Five Myths About Health Care ‘Reform’
Generalizations and assumptions like this are a major reason why rigidly ideological leftists like Obama are genuinely mystified at the failure of their ideas and proposals to sweep through and inflame the populace like wildfire. Were Democrats to listen to those they purport to represent, rather than simply relying on that which they “know” to be true, they would know that going after individuals’ health insurers and providers is a losing proposition in this country.
Simple polling shows this to be the case. A July 1 Quinnipiac poll found that 85 percent of Americans are “satisfied” with their health insurance plan, with almost 58 percent of those being “very satisfied.” A June 20 New York Times/CBS News poll found that 77 percent were satisfied with their health care. Further, that same NYT/CBS poll found that 77 percent of insured Americans found health care “affordable.” At the end of May, a Rasmussen poll found that a comparatively paltry 70 percent of Americans rate their health coverage “good” or “excellent.” Much like the Obama “reform” plan has grown less popular as people have found out more about it, Americans’ opinions of their own coverage and care have improved as they have gotten a better look at the government-run alternative.
Further, not only do fewer people than Democrats expect have stories of being “screwed over” by their insurance company, but there are myriad examples of people being denied treatment and care by government-run health care programs and so-called “public options” of the type Obama and his allies wish to implement here. State governments have even gone to court here in the U.S. in an effort to have bureaucrats ruled more competent arbiters of medical decisions than medical professionals themselves.
Pointing out such facts almost invariably elicits the rebuttal “private insurance rations/denies care, too” — a response that is a complete non-starter as long as the goal posts in the health care reform debate remain where the Democrats laying out the playing field initially put them. The rationale for a government-centric health care overhaul has from the beginning centered on the ability of government to somehow do health care better — more humanely, more fairly, and more universally — than the pseudo-free market we currently have. Sadly, empirical evidence shows that such is not the case.
4. Republicans and “opponents of change” are employing scare tactics and peddling misinformation about the cost or contents of the health reform legislation in Congress and about President Obama’s proposal.
This has been the party line for the Democratic National Committee, MoveOn.org, the SEIU, and the Obama administration since opposition to their health care overhaul proposals began to take root among the general population. However, the actions of those pro-ObamaCare organizations — which amount to employing actual scare tactics and waging a misinformation campaign against those citizens who have turned out at town hall meetings across the country to express their concerns about the proposed health overhaul — have not been those of victimized policy proponents, but of professional agitators whose only experience dealing with people is as part of smear campaigns and astroturfing efforts, and whose knee-jerk reaction to dissent is to declare it “dangerous” and to quash it.
The information being repeated by opponents of President Obama’s health overhaul proposal comes from cost analyses published by the officially non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and from testimony by CBO director (and joint Nancy Pelosi/Robert Byrd appointee) Doug Elmendorf, as well as from ordinary citizens actually reading the health overhaul bills — an exercise many in Congress (and the president himself) have turned up their noses at repeatedly.
Publicly stating the contents of legislation, and asking those who will vote on whether that legislation becomes the law of the land, is neither an illegitimate scare tactic nor a misinformation campaign. On the other hand, sending union thugs to threaten protesters, calling on American citizens to turn their fellow men and women in to the government for questioning the president’s policy proposals online or in “casual conversation,” and rallying Democratic supporters by repeatedly and publicly referring to civic-minded citizens as a “dangerous mob” that must be countered and stopped are examples of both scare tactics and misinformation.
It’s just not coming from Republicans, or from those nefarious “opponents of change.”
5. Republicans are preventing health reform from taking place despite the best efforts of President Obama and Democrats in Congress.
The persistence of this myth speaks to both the lack of civics education in our school systems and the prevalence of partisan finger-pointing in the political discourse. The Democratic Party currently has 60 seats in the U.S. Senate — a filibuster-proof supermajority. If Senate Democrats actually want to pass a health overhaul bill, there is absolutely nothing the few Republicans in that body can do to stop them.
Further, Democrats have a 70-seat advantage in the House of Representatives. As Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) pointed out in July, this means every Republican representative could bring their surviving parents to a House vote and still not have a large enough contingent to defeat the Democrats on any legislation the latter wished to pass.
The Democrats got what they wished for — total control of Washington, D.C., and of the lawmaking and enforcing branches of government. However, liberals traditionally specialize in owning intentions, not results or consequences, meaning many are having difficulty accepting responsibility for enacting those policies they so steadfastly claim to support.
In the end, Democrats’ problems passing a health care overhaul bill are theirs and theirs alone, as are their problems enacting any other aspects of the sweeping liberal agenda so many of them — including the president — campaigned for office on.
These leftists have already unmasked their radical agenda but I hope they force this socialist takeover on the nation because the ensuing explosion will destroy them.
As a Military vetern does Mr. Emanuel get health care from the V.A. which is a (gasp!) form of socialized medicine?
It is true that some people have been denied care by HMO’s, etc…. The scary thing is, if the government does this, you have no recourse. You can sue the HMO or whatever. Will you be able to sue the government under the government plan. I suspect not. It’d be a nightmare, even if you could.
Generalizations, assumptions, and myths all play a role in the Democrat-led onslaught to pass health care reform. However, what is the real impetus behind such a radical plan? I don’t think we can discount Obama’s and his supporter’s “core beliefs” that America is fundamentally flawed and a racist country. Obama is first and foremost a radical organizer whose ideology cannot be separated from his legislative agenda. If this is even remotely true, then a massive middle-class tax hike to support Obama’s health care reform is easily justified in the president’s and his supporter’s minds, because “white” middle-America has been oppressing others for far too long.
Well I for one think Obambi DESERVES the rush the ‘BUMS RUSH’.
Good call, Mr. Emanuel.
“Publicly stating the contents of legislation” should never be considered a scare tactic. Think about it: newpapers are supposed to do this, and the Congress has its own system to make the information available. So why not us goombah civilians, too?
Excellent post.
I can’t figure out which is the case: (1) The DC Dems simply do not care what we Americans outside the beltway think; or, (2) The DC Dems are THAT dumb and removed from reality. I have come to the conclusion that it can only be one of those.
“Anybody can look at the American health care system — which is and continues to be the best in the world —”
I stopped reading right there . . .
May Obama have mercy on our souls.
This President and his administration are totally opposed to any “increase in personal freedom and control of health care dollars,” which is the only thing that could improve our current problems. Health care (and everything else Obama has been selling) is about government control, period. No one argues that the present system is perfect, but when the President says that “those who made the mess should get out of the way so we can clean it up,” he’s talking pure nonsense. The GOVERNMENT is responsible for the flaws in the current system of employer-based coverage. If my employer buys by coverage, there’s no tax on the cost. If I buy it, it’s with after-tax dollars. Government has also dictated what MUST be in any health insurance program, whether it’s coverage for mental health care, acupuncture, chiropractic adjustments, etc. Government, particularly the Democrat Party, has also encouraged the mentality that health care should be a universal “right” financed by the wealthy. Even if this were somehow fair, it just won’t work. Our current socialist programs – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – have long-term deficits that can’t be fixed by raising taxes on the rich. Eventually, tax rates on everyone with a job will have to be raised to much higher rates to pay the tab. Adding promises of more “free” medical care is the answer to nothing.
5. Republicans are preventing health reform from taking place despite the best efforts of President Obama and Democrats in Congress.
I particularly like this one. The Won is not the leader of his own party, it is the Reagan Democrats (like me) who are the most energized to push them to start over, slow down, and listen to the constituents. And read the bill before you vote for it. There will be a test afterwards. In 2010. And in 2012.
Our Community Organizer in Chief is trying to balance allowing some anger and hoping it will dissipate. I sense that it is building. Getting hotter. And it is directed at the Precedent and his party.
Well written. Very helpful penetrating the Liberal Democrats smoke screen.
RAP – Being a veteran does not necessarily qualify anyone for VA care and nobody with insurance is going to go to the VA first.
Marc – Lawsuits aren’t even necessary – just look up the rules with your State’s Department of Insurance (DOI) and let your insurance carrier know you will file a complaint. You will be amazed how fast your insurance changes their tune.
This article confirms the problems with Obamacare. The Democrats are compounding the problem by attacking the constituency opposed to the bill. Alot of these people are independents and some are Democrats. They are also creating suspicion about other bills on their agenda because of their irrational reaction to the opposition on Obamacare. They are flushing whats left of their credibility down the sewer.
What the conservatives are trying to do is paint a picture that suggests there is wide spread opposition to health care reform. It’s a lie. A NYT/CBS poll (06/09/09) indicated that 85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt, 77 percent said they were very or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their own care. In my own somewhat conservative congressional district 78 percent of voters think there needs to be significant change and a sizable majority support a public option. The bottom line is that many of us don’t know how crappy our insurance is until we actually have to use it. Conservatives, who are the concubines of the private health insurance crime syndicate, want to scare Democratic politicians in voting against health care reform, so they can save their behind in the next election cycle or at least that’s what they hope. We hear the, “if you vote for this we’re gonna get you in 2010″ meme floating around frequently. We know what happened to Democrats the last time health care reform failed in 1994. The GOP would love a repeat of this that’s why they are doing all they can to derail the legislation. The Dems have far more to lose by not passing health care reform than passing it, which is why it will be passed this time.
On a separate note, we knew it would only be a matter of time before the mob started bringing weapons to town hall events. They (the right wing media) keep firing up the whackos and are encouraging violence. Fanning the false fires of overheated minds isn’t going to work this time but it is scary. This isn’t the America I know. I want my country back.
@ RAP #2 –
As a 36 year veteran of the military I do get ‘socialized’ medical care; what’s the point?
The VA as the model of the advantages of government-run health care? Have we forgotten the 40K+ backlog of veteran’s appeals; have you been to the VA hospitals where our ‘greatest generation’ now goes to die? If so, then I would suggest that any support for the ‘public option’ would be challenged.
I am a member of about a 3% minority of Americans who served in the military. When I enlisted in the ’70s I was promised full health benefits if I retired – that was taken away years ago as the government could not manage costs for longer-surviving veterans. Now, I have a rising co-pay (the President has floated making this income based), limited opportunity for care dependent on the base/location, and threats repeatedly of reduction of even these diminished benefits.
Like one of our ‘mob-sters’ stated to his congressman, no one should tout Veteran’s care until, ” you’ve been there as a veteran” and seen similar promises ‘dashed.’
We all know the facts of the article to be true. Most people are satisfied with their current health care and don’t want the government meddling. The real question is will the liberal posters read the article before commenting or will they have a knee-jerk reaction and regurgitate the Obama talking points?
PS…My favorite point is #2. The liberal notion that since Obama won, he was essentially given a blank check to do whatever he pleased. On what planet does the President get a free pass to run roughshod over his constituents?
I wish more conservatives and libertarians would pay more attention to the larger phoilosophical issue of government intrusion into our daily lives. I see a lot well meaning people being suckered into bickering at at the detail level, essentially conceding that government will play a much bigger role in our lives and we will be losing more of our liberties.
It is not the role of government to be involved with our health care or to have any role in our health care decisions. It’s the largest Trojan Horse that anyone has ever attempted to slip though our gates.
The entire concept is wrong.
Are you still proud that you voted for Obama? Really? .. Truly? .. Cross your heart?
Praetorian: Please provide links to the mob bringing weapons please. I’ve heard of one incident of someone bringing one that had a concealed weapons license (which, unless Obama has already rewritten the Constitution is still an American right). Apparently you’ve heard reports of a MOB bringing weapons.
I can’t wait to see your informational links.
PS…Do the SEIU union thugs in purple shirts coming in to rough up voters count as a mob?
My wife was denied health insurance because she had cartilage removed from her knee three years prior to applying.
#18a thinking person
“On what planet does the President get a free pass to run roughshod over his constituents?”
On this planet, which is fine as long as you agree with him, apparently.
Is this the future of healthcare? A sick 17-year-old girl needs a liver transplant. Doctors find an available organ, and they’re ready to operate, but the bureaucracy — or the “death panel” — steps in and says it won’t pay for the surgery. Despite protests from the girl’s family and her doctors, the heartless hacks hold their ground for a critical 10 days. Eventually, under massive public pressure, they relent — but the patient dies before the operation can proceed. How sad.
Does this sound scary enough to make you want to go show up at a town hall meeting and yell about how misguided President Obama’s healthcare reform plans are? Except that’s not the future of healthcare — it’s the present. Long before anyone started talking about government “death panels” or warning that Obama would have the government ration care, 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, a leukemia patient from Glendale, Calif., died in December 2007, after her parents battled their insurance company, Cigna, over the surgery. Cigna initially refused to pay for it because the company’s analysis showed Sarkisyan was already too sick from her leukemia; the liver transplant wouldn’t have saved her life. Nataline’s story mirrors countless others whose lives have been sacrificed for the all mighty bottom line.
That kind of utilitarian rationing is exactly what opponents of the healthcare reform proposals pending before Congress say they want to protect the country from. Huh? “Such a system is downright evil,” Sarah Palin wrote, in a message posted on Facebook where she raised the “death panel” specter.
No matter what kind of system we end up with there are going to be controls. Nataline Sarkisyan was denied a chance by the private health insurance bean counters because that would have had a negative impact on their bottom line and profit margin. While there would be controls in a government based system the controls would likely be based on evidence not on profit.
19. RE:
“I wish more conservatives and libertarians would pay more attention to the larger phoilosophical issue of government intrusion into our daily lives.”
Where were the conservatives when Bush and Cheney were reading all of our e-mails and listening to our phone calls and checking our library records and searching our homes with an FBI “letter” in hand? That’s the kind of intrusion that upsets me. But the right doesn’t seem to care about that. They believe it was all in the interest of “national security” or that it wasn’t happening to “real” Americans, only terrorists. Wrong. They listened to everybody and everything. And you’re worried because Obama wants to make health care more accessible and affordable and competitive. So worried that you’re taking loaded guns to town halls, where you promptly drop them on the floor. Oops, silly me. Was that my gun that went off? Sorry, but I was just busy exercising my Constitutional right to be a moron.
Vivo:
Ok. Today your are diagnosed with Cancer. Where do you want to go for treatment?
#16 Praetorian, you may never see your country again. Your President shows distain for our country, for whites, for people who don’t agree with him in lockstep, has an agenda that has been tried and failed in Russia, China, and everywhere else it has been tried. Open your eyes. The GOVERNMENT is not America. We are America, all of us. Our founding fathers set this country up to succeed by making sure the government stayed OUT of our lives as much as possible. Does your “I want my country back” really mean “I want all you people who don’t agree with me to leave.” ::shudder::
9. vivo:
“Anybody can look at the American health care system — which is and continues to be the best in the world —”
I stopped reading right there . . .
WELL WHICH COUNTRY HAS A BETTER SYSTEM ? I LIVE IN CANADA AND IT IS NOT BETTER HERE NOR IS IT FREE
What a bunch of wingnut nonsense.
Just where is this conservative proposal for reform?
The fact is that every other country in the world uses some form of single payer, just as we do with medicare.
And every other country delivers the same level of care for half of the cost.
Medicare and medicaid insure the poor and the elderly and it works pretty well. Obama’s plan simply creates a similar model for those in the middle to choose if they so desire.
#19.
“It is not the role of government to be involved with our health care or to have any role in our health care decisions. It’s the largest Trojan Horse that anyone has ever attempted to slip though our gates.”
Amen to that! Whether government healthcare is good or bad is immaterial as it is completely outside the powers granted the government by the Constitution.
23. Praetorian:
Stunning and irrefutable. When faced with this story and the truths it represents, what course CAN the right take but to scream and shout and stomp their feet so that the truth is not heard.
28. jharp:
Absolutely correct. Where is the conservative proposal for reform? Let’s ask the good people here, what would you do, specifically, to reform health care?
Get the government out of it? Oops, no Medicare or Medicaid or VA care.
Make it more affordable? How?
Come on, folks, you’re all experts on what may be the most complex and arcane institution in the world, what would you do?
24. Now and Then:
Sorry, but I was just busy exercising my Constitutional right to be a moron.
And you succeeded spectacularly well.
The Democrat Party is a criminal enterprise. Pass it on.
With the Emanuel brother (Ezekiel) speaking about how most of our healthcare costs go to those who contribute least we know where this is going.
Vivo says “Anybody can look at the American health care system — which is and continues to be the best in the world —”
I stopped reading right there . . .
Hey Viv, ask any Canadian, Brit, German or Norwegian what happens if they need a knee replacement . . . let alone any chancy form of cancer. They wait, They are given percs or other pain killers and told to wait and wait and wait (this is why most Germans who can afford it buy private medical insurance, go to private doctors and hospitals and live longer).
Single payer systems result in two things, a dispassionate (life determining) decision making processes, and waiting indeterminate periods for any kind of specialized care.
Why else would so many from other countries (Canada, UK) come here for specialized care?
And finally if you are so in favor of “single payer”, why is it that the legislation (as written now) does not address tort reform? Without that the future doctor (making his gubment mandated 35k year) will pay all of his income to his malpractice insurance provider. Since, what is one of the main causes of spiraling medical costs, but the reality (or threat) of lawsuits (Jacobi&Meyers, Binder&Binder). I guess the Democrat leadership is too afraid of offending the legal trade to cut and cauterize the real Hydra in this fight.
#31 RE:
Powerful argument. Impressive logic. Tell me, how do you manage, with your incredibly busy schedule and demanding responsibilities, to stay so informed? Perhaps you can turn that blinding intellect on #30 and educate us libtards on what need to be done (not what SHOULDN’T be done, we already know your answer to that, but what SHOULD be done).
Go ahead, we’re listening . . .
Re #28 jharp: I was wrong! You don’t even read the liberal bible/Huffington Post! Even THEY link to a Newsweek article that says Medicare (that insurance plan you claim works well and which Obama’s plan models) should be scrapped.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/24/newsweek-how-to-solve-med_n_207152.html
As for your claim that EVERY OTHER COUNTRY “delivers the same level of care for half the cost”…http://www.angelfire.com/pa/sergeman/issues/healthcare/socialized.html
Time to go back to the moonbat cave for new talking points. The outdated points you’re using today can easily be discredited.
What difference does it make if the government ‘rations care’ by deciding what it will pay for or if the insurance company does it?
If we want insurance to pay for everything and to spare no expense keeping us alive as long as possible, then we have to suck it up and pay for it. Nothing is free.
It’s that simple.
Jharp
Medicare is going to go bankrupt in a few years. I would not call that ‘working well’
In 2007, an estimated 750,000 Americans travelled abroad for medical care. The number is estimated to increase to 6 million by 2010. The base-case estimate for the annual growth rate in outbound medical tourism is estimated at 100 per cent from 2007 to 2010.
How many are coming to America for care? Seriously, I have no idea. Who does?
“Is this the future of healthcare? A sick 17-year-old girl needs a liver transplant. Doctors find an available organ, and they’re ready to operate, but the bureaucracy — or the “death panel” — steps in and says it won’t pay for the surgery. Despite protests from the girl’s family and her doctors, the heartless hacks hold their ground for a critical 10 days. Eventually, under massive public pressure, they relent — but the patient dies before the operation can proceed. How sad.”
Prae, Are you a Dr? Please research the facts of the case before you post Dem talking points. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/cigna-corp-in-liver-transplant-coverage-controversy
What amazes me with this talking point is, a Government run health care program would no more approve of this procedure than the Private Insurer was willing to. When did the people of the world start to believe that medicine allows us to cheat death? When did we stop understanding that some conditions are just not curable? I am so sorry these parents lost a child, it must be agony. But that is what we call life and death, it has no rhyme or reason, and we truly cannot control it.
18. AThinkingPerson wrote:
The real question is will the liberal posters read the article before commenting or will they have a knee-jerk reaction and regurgitate the Obama talking points?
Peter writes: If Praetorean @ #16 is any indication, then you are quite prescient in your prediction that the libtards will simply regurgitate the Leftist talking points.
the more the truth comes out the more the trolls attack.
I judge the strength of the story by the troll attack level. this one has them bothered.
they really do believe what their handlers tell them, or they are paid thugs. either way they lose with the rest of us.
As a Canadian, I wish our system on vivo and company. Such gentle, caring, thoughtful souls, they’re way more deserving of it than I am.
What I can’t figure out is why more of you just don’t move up here. The waiting list can’t be that long, besides it would be good practice for any medical situation that might arise once you get here. What’s a ten or twelve month wait? We already have what you want. Socialism-lite. Come get it! Where’s that pioneering American spirit?
Now and then;
You pose a good question.
This link says ‘thousands and thousands of Canadians’. I couldn’t find any statistics on other nationalities.
http://www.aim.org/briefing/stimulus-and-health-care
About your 750,000 number, how many of those Americans are seeking cheap facelifts or other cosmetic procedures? It’s just that’s the only context where I’ve heard Americans going overseas. Maybe many are going for necessary treatment but I sure would like to get more information on why they leave. Thanks
This is right on the mark. There are much better ways to improve our system then turning to massive government intrusion. Our regular troll fools show up, toss around insults, and then affirm exactly what the article nails them with.
We do have the best healthcare in the world. What we need is better system to pay for it. Government regulation in the form of Obamacare and “public options” (which are nothing more than a expansion of the welfare state in the long run) makes the problem worse – it continues the system where people are completely insulated from the real world economic reality of their care. They perceive no reason to make smart choices – especially when it comes to day to day care and living. The leftists answer is to remove people’s control over their own lives and control what care will be available by controlling what will be paid for. This makes for a lower quality of care just about everywhere it is tried.
Until the left adds serious tort reform to cut out what could be as much as 25% of the cost of care (premiums and defensive medicine), they cannot be taken seriously. But that would mean less money for the trial lawyers and they would never allow that to happen. This is about politics to them.
The answer is to get everyone covered with a catastrophic care policy (regulation can be created to mandate the insurance providers cover some portion of those with pre-existing conditions) and then allow HSA and other vehicles to cover day to day health care. Tax credits and assistance can be made available for the truly poor and disabled. This protects healthcare intitutions from financial ruin of the uninsured, gives consumers a stake in making good decisions, and covers those that cannot pay. Best of all it limits government from using healthcare as a vote buying and control scheme – which is really what Obamacare is all about. I believe the weight of this issue was pushing things here already before this group of extremists got in power.
Any form of single payer system in the U.S. would be a disaster that should be fought against and resisted. It would lower the quality of care for the majority and end innovation and improvement as it has done in Europe and Canada.
Opening up an important question . . . lots of experts here, apparently . . . educate us libtards on what needs to be done (not what SHOULDN’T be done, we already know your answer to that) but what SHOULD be done, specifically, to fix health care? (Please, be a little more insightful and far-reaching than “tort reform.”)
Canada sends many to the USA for treatment they cannot provide (but only those who have some pull to jump the waiting list)
percentage wise it is big …sorry I don’t have any numbers handy (not that that matters to you)
other Canadians go on their own because the treatment is delayed so long that they don’t live long enough or they may suffer permanent disablity if they don’t.
There is a big push to get private clinics in Canada to provide choice. But our government is still not allowing it.
the republicans have some ways to help the health care in the USA but the pelosi reid crowd will not even let them present it.
I follow the politics of the USA closely and it is funny (not haha funny) that you all allow your freedom to evaporate to these political clowns. DON’T YOU SEE THAT OBAMA, PELOSI, RIED …BARNEY FRANKS are complete idiots. (sorry I didn’t name all of the circus here …but these people have done and continue to do incredible harm.
one note to the trolls …do you really think they (pelosi, reid, obama) know what is best for you? do you really think there is magic out there? ARE YOU REALLY THAT WILLING TO ADBICATE YOUR FREEDOMS TO ANY POLITICIAN DEMOCRAT or REPUBLICAN. because whether you know it or not that is what you are doing. those you ridicule and criticize are not willing to adbicate their freedoms.
the government is a failure at business.
Fact: The 3rd largest institutional employer in the world with 1.4 million “workers” , the great majority administrators, is the United Kingdom’s National Health Service.
Fact: The US federal government in 2008 had a non-military employment total of 2.7 million “workers”.
Question: Given the facts above, what are the ramifications of Obamacare on the size of the US government?
Just think about it. If you are capable of reasoning, you will understand what Obamacare is actually about.
Whats really funny is to listen to Now and Then talk about making health care more competitive while jharpe is bleating on about single payer. Then you look at President Obama, and he weaves back and forth between both depending on which one serves him at any given moment. The left just cannot be trusted with this huge issue.
Now and then:
Ten percent of Canadians come to the US for important medical services. Without the US safety valve the Canadian healthcare system collapses. Just ask any Canadian healhcare bureaucrat.
Recently the British Parliament passed a law requiring Britains traveling abroad to carry their own health insurance for the trip. The law was passed to close a loop hole in British law that allowed British tourists to receive medical care at government expense while out of the country. In was tacitly acknowledged that the law was aimed at medical tourism to the US.
There are many reason for Americans to go abroad for medical care and few of them have anything to do with the lack of insurance or cost. If you can go to India for heart surgury you can afford medical insurance. When foreigners come to the US for care it is always to get immediate treatment or to get a kind of treatment not available at any cost outside of the US.
Unlike some here, I have friends and in-law relatives who actually live in the UK and Canada and who have to deal with those brands of socialized medicine. It is neither good, nor is it free.
Every single one of them tells me it sucks.
America, you don’t want this type of health care system in your life.
Also, while I make no pretense of being a U.S. Constitution expert, I have read the document, (which seems to be more than some of our congress-critters have done), and I’m having trouble finding that part, that clause or paragraph, which gives the Federal government the authority to dictate how I get my health care. Will somebody please point that out to me?
vivo:
why are you here? you don’t read, don’t have facts to marshal, get you a$$ handed to you when you show up – damn, a real masochist.
OK, everybody:
Said the masochist to the sadist: ‘beat me! beat me!’
Said the sadist to the masochist: ‘I won’t!’
Don’t feed the troll.
#11 Bob: “Our current socialist programs–Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid–have long term deficits…..” Can we assume then that you will be true to your principles and not claim any benefits from these programs? Oh, and you forgot the horribly expensive prescription drug benefit foisted on us by Bush.
#20 Paul-Indiana: “Are you still proud that you voted for Obama….” Nope, I voted for McCain. I wonder how many of the self-proclaimed “conservatives” here at PJM did at least one of the following: voted for McCain, campaigned for McCain, contributed $$ to the campaign (disclosure: I did #s 1 & 3). And Paul, I note the Hoosier state went for Obama. What happened??
#24 Now and Then: “Where were the conservatives when Bush and Cheney were reading all our e-mails…..” The answer is real simple: they didn’t become “conservative” until after Obama was inaugurated and “tea parties” became “fashionable”. Except for El Rushbo of course, but it’s hard to consider him a conservative. Maybe a low brow entertainer.
44 Dave:
“The leftists answer is to remove people’s control over their own lives and control what care will be available by controlling what will be paid for.”
This is exactly what we have now, only insurance companies decide.
“The answer is to get everyone covered with a catastrophic care policy (regulation can be created to mandate the insurance providers cover some portion of those with pre-existing conditions)”
Who defines what is “catastrophic?” If it’s the insurance companies, you can bet that definition is going to change. “Regulations” and “mandates”? That’s the government.
“allow HSA and other vehicles to cover day to day health care”
At $18 a bandaid, who can save enough money on a use-it-or-lose-it basis to cover that?
“assistance can be made available for the truly poor and disabled”
That’s the government.
“We do have the best healthcare in the world.”
Maybe, but why doe s the WHO rank America #37 out of 191 countries?
Change is required . . . In the US, one out of two bankruptcies, medical debt is the major factor (one bankruptcy every 20 seconds is attributable to medical/hospital debts). Insurance premiums in the US have risen 117% in the last 10 years . . . and it’s not the insurance companies the hospitals that need to be protected, it’s the people.
Now and Then (and any other liberals too lazy to look up the information for themselves):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124277551107536875.html
As for your insanely stupid comment that something should be more “far-reaching” than tort-reform, you basically summed up what is wrong with Obama’s plan.
Odd isn’t it how Obama is putting trial lawyers ahead of the healthcare of Americans?
Now an “important question” for you ….Why is Obama NOT considering tort-reform??????
45. Now and Then:
Opening up an important question . . . lots of experts here, apparently . . . educate us libtards on what needs to be done (not what SHOULDN’T be done, we already know your answer to that) but what SHOULD be done, specifically, to fix health care? (Please, be a little more insightful and far-reaching than “tort reform.”)
that is actually easier then you think.
BUY THE HEALTH CARE FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT AFFORD IT. don’t take over the system …buy coverage (private insurance coverage) for those lacking it. It’s just like welfare anyways so don’t re-invent the wheel.
BUT the government wants to control it so they don’t like the idea …they want the whole pie.
