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I keep seeing the preventative care bandied about and I wonder what is included in that ? Probably a blood test and a urine sample that will identify high cholesteral, diabetis, things of that type. Will they send you for a chest xray which they say really doesn't catch lung cancer early enough to make a difference but it sounds good ? Dexa scans for womens bone loss ? Will they check for thyroid tumors ? I have only ever had one doctor do that every visit even when I didn't have them and I have them now. A full body check for skin cancers ? It all sounds great but these preventative checks are cursory at best, depending on the doctor.
But life expectancy may have very little to do with the quality of medical care system. There are a lot of cultural variables that medicine can't really solve.
Look at mortality rates related to cancer for a better picture of our health care system fairs.
I don't understand your position. Do you want the government rather than docs telling people what drugs they need? Do you think that mammography is more expensive than chemo? What explicitly would you rather the gov't do to contain costs. Why would you suggest the ACA does otherwise? And is there no moral imperative to ensure people with cancer, MS, and every other awful disease have access to medical insurance? I'm all ears.
People are nowhere near as "sick" as this corrupt system has led them to believe. Just as your car rarely needs more than the front brake pads that you took it to the shop for. Our system is the disease that we should make our top priority.
My position is that it is the corruption built into the system that is the problem. And the solution is to dismantle it - not prop it up and protect it as Obamacare does. First, we need to repeal this draconian law. Then, we need to get corporate profits out of the system just as you get the fox out of the chicken coup and for the same reason. Once that is done, and people step back, take a deep breath, and take back control of their lives from the "health care" system, we'll begin to understand how "sick" this industry has made us and how much smaller our real problem with legitimate health care need really is.
It was manageable before this monster was built and can be again. We simply must think outside of their box.
People are nowhere near as "sick" as this corrupt system has led them to believe. Just as your car rarely needs more than the front brake pads that you took it to the shop for. Our system is the disease that we should make our top priority.
My position is that it is the corruption built into the system that is the problem. And the solution is to dismantle it - not prop it up and protect it as Obamacare does. First, we need to repeal this draconian law. Then, we need to get corporate profits out of the system just as you get the fox out of the chicken coup and for the same reason. Once that is done, and people step back, take a deep breath, and take back control of their lives from the "health care" system, we'll begin to understand how "sick" this industry has made us and how much smaller our real problem with legitimate health care need really is.
It was manageable before this monster was built and can be again. We simply must think outside of their box.
If there is a system, it's a highly capricious one and paradoxically irregular. We've got for-profit private insurance, single payer-delivery (Tricare and Medicare), Medicaid and related programs, not to mention pay-out-pocket, begging on crowdsourcing sites, and the incredibly humiliating collection jars you might encounter a convenience store. This country has already seen the devastating personal and economic impact of medical bill-related bankruptcies.
It seems that a lot of people have forgotten that much of the healthcare reform movement was driven by large corporations and small business who argued that they could not afford to subsidize their employee's medical expenses. During the 1990s, as employers increasingly hired on short-term contracts, health care benefits either disappeared or became severely circumscipted.
For all the pearl-clutching worry about the ACA (nee Romneycare), few critics actually offer any viable alternatives that might lessen the financial load already placed on the middle class and allow us to continue with a first-world standard of living.
People are nowhere near as "sick" as this corrupt system has led them to believe. Just as your car rarely needs more than the front brake pads that you took it to the shop for. Our system is the disease that we should make our top priority.
My position is that it is the corruption built into the system that is the problem. And the solution is to dismantle it - not prop it up and protect it as Obamacare does. First, we need to repeal this draconian law. Then, we need to get corporate profits out of the system just as you get the fox out of the chicken coup and for the same reason. Once that is done, and people step back, take a deep breath, and take back control of their lives from the "health care" system, we'll begin to understand how "sick" this industry has made us and how much smaller our real problem with legitimate health care need really is.
It was manageable before this monster was built and can be again. We simply must think outside of their box.
You want the government to dismantle the entire healthcare system? Takeover all the hospitals, doctors offices, and drug companies, and totally disband all of them? Yeah, sounds like a real winner of an idea.... Bet you unironically consider yourself a "small govt" person too.
I won't be practicing civil disobedience, but will be using a modified HSA/Insurance hybrid available through my employer (Federal administrative law agency). Still, I really dislike our system of private insurance and find the "minimum coverage" under PPACA both unaffordable for most younger and middle-income consumers and inadequate for many health needs.
Thus, I really do dislike Obamacare for the same reasons specified in the first post. I'd only be in favor of a single-payer system or a system of non-profit private insurers with doctors/hospitals being given COL-adjusted fee schedules for procedures. Every well-developed nation either has government-run systems (NHS), government-run universally accessible insurance (Canada), competitive systems through non-profits (Switzerland), or a mixture (Germany) with strict price controls.
