctors choose to go.

The debate really concerns not "healthcare" but legislating people like Chuck Shumer, Henry Waxman, Chris Dodd(!!!), Barney Frank(!!!!), and Barak Obama further into our lives as citizens of the USA through the lie of providing universal health coverage.  Politicians like this have already made the best system less than it can be, and I do not want their mediocrity.  They have been the problem, not the solution.  I can barely shop for insurance providers now because of state legislation.  And they want to take it further. 

FOR THEM TO WAIVE PARTICIPATION IN THEIR LEGISLATION IS THE HEIGHT OF HYPOCRISY.  How could anyone here support that?  It is the best proof that this is all nanny-state "do as I say not as I do" tax and spend liberalism, promoted by the nannys themselves and those who would wish it upon themselves and the un-willing.

They can try to end the debate today by a party-line vote, but the problem is that even democrats don't like "the bill".  Heh.  There IS no "bill" because anything released is shredded by simply reading it.  They are working on five different bills, none of them by direction from the White House, and they cannot sell any of it to the majority of citizens and they know it.  They have tried "we need to help everybody", "the insurance companies are bad", "we will only tax those earning more than 400K", "we will find the waste", "we won't kill grandma", "those opposed are nazis", "we-wee'd up" etc.  And the majority, those who will pay for it, do not believe it.  I think that the president needs to give a speech explaining his vision, but the problem is that he has to hide his real vision behind hundreds of out-source authored pages.

This "healthcare legislation" is like one of those magazine drug ads with the one page ad and the four pages of side effects.  I'll take the apple a day instead of the pills.
Mike

 

[no-fi]

this thread is funny.

I come from a country with a combination of free public healthcare (minimal free dental, but..) and private healthcare.

as far as i can see, things work pretty well here.  whenever I've needed to see a doctor, I've seen one, and got treated. And our entire economy hasn't been destroyed by it. (in fact our $ could be worth more than the US$ soon, the way things are going) Nor has our entire population been turned into welfare dependent drones.


can't help but see the conservatives (or is that libertarians? hard to tell sometimes...) all running around like henny penny screaming "the sky is faaaaalinnnnng!"

 

[sodderboy]

Yeah, but who can get a visa to the center of the universe, you braggart!?  You guys are tighter than North Korea.
Mike
PS: in which Utopia do you really live?

 

[JohnRoberts]

I realize this debate must sound bizarre to people who grew up with socialized medicine. Some even make an argument that universal health coverage is a moral responsibility for a wealthy nation such as ours which certainly can afford it.

I have gotten an eye opening education about the relative pros and cons of other countries healthcare systems, and there are several things that they do better than us. there are also things they do worse. In fact several European systems burdened by similar demographic trends as us, have borrowed some of our ideas (like co-pays) to introduce market forces to help manage consumption behavior.

NOBODY calls the status quo here optimal, but we differ violently about the solution. In what is arguably the weakest economy in my lifetime we have an administration calling for a massive expansion of entitlements and spending.  I am even willing to agree with their focus on insurance as one of the major problems. But again I don't agree with their solution. Germany has private health insurance with overhead costs < 1/4 what we waste.

I don't need look to the left for a solution. The popular description of universal health care is coverage for all paid for by all, what I see coming is coverage for all paid for increasingly by the wealthy and increased deficits.  We need to help those who truly need help, but this doesn't need to be yet another vehicle for class warfare wealth transfer. Also any business man knows you don't borrow to pay expenses. You spend less. 

To repeat my mantra, we need to approach this with modest (centrist) incremental fixes. The primary focus IMO should be reducing waste and rationalizing costs (like tax treatment distortions). I do not support a sweeping partisan rewrite. Even the compromises I hear leaking out sound like superficial changes at best.  The folks in power and milking profit from the system, are not being threatened by this bill, as they should. it took a long time for them to gain that power, so it will take time and much effort to take away that power. I am not very proud of the right's record in all this, while they have made some good starts with HSA's etc. Congress is a mostly corrupt group that needs some serious cleansing.