When the government took over in Canada …in my province 90% had coverage. it would have been so easy just to buy coverage for the other 10% and problem solved. (sort of ..it really is complicated …and the the more complicated it is then the less you want the government with their hands on it.)
now we have a system that has more administrators then doctors and service is bad and getting worse. and you think it will not be that way in the USA ?? ..it reall is obvious if you think about it. JUST IMAGINE WHAT WILL HAPPEN ..it isn’t hard. Human nature hasn’t changed.
another huge issue that I don’t see anyone talking about is that if you take one/sixth of the economy that is paying taxes and make it a government run group …then you will lose all that tax revenue.
the only good I see is that many of the doctors my tax dollars in Canada educated will come back to Canada.
Great article. I think that what has really outraged the liberals is that WHAT THEY HAVE BEEN TRYING TO DO IN THE DARK HAS COME TO LIGHT! Articles like this one further exposes the lies.
People like me are ABSOLUTELY OPPOSED to this Obama-Pelosi-Emmanuel-Reid health care plan. If this plan is sooooooo wonderful, why don’t they put themselves into it?
The fact that they don’t include themselves says a lot!
#49 jerryofva . . . I admit it. i lied. I DO have an idea. It’s closer to 2% or 1/5th of the figure you pulled directly from your cloaca.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/21/3/19
46. a non a mouse:
“Canada sends many to the USA for treatment they cannot provide (but only those who have some pull to jump the waiting list) . . . percentage wise it is big …sorry I don’t have any numbers handy (not that that matters to you)”
Indeed. I respectfully refer you to #52.
“the republicans have some ways to help the health care in the USA but the pelosi reid crowd will not even let them present it.”
They don’t need permission to present their ideas to the American people. If they had a better plan, you can bet we’d be hearing about it.
“The Singapore government spent only 1.3 percent of GDP on healthcare in 2002, whereas the combined public and private expenditure on healthcare amounted to a low 4.3 percent of GDP. By contrast, the United States spent 14.6 percent of its GDP on healthcare that year, up from 7 percent in 1970… Yet, indicators such as infant mortality rates or years of average healthy life expectancy are slightly more favorable in Singapore than in the United States.”
More details on how Singapore’s system works:
* There are mandatory health savings accounts: “Individuals pre-save for medical expenses through mandatory deductions from their paychecks and employer contributions… Only approved categories of medical treatment can be paid for by deducting one’s Medisave account, for oneself, grandparents, parents, spouse or children: consultations with private practitioners for minor ailments must be paid from out-of-pocket cash…”
* “The private healthcare system competes with the public healthcare, which helps contain prices in both directions. Private medical insurance is also available.”
* Private healthcare providers are required to publish price lists to encourage comparison shopping.
* The government pays for “basic healthcare services… subject to tight expenditure control.” Bottom line: The government pays 80% of “basic public healthcare services.”
* Government plays a big role with contagious disease, and adds some paternalism on top: “Preventing diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tobacco-related illnesses by ensuring good health conditions takes a high priority.”
* The government provides optional low-cost catatrophic health insurance, plus a safety net “subject to stringent means-testing.”
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/01/singapores_heal.html
The Democrats don’t want to listen to what could be done to help fix health care. They don’t want to work any harder on it. They just want it done so they can move on. Move on. Sound familiar? George Soros was involved in that too.
The Democrats don’t want to hear ideas such as teaching people personal responsibility, reigning in the pharmaceutical companies and the associated costs, reigning in unions who make unreasonable demands, reigning in the abuse of the system by illegal immigrants, reigning in the malpractice lawsuits and associated liability insurance costs for surgeons and other medical professionals, considering tax credits for health care for those of a certain income level, subsidized care only for those below a certain income level…there’s a much longer list but the point is that there are MANY MANY options to a government controlled health care system. But the Democrats seem to simply WANT government control and no debate. Socialism sucks.
now and then
“the republicans have some ways to help the health care in the USA but the pelosi reid crowd will not even let them present it.”
They don’t need permission to present their ideas to the American people. If they had a better plan, you can bet we’d be hearing about it.
I have seen the republicans state their plans. if you chose to ignore it is your issue not mine.
I will not be responding to you again since you lack honesty in your comments.
good day
Deaths per 1,000 live births. Best health care system in the world my foot.
44 other countries have lower infant mortality than us while spending half of we spend.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html
180 United States 6.26
181 Cuba 5.82
182 European Union 5.72
183 Italy 5.51
184 Isle of Man 5.37
185 Taiwan 5.35
186 San Marino 5.34
187 Greece 5.16
188 Ireland 5.05
189 Canada 5.04
190 Wallis and Futuna 5.02
191 Monaco 5.00
192 New Zealand 4.92
193 United Kingdom 4.85
194 Gibraltar 4.83
195 Portugal 4.78
196 Australia 4.75
197 Jersey 4.73
198 Netherlands 4.73
199 Luxembourg 4.56
200 Guernsey 4.47
201 Belgium 4.44
202 Austria 4.42
203 Denmark 4.34
204 Korea, South 4.26
205 Liechtenstein 4.25
206 Slovenia 4.25
207 Israel 4.22
208 Spain 4.21
209 Switzerland 4.18
210 Germany 3.99
211 Czech Republic 3.79
212 Andorra 3.76
213 Malta 3.75
214 Norway 3.58
215 Anguilla 3.52
216 Finland 3.47
217 France 3.33
218 Iceland 3.23
219 Macau 3.22
220 Hong Kong 2.92
221 Japan 2.79
222 Sweden 2.75
223 Bermuda 2.46
224 Singapore 2.31
RAP, ET AL.: I would argue that the VA is not “socialized medicine”, not in the sense that we generally mean it, and certainly not in the sense that is now undergoing national debate. It is a service provided to those that have given much of themselves.
It is not viewed as some sort of ctizen birthright, and is handled through the infrastructure of the Military. The VA’s core charter it to take care of combat verterns who incurred there disabilities in combat. The VA could not exist without the broader (and constitutionally sanctioned) mission of the armed forces, nor could the military perform that mission if it did not take care of its own. To not care for the fallen would be in fact a deep immorality repugnant to all decent Americans. This is hardly the same thing that the Democrats are pushing,
This might help claify things:
http://www.workworld.org/wwwebhelp/veterans_affairs_va_benefits_health_care.htm
It is not true that any person who wore a US uniform gets complete medical coverage. Far from it. Anyone that thinks otherwise is poorly informed. To, possessed of such ignorance, use the VA as some sort of talking point for socialized medicine is of questionable morality and decency. To willfully do so with full knowledge of the reality of the situation at the VA is to behave with the deepest immorality and indecency. It is an insult to those have have given much for the rest of us.
Terming it “specialized medicine” is really a specious argument for VA style treatment is most profoundly not what we are talking about in the national discussion about socializing our health care sector. Obviously, the nation must tend to the veterans who have served it. This is hardly “socialized” medicine in the sense of overarching government controls, mandates,fabricated “rights” and oppressive and draconian diktats to the citizen.
But at least RAP is being inadvertently honest here: He is a socialist. I imagine that this is the only sort of honesty he is capable of.
His analysis, however, is superficial, his “example” flawed and inappropriate, and his reasoning is specious; this is fairly typical of the Left and the Democrats, but it should not be tolerated.
This case is very much like the common error leftist make in calling organizations such as Police and Fire Department “socialist” because a polity agrees to fund them. This hardly makes them “socialist”. So to it is with the VA. This is merely a willful perversion of language, and to maintain these stances in the face of reason and knowledge is dishonorable.
I’m still laughing at the headline. That’s like the Catholic church discussing five myths about evolution.
Here’s some perspective that resonates with the majority of America . . .
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/11/jon-stewart-vs-town-hall_n_256272.html
Honestly, i couldn’t “make this stuff up.”
Re Now and Then: You bet we’d be hearing about it? You’re kidding right? With the MSM firmly in the tank for Obama, you think they’d report ANYTHING that would tarnish his message? LOL!
Here’s a website you might find interesting…. http://newsbusters.org/
Terming it “specialized medicine” is really ==Terming it “socialized medicine” is really
(to fast with the spell checker)
A truly sad story about the little girl with leukemia. Please keepin mind that in situations like that boobama has already said he would have given her pain killers
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/23/3/10
U.S. per capita health spending continued to exceed per capita health spending in the other OECD countries, by huge margins, in 2001. After expenditures are converted into purchasing-power parity international dollars (PPP$), Switzerland spent only 68 percent as much on health care per capita in 2001 as the United States.3 Neighboring Canada, with a health care delivery system and medical practice styles fairly similar to those in the United States, spent only 57 percent as much per capita as the United States. PPP-adjusted per capita spending in the median OECD country was only 44 percent of the U.S. level (PPP$2,161).
Finally, the median percentage of GDP absorbed by health care in the non-U.S. OECD countries in 2001 was only 8.3 percent, compared with 13.9 percent in the United States
Dave at 44,
From the information I have gathered your analysis is on the mark. I note that Paul Ryan and several other Republicans have set forth detailed reform proposals that incorporate the same ideas.
Praetorian, Jharp, and Now and Then are emotioanally marrried to an irrational solution to the health care systems imperfections. Because of their ideology and political goals they won’t consider alternatives.
Gentlepeople, if Obamacare is so perfect explain these things to us:
1 Where are the demonstrated cost savings? The CBO can’t find them.
2 If we accept your number of 47 million uninsured and we add them to the system where do we get the Doctors to treat these people while we are making Medicine a less attractive field to be in for smart people?
3 Do you think that illegal aliens should be covered by HB 3200. They can easily get coverage under the proposed legislation by showing a social security card.
4 How do you get around the Doctor-Patient privilege that the bill violates by requiring reporting to the government? All 50 states recognize the privilege as do the Federal Rules of Evidence. There is immense precedent finding in favor of the privacy of the relationship.
5 How do you guarantee there will be no rationing, when the bill sets up a scheme for rationing via procedural decisions by government board, not doctors? Under the current system if an insureer refuses treatment there are multiple forms of redress that would be unavailable against the government.
6 What do the elderly, who have relied on the promise of Medicare, do when the system is trimmed by 500 billion dollars? The system is already going broke.
7 How do you solve the government intrusion into peoples homes proposed under several provisions of the bill? Can you say 4th Amendment? The government can not force me to open my door without a warrant.
I will be interested in your responses; and save the ad hominem attacks for another forum, they make you look shallow and emotionally arrested to other people
Yap. Yap. Yap. Stats. Stats. Stats. Yet none of the trolls will address the Canadians here and explain to us, just how wrong we are and why we should actually love our single payer, one stop shopping, triage you to death system. I’ve got time. I’ve been waiting to see the a specialist for ten months, surely you couldn’t take longer than that.
So jharp, you’re basically telling the assembled posters here that you think Singapore’s health care system is superior to the United States? Really?
That explains so much.
From the list at #62:
Waiting with baited breath for jharp and his buddies to go move to Singapore, Sweden, Norway, or France. It has the added benefit of them living the dream of ‘better health care’ than thay obviously think they get here in the US, plus they will be out of our hair for good.
Win/Win!
I’d even be willing to contribute to the one-way plane ticket. Anyone else want to contribute?
Now and Then:
It is called Tort Reform and it is the biggest lever available for reducing HC costs in this country. Of course, wasteful tort law is one of the top weapons for the redistribution of wealth in this country that liberals have, and we don’t even need to discuss the sizable share of donations to your beloved party they provide.
I am curious, and I know it is a slow economy, but what is the economic model for a liberal troll? Do you get paid by ACORN/MoveOn to parrot statist talking points on an hourly basis? Is it on a price per post basis? Is it on an article basis? I would think the hourly basis is ripe for “estimate inflation” when submitting your monthly numbers to payroll, so I as any good liberal on any good economic issue, I would assume this must be the model….consider me curious. I am just a productive (ie, I create jobs, pay your taxes, and drive the growth of this country so you can actually exist out of poverty) fiscal conservative who reads these articles every know and then and doesn’t have time to truly grasp the inner workings of “community organizers” or the unemployed.
Now and Then: Using Stewart or HuffoPo to describe what “resonates with the majority of Americans” is total hogwash, and you know it. You cannot support that claim with any valid and reasonable facts. In fact only a tiny minority of American pay attention to these folks at all.
I think this is part of you problem, your horizons are so small and your world experience is so shallow that you imagine that you are in the mainstream of America and can speak for it. You live in the left wing media bubble. You have no idea what “resonates with American”, and if you did, you would not be using such a soporific and sophomoric cliche as “resonate with Americans” either, I might add.
In fact, the democrats have the majority on the Hill and have the WH. What is stopping them if it is ture that the “majority of Americans” favor socialized medicine?
In fact they do not, the Democrats hustled, lied and conned there way into their position, and now the American people are getting a sense of the truth about them.
This is why they insult and slander their constituents–they hope to provide cover to those Democrats who posed as something other than what they actually are in order to get elected. It will not work.
Americans do not want the centralized and tyrannical socialist nation that the Democrats are attempting to foist on us. Stop maintianing otherwise.
62. jharp
That’s a rather long list of countries you are perfectly free to emigrate to if you feel they are so much better.
From a personal integrity perspective, it’s far more honorable for you to do that than it is to impose your crap upon us.
Now and Then asks: educate us libtards on what needs to be done (not what SHOULDN’T be done, we already know your answer to that) but what SHOULD be done, specifically, to fix health care? (Please, be a little more insightful and far-reaching than “tort reform.”)
Specific? Tort reform would imply (at the very least) loser pays. Better would be to define specific limited types of suits that can be undertaken (with limits on compensation).
Of course the above is impossible as government (and congress most of all) is composed of lawyers (most of which think they’ll have their turn at the Tort trough once they leave gubment and become partners).
Shakespeare had it right (though usually used completely in the wrong context) “first we kill all the lawyers”.
AThinkingPerson:
“So jharp, you’re basically telling the assembled posters here that you think Singapore’s health care system is superior to the United States? Really?”
Singapore has equal or better outcomes than us. And they spend 1.3% of GDP while we spend 14.6% of GDP.
You tell me who has a more efficient health care system.
And I’m still waiting for the republican health care reform proposal.
Wait. It just came to me. How could I have missed it? Cut taxes.
Now and Then…. Why isn’t Obama even considering tort reform? We await your answer.
Singapore also has a very low birth rate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Singapore
which explains their low infant mortality rate. I would wager Sweden also has a low birth rate.
If American health care is so wretched and unfair, why do people come here (as opposed to say, Singapore, Bermuda or Sweden) for critical surgery when unavailable in their own countries (or if the waiting lines for socialized medicine in their countries are too long)?
One of the problems with health care is that the cost is divorced from people’s ability to pay. It’s not really market-driven. People don’t pay; HMO’s/insurance companies do, and they have deeper pockets, which is why they are charged more. Plus, some states (usually the “bluer” ones) require insurance companies to cover things that aren’t essential (classic example is sex-change operations in SF), which also drives up costs. Also, as stated in earlier posts is the whopping malpractice insurance fees doctors have to carry thanks to the Dems’ buddies, the trial lawyers (which shouldn’t be surprising, since most politicians are lawyers anyway).
No one is turned away for emergency care in this country — it’s illegal. However, we will be expected (and are really doing so now) to cover illegal immigrants. How is that “fair”?
I remember when HMO’s were introduced in the ’80s (by The People’s Senator, Ted Kennedy) people were saying it would bite us in the butt. Here we are.
Is our health care system perfect? Absolutely not. But this nightmare boondoggle state-run health care is not the solution. It’s better than what Obamacare offers.
jharp: You’re still waiting for the GOP health care proposal because you aren’t reading everyone’s comments.
… educate us libtards on what needs to be done …
1) Disassociate health insurance from work completely. One’s employer should never have any say whatsoever in the kind of medical insurance or healthcare you or your family receives. Also, you shouldn’t have to switch plans every time you switch jobs, or decide to work PT instead of FT.
2) Mandate HSAs with a mandatory contribution that is a very low percentage of your income (say 2%), with the option to contribute much more. Like 401(k)s, HSAs would allow matching contributions from companies, and of course all employer or employee contributions would be pre-tax — meaning the poor are being subsidized by the educated and/or productive. Unlike 401(k)s, however, HSAs would not be administered by the company. They should be conservatively invested in something like MMs –- investment vehicles that cannot lose money, as an inflation hedge. Allow insurance premiums to be automatically deducted from HSA account.
3) Health insurance should be for serious conditions only and have high deductibles as default (although no-deductible plans are an option). Simple doctor’s visits, for instance, should involve nothing more than handing over your HSA ‘credit card’ for a ‘charge’.
4) Possibly mandate that health insurance must be purchased after the age of 25 (or younger). This is problematic, and causes market distortions, but it should be on the table.
5) An option on your 1040 or other tax form allows contribution of monies to a fund to which the poor can apply for assistance. Liberals can contribute away ‘for the greater good’, even though we all know they are the least charitable group in the electorate. This is NOT A TAX, and bureaucrats are paid ONLY through this fund. Let’s see liberals fund their own programs for once.
6) Tort reform.
7) Create a mechanism whereby people can voluntarily join an association that offers insurance. This allows pooling, which reduces cost, but also limits your options. Again, this is voluntary.
9) Highly regulated clinics not associated with hospitals to reduce the cost of testing should be allowed to compete.
10) Etc.
Those are just a few ideas off the top of my head.
Issues that need to be addressed:
1) Pre-existing conditions
2) No one can ever be dropped from a plan for any reason except in cases of fraud.
3) Caps
4) Consumers dropping one expensive plan that covers everything (Viagra, chiropracty, mental illness, etc.) for another cheaper plan that only covers real problems once a real problem arises.
5) You can reduce costs for some by mandating that everyone be charged the same amount for certain categories, but this makes it much more expensive for younger people, and will probably cause them to drop insurance altogether.
There are a lot of options for true reform out there, but installing the incentives and mechanisms that will eventually lead to Canadian and British style health care is NOT the way to go.
It’s like using a howitzer to go squirrel hunting, in the sense that it isn’t necessary to ruin the healthcare of 98% of the population just to address the needs of the 2% of the population that truly needs some assistance.
And please, I’ll take a howitzer to any idiot who drags out that ridiculous 47 million Americans without health insurance claim. Even you liberals should know that number has been debunked thoroughly by now ….
RE: Tort reform? Why do we never hear of lawyers getting sued for malpractice? Surely there are lawyers who have done horrible jobs for their clients. Why doesn’t someone who’s lost a capital case, or their families, sue their lawyer instead of complaining to the supreme court that they had an unfair trial? Imagine the pain and suffering amounts their families could get!
Peter the Bubblehead:
“Waiting with baited breath for jharp and his buddies to go move to Singapore, Sweden, Norway, or France.”
You are mistaken. The liberals now control our government. It is you who will be moving if you don’t like it.
I suggest Somalia. No big government interfering with your freedom there.
By the way Peter, how’s your imaginary friend who is on the VA and Tricare at the same time doing?
I know this dead horse has been beat too many times but I’ll do it yet again. The largest salient reason for the every growing spiral of healthcare cost is one caused by the legal mercenaries. Sure our costs are more expensive, malpractice insurance rates are insane. Doctors often prescribe testing for patients that are not useful, but they “check the block” burdening the system and raising the costs . . .
It’s silly and pointed that the Democrats talk about everything but this . . . just waiting for their turn at the Tort Trough.
Jharp: You should factor out the illegal immigrants and the inner city community in these stats.
Those problems are in fact not caused by any problems with our health care system, but by broader cultural and social problems. These problems can be traced to 60 years of disastrous Left Wing policies and politics. These are areas of personal responsibility and not the fault of incompetent medical professionals nor access to the system. I challenge you to prove otherwise.
To mask these the hideous effects of left wing social engineering under raw statistics is wholly dishonest. To then call for even more disastrous social engineering using this sort of lying rhetorical hustle is profoundly immoral. In fact, in actual in quality of care, infrastructure, research and access to such, the USA far surpasses any other nation. If you choose not to see this or acknowledge it then you are merely letting you narcissism, immaturity and “ideology” get in the way of the facts, and are therefore not really worth the time spent listening to you.
And another thing, you no doubt believe that Roe vs Wade should not be overturned. If this is the case then your hypocrisy here is most glaring.
Jharp (Re #78) I think I’m going to forward on your comments about Singapore’s health care system being superior to the USA onward to the White House nark website. They sound “fishy” in an anti-Obama’s-healthcare plan sort of way.
This article is a joke. Republicans had 8 years to tackle health care and didn’t even address it. Their idea of a repsonse to the social security crisis was to put elderly life savings in the stock market. Imagine how many seniors would be out on the street right now had they put their life savings in the stock market just as it was about to crash. And the GOP has the audacity to claim that it cares about seniors, or that it cares about menaingful health reform. The GOP will always obstruct any kind of meaningful health care reform for the simple reason that they are in the pocket of the health care lobby.
You want me to believe that the GOP gives a flying fig about anyhting else other than obstruction? Fine, show us an alternative bill. Show us an alternative plan for reform. Instead, you just give us stupid joke charts and Sarah Palin twitters about a “deaht panel”.
The only “myth” here is that the GOP has any credibility to lend to this discussion at all. Apparently, solving national challenges is simply above the GOP’s pay grade these days.
Thank you Samizdat for the well articulated points.
This has been a trojan horse strategy by the dems since the get go. Just get it passed and we’ll fix it later, once we have control…it seems to be their strategy with everything.
That is a very dangerous approach for those that value liberty. Strictly speaking from an IT perspective and your point number 7.
I feel like I’m entering a Kafkan nightmare.
I love the depth of Kazooskibum’s analysis. I suppose this what passes for thoughtful analysis among thw wingnuts
jharp, Now and Then, vivo, Praetorian. At this point in time, are there any Federal/State laws/regulations that apply to the private health insurance industry?
unthinkingpersonoidWith the MSM firmly in the tank for Obama, you think they’d report ANYTHING that would tarnish his message?
Some of us read the paper and actually know the answer to this question.
The Shadow: Please do us all a favor and honor us with some of YOUR “thoughtful analysis”.
Shouldn’t take long for you to belch out something right?
Thank God, I thought all the health care debate had simply devolved into screaming Teabaggers! This is an excellent article and IF people would discuss this stuff at Town Hall meetings. Thanks Mr. Emanual for presenting an actual argument, rather than behaving like a five year old. I only wish the Teabag Party would follow your lead.
Sadly, I think they’re more interested in being outlandish children, rather than behaving like adults concerned about the future of this great nation.
But, articles like this give me some hope that not all of the country has turned into nutters.
23. Praetorian
Gee, I hope this person continues to submit comments. This person argues that insurance companies that DON’T PAY FOR A
PROCEDURE are not as good as a government that REFUSES TO ALLOW A PROCEDURE TO HAPPEN UNDER PENALTY OF THE LAW.
82. Aureliano:
7) “Create a mechanism whereby people can voluntarily join an association that offers insurance. This allows pooling, which reduces cost, but also limits your options. Again, this is voluntary.”
Congratulations Aureliano. You got one right. Almost.
And it is exactly what Obama care does save the “limits your options”. Obama care increases your options.
1. de-link health insurance from employment (gradually)
2. make it legal to buy health insurance across state lines–across national lines, for that matter. People will be able to buy whatever level of coverage they want.
3. tort reform
4. more health care professionals, allowed to do more things on more levels–i.e., relaxing of licensing laws.
5. mobilization of charity into caring for the poor and grant money for technological innovation.
Other than that, we might have to wait until the enormous technological advances of the last couple of decades become more portable (instead of huge, expensive machines only hospitals can afford)–kind of like what happened with computers. (And this is exactly the kind of process government obstructs)
That’s for starters, anyway.
44 other countries have lower infant mortality than us while spending half of we spend.
Don’t be an idiot. The United States counts premature births as ‘live’ births, and since many preemies die, this skews the statistics rather dramatically (most other countries don’t count preemies as live births). In other cases, the records-keeping is inferior or downright manipulated (e.g., Cuba), and in societies like Japan or Taiwan, the statistics do not account for poor third world immigrants, who tend to skew the results in the negative (people from the third world tend to be ignorant and do not know how to take care of themselves).
Moho: From your comments, I can safely assume that the “some of us read the paper and actually know the answer to this question.” does NOT include you.
Points for effort though moho. You do know that The National Enquirer isn’t a real paper right?
Samizdat…if these questions are so pertinent, how come none of the teabaggers have asked any of them? I’ve watched just about every bit of footage available and your heros seems obsessed with euthenasia. It seems if they had this list of questions to ask on behalf of armchair teabaggers like you, then they are doing you a disservice by simply showing up and screaming “no socialism” and “government out of my medicare”! Better teabaggers please.
91. Mr Lucky:
jharp, Now and Then, vivo, Praetorian. At this point in time, are there any Federal/State laws/regulations that apply to the private health insurance industry?
Of course there are. Are you really that uninformed and still believe you can add anything to this debate?
I love the depth of Kazooskibum’s analysis. I suppose this what passes for thoughtful analysis among thw wingnuts
Blah blah blah WINGNUTS blah blah blah WINGNUTS blah blah blah WINGNUTS blah blah blah WINGNUTS.
Racists!
Thank you.
the statistics do not account for poor third world immigrants, who tend to skew the results in the negative (people from the third world tend to be ignorant and do not know how to take care of themselves).
Aureliano, I would be angry too about the racist charge if I were you. This is asinine xenophobia, not racism.
62. Jharp
As has been pointed out many times before when infant mortality has been cited as a statistic for measuring the quality of care provided.
The critera as to what constitutes “infant mortality” differs by country.
In the United States we use the full WHO definition. In Germany they only use one of the four criterion and in the U.K. infants who are delivered before full term and then die are classified as “still-born” and not included in infant mortality rates. In some countries death of an infant before the age of 1 does not count toward infant mortality.
For premature infants the rate of survival in the U.S. is unmatched anywhere in the world.
In several European countries, idolized by self-described “progressives” no attempt is made to provide anything other than pallative care to infants under 25 weeks gestation.
Apples and Oranges, Jharp, apples and oranges.
Marklar: Get your fact straight:
http://www.heritage.org/research/healthcare/bg1804.cfm
And some other points you need to get straight:
1)The GOP only controlled both houses of Congress for 4 years during the Bush administration, and only by small margins. The GOP can only get through to a tiny portion of the MSM. The Federal and States’ bureaucracies are almost wholly Democrat fiefdoms, and the relevant Academic and NGO communities are almost exclusively owned by the left and mostly paid for, btw, out of the taxpayer’s purse one way or another.
2) Children that they are, the Democrats obstructed almost any reform at all during the Bsuh years all the while whining abut the “lack of reform”. They were given cover by the Democrat controlled MSM. In fact the Democrats do not want to actuall “reform” anything. Traitors that they are, they want to use socialized medicine as an excuse to foist an American version of Socialist and Communist tyranny on us. They certainly do not want their lucrative fiefdoms of Medicaid or Medicare “reformed”, not properly at least, no more than they want Fannie Mae or Freddie MAc “reformed”. Above all they do not want tort reform or to stand up to the AMA, the ABA and the AMA being, oddly enough, both key sources of funding for the Democrat party.
So it is a completely dishonest line of argumentation here on your part that the “GOP did not address the issue” and that the democrats have no culpability in the matter. Nothing could be further from the truth.
3) It is government meddling that put us here in the first place, namely Medicare, Medicaid SCHIPS and a host of other Federal and State socialized entitlement programs. Again, your argument is specious: You are holding the GOP responsible for the state of the current system when in fact it is the fault of the Democrats. It is true that they have a hard time standing up to the Democrats, but if they did, you would be right out there slandering them and spewing misinformation and agitprop just as you are doing so today on this blog.
Jharp, does his holiness have any response to his peoples curious lack of interest in Tort reform (and the consequences thereof we daily pay for)? Of course if his holiness’ concern is that people are “protected” (vs Mercenaries having their time at the trough of plenty) that is understandable, I’m sure protection and handcuffing the trade of legal mercenaries can be deconflicted . . .
Perhaps a better way would be to bar members of the bar from seeking political office, or banning their participation after government service . . . why let those with such a generous retirement continue “cashing in” . . .
Finally, “Follow me, do as I do” is the trait of all good leaders, “do as I say, not as I do” is the trait displayed by all bad ones, since congress seeks to foist a plan on all (except them) we know what kind of leadership traits they have (every one who will not address their rationalia behind NOT being under the same program).
Moho: You must not be one of them, evidently. Seriously, are you maintaining that the vast majority of the MSM is not “in the tank” for Obama and the Democrats?
The MSM is in tha main wholly owned by the Democrat Party and has been since the days of FDR.
It is just preposterous to maintain otherwise. If you domaintain otherwise, you have departed from reality, and it is no wonder that you think the things that you do.
And it is exactly what Obama care does save the “limits your options”. Obama care increases your options.
No, it doesn’t. Adding the ‘public option’ to 1400+ private insurance plans increases your options by exactly 7/100 of one percent.
