US Healthcare reform

Post Reply New Topic

How come the only people who complain about government healthcare are the ones who don't have any. I'd rather have some bad teeth than a failing heart any day. I think a little perspective is in order here. I'm also not sure that I understand what opponents to Obamacare mean when they say our quality of care will suffer. If you mean that some of these upper end cadillac policies may have to take it down a notch so that 50 million of their fellow citizens can actually afford to see a doctor, well then I think that is a more than fair (and humane) compromise. I actually don't think the Obama plan goes far enough, but it's at least a step in the right direction. Employees of the government and non-profit sector are able to feed their families too, by the way.

The idea that there is nothing wrong with a for-profit healthcare system is laughable. A corporation such as an insurance company or a pharmacutical company, by definition, can only survive through profits. The only way they can make profits is by increasing sales and reducing costs. Drug companies have done a bang-up job on increasing sales. We pop more pills than ever before. The insurance companies increase sales by raising premiums and co-pays. Reducing costs is simply equal to reducing care and liability. As a result of the profit model, consumers are frequently denied care or simply refused coverage altogether. Premiums keep going up and up and consumers and employers alike are suffering. Remind me again how this is working just fine? If patients are not a higher priority than profits, we the people will continue to suffer.

The talented healers are already crippled by insurance company clerks and their 'experts.' They spend too much time on the phone arguing with said clerks to get their patients what they need, and when they are overruled there is no recourse. Their expertise is worth less and less these days -- it's the insurance companies that are practicing medicine.

I'd rather have a boring government clerk involved, motivated by a rule book, rather than a clerk who is motivated by a bonus or a promotion if he/she denies enough care. Rescission == private industry rationing for the sake of profit.

As long as the insurance racket siphons a huge cut of health care costs in the United States they will have trouble... the answer is to break the racket.

Whenever government gets their hands on anything, they end up increasing the cost and decreasing the quality. Education for example. In the 2006-07 school year, public education expenditures were $9,391 per student (http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66). It's constantly been going up, and I really doubt you can argue that the quality of public education has gotten any better (since it's gotten much, much worse). Private schools, on the other hand, often cost less than that and have a much higher quality of education.

You just admitted that quality will go down.

Government employees are paid way too much for how little they do. A lot of them are nothing more than bureaucratic paper pushers, just like in the current corporatist system. They contribute a lot to the bloated cost of government programs.

Drug companies can't *force* us to pop pills. Just stop buying into corporate media BS, and refuse to take the SSRIs they claim you "need", even though they cause a lot more bad than good. Plus a lot of the power big pharma gets has been granted to them by the government.

You probably didn't read my earlier post where I said the government is responsible for our current, failed healthcare system. Nixon imposed HMOs on us, which increased the individual cost of healthcare and lowered the amount of healthcare people got. Just because someone doesn't support government healthcare, it doesn't mean we like the current system. Both me and Orwell have said reform is needed even though we don't support Obamacare. Do any of you people read? Seriously?
Yes, reform is needed. Take the power away from the corporations, and give it back to the people. Giving that power to the government will just end up in higher costs, which will lead to rationing. It'll also lead to one-standard healthcare, which will inevitably lead to lower quality (just like in government education).

Cyanide, I believe that you are completely misunderstanding my argument. I never said that public school was better than private school. I simply stated that it is a good thing that education is a right provided to all citizens. Just because the spending per pupil is about $9000/year (actually much higher here in NY) doesn't mean that that's what a parent shells out to send their kid to school. If that were the case, could you even begin to imagine how many kids couldn't go to school at all? Public Ed is a perfect example of why we need public healthcare and how it might work. We cannot afford to continue to leave out the poor and the sick anymore than we could have afforded not to educate low income kids. If a wealthy family wants to send their kid to private school, they are free to do so just as if a wealthy person wanted to buy better healthcare, they could be free to do so as well.

I never said that overall quality will go down, and it won't. I said that those on the very top may have to sacrafice a small amount to allow 50 million + to receive care at all. The equation more than balances out. Way fewer Americans will be sacraficing so little to provide so much for so many.

