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For as much of a "tea party conservative" as I am, I do believe that there needs to be some government intervention in health care... if in no other way than to return it to its former state and then get out of it.
Step 1: Abolish all medical malpractice laws, lawyers, lawsuits, etc.
Make it something simple. You go to the doctor, you are taking your chances. You're chancing that the doctor will do something that will heal you, and you have chosen to take this chance over the perceptibly greater chance that you will either remain sick or you will get sicker by not seeking medical care. If it means you sign a waiver, fine. But let's abolish medical malpractice... and lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies. Nobody is forcing you to take drugs. If you take a drug, you are consenting to its potential side effects, known and unknown. You don't like that? Don't take the drug.
Step 2: Decide if we're going to remain a private healthcare system or a government-sponsored single-payer healthcare system.
Honestly, I'd prefer "private". "Private" is always better. By "private", I mean "keep the government completely OUT of healthcare".
The government never reduced the cost of anything without causing a problem that was much worse. The private sector, however, has a history of reducing costs. A while back, I read an article about a doctor in New York who wanted to open a sort of concierge practice for people of modest income. I don't remember the specifics but he believed it would reduce people's health care costs while not impacting his ability to make a living. The state prevented him from opening the practice, saying that it amounted to a type of medical insurance... and he wasn't licensed to provide insurance. What the heck?!
Step 3a: If we stay private, keep the government out of health insurance... and don't require that people get health insurance. Also, abolish all laws that bind any healthcare provider to provide care regardless of the patient's ability to pay. Make medical bills non-dischargeable in bankruptcy, also.
This may sound a bit harsh but think of the situation. If the government got out of healthcare, and malpractice lawsuits were abolished, the cost of basic healthcare would drop by one-half to two-thirds and the cost of more advanced healthcare would drop by a larger percentage. (Doctors have told me this.) This means that insurance would be much more affordable. If insurance companies weren't bound by government laws, they could offer policies that contained plain language, for specific situations that people wanted to pay for, and the policies would be far cheaper. If hospitals didn't have to worry about not being paid by people who show up, and didn't have to render care until they were paid, then the costs for hospital care would drop dramatically as well.
If you think this means that some people wouldn't get care, you don't know the American people. First of all, with cheaper insurance, more people would buy insurance of their own volition and they would thus be covered. Secondly, what do you think covered people's healthcare costs back in the day before Medicare, Medicaid, and the like? Answer: Churches and other charity groups. Don't kid yourself. Medical costs would be taken care of, if someone was truly that badly off... assuming that that person had forged some relationships within his/her community.
Step 3b: If we go single payer, or retain an Obamacare-esque mandate to buy health insurance, attach to it conditions and provisions for maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
The biggest problem with Obamacare is that it does absolutely nothing to bring down the price of health care. It reduces the cost to certain people who can't afford the prices, by pushing off part of the price burden onto the government... but it still doesn't change the price. Getting subsidized health insurance is like getting subsidized gas. It costs $4 per gallon and the government will pay $3. That doesn't change the fact that the price is still $4 per gallon - it just changes who pays that entire price.
There are also no incentives in Obamacare to live a healthy lifestyle. We all know that people who drink, smoke, do drugs, live dangerously, etc. are going to incur higher health care costs than will healthy people. Yet, the only condition by which premiums can be increased is if someone uses tobacco. What about alcohol? What about other drugs? What about people who do daredevil stunts that land them in the hospital? Who pays for all of that?
If people knew that they would be held personally responsible for their stupid decisions regarding their lifestyles, you would see far less such decisions being made. Obamacare does absolutely nothing to reduce bad lifestyle choices... it just makes the rest of us pay for it.
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Ultimately, I don't really care all that much about what happens to healthcare reform... as long as the outcomes are: 1) I'm not paying for anyone else's stupid decisions, and 2) I'm not paying outrageous prices for healthcare and health insurance.
I really do not feel that healthcare is a right for everyone. It should only be a right for people whose conditions came about through absolutely no fault nor decision of their own.
Unfortunately regarding your comment on the cost, I don't think we'd see a drop anywhere near what you mentioned if we got the government and lawsuits out of the picture. Prices are high for one big reason- profit. The costs are high because it is private- because hospitals/clinics, etc. know they can charge as much as they want. Insurance companies then charge an arm and a leg for policies because they have to pay the bloated hospital/clinic bills, and then also have to make their own profits.
I just don't see a solution other than making healthcare non profit and taking insurance companies out of the picture.
Unfortunately regarding your comment on the cost, I don't think we'd see a drop anywhere near what you mentioned if we got the government and lawsuits out of the picture. Prices are high for one big reason- profit. The costs are high because it is private- because hospitals/clinics, etc. know they can charge as much as they want. Insurance companies then charge an arm and a leg for policies because they have to pay the bloated hospital/clinic bills, and then also have to make their own profits.