The taxpayer-funded public option will incentivize companies to drop their plans, forcing individuals to the public option, thereby reducing one’s options. Obama is pretty clear in his commitment to single-payer healthcare, and he’s been clear that it will happen incrementally.
And it’s clear that the Canadian and British style single-payer system is inferior, rationed, politicized medical care.
I remind you that the accusation was that people who disagree with the public option didn’t have any counter-proposals. I came up with nine major proposals in a matter of minutes, and I could come up with dozens more if I had the time (or the inclination).
The ideas ARE out there. They have always been floating around.
Then I would assume that you would agree that the health insurance industry is not wholly private. Since the State/Federal government oversee the health insurance industry, are they not in part responsible for the failures of that industry?
For some reason, my post at 105, was give the handle of Anonymous. It was actually posted by me.
#62 Jharp, does it really surprise you that a country that says it is legal to kill a baby in womb or allow one born alive to die and refuse any treatment has a high infant mortality rate?
“Jharp, does his holiness have any response to his peoples curious lack of interest in Tort reform”
It always tickles me that the wingnuts want a government bureaucrat deciding the judgments received after being mangled by malpractice, instead of a jury of ones peers.
Not very wingnuttly of you.
9. vivo wrties:
““Anybody can look at the American health care system — which is and continues to be the best in the world —”
I stopped reading right there . . .”
..good!
107. Mr Lucky was directed to jharp.
Aureliano, I would be angry too about the racist charge if I were you. This is asinine xenophobia, not racism.
Perhaps.
Then again, perhaps the statistics simply show that poor immigrants from third world countries have more health problems, including a higher infant mortality rates.
Facts. To a Left-liberal political tribalist they are angry, xenophobic, and racist.
Or put another way: blah blah blah WINGNUT blah blah blah WINGNUT blah blah blah WINGNUT … racists!
Thank you.
Don – Do you any statistics on how much money tort reform will save. The only study I am aware of said it would save one half of one percent. I suspect if your child were injured or killed by a medical mistake you would be the first one to sue
Reason #6:
Wingnuts! Nazis! Fascists! Bush! Cheney!!!!11
CKIAH
does his holiness have any response to his peoples curious lack of interest in Tort reform (and the consequences thereof we daily pay for)?
Tell that to your fallen hero, who announced a frivolous law suit to cover his medical bills to the cheers of dozen teabaggers the other day. The image of him rolling around in a wheelchair two days after the very video of the event showed him jumping around and walking was especially humorous. Tort reform starts at home, teabaggers.
MoreHO: That is a statement of fact, not racism.
Get over that dishonest rhetorical hustle of yours of calling people racist when they disagree with you or state facts that you may find awkward. He is quite right to raise this as an issue and you are not addressing it either rationally or honorably.
That racist business of calling people racist is over and done with, get used to it. Nobody cares.
You really need to get over the notions that: 1) You are a moral or intellectual paragon hereabouts–this notion is about as far from the facts as could be, believe you me; 2) That you somehow are empowered by your political “beliefs”, if they can be called that, to make moral pronouncements on people here (or anywhere else for that matter). This is just pure narcissism and self-importance on your part. You are mostly just cipher in the broad scheme of things; and 3) That anyone hereabouts has a care at all what you think about them. You mostly amuse people here, you are just too obtuse to realize it,
As for racism, like most liberals, you are the one that is the racist–you just happen to hate your own race. And yourself, I might add.
Jharp, thank you for your response!! Party line thinking (or lack) at it’s best!
It always tickles me that the wingnuts want a government bureaucrat deciding the judgments received after being mangled by malpractice, instead of a jury of ones peers.
Not very wingnuttly of you.
What’s really funny about that line is it comes from one who seems to want a Gubmint bureaucrat determining access to particular parts of care.
I get it now, Doctors are morally bound by the Hypocratic oath, and your betters are amorally bound by the oath of hypocrisy
Moho at 100,
I posed questions based upon the legislation. Your response was to attack someone for supposedly not asking pertinent questions at public forums. That is an evasion, not an answer to the questions.
We are waiting for you, and the others to answer these questions. These are only preliminary, I have more after you explain how cost savings without rationing will occur. The CBO can’t find that this is true. I will be interested as to how you solve the Constitutional problems as well.
Let’s hear a reasoned response, without the reflexive ad hominem attack. You sound weak when you can’t answer other than by making personal attacks that don’t answer a legitimate question raised by the legislation.
Ruh Roh. You’ve lost Fox News on the euthanasia lies.
“Neil Cavuto calls Sarah Palin’s words ‘extreme’: Things like “death panel” and “evil” destructs the debate”
I’m starting to like Palin. She’s killing the GOP. Go Sarah.
JHARP: You completely mischaracterize what is meant by tort reform, and you know it!
This is thouroughly dishonest of you.
Tort reform has nothing to do with
It always tickles me that the wingnuts want a government bureaucrat deciding the judgments received after being mangled by malpractice, instead of a jury of ones peers.
It is about reforming the legal codes and statutes to reduce frivolous lawsuits and outrageous judgments. There is not “government bureaucrat” involved whatsoever. It is about legal codes.
Do you mean to sat that judges are “government bureaucrats”?
You are lying. How very much the dishonest, raving moonbat of you.
#116 The Saaaahhhhdow noes.
“I suspect if your child were injured or killed by a medical mistake you would be the first one to sue…”
And if, Sahdow, you made a mistake in your work and were sued for it, you would undoubtedly feel that people who are sued because of mistakes in their work would be wrongly sued. Negligence is another matter entirely.
In response to Sazmat and Dopeyperson
1 Where are the demonstrated cost savings? The CBO can’t find them.
There has been one great study of the difference in healthcare cost accrosss the country. It was done at Dartmouth. The study found that cost in one area could be twice what the Mayo Clinic would charge or even another city, but there was no corresponding difference in outcomes. What was driving the cost were that some doctors and hospitals were ordering twice the number of tests, procedures and dugs than a comperable set of doctors. The cost can only be brought under control by the panel that the bill call for. That panel will come up with a set of best practices. The CBO did not examine the potential saving but merely stated that past efforts to control cost were a failure. If we do nothing, the cost will escalate
2 If we accept your number of 47 million uninsured and we add them to the system where do we get the Doctors to treat these people while we are making Medicine a less attractive field to be in for smart people?
There is no shaortage of people who want to get into medical school. In fact medical schools are expanding and new ones are being built. The 47 million people can get healthcare already in the emergency room because by law no emergency room can refuse to treat them . Unfortunately, it cost twn times as much to treat them inthe emergency room than in a doctor’s office. I talk to doctors everyday and most of them got into the field not just because of money but because they want to help people
3 Do you think that illegal aliens should be covered by HB 3200. They can easily get coverage under the proposed legislation by showing a social security card.
See above – They can already get expensive treatment. As a Christian, I believe we have an obligation to cover everyone, but do it in an affordable way.
4 How do you get around the Doctor-Patient privilege that the bill violates by requiring reporting to the government? All 50 states recognize the privilege as do the Federal Rules of Evidence. There is immense precedent finding in favor of the privacy of the relationship.
There is nothing in the bill that violates the Doctor Patient realtionship.
5 How do you guarantee there will be no rationing, when the bill sets up a scheme for rationing via procedural decisions by government board, not doctors? Under the current system if an insureer refuses treatment there are multiple forms of redress that would be unavailable against the government.
“The scare tactics about how CER will lead to government rationing mask the actual rationing going on right now, rationing that health-care reform is intended to help:
Care, except emergency care, is rationed to those uninsured or unable to pay. David Leonhardt in the New York Times reminds us:
The uninsured still receive some health care, obviously. But they get less care, and worse care, than they need. The Institute of Medicine has estimated that 18,000 people died in 2000 because they lacked insurance.
Coverage for pre-existing conditions is rationed.
Care is rationed when your insurance company says it’s not medically necessary and will not pre-authorize it, regardless of your doctor’s assessment.
Care is rationed when it has become too expensive according to your insurance company, which cancels your policy just when you need it most. “At a recent House hearing, three insurance companies testified that they had ‘rescinded’ or dropped coverage for nearly 20,000 patients between 2003 and 2007,” Leonhardt reported, “often after patients had submitted claims they thought would be covered.”
Quality is rationed, according to Leonhardt, when “billions of dollars [are spent] on operations, tests and drugs that haven’t been proved to make people healthier. Yet we have not spent the money to install computerized medical records — and we suffer more medical errors than many other countries.”
Money is rationed, underpaying primary-care doctors, relative to specialists. Leonhardt writes:
They keep us stewing in waiting rooms while they try to see as many patients as possible. We don’t reimburse different specialists for time spent collaborating with one another, and many hard-to-diagnose conditions go untreated. We don’t pay nurses to counsel people on how to improve their diets or remember to take their pills, and manageable cases of diabetes and heart disease become fatal. We don’t pay for doctors to talk to each other about our care. Doctors are generally not paid to do the blocking and tackling of medicine: collaboration, probing conversations with patients, small steps that avoid medical errors. Many doctors still do such things, out of professional pride. But the full medical system doesn’t do nearly enough. That’s rationing — and it has real consequences. … Over all, the survival rates for many diseases in this country are no better than they are in countries that spend far less on health care.”
6 What do the elderly, who have relied on the promise of Medicare, do when the system is trimmed by 500 billion dollars? The system is already going broke.
AS stated above the saving are not coming from denying coverage or limiting coverage but by instituting best practices
7 How do you solve the government intrusion into peoples homes proposed under several provisions of the bill? Can you say 4th Amendment? The government can not force me to open my door without a warrant.
No one is coming into your home and there is no increase in the government’s ability to come an get you.
And still none of the trolls will address a Canadian who, if you take the single payer path, knows exactly where this will head. Ten months to see a specialist? Just hope that it’s not serious, eh?
There will never be tort reform. Congress and the White House is a cabal of lawyers looking after the interest of trial lawyers and unions.
Samizdat:
Your response was to attack someone for supposedly not asking pertinent questions at public forums. That is an evasion, not an answer to the questions.
Well, this is a start I suppose. Let me give you some tips for when you want your questions answered. First of all, if you have no factual basis for your questions, its your fault, not the fault of the person receiving the questions. If you bring up an issue, you need facts to contend that it really is an issue. I’m not going to do your homework for you. I’m more than happy to have a discussion based on facts, but the people here rarely offer anything substantial. My guess is that you’re regurgitating the things you’ve heard or seen in the echo chamber that constitutes your discourse.
I’ll take you seriously–and I mean that–when you come back with some substantive issues that are a product of informed research. Don’t blame the public for thinking that there’s no factual basis for a movement that’s most vocal representation is trying to talk over people. You people chose to frame this debate as a shouting match. My guess is that you have nothing factual to back up your claims, but I’m open to being surprised. This is a challenge by the way; I rarely if ever offer up an argument unless I can offer subtantive citations for my view.
I would be interested in seeing a valid comparison of health statistics between countries. As in, a study that discounts the premies and stillborns that contribute to our infant mortality rate, as many European countries do. As in, a study that attempts to control for variables like a massive inmate population and more prevalent violent crime, rather than one that uses the assumption that healthcare is the only thing that influences things like life expectancy.
I won’t hold my breath.
Moho:
About the Catholic Church and evolution:
http://www.cinews.ie/article.php?artid=5793
Yet again, you are wrong!
More mindless slander and unfounded agitprop out of you. Or is it just ignorance?
Both, I would wager.
Mongoose:
“It is about reforming the legal codes and statutes to reduce frivolous lawsuits and outrageous judgments.”
In other words, it’s about taking the power away from a jury of our peers and letting a government bureaucrat decide what’s best.
“There is not “government bureaucrat” involved whatsoever. It is about legal codes.”
Wrong. It’s all about a “government bureaucrat” deciding what’s best instead of a jury.
To Congress,
Why is ok to have Union thugs force mortgage firms to offer low cost loans to people who could not afford them; paid Acorn thugs to stake out polling places against the law and have the DOJ turn a blind eye toward corruption; and organized paid political organizations to shout at Bush, and then when individual Americans afraid of what Health Care will do to all Americans we are called Un- Americans! The nerve and arrogance of Congress leadership. Rise up.
125. Anonymous:
“6 What do the elderly, who have relied on the promise of Medicare, do when the system is trimmed by 500 billion dollars?”
Flat out false. You are a lying sack of dog doo doo.
It must be a really proud feeling for you to scare the elderly with lies. Today’s GOP. Real classy.
Never underestimate the power of people for whom bureaucracy is responsible for their actions to intrude into your affairs and make your life harder. Within that, never underestimate the effect of a limited budget on what such people “can’t” do when actually spending money or doing something.
Moho:Samizdat…if these questions are so pertinent, how come none of the teabaggers have asked any of them? I’ve watched just about every bit of footage available and your heros seems obsessed with euthenasia
Unfortunately, not all the participants in these TH meetings are as eloquent and coolheaded as you. They have a gut emotional reaction to being lied to, and treated like children. What makes good television is what we see. Kind of supports the claim these are unorganized donchathink?
I’m not a big fan of cherry picking facts to support conclusions. I just want to know why Queen Pelosi really isn’t that interested in alternative proposals and why does Obama defer crafting proposals to House and Senate?.
Any ideas?
A couple points to the anonymous reply at 53.
Yes change is required. But what that change includes is much more important than change for changes sake. And some change could do more harm than good – and I think the current left extremists that are pushing this disaster would do great harm.
The idea that there is no difference between an insurance company making decisions about what to cover and the government is not a very good one. Insurance companies have to compete against other insurance companies and options. They may decide to compete based on price, service, or a combination. But if they screw their customers, they won’t be around long. First their customers will leave, and second, government can play the role it should play in over-site of the insurance market – which is NOT the same as actually providing the insurance. That is why states have insurance commissioners and fine insurance companies when they fail to provide the services they contract to do. We move more towards Government running the whole show, and there is no recourse and accountability. Its just political pass the buck and “oh well.”
The American health care system is absolutely nowhere near the best in the world — our best hospitals are like Mexican clinics compared to the best hospitals in France and Scandinavia, and our average care has been ranked for some time among the worst of all the industrialized nations. Most people have no idea of how good or bad their doctors or hospitals are in relationship to how things are elsewhere. I’ve also personally noticed, especially among older people, that there is an awful lot of near blind faith placed in doctors that they’ve known for a while, even if any sort of cursory look at the treatments and drugs being used relative to what the ailments are would raise immediate warning flags.
Also the modern HMO is mostly a Nixon creation — Ted Kennedy did offer up an alternative much broader health care plan at the time, but what ended up being enacted was a half-ass compromise bill with mostly Nixon’s fingerprints on it.
The rest of the article is pretty much just as “accurate.”
#125 “7 How do you solve the government intrusion into peoples homes proposed under several provisions of the bill?”
Anonymoses say: “Can you say 4th Amendment? The government can not force me to open my door without a warrant.No one is coming into your home and there is no increase in the government’s ability to come an get you.:
Ring,,,ring.
Homie: Yes, who is it?
Ringer: It’s Acorn here for the census. Open up. We’ve got questions about your race, place of origin, and political leanings. Hope you have a copy of your original birth certificate handy.
Homie: Sorry, I won’t. You need a warrant to come in.
Ringer: Oh yeah? You better open up. NOW, or I’ll be right back with a cop.
What’s the matter “Anonymous” (Re #125) did you forget how to spell The Shadow?
Benefits of tort reform: http://www.atra.org/wrap/files.cgi/7964_howworks.html
The rest of your comment consisted of assuring me that the government promises me my care won’t be rationed. Yeah. Sure. Just like they promised me my taxes wouldn’t go up, Gitmo would be closed by now, unemployment wouldn’t go over 8% and they didn’t want to take over the banking and auto industries.
So The Shadow, er, I mean “Anonymous”, you’re claiming that indeed, the trial lawyers do need to profit from health care at the expense of the public, longer lines are acceptable because there are lines now and it’s okay to “trim” Medicare by 500 BILLION dollars because it’s already going broke? That about sums up your post right?
Gee, I have no idea why people are so scared of the Obama regime taking over healthcare.
Anonymous said -
“Over all, the survival rates for many diseases in this country are no better than they are in countries that spend far less on health care.”
Unless perhaps you’ve got cancer. Oh, but I see that you’ve used the “many diseases” clause.
From Lancet Oncology -
“One of the reports compares the statistics from Europe with those from the United States and shows that for most solid tumors, survival rates were significantly higher in US patients than in European patients. This analysis, headed by Arduino Verdecchia, PhD, from the National Center for Epidemiology, Health Surveillance, and Promotion, in Rome, Italy, was based on the most recent data available. It involved about 6.7 million patients from 21 countries, who were diagnosed with cancer between 2000 and 2002.
The age-adjusted 5-year survival rates for all cancers combined was 47.3% for men and 55.8% for women, which is significantly lower than the estimates of 66.3% for men and 62.9% for women from the US Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program ( P < .001)."
If we take SAHDOW literally . . .these hundreds of Billions Mercenary organizations (Jacobi &Meyers, Binder&Binder, and the rest) leach from the system are a mere pittance . . . Then the oNLY reason for healthcare costs to be what they are . . . is greed. Of course the law suits (what they do and all they are) are a “public service”) and the 20 to 60 % they take as a fee are “mere expenses” given to those deserving. Ask any doctor about what malpractice insurance does to their costs, I think your 1% might qualify as what the costs are of blind mailings (“Have you been exposed to asbestos, do you have hangnail, did the “enlargement” operation leave you unsatisfied”, etc) fishing for “suitable” cases.
Jharp and SAHDOW, are you blind to this, or is blind obedience to partei doctrine your only rationalia?
105. Mongoose:
“The Federal and States’ bureaucracies are almost wholly Democrat fiefdoms, and the relevant Academic and NGO communities are almost exclusively owned by the left and mostly paid for, btw, out of the taxpayer’s purse one way or another.”
Oh, I see, so even though Republicans made absolutely no progress whatsoever on health care reform, despite controlling the executive branch and having a majority in congress for 6 years, the fact that they did not even try was because they just knew that Democrats would try to obstruct them.
Nice cop out you got there.
“Traitors that they are, they want to use socialized medicine as an excuse to foist an American version of Socialist and Communist tyranny on us.”
Oh…sorry. I thought I was talking to a rational adult. My mistake. Apparently I’m conversing with just another right wing nut screaming “Socialism!” because he hates Democracy and just can’t stand the fact that his party is not in control for the next 4-8. Maybe someday you’ll grow up and realize that erupting in a paroxysm of rage and lunacy is not a constructive way to respond when your party loses a national election. And maybe someday you’ll read a junior high school civics book and maybe get a understanding of what “communism”, “socialism” and “tyranny” actually mean. Because clearly you don’t.
Harpo say: “Flat out false. You are a lying sack of dog doo doo.”
Harpo, I am afraid you may be in violation of two PJM guidelines:
“2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad-hominem attacks.”
Harpo, do do do try to be more careful.
BC, how much time have you spent in Scandinavia? Been there, average wait time to see an Orthopedist? 6 months (unless you have purchased private medical insurance). Great countries, beautiful landscapes (and women) just don’t get real sick. Though one thing about the Norgies, they do tend to work out . . . though the smoking and imbibing (in binges) ludicrous amounts of alcohol is a wee bit off putting.
Nice to see that the trolls have been let out to play for a bit. It would be great if they actually had something useful to say. That they are apoplectic shows just how badly it is going for them.
To say that the non-left has not provided proposals is just beyond laughable. Even the blue dog democrats have provided solutions that do not include the unprecedented government intrusion into the most private of decisions that anyone of us has to make. However, their proposals have also been squashed by the POR cabal.
NO ONE and I repeat NO ONE has said that health care/health care payment could not be handled better. That is probably the most stupid of the left’s lies and I have heard some clear whoppers.
62. jharp:
You list the EU and then list a very large number of nations IN the EU….double-dipping is lying. Plus, are you really using Andorra? A one-legged man can walk across that country in an hour.
Guernsey, Jersy and the Isle of Man are part of the UK medical system, they exist as independent nations by an accident of British law. I could probably get all of the children born in a year in those “countries” in my living room at the same time.
You are intellectually dishonest and deserve no further feeding, begone troll.
Sorry, last comment. Gotta work some.
Shadow, @116, you are leaving off the cost of defensive medicine which is a much larger portion of total health care costs. (Extra tests and paperwork for CYA.) You also are not differentiating between the different medical specializations. Your 1% does not come close to what an OBGYN or orthopedic surgeon has to pay. It gets harder all the time for people to see these very important specialists.
Tort reform is important and needs to be done, but trial lawyers are part of the DNC coalition and have the deepest pockets. Chances of this happening is small, but if the left wants some credibility on the issue, they should start here.
Jharp: Again you mischaraterize tort. You know nothing about tort reform, or you are lying.
It is a statutory matter, it has nothing to do with “’government bureaucrat’ deciding what’s best instead of a jury”/ You have completely avoided explaining your last mis-characterization, which was wrong, and show a complete lack of knowledge about how the legal system works. There is no “government bureaucrat” involved. How? You are just making this up. You evidently do not understand what tort reform means. Do you really think it means that in a trail that they call up a “government bureaucrat” to make a “decision” Too funny.
But what is really halious is in ObamaCare that is exactly what you will have!
Do you want to explain this contradiction in your positions? Thought not.
What a maroon!
How does tort reform more uniformly take away “rights” from the electorate than the current one does?
Current tort law favors the tort lawyers industry, which is to say lawyers as a class.
Outrageous abuse of tort law has driven up malpractice insurance to absurd levels, and is a major contributor to cost. You know that. Why do you want to support a corrupt sector of the society such as ambulance chasers?
Once again, you are completely irrational, when you are not being immoral, that is.
For a minority of the population to benefit by that while at the same time forcing the vast majority of us to pay for it in our medical payments is hardly “empowering the little guy”. It is being held hostage by a pack of lawyers who pay off the Democrats to make ever more laws that they can use to steal money out of the pockets of productive and successful people.
MAKLAR: What a childish little hissy fit of a rebuttal you spewed just now. You this that you can detect such a thing as adulthood? Stop kidding yourself.
Must have struck a nerve or three, didn’t I? You guys are really sounding desperate. Completely irrational rebuttal. It is beginning to dawn on you that you are losing the debate, isn’t it. Just wait another 6 months. The Democrats are toast! Hahaha! I cannot wait to see you fold like a deck chair.
And of course the Democrats are traitors: Socialism is treason.
Too funny. You do not know the world you live in and yet you think that you can make pronouncements on those that do.
What are you, like 25? DO you even have a job or kids? I’d bet not on the latter.
What a tool. Too funny.
Meanwhile the Canadian awaits clarification as he awaits medical attention. Which will come first?
125. Anonymous:
“6 What do the elderly, who have relied on the promise of Medicare, do when the system is trimmed by 500 billion dollars?”
Those that can afford to do so will pay higher premiums. And I see nothing wrong with that. Services have to be paid for and Medicare is headed for insolvency.
Mongoose:
What in the hell are you talking about?
Judges decide if a suit is frivolous and throw it out if so.
Juries decide wrongdoing and damages.
And it works pretty well. Who would rather make these decisions?
125: Anonymous…what you call facts I call opinions. ‘The government can not force me to open my door without a warrant.’ what about a virtual invasion? Maybe not now but … It is harder to undo something then to do something.
Electronic Medical Records scare me (or should I say government owned/created standards)…Drs’ already share information, at least where I live.
new technology is capable, without having a centralized dBase, which is what will ultimately happen.
I’m not too crazy about the government owning the data, although they likely will eventually regardless.
Best Practices don’t need a government panel.
I’d personally like visibility to costs as a consumer. Dr’s are clueless when they send you for tests…more transparency would solve alot of problems.
I agree that people with no insurance need a solution (group rates drive down individual costs by a factor of 10 or more)
MM going broke has alot to do with needlessly paid claims…current systems are cost recovery based not proactive…that would require a central dBase
which will probably happen eventually, but could be limited in scope.
Don:
You have to deal in facts if you expect anyone but the wingnuts to take you seriously. Cite a study of saving if you have tort reform. Then we can have a discussion. Otherwise
” In Texas, GME Medical Protective, the largest medical malpractice insurer in the state, was forced to admit that the state’s cap on damages would “show loss savings of [only] 1.0%”, even as the insurance company announced it was raising medical malpractice premiums by 19%. A report by Weiss Ratings said insurers increased premiums on physicians regardless of whether the state had caps or not – from 1991-2002, premiums in states with caps increased by 48.2%, but in states without caps, they increased 35.9%. Yes, that’s right, premiums increased more in states with caps.
Even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in 2004 conceded that the legislation for tort reform, even if it instituted a federal cap, would barely dent health care costs: “Malpractice costs amounted to an estimated $24 billion in 2002, but that figure represents less than 2 percent of overall health care spending. Thus, even a reduction of 25 percent to 30 percent in malpractice costs would lower health care costs by only about 0.4 percent to 0.5 percent [emphasis mine], and the likely effect on health insurance premiums would be comparably small.” They were even reluctant to say that a cap would even make a dent on defensive medicine.”
“NO ONE and I repeat NO ONE has said that health care/health care payment could not be handled better.”
And not one republican, I repeat NOT ONE REPUBLICAN, has offered anything in the way of solutions.
Just try looking up where your senators and congressmen get there campain funds. What I have found is that all of the them who oppose healthcare reform mainly public option get large sums of money from Health Insurence companies.
125. Anonymous (whoever they are) wrote:
There is no shaortage of people who want to get into medical school. In fact medical schools are expanding and new ones are being built.
Peter writes: But there WILL be once the government tells them they can only earn X amount per year, in spite of the fact that medical tuition payments, malpractice insurance, and the cost of starting and/or running a medical office will be greater than the X amount the government deigns for them to earn.
Tell me, if working in your chosen field were a guaranteed way to bankruptcy, would you continue to work that job?
Mongoose – Are you a child? You certainly act like when you say “Democrats are traitors” I hope we have moved beyond the playground taunts
Bear – We already have emr and the insurance companies have access to them
24. Now and Then:
‘Where were the conservatives when Bush and Cheney were reading all of our e-mails…’
Bush and Cheney must have been rolling on the floor when they were reading ‘all’ of your emails.
@129;
I did read somewhere that if you discount the US’s high homicide rate, the n life expectancy resembles that of Europe. There are other factors as well, that are irrelevant to the quality of care, one of the most important being lifestyle. Our medical system cannot be blamed for the obesity epidemic, for example. The Japanese have very long lifespans, but they eat a very healthy diet.
Everyone;
Most European medical systems are not purely socialist. There is a private sector that attends to people who wish to avoid delays or which handles certain treatments better. They are really hybrid systems.
137. BC wrote:
The American health care system is absolutely nowhere near the best in the world — our best hospitals are like Mexican clinics compared to the best hospitals in France and Scandinavia…
Peter writes: So it is entirely reasonable to assume that BC is getting on a one-way plane to France or Scandenavia right now so he can enjoy their much superior health care as I type this, right? To do otherwise is hypocritical.
If you are going to tout another contry’s health care system as superior to the US, I want to see you go make use of that system first. Give it a test drive. Go abibe by their regulations for 5 or 10 years. THEN, and only then, come back and tell me how great their system is compared to our current crappy US system.
One of the things that was ALWAYS emphasised when I served in the navy was, when my boat made port calls overseas, NOT to get injured in any way. At all costs, avoid foreign medical care. If at all possible, if injury was unavoidable, get back to the boat and let the corpsman evaluate you before agreeing to be admitted to a foreign hospital. Now I wonder why the military (a GOVERNMENT agency) would be giving out THAT advice?
Moho:
Well, this is a start I suppose. Let me give you some tips for when you want your questions answered. First of all, if you have no factual basis for your questions, its your fault, not the fault of the person receiving the questions. If you bring up an issue, you need facts to contend that it really is an issue. I’m not going to do your homework for you. I’m more than happy to have a discussion based on facts, but the people here rarely offer anything substantial. My guess is that you’re regurgitating the things you’ve heard or seen in the echo chamber that constitutes your discourse.
What condescending, sophomoric tripe! You are the one that is not reasonably responding to others’ arguments. You argumentation is terrible-practically nonexistent. All we are getting out of you is narcissism and hissy fits when someone calls you on your nonsense. You really need to get over that self-importance and high self0regard, and start responding to people in a rational way. Nothing you say on these forum warrants this supercilious tone of yours–in fact you have earned quite a low reputation here.
It is comic.
Let me tell you something: You come off as an intellectual lightweight and a very immature young man. You cannot argue your points and yet seem to think that your approbation is cause enough for people to defer to you. It is preposterous self-delusion on your part. No one has that sort of regard for you here. I really doubt that they do anywhere on this earth, which is just why you believe the things that you do and comport yourself so poorly.
You cannot reasonably respond and yet you think that you can lecture people about their responses. Grow up. You are making a fool out of yourself. You are just too young to understand it.