As for the rest of it, I'm not even sure that I know what you are talking about. I never said anything good or bad about government employee compensation, but I know a few teachers that would be pretty pissed off by what you said. I was also a temporary government employee, and the pay was horrific and the job was hard.

I already don't buy into the drug company marketing and rarely pop a pill. For some reason, that hasn't made much of a difference. I totally agree that the government has been too lenient on big pharma and, in many ways has been bought out. If the drugs were no longer sold for profit, then big pharma wouldn't have the cash to pay for Washington advocates in the first place.

I also DID read your earlier post on Nixon and HMO's, I just happen to think it is nonsense. We're in this mess because of greed at the top, plain and simple. The rich keep on getting richer and the poor keep on getting poorer. This is the outcome of a free market left to its own devices. This is also why we need government to step in to look out for the less fortunate because I guarantee that a corporation is not going to do it. I'm glad y'all are in favor of reform. What might your suggestion be?

number5, your 50,000 number is just false. 2 sources have been provided attacking that claim, one provided by myself and one provided by Orwell, and both sources have basically been experts who said the same things about the issue. To trumpet the claim that 50,000 Americans cannot afford healthcare is just a factual inaccuracy by this point.

Actually, a government solution will cause a crowding-out effect that will limit or eliminate private options. The only private options left will be the most expensive ones, available only to the high elite (such as the politicians who push the public system through) and everyone else will be forced to use the public system, no matter how poor the quality. As far as the public school system: in many cases, it is just as bad as if the kids didn't go to school at all. I went to a suburban public school, one of the better ones in the state. I have since returned to do tutoring work there. Trust me, we are not doing the poor any favors by keeping them in what amount to holding pens. The situation is even worse in the inner cities and rural districts, where the lower-class actually live. Our public school system does not educate the poor, and to claim otherwise just demonstrates that your views are completely divorced from reality.


Well, AG already pointed out that you are being dishonest by repeatedly citing a demonstrably inaccurate number, but you are also very much underestimating the segment of the population that will be worse off as a result of a socialized health care system.


Really? Standard of living keeps rising. The rich are getting richer faster than the poor are getting richer, that's indisputable, but the poor are getting richer all the same.


"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own neccessities but of their advantages." -- Adam Smith

"It is not from the benevolence of the pharmacist, the surgeon, or the nurse, that we expect our medical care, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages." -- Slightly modified

The exact same argument applies whether we're talking about medical care or food. Are you going to be consistent and demand a government takeover of farms and grocery stores? After all, millions of Americans suffer from malnutrition. According to the US Department of Agriculture, 36.2 Americans (including 12.4 million children) suffer from "food insecurity," meaning that they do not have reliable access to a full and healthy diet.


Change the rules for how insurance companies work to give physician's more autonomy in treating their patients, crack down on frivolous lawsuits, invest in a more efficient administrative infrastructure. We could also look to emulating aspects of Singapore's medical system, widely acknowledged to be among the world's most efficient healthcare systems in the world and based primarily on private funding.

And some other things that would be hard to really speculate at without a lot of number crunching and a more in-depth analysis of our current system.

First of all, it's 50 million, not 50 thousand, and second of all, I don't consider some guy who used to work for the Bush administration a credible source. The Census Bureau says about 10 million are non-citizens and 5 million of thoses are illegal. If you'd like to not consider these people and drop the number down to 40 million - that's fine by me. To make an inference about who is simply deciding not to buy insurance doesn't even resemble scientific data. Mind you, these are just the numbers for the uninsured. We don't have any accurate statistics on how many underinsured there are or how many will become uninsured once the premiums rise again and more employers drop health benefits altogether.

If you'd like to play the numbers game, go ahead. It simply reinforces the fact that you are not considering the human impact of all of this. Whether it's 50 million, 20 million, or 1 million - it's still completely unacceptable. The fact that ANY American in this country is turned away from care because they can't afford it makes me sick. The fact that people are told that if they want to live, they must sell all of their assets is horrible. Imagine you got cancer and then were told "now here's the bad news." This happens every day and it's barbaric.

prison industrial complex
military industrial complex
insurance industrial complex
energy industrial complex
banking industrial complex

^Essentially the only entities that the US government actually watches out for. It certainly doesn't watch out for its citizenry. Well, occasionally by accident or coincidence but not by design.

