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If you want the last nation on Earth that actually invents medical innovations (thanks to profit motive) to stop doing so, you are basically saying that either you think every medical innovation that could be invented has been invented or you don't care to ever see medical innovation again.
The last thing we need is government to ration healthcare and kill off the very sick and old.
Socialized Medicine kills.
Well, Great Britain has its problems, but their health outcomes are better than in the United States. We are somewhere akin to Zimbabwe or something with health outcomes.
Medical innovations can still be a part of a private system. They dont thrive idiotically as they do here, because when doctors are salaried, as in the VA system, they dont run every test on every piece of expensive equipment. Private "innovation" spends thousands of dollars sending sales reps to tell doctors WHY they need to recommend that particular test, or drug, or procedure to their patients. And NEVER does it cost less. Why, because there is no profit in making things cost less, only in costing more. Take pharmaceutical companies who began to realize that their biggest profit was from patents on new drugs. When they couldn't come up with a new drug, they began to combine two different drugs frequently taken in combination with one another to get a new patent to run for seven years or so. Of course, the new drug prescription is always more costly than taking the two old drugs separately. But they make every kind of incentive for doctors to buy into that scenario, and people are not educated or informed enough to know that the new drug is EXACTLY the same medicine as the old two, just in one tablet or capsule. It's a rip off from start to finish.
If our system is so good, why are we staring financial disaster in the face due to health care costs. Why do we have more bankrupticies due to health costs than any other nation in the world? Why do we let our system force some people who are on narcotic drugs to cut their own dose in half so that they SELL the other half to pay for their prescription. (e.g. a few years ago it was a 76 year old Kentucky woman caught by the police doing just that). Of course, we can put those people in jail--and then your tax dollar will pay for their drugs until they get out of jail.
IT DOES NOT WORK, people. It's not working now, it hasn't worked in the past, and it won't work in the future. We are in a plane spiraling down out of the skies and the people with their hands on the stick just want to keep it shoved forward, because to try something else might not work. How stupid is that?
At that level we the people (those who actually work for a living) don't need insurance at all.
Maybe a small homeowner type backup for special events.
Only the hospitals need it (to protect them from the occasional bankruptcy).
That would only work if basic care becomes affordable, which it is not as we speak. You don't want to have to spend $ 500 to get checked out for a cold and then pay another $ 500 for 5 days of antibiotics. Unless this part is worked out, the no insurance approach could still be prohibitive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrRational
When we get to the really expensive stuff...
anything short of a tax supported 100% actuarial base is spitting into the wind.
But we almost have that now with medicare or the medicaid that the family will/should
soon qualify for when faced with that level of expense.
We definitely need the 100% actuarial base, but we're nowhere near having that now. If you're over 65 you have it, and if your income is below a certain level you have it. The people in the middle have nothing, and this is the reason people lose their homes when they get seriously ill.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrRational
That's the point though.
The line has to drawn back around the 30 yard line... not in the opposite end zone...
even with that 100% actuarial base for the catastrophic and traumatic.
And those who want more or better... better be prepared to pay for it on their own.
(just as they do in all these other countries held out as models)
The positioning of the line will no doubt draw intense opinions, as well it should. I may not agree with the 30-yard line, but I completely agree that it must be discussed.
Last edited by Captain_Fingers; 01-07-2013 at 11:57 PM..
Reason: typo
So your tax dollars go to cover people who aren't taking their prescription medication because they can't afford it. They go to the ER uninsured, and drive up the cost of employers' health insurance for their employees. Your deductibles and other out of pocket expenses go up to cover those people. Your premiums go up to cover those people.
Most would have some sort of coverage if we mandated it just like social security on any income you earn.
The annual Consumer Reportsprescription drug poll found that people under age 65 who lack health insurance for medications have had a sharp drop in healthcare utilization. A whopping 81 percent said they had declined a medical test or procedure, postponed a doctor's visit or chose not to fill a prescription because of cost concerns.
In last year's survey, 27 percent of people under age 65 who lacked prescription-drug coverage said they had not filled their prescriptions due to costs. That ratio surged to 45 percent in this year's poll. The survey included 1,158 adults 18 years or older.
Lisa Gill, Consumer Reports' editor of prescription drugs, told TakePart. "We use the word crisis. Eighty-one percent of people skipping some medical care is a crisis."
If you want the last nation on Earth that actually invents medical innovations (thanks to profit motive) to stop doing so, you are basically saying that either you think every medical innovation that could be invented has been invented or you don't care to ever see medical innovation again.
The last thing we need is government to ration healthcare and kill off the very sick and old.
Socialized Medicine kills.
First of all, medical innovations mean nothing if you can't afford them. As more and more people fall out of the affordability bracket, cutting edge medical innovations will mean as much to me as the latest innovation in a Ferrarri - zero, if I keep driving a Honda.
Second, news flash - healthcare is already being rationed in the US! Granted its not the government, its the health insurance companies. I don't how many times its been pointed out here that these companies have, in many cases, cut short chemo treatments right in the middle. Let 'em die, is their motto...just don't cut into my quarterly profits. Do you seriously condone that? And what about denying somebody insurance due to pre-eixsting conditions? If thats not rationing, I don't know what is.
Yeah, yeah, I know Obamacare, blah blah blah....lets wait until it kicks in.
Last edited by Captain_Fingers; 01-08-2013 at 12:15 AM..