Goodness, even your prose read like that of an undergraduate. Argue points and stop the condescension and the comically juvenile didacticism. You have not earned the right to behave in this manner. You are making a fool out of yourself.
82 Aureliano
They should be conservatively invested in something like MMs –- investment vehicles that cannot lose money, as an inflation hedge. Allow insurance premiums to be automatically deducted from HSA account.
I like your list, but I had a quibble with this point about HSAs. I have one and I personally think they should be invested in baskets of equities that will rise with the cost of health care, since one of the major problems with keeping up with health care costs is that they rise faster than inflation, so investing in money market funds won’t help you keep pace. Ideally, one would be able to hedge against the account losing value as one got older (perhaps in “inverse” ETF to this basket of equities would work).
I also think the IRS should create HSAs for children, so that their parents can fund them and take advantage of the power of compounding, like with 529 plans for college.
Folks;
Can you please avoid the personal attacks?
It’s really degenerating what could be an interesting discussion. If you don’t agree with someone, respond with a reasoned argument, not insults. And ignore posts that don’t have an intelligence behind them.
Thank you
Peter the Bubblehead:
“Peter writes: But there WILL be once the government tells them they can only earn X amount per year, in spite of the fact that medical tuition payments, malpractice insurance, and the cost of starting and/or running a medical office will be greater than the X amount the government deigns for them to earn.
Tell me, if working in your chosen field were a guaranteed way to bankruptcy, would you continue to work that job?”
Utter nonsense. The rest of he world delivers the same level of care as us for half the cost and they all use some form of single payer.
And how your imaginary friend, Peter? The Retired Navy guy with kidney stones. Remember him?
The one who is on the VA plan and Tricare which is impossible to do and made you into a proven liar.
Instead of arguing about tort reform, maybe a better question to ask is, will the government allow itself to be sued? What’s John Edwards going to do when there’s single payer?
shadow…my bad I meant centralized emr…as opposed to decentralized
Mongoose. You and yours set the fool-bar pretty high. I’m not sure I could match this:
107. Anonymous:
Moho: You must not be one of them, evidently. Seriously, are you maintaining that the vast majority of the MSM is not “in the tank” for Obama and the Democrats?
The MSM is in tha main wholly owned by the Democrat Party and has been since the days of FDR.
It is just preposterous to maintain otherwise. If you domaintain otherwise, you have departed from reality, and it is no wonder that you think the things that you do.
I could keep them coming. You may even be of average intelligence, but, as they say…when you lie down with dogs…
155. jharp:
“NO ONE and I repeat NO ONE has said that health care/health care payment could not be handled better.”
And not one republican, I repeat NOT ONE REPUBLICAN, has offered anything in the way of solutions.
THIS IS NOT A CASE FOR LETTING THE GOVERNMENT CONTROL MORE OF IT.
are you that naive to think that it is not the government that brought those problems to the health care to begin with.
like the artical stated these are their talking points and the trolls prove the author to be right.
#136 Dave: “insurance companies have to compete against other insurance companies and options……” Depends on where you live. According to a recent article in Business Week and an AMA study last year, about half of the states have their health insurance markets controlled by one or two carriers. That’s not the free enterprise system that some of you are so vigorously defending. That’s oligopoly and monopoly.
A government operated payer system could compete and offer consumers a cheaper option (NOTE: I said “could” as I’m not sold on the government coverage system).
One can tell the President places his whole presidency on this one issue. The word is out, the handlers have been given their marching orders and troops are marching into the valley of death. Too bad they are riding a dead horse that they don’t know is dead because they are given so much false info.
The government MUST control the health care system because no entitlement has never been successfully removed not mater how idiotic it turns out to be. That is why it must be done and done before too much light has been shed on this monstrosity. Even the Congress may actually read the bill if the process drags on too long. There goes the President’s legacy.
I wonder if the provision that mandates that all American’s bank accounts must be open to the government applies to Congressmen and Senators. Somehow I doubt it.
Tort reform, were it to be implemented would deny us the talents of (and be terribly unfair to) paragons of virtue like “almost” savior and guiding light John Edwards, ex-candidate for the Democratic nomination and now near financially destitute champion of “the little people”. Being denied the benefit of that magnificent moral exemplar we are alternatively forced to rely on prescient intellectual assets embodied by Barbara Boxer, Joe Biden, or Al Franken (just to name a few) for our collective salvation. But should these exemplars of our betters prove inadequate for the task we can place our future and our confidence in Barack Obama that monument to honesty (based on the Chicago model) and accomplishment (showcased by his many prior crusades and monumental body of work). Without such mentors and true representatives of enlightened guidance the country might very well plummet into the abyss. So, I beg you, pay heed to the admonitions of those visitors here offering their inspired wisdom and intellect in support of the above mentioned. Jharp, praetorian, vivo, moho, consume their valuable time to interpret and represent the divine wisdom embodied by the Liberal/Democratic pantheon. They come here only to save us from our ignorant, benighted selves and to point out for us the one true path. They wish for us only contentment and urge support for what we are simply too dense to comprehend, peasants that we are. What we erroneously think of as freedom or liberty they are here to tell us is an outmoded folly. We aren’t capable, don’t you know. Contrary to our thinking their guidance is really just “for the best”. It isn’t “soft slavery” at all.
Bull! Patrick Henry had the right idea, and it is quickly coming to just that.
SteveB, a far better idea is to unshackle insurance companies and give insurance companies the ability to cover people across the country. Competition and no government plan to force out competition.
SHADOW: You are just projecting in that infantile response of yours. Between the two of us, it is perfectly obvious who the childish one is. Goodnesss, you have to put your little hissy fit into CAPS. Too funny. Struck a nerver eh?
I imagine that my grandchildren are within a decade of you. I doubt that you are even 30 years old. It is also no doubt certain that you have never had any real responsibility in life whatsoever, but if you did, with belief such as you hold and your fould comportment, you would let those that depend on you down–of that I am certain. I do doubt that you will ever have any real responsibility in life, other than alimony and credit card debt that is.
What a juvenile response. Let me update it:
Of course the Democrats are traitors. They have been ever since the New Left took over the party during the Viet Nam era. One cannot be an American and a Marxist or a Socialist and not be a traitor–one cannot even truly be a decent persons and hold these beliefs, at least not hold them after the age of 28 or so. Like all Marxists everywhere, the Democrats detest all that America has been, what it is and what it should be. They detest Western Civilization. They detest truth itself. They actively work to destroy the USA and Western Civilization and Obamacare is just another outrage against them both. But not only are they traitors, they are childish traitors. You are a case and point.
Shadow, you need to get used to the fact that the vast majority of Americans agree with me, and more will move over everyday. When the silent majority finally get off it rump next year, you will see just what I mean. You will not like it one bit. It will make 1994 look like a class picnic.
Obama will destroy the Democrat Party, or at least set it back for a generation. Peace be upon him.
I cannot wait. What fun this is watching them con and lie their way into to this position and then losing it all in just a matter of weeks. How hilarious it is! How amusing it is!
It will just get better. “Democrat” will be a curse word by 2012.
#24 Now and Then
“Where were the conservatives when Bush and Cheney were reading all of our e-mails and listening to our phone calls and checking our library records and searching our homes with an FBI “letter” in hand?”
Exactly where I am now, writing my Congress critters numerous letters & emails in opposition to the bill. My Representative & Senators (all 3 Democrats at the time) voted in favor of the Patriot Act…go figure.
The moonbat Left has certainly descended upon this “discussion”, hasn’t it?
Moho: More childishness out of you. Repeating your points rather than supporting them with fact ir rational arguments is just the most infatile behavior imaginable, It is like a 2 year old stamping their feet. Are you so childish to think that this accomplishes anything?
You are just proving my point, but you are so obtuse that you do not understand it.
Clinical narcissim is not a reasonable response.
Really Moho, this ego of yours. Do you really think that I have any respect for your “judgment of my intelligence? It is too funny. I would not hire you to mop the floor.
Believe me, the fact that you are a liberal troll pretty much shows that you are not too bright.
Such hilarity. You trolls really do not understand the contempt that you are held in around here. If you did–if you really understood it–you would not come here.
I don’t normally feed the trolls here, but I just have this need to put down jharp at #166, especially since he seems to conveniently ignore any facts that don’t fit his/her/its world-view, so he/she/it probably ignored this posting.
This comes from the comments on the VA thread from last week;
185. vech:
To Whomever: The link you provided is for ChampVa which is for the spouse and/or children of veterans who meet certain criteria. It is much different than the VA Medical Benefits package which a veteran can use in addition to other insurances , private and federally funded, including Tri Care. Not that the VA accepts other insurance, but the veteran can have more than one insurance.
The first (CHAMPVA) is shown below and then the second below that. So yes, veterans can have VA insurance and Tri Care (and Medicare, Medigap, etc.).
1)To be eligible for CHAMPVA, you cannot be eligible for TRICARE/CHAMPUS and you must be in one of these categories:
the spouse or child of a veteran who has been rated permanently and totally disabled for a service-connected disability by a VA regional office, or
the surviving spouse or child of a veteran who died from a VA-rated service connected disability, or
the surviving spouse or child of a veteran who was at the time death rated permanently and totally disabled from a service connected disability, or
the surviving spouse or child of a military member who died in the line of duty, not due to misconduct (in most of these cases, these family members are eligible for TRICARE, not CHAMPVA).
2) If you are enrolled in the VA Medical Benefits Package and also have private health insurance or federally funded coverage through TRICARE, Medicare or Medi-Cal, you may use your existing coverage in addition to your VA health care benefits. The programs are independent and do not coordinate. As a result, you cannot use your Medicare card at a VA facility because the VA cannot bill Medicare. To use Original fee-for-service Medicare, you must go to doctors and facilities that accept Medicare assignment. You are responsible for paying all Medicare premiums, deductibles and coinsurance. The VA does not pay for these Medicare costs.
In addition, if you have other private health insurance, including a Medigap policy, the VA is required by law to bill your insurance carrier when you receive care for non-service-connected conditions.
Aug 6, 2009 – 3:00 pm
186. Peter the Bubblehead:
Thank you, vech.
Aug 6, 2009 – 5:49 pm
187. Peter the Bubblehead:
So tell me, jharp, how does it feel to ALWAYS be proven wrong?
Aug 7, 2009 – 4:47 am
188. Chuck Pelto:
TO: Peter the Bubblehead
RE: jharp
So tell me, jharp, how does it feel to ALWAYS be proven wrong? — Peter the Bubblehead
He’s behaving like a sociopath. I doubt if he feels anything particularly useful about being proven wrong.
Oh, and jharp, my friend Bill is feeling much better, thank you. He returned to work yesterday.
It would appear Obama has sent in his internet brownshirts. Or should we call them purpleshirts pertaining to the SEIU thugs?
How would you like to be a member of a party that has ACORN, the New Black Panthers, and Union thugs as your muscle? Really uplifting!!!
Obama care supporters say about 50 million (??) people have no insurance in this country. The 50 mil are primarily divided into four groups-illegal aliens (10-12 mil), people who are healthy and don’t need or want to pay for insurance (10 -12 mil + or -), people who could qualify for state run indigent care programs but for whatever reason have not signed up, (10-12 mil) and the working poor (10-15 mil)who want insurance but are not offered it or cannot afford it. If this analysis is accepted then the problem is not nearly as critical as Obama care supporters contend. All states have indigent care programs-these programs should be expanded to include the uninsured and the illegal aliens before they are deported.
171
I read that article in BW as well. Seems to me that the most compelling case it makes is that the government might want to look into anti-trust cases in those geographies (assuming any reform that passes doesn’t allow selling policies across state lines). Open those oligopolistic markets up to free-market competitors, don’t stick a public option in there to drive the oligopolists out of business.
JHARP/SHADOW/NOWANDTHEN blah meh blech etc…
Lets talk about your messiah, Sweet Little Barry! Now we all know Sweet Little Barry didn’t come from money, right? So how did Sweet Little Barry get to where he is today?Hmmmm… No if he had been a Republican with no actual record to speak of, and especially if he had been a woman, the lib talking point would have been that he got to his position on his knees or back or on all fours.I think Barry’s a flexible guy so I’ll go ahead and say all of the above… What do you guys think?
Our friends are acting in a proper manner for those who live in a democracy, they are exercising their freedom of speech. It’s a shame that they feel that freedom only entitles them to spew forth what the party decides for them, but it is their right. What is very funny is that forums like this have many different viewpoints being expressed, but look at the reactions from party betters about people at these “town meetings”. They have been perfectly happy to chastise, denigrate, and insult opposing viewpoints often in the most vile ways, but when faced with staunch argument they hide behind terms like “Astroturf”, “Nazis”, “Racists” etc. Says something about their strength of character and spineless nature.
Bottom line is we have a bill being prepared imperfectly in a bums rush that is imperfectly understood by all concerned, this whole thing needs to be slowed down and done right, not fixed “after the fact”. What hypocrisy is shown when a Congressman says we need “be in this rush”, that “we’ll fix it later” ( even though it does not even go into effect until 13′?). Slow down, do it right the first time, and any who are satisfied with the line “close enough” (for government work) are the largest part of the problem.
It would appear Obama is having another phony townhall meeting with chants of ‘Yes We Can’ throughout the meeting. When is this fraudster going on vacation?
The great thing about PJM is that this is akin to an online townhall meeting about health care!
The only problem is that I keep looking over my shoulder waiting to see a group of purple shirted union thugs ready to rough me up or a few Black Panthers wielding clubs ready to help me finish my dissent.
Thank God the internet allows we unsavory Conservative/Independent/Moderate Democrat types to talk without the Obama thuggary/violence that’s happening in the public forum.
Poor Mongoose once agian demostrates that he cannot do anything but call people names. I wonder how he deals with his wife and children. I suppose that happens to people when they their emotional maturity is stunted
People of all political persuasions know the healthcare system as it today has many flaws. Instead of chasing a monolithic solution that puts the government in control maybe we should focus on ways to put individuals back in control over how they spend their healthcare dollars.
What I am particularly amazed over is the degree to which there is this near blind faith that were it to assume the role of heakth insurance provider, the federal government would be an island of good judgement, organizational efficiency, and fiscal sanity. How anyone could persist in engaging in this kind of magical thinking despite decades of proof to the contrary is stunning to me.
No matter how evil or egregious the practices one may experience in a for-profit provider, it pales in comparison to the degree of stupidity, sloth, malfeasance and ineptitude you will find in the government sector. A poorly run, incompetent and dishonest private sector corporation will eventually be the agent of its own undoing because customers who are free to choose can exercise that freedom and take their money elsewhere.
Once the Fed is in charge you will have no hope of regaining that choice. No matter how fiscally irresponsible it proves to be or incompetent in its management, it will be virtually impossible to pull the plug. Remember, one of the primary underpinnings of the whole Democrat side of the healthcare reform argument initially hammered away on this selling point:
Costs were spiralling out of control and something needed to be done.
I don’t dispute that costs for many people have gone up considerably over the last ten years. However, the governement is not going to solve it by taking over that industry simply because we have literally decades of proof that tells us they will make it even more expensive, less effective and a cesspool of institutional lethargy.
The solution is to focus on ways to put individuals back in charge of their own healthcare budget and decisions. This means-
-Decoupling giant corporate employee health plans from giant insurers.
- Offering insurance that covers individuals, not huge, blended risk pools.
-Allowing individuals to pick and choose the coverage limitations they want or can afford.
- Giving the consumers the right to comparison shop for policies from any insurer outside their state boundaries.
- Find a way to prevent states/federal government from mandating coverage limitations.
As it is now we have an unwieldy and expensive private system that is mired in regulatory and procedural hell thanks to state and Fed government laws that have piled on over the years. But as the saying goes, if you think healthcare is expensive and messed up today, just wait till the government “fixes” it.
It It will be interesting who takes the blame if this medical insurance reform fails as badly as we all seem to think it will.
Insurance is very very expensive due to medical costs of tests etc. Meds are very expensive. I had to take zyvox at $100 a pill..my insurance picked up the $800 bill…I understand the pharmaceutical company must make back their investments, but there has to be a better way.
If our elected officials felt the plan medical plan they are hell bent on passing, was good, they would want to tell us about it, all the wonderful things that are going to happen with it…INSTEAD!!..we are degraded for asking questions that they don’t know enought to expalin. They get defensive with their own voters.
We have become a nation of “gimme something free”. I believe these are the majority of Americans that are for the unread, not understood, medical plan. we could end up like Barbara Wagner in Oregon. If not familiar with her case please look her up…she was offered assisted suicide instead of medicine?? Is this what we have to look forward to??
Pelosi says we’re UnAmerican because we voice opposition. She will not be voted out of office, however, her position needs to be downgraded.
I don’t care what facts and figures you spout, no of us know what the medical makeover plan says or doesn’t say….Neither do our elected officials in Washington!!! vote them out if they are swayed by people other than the people that voted them in.
I believe the idiot teabaggers are suffering from Stockholm syndrome.
http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/000646.htm
“A study released revealed that Americans’ health care varies dramatically from state to state. It should come as no surprise that in general Southern states ranked at the bottom in almost every category. After all, whether the issue is health, education, working conditions, or virtually any indicator of social pathology, things are worst in precisely those states that voted for George W. Bush.
The Commonwealth Fund report, “Aiming Higher: Results from a State Scorecard on Health System Performance,” examined states’ performance across 32 indicators of health care access, quality, outcomes and hospital use. Topping the list were Hawaii, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Bringing up the rear were the Bush bastions of Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, Arkansas, Texas, with Mississippi and Oklahoma. The 10 worst performing states were all solidly Republican in 2004.”
And Peter, I stand corrected. It appears you can have Tricare and VA benefits. It’s rare but possible.
SteveB: “A government operated payer system could compete and offer consumers a cheaper option”
Cheaper for who? Not the future taxayers that would have to deal with paying the deficit or suffer the effects of inflation.
Michael @174 has the right idea about opening up competation across state lines. Anti-trust laws also have a role.
I think the outcome of a government operated system would be the destruction of the private system and exactly what the far left Democrats are banking on. Over regulation is bad, but making the regulator and the provider the same entity would be even worse. We saw this when Fannie and Freddie got in bed with Congress and we are living the results. It would be industry lobbyist meddling on ‘roids.
It would be like allowing Microsoft to subsidize their costs with taxpayer money and also give them the power to regulate Apple. Apple would be put in an untenable cost position and, in addition, Microsoft could knee cap them with regulation. Once Microsoft had weakened Apple sufficiently, they would have little incentive to innovate. That is good for nobody but Gates, Balmer, and company. (I am not insinuating they would want this. This is not a MS vs Apple thing, just an example.)
Government has a role to play in regulation. But regulation is not the same as running the whole health care industry and we are going to regret it if we go this route. History is clear on where this goes and the results.
My guess is that most of the trolls here are dopey kids subjected to a dozen or so years of left-wing indoctrination. I think it was about 1980 when Future Farmers of America was replaced with Future Marxist of America.
I went to school pre-1980 so a re-education camp would have little effect on me.
jharp…Go back to sleep. The Free-Speechers will clean up the mess from the Obama Regime in 2012. Why not move to Singapore. I hear they have wonderful health care. Hopefully since you seem to have anger issues they have a mental health clause. Of course putting on a purple union shirt and bashing on dissenting Americans seems to be working for some liberals. Why not go down to your local town hall meeting and kick around some senior citizens? Obama did tell his followers to “punch back twice as hard” now didn’t he?
“Idiot teabaggers”…Yep, pure liberal poetry there. You might try reading a bit to not only calm down but gain a few new adjectives in your repertoire.
The weather in the South is markedly better than that of the states who voted for that dreamy Hawaiian, Obama. That probably accounts for the fact that those 53% are never satisfied unless they are complaining about the U.S., apologizing for it’s glorious history, and wanting the government to pay for every service at the very real expense of their fellow citizens.
If you thought the Obama/Joker poster was funny in a they-did-it-to-Bush-too sort of way, you’ll really enjoy Obama getting a TeleTubbie makeover. Priceless.
http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2009/08/10/new-poster-reveals-the-ugly-face-of-racism/
Let all the little bitty wingnuts huff and puff all they want.
Then in the fall, we’ll pass a comprehensive overhaul of health insurance, just like we were going to do all along. I can’t wait until the fall when the bill passes with a strong public option. You guys are going to be so crushed. But this isn’t about politics, although the deep hurt you feel from your defeat will be gratifying, I’ll admit, it’s about doing what is right for hard working American families. All your huffing and puffing will have been for naught.
But, Fred, you may say. Hawaii has good weather and they voted for Obama. The answer to that is simple, native son (maybe).
But, Fred, you may also quibble, Florida, Louisiana, and the Carolinas are subject to hurricanes. True, but so are Virginia, New York, and Connecticut, to name a few.
Isn’t it interesting that if we the people object, we are a mob of paid thugs, yet in 2005 when Bush wanted to reform SS, the screams pierced the ears of the planet, but none were called mobs & unAmerican by House Leadership?
Every problem, including the one where the girl was denied a Kidney until too late, can easily be reformed by specific targeted legislation. Why throw out the entire system to correct specific problems? Why create 53 new govt employee run bureaucracies? That’s insane.
What is not specifically included or excluded in the proposals posted on-line, is possible to become part of the operation.
Where is Tort reform? The private sector will have to live with it. Apparently, with the public option, Doctors & the system will not face lawsuits since sovereign immunity will probably apply, thus eliminating lawsuits against them. Guess which system that favors?
The problem with the proposals & especially the public option proposed, is that when the flaws are shown, we are told they are not there or not true, yet there they are. If we can uncover them now, yet are told they do not exist, perhaps we are being led down that proverbial garden path again. Its not like Washington has not done that before.
Why are taxpayers supposed to absorb up to $1.6 Trillion more in costs, to include a supposedly 46 million uninsured? In truth, remove those NOT chronically uninsured (moving from job to job, etc. {& who could use COBRA until re-employed}), remove illegal aliens, & remove those who opted to not buy insurance even though they had over $50,000 a year incomes, & what we have is about 7 to 10 million. It would be cheaper to outright pay for their premiums than to gut our entire system with this ‘comprehensive’ reform, which would change the system for all, & not in good ways!
I believe all the idiot libtards are suffering from penis envy. They will never have a president again of the stature of FDR or JFK, and they hate the fact that Reagan’s legacy cannot be eclipsed by the Obamessiah, AKA the Tent Revival Con Man.
Sweet little Barry is already a one termer, and all of their dreams or recreating our country in their miserable self hating image has come to naught.
AThinkingPerson:
“Why not move to Singapore.”
We won. Remember. The White House, 60 Senate seats, 75 seat House advantage.
And it the liberals who are presently cleaning up the huge disaster of Bush and the GOP.
It is YOU who can move if you don’t like it. And I hear Somalia is a wonderful place for those who hate governments.
#155
“And not one republican, I repeat NOT ONE REPUBLICAN, has offered anything in the way of solutions.”
Call BS. Bush and the Repub Congress initiated the drug plan for seniors. If somebody thinks that means nothing to seniors that somebody is nuts. Of course it was socialistic and will probably help the government go broke sooner rather than later, just as social security, medicare/medicaid, and all the other ponzi schemes are doing.
196
Praetorian, or, The Man Who Thinks Everything He Says Three Times Is True
So at the end of the day the sole real rationalia for our friend Jharpmaster is “we won”. Well if your movement really did win why have we not seen show trials for the class enemies like Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush? Why not indictment and prosecution of the CIA leadership? Why not a mass arrest of the Republican party leadership for indictment under the RICO statutes? Why not a new (and most important) category on all background investigations (first for Military, then Civilian government, then private industry) . . . political affiliations? You did not win Dictatorship, the Negusa Nagast is still not Chavez. I know . . .just wait.
So I ask again of jharpmaster, Herr Schatten and the rest; why the rush to get a half assed bill that we’ll “fix later”, why not do it right the first time?
You cannot make this stuff up. At todays townhall meeting while Obama was trying to sell Gov’t run healthcare he made the following statement; ‘UPS and Fed-Ex are doing fine, its the U.S Postal Service that is having problems.’ What a salesman.
jharp… See, that’s where you’re wrong. I LOVE my country, that’s why I’m protesting the socialistic takeover by the Obama Regime. You, on the other hand, just finished telling all of us how much better every other country’s health care system was than our own.
Yes, you won for now and it would take me hours to type all of the atrocities that Obama Regime has already thrust on this great country in only a few months (or even contemplate the horrors that await us in the ensuing 3 years). The tragedy is that in the end we ALL lose because of your stupid, uneducated decision.
The liberals are the one’s trying to remake America into something else. Don’t dare claim that you care one iota for the Constitution. If you did, there would be NO WAY you would endorse a complete overhaul of it. Ever.
If you are dying to turn the US into Obama’s dream of a banana republic, I again urge you to MOVE ON and leave the rest of us who still value the Constitution to clean up the mess Obama is creating (oh, and take his thug army of purple shirts and Black Panthers with you).
#190 jharp:
If Iowa is one of the best states for health care–heaven help us all. My mom broke her foot, and has now had 3 surgeries to correct it. But she still lives in constant pain. My dad had open heart surgery at Iowa Methodist Hospital, but was dead within one year later!
**************************
As it stands right now, if I had a choice between going to the DMV or having my teeth cleaned–I would choose the dentist.
Think of what it would be like to combine the two–I don’t know about you, but I’m whispering, “Is it safe.”
The American health care system is absolutely nowhere near the best in the world — our best hospitals are like Mexican clinics compared to the best hospitals in France and Scandinavia, and our average care has been ranked for some time among the worst of all the industrialized nations. Most people have no idea of how good or bad their doctors or hospitals are in relationship to how things are elsewhere. I’ve also personally noticed, especially among older people, that there is an awful lot of near blind faith placed in doctors that they’ve known for a while, even if any sort of cursory look at the treatments and drugs being used relative to what the ailments are would raise immediate warning flags.–BC
BC, nothing is perfect. However, the United States of America has the BEST health & medical in the world. Why? People from other countries–including Canada & Europe–come to the United States for treatment. Can you provide examples where people went to other countries for medical help? I mean life saving medical treatment such as on the major organs such as heart, lungs, etc al. I am not referring to sex change operations.
The best medical treatment is right here in America. Yet President Obama & the other Socialists want to tear it down along with our liberty. Obamacare has to die a swift death. No compromises will do.
Here’s another reason to keep government out of the health care business (I hope the link works).
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2009/08/11/chitrib-finds-illegal-immigrants-laughing-idea-returning-home-socializ
jharp, et al:
Why do you bother? Nothing you say, no statistics you cite, are going to change the minds on the other side. What in heaven’s name could possibly be your motivation beyond being the turds in the punchbowl?
some one hit the nail on the head when they said that the trolls target these articals.
what did blarty change his moniker to since stating he didn’t bother to read the piecees to begin with. his handler must have been pissed.
saddly everyone even the trolls lose if the obama administration get what it wants.
204
At what point does Obama just take a step back and say to himself, “Damn, everything I thought was true is a lie?”
Trolls, there’s a reason why in some places on this planet, markets, “bazaars”, whatever you want to call them, have been operating continuously for thousands of years, despite the fact that governments have come and gone on that same spot of land. Think about it. Free markets and the free buying and selling of goods they require, are encoded in humanity’s DNA.
Here’s another. And from a lefty organization to boot.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/24/news/economy/health_care_reform_obama.fortune/
We won. Remember. The White House, 60 Senate seats, 75 seat House advantage.
Then what’s the hurry? You have plenty of time to craft legislation before 2010. What’s with all the backroom nonsense, especially for something so important?
Let all the little bitty wingnuts huff and puff all they want.
According to Rasmussen, 57% of likely voters oppose a single-payer healthcare system, with 32% supporting, which is another way of saying that 64% of voters who have an opinion on the matter get that the public option is eventually going to lead to a single-payer system.
Technically, it is YOU who are the wingnut regarding the healthcare debate.
Hell, for almost a month now more people strongly disapprove of Obama’s job performance that approve, and according to Rasmussen Obama can’t even get a 50% overall approval rating from LIKELY voters.
Even during the election 47% of the electorate did not vote for Obama.
Pretty tough to call half the population ‘wingnuts’, especially now, and especially when it is you who are on the fringe.
Oh well … there is always Olbermann’s skirt for the true fringers to hide behind ….
drinkingperson—yeah, he got us caught up in two wars and ruined our economy.
I thought the Wingnuts would be interested in this quote from Johnny Isakson (R-GA)who was the co-author of the provision for end of life counseling
“ISAKSON: I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin’s web site had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts. You’re putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don’t know how that got so mixed up. [...]
It empowers you to be able to make decisions at a difficult time rather than having the government making them for you.”
Now they will proabably go after him.
Jeff Emanuel – Are you related to Dr. Mengele Emanuel, Rahm’s brother, and current author of the original “death panel” concept?