If it were by design, education would be the first field that gets ALL the money and everything would go from there. Instead, it's the first one cut and the last revived.

I don't want nationalized healthcare, I want money put behind nationalized education. All the way up through higher education. It'd actually pay itself back through innovation and generation of new products that would lend itself to helping increase the country's GDP by natural means rather than bolstering it by bubbles of crapioca pudding sludging to the top by the slimiest of slimes in the country (Rockefeller).

I'd argue that public education is a perfect example of why we shouldn't want public healthcare. Public schools are terrible. They teach to the lowest common demoninator, which leaves the smart kids (like me) bored and resentful. I would've been better off teaching myself, or maybe not even going to school at all. Yes, public education is that bad. What's the point of public education if it's so terrible that there's no point of even participating in it? And if government handles education this badly, what will happen with healthcare?
Well, there's actually an example of how our own government handles healthcare. Do you remember the Walter Reed Medical Center scandal?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01172.html

There was also an article a while ago on how some sickness called C.difficile (I think) was spread around some UK hospital because hospital staff weren't taking proper sanitary precautions...

Well, if you take taxes from people so they can't afford tip-top medical care, then technically that is lowering quality. Also, taxing the middle class will make it difficult for some to opt out of the government system and get private insurance. The same thing happened with education. Not many middle class families can afford to send their kids to private school.
Essentially, what will result is a near-monopoly of the government system. With no threat of competition (and being able to take on debt to cover losses), the quality will lower and the system will become more inefficient.


I know you didn't say anything about it. I was just trying to make a point that government healthcare will be expensive, because they are pretty much obligated to give their employees "competitive and fair wages". Oddly enough, teachers are probably the only government employees that aren't paid enough.
But in all other cases, government salaries are way too huge. My uncle drives a street sweeper, and he makes $50K/year with full benefits (including health insurance) and a full pension.


Since the government is bought out by big pharma, what makes you so sure that nothing in this Obamacare plan will enrich big pharma?
Oh, and if drugs were no longer sold for profit, who would have the incentive to make them? Would we have a government monopoly on drugs? That would just open up a whole new can of worms.


You mention greed at the top... You know who's at the top? HMOs are at the top, so I fail to see how my argument "doesn't make sense". HMOs are the main problem of our healthcare system. This is NOT the free market at its own devices. As I said before... when the free market actually was left to its own devices, the healthcare system was extremely efficient (people paid less and got more). Here's a good article on the whole thing: http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2819

In the U.S., one does not need insurance or even money for medical treatment. Just show up in an Emergency Room without a cent in your pocket and no i.d. You will be treated.

ruveyn

To address public education, I totally agree that significant improvement is needed, especially since the no child left behind act. I hardly think it is worthless though. Many great minds are products of public school and the majority of teachers put so much effort and energy into educating our students that it is nothing more than a slap in the face to say that their efforts are completely worthless. I went to public school, learned so much more than my parents could have ever taught me, and then went to college and did quite well. The reason the middle cannot afford to send their kids to private school (assuming they wanted to) is much more closely tied to healthcare expenses than it is to property taxes. I live in a county that has the third highest property tax rate in the nation and my medical premiums cost three times more than my school tax bill. Private schools schools do so much better because their student population is cherry picked. Only the best and the brightest are even admitted, assuming they can pay the tuition. You cannot fairly compare an urban district to a private instituion when you consider the enormous baggage brought in by urban students. I doubt many private school kids go home to an empty house where they must do all of the cooking and cleaning and babysitting because their single mom is working another double shift. Apples and oranges.

