US doctors call for universal healthcare

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http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/we-nee ... &ocid=iehp

I wonder if a certain someone paid them off to say that.

gov. health doesn't work .. so we need more gov. health care , and oh yeah , more money too!

Then the guy makes the absurd argument that if we get rid of the insurance companies that control cost -- somehow the government will be just as efficient.

Last edited by LoveNotHate on 06 May 2016, 5:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There are 908,508 doctors currently practicing in the US.

2000 doctors isn't that many.

And how can the government keep paying when they are broke? Oh! That may be part of the extra Trillion dollars Mr. Aw added to our debt. Duh. Silly me.


United States 434,840 473,668 908,508
Alabama 5,372 5,776 11,148
Alaska 939 804 1,743
Arizona 7,906 8,636 16,542
Arkansas 3,209 3,324 6,533
California 49,164 52,815 101,979
Colorado 6,694 6,856 13,550
Connecticut 6,235 7,800 14,035
Delaware 1,367 1,472 2,839
District of Columbia 2,785 3,601 6,386
Florida 24,772 26,299 51,071
Georgia 11,387 11,674 23,061
Hawaii 1,791 1,866 3,657
Idaho 1,494 1,352 2,846
Illinois 19,912 19,497 39,409
Indiana 7,657 8,080 15,737
Iowa 3,964 3,616 7,580
Kansas 3,742 3,441 7,183
Kentucky 5,046 5,868 10,914
Louisiana 5,668 6,651 12,319
Maine 2,229 2,077 4,306
Maryland 10,079 12,123 22,202
Massachusetts 14,239 17,891 32,130
Michigan 16,683 18,332 35,015
Minnesota 8,013 8,532 16,545
Mississippi 2,951 3,041 5,992
Missouri 8,528 9,601 18,129
Montana 1,066 1,084 2,150
Nebraska 2,421 2,325 4,746
Nevada 2,796 2,807 5,603
New Hampshire 1,886 2,073 3,959
New Jersey 13,471 14,355 27,826
New Mexico 2,652 2,508 5,160
New York 36,128 43,674 79,802
North Carolina 12,064 13,111 25,175
North Dakota 997 826 1,823
Ohio 17,649 20,440 38,089
Oklahoma 4,374 4,364 8,738
Oregon 5,437 5,613 11,050
Pennsylvania 21,627 24,074 45,701
Rhode Island 2,178 2,313 4,491
South Carolina 5,792 5,793 11,585
South Dakota 968 891 1,859
Tennessee 8,334 9,418 17,752
Texas 28,113 30,221 58,334
Utah 2,735 3,354 6,089
Vermont 1,041 1,077 2,118
Virginia 10,629 10,724 21,353
Washington 9,784 10,186 19,970
West Virginia 2,603 2,531 5,134
Wisconsin 7,676 8,343 16,019
Wyoming 593 538 1,131

Silly person the insurance companies don't control costs.
Many states bar them from negotiating with doctors (mostly in the South).

Pharmacuticals are allowed to price their medication at any price they want and both the insurance companies and Federal Government are barred by Federal Law from negotiating prices.
Same thing for most equipment and supplies.

Also nearly every insurance company is publicly trade with shareholders (who earn high dividends).
They are required to MAXIMIZE profits for the shareholders as required by law for all publicly traded companies.
Also management gets paid almost as much as Wall Street management does.
You literally can make over $10M+ a year being a CEO of a insurance company.

The U.S. medical and insurance system was literally designed for profit at each level.
It was not designed to control costs and/or increase access to medical care.
Nor was it designed to make the public healthy.

Medicare has repeatedly been shown to be better ran than practically every insurance company in the U.S.

I won't even go into detail how much money all the layers of administration costs at insurance companies (No law mandates it).

the denial of affordable healthcare to the working class is basically a weapon designed to keep us down, too sick and impoverished to demand our slice of the pie. until the working class disabuses itself of the silly notion that it, too, can join the middle class one day, they will continue to vote precisely against their own best interest, with noses firmly up the backsides of the upper classes. we have met the enemy, and he is us.

Well, US doctors agree with me about universal healthcare.

^^^mee too.

This

There is almost universal scholarly agreement that universal single-payer health care is superior to the US-based insurance system on just about any indicator...

I made a thread about it here back in 2014: https://www.google.com/url?q=http://wro ... bQfasQ_5ZA

... So it should come as no surprise that a lot of doctors are in favour of Universal Health Care.

However - based on the experiences with the PPACA (Obamacare) - introducing Universal Health Care will likely face tremendous hurdles in the US...

A few questions...

- How would one actually implement Universal Health Care (UHC) in the US? So far the attempt in the tiny state of Vermont failed, and the PPACA has been subject to unprecedented opposition in Congress
- How is UHC going to be funded? Bernie Sanders' plan for funding his proposal was effectively an exercise in economic illiteracy, and the US federal budget is already running a massive deficit...
- How will UHC pass constitutional muster? The significantly less ambitious PPACA only barely made it through the Supreme Court, and for UHC to be successfully implemented, the Executive branch will likely need substantial powers to regulate the provision of health care above and beyond PPACA.

At this point I don't see a realistic path towards UHC in the US unless it can first be demonstrated that it would work at the state level...

and while people who know better continue to dither and politic, American citizens, uniquely affected in the western world, will needlessly suffer and die.

Insurance companies negotiate with the hospitals on reimbursement rates to control costs.

"But insurance companies don't pay those listed charges. The listed charges are almost fiction. Instead, each insurer negotiates for lower prices with each hospital and doctor on every plan".
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shot ... cares-cost

Put the gov. in charge of it, there goes the cost control.