No. 209
They can’t control the dialogue here and on talk radio like the do in the MSM so its “Get in their faces!” where they can.
But one must wonder how many come here to disrespect the right and end up getting schooled?
More than you think. There are the hard-core cut/paste and name calling types, but most must go to bed with a deeper understanding of differing points of view after a visit here. A sum gain for the right because, as you implied, they don’t change minds with their current rhetorical skills.
If we have the best healthcare why are our infant mortality rates so much poorer than so many countries? The problem with the assertion is that it is not based on data. If you have healthcare insurance, you probably have a good system, but God forbid if you do not or if you have a preexisting condition. Then the system sucks. I expect all you wingnuts will refuse your Medicare (Government)coverage and opt to pay for private insurance.
LeftiesBinWhinin:
Here at last is a wingnut who admits he is a dope “no statistics you cite, are going to change the minds on the other side.” He revels in his own ignorance
This whole debate is getting moronic because it is being made way too complicated. The issues here are all very simple and easy to figure out. Just ask yourselves these questions, and then pour yourself a drink.
1) If you had to submit a bid for a job in another city, would you ship it through the Post Office or Fed Ex?
2) If you were told you could have your cataract surgery done at the local VA hospital or at Beth Israel in Manhattan, which would you choose?
3) If you were looking for someone to run a new tire factory you were building in Arkansas, would you recruit from Michelin or from the Dept of Commerce?
4) If you had an idea for a new super-yielding strain of rice, who would you take the idea to Archer Daniels, or the Dept of Agriculture?
5) If your child had cancer, would you take her to MD Anderson in Houston or to the NIH?
6) If your child had cancer would you take her to MD Anderson or to Canada?
7) If you were a US Senator and had the choice of going with the public option being insisted upon or sticking with the(privately run) plan that you have now, which would you choose? Oh wait! They’ve already made that choice.
Wake up people.
SusanC – Was your mother covered by Medicare?
190 jharp
“idiot teabaggers”
We are not idiots. We are Americans who (according to Hillary Clinton)have the liberty to speak out and oppose any administration: “I’m sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you’re not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we’re Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration.”– Hillary Rodham Clinton (she was yelling at the time)
We are not “teabaggers”. It my understanding (as a result of the sniggering comments contributed by the liberal media who, of course, knew what this meant)that “teabagging” is a vile and unnatural practice of homosexuals.
Your lack of manners and your vile namecalling are just getting old and boring.
You’re just an addict to nastiness, aren’t you?
209
Nothing you say, no statistics you cite, are going to change the minds on the other side.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but this is so false to my method for drawing conclusions on any topic as to be 180 degrees from the truth. I grew up a Massachusetts liberal and only drifted away from it as the gap between the rhetoric it espoused and the results it achieved grew. This was also the basic path followed by the original neoconservatives. That the Left “lost” me to Classical Liberalism/Libertarianism was entirely due to my observations of statistics and data. The glaring hypocrisy (e.g., passing health care reform and not including Congress in it) and denigration of the accomplishments of Western Civilization didn’t help, either.
“The facts of life are conservative” – Margaret Thatcher
James–the debate got moronic when you people jumped in to distort the issues. Just what are you talking about? Do you even know? Are you coming from the invented perspective that Obama is nationalizing health care? Or are you coming from the invented perspective that a public option will drive insurance companies out of business. You people set up the terms of your own deabte–which ranges from death panels to socialized medicine and then argue the merits of those fantasies. This is why last year, when the rest of us were debating the economy and the wars, you people were all stuck fantasizing about Obama’s secret-muslimness and his ties to Ayers.
Wake up, indeed. There’s an entire world outside of that subdivision you live in.
Aureliano:
We won. Remember. The White House, 60 Senate seats, 75 seat House advantage.
“Then what’s the hurry?”
When the car that gets you to work breaks down do you?
A) Get it fixed as soon a possible
B) Trade it in for a new one
C) Wait till 2010 and get along the best you can with a broken down car
Don’t see anyone picking C but in dealing with the teabagggers one can never be sure.
venividivici:
“The glaring hypocrisy (e.g., passing health care reform and not including Congress in it)”
Put the bong away. Just who do you think is writing the bill?
Good grief! And the “left lost you”? Sorry, but it is you who lost your ability to see something right in front of your face.
220. james:
If you were driving from New York to California would you take a private road or use the federal government funded interstate highway system?
The birther movement is strongest in precisely those states where Republicans poll best and health care is worst. And as it turns out, there is a Birther Corollary: education, working conditions and myriad other indicators of social failure are generally most dismal in the most red of states.
In the staggering DailyKos/Research 2000 poll released days ago, a stunning 58% of Republicans did not believe (28%) or were unsure (30%) that President Barack Obama was in fact born in the United States. This is a uniquely Southern pathology, a region home to 69% of all birthers and the only part of the country to increase its Republican presidential vote in 2008.
As Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent concluded, “as many as three-quarters of Southern whites told pollsters that they didn’t know where Obama was born.”
That helps explains why when it comes to the delusion over Obama’s citizenship, as Steve Benen observed, one of these things is not like the other: “Outside the South, this madness is gaining very little traction, and remains a fringe conspiracy theory. Within the South, it’s practically mainstream.”
But that brand of racial flat-earthism is not all that’s practically mainstream in the South. Consider, for example, abysmal health care.
A 2007 Commonwealth Fund report, “Aiming Higher: Results from a State Scorecard on Health System Performance,” examined states’ performance across 32 indicators of health care access, quality, outcomes and hospital use. Topping the list were Hawaii, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Bringing up the rear were the Bush bastions of Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, Arkansas, Texas, with Mississippi and Oklahoma. The 10 worst performing states were all solidly Republican in 2004; 8 voted for McCain in 2008.
30% of adults and 20% of children in Texas lacked health insurance, compared to 11% in Minnesota and 5% in Vermont, respectively.
Premature death rates from preventable conditions were almost double (141.7 per 100,000 people) in Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi compared to the top performing states (74.1 per 100,000).
Adults over 50 receiving preventative care topped 50% in Minnesota compared to only 33% in Idaho.
Childhood immunizations reached 94% in Massachusetts, compared to just 75% in the bottom five states. As the report details, federal and state policies, such as insurance requirements and Medicaid incentives, clearly impact health care outcomes.
Then there’s working conditions. A December 2005 study by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts showed that Americans’ working conditions generally follow the 2004 electoral map. The report’s Work Environment Index (WEI) rated the quality of Americans’ working lives by a weighting of three factors: job opportunities, job quality, and job fairness. The top five states were Delaware, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Vermont and Iowa, the bottom five were South Carolina, Utah, Arkansas Texas and Louisiana. Unsurprisingly, all five of the cellar-dwellers are so-called “Right-to-Work” states featuring outright hostility towards union organizing.
When it comes to education, faithfully Republican red states do a little (but not much) better. In 2007, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a study titled “Leaders and Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on Educational Effectiveness.” The report looked at seven different performance categories, including return on education investment, workforce readiness, teacher skills, and academic achievement of low-income and minority students.
Again, the top five states (Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Vermont and New Jersey) backed Democrat Obama in 2008. Only two of the bottom 15 states similarly supported John Kerry; five voted for Obama four years later.
The same disturbing pattern applies to a wide array of measures of social dysfunction and pathology.
In 2007, 7 of the top 10 states with the highest murder rates were squarely in Red America; conversely, 7 of the 10 states with the lowest murder rates were in the Obama column.
In January 2009, a new report from the CDC showed teen birth rates increased for the first time in 15 years. Topping the list was Mississippi; again, 8 of the other 9 states in the top 10 went Republican in 2008. By almost any measure of societal breakdown that so-called Republican “values voters” decry, it is Red State America where moral failure is greatest.
220. james:
If you were driving from New York to California would you take a private road or use the federal government funded interstate highway system?
If we were invaded by a foreign power would you call out the militia or the government run mightiest military in the world?
If you were flying into Chicago would you rely on the federal air traffic controllers or would you phone someone on the ground and see if it was all clear?
If you were buying food at the supermarket would you rely on the F.D.A. to insure it’s safe or would you test it on Grandma?
If you were buying you child a toy, would you rely on the Consumer Products Safety Commission that it is safe or would you just risk it?
The attached is an interesting article because it talks about the problems current system
“High Fees Common in Medical Care, Survey Finds
Published: August 11, 2009
A patient in Illinois was charged $12,712 for cataract surgery. Medicare pays $675 for the same procedure. In California, a patient was charged $20,120 for a knee operation that Medicare pays $584 for. And a New Jersey patient was charged $72,000 for a spinal fusion procedure that Medicare covers for $1,629.
The charges are among a long list of high fees cited in a survey released online Tuesday by America’s Health Insurance Plans, which represents 1,300 health insurance companies. The group said it had used Medicare payments for comparison because Medicare was so familiar and payments are, on average, about 80 percent of what private insurers pay.
The survey, insurers and some economists say, shows the sort of irrational pricing of medical care that is an integral part of the nation’s health care problems and that is largely being ignored, some say, in the current debate.
“It’s the wild, wild West when it comes to prices of anything in the U.S. health care system, whether for a doctor visit or for hospital charges,” said Jonathan S. Skinner, a health economist at Dartmouth.
The situation is so irrational, said Uwe E. Reinhardt, a health economist at Princeton, that it simply cannot go on. “We will not emerge out of this decade with this lunacy,” Dr. Reinhardt said, adding, “You worry about credit card charges, you scream for consumer protection — why not scream for it here?”
But Dr. Robert M. Wah, a spokesman for the American Medical Association, says there is another side to the story — insurers’ low payments to doctors who enter into contracts with them and the doctors’ difficulties, in many cases, in getting paid at all. That is why, he said, doctors may simply abandon insurance plans. Then patients end up with extra fees because they have to go outside their networks to get the care they want.
The survey comes as health insurers are trying to defend themselves against recent efforts by the Obama administration to portray certain industry practices as a major part of the nation’s health care problems. The insurance group, which gave its report to The New York Times before posting it online, said it had contracted with an outside group to do the study in part because insurers felt unfairly vilified.
Karen Ignagni, president and chief executive of America’s Health Insurance Plans, explained: “As we think about the health care debate, what’s been talked about is, What are the cost sharing levels? What are the premium levels? How much do health plans pay? No politician has asked how much is being charged.”
In the survey, patients were insured but saw doctors who were out of their networks of medical care providers. When patients go outside their networks, doctors have no obligation to accept the out-of-network fee from insurers as payment in full. Patients may then be accountable for the balance.
“That is what generally happens,” said Susan Pisano, a spokeswoman for the health insurers’ group. “The consumer is responsible.”
The survey looked at 10 companies that insure patients in the 30 most populous states; the companies provided some of the highest bills from 2008. Researchers excluded two types of charges that were likely to be erroneous: those that were greater than 10,000 percent of Medicare’s fees for a procedure, or more than 2,000 percent of Medicare’s fees and also more than 50 percent higher than the next highest bill for the same procedure.
There are state laws to protect patients from getting stuck with medical bills in excess of their normal deductibles or co-payments to providers in their insurance networks, but they vary widely, said Betsy M. Pelovitz, the group’s vice president for state policy.
And, she said, the laws often offer little or no protection to patients who seek care outside their insurance networks.
In New York, patients with managed care insurers cannot be asked to pay more than the applicable co-payment, deductible or coinsurance for an ambulance regardless of whether the provider is in or out of their network. In New Jersey, hospital emergency rooms treating Medicaid managed-care patients must accept Medicaid payments as payment in full and cannot bill patients extra. In Connecticut, a state law says it is “unfair trade practice” for medical providers to ask patients to pay more than a deductible or copayment for services covered by their insurance.
But, in general, patients hit with high bills from out-of-network doctors and hospitals may have little recourse, said Leslie Moran, senior vice president of the New York Health Plan Association. “When patients dig in their heels and say, ‘No, I’m not going to pay it,’ it sometimes goes to collection,” she said.
While there is no way of knowing how often doctors submit exorbitant bills, insurance companies tell American’s Health Insurance Plans that they see such bills “all the time, every day,” Ms. Pisano said.
The New York Health Plan Association provided additional examples. For example, in testimony at a state hearing last October, it told of a Long Island surgeon who charged $23,500 for an emergency appendectomy. The patient’s insurer paid its out-of-network fee of $4,629. The surgeon then demanded the balance or said he would force the patient to pay. In this case, the insurance company paid the rest of the bill.
Patients who receive unexpected bills may not know what to do. That happened to Charles Bacchi’s mother. Mr. Bacchi, executive vice president of the California Association of Health Plans, said his mother was admitted to a hospital that, unbeknownst to her, had just dropped its association with her insurer and was now out of her network.
Mr. Bacchi’s mother, who spent less than a week in the hospital, received a bill for nearly $90,000 and was told that her plan would pay only a small portion of it and that she was responsible for the rest. Mr. Bacchi said his mother was terrified and hid the bill. “She thought the entire family savings would go up in smoke,” Mr. Bacchi said.
When his mother finally told him about the bill, Mr. Bacchi intervened and, eventually, the matter was settled by the hospital and the insurance company “as it should it have been” Mr. Bacchi said.
No one intervened for Maria Davis, though, when her son fell and banged his mouth on her kitchen floor.
Ms. Davis, a respiratory therapist in Miller Place on Long Island, took 4-year-old Ryan to an emergency room. “He was bleeding a lot, and it looked like he had a bad cut on the inside of his mouth,” Ms. Davis said.
After a long wait, she said, a doctor said he would put in a couple of stitches but seemed uncomfortable treating the agitated child. When he said he could call a plastic surgeon, Ms. Davis agreed.
The plastic surgeon, Dr. Gregory J. Diehl of Port Jefferson, “was very nice, very gentle, very kind,” Ms. Davis said. He put in three stitches, and Ms. Davis assumed his bill would be fully covered by her insurer, United Healthcare.
It was not. The bill was $6,000 — $300 for the emergency room consultation and $5,700 for putting in the stitches. The Davises paid their deductible of $350 and waited to see what would happen.
After United Healthcare paid $2,024.80, Dr. Diehl reduced his bill by $2,100 and billed the Davises for the balance, $1,525.20. He did not return calls to his office.
So far, the Davises have not paid the balance.
“I told them I thought it was an unreasonable amount,” said Jonathan Davis, Ryan’s father, who is a police officer.
“We have gotten several letters, and they have gotten more than a little threatening,” Mr. Davis said.
Had he known that the doctor would charge $6,000, he said, “we may have looked for another doctor.”
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#222.Meryl…..Ever since Anderson Cooper joked around about teabaggers in a tasteless manner his ratings have dropped 20%.
It reminds me of Chevy Chase throwing out the F bomb at the Kennedy Center several times or Whoppie Goldberg making sexual jokes about Bush and Dick at a Democrat fundraiser. The American left has no class.
James:
If MD Anderson is out of your plan you are stuck under the current system. If you have no insurance – what happens? If you change jobs and have a preexisting condition, what happens. We have some great hospitals and doctors. That is not the point. Many times, it is the insurance companies that call the shots. We are trying to create a system where you and your doctor call the shots. If you can get a good result from you local physician, why go to MD Anderson or the Mayo Clinic? How many people currently have that option? You have created a series of false analogies
If I were building a tire company, I would look for the best person,who may or may not come from the Department of Commerce or may or may not come from Michelein.
By the way I know some really great doctors in Canada, the UK, Japan etc If I were there, I would not hesitate to go to them
229. jharp
maybe those arguments worked on you. but they don’t relate to a government health program. did you notice the roads are in disrepair? that the air traffic control system is outdated and even behind european countries? that the food in the supermarket would be the same with or with out uncle sam? that the toys with lead etc still get on the shelves?
the only thing that has merit or should say had merit is that the military is the best and strongest. but it is targetted for big budget cuts …the personal are being disrespected by the obama/pelosi crowd. and are generally hated by said crowd.
good luck with that “we won thing”
The Shadow: “we have the best healthcare why are our infant mortality rates so much poorer than so many countries?”
Shadow, do some reading. That assertion has already been debunked at least 3 times on this thread alone.
Parker L.:
“By almost any measure of societal breakdown that so-called Republican “values voters” decry, it is Red State America where moral failure is greatest.”
So true. It is and has been quite clear that the teabaggers haven’t a clue as to what the issue is they are protesting.
Obama cuts taxes. And they have a Taxed Enough Already protest? Good Grief!
I often wonder, will they ever get it in my lifetime?
234. Tolbert:
The Shadow: “we have the best healthcare why are our infant mortality rates so much poorer than so many countries?”
Shadow, do some reading. That assertion has already been debunked at least 3 times on this thread alone.
_________________________________________________
Nonsense. It has not been debunked even once because it is true.
The United States ranks 50th in life expectancy.
50th!
And every one of the countries that bests us has some sort of single payer/public insurance.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html
Put the bong away. Just who do you think is writing the bill?
I meant not including Congress under the coverage that the law will require, i.e., they get their own special plan.
Good grief! And the “left lost you”? Sorry, but it is you who lost your ability to see something right in front of your face.
Wrong again, sport.
jharp – you find when the wingnuts don’t agree they do not hesitate to make things up. I heaard similar nonsense at the Townhall meeting I attended
Judging by the number of comments and the amount of troll infestation one might think this was an article about Sarah Palin. Obamacare is not about health care, it’s about social control and an attack on American liberty. Read Obama’s health care advisor E. Emmanuel and enter the world of the Nazi technocrats who engineered the final solution. Trolls, read his Jan. 29 article if you have the guts. Obama Death Panel? You betcha.
Anytime someone in government is in a rush to pass legislation be afraid, be very afraid. This is a VERY complex issue that needs to be openly discussed, by ALL sides, in the light of day. Also let us remember government run program don’t work. Social Security and Medicare are both failures, and like the proposed Health reform, do not apply to congressmen – I always found that one interesting.
We do need Health Care reform, but in my personal opinion, the government should not be a provider and instead should ensure a level playing field with equal access.
229 jharp
are you under 30 or just willfully ignorant of what everyone else knows to be government’s tendency to incompetently waste billions while sleeping on the job? Surely the words “public school,” “post office,” “pearl harbor,” “9-11,” “TSA,” “army corps of engineers,” “congressional corruption” “watergate,” “dennis hastert,” “pork,” “investigation of joe the plumber,” “daniel elsberg breakin,” ….resonate with you too.
Govt blights almost everything it touches with waste, inefficiency and a suppression of innovation.
#222.Meryl…..Ever since Anderson Cooper joked around about teabaggers in a tasteless manner his ratings have dropped 20%.
It reminds me of Chevy Chase throwing out the F bomb at the Kennedy Center several times or Whoppie Goldberg making sexual jokes about Bush and Dick at a Democrat fundraiser. The American left has no class.
Again, like everything else you people talk about, a sheer fantasy. Its true that Cooper’s ratings have dropped, but they’ve been dropping since January. In fact, the steepest drop occured between March and April when they dropped 21%. They only dropped 16% from April to May when the alleged teabagging comment was lodged. You people never know what you’re talking about. This is the second time I did this today on some stupid baseless comment and it only took 3 minutes of googling in both cases. You people are either ingorant because you want to be, or because you’re stupid. But either way, you’re ignorant.
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/05/12/anderson-coopers-ratings-slide-on-cnn/18557
228. Parker L. wrote:
The birther movement is strongest in precisely those states where Republicans poll best and health care is worst. And as it turns out, there is a Birther Corollary: education, working conditions and myriad other indicators of social failure are generally most dismal in the most red of states.
Peter writes: This is getting old. Why is it when the libtards are losing the arguement because the facts are definitely not on their side, they all start bringing up the birth certificate issue again.
You know, for people who claim the conservatives are so single-minded about The Won’s birth certificate, it seems to be the only thing you libtards are thinking about lately.
I can’t believe how phobic many Americans are to the socialization, even partial socialization, of health care.
You are bombarded with what amounts to negative propoganda by anyone who stands to lose from such socialization. (ie. Politicians, lobbyists, Drug Companies) You see, in America, Health Care is just another industry like Oil. The idea is to make the most money. To do that, you need to provide as little service as possible while taking in as much money as possible. See where I’m going here? The lobbyists and corporations seem to equate socialization to Communism or some other anti-american ideal. It basically amounts to brainwashing.
What the rest of the developed world seems to have figured out is that socialized medicine isn’t the Red Menace you make it out to be. I’m from Canada, and we have public health care. A portion of my and every other Canadian’s income tax pays for it. Those who have more income, pay more taxes. But everyone is eligable for the same care. No one can be denyed any kind of neccessary treatment. Contrary to what you are told, this includes everything from treating the common cold, to cancer. The great thing is, I NEVER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT MONEY WHEN I GET SICK OR HURT! I have no idea why Americans seem to want to burden themselves with worry over whether or not they can afford health insurance, and if they do have the insurance, will that insurance cover the treatments they need??!!!? You are also told that in a public health system you don’t get to choose your doctor, and the waiting lines are so horrendous you’ll die waiting. This also isn’t true. I’ve never waited more than 1 hour in any clinic or emergency room. And I have every right to choose who my family doctor is. I went to 5 different ones and picked my favorite! ALL FOR FREE!!!
In Emanuals opening point, he talks about how America’s health Care system is “the best in the world”. I almost fell off my chair.
Although it is true that you spend the most money on health care:
http://www.photius.com/rankings/total_health_expenditure_as_pecent_of_gdp_2000_to_2005.html
That’s right. You think that public health care will cost you too much in taxes, yet under the system you have today, you pay more per captia than any other country!!!
And look it up anywhere, your life expectancy is much lower than ALL of the developed world. That’s right again! We’re talking all of Europe, and much of Asia, South America, and Oceana. (Countries that all subscribe to the hammer and sickle style of socialized health care) Canada too. We all have much higher life expectancies. Even check the CIA World Fact Book website for this info. It’s not made up.
Please let go of this American Pride thing. You know the “I work three jobs to send my kids to College, have the biggest house, the best car, and the best health insurance” idea. Your governement should be there to help you send your kids to college and pay for health care so you can actually afford the house and the car without maxing out your credit cards… maxed out credit is another American invention by the way.
Thanks for letting me vent.
God Bless America.
A limited number of adjustments and the opening up of competition across state lines would fix the problems without destroying the economy of the country. This has been pointed out numerous times but roundly ignored by the community organizers allotted to Pajamasmedia.
All that I can see from this is that:
1) It wouldn’t produce trickle down poverty lowering everyone to the lowest common denominator and keeping the poor down where they can be led by the nose.
2) They would miss out on the opportunity to verbally defecate on everyone here who disagrees with them.
jharp, The Shallow/Anonymous, Moho and other liberals never cease to amaze me with their inability to understand the facts when presented to them. Over and over they’ve been shown links to info they’ve requested and then for some inane reason one of them will ask, “Where’s the info?” and then all the other parrots will chime in too when it’s been posted and Posted and POSTED over and over again. Too much of our time is wasted trying to educated the uneducated.
I guess that’s why liberals cannot be reasoned with or engaged in any meaningful debate with. If the info isn’t read to them from a teleprompter, printed on the back of a union T-shirt or spoonfed to them from the DNC, their eyes, ears and brains remain shut.
This info should come in handy when 2012 rolls around and once again, the Conservatives, Independents and Moderate Dems will be given the task of cleaning up after a Presidential tragedy. I think rather than asking for their help or even taking it if offered, the liberal loons should all be coaxed to go back into the coma they have been in for YEARS until Obama came on the scene and with a few cups of kook-aid and some offers of paying off their mortgages and sticking it to the white man, they were sucked in.
I am now choosing to disregard their insane posts and instead will concentrate on those making sense and offering solutions instead of DNC talking points and “All Hail Obama because We Won” BS.
Not supporting health care reform on partisan grounds is so bizarre. How can you even justify it to yourself? You don’t want better options, an improved economy, and protections against the criminal practices of major insurance companies?
Because…the person proposing massive changes is a Democrat.
This is the moment for reform. If this doesn’t pass, you can kiss reform good bye for at least another 10 years. Longer. Good luck. All it will do is prove to the insurance lobbyists and special interests that, yes, they can overcome the will of the American people by lying to them and scaring them.
Think about that. I mean, look at yourself in the mirror and consider who, exactly, gains from you behaving this way. Why do they encourage you to behave this way? What’s in it for them? Book sales? TV ratings? Their own wallets? The protection of their business model? Somehow, we think it’s unAmerican to vote against funding the troops, but it’s perfectly acceptable to debate funding a system that makes sure people don’t get sick, or don’t go bankrupt from getting sick.
The middle class has been somehow convinced by those in power to fight against their own interests. It doesn’t even make me angry. It’s remarkably sad.
I have to admit that I agree with some of my conservative friends. The U.S. Government should not be running these, so called, “Death Panels,” It’s far to big and out of control to be trusted with something that important. That responsibility should remain where it is now with private insurers.
AThinkingPerson:
“I am now choosing to disregard their insane posts and instead will concentrate on those making sense and offering solutions instead”
I guess you’ll be leaving us then.
You’ve just eliminated reading anyone on this board.
You see, in America, Health Care is just another industry like Oil. The idea is to make the most money. To do that, you need to provide as little service as possible while taking in as much money as possible.
Yes and no. Many (most?) doctors are solo practitioners and have leeway to make exceptions for people who are hard-up. Medical school is not inexpensive, so it’s hard to pay off your debts if you give everyone free treatment. There are also many charity-run hospitals that, while they may not provide the best care available, do a good job of keeping people alive.
Secondly, your equation of industry with “provide as little service as possible while taking in as much money as possible” is fairly cartoonish. Even if it were true (and if it is, how is it that some companies manage to win “Customer Service Awards” from 3rd-party observers who tabulate the scores from surveys sent in by actual customers, e.g. J.D. Powers?) how is that any different from saying, “It is human nature to want something for nothing?” It’s not. Of course, all things being equal, I would like to be paid a full day’s wage for a half-day’s work. However, if I want to keep my job, I must do my full day’s work. If my company wants to keep a customer, it must provide them with value for the money the customer pays, otherwise, the customer goes to another company. When the government is the only provider of something, none of these mechanisms work. Government workers are rarely fired, they are merely shuffled off to other departments of the bureaucracy and when government is the only provider, customers can’t leave. Your system is so primitive it is like the old days when people lived in one village their whole lives, only instead of a village, you have implemented this in an entire country. Wow, congratulations.
I must admit that I have to agree with some of my conservative friends. The U.S. Government should not be running these, so called, “Death Panels,” where they decide who gets treated and who doesn’t. The government is for to big and out of control for something that important. That responsibility should remain where it is now with private insurers.
Proud Canadian:
“You are bombarded with what amounts to negative propoganda by anyone who stands to lose from such socialization. (ie. Politicians, lobbyists, Drug Companies) You see, in America, Health Care is just another industry like Oil. The idea is to make the most money. To do that, you need to provide as little service as possible while taking in as much money as possible.”
I don’t know if you are aware Proud Canadian but we have Limbaugh, Hannity, Fox News, Beck, Ingraham, Savage, Dobbs, among many others who 24/7 spread the myth that these companies are out for the best interest of Americans and are not after maximizing profit, which is, of course, their duty to their sharholders.
Unfortunately, we still have some that believe them.
American’s biggest enemy is ignorance, and ignorance is a formidable foe. Especially in the south.
Of course, nothing in this article edifies anybody about the genuine contents of the health care reform bills currently being considered. It is purely ideological mudslinging and that contributes nothing but more emotional extremism to the discussion.
The amount of downright cornpone ignorance demonstrated in some conservative blogs is breath-taking. First of all, anybody who tries to shout down other people at these meetings is there for one reason: to make sure nobody learns anything. They walk in the door thinking that they know everything there is to know about the health care reform bills in Congress, but all they spew out are the patently false rumors that have been spoon-fed to them by political operatives, and organizations that are in the pocket of the insurance industry. These meetings represent a chance for ordinary citizens to ask questions and HEAR answers. If they don’t agree with an answer, they can always ask a follow-up. Disrupting a meeting fails to achieve anything. It’s just a juvenile hissy-fit that makes it impossible for any reasonable person to get any facts at all. If these lunatics don’t think any real facts are being discussed at these meetings, then why are they attending?
The behavior of some citizens at these town hall meetings, which were a great idea, has been shameful at best and unAmerican at worst. The delusional and totally scurrilous notion that the President of the United States is trying to “take over” the country is the kind of paranoid rant you’d expect to hear at a Klan meeting. This country is in a serious crisis on several different fronts. Instead of screaming like a jackass, try asking an intelligent question or making a rational suggestion. Those that are whining about “socialism” don’t even know what socialism is, and they don’t know that the current reforms do NOT take over health care. You can keep your existing insurance and your doctor if you want to, or you can go with the national plan. There’s nothing nefarious about this. It is simply a way to make health care providers more competitive and keep millions of people from going bankrupt every year because they can’t afford decent medical coverage.
