Americans are more dissatisfied than citizens of other nations with their basic healt

[Agnapostate]

In the case of such commodities, funds should obviously be diverted to ensure the spread of essential utilities instead, as those commodity fetishists would not sacrifice anything of comparable moral significance.

 

[Chris]

I was channeling Sean Hannity. It was tongue in cheek!

Gotcha.

Ode to Sean Hannity
by John Cleese

Aping urbanity
Oozing with vanity
Plump as a manatee
Faking humanity
Journalistic calamity
Intellectual inanity
Fox Noise insanity
You’re a profanity
Hannity

 

[Gord]

There are three reasons American health care is more expensive:

1. High malpractice insurance caused by

2. Too high litigation awards that Democrats refuse to allow limits on

3. Illegal aliens

There is a much better system than either the current one or single payer. It is called Medical Savings Accounts. You buy catastrophic insurance with an anywhere from $5000 to $10,000 deductible. This would cost $150 to $300 per month. This covers all medical expenses above the deductible in case of a major medical problem, including long term. Then you set up a tax free savings account and place the rest of your money that you would pay to medicare, medicade taxes or any other current medical insurance expenses into it each month. Over time you pay for your medical care as you find it necessary up to the deductible then the insurance takes over. If your family is healthy you keep building the account, receiving interest along the way and when it is topped up to your deductible amount you no longer need to spend any more than your insurance premium each month. One benefit of this system is that it takes the government out of the decision making process completely. You are in complete control of your family's health care. This also adds incentive for people to take care of themselves with a visible benefit of saving more money for how healthy your family is. Another benefit is that you will not be bankrupted by a major health problem. And the government doesn't go bankrupt trying to sustain an inefficient medical care system. And you can will the savings account to your children.

Some sort of government insurance program may be needed for those at the extreme wrong end of the societal bell curve. But anyone who works or receives any sort of pension is already paying more now than would be necessary for medical savings accounts simply because it is a much more efficient system.

An additional way to pay for medical care would be to allow for the sale of your own organs upon death. You sign a contract to allow your organs to be harvested and the money paid goes to your medical savings account and on to your family.

 

[Neubarth]

As a Liberal Neo Fascist (Please don't read Nazi into that), I favor state correction of the health crisis that we have. I have seen and noted the comments and biases above and feel substantiated in my position. I have felt this way for a third of a century. Our medical care system is effective for the upper middle class and above. For the lower classes it is failing the people. We need to correct that, some way and some how.

We need to do away with legal suits about medical care as that is bankrupting the health plans. We need the government to equal the "playing field" by providing fundamental medical care for all, regardless of social-economic status. Expensive additional care packages can be bought by the rich if they feel so inclined but even they should have the same basic care provided to anybody in this country.

NOTE: We can use the HMO type businesses. I believe in private enterprise. The government will just negotiate a basic care package for all with the companies that are willing to take that package. We need not totally socialize medicine.

OK, now, for those of you inclined to call people names, you can start your assault on me. Words do not hurt.

 

[editec]

There are three reasons American health care is more expensive:

1. High malpractice insurance caused by

2. Too high litigation awards that Democrats refuse to allow limits on

3. Illegal aliens

You missed the forth and fifth and sixth reasons for our current escalating HC costs


4. The highest most obscenely overpaid HC professionals in the world

5. The most obscenely overpriced drugs in the world.

6. A clearly designed system (by the AMA) to severely limit the number of HC professionals being trained in the USA.

 

[Old Rocks]

Okay, gotta address this, if doctors are so underpaid in socialized health care systems then why are they flocking from the US to Canada?

There are also doctors from the US going to Canada, simply because that they are fed up with the constant paper work, and wish to spend the majority of their time doing medicine.

 

[Red Dawn]

We can use the HMO type businesses. I believe in private enterprise. The government will just negotiate a basic care package for all with the companies that are willing to take that package.

Then you believe in the Liberal position.

What do you thing Medicare, Tricare, and CHIPS are? They are programs where the government negotiates rates with private doctors and hospitals.

No one has ever suggested nationalizing healthcare, making doctors and nurses government employees, and taking over private hospitals and clinics.

Conservatives seem to believe that boogeyman because Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh instructed them to believe that.

No one in the Democratic party has ever suggested that. Single payer healthcare, government financed healthcare is exactly what retired veterans, senior citizens, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Barack Obama recieve. And I don't hear them complaining that its some horrible socialist experiment gone awry.

 

[Old Rocks]

Oh hell yeah, getting a same day appointment can be impossible, even if one is fortunate enough to have health insurance.

Our healthcare is the most expensive and cost inefficient on the planet? Color me not shocked.

That said, I believe in unregulated, free market solutions. The government has no business subsidizing healthcare. If the free market were released from any kind of regulation and oversight, people would have more choices. In short, I believe in personal responsibility, and people should buy health insurance out of their own pockets. Or, look for a job where the employer provides it at a price they can afford.