As president Obama told us, Medicare, the "ticking time bomb" -- is doomed.

Why? Because there's limited cost control. Why? Because the gov. runs it.

See .... they abolished the cost-control body ...
"House votes to repeal Medicare cost-control panel in ObamaCare"
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/h ... trol-panel

Also, maybe someone can explain ... in the "Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act" [source 1] it states ....

"It prohibits the federal government from negotiating discounts with drug companies".

So, how can Medicare/single payer ever be better than a private insurance company negotiating lower prices for you?

And before you answer, read this:

"Congress barred Medicare from negotiating the way Medicaid and the Department of Veterans Affairs do with drug makers to get lower prices. Instead, lawmakers insisted the job be done by private insurance companies.” [source 2].

sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_ ... zation_Act
2. http://www.ncpssm.org/EntitledtoKnow/en ... are-part-d

The obvious answer is to change that silly law.

GGPViper,

It would be different at the federal level because, one, the federal government can run deficits and, two, there would not be any concern about a race to the bottom among different states.

Constitutionally speaking, this issue would likely be less constitutionally problematic than the PPACA. The losing question presented to the Supreme Court regarding the PPACA was about requiring states to expand Medicaid or they would lose all their funding. Universal health care would involve expanding Medicare, which is for those 65 and older, those who have been on SSDI 2 years or longer, and a couple other small populations, to the whole population. Were Medicare being extended to the whole population unconstitutional, then Medicare as it is now would also be unconstitutional.

In addition, the federal government already has authority to issue minimum standards of coverage under the PPACA. Other authority, like Congress prohibiting insurers from selling plans duplicating what Medicare provides would fall under the Commerce Clause and Proper and Necessary Clause authority.

You have a point regarding the political will. That is the only one I don't have a good answer for, but I know events can surprise. Creating a clear declaration like these 2000 doctors have is a start.

That was done to because drug companies complained that Federal Government was forcing the price of their drugs too cheaply to market.
So Bush II and then Republican majority in Congress decided to come to the aid of the drug companies and let drug companies set the prices. They promised us that the drug companies would do a better job of pricing drugs and the free market would help in keeping costs down.
In the end they claim it would drive down healthcare costs by a significant amount!

In the end it allowed drug companies to price their drugs at whatever price they wanted, driving up the price medications.

Private insurance companies (if you can call them that) are barred from price negotiations by other Federal Laws and state laws.
The system is rigged in the favor of the equipment providers and drug companies, not to the benefit of the people.

Medicare is the biggest buyer of all things healthcare and if had the full power of negotiation would drive down the prices of everything to an affordable level.
Since Medicare/Medicad, Military and VA are all barred from price negotiations on everything


Medicare was running massive surpluses until the late 2000s, when the Babyboomers started to retire.
Congress spent the surplus on many other projects including the War on Drugs, Iraq War, Afghanistan War, etc...
Congress left special bonds with high interest in Medicare trust, hoping that Medicare would never need to cash them in.
But as Babyboomers retire, the system doesn't have enough money to cope with all these new people entering every year.

So Congress will have to repay the money, increase the Medicare tax and/or reform the system to cut costs.

Congress really owes Medicare Trust over $2 Trillion dollars.

The same thing happened to Social Security.
Though Congress owes Social Security over $6 Trillion dollars now.

Literally Medicare and Social Security combined hold 50%+ of the U.S. National Debt (being the biggest holders).

As for private insurance my history with them has gone like this:

when I was a kid most of my occupational therapy and physical therapy weren't covered by my Dad's Blue Cross of Michigan or my Mom's Ohio Teacher plan (This was the better insurance). Many of it was paid out of pocket to the tune of 100s of dollars a year.

My specialist visits weren't mostly covered either and had to pay out of pocket.

Prescriptions had up to $20 copay per refill.

The reason why my parents had to pay out of pocket for my neurological and physical stuff, is because I was born it, thus constituting a preexisting condition.

Then as a college student on my own plan I was literally paying initially paying upwards of $300+ a month copay for my medications related to my Asperger Syndrome and the mental health stuff.
I had to pay out of pocket for half of my physician visits which was $40 and I had to pay out of pocket to see both of my therapists which costs me $62 a month out of pocket.

I was thankfully to get on the local hospital's charitable program to cover my meds at the time, because being a college student under 30, I couldn't get on Medicad in Michigan.

Then Blue Cross canceled my plan two years ago because it didn't meet their "profit margins and expectations" (yes this was said in the letter they sent me).

When I met with their agent to discuss new plans, the cheapest plan with copays was $168 a month, the copays could be as high as $100 per medication, though not all medications are covered. Though I'd have to out of pocket for doctor visit until by Prescription/Doctor/Hospital deductible.

The deductible was $6,600 a year.
Once you hit $6,600 in a year, all prescriptions covered by insurance become fully covered, Doctor visits are fully covered, and hospital visits become fully covered.

This is from the biggest insurer in Michigan who is a "non-profit".

My dad's new insurance from his new employer is similar but with a much higher Prescription/Doctor/Hospital deductible, which is costing them $100s per month out of pocket and yet they are not close to hitting the deductible.
This is through one of the other insurance companies, their employer chose.

For me I got on Medicad, which covers almost everything including doctors visits and most prescriptions.
Though I only have to pay for my heart pill, because I was diagnosed with a rare condition that people are born with.
The pill costs me $32 a month with Medicad, though my local Meijer's gives it to me at discount at $16 because I am regular costumer and qualify for prescription discounts.

I am talking to people to see if I can permanently stay on Medicad due to my disabilities.