Right now, the insurance industry can deny you coverage if you have a previous condition OR what it determines to be a lot of medical problems. It can raise your rates at any time, and it can arbitrarily deny coverage if it thinks you’re too old or sick to benefit from treatment. As it stands right now, all insurance companies have “death panels” in that they can deny coverage to you if you’re too old, or if your condition is, in their opinion, untreatable. Under the reform plans, only the health care providers would play a role in those processes, not corporate actuaries. The reform bills do NOT sanction or form so-called “death panels”. They set up “end of life” counseling, which will benefit every single family with an elderly relative. There would be no government subsidized abortions and no government controls over doctors. Nobody would tell you which insurance you have to go with. It would be your choice. Period. End of story.
The lies that have been spread by public relations firms commissioned by the insurance industry have taken root in the minds of these screamers. If any one of them actually sat down, shut up and listened for one minute, they might understand that the government would not be taking over their medical care. It would be managing a national plan. Those who claim that the government can’t run anything well should pick up a newspaper some time. They might learn that the VA and MediCare, which are administrated by the government, have excellent reputations. Ironically, some of the people screaming loudest at these meetings are on MediCare and don’t even know it’s run by the government. They yell angrily, “I don’t want the government messin’ with my MediCare!” Forehead slap goes here.
Everybody is entitled to confront lawmakers with hard questions about the reforms that are being considered. But they have no right to take over these meetings and make it impossible for other, more reasonable citizens, to ask their questions in a civil manner and hear answers. As for liberals not “understanding the facts”, I have yet to hear a single conservative get any of them right, much less be willing to discuss in them. So, you go ahead, AThinkingPerson”. Curl up in your little ideological ball, close your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears.
Athinkingperson translated:
I have no factual basis for anything I’m arguing.
VVV:
Check you statistics the vast mjaority of docs are not in solo practice
I always find it interesting to read the statistics that liberals use to establish a demographic/educational basis for their alleged intellectual superiority. I have to smile and wonder what exactly would happen if one were to factor out the 99% of vanity liberal arts degree that they use to establish said more-educated-than-thou status… Just an amusing thought.
Dopeyperson – Anyone who is a birther cannot talk about facts. They are automatically disqualified
I listened carefully to President Obamaoist’s ‘town hall’ show in NH this morning and I found it interesting that I think he genuinely believes the rhetoric he is speaking. He fails to grasp a couple of critical aspects and that is: 1) The government is unable to fiscally manage any program within it’s means; 2) The entire proposed reform bill is riddled with vagueries and loopholes that in no way prevent the government from improper and incompetent health care management (i.e. independent oversight); 3) Obamaoist IS proposing a single-payer system since the government claims it will drive costs down by setting competitive fees regardless of what he claims or perceives; 4) No one in government has ever been capable of including the Law of Unintended Consequences in their grandiose schemes; 5) There will always be a double standard for the haves (govt) and the have-nots (average taxpayer) and there is nothing ion the bill that forces Congress to have the same benefits as we the people and empty promises don’t cut it; 6) there is in fact a review panel to determine the efficacy and appropriateness of continued treatment which is a de facto decision maker (similar to insurance cos. now) that can deny payments so Obama is blatently lying about that fact (see pg. 29-30, pg. 272 and pg 429);and finally he is so out of touch with reality that he cannot be taken seriously. He tried to justify his position by comparing the success of UPS and FedEx in competing with the USPS but he failed to mention that the Post Office in spite of continuing rate increases is still running billions of dollars in the red which does not bode well for a government run solution. All in all there are just too many questions and no straight answers from the administration or Congress and no one should trust a word they say as they are not at risk – at all – of a reduction in benefits or timely care as they still have their own unique plans.
Is anyone comforted by the fact that Obama said his health care plan will run like the post office? I think Rahm should tell him that he’s better at organizing people than he is with forming a coherent thought.
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/11/obama-government-health-care-will-be-like-um-the-post-office/
The pro abortionists are now concerned about infant mortality rates? THAT IS RICH! That’s about as hilarious as Leftists spouting that they are concerned for people in the VOLUNTARY military who go to war.
Remember:
You get what you pay for.
Nothing in life is free.
DMV/PostOffice healthcare? Uh. NO.
253
You also have about 25 Nobel Prize winners from the University of Chicago, arguably the greatest university in America over the past century, explaining why free markets are the optimal arrangement.
I don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh, but I read Gary Becker. I don’t watch Hannity, but I read Richard Posner. I haven’t seen the latest by Bill O’Reilly, but I’ll read Robert Lucas.
The Left has no one, NO ONE, that compares to any of these individuals and no theory that has even half the explanatory power of their theories. I’ve looked. That’s one reason why you people come in here with about a hundred ad hominem attacks for every philosophical proposition in favor of your proposals. Hell, the Left is still citing Karl Marx as some kind of authority on economics and industrial organization. The entire Leftist intellectual project collapsed with the oil shock of the 1970′s and has never recovered and cannot recover. Intellectually, you people are dead in the water and there is no sign of a wind to get you going again. Even a Rush Limbaugh providing a semi-degraded version of the U of C intellectual argument in favor of free markets is twice as intellectually coherent as anything from the most respected of Lefty economists, a la Krugman.
And one more critical point. Adding 47 million uninsured people (as Obamaoist stated) will cripple an already over-wrought health care delivery system since the reason costs are so high now is the demand outstrips the supply and until and unless the medical professional resource pool is at least doubled (highly unlikely if not impossible) then you will absolutely break the system and only those with cash will get care. This program should be renamed CASH 4 CARE since that will be the reality as it is in every nation, without exception, that has government sponsored healthcare. Why do you think so many Canadians come down to Washington state to get health care? Duh! Find a Canadian and ask them what they think of the wait times and resource restrictions and whether they feel they have full access to quality care in a timely manner for every illness or injury they suffer – bet you can’t find one honest Canadian that will claim that.
TheShadow, et al:
“Here at last is a wingnut who admits he is a dope “no statistics you cite, are going to change the minds on the other side.” He revels in his own ignorance”
You still haven’t answered my question, you just toss insults. Why do you bother if you think we are so ignorant?
Interesting argument. And I could almost believe the Republican party had n alternative viewpoint and strategy for health care reform…IF you hadn’t already blown your cover at the meeting with Tea Party and Conservative Groups.
Your party and Conservative Coalition of health reform protester lobbyists are on record:
“No reform at all is good.”
“Some reform would be considered a failure”
“We have an opportunity to kill Obamacare.”
No point playing sheep when we know you’re core mission is to be a big bad wolf!
FYI…All of those idiots claiming that Americans “overwhelmingly” want government healthcare are wrong. New polling shows 57% are AGAINST single-payer health care. Why am I not surprised?
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/august_2009/32_favor_single_payer_health_care_57_oppose
I guess it doesn’t really matter though because Obama doesn’t want to hear from people that don’t agree with him. Nice of a President to care so much about what the majority of Americans want isn’t it?
God Bless the people who are still brave enough to speak out against this at the townhalls!
# 61 JHarp: “44 other countries have lower infant mortality…”
Mon Dieu, Montressor! You have it exactly.
Err… this mortality number excludes the aborted infants, right?
The Soros internet brownshirts are out in large numbers today. Must be their new strategy along with union thugs beating up fellow americans.
venividivici:
“Even a Rush Limbaugh providing a semi-degraded version of the U of C intellectual argument in favor of free markets is twice as intellectually coherent as anything from the most respected of Lefty economists, a la Krugman.”
The laughs just keep coming. Limbaugh, the three time divorced drug addict dropout makes more sense to you than the Nobel Prize winning Princeton PhD Paul Krugman.
Take another toke on the bong. That must be some excellent stuff.
I agree with JohnRJ08. I am tired of this debate being overtaken by people who take marching orders from Limbaugh and Glen Beck rather than analyze these bills to see how it will affect them. It does strike me that many of these attendees are retirees who benefit the most from government social programs (not socialism). There are legitimate concerns with this bill that being lost in the background of this “noise”. I thought it was interesting to see several faith-based organizations rally in support of healthcare reform today. Lastly I’d like to remind the author that if we’d followed through with G.W’s privatization of Social Security, it would have as much money in it now as our 401Ks, which is to say, nothing! The arguments of less regulation and more free market seen in the current healthcare debate are the same old arguments that allowed the Wall Street fat cats to run our economy into the ground and laugh all the way to the bank!
Curmudgeon:
“DMV/PostOffice healthcare? Uh. NO.”
So I assume you use fed ex and UPS and not the U.S Mail?
Tell me, who else delivers mail from New York to L.A. for 44 cents? Fed Ex? UPS?
Ah yes, un-American to disrupt carefully orchestrated theatre masquerading as town halls with questions and hilarity at silly statements. How many have closed their doors claiming they are full yet are found to have a side door open to the chosen groups. How many where taking cards with questions that artfully played to their talking points.
The telling point above all is the childish rush to get legislation passed before even the congressmen could read it all. Something that is being rammed through in such a manner can only be hiding something unwholesome. As indeed, the government given total access to all Americans bank accounts, the quick flushing of an amendment to prevent bureaucrats from having the final say on patient procedures, the lack of any regulatory fixes that would allow the free enterprise companies to actually freely compete.
I don’t expect any of the Huns that have ridden in here to agree with anything said outside their talking points. It is quite clear that if we said the sky is blue they would reflexively cry that we are bastards of lesser beings and un-American to make any such claim.
No one eh? How about the 2008 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Howard Krugman. If you read anything, you’d realize that he’s a major voice on the left. Its not a “baseless assertion” contest between you and ‘thinkingperson’ [but to be honest, he's got a slight lead over you]. Now, I don’t actually believe your comment about the 25 nobel winning economists. It might be true, but given the track record of people here, its more likely a distortion that has nothing really to do with health care. There is no such thing as a free market system in an organized state. Its actually impossible. I think these economists would be the first to school you on that. Prove me wrong.
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2008
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2008/
‘In the staggering DailyKos/Research 2000 poll released days ago, a stunning 58% of Republicans did not believe (28%) or were unsure (30%) that President Barack Obama was in fact born in the United States. This is a uniquely Southern pathology, a region home to 69% of all birthers and the only part of the country to increase its Republican presidential vote in 2008.’
Research the recent study contrasting poll numbers on the % of democrats that are still convinced that the previous administration had something directly to do with 9/11, truthers, with the % of republicans that do not know where Obama was born. Which is actually what your over half of your 58% figure means, not whether they are birthers who believe that is is hiding the fact that he was born outside the country. That wasn’t the question. And that is the birther belief – not where he was born, but that he is hiding it.
Apply heuristics to both polls. Which is what professionals who read and interpret polls for a living do. If you are unable to figure out the intricacies of doing that, and it is not a simple task, expand your research outside Daily Kos where the heuristics behind the 7/31 poll have already have been examined and published.
What you’ll find is that general public awareness of the birther controversy is actually limited. So the numbers on republicans not knowing where Obama was born cannot be extrapolated into any conclusion that they subscribe to either side of the birther controversy. Not even the 28% who believe he was born outside the country.
The number being extrapolated is somewhere close to the 28%, but until a poll is run that actually asks the same or similar sample the question of they believe that Obama is hiding his actual birth records (which, again, is the birther conspiracy), that number is only speculative.
What you’ll also find is that general public awareness of the truther controversy is widespread. So the numbers on democrats that believe that the previous administration had something directly to do with 9/11, the question in the poll was very direct, can be extrapolated into a stronger argument that they actually subscribe to the truther conspiracy than one can make that 58% of republicans subscribe to the birther conspiracy.
Then tell us what regions of the country those democrats are concentrated in, and their level of education.
I would provide you the links, but this all occurred in just the last week or so, so it’s easy to find and the search will do you good.
Here is a hint. The number of truther believers in the democrat ranks is about 54%. Concentrated in high income high education northern and coastal demographics
Rick3:
“Adding 47 million uninsured people (as Obamaoist stated) will cripple an already over-wrought health care delivery system”
You must be new to the Wingnutosphere. Don’t you know that everyone gets treated whether they have insurance or not? (I know it’s false, my point is the teabagggers believe this)
No one is being added to our health care system, regardless.
256. The Shadow:
VVV:
Check you statistics the vast mjaority of docs are not in solo practice
Even so, almost everyone can find a solo/small group practitioner and then work with that provider to see if a reasonable payment plan can be worked out, regardless of insurance status or socio-economic status.
My more basic point is that among “professionals”, I would wager a guess that doctors give away more of their time and effort than their counterparts in fields like engineering and law.
253. jharp:
Proud Canadian:
I am a Canadian and you are just plain stupid. I don’t say that lightly.
I trust the free market to provide better service then any government ever known.
YES THEY MAKE A PROFIT. THEY INNOVATE THEY COMPETE, they make mistakes …but no where near the level you will see if this thing gets through.
Like I would want congress covering my back.
STUPID doesn’t even come close to what you have shown yourself to be.
Any public option will have access to public coffers and skews the ratio of those who pay in to those who are covered. Combined with a set payment for services, that like Medicare, pays substantially less than the actual costs of treatment, it is easy to understand why many are afraid of the public option. Private insurance already covers approximately 20% of the cost of treatment received by medicaid and medicare. Add to that a public option, and private insurance (i.e. freedom to choose) will not be around for long. Insurance companies will have to raise premiums further to finance the added costs of public option, business operations, and return of earnings (in the form of dividends) to reward their shareholders for taking a financial risk. The major ownership stake in these shares, hence profits, are mutual funds and pension plans that fund the retirements for millions of people. Further, there is no reason to reign in costs on a public option and the potential for yet another large unfunded liability is frightening. These are reasons why we are skeptical of a public option.
Here’s a very good article at American Thinker with lots of facts and figures.
Thank you Moho, this discussion needed a laugh and you gave a great belly laugh! Any organization that gave an award to Al Gore for his infomercial no longer has a whiff of credibility. I expect a Nobel any time now for Iran’s Khamenei in his tireless work in bringing peace to Iran, even if it is the peace of the grave.
Any economist that doesn’t look at what has worked and what hasn’t in history gets only kudos for great fiction. Too many people make up nice theories with no nod to fundamental human nature.
276. venividivici:
Even major providers will usually give discounts and payment plans for cash customers in order to avoid dealing with insurance company paperwork.
I get approx 20% off of my glasses because I am “out of plan” and pay cash, then submit the forms myself. I’ve heard several stories of patients getting significant discounts on even major surgery because they could afford to pay cash.
JHARP/SHADOW…So why do you take as gospel truth the words of a man very possibly who got his start performing sexual favors for a criminal pervert slumlord?
Dear PJM: Can you please add a feature that allows us to block some posters? I’d like to give up jharp for lent but I guess it’s the wrong time of the year.
venividivici:
“Even so, almost everyone can find a solo/small group practitioner and then work with that provider to see if a reasonable payment plan can be worked out, regardless of insurance status or socio-economic status.”
Have you lost your mind?
This is your solution to our broken health care system? Find a doctor who will work out a payment plan?
Good God. I have heard it all.
Just what kind of payment plan do you suggest for $100,000 breast cancer treatments? Or $300,000 heart surgery? … from someone too poor to buy insurance.
Apply heuristics to both polls. Which is what professionals who read and interpret polls for a living do. If you are unable to figure out the intricacies of doing that, and it is not a simple task, expand your research outside Daily Kos where the heuristics behind the 7/31 poll have already have been examined and published.
Its pretty obvious you don’t know what you’re talking about. Apply the heuristics yourself if you have a point to make. Its your responsiblity to back up your points, not the person you’re addressing.
Anonymous:
Way to not back up your statement in any way, shape or form. Calling me stupid doesn’t make you sound any smarter.
The facts speak for themselves. When you rank behind the rest of the developed world in terms of the quality of health care provided to your citizens, while at the same time paying more money than every other country, there is something very very wrong.
“Tell me, who else delivers mail from New York to L.A. for 44 cents? Fed Ex? UPS?”
No one. It is illegal for anyone but the US Post Office to deliver first class (44 cent) mail. Fool. But I state the obvious.
But I must ask why! Why do you beat your wife! When was the last time you had an honest job! Why can’t you remove your stickey fingers from that keyboard and go back to the hole you crawled out from. Why! We really want to know.
“The Soros internet brownshirts are out in large numbers today. Must be their new strategy along with union thugs beating up fellow americans.”
George Soros may be rich but he sure isn’t getting his money’s worth with this pathetic and shallow lot.
The laughs just keep coming. Limbaugh, the three time divorced drug addict dropout makes more sense to you than the Nobel Prize winning Princeton PhD Paul Krugman.
Yes. Notice I didn’t say that Limbaugh was more accomplished in economics than Krugman (whose Nobel Prize, by the way, was in international trade, before he went off the loony Left deep end, so implying some sort of connection between the types of analysis he did to get the Prize and his thinking today is disingenuous or ignorant), only that when Limbaugh utilizes the arguments put forth by the Chicago economists (I am sure Rush would be the first to admit he did not come up with these arguments himself, and he would undoubtedly admit that he doesn’t understand all the math behind them), he is more coherent than Krugman.
Was there some pertinence to the number of times Limbaugh was divorced to your point? John Lucas was actually a Nobel Prize winner and, famously, if you follow these sorts of things like I do, had to give half his prize money to his ex-wife. Given that counter-example, I’m not sure your insinuation that Limbaugh’s divorce somehow makes his economics invalid holds.
To Don: That whole waiting time bit, as in how US health care may not compare well overall to other Western countries but at least our wait times aren’t as bad, is mostly a very dubious numbers game. But if you’re really in a hurry, go to Germany: better care and shorter wait times. But there is some anecdotal evidence that France, which has the top ranked health care system, can be not so sluggish either.
“Tell me, who else delivers mail from New York to L.A. for 44 cents? Fed Ex? UPS?”
Current Drudge Headline:
“OBAMA ‘UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems’… ”
Again we ask Why!!?? Why do you hate the President so? Is it becauese he is black? How can you be such a racist?
Obamacare is not about health care – it is a power grab being pushed by the Fear Monger In Chief, rushed through as fast as possible. Its promotion rests more on the back of efforts to demonize opposition, rather than a truthful accounting of its merits. With only 4% of citizens (NOT illegal aliens) classified as chronically uninsured, and with most folks happy with their present health care, the destruction of what suits the many to provide for such a small fraction of folks is a joke – it is a lie; it is a power grab. And with congressional representation unwilling to accommodate their health needs through this massive boondoggle, democrats appear to be very much elitist. Our American right to Life is unalienable, a God-given right, from the government has no legitimate authority to deny.
286. Proud Canadian:
Anonymous:
Way to not back up your statement in any way, shape or form. Calling me stupid doesn’t make you sound any smarter.
The facts speak for themselves. When you rank behind the rest of the developed world in terms of the quality of health care provided to your citizens, while at the same time paying more money than every other country, there is something very very wrong.
I am not going to waste my time with you. …I have made as many arguments as I intend.
…could I change your mind with facts ..I doubt it. I will not even try to change your mind.
to me you are stupid and so is jharp and the other bully thugs who just put out obama talking points.
OBAMA is a marxist …and people who support marxism are either getting something (illicit) or they are stupid. since you claim to be canadian, you will not benefit from obama’s marxism so that leaves stupid.
273
No offense, buddy, but the amount that I care what you think of my assertions about the University of Chicago can be most accurately compared to “the null set”.
http://www.uchicago.edu/about/accolades/nobel/
Look at the list under “Economic Sciences”. It’s actually 26. They win so many, it’s hard to keep track. There are at least two more professors who are odds-on favorites. All of these people support free markets, some to a greater degree than others. I doubt that any of them support ObamaCare.
See my post above (if it gets approved) for the distinction between Krugman’s economic work and his loony Left diatribes. There’s no connection between the two and no logic in the latter.
There is no such thing as a free market system in an organized state. Its actually impossible. I think these economists would be the first to school you on that. Prove me wrong.
No, there are no completely free markets, but that is the condition toward which policy should aspire. The fact that I will never play in the NBA doesn’t stop me from working on my jump shot.
If the Canadian health care system was so stellar, there would be no need to ferry Canadians across the US border to receive care here.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/11/canadas-health-plan-contrasted-with-us/
Americans have always enjoyed the best care in the world. Well, we used to anyway.
Just what kind of payment plan do you suggest for $100,000 breast cancer treatments? Or $300,000 heart surgery? … from someone too poor to buy insurance.
First of all, they’d probably get Medicaid, if they had no assets.
Secondly, people buy $100K houses on little income all the time.
Thirdly, at the end of the day, it is not my responsibility to pay for these people. They’ve got family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, fellow congregationalists if they go to church. I wish them well, but my money has other uses that are more important to me, e.g. paying my own bills.
Man the Left is a bunch of grabby buttinskis. Just leave me alone, for crying out loud. I’m not bothering you, why do you feel the need to involve me in your ridiculous schemes? I’m not interested.
285. Moho:
‘Its pretty obvious you don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Well, no, what’s obvious, tool, is that you do not know what I am talking about. Wouldn’t expect you to. Not covered in junior high.
‘Apply the heuristics yourself if you have a point to make.’
Can’t. Not my field, and as I mentioned, it’s no simple task. Which is why I reasearched a bit to find people who do know how to do it.
‘Its your responsiblity to back up your points, not the person you’re addressing.’
Well, first, coming from you that is rather hypocritical. Secondly, I have no responsibility to help anyone stuck on stupid. There is more than enough in what I posted to track it down. Which, tool, was ‘the point’.
Hint: You won’t find it on the DU site, so you yourself are out of luck.
Sharper tools, please.
270
Lastly I’d like to remind the author that if we’d followed through with G.W’s privatization of Social Security, it would have as much money in it now as our 401Ks, which is to say, nothing!
401(k) started in the 1980s, around the time when the bull market started in 1982. For anyone who’s been saving in a 401(k) since then, the compounded returns, plus dividends, would far outperform Social Security returns, even after taking into account the losses in 2008.
275. jharp:
You are (not deliberately, I hope) confusing several issues here, jharp. One is access to medical care, second is access to emergency medical care, third is freedom from payment for medical care.
By statute, no-one in the US is denied access to emergency medical care. If you show up at a hospital ER, you will be treated – even if you only have a case of the sniffles or are an illegal alien. Indeed, one of the problems with the US medical care system is that the hospitals are overwhelmed by patients that should properly be seen by a private physician or an urgent care facility and not an ER.
Likewise, no one in the US is denied access to a physician’s office, unless that physician’s practice is totally booked – and even then they will usually fit you in if you wait a while.
There are three problems with the U.S. health-care system, none of which are even addressed by the proposed Democrat health-care plan.
1) Non-paying customers. One problem is that people expect free health care and make no provisions for paying for it. About 10 to 12 million of that “50 million uninsured” figure that the Democrats toss about are illegal aliens who are truly not entitled to any government subsidized health care, except perhaps in Mexico. Another 8 to 10 million are young adults who – in the way of the young – deliberately choose not to pay health insurance premiums because they think that they are immortal. Right now, these two groups are subsidized by those of us who do pay our bills (this is the reason for the $50 Tylenol on the bill).
2) Liability lawsuits. A very large chunk of your medical bill goes towards paying monsterous liability insurance premiums incurred by everybody in the health-provision chain, from the doctors on down. Tort reform is desparately needed. The problem is so bad that some areas of the country are majorly short of certain high-risk specialties, especially Ob-Gyns.
3) The coupling of health insurance with employment. This dates back to the ’30′s and was started to discourage job mobility. If I change jobs and move out of state I can keep my auto and property insurance and my home insurance provider, why not my health insurance? Decoupling the two would also increase the pool size and help lower costs.
venividivici:
Just what kind of payment plan do you suggest for $100,000 breast cancer treatments? Or $300,000 heart surgery? … from someone too poor to buy insurance.
________________________________________________
“First of all, they’d probably get Medicaid, if they had no assets.”
Many of the uninsured do have assets, fool.
_______________________________________________
“Secondly, people buy $100K houses on little income all the time.”
Ah, I see. All you have to do is find a doctor who will accept a 30 year payment plan.
________________________________________________
“Thirdly, at the end of the day, it is not my responsibility to pay for these people.”
Sorry but it doesn’t work that way.
I felt the same about paying for the Iraq War.
And it is your responsibility to pay for Medicare and Medicaid. This is nothing different. It’s insurance for American’s that no one will insure.
Are you so ignorant that you cannot see that a healthy America is a productive America? And everyone benefits.
My God, you’re an idiot!
Can’t. Not my field, and as I mentioned, it’s no simple task. Which is why I reasearched a bit to find people who do know how to do it.
[hand slaps forehead] Then you don’t know what you’re talking about! I hope you haven’t bred yet.
How about the 2008 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Howard Krugman. If you read anything, you’d realize that he’s a major voice on the left.
Howard Krugman? I know who Paul Krugman is — he’s that twitchy white NYT columnist who thinks he knows all about Race in America because he married a black woman — but who the heck is Howard Krugman?
Also, awarding the Nobel to Krugman was to the economics prize what awarding the Nobel to Yassir Arafat was to the ‘peace’ prize.
Of course, you probably think Yassir was a peach.
Yes Paul Krugman received a Nobel for International Economics. Not only is he that bright but he works at the New York Times. That is sure some credential and, additionally, just last week he was warning us about, and trumpeting his profound scientific expertise about global warming and the fact that we are all traitors to the planet because of our carbon footprints. You bet’cha I paid a lot of attention to that because he is just so damn smart. Why he has a Nobel prize. Just like Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, and Yasser Arafat other world-class intellects. Damn, them Nobel committee people in Sweden sure are good about picking out our betters for us. Those prize winners, especially if they have a Princeton PhD sure are some powerful thinkers alright. Why, if they have an opinion or experience with one thing they are suddenly also world class experts on just about everything else. We dumb people ought to pay more attention to people like Paul, and also jharp, and moho, and shadow, and Amanda. They are just so much brighter than we unenlightened proles–they exude intellect and wisdom we can never fathom. And they have no hesitation in coming here to tell us that. Bless their little hearts!
299. Paul of Alexandria:
“Likewise, no one in the US is denied access to a physician’s office, unless that physician’s practice is totally booked – and even then they will usually fit you in if you wait a while.”
You must be smoking the same stuff as venividivici.
Your claim is ludicrous. Utterly ludicrous.
Many of the uninsured do have assets, fool.
Do you just generally lack reading comprehension skills or is it something specific to my posts? Anyway, I said IF they had no assets, they’d PROBABLY get Medicaid. If they have assets, sell them to pay for the treatment.
Ah, I see. All you have to do is find a doctor who will accept a 30 year payment plan.
I wouldn’t be averse to the government setting up a Medical Emergency Loan program like student loans. That way the doctor could get the money in a reasonable amount of time and the person could pay off the loan like I am doing with my student loans.
Are you so ignorant that you cannot see that a healthy America is a productive America? And everyone benefits.
The incremental benefit I will get will be less than the incremental cost I will pay. My cost-benefit analysis says “no sale”.
I felt the same about paying for the Iraq War.
Yeah, the problem with that analogy is that national defense has been traditionally included among the set of “public goods” that no one really disputes. Health insurance has not and I don’t find any persuasive arguments for making it so.
venividivici:
“401(k) started in the 1980s, around the time when the bull market started in 1982. For anyone who’s been saving in a 401(k) since then, the compounded returns, plus dividends, would far outperform Social Security returns, even after taking into account the losses in 2008.”
How about those who have been saving since 2000?
Or from Jan 05 to mid 08?
The bull market you refer to was nothing more than ignorant lemmings paying way too much for stocks.
Sure it lasted for awhile just as the real estate bubble did.
Has anyone else bothered to look at where the WHO numbers are coming from? Aside form the obvious flaws in trying to compare vastly different populations using a single variable, it certainly doesn’t help to use data that is sometimes decades removed from the data used for other countries
http://www.who.int/healthinfo/paper39.pdf
Look at pages 13-14 in this study, and ask yourself whether the data set they used makes any sense at all for creating models and then using them to determine estimated current rates.
This report was used heavily in creating the oft-cited world health report http://www.who.int/whr/2005/whr2005_en.pdf In this document, travel down to page 149 and read on. Take careful note of the number of assumptions that have no empirical basis, yet are still used for calculating the numbers.
Seems about right for an organization that uses facts such as health distribution, responsiveness distribution, and financial fairness to “objectively” rank nation’s healthcare. In fact, in the most valid category the WHO uses for national rankings, responsiveness, the US is ranked number 1, it only drops once it weighted with standards designed to punish a US style system, and reward Euro style systems.
TLDR version, be very careful to critically evaluate any claims based on “objective” WHO studies.
How about those who have been saving since 2000?
Or from Jan 05 to mid 08?