Of course opinions vary.

JR 

 

[sodderboy]

How about a poll-
"Do you support legislation that your legislators and President support for YOU, but NOT for themselves?"  YES or NO.  This can actually apply to MANY things.  How about it, guys?  Do you?

We give the president and his family a pass, for obvious reasons, but the rest of them, all 535 in DC plus the thousands in our state houses and legislatures, and the hundreds of thousands working in the hallowed halls of country, state, city, county, and township:

if this is all so great, important, and necessary NOW, you all join first.  You can get in the front of the line, but we all have to share the same doctors, needles, and finger cots. 

Otherwise, this is all just syrup of ipecac being sold as an Egyptian Miracle Health Elixir.
Mike
PS: still no real country affiliation from no-fi.  Put a country where your mouth is bro!  I promise me and my friends will not come over there wearing shorts and tall white socks, talking in English really loudly to the healthy locals :big wink:

 

[no-fi]

PS: still no real country affiliation from no-fi.  Put a country where your mouth is bro!  I promise me and my friends will not come over there wearing shorts and tall white socks, talking in English really loudly to the healthy locals :big wink:

sorry if I don't post fast enough for you... while you were all rotating around me, I was sleeping and then working, since I last posted here.


Anyway - I'm from Australia.

We have a basic medicare system that will cover pretty much anything that can go wrong with you medically (though there's waits if you have elective surgery) and it's paid for by a small income tax (I think this is maybe 1.5%? - anyway -  it's the proportion of my tax i resent least) on most people who work. Then on top of that we have private insurance, and the ability to go into hospital as a private patient if you want/need. (I have basic & extras private insurance, and I think it costs me about AU$70 a month. It's not much money and a bit more peace of mind. but I wouldn't be scared to be without it if money was an issue for me.) We had a crappy mean spirited right wing govt in power for about 12 years who seemed to be trying to kill medicare via suffocation because it didn't suit their sick user-pays world view, but they couldn't attack it - people wouldn't have stood for that. Anyway - crappy little eyebrow man is gone now, and medicare is still going. And should for a long time to come.

I suppose by the time I come back here you'll have googled up all sorts of horror stories about the medical system in my country, but I stand by my experiences and the experiences of everyone I know, that our system works pretty well in practice (if not perfectly)


I'd say its biggest weakness is the massive lack of dental coverage. people without money or insurance can go a long time with tooth infections, that can cause all sorts of long term awfulness, that could be easily avoided if we included money for once a year dental checkups and fillings for everyone who needed it...

 

[no-fi]

I realize this debate must sound bizarre to people who grew up with socialized medicine. Some even make an argument that universal health coverage is a moral responsibility for a wealthy nation such as ours which certainly can afford it.

yeah... I guess in my mind, there's just a basic minimal standard of care that a society has to be able to provide to its citizens. otherwise it's not a society, but a structure of rules and obligations just ensnaring people for no benefit to them.

The thing is, with a private system based entirely on profits - people do fall through the cracks. Insurance payments get missed the day before a bad accident, honest paperwork errors render years of payments irrelevant when someone needs to claim... all sorts of things. it happens to all sorts of people. even people who like to declare it'll never happen to them.

and yeah socialised medicine takes up some money you could spend on other things, but I dunno, if you're not getting this sort of protection from your society, what's the point of even being a part of it?

 

[sodderboy]

Well we could pass that legislation today, by expanding our own State Medicaid and SCHIP systems and actually seriously finding and eliminating the waste and cheats to fund it.

But the problem is that they want to go much further than that.  They want to change everything else in the system.  It is much more than about "healthcare from a caring society".  We already have that despite all the arguments.

I don't know if the Australian provinces also have their own layer of taxation, but we already have such a screwed-up federal-state-county-township taxing, mandating, and funding scheme that is so internally wasteful that anything but reducing it is wrong.  By the time a buck from DC makes it to a local clinic through the state and county, it is less than 66 cents. 