The reality is that information asymmetries make the market an utter failure for providing healthcare efficiently. This asymmetry both in terms of expertise (the average person doesn't understand medicine on a technical level at all), in billing (the ability of a non-insurer to bargain meaningfully on price is nil), and in prediction (nobody knows if they are going to be sick/get an accident/etc...). Not only that, but humans are famously "irrational" when it comes to purchasing insurance; for one, once we purchase one brand of plan, we stick with it even when it becomes uncompetitive.
Then again, we are a nation where a substantial number of people, a majority according to a few outlier polls, don't believe healthcare is a right. They honestly believe it is a "personal responsibility" rather than a social one. "Each man is an island", it appears their alternate-universe John Donne must say . The obsession with rights being of the 17th-century "negative" kind is utterly beyond my comprehension, given the destruction it has wrought upon our ability to address social ills that other nations have no issue addressing.
TL;DR: The employment-based, private, market-based healthcare system in this country is an abomination, and Obamacare more or less doubles down on it rather than tearing it up from the roots.
I won't be practicing civil disobedience, but will be using a modified HSA/Insurance hybrid available through my employer (Federal administrative law agency). Still, I really dislike our system of private insurance and find the "minimum coverage" under PPACA both unaffordable for most younger and middle-income consumers and inadequate for many health needs.
Thus, I really do dislike Obamacare for the same reasons specified in the first post. I'd only be in favor of a single-payer system or a system of non-profit private insurers with doctors/hospitals being given COL-adjusted fee schedules for procedures. Every well-developed nation either has government-run systems (NHS), government-run universally accessible insurance (Canada), competitive systems through non-profits (Switzerland), or a mixture (Germany) with strict price controls.
The reality is that information asymmetries make the market an utter failure for providing healthcare efficiently. This asymmetry both in terms of expertise (the average person doesn't understand medicine on a technical level at all), in billing (the ability of a non-insurer to bargain meaningfully on price is nil), and in prediction (nobody knows if they are going to be sick/get an accident/etc...). Not only that, but humans are famously "irrational" when it comes to purchasing insurance; for one, once we purchase one brand of plan, we stick with it even when it becomes uncompetitive.
Then again, we are a nation where a substantial number of people, a majority according to a few outlier polls, don't believe healthcare is a right. They honestly believe it is a "personal responsibility" rather than a social one. "Each man is an island", it appears their alternate-universe John Donne must say . The obsession with rights being of the 17th-century "negative" kind is utterly beyond my comprehension, given the destruction it has wrought upon our ability to address social ills that other nations have no issue addressing.
TL;DR: The employment-based, private, market-based healthcare system in this country is an abomination, and Obamacare more or less doubles down on it rather than tearing it up from the roots.
Thus, I really do dislike Obamacare for the same reasons specified in the first post. I'd only be in favor of a single-payer system or a system of non-profit private insurers with doctors/hospitals being given COL-adjusted fee schedules for procedures. Every well-developed nation either has government-run systems (NHS), government-run universally accessible insurance (Canada), competitive systems through non-profits (Switzerland), or a mixture (Germany) with strict price controls.
This! ACA seems like a mess. Other civilized nations have decently run Government Healthcare systems so why didn't the US adopt one of those plans? Instead, they conjure up this intrusive, confusing ACA plan with penalties for non-compliance.
Yes, it benefits some people (i.e.:those with pre-existing conditions), but there are plenty of other people out there that ACA creates a worse situation for.
This! ACA seems like a mess. Other civilized nations have decently run Government Healthcare systems so why didn't the US adopt one of those plans? Instead, they conjure up this intrusive, confusing ACA plan with penalties for non-compliance.
I HEAR what you, and others arguing for single-payer are saying. I REALLY do. I want single payer, too. But I feel like this the same way I feel about folks who want Dennis Kucinich or someone like him to run for president - it's NOT going to happen. It just isn't! H.ell, we BARELY have what we've got. We ALMOST didn't get that. What do you think would happen - President Obama hops on a podium one day and announces, "Blue Cross, Humana, Cigna, United Healthcare, and all the rest of you...thanks for everything...your services are no longer needed. We're going in a new direction." Ummmmm...NOPE.
No, ACA isn't perfect, but at least it gives us something to build upon.
What do you think would happen - President Obama hops on a podium one day and announces, "Blue Cross, Humana, Cigna, United Healthcare, and all the rest of you...thanks for everything...your services are no longer needed. We're going in a new direction." Ummmmm...NOPE.
LOL! I'm hopeful, but not insane.
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. The obsession with rights being of the 17th-century "negative" kind is utterly beyond my comprehension, given the destruction it has wrought upon our ability to address social ills that other nations have no issue addressing.