Anyone saving in a 401k since 2000 (or from 2005) probably has many years of saving to go before they can even touch the money. Sure, it is tough to see it go down, but if you keep contributing and dollar-cost averaging your contributions, chances are that you’ll end up getting the standard 6-7% total returns over time. Now, if you needed that money right now and you were about to retire, that’s a different story and people at that age probably shouldn’t have so much allocated to equities, anyway.
Lasted a while? It was an 18-year bull market. That’s a bit more than “a while”. Of course, nothing in the real world can compare to the perfect leftist fantasy world you seem to inhabit, where everything is “free”.
The bull market you refer to was nothing more than ignorant lemmings paying way too much for stocks.
So I’m sure a super-duper-extra-wicked-smart genius like yourself made a killing buying low and selling high, right? Which brings me to one of my sticking points on lefties in general. If you guys are so smart, how come you don’t already have all the money you need to fund these programs? Seriously, a super-genius like yourself should be able to get a rube like me to hand over my life savings in about two minutes. How could I possibly resist signing away all of my worldly possessions for a handful of “magic beans” you could sell me or some shiny NASCAR paraphernalia? Come on, take my money from me fair and square, don’t use the government to take it. If you can do that, I won’t even have any reason to go rant and rave at my Congressman’s town hall now, will I, because it will have been a “free market” transaction. Or is it the case that you really don’t have anything of value to offer, so you need to use the threat of government-enforced violence to take from me what you can’t earn?
“You must be smoking the same stuff as venividivici.”
For people who pretend to know a lot, you folks know so little.
It is illegal for a health care provider to refuse to treat your life-threatening emergency simply because you cannot pay.
That is a fact.
Now, if you can’t afford it, you can’t get a free visit to the doc for a nose job, or for that nagging cough, or to get some full-body screens like on House. But it’s precisely that kind of stuff that you SHOULD pay for.
Separating essential from nonessential treatment is one of many things we need to do if we’re going to keep the system running. Just soapboxing about HEALTH CARE IS A RIGHT!!!! doesn’t do anything.
“Are you so ignorant that you cannot see that a healthy America is a productive America? And everyone benefits.”
A proto-socialist, surrounded with the failure of socialism everywhere he looks yet calling for the socialization of America … calls someone else ignorant. Hilarious.
A healthy America is a productive America, sure. Are you so ignorant you can’t see that government involvement in our health has only worsened it?
venividivici:
“So I’m sure a super-duper-extra-wicked-smart genius like yourself made a killing buying low and selling high, right?”
No. I pretty much avoid the market. You can be damn smarter than me and the odds are still way against you.
“If you guys are so smart, how come you don’t already have all the money you need to fund these programs?”
I have plenty of money but not enough to fund the U.S. health care system.
“Seriously, a super-genius like yourself should be able to get a rube like me to hand over my life savings in about two minutes.”
I don’t operate that way. But plenty do. And that is exactly what is happening. And the health insurance industry is a perfect example.
62. jharp:
Deaths per 1,000 live births. Best health care system in the world my foot.
44 other countries have lower infant mortality than us while spending half of we spend.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html
_______________________________
Those ‘Numbers’ are falsely reported .
The Proof more people come to America for Surgeries and Health Care than any County in the World not to mention Live here … jharp !
Aureliano.
I know who Paul Krugman is
I’m pretty sure you didn’t, unless you were lying before. That’s basically what you get caught up in every time you respond to one of my posts–either you’re a liar or an idiot. I assume a bit of both.
venividivici:
I felt the same about paying for the Iraq War.
Yeah, the problem with that analogy is that national defense has been traditionally included among the set of “public goods” that no one really disputes.
_________________________________________________
National defense? Really? The Iraq War was a national defense issue? I thought it was about spreading freedom. It’s hard to keep track.
And the health of all American’s clearly is a public good. Every country in the world believes so except one. Us.
“so you need to use the threat of government-enforced violence to take from me what you can’t earn?”
Well, as a paid shill trolling at PJM, and a pretty sorry example at that, he probably isn’t earning top dollar.
122. jharp:
Ruh Roh. You’ve lost Fox News on the euthanasia lies.
“Neil Cavuto calls Sarah Palin’s words ‘extreme’: Things like “death panel” and “evil” destructs the debate”
I’m starting to like Palin. She’s killing the GOP. Go Sarah.
__________________________________________________
Facts ….. YOUR BOY OBAMA AFTER 7 MONTHS IS RATED IN ALL POLLS FAR LOWER THAN THE LAST BUSH AFTER A YEAR .
YOUR LEADER PELOSI AND REED DRAW A 14 % POSITIVE IN THE POLLS ….. PROBABLY YOU AND THE DAILY KOS VOTING FOR ALL THREE A THOUSAND TIMES EACH .
venividivici:
“Anyway, I said IF they had no assets, they’d PROBABLY get Medicaid. If they have assets, sell them to pay for the treatment.”
So to pay for a $300,000 heart surgery John Doe has to sell his only asset, his $100,00 house.
Just curious, where is going to live while recuperating? And not working. And who is going to pay to feed him?
“I wouldn’t be averse to the government setting up a Medical Emergency Loan program like student loans. That way the doctor could get the money in a reasonable amount of time and the person could pay off the loan like I am doing with my student loans.”
So a 64 year old caught without insurance who just had heart surgery and had to sell his only assset, his home to pay $100,000, is soon to be using his social security to pay the remaining $200,000?
What’s he supposed to live on? And do the math. Interest alone only 200K is $1,000 a month. And that doesn’t even touch the principle.
Though I applaud you for admitting it’s a huge problem. Your solution is absurd.
“The incremental benefit I will get will be less than the incremental cost I will pay. My cost-benefit analysis says “no sale”.”
It’s also refreshing to hear you openly admit you don’t give a damn about the health of your fellow Americans.
Do you want your children sitting in school with a tuberculosis sufferer? Strep throat? Measles?
You do know that untreated health issues can become pandemics, right?
It’s not all about you.
257
I agree, this whole “I’m smart because I believe liberal dogma” is really getting out of hand.
There were a lot of Ph.Ds in the Soviet Union whose degrees were in “Marxist Studies”. When it fell, they all ended up driving cabs, that’s how useless their “degree” was.
I can totally imagine some of these trolls sitting on the sidewalk with signs “Will pontificate on the evils of capitalism for food”.
307. (jharp=sheesh,Shadow=Blarty)=tool:
As usual, bullshit. If you had critiques of the texts, then you should have made them. Simply pointing people to pages and telling them that there are unsupported statements, without saying what those statements are demonstrates either that you have no understanding of what you’re talking about or that you are simply trying to mislead people. Or both.
I did actually go to both pages. In the context of the first report, in which the explanatory text for the life tables that you cite
Look at pages 13-14 in this study, and ask yourself whether the data set they used makes any sense at all for creating models and then using them to determine estimated current rates.. The data set is perfect for its purpose–estimating increase/decrease in life expectancy and other health factors over time in a predictive context for countries that do not maintain good statistics. If you had a problem with the methodology come out with it. I assume you don’t and I assume you actually didn’t read the report in question.
Also, the claims made on the page 149 you noted on the second document are all susbtantiated with footnotes and tables. Your movement attracts quite a few compulsive liars.
I don’t operate that way. But plenty do. And that is exactly what is happening. And the health insurance industry is a perfect example.
5% net profit margins is typical for a health insurer. Hardly out of bounds and actually fairly standard for someone who is essentially just a middle-man.
National defense? Really? The Iraq War was a national defense issue? I thought it was about spreading freedom. It’s hard to keep track.
Again with the reading comprehension issues. “National defense” as a broad category of expenditures is a “public good”.
So to pay for a $300,000 heart surgery John Doe has to sell his only asset, his $100,00 house.
Just curious, where is going to live while recuperating? And not working. And who is going to pay to feed him?
Hey, sometimes life throws you a curve. Maybe instead of selling it, he takes on a second mortgage or a reverse mortgage. It is called ‘personal responsibility’.
What’s he supposed to live on? And do the math. Interest alone only 200K is $1,000 a month. And that doesn’t even touch the principle.
Life is not always fair.
Do you want your children sitting in school with a tuberculosis sufferer? Strep throat? Measles?
And yet we’ve somehow managed to survive schoolhouse sicknesses for these 230-odd years as a nation without a “public option” health insurance plan. How did we do it?
You’re such a melodramatic sally. I thought you were a man, but now I’m not so sure.
It’s not all about you.
It’s way, way more about me than it is about you and for that I offer zero apologies and it will not change. Sorry, pal.
Moho,
If your daughter – or you – had cancer, would you take her – or yourself – to Canada? If you can’t answer this question honestly in public then at least do so privately. No one will know. Except everyone.
James:
Nothing could be more irrelevant to the issues in this debate. You apparently have access to the internet. Do some research out of your comfort zone.
AtheistConservative:
“It is illegal for a health care provider to refuse to treat your life-threatening emergency simply because you cannot pay.”
Good one. A pretty clever choice of words and it’s true.
Yet it wasn’t very honest of you ignore the heart of the matter, chronic care, that amounts to 75% of total health care costs.
And people are denied chronic care every day. And folks are losing going busted due to the costs associated with their chronic care. 60 year olds! Losing everything!
If that doesn’t disgust you I really don’t know what to say.
Now go drown out any meaningful debate at your local Town Hall meeting. No need to debate. Interrupt loudly and often. Ask no questions. Simply shout out liar, Marxist, socialism, government takeover, death panels, you get the idea.
And then don’t forget to go to Church on Sunday.
290. BC wrote:
To Don: That whole waiting time bit, as in how US health care may not compare well overall to other Western countries but at least our wait times aren’t as bad, is mostly a very dubious numbers game. But if you’re really in a hurry, go to Germany: better care and shorter wait times. But there is some anecdotal evidence that France, which has the top ranked health care system, can be not so sluggish either.
Peter writes: Still waiting for BC to get on that one-way flight to France or Germany for their far superior health care than he can get here in the US.
If you’re going to talk the talk, then walk the walk, BC. Right over to European socialist health care. Leave the rest of US alone.
venividivici:
It’s not all about you.
“It’s way, way more about me than it is about you and for that I offer zero apologies and it will not change. Sorry, pal.”
Then I guess we’ll just have to go back to debunking each others posts.
I do see a shred of decency in you. Unlike many others who share your views.
“And the health of all American’s clearly is a public good. Every country in the world believes so except one”
You know what else is a ‘public good’? Food. So let’s have the government buy all our food for us.
Hang on, we need drinks with that. And a place to stay. And transportation. And you can’t give people food, drink, and a place to stay without some entertainment. So how about government-run TV?
And we all know it’s a ‘public good’ to have a job. So let’s all register with job boards and have our career paths planned for us. You know, each according to his abilities and so forth.
How could it possibly go wrong? I mean, we’re not surrounded on all sides by countries that are in a slow death march of unsustainable socialized ‘public good’. Let’s just re-read those false ‘live birth’ statistics (hey, any information given us by the government of Cuba MUST be accurate) and obsess over that within-statistical-error 1 year of life expectancy difference. I mean seriously, with all the problems in the US, there’s no way we could ever become the leader of the free world, have the world’s primary currency, be the world’s leader of charitable donations …
Left-wingers. Listen to them at your own peril.
Guys, this is silly having a prolong conversation with leftist trolls. We are free-market capitalist, and have nothing in common with socialist/communist.
My guess would be that we are old enough to be the parents of most of the left-wing posters, therefore we have our life experiences, whereas they are the victims of a recent left-wing indoctrination.
BTW….Obama lied twice today about having the endorsement of the AARP, and was corrected by the AARP immediately after the meeting that they have not endorsed any health care proposal. Obama is a piece of work.
There are many more lies the Dems, Obama, and his State-run media hacks are propagating. The bill is written in typical New Left, lawyerese so that, so that while it is unintelligible to the common citizen, it can be used like the Left likes to use the Constitution – like silly putty – to be stretched, twisted, and applied anyway they wish it to as long as it fits their overiding political ideology, agenda, and goals.
1. Obama and his apparatchiks lie when they say that abortion IS included in the bill, not explicitly, but implicitly by inference. It will be free and taxpayer funded.
2. They lie when they say that there are no soft euthanasia provisions and “death panels.” Although not mentioned explicitly, these things will logically have to become part of a system of rationing. Arbitrary and unaccountable Obama czars like Emanuel have already been quite specific who that rationing will go to. They will have unquestioned power to direct the ambiguous limits and policies that the bill allows.
3.It has been already proven that private companies will be hurt, struggle and fail in competition with a federal company funded by tax dollars.
4. And the biggest of the Goebellian lies is when Obama claims that “I will not pass a bill that puts us into debt, when the CBO has repeatedly contradicted that absurd decption.
It all boils down to one very simple fact….
There’s no way in hell I want an inept community organizer appointing ANYONE to come between myself and my doctor.
Those that want yet another level of bureaucracy in their personal lives must be very needy.
I often wonder why the most vocal proponents of European style health care are the ones who never worked in hospitals and medical centers as a front-line staff . Let me destroy some of the myths j-harp ,BC,the commenter in post 125, praetorian and other supporters of the Obama health care plan .
1) Myth- the non-insured gets the worst medical care than the insured . Wrong . Fact, the non-insured patients gets the practically the same care or even better care than those who are insured and the greatest irony is this, if you are an illegal with a life threatening illness, you may get a much better medical care comparable to those rich folks the Left often deride.I got a patient more than a year ago who does not speak English who had a strange respiratory ailment. His wbc count was high and so the Attending physician got an Infectious disease on the case as well as a Pulmonology consult and for the remainder of his stay,the consults would include, a cardiologist for cardiac clearance, a general surgeon as well as the thoracic surgeon. He stayed about 3 weeks in a telemetry unit prior his surgery for the doctors to get his blood levels particularly his white count back to within normal limits. He was operated on once he was stable and he spent at least 1 week in ICU and then another week or so in a general medical floor prior to discharge . The cost in treating this patient was almost a million dollars and the hospital and the doctors who participated in his care did not see a single cent . Every American hospital gets these types of patients 30-40% of the time. BTW, my father is included in that 30-40%.
2)Myth, insurance companies dictate to MDs on how to treat their patients . Fact. Attending physicians first loyalty is to their patients and their loyalty to the insurance companies near to the bottom of the list. Nurse Case managers can attest to that .
3) Myth, Medicare pays the Hospitals and doctors on time . Fact, hospitals and doctors are not paid on time, usually after 5-8 months and they never get paid the full amount of the work they provided .
4) Government bureaucrats care for the patients. Fact, the service provided by government bureaucrats is similar to DMV and believe me, if people like you think insurance bureau winnies are cheap, the public bureaucrats are 50 times worse.
Good news…. the CBO now says that the deficit THIS year will be 4 TIMES as large as last year. Oh, and that’s NOT including Obama’s health care disaster. Do liberal colleges offer any economic classes or is it all hemp weaving and tree hugging?
Anyone feeling any of that HopeNChange yet?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-08-10-deficit_N.htm
DinobotPrime… I agree with you wholeheartedly (good points btw!) but trying to tell a liberal that the government bureaucrats don’t care about them is like trying to herd cats. Impossible. For some odd reason they think that the minute everyone is on a generic plan the skies will open up, rainbows will appear and Obama will come on his unicorn to take them to the doctors office (no lines to wait in of course).
I guess that explains why they were so easily lured in by the HopeNChange fantasy.
Where are the Blue Dog Democrats? The Dems have been hijacked by leftist idealogs. This is their chance to save their party and our Country from catastrope. A Blue Dog needs to step up and lead. A voice from the smoke filled confusion; gather the dogs and Gop and lets create a new bill. One that focuses on Medicade and Medicare Reform, gives tax breaks to doctors rather than run the poor through a government beurocracy. Ext…..Come on Blue Dogs…it is time to defect.
Love the insanity in the air at Daily Kos. Here’s their ObamaCare talking points should a libtard attend a town hall meeting. All these were written by lawyers are are full of half truths and loopholes.
(I INCLUDED 4 LIBTARD TALKING POINTS. IF YOU WANT, VISIT DAILY KOS FOR THE REST OF THEM, THAT IS, ASSUMING THEY HAVEN’T TAKEN THEM DOWN SINCE THE’RE NOW TOTALLY EMMBARASSED BY RACHEL.
The Moveon website (no talking points, just libtard idiocy) is as good as dead; sounds like it was written by the mentality that Thinking person wipes the floor with every day on PJM.
UPDATED: Stop Health Care Town Hall Disruptions In Their Tracks
by ShadowSD (SOUND FAMILIAR?)
Digg this! Share this on Twitter – UPDATED: Stop Health Care Town Hall Disruptions In Their TracksTweet this submit to reddit Share This
Mon Aug 10, 2009 at 08:59:08 AM PDT
(New In This Installment: Rebuttal Points To The Five Most Common Opposition Arguments At Town Hall Meetings, A More Detailed Review of The CT-02 Town Hall, And A Retraction)
(a libtard writes)
Just a few nights ago, I went to Rep. Joe Courtney’s August 6 town hall in Woodstock, CT with this document in hand, and it helped change what started as a completely disruptive meeting into a contentious but functional one where the public option side clearly won.
Below the fold, a brief recap of these top ten health care talking points with five additional rebuttal points, an account of my first town hall experience ever, and how to diffuse disruptions before they effectively silence other viewpoints…
* ShadowSD’s diary :: :: YES, THAT NAME DOES SOUND FAMILIAR)
*
Meteor Blades and others in the comments have asked me to put the shortened summary of the ten talking points at the top of this diary before the list itself. Please note, this shorter verson is ONLY for situations where something with only a few hundred words will do, like a letter to the editor, or situations where you know for a fact you only have thirty seconds or less to speak; if you have a bit more time to speak – even a minute in total – the Top Ten list in full is considerably more effective than the shorter version, which should really only be used absolutely necessary.
A Short Summary of The Top Ten Talking Points On Health Care
1. If you’ve always paid your premiums on time, you’re as likely to be dropped by a private insurance company when you need life-saving care as you are to get treated; even if you aren’t dropped, they have the ability to overrule your doctor’s advice for life-saving treatment and only offer to cover something cheaper.
BUT THAT’S JUST THE LYING START. (RACHEL)
2. Private insurance companies are spending $1.4M a day to kill the public option, inventing phony citizen groups, and trying to scare the elderly about euthanasia and pro-lifers with abortion; they know the only way to kill reform is to get people of good conscience fighting each other, while they laugh all the way to the bank. They don’t think very highly of our intelligence.
OH, AND I ALWAYS THOUGHT HIGHLY OF LIBTARD INTELLIGENCE. LOVE OXYMORONS.
3. The average American family pays $16K/yr on health care while the avg. Canadian family pays less than $2K/yr, and businesses can no longer afford to provide insurance under the current system. Every independent estimate says the public option will SAVE the government money, from anywhere between $150B (CBO) to $265B (Commonwealth).
OBAMACARE WILL SAVE THE GOVERNMENT TONS OF MONEY. AND ELVES MAKE SHOES. IN TRUTH, IT’LL MAKE THE GOVERNMENT TONS OF MONEY. AND COST TAXPYERS TONS OF MONEY, NOT TO MENTION MANY LIVES.
4. So – if you’d rather spend more taxpayer money, bankrupt businesses, AND pay $16K a year for your family’s private insurance coverage in exchange for a policy that can be dumped the second you actually need it, then the current system is great for you. If you’d rather spend less, have less of a chance of dying, and want to remove the corporate bureaucrat from between you and your doctor, then a public option is the way to go.
I’D TAKE A CORPORATE BUREAUCRAT ANY DAY OVER A GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRAT. OF COURSE, OBAMA, MOVE ON AND THE ENTIRE DUMOCRATIC PARTY LOVES CORPORATE BUREAUCRATS.
(more rachel)
again, if you want to read more, put some put some poisonous landfill clothes on and wade into the mess at “Daily Kos.”
You’ll feel very dirty when you get back, and feel no amount of showers will get the stench off.
RACHEL,
have a nice day
Those who oppose health care reform should be reassured that if you like the organs you have you will get to keep them. Obama will not be forcibly harvesting them for his Chicago buddies. Lighten up! It’s gonna happen! You betcha!
I’d like to see the criminals in Washington stop the fraud in Medicare that some estimate to be as high as 30% to total. Medicare is a great example of how well the government can run healthcare.
Oh, I guess we have another shining example that Gunfighter #17 so clearly pointed out… the VA healthcare debacle.
Thank you for your service Gunfighter. Stay strong, we made need your services again before this is all over.
The government and these sleazy, money grubbing politicians… what a frightening joke our Republic was devolved into.
Incidentally,
I just strapped on a new set of poison control clothes to check if Daily Pus had taken all their town meeting talking points down. I think they have because I couldn’t find them where they were before.
But since insiders there have given me all the passwords and access codes,I can get everything I want from the pukes.
So I checked the right drawer and refound all the idiot Oramacare talking points. If anybody plans to go to a town meeting, you might as well have everything.
So if anybody body wants all ten talking points and the rest of the crap they’ve included, just give me a heads up and I’ll post it all.
Did I ever tell you how I drove Janet, of home securty nuts when I gave her inside info that returning GI’s from Iraq were joining subversive groups? Even the slave media took her to task for that one. And Napolitano still thinks it came from trusted sources. After all, who wouldn’t trust lil’ ole’ blond haired, blue eyed, Rachel?
Great post Rachel. I often put on my radioactive gloves, spray on some bug repellent and check out the liberal Bibles (HuffPo and DailyKos). SCARY STUFF. It does explain how easily those people became brainwashed though. It also explains why they always begin every answer with “It’s Bush’s fault because _____________.” They are simply minions in the liberal war machine and it’s sad how they are being manipulated to further an agenda.
I have to admit though that I do enjoy reading liberal responses to questions regarding the healthcare plan. You could honestly sit with the Obama playbook and check off each one of his points in their answers. Not an independent thought in the bunch. The odd thing is that among Conservative/Independent/Moderate Democrat posters, the responses run the gamut. Some are for NO government intervention while some are for a minimal amount. Not the liberal posters…it’s all Obama’s way or the highway. No variations. No options. No conversation.
It does make one wonder at what point in their upbringing did they become followers and not leaders?
I’ll weigh in and risk being called a wingnut (gee, like I haven’t been better insulted than that)…infant mortality rates…the US uses a different metric than most other advanced countries…the US includes preemies, those babies that are born but might not have a good chance to survive. The US system tries to save them…most other systems don’t and consider them as dead at birth and so don’t count. In addition, the US has a huge illegal base, and a base of legal immigrants from countries with not so good medical care; all of them are included in our overall infant mortality rate and then we’re compared against those countries with little racial, cultural or other differences…yes…we have a worse rate compared to Japan and Switzerland…and your point is what, exactly?
If you want us to have as good a rate as racially uniform countries then just come out and say so.
…oh…didn’t think you would…but then your party remains the party of slavery in America and good luck denying that fact.
27. a non a mouse:
“WELL WHICH COUNTRY HAS A BETTER SYSTEM ? I LIVE IN CANADA AND IT IS NOT BETTER HERE NOR IS IT FREE”
The World Health Organization’s ranking
of the world’s health systems. (Top 50 only)
Source: WHO World Health Report
The World Health Organization’s ranking of the world’s health systems was last produced in 2000, and the WHO no longer produces such a ranking table, because of the complexity of the task.
Rank Country
1 France
2 Italy
3 San Marino
4 Andorra
5 Malta
6 Singapore
7 Spain
8 Oman
9 Austria
10 Japan
11 Norway
12 Portugal
13 Monaco
14 Greece
15 Iceland
16 Luxembourg
17 Netherlands
18 United Kingdom
19 Ireland
20 Switzerland
21 Belgium
22 Colombia
23 Sweden
24 Cyprus
25 Germany
26 Saudi Arabia
27 United Arab Emirates
28 Israel
29 Morocco
30 > Canada
31 Finland
32 Australia
33 Chile
34 Denmark
35 Dominica
36 Costa Rica
37 > United States of America
38 Slovenia
39 Cuba
40 Brunei
41 New Zealand
42 Bahrain
43 Croatia
44 Qatar
45 Kuwait
46 Barbados
47 Thailand
48 Czech Republic
49 Malaysia
50 Poland
25. jerryofva:
“Ok. Today your are diagnosed with Cancer. Where do you want to go for treatment?”
I ask my Primary Care Physician.
33. Don:
“Single payer systems result in two things, a dispassionate (life determining) decision making processes, and waiting indeterminate periods for any kind of specialized care.”
I agree with your observations. What I want is a system that will be the BEST in the World. It’s all up to our legislators. They should show some creativity and abandon politics. They represent us, not their parties.
42. Thomas_L……: read my comment above.
109. Mr Lucky:
“Then I would assume that you would agree that the health insurance industry is not wholly private. Since the State/Federal government oversee the health insurance industry, are they not in part responsible for the failures of that industry?”
I agree with you. That’s been my point: LEGISLATORS.
173. MikeD:
“Jharp, praetorian, vivo, moho, consume their valuable time to interpret and represent the divine wisdom embodied by the Liberal/Democratic pantheon. They come here only to save us from our ignorant, benighted selves and to point out for us the one true path. They wish for us only contentment and urge support for what we are simply too dense to comprehend, peasants that we are. What we erroneously think of as freedom or liberty they are here to tell us is an outmoded folly. We aren’t capable, don’t you know. Contrary to our thinking their guidance is really just “for the best”.”
I couldn’t have said it better!
To Peter the Bubblehead: my mom one time fell and broke her wrist, and I took her to the emergency room of one of Boston best hospitals. After the now usual nightmarishly long emergency room corridor wait, they finally saw her and fixed her up — sort of: they didn’t set it correctly and it ended up bothering her until….a few years later, when she was visiting in London, England. While walking around a construction site, she slipped and….broke that same wrist. The English doctors saw her right away, commented negatively on the meds she was on, fixed her wrist correctly this time, and sent her on her way with a wave.
Much more recently, a friend living in France came down with brain cancer. The only good thing about it was that he was in France. If it was me, and I was in this country, it couldn’t be soon enough for me to hop on the first plane overseas.
Lastly, here is a little research assignment for you: try to find out how long it took US doctors to accept that H.pylori bacteria was the main culprit behind stomach ulcers after Australians researchers made the discovery, and finding that a cheap and simple 2-week treatment of Pepto Bismol and two generic antibiotics completely cured the condition for most people.
The real problem with the Left … or rather America’s problem … is that there is no Right. The Right as a viable political power became ill under George Herbert Walker Bush, was marginalized under Clintoon and died and was buried by George Bush.
Their effectively IS no Right in DC. The GOP is a sick substitute haunted by ghosts. IF we could bring back RWR from the grave he might be able to breath life into the dry bones again but it would take even him twenty years.
We have to secede. Most of the South will pull out. Most of the Midwest. Large portions of neighboring states such as Eastern Cali will come along. Let the socialists in their infested cities rot.
James at 220,
Perfect; way to simplify and personalize the issues. Very efficient. Just wanted you to know I admire your reasoning.
Well done at #341, vivo. Cute, clever, and despite the smiley face, exactly what I might expect–typical of your complete dishonesty. But then that is what we have come to expect from you and yours and none of us (certainly not I!) are surprised.
vivo # 340, France is indeed the country rated with the best overall health care system in terms of product and patient satisfaction. The U.S. by contrast spends far more per capita than France and is no where near as healthy for it. In fact we are rated # 1 in obesity. If you had the misfortune to be diagnosed with cancer in France, for instance, you would have the peace of mind in knowing that France guarantees every cancer patient can get any drug, including the most expensive and even experimental ones that are still being tested. This kind of access is why the French — unlike Americans — say they are highly satisfied with their health care system. In France you NEVER hear of people with serious illness being bankrupted because it NEVER happens. Here it’s all too common. we need to change that and we will.
Here in the states we have quite a different outcome. If you were diagnosed with cancer your doctor would likely be second guessed by a private health insurance death panel. They would want you to try cheaper drugs first or even delay your treatment in the hope that you just die off. This way here you maximize their profit and the shareholders can eat more caviar, take more spa vacations, and line the pockets of their GOP concubines.
Ironically, France, contrary to what conservative detractors claim, does not utilize a socialist framework for their health care deployment model. The system they have is a mix of both public and private entities (albeit well regulated). If you want more generous coverage than the already generous coverage provided then there are supplemental plans much like we have here in the states that you can purchase at a modest rate.
The systems in Canada and Britain are really second rate when compared to France (and even Germany). We would be very lucky if what we end up getting comes close to either France or Germany.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92419273
What are we becoming when we defer to the accuracy of a google search for our wisdom…pretty sad (given that studies cited and sources quoted largely don’t stand under serious scrutiny). For the arrogant ones out there that think they know everything, you may think you’re clever and you may come off that way initially, but the more you post the more transparent you become.
Keep it up, I learn more about human character daily.