So who supports legislation on themselves where the legislators and their minions are exempt?  Anyone?

Mike
PS: if we keep raising our debt limit and selling our pulpy government bonds to fund all the existing insanity, the dollar will be 1-1 with the Rupee.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I realize this debate must sound bizarre to people who grew up with socialized medicine. Some even make an argument that universal health coverage is a moral responsibility for a wealthy nation such as ours which certainly can afford it.

yeah... I guess in my mind, there's just a basic minimal standard of care that a society has to be able to provide to its citizens. otherwise it's not a society, but a structure of rules and obligations just ensnaring people for no benefit to them.

The thing is, with a private system based entirely on profits - people do fall through the cracks. Insurance payments get missed the day before a bad accident, honest paperwork errors render years of payments irrelevant when someone needs to claim... all sorts of things. it happens to all sorts of people. even people who like to declare it'll never happen to them.

and yeah socialised medicine takes up some money you could spend on other things, but I dunno, if you're not getting this sort of protection from your society, what's the point of even being a part of it?

Fair points... I have a friend from OZ who was working in the US when his wife needed expensive medical attention, so he returned back home to get her well.

We are already a little pregnant with our medicare and social security programs, and like you said, once the people get used to an entitlement it's almost impossible to take it away.

Not to sound too much like a broken record my largest objection how this is being addressed.  If they just expand the system without addressing systemic problems, this will break the bank for future generations to come.

The legislators are a little too friendly with the same groups who are draining so much profit from this system without adding value. Those folks will get even fatter and we all know obesity is bad for health.

Why can't we address tort reform which will reduce malpractice insurance and CYA testing? Why can't we address drug price disparity between US and overseas? Why can't we open up health insurance for more competition across state lines? Why not expand HSAs so people get even more control how their healthcare money is spent?

I get really angry when our fearless leader says with a straight face that the opposition don't have any good ideas. He is a great public speaker, but either incredibly misinformed (which I doubt), or intentionally acting in a partisan way to deceive and discredit a more moderate approach that IMO would be more broadly supported by the fly over states.  2010 can't come soon enough for me. These bums need the kind of feedback that they can't ignore.

JR

 

[sodderboy]

A complete disgrace.  The Senate Finance Committee passed a bill, the text of which is not fully available to the public, for which they are exempt, and that won't even possibly take effect until 2013.  That last part is the most promising, even though the increased taxation starts as soon as 44 signs the bill (in red ink).  For Teddy, sniffle. . .

Way to get on the road to solving the IMMEDIATE HEALTH CRISIS!  You bloody blood-sucking hypocrites!  You are the end of the road.

Hey, but the baseball playoffs are going strong, right?  Go Wankees!  And how about that new [insert favorite FreeVee series here] episode!  That was awesome!  This season is great watching.
Mike

 

[JohnRoberts]

No, the disgrace will be complete after all the amendments get added... wait for it....

JR

 

[Greg]

... Or 3-5 years from now when it's no better and the wise politicians want more control and say over health care. I watched over an hour of the committee meeting. Oh brother!

 

[sodderboy]

Now after all the "queen for a day" buy-offs and insurance industry add-ins the legislation is a bigger turd than ever.  To justify the buy-offs my senator Scheister sez that ALL states got sumpthin'.
Well it won't get us closer to Germany, Canada, or Britain with our health care industry, but to Washington. 
And they are all exempt from it, just like SS.
And it does not really go online until 2014, even though we are in a "crisis" today.
No one here can justify this. . .
Mike

 

[JohnRoberts]

I have grown weary from waving my arms about and shouting the sky is falling, but damn, the sky is falling.

Several supporters of this legislation are already planning to retire and not run for re-election in 2010, go figure. I hope they'll be OK.  :

Some argue that making legislation is like making sausage, and you don't want to watch what goes into the process, but there is so much closed door, back room, wheeling and dealing being done, we are only seeing the biggest lumps of sugar being passed around.