I just don't see a solution other than making healthcare non profit and taking insurance companies out of the picture.
Most hospitals are non-profit or government run (about 80%). Kaiser, which is huge out here in the west, is non-profit. Mayo Clinic is non-profit. There are a lot of non-profits out there. I'd be happy with it all being non-profit.
Most hospitals are non-profit or government run (about 80%). Kaiser, which is huge out here in the west, is non-profit. Mayo Clinic is non-profit. There are a lot of non-profits out there. I'd be happy with it all being non-profit.
But are 'not-for-profit' hospitals really not-for-profit or is it just another scam to rip-off ordinary Americans?
"because of loopholes in state laws, nonprofit hospitals are often permitted to make huge profits. (Have a look at Forbes’ recent list of the most profitable hospitals in the United States and you’ll notice that three of the top five are owned by nonprofit organizations. The most profitable of these nonprofits, Rochester Methodist Hospital in Rochester, Minn., takes in $446 million in net patient revenue and has a 37 percent operating margin.)"
JANESVILLE — Existing and soon-to-be health care providers in Rock County are making money.
Their combined balance sheets for their most recent fiscal year show an excess of revenues over expenses of nearly $90 million.
How is it, then, that Mercy Health System, SSM Health Care of Wisconsin, Beloit Health System and Edgerton Hospital and Health Services are all referred to as "not-for-profit" entities?
Adventist Health System, which operates Florida Hospital system, is the largest nonprofit Protestant health-care provider in the nation, operating 37 hospitals in 12 states and generating $363 million in profit in 2009.
Nonprofit hospitals in the Charlotte region are respected community institutions. They save lives, heal the sick and provide good jobs.
At the same time, most of them are stockpiling a fortune.
Their profits have risen along with their prices. Top executives are paid millions as their hospitals expand, buy expensive technology and build aggressively.
And they benefit each year from a perk worth millions: They pay no income, property or sales taxes.
The Republicans are against it because the big health insurers pay them to be against it!
Oversimplification of the first order; opposition to collectivized medicine is strongest among the self-employed, or those who have no choice but to seek a labor supply among the least-motivated.
In the days before the concentration of industrial activity in fewer, larger players, smaller employers had a better chance of finding, retaining and adequately compensating responsible labor, The fast-pace shops and call centers, though they pay poorly and push hard, stand a better chance than the man who runs a dairy farm that has to be operated day after day, in fair weather or foul.
Ironically, third-world immigration has been a blessing to dairymen; as a certain sector of the immigrant labor pool finds the nature of the work easier to identify with. But the subscribers to Farm Journal or Hoard's Dairyman, if they visited this site, would quickly attest that too many of the hired hands still dream of being rock musicians -- and have no idea what to pursue as a sensible alternative.
Agriculture, small-scale retail, and a few other sectors on the "ragged edge" of the economy were among the last to be integrated into the Social Security program; it will be no different with the boondoggle commonly called ObamaCare, if it survives at all.
Oversimplification of the first order; opposition to collectivized medicine is strongest among the self-employed, or those who have no choice but to seek a labor supply among the least-motivated.
In the days before the concentration of industrial activity in fewer, larger players, smaller employers had a better chance of finding, retaining and adequately compensating responsible labor, The fast-pace shops and call centers, though they pay poorly and push hard, stand a better chance than the man who runs a dairy farm that has to be operated day after day, in fair weather or foul.
Ironically, third-world immigration has been a blessing to dairymen; as a certain sector of the immigrant labor pool finds the nature of the work easier to identify with. But the subscribers to Farm Journal or Hoard's Dairyman, if they visited this site, would quickly attest that too many of the hired hands still dream of being rock musicians -- and have no idea what to pursue as a sensible alternative.
Agriculture, small-scale retail, and a few other sectors on the "ragged edge" of the economy were among the last to be integrated into the Social Security program; it will be no different with the boondoggle commonly called ObamaCare, if it survives at all.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say here.
Are you saying that Obamacare will make it harder to recruit labor?
Surely, if 'collectivized medicine' (not Obamacare) took the responsibility of providing health care away from employers then that would make your life easier as you would no longer have to compete with the big players over health care benefits.
"Collectivized medicine", lol...why don't you just come out and say what you're trying to hint, superciliously: you want to taint the ACA, and its original sponsor (POTUS) as communist. Except you'll use the dissimilar word, "socialist". Not just a STRAWMAN -- a STRAW-BALE MAN!