BTW Paul Krugman is an idiot.
vivo
The problem with WHO’s ranking health care systems ranking is not only as you pointed out , the various complexities of the task that produce the rankings, but it also involves the inherent political and economic biases that will obviously skew the rankings to favor whatever agenda the authors wish the public to see . Let’s us start with the glaringly obvious which would be a country’s population. The bigger the population , the greater would be the pressure on the health care delivery system . 2nd , how was the data gathered , was it gathered by an politically independent entity , a paid WHO team or by each countries’ representative ? How was it tabulated ? Who determined the rankings ? Any agenda involved ? 3rd, Does it really correspond in real life . As others have pointed out , the United States count everybody admitted into it’s health care system which includes car accident victims, live or dead premature babies ,drug related deaths, gun related deaths and others. From what I understand, in regards to individual European countries , they have a different method in padding their stats .
We health care providers have a saying, rankings does not mean a damn thing if you cannot walk the talk in real life medical situations. American health personnel are more than willing to see what Europe and the rest of the top 46 had to offer and they are more than willing to integrate those systems if they work in an American real life setting. How do I know, there are lot of foreign trained nurses and doctors working in the US today , some from the UK , Australia , Philippines , Korea, Japan, India, Italy, Germany . We talk to each other a lot and compare notes . And from where I am standing, those rankings cannot stand in the face of real life health care . So if you want to shoved to our face those rankings, maybe learn to talk to us foreign graduate nurses and doctors first .
IF we could bring back RWR from the grave he might be able to breath life into the dry bones again but it would take even him twenty years.
Don’t forget the cognitive deterioration that accompanied the bulk of his last term–he was babbling like an infant in the days before he died. Come to think of it, he’d fit right in with you lot.
Kevin S., you win your wingnut decoder ring, after all. I’ve been seeing this data running around for a little while now. It seems to all trace back to a very slim and not very well researched US News and World Report Article
http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/060924/2healy.htm
Of course, you people leave out this part, which basically blows the argument out of the water:
Mystery. Look at Iceland. It uses the same standards as we do. But it also has a population under 300,000 that is 94 percent homogenous, a mixture of Norse and Celts. Similarly, Finland and Japan do not have the ethnic and cultural diversity of our 300 million citizens. Even factoring in education and income, Chinese-American mothers have lower rates, and African-Americans higher, than the U.S. average. Environment matters as well. Lower infant mortality tracks with fewer teen pregnancies, married as opposed to single mothers, less obesity and smoking, more education, and moms pregnant with babies that they are utterly intent on having. Yet, there are still biological factors that we don’t understand that lead to spontaneous premature delivery.
The article goes on to wonder if there’s a genetic basis, but it offers no studies to back this up, and its difficult to differentiate social factors from biological ones when it comes to health care. In any case, you would expect Iceland to rate at least near the US in terms of infant mortality, but it has a way lower rate and thus rates much higher in health care than the US, despite the fact that it uses the same methodology to determine infant mortality rate. The bottom line is that this line of thinking is bogus–the fact that the US uses a different method does not account in a significant way for the mortality rate.
I suppose if one wants to, one could read a lot into racial distinctions. But that’s obviously going out of your way to not see the obvious truth–the infant mortality rate is much higher than it should be in this country. And without any evidence that race or ethnicity have something to do with it, we are only left with the reality that our health care system over all has some significant problems.
TEN INDICATORS THAT YOUR EMPLOYER HAS CHANGED TO OBAMA’S HEALTH CARE PLAN:
(10) Your annual breast exam is done at Hooters.
(9) Directions to your doctor’s office include “Take a left when you enter the trailer park.”
(8) The tongue depressors taste faintly of Fudgesicles.
(7) The only proctologist in the plan is “Gus” from Roto-Rooter.
(6) You get you medical bill and find out you have 7 new dependents; 3 Pedros, 3 Juanitas and 1 Tyron Jefferson IV.
(5) Your primary care physician only speaks Pakistani and has a picture of Osama Bin Laden next to Barak Obama.
(4) “The patient is responsible for 200% of out-of-network charges,” is not a typographical error.
(3) The only expense covered 100% is “embalming.”
(2) Your anti-depressent comes in different colors with little M’s on them.
(1) You ask for Viagra, and they give you a Popsicle stick and duct tape
@319
I’m sorry that your public education didn’t even teach you a concept as simple as “Garbage in, garbage out”. I don’t really feel like giving you a primer on what an outlier is, since you have access to the internet, but instead will limit myself to pointing out that the data set used will by nature contain outliers due to the fact that using data from non-standardized populations(eg agrarian and industrial societies).
However, the math isn’t even the most important aspect of the report(although it is more interesting), the important part is found on page 2 so you won’t have to strain yourself, in fact, I’ll even quote it for you, “The central thesis is that the complex phenomenon of age specific mortality rates can be adequately represented by two or three parameters such as model family and level.” Who cares about what complex systems theory says, we can just reduce complex systems to a couple parameters and we’re ready to go(Any wonder that lefties have so much trouble with their climate models?).
“I assume you don’t and I assume you actually didn’t read the report in question.”
I’m pretty sure they have a word to describe people who think that they’re clairvoyant, I’m also pretty sure that word is psychotic.
“the claims made on the page 149 you noted on the second document are all susbtantiated with footnotes and tables.”
I guess you didn’t notice the annotation on all of those figures and tables that reads “Figures computed by WHO to assure comparability”. Nowhere in the document is method of computation described, which leads me to believe that those in charge of “computing” the data probably think Andrew Wakefield is a fine scientist.
Obama bothers me. Now at town meetings he allows in people only who say what Obama wants them to say and do; the daily kos talking points and stuff like that.
I want to join the town meetings but the FBI has already told me I am not an invited guest.
Now, I ask you, have I ever said a bad word about Barack.
The fact he helps commit abortions like water probably wasn’t my finest moment.
The fact he butchers the unborn could probably be said with a word to soften it like slaughters.
He’s ruined our free economy and replaced it with managed collectivism probably didn’t do me any favors.
I said a couple of things about Michelle needing chromosome tests. But is that new? They must know that already.
I said Barack and Henry Grace were overt racists vis a vie, James Crowrey and that didn’t go over very well. But Barack wasn’t a choir boy the whole time either.
Simply on the basis of testimonials, Obama talks about giving 17% of American industry to the goverment. I think it’s too much. Why the government couldn’t run a profitable lemonade stand. They don’t know to pay taxes.
Hire bigoted , racist supreme court judges, like Sonia Sotomayer,.. .they know how to do that. But it was a huge mistake.
They spend the country dry, bankrupting generations of our children.
They try to use the law against people they don’t like and people they should like, like James crowley, they call stupid, racist and ignorant.
Well, RAchel says Obama and Henry Gates are the racist ones who should be slapped in jail and they should throw away the key.
Grace and Obo, I mean Bo, are poison for our country. BO poses a cancer on the presidency and should be removed with care, voluntarily would be the best way. If not, they can always click on Little handcuffs and take the brown eyed handsomn man away.
Move him to Russia. Philoshicallt, he has much more in common with them that us. James Lowrey would make a thousand better President than Barack.
Let’s face it. Barack is about the hugest mistake the voting electorate of this country ever made. That the blacks voted 93% for Barack means they need an exptensive battery of literacy tests. (did you know oj can’t read and write..he’s illiterate) If Illiteracy is the reason they voted for Barack, anger isn’t the response, schooling should be.
Next time you go to a town meetings, ask Barack if health care needs to be run with a loss. Then ask Barack if he’s ever run something to make a profit. If he says no, then tell him he’s too inexperienced for the job and throw a shoe at him, maybe it’ll knock some sense into him.
You libs who post here. I want you to go home. Come back when you can communicate better. You’re lack of talent is probably why you don’t have jobs. Plus, being on the internet we can’t see your faces. Let’s start putting pictures of ourselves up. Delia, be sure to put some clothes on. Rachel
346. Praetorian:
“If you had the misfortune to be diagnosed with cancer in France, for instance, you would have the peace of mind in knowing that France guarantees every cancer patient can get any drug, including the most expensive and even experimental ones that are still being tested. This kind of access is why the French — unlike Americans — say they are highly satisfied with their health care system.”
You have to be realistic here. Some cancers have NO cure. That’s why drugs are prescribed. There is a time when all is left is death. Not even the richest health plan can avoid that.
Thanks for your comments.
348. Dinobotprime:
“And from where I am standing, those rankings cannot stand in the face of real life health care .”
Rankings and statistics can be misleading, but this was the only ranking that I found.
The point was U.S. health care is not the best, but we have a real chance right now if everyone cooperates and acts professionally.
Let’s say for the sake of argument Mr Obama is a centrist, albeit center extreme left, We the working people will once again get stuck with any additional costs associated with this reform, from higher premiums to additional taxes.
There is already a Government run “Public Health System” in place and functioning below capacity, how about allocate a few more dollars to their budget and let them provide health coverage for the un-insurable, uninsured and under insured.
The first step that is required is to keep government out of the Health care business the only role Government should play is to disallow Insurance companies from inserting themselves in to patient care.
Enough of this chatter, Progressive Socialism is not the country I want to leave for my children, grandchildren and their descendants.
America need to return to the no whine zone it used to be, like when we made cars that everyone wanted own and drive, when we built technology that drove the world, when we innovated instead of emulated…
I miss those day of making do and making ends meet, today we just print more money and act as if we are all entitled to everything without the hard work.
Ya’ll have a great day and be free while it lasts.
#342. BC: I’m sorry to hear about your mother’s travails with her wrist.
Interestingly, when my wife broke her wrist we went to the only hospital, the Guadalupe County Hospital (Texas). We waited about three hours. They tried to set the wrist three times. After they felt certain she needed surgery, the orthopedic surgeon took a look and she was operated on that day (certainly a little serendipity was at work). And to this day her wrist is fine.
So I wonder, was the state of Mass. already in full swing with government health care? Perhaps that is the reason she received such shoddy care. (Or maybe your doctor was just incompetent? That makes all doctors incopetent, yes?)
342. BC wrote:
To Peter the Bubblehead: my mom one time fell and broke her wrist, and I took her to the emergency room of one of Boston best hospitals.
Peter writes: See? That’s where you made your mistake! Instead of taking her to a hospital, you should have driven her to Logan Airport and immediately boarded a plane for France or German, so that way your mother could have experienced the SUPERIOR health care they offer, the care you have been touting on this thread over and over again, much better than here in the lowly US of A. What kind of a soin are you to subject your poor mother to the barely adequate health care you will find here in the US? You should be ASHAMED!
BTW, while you were at it, you should have gotten on the flight to France or Germany with her, so you can walk the walk you’ve been doing bnothing but talking here.
301. Moho:
Let’s look at this a moment. I bring up a point and challenge someone to do a little research before running with something.
Some tool, threatened by the implications, and serenely confident in his superior intelligence (but whom everyone else repeatedly points out comes off as utterly stupid), says I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Because the tool does not know what I am talking about. The tool comes from a segment of society that must be told what to think. I didn’t do that. I challenged someone to think on his own. Not the tool by the way. I would not bother. He has already repeatedly shown that not only that he is incapable of thinking on his own, but also that he is comfortable enough being stuck on stupid.
I respond that because it is not my field, I researched it so that I would know what I’m talking about. And that he should do the same. I had no expectation that the tool would be capable of doing so, but it was what I originally told the person I was originally talking to.
Because he did not have the direct links to the information, the tool had not been told what to think. So the tool’s response is to again project – I don’t know what I’m talking about.
The interesting thing is that one intelligently phrased search inquiry originally brought up this response:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/08/03/each_party_has_its_fanatics_97748.html
A disclaimer. I made that inquiry and saw the article a week or so ago when I first investigated – researched – the implications of the poll brought up by the person I was originally responding to. But the idea holds. You want to educate yourself, you ascertain the provenance and validity of information. You don’t take everything you’re told at face value.
You do a little research.
The author has obviously well-researched his subject and all the information is there to continue on and educate oneself. Which I did. Learned a bit about heuristic versus encyclopedic when applied to polling etc. Before my original response to someone other than the tool.
The tool would have come to an impasse. The tool’s problem would be that there are no links. He is not being told what to think, but being challenged to think. One must continue to research by applying some critical thinking in utilizing the information in that article. Or any article on the subject. So one would know what one was talking about. The tool has hit a brick wall.
Sharper tools, please. Or at least tools that do not beclown themselves with such regularity.
To Peter the Bubblehead: all I can say further to you is that maybe you should be the one to hop on the plane — obviously US health care has completely failed to treat your bubbleheadedness.
To Reiuxcat: most of my relatives live in England and Ireland, and overall my elderly relatives over there have no where near the medical horror stories I hear way too frequently from people I know in this country describing how their elderly parents or grandparents get treated. Granted that this is only anecdotal stuff, and that I’m sure you and others can come up with countering anecdotes, but myself personally have seen way too much medical incompetence and indifference in too many different scenarios the past several years to not believe the things are seriously out of whack with the current system. It could be that the Boston area’s medical reputation is indeed grossly, GROSSLY overblown, but….
Define best in terms of health care and don’t give me some vague phrase of we have a real chance now if everybody cooperates and acts professionally. Why don’t you come to the hospital where I work and explain it to us doctors, nurses and therapists. I won’t be surprise that you will not be able to quantify what you have posted over here . And oh btw ,all American doctors go to medical symposiums and interact with the doctors from France ,Italy, Singapore,Germany and others multiple times every year. They would be the first ones who would tell you that the WHO rankings doesn’t jibe with reality because if the WHO ranking really matter, they would be the first ones who would push for it. It says a lot when the vast majority of physicians are against what Obama and Congress are offering.
Proud Canadian – Maybe we can have a healthcare debate then. Your glowing report is 180 degrees from my experience. First of all, where do you live? I’m guessing it may be Ottawa or Toronto. Nice to be in the centre of the universe, eh? And my taxes help pay for it? You’re welcome. Here in Thunder Bay, an appointment was made for me, through my family doctor (I’m lucky enough to have one), to see the gastroenterologist on Feb. 18/09 for November 26/09. Close enough to 10 months as to be quibbling. Care to explain how this fits in with your experience?
By the way, I’m a proud Canadian too, just not so proud of this health care system that you and Michael Moore have said is all that.
For those who cite infant mortality rates in a world where 40+ million abortions have taken place in the US alone, since Roe v Wade, I can only shake my head. You obviously care more for your talking points than you do about (anyone’s) life.
351. any mouse:
TEN INDICATORS THAT YOUR EMPLOYER HAS CHANGED TO OBAMA’S HEALTH CARE PLAN:
(1) You ask for Viagra, and they give you a Popsicle stick and duct tape
Only a conservative would worry about that.
Now and Then
Hey pal, Viagra is also being used to relieve the effects of Pulmonary hypertension on both male and female. My patients and I get to joke about it all the time .
359. BC wrote:
To Peter the Bubblehead: all I can say further to you is that maybe you should be the one to hop on the plane — obviously US health care has completely failed to treat your bubbleheadedness.
Peter writes: I am not the one complaning about the US health care system. In fact, I fall into the 85% (note, 85% is in the definite majority, in case you could not comprehend that) of US citizens who are happy with their current health care insurance plans.
I also have the added benefit of having traveled around the world and, each place I have been, was told “Avoid local health care, at ALL COSTS!”
You, on the other hand, keep harping about how great the health care system is in France and Germany and other Eurpoean socialist countries. And again I ask, have you ACTUALLY, PERSONNALLY experienced these ‘superior’ systems you keep touting over and over again oin this thread?
My guess… no, my assumption… is NO, you have not.
So before you go singing the praises of European socialist health care and claiming (unfactually) that it is superior in every regard to the US system, go fly over there and use it! Live under socilaized medicine for one year. That’s all I ask. ONE YEAR. Then come back here and tell us all how great their system is compared to the US.
Praetorian #346
Your information on France’s Health Care abilities is outdated. I suggest you take a look at this year’s data: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124958049241511735.html
France’s health care system is paid through employment taxes — but high unemployment and an aging population combined with a slow population growth and rising health care costs has reduced the government’s ability to deliver the kind of care you mentioned. Rationing and cutbacks have already begun.
BC, if you knew Boston hospitals and trauma, you’d have known to take Mom not to the best (Mass General, Beth Israel, Brigham) but to the worst, Boston Medical Center, where their practice working on all the gunshot and knife wounds in the city has created the best trauma unit in New England. My primary care is at MGH, but if I have an accident, take me to BMC.
A SIMPLE REQUEST:
Please email your representatives in congress the following:
~~~
~~~
I am requesting that you sponsor the following amendment to the health care bill.
If you cannot support the below amendment then you cannot in good conscious vote to approve this bill.
1) UPON THE PASSAGE OF NATIONAL HEALTH CARE BILL IT IS RESOLVED THAT ALL MEMBERS OF CONGRESS AND THEIR FAMILIES ARE REQUIRED TO BE SOLELY COVERED BY THE GOVERNMENT PROVIDED HEALTH CARE PLAN.
2) CONGRESS AND THEIR FAMILIES MAY NOT HAVE ANY ADDITIONAL INSURANCE PLAN OR PRIVATE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM APPLIED TO THEM EVEN IF THEY PAY FOR IT THEMSELVES.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This health care plan does not look so good when YOU and YOUR FAMILY are forced to live by the same rules you are planning to force on the rest of us.
Brutus – You are absolutely right about that.
RP Please the FBI could not care about you – I think you might check with your physician to see if you need medication though I do not know what they do these days for delusions. You do seem to have a bad case though
Don:
You make statements with no data to back then up. Of course it is easy that way because you don’t ever have to let fact get in the way of your opinion. Good thing you are not a doctor. “Hey doc why are you prescribing that dose?” “Oh I jsut think that is the right dose. I never read the literature.”
I think of Obama’s plan and I think of this image: http://is.gd/2dYxi
‘Babbling like an infant..’ – Wow. You’re referencing a person’s last days, at home, in a political discussion? You leave no stone unturned.. or scathingly low brow reasoning.
How about Slick Willy’s memory. The following is from a deposition ONE day!
FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES: In the portions of President Clinton’s Jan. 17 deposition that have been made public in the Paula Jones case, his memory failed him 267 times. This is a list of his answers and how many times he gave each one.
I don’t remember – 71
I don’t know – 62
I’m not sure – 17
I have no idea – 10
I don’t believe so – 9
I don’t recall – 8
I don’t think so – 8
I don’t have any specific recollection – 6
I have no recollection – 4
Not to my knowledge – 4
I just don’t remember – 4
I don’t believe – 4
I have no specific recollection – 3
I might have – 3
I don’t have any recollection of that – 2 I don’t have a specific memory – 2
I don’t have any memory of that – 2
I just can’t say – 2
I have no direct knowledge of that – 2
I don’t have any idea – 2
Not that I recall – 2
I don’t believe I did – 2
I can’t remember – 2
I can’t say – 2
I do not remember doing so – 2
Not that I remember – 2
I’m not aware – 1
I honestly don’t know – 1
I don’t believe that I did – 1
I’m fairly sure – 1
I have no other recollection – 1
I’m not positive – 1
I certainly don’t think so – 1
I don’t really remember – 1
I would have no way of remembering that – 1
That’s what I believe happened – 1
To my knowledge, no – 1
To the best of my knowledge – 1
To the best of my memory – 1
I honestly don’t recall – 1
I honestly don’t remember – 1
That’s all I know – 1
I don’t have an independent recollection of that – 1
I don’t actually have an independent memory of that – 1
As far as I know – 1
I don’t believe I ever did that – 1
That’s all I know about that – 1
I’m just not sure – 1
Nothing that I remember – 1
I simply don’t know – 1
I would have no idea – 1
I don’t know anything about that – 1
I don’t have any direct knowledge of that – 1
I just don’t know – 1
I really don’t know – 1
I can’t deny that, I just — I have no memory of that at all – 1
http://www.prorev.com/legacy.htm
When I was treated for prostate cancer in Georgia they had a world map on display in one of the day rooms. Pins were placed on the map on the city/state/country of those being treated. The pins were on many, many foreign countries. An Englishman I meet there paid for his own treatment (borrowed the money) because he had friends die from “watchful waiting” and delays in surgery or other treatments. Men from Canada, New Zealand, and others had similar stories. They were grateful to have a Center for Excellence for their treatment.
59. jharp:*
There are mandatory health savings accounts: “Individuals pre-save for medical expenses through mandatory deductions from their paychecks and employer contributions… Only approved categories of medical treatment can be paid for by deducting one’s Medisave account, for oneself, grandparents, parents, spouse or children: consultations with private practitioners for minor ailments must be paid from out-of-pocket cash…”
* “The private healthcare system competes with the public healthcare, which helps contain prices in both directions. Private medical insurance is also available.”
* Private healthcare providers are required to publish price lists to encourage comparison shopping.
* The government pays for “basic healthcare services… subject to tight expenditure control.” Bottom line: The government pays 80% of “basic public healthcare services.”
* Government plays a big role with contagious disease, and adds some paternalism on top: “Preventing diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tobacco-related illnesses by ensuring good health conditions takes a high priority.”
* The government provides optional low-cost catatrophic health insurance, plus a safety net “subject to stringent means-testing.”
But we’re not debating the Singapore health system. The way you present it makes it somewhat attractive, but:
1) HB 3200 outlaws MSAs
2) the way HB 3200 is designed, the government gets to present it’s “public option” AND dictate what coverage and individual costs a plan must have to be able to “qualify”. If your company does not have a qualifying plan, they pay an 8% payroll tax. they also pay that 8% if they don;t offer coverage at all. What do you think a business would do in that situation, facing a doubling (or more) of your costs? Also, even if you have a qualifying plan one year, the government may decide next year to change the criteria – something the public option, by it’s very nature, never has to worry about. It’s not competition, it’s monopolistic behavior only the government can get away with – If a corporation tried anything similar, it would be destroyed under anti-trust laws.
3) Private insurers already publish price lists, it’s sorta in their interest in order to compete for consumers. Why should it be mandatory?
4) government already plays a significant role in contagious disease – the CDC comes to mind. Ditto for HIV/AIDS and tobacco. we already spend lots of federal money to assist with those two issue, via various programs.
5) We have Medicaid, the “safety net”. What we don’t have is a “public option”. IF they were to merely offer that, without the insurance limiting restriction discussed above, it would be much more palatable – as long as they actually competed with private insurance. And HB 3200 is hostile to the MSA/catastrophic insurance scheme. If they offered that, and expanded MSAs (possibly using the child tax credit to fund a child’s account), I would be all for it. It’s simple, and it brings consumer pressure back into the health care costs problem. Which is what this bill does not do.
354. vivo:
….
The point was U.S. health care is not the best, but we have a real chance right now if everyone cooperates and acts professionally.
Umm, what do you mean by “cooperate”? Do you mean, “sit down, shut up, and let us fix it for you”? Then, no I won’t “cooperate”. I don’t see much cooperation from you, as far as acknowledging valid concerns with the current health care bill(s). I mean, we have different ideas on how to fix the problem, which those with whom you have allied dismiss out of hand, because it’s the opposition who proposed it and not based upon it’s merits. So don’t lecture me, I really hate being patronized.
340. vivo:
You also need to look carefully at how they came up with that list. See WHO’s fooling who? by the CATO Institute.
375. Jeff Weimer:
“Umm, what do you mean by “cooperate”? ”
co·op·er·ate:
1. To work or act together toward a common end or purpose.
2. To acquiesce willingly; be compliant: asked the child to cooperate and go to bed. (not this one)
3. To form an association for common, usually economic, benefit.
376. Paul of Alexandria:
Thanks, but I said this on #354:
Rankings and statistics can be misleading, but this was the only ranking that I found.
Conservatives continue to distort the truth about health care reform. As a practicing physician and past health care CEO I can absolutely guarantee you that America does not have a capable, competent health care system. Obama’s health care reform is required therapy for the illness of our health care non-system. The best health plans on planet earth are Medicare and Tricare, both solid socialized, competent and cost efficient health plans.The changes Obama seeks are rational and reasonable and supported by most professional medical societies. If you conservatives are so concerned about cost then realize that we waste $1.2 trillion a year on non-productive unnecessary care. With that savings you conservatives could invade a different country every year. I have yet to read or hear a rational discussion on health care reform from any conservative source. Are you aware of the published scientific study on political conservatism that defines your political cognitive motivations? It’s published in Psychological Reviews, May 2003. Fear and a drive towards inequality form the basis of your motivations. I wonder of therapy for this dysfunction is included in health reform?
Well, Dr, John, you are in the solid minority of doctors, because every other doctor I have read about, heard from, or read on forums like this are all against Obamacare as nothing more than a massive socilaist power grab that will ruin any incentive to become a doctor and practice medicine.
Tell me how you would feel if, after this boondogle passes, the government then tells you you can only earn $X per year and no more, and that X is significantly below what you are currently earning.
HC3200 Page 127 Lines 1-16.
Take a look for yourself.
Conservative plan for successful Health Care Reform – How about starting with Tort reform?
377. vivo:2.
….To acquiesce willingly; be compliant: asked the child to cooperate and go to bed. (not this one)
Actually, I think you do mean this one. When the “opposition” is shut out from discussion (or demagogued or expressing opposition), not allowed to amend, or even discuss their ideas for this health care plan tells me that’s EXACTLY what you mean.
How can we “work together” if your side won’t let us?
372. paul_unalaska:
Wow, almost as many as Alberto Gonzalez . . . of course Clinton was talking about flirting and Alberto was talking about torture and politicizing the justice department and firing us attorneys. But I’m sure you see them as the same. He had a lot more reason to BS than Bill did.
Myth #6 – You people know what you’re talking about.
Financial Planner Minnesota
I beleive this health care will be good for the United States. It will give more people be health coverage that can’t find a job. I feel for those people.
Does anyone remember long years ago when there was no healthcare bureaucracy? Before Lyndon Johnson busted up families, requiring a father to leave home in order for mom and kids to receive a pittance from the federal government? The mom and kids who were infinitely better off with a dad at home even though money was tight? The federal government had no rights to come into your life with bureaucrats seizing children and placing them in nightmare foster care where many times, the money earned was the incentive to be foster care providers? Honest overhaul of this healthcare debacle should begin with purging the lobbyists who ply our government employees with incentives to do all the wrong things that do not represent we who supposedly put these officials in office. Insurance companies long ago, did not have huge bonus pay-outs to employees who could deny contractual coverage the most. Heads of corporations didn’t have millions of dollars bonus incentives to corrupt the business of upholding contracts faithfully paid by consumers for a rainy day. Creation of the Food and Drug Administration that has a revolving door up top with government to lucrative big pharma, big business that rewards looking the other way when our food and water systems are corrupted with excitotoxins, flluoride waste from aluminum industries, vaccines with thimerosol, and mercury. Substitutes for food become mainstream in our diets, like Aspartame, dyes, genetically modified genes placed into our foods, cloned foods. We are a nation under attack from every side. We call our representatives and the recorded message is, “goodbye.” We call C-Span and attempt to reason only to be cut off and when mainstream media film the paltry and few town meetings quickly assembled and they hear an angry, frustrated voice trying to reason that there should have been criminal investigations and jail time instead of bail-outs, that our Congressional and Senatorial employees should have consulted “the People” on such life-changing matters as who should be in control of our choices…ourselves or some government bureaucrat (totally breaking our Republic contract and Our Constitution…what can one think but betrayal? What is there left of the once precious liberties and pursuit of life? Make no mistake, when the federal government slipped into state run education systems, the changes for the worse came within one generation. Why? Because when you take control of the children, you shape the future as you wish it to be. There are no civics classes, discussions of The Constitution and our rights within the amendments. No history but what is shaped as history. Don’t believe one crying in the wilderness. Search the source. Take on ones’ word for it. Find out for yourself. Since when does a flurry of Executive Orders written by a president trump the precious document that binds Americans in freedom together and with unalienable rights? Look at what has come upon us all with the deaths of our president, John F. Kennedy and freedom fighter and peaceful activist for what is right under Almighty God, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Do you know what he said in depth? Or do you know merely a few famous phrases from his stirring speeches? One can always measure the immense importance of leaders who appear in time by how they are dealt with by those who hold the power. They have an inner light that cannot be corrupted. That makes them dangerous to those who will take you where you do not wish to go. That begs the question in all of us, where do you wish to go and what of those who will come after you?
Leave it to the Left in surprisingly ‘going off topic’ – but I’ll bite.
Now and Then – ‘. . of course Clinton was talking about flirting..’
Wow, so what Bill did was ‘flirting’? Maybe I’m old fashioned or a fuddy duddy but I thought the actions of POTUS requires more decorum. What else.. oh yeah – honesty, in a court of law. Perhaps that’s why he was impeached, disbarred. Maybe..
As for Gonzalez, yeah the guy was scum and eventually left office. I believe Bush learned you shouldn’t hire your friends.
Speaking of which, poor old Vince Foster learned that the hard way.