Reason: typo
More than 40 people age 60 and over have been caught illegally selling prescription painkillers in Kentucky since April 2004, according to a local anti-drug task force.
The Associated Press reported Dec. 12 that an 87-year-old woman was recently arrested and imprisoned for reselling her prescription drugs for cash.
"When a person is on Social Security, drawing $500 a month, and they can sell their pain pills for $10 apiece, they'll take half of them for themselves and sell the other half to pay their electric bills or buy groceries," said Floyd County jailer Roger Webb. "It used to be a rare occasion to have an elderly inmate. Five years ago it was a rarity."
Employers are pulling their hair out now trying to figure out the mountains of red tape being set up by the 18,000 new IRS agents brought on board to look up their accounting butts with a stethoscope.
That is one very good reason to get rid of employer-based health insurance. There are others too, like being able to compete in the global market, the reduction of the compulsion to stay with an employer solely for insurance, the increase in the number of small businesses because owners don't have to worry about health insurance either for themselves or for their hires.
Look at this take on our system of health care. We aren't a single payer system, we are not a two-party system, we are not even third party system ([1]people buying insurance and [2]insurers paying [3]hospitals and doctors), we are a FOURTH party system:
This last fact is the key to understanding the peculiarly distorted character of our health-care market. Ninety percent of Americans with health insurance neither choose it on their own, nor pay for it directly. Analysts use the term "third-party payment" to describe the fact that insurers reimburse hospitals and doctors, bypassing policyholders. But in practice, the 235 million Americans with employer- or government-sponsored health coverage actually have fourth-party insurance — since they don't even choose their insurers, let alone pay directly for care.
For most Americans, health care looks something like this: A patient purchases health insurance, or receives it from his employer. The insurer then directs the patient to use physicians in its network, with whom it has negotiated reimbursement rates. The patient is given little or no information about the comparative cost or quality of any particular doctor. The patient then visits his doctor. After an interview and an examination, the physician orders tests, procedures, or medications on the patient's behalf. The insurance company reimburses the doctor for a large share of these costs, though it might occasionally haggle if it feels the doctor has spent too much on the patient. The patient receives a bill in the mail from the insurer for his part of the expenditure; that bill is only vaguely related to the services rendered to the patient, and is generally presented in a way that makes it impossible to decipher the relationship between services and costs.
This is no way to design a market, especially if the goal is to keep costs in check.
This is why our for profit health care system DOES NOT WORK. Where can you go and compare prices to have a kidney stone removed, or even to give birth to a child. Every other profit system has a comparative system that helps consumers decide. As health consumers we have next to NO choice in what coverage we receive, what care will be provided, and practically no knowledge of what OUR share of the final costs will be. THAT IS NOT a profit system. It is an amalgamated bunch of crap that doesn't work.
Read the entire article cited above. It is lengthy but tells how the current system came about. The author concludes we need BOTH a profit and a universal care system, but balanced in a different way.
He concludes by saying:
"---our health-care conundrum: a moral problem with an economic dimension, and an economic problem with a moral face. We cannot solve it while ignoring either element."
The latest sign is a poll published recently in the Annals of Internal Medicineshowing that 59 percent of U.S. doctors support a "single payer" plan that essentially eliminates the central role of private insurers.Most industrial societies -- including nations as diverse as Taiwan, France, and Canada -- have adopted universal health systems that provide health care to all citizens and permit them free choice of their doctors and hospitals. These plans are typically funded by a mix of general tax revenues and payroll taxes, and essential health-care is administered by nonprofit government agencies rather than private insurers.
The new poll, conducted by Indiana University's Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research, shows a sharp 10 percent spike in the number of doctors supporting national insurance: 59 percent in 2007 compared to 49 percent five years earlier. This indicates that more physicians are eager for systematic changes, said Toledo physician Dr. Johnathon Ross, past president of Physicians for a National Health Program.
"What this means is the usual bloc of anti-reform is breaking up," he told The Toledo Blade. "These doctors are looking in the eyes of sick [uninsured] patients every day."
What is anti-consumer about this Obama requirement?
(When the) Obama administration’s health care act goes into effect(,) The law will require disclosure of almost all payments and gifts that device makers and pharmaceutical firms make to individual physicians.
The provisions will shed unprecedented light on what Dr. Angell described as a “tsunami” of drug company money, inundating doctors and influencing prescribing habits. Patients will be able to check out their doctors, and more important, Dr. Brody of Galveston said, journalists and other watchdogs will be able to examine patterns of compensation on a national level.
Is it bad for us to know how much physicians are currently taking under the table to recommend drugs and tests or procedures for us? Is that not what one would expect in a "consumer" driven industry?
So I'm all for that part of the first step toward a national healthcare policy, whether or not it stays as a "for profit" system.
What is anti-consumer about this Obama requirement?
(When the) Obama administration’s health care act goes into effect(,) The law will require disclosure of almost all payments and gifts that device makers and pharmaceutical firms make to individual physicians.
The provisions will shed unprecedented light on what Dr. Angell described as a “tsunami” of drug company money, inundating doctors and influencing prescribing habits. Patients will be able to check out their doctors, and more important, Dr. Brody of Galveston said, journalists and other watchdogs will be able to examine patterns of compensation on a national level.
Is it bad for us to know how much physicians are currently taking under the table to recommend drugs and tests or procedures for us? Is that not what one would expect in a "consumer" driven industry?
So I'm all for that part of the first step toward a national healthcare policy, whether or not it stays as a "for profit" system.
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People skimping on drugs