If a private citizen or company, gave a senator financial considerations to influence their vote, both would be in jail, deservedly so. But if Harry Reid gives Nelson and Landreau hundreds of millions, or more, of taxpayer's money, it's business as usual..  Sen Shiester is right, there is a lot of axle grease, being liberally spread all around, but not evenly. To the holdouts go the spoils. That just raises the cost, and reduces the ounce of good, that might have been in this legislation.

Nobody denies that healthcare has problems, but this does very little if anything to address the real problems, while expanding entitlements and promoting the largest transfer of wealth I've seen in my lifetime. If I was a doctor, I'd be looking for a different gig. More patients for less compensation, with bureaucrats second guessing every decision. Lets see how that works out?

Always optimistic, we (the public) will finally get our chance to be heard in Nov 2010, 2012, etc. It stands to be seen how the actual voters will view this, but I suspect the folks who actually vote, are often disproportionately taxpayers, so should have strong opinions about this. l believe with a change of control we may be able to unwind some of the worst of this, be we can never get back to where we were.  They did try to put a clause in the bill that one provision couldn't be changed without a 2/3rd vote, but I think that is probably unconstitutional and won't hold up to supreme court review.

Happy new year all...

JR

PS: Did anybody notice that congress has quietly extended unlimited backing for Fannie and Freddie's housing loan losses..? Do they forget how we got into this housing bubble in the first place?  If we remove all risk and loss from the system, we create an unstable environment that never corrects.  arghhh  We are quickly running out of money to support these drunk sailors.  Re-purposing TARP is wrong.  They are frantically trying to pump up hiring by November, but just keep scaring business even more. At least Bernanke seems to be quietly withdrawing liquidity, but there's plenty more to go there.  Then there's the debt ceiling they have to raise, soon.  Interesting times.

edit- looks like Obama already signed raising the debt ceiling, but that will only hold then a couple months.. they'll be back for more- /edit

 

[MikeClev]

The american system has got so caught up in chasing and maximizing those lovely profits that it forgot about the important task of actually providing healthcare.

And the system of 'Government' in Washington rewards senators who throw hissy fits and stamp their little feet and hold their breath til they get what they want.

 

[sodderboy]

Keep watchin' that FreeVee Mike!  You are so well informed.
Mike

 

[JohnRoberts]

We can be angry about this, without stooping to personal attack.

There is a lot of factual meat, to chew on, and digest.

A one party health bill will not be good for the country. They are having to whore it up, just to get that one party to fully support it.

Both party's deserve blame for allowing it to get to this, by not promoting more moderate reforms sooner.

Good luck to us all...

JR

 

[Svart]

Which state was it that won't ever have to pay social security ever again according to this bill?  Nebraska was it?

 

[JohnRoberts]

Sorry.. yes, Nelson is from Nebraska, and Landreau is from Louisiana. Ugly business.

Some state governors are already making noise, since they will get saddled with paying a lot of this.

JR

 

[sodderboy]

So, yes, I am still calling and typing admonishments to our disgusting overpaid slugs in DC in between trips to the bathroom, but I also encountered something REALLY wack today-

I called a local state park regarding a recent meeting about spending beau coup bucks that New York State cannot even borrow let alone afford to supposedly improve the park, and the person put the phone down to radio her boss about my question and she said. . .

"(name withheld), it's (name withheld).  I have a patient on the phone who is asking about the minutes for the recent meeting about the park.  Where can he get them?"

I swear she said "patient" like in, like patient (n.) in a hospital, and although I WAS patient (adj.), she did not say "patient (adj.) person, or guy, or whatever". 

Is this vine-infested, run-down shell of a former estate built by a disgusting turn-of-the-century capitalist cum New York State Park the future site of my doctor in 2017, and they are just practicing?  I feel really funny today. . .
Mike