To address the food comaprison, again apples and oranges. Yes we have hungry people, but no one has ever been told that they can't buy a loaf of bread because they have a pre-existing condition. The government and the people have ways to help those in need and do so. In my community, as in many, we have meals on wheels and soup kitchens that are regularly able to help and the government has set up food stamps and WIC. If my neighbor is hungry, I can help by donating some food. If my neighbor needs 250K for a new liver, well then I am powerless. Healthcare is an issue in which we need the governments help. Average citizens cannot fix healthcare on their own, we simply do not have the resources or power. Incidently, the government does own many of the farms via subsidation and a lot of the malnourishment in this country is a direct result of the private sector turning what used to be food into overprocessed, artifically flavored and preserved junk. This happens to be a major contributor as to why so many Americans are so unhealthy.

Let's see, what else. Oh, hospital sanitation in the UK, it happens here too - don't kid yourself. Just last summer 2 of my local hospitals had a major outbreak of Legionaires disease due to poor sanitation in the air conditioning system. Lots of folks got sick and a few died. Oops. Walter Reed is horrible, I'l give you that. HMO's are no picnic either, but to say that's the sole reason that we are in this mess is nothing more than a bunch of rhetoric from a capitalist magazine. And no, the poor are NOT getting richer. Just stop by your local shelter or soup kitchen and ask them how many folks are asking for help these days.

The part that amazes me most is that we have become so brainwashed by rich and powerful industries that we actually believe that the only reason that anyone would do anything is for a profit. That's exactly what the CEO's want us to think. Most human beings who are passionate about what they do are fulfilled by their work and how it helps others. Of course they need to make a living, but not everyone needs a Porsche to be happy. Most of the doctors and scientists I know are truly dedicated to helping others and strive to make the lives of others better. You'll find that many doctors are in favor of a single payor system. Some people are actually trying to cure cancer simply because it will save lives. How sad that this idea seems foreign to Americans.

In 1992 my blood pressure was dangerously high (220/120). I was broke. I could have gone to the emergency room, where they would have evaluated me, and written out some prescriptions for blood pressure reducing drugs. A lot of good that would have done me. Being broke, there is no way in Hell I could have filled them. I certainly would have had a stroke, probably been long dead by now.

Fortunately, being a Veteran, the VA agreed to take me on as a patient. They are still treating me today, as I age. I love the treatment I have gotten from them. This is socialized medicine at its best!

Of course the bill currently under consideration has nothing to do with socialized medicine. It is just about health insurance. It is about insuring those millions of Americans who are without. It says no one can be denied coverage, regardless of any pre-existing conditions. It says the insurance companies cannot drop you if you require expensive treatment. And to keep them honest (which they obviously haven't been in the past) it sets up a new insurance company as an option, one that is run by the government. It will function just like regular insurance companies, but since it doesn't have to make a profit, it will probably be cheaper.

If you don't want government-sponsored health insurance, you can continue your coverage through a for-profit insurance company. It'll probably cost you more than the government plan, but if it makes you happy, go ahead and pay the higher premium.

Of course this bill will make your premiums a lot smaller, since you will no longer have to pay the medical costs for those poor people currently without insurance.

It will increase taxes on those earning more than a quarter-million dollars.

The bill will be revenue-neutral, President Obama has assured us he won't sign any bill that increases our national debt over a 10 year period.

Now, without lying or changing the subject, explain what is wrong with this bill.

Taxing those who have something to tax for the sake of those who have little or nothing to tax. It is theft. If a private person did that he would be sent to prison. If the government does it, it is called compassion.

Let those without the means beg for crumbs and let their betters help them voluntarily or let them die.

ruveyn

It pretty much is.


Those minds are great in spite of, not because of, the public school system.


Most teachers are bitter, burnt out, and incompetent. There are some excellent teachers, but they are the exception, not the rule. Even in AP classes in an upper middle class suburban district, most of my teachers were still incompetent.


The reason they can't buy food is irrelevant. They're hungry and they don't have food. I don't see how the comparison fails.


And this subsidization is actually a cause for a lot of the problems (like high fructose corn syrup).


You wanna crunch the numbers? I'll guarantee you you're dead wrong on this.


Weren't you the one accusing the drug companies of malfeasance before? I dunno, you're just seeming inconsistent now.

Well, at least no one's going to accuse you of having empathy