I hear people say that the public healthcare option would be bacially an extension of Medicare, which many people are satisfied with. Well it is also a fact that Medicare is going bankrupt. Further, it is also a fact that private insurers basically subsidize the costs of Medicare patients to physicians. Without private insurance payments to doctors, many could not afford to operate on Medicare payments alone. It appears that the logic of extending a financially unsustainable Medicare system to the entire nation is a similar type of logic that more spending will save money. Or that including 47 million more people in a financially bankrupt system will save money.

Signed,
An independent minority voter

- and I had at least given Obama credit for being an astute politician. Not too smooth to begin your talk to the one organization you need behind you to get anything done on health care by calling them all butchers for hire who would rather slice open a kids throat than give her some pills just to make a few hundred extra bucks.

“So one thing we need to do is to figure out what works, and encourage rapid implementation of what works into your practices”

Umm, I thought that is what we had been doing for the past few millenia…(walks out of auditorium)

Really what doctors need is another lawyer/politician to tell them these things.

“Hey Barry, I have a good one. Some of the folks over at NIH were telling me that they plan to replace of of the lab rats with Politicians and Lawyers”

“ummm…aaa..why is that doc?”

“well for one thing there is no shortage of expendable lawyers. Also the scientitists get too attached to the animals and there are some things even a rat won’t do”

Spindok

Sorry Edward Kennedy would not die under the Obama plan because all the elites of our society will get whatever they want through taxpayer subsidies as they do right now in congress, and if they didn’t they would use their money and political influence under the
“old black market” (actually the free market that our medical system has not seen 100% of since the johnson administration), just as russian elites did under communism.

I am certain that this ad hoc arrangement is humane and even fair. It has been in place for decades. We cover the uninsured by spreading their incurred costs over everyone else. It works for everyone and does not require fixing. No one dies of acute problems in America for lack of insurance. Emergency rooms become the venues for primary care as well, but that is the way the system has handled the uninsured, again, for decades.

The real cost savings will occur when diseases become curable. Common flu, pandemic influenzas such as swine and avian, auto-immune diseases, and Alzheimer’s dementia, among others are on the verge of being conquered (within 5 years). When Boniva is no longer $120 per pill, the number of hip replacements will go down. Some medical specialties will go out of business. Those are the ways we will lower health care costs, not by rationing.

If everyone knows that statins and a baby aspirin a day represents good medical practice, they can assume the responsibility for their own heart health care with minimal professinal intervention. Aspirin and lovastatin in the form of Red Yeast Rice are available over-the-counter. Side effects as a result of these treatments occur whether one is insured or not.

The internet and diagnostic knowledge bots will aid primary practitioners and laypersons with the ability to shorten diagnostic times and improve accuracy. When chest x-rays are machine-read, when Cisco Telepresence systems enable specialists to interview patients in rural areas without leaving their Manhattan offices, health care will be less expensive without being less available. It is, or should be, scientific and technological innovation that will make health care better without making other things worse.

By the way, my very intelligent wife has pointed out that Senator Edward Kennedy would already be dead under Obama’s bill unless the government began to decide who would live and who would die based upon their productivity. Let’s see! Employed elderly can live, while unemployed elderly should not. Government employees and union members can breath, non-union workers – not.

Do you really truly believe doctors order additional and/or unnecessary test just based on insurance coverage so that they ensure they get paid??? Is this why doctors spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in education and sign hippocratic oaths just to play in this scheme?

Any doctor I have ever met, whether it is my own personal MD, or just somebody I know, are committed professionals dedicated to helping people. That is what it takes to spend the dollars on education and the hours put in and the sacrifices made to have the privelege of HIPPOCRATICLLY COMMITTING to help people with their ailments. They care. That is why being a medical professional should pay well, because few people have it in us.

Do you want the answer for WHY they order a series of tests??? It is because it is the LAW…a law developed by people who have no business making them. And if he/she doesn’t order those additional (perhaps unnecessary) tests, then he gets sued. And the $200,000 a year malpractice insurance he is forced to carry does not cover him/her.

Obama’s plan will not have the effect of reducing our coverage and raising costs, it will also have the consequence of deincentivizing any young aspirers to the medical profession. We simply do not have the supply right now of qualified doctors and that supply is about to drop exponentially if this bill gets passed.

Joe in SoCal.