To explain with what is, admittedly, one of the simplest parallels, a farm animal produces milk, eggs and manure 365 days per year; yet no one wants the responsibility for milking on Christmas morning (or Saturday evening, for that matter).
and to underscore the point with a bit of humor:
A Five Day Cow
(The origins are anonymous, but I can recall it making the rounds in farm publications when I was in my early teens, a long time ago,)
I long for a cow of modern make
That milks five days for leisure’s sake;
That sleeps on Saturday, snores on Sunday,
And starts afresh again on Monday.
Oh! For a herd beyond suggestion
Of staggers, bloat or indigestion;
That never bothers to excite us
With chills or fever or mastitis.
I sigh for a new and better breed
That takes less grooming and less feed;
That has the reason, will and wisdom
To use a "seat and flushing" system.
I pray each weekend long and clear,
Less work to do from year to year;
And cows that reach production peak
All in a five-day working week.
Oh why don’t the scientific bods,
Firmly entrenched in their cushy jobs,
Show these ignorant breeders how
To propagate a five-day cow?
Point being, additional "security" provided by Big Brother/Sister makes it easier for the less-motivated among those on the bottom rungs of the ladder to simply disappear when it's convenient, and the small entrepreneur is the guy or gal who has to take up the slack. It's no wonder that a skeptical attitude toward further experiments in socialism is strongest in those sectors.
As no less a publication than the Utne Reader pointed out about a year ago, the workings of the labor market, (agricultural, retail, or whatever), tend to ensnare not so much Dangerous Elves as Malignant Mental Dwarves.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 10-25-2013 at 11:39 PM..
Prices are high for one big reason- profit. The costs are high because it is private- because hospitals/clinics, etc. know they can charge as much as they want. Insurance companies then charge an arm and a leg for policies because they have to pay the bloated hospital/clinic bills, and then also have to make their own profits.
Profit (a dirty word to those whose own attitude is what often condemns them to a place at the end of a long line) is the entrepreneur's natural reward for the assumption of risk; the greater the risk, the greater the potential reward. In rare instances, and particulary in less-civilized societies, entrepreneurs have, literally, become a convenient target for ignorant mobs.
And unfortunately, the "Wild West" attitude in much of the emerging global economy has heightened the risk in many sectors; long-term trends currently inveigh against "stability" in much of the industrialized world.
"New money" always accrues first to a visionary few, then "trickles down" via the means of inheritance, taxes, and the workings of the institutional economy. or it "disappears" in part when those perceived as hostile come into power. Just the way it works; the only alternatives are either stagnation, or totalitarianism. The functionary straw-men who claim to "manage" the economy weren't called "czars" by the manipulators of pubic opinion for no reason.
And contrary to "pop wisdom", a monopolist does not attempt to charge "the highest price he can get"; he limits production to charge the most profitable price -- the greatest amount of income for the least input of effort. Some of the largest, but least-noticed culprits in the current heath-care impasse are the security-obsessed suburban ditzes who have been conditioned to believe that the medical profession can provide an easy answer to all our disappointments, and the Hollywood and Madison Avenue liars eager to sell it to them.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 10-26-2013 at 12:27 AM..
What I would like to see is some of the posters who are against socialized medicine address is why nearly all the other industrialized countries have adopted socialized medicine with great success:
Quote:
According to many recent studies, socialized systems outperform free-market profit-driven systems in terms of availability, quality, and cost of care. In addition a report from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health stated that the United Kingdom’s socialized medical system outperforms the U.S. system in patient-reported perceptions (Blendon, Schoen, DesRoches, et al. 2003). In other words, the people with direct experiences report greater satisfaction with their health services under a socialized system than they do in a free-market system. These results must be considered along with the fact that the U.S. per capita health care expenditures ($4,887) are nearly triple those in the United Kingdom ($1,992). In the year 2000 the United States spent 44 percent more on health care than Switzerland, the nation with the next highest per capita health care costs. Nevertheless, Americans had fewer physician visits, and hospital stays were shorter compared with those in most other industrialized nations. The study suggests that the difference in spending is caused mostly by higher prices for health care goods and services in the United States.
Source (click)
That info is a few years old, but the recent information is more of the same except that costs have skyrocketed here.
Here is something more recent:
Quote:
The results became notorious — the US healthcare system came in 15th in overall performance, and first in overall expenditure per capita. That result meant that its overall ranking was 37th.
So if you are against socialized medicine, why is that? Please provide some facts, not just anecdotes about particular individuals complaining. I see these stories all over the net about long waits to see doctors in Canada and England, but people I know personally that live there tell me it is certainly not true for them. It seems it is just part of the conservative mythology.
Last edited by ReachTheBeach; 07-21-2015 at 05:33 AM..
I believe in a Universal health Care system with price and profit controls paid for by a highly progressive income tax on all income from all sources. Allowing profit driven businesses control health care only results in less service at vastly higher costs. These is no need for insurance company involvement at all.
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