Old people, kids, and people with pre-exisiting health conditions? Again, I believe in personal responsibility. Fat kids and old people should get off the couch and exercise more. Pre-existing condition? To bad, you shouldn't have chosen to smoke or eat trans-fatty foods.

Are you for real? How about people that have lived nearly ideal lives from the standpoints of nutrition, and develop auto-immune diseases? Or my wife, who has cerebrial palsy. Or a worker that has been injured, and develops problems from the injury, problems that are often denied by both the state industrial and health insurance company? I can go on listing innumerable other situations where the citizen is not at fault. The whole idea of health insurance is that a sickness or health condition will not totally bankrupt an individual, such as happens to 700,000 American families every year.

 

[Old Rocks]

I was channeling Sean Hannity. It was tongue in cheek!

Good job, you took me in. It sounded just like him!

 

[Old Rocks]

There are three reasons American health care is more expensive:

1. High malpractice insurance caused by

2. Too high litigation awards that Democrats refuse to allow limits on

3. Illegal aliens

There is a much better system than either the current one or single payer. It is called Medical Savings Accounts. You buy catastrophic insurance with an anywhere from $5000 to $10,000 deductible. This would cost $150 to $300 per month. This covers all medical expenses above the deductible in case of a major medical problem, including long term. Then you set up a tax free savings account and place the rest of your money that you would pay to medicare, medicade taxes or any other current medical insurance expenses into it each month. Over time you pay for your medical care as you find it necessary up to the deductible then the insurance takes over. If your family is healthy you keep building the account, receiving interest along the way and when it is topped up to your deductible amount you no longer need to spend any more than your insurance premium each month. One benefit of this system is that it takes the government out of the decision making process completely. You are in complete control of your family's health care. This also adds incentive for people to take care of themselves with a visible benefit of saving more money for how healthy your family is. Another benefit is that you will not be bankrupted by a major health problem. And the government doesn't go bankrupt trying to sustain an inefficient medical care system. And you can will the savings account to your children.

Some sort of government insurance program may be needed for those at the extreme wrong end of the societal bell curve. But anyone who works or receives any sort of pension is already paying more now than would be necessary for medical savings accounts simply because it is a much more efficient system.

An additional way to pay for medical care would be to allow for the sale of your own organs upon death. You sign a contract to allow your organs to be harvested and the money paid goes to your medical savings account and on to your family.

What bullshit! Get off of it. I think for your humanity, you need to go bankrupt, and be forced to take a minimum wage job to survive. Then you would see the impossibility of the idiocy that you are pushing.

Taiwan decide in the '90s that they needed a universal health care system. They sent representatives to almost all the industrialized nations to see how each system worked, and what would adapt best to Taiwan. When asked if they had sent representives to the US, the head of the Taiwanese Health Care System just gave the interviewer a "You are kidding me, right?" smile. That is exactly the approach we should take. See what is working, what is not working as well, in each nation, and adapt what fits us best, and let go of our 19th century health care system and move into the 20th century.

 

[Gord]

You missed the forth and fifth and sixth reasons for our current escalating HC costs


4. The highest most obscenely overpaid HC professionals in the world

Are they paid more than Canadian doctors? I am not sure about that.

5. The most obscenely overpriced drugs in the world.

Drugs are not included in the Canadian health care system, except for what is received in a hospital. They must be paid for out of pocket or through a employer or private insurance system.

6. A clearly designed system (by the AMA) to severely limit the number of HC professionals being trained in the USA.

Don't know about that either, but I do know in Canada many more medical students are speciallizing instead of going for a GP because of more pay and not wishing to work in rural areas where most GP's must start. This has led to a GP shortage in Canada.

 

[Old Rocks]

As a Liberal Neo Fascist (Please don't read Nazi into that), I favor state correction of the health crisis that we have. I have seen and noted the comments and biases above and feel substantiated in my position. I have felt this way for a third of a century. Our medical cars system if effective for the upper middle class and above. For the lower classes it is failing the people. We need to correct that, some way and some how.

We need to do away with legal suits about medical care as that is bankrupting the health plans. We need the government to equal the "playing field" by providing fundamental medical care for all, regardless of social-economic status. Expensive additional care packages can be bought by the rich if they feel so inclined but even they should have the same basic care provided to anybody in this country.

NOTE: We can use the HMO type businesses. I believe in private enterprise. The government will just negotiate a basic care package for all with the companies that are willing to take that package. We need not totally socialize medicine.

OK, now, for those of you inclined to call people names, you can start your assault on me. Words do not hurt.

There are many countries that have Universal Health Care Coverage that have similiar systems to what you are talking about. However, the HMOs are organized as non-profits, and regulated so that upper management is not bankrupting the company with ruinous salaries and bonuses.

As far as upper middle, as one of those people, I do have excellant health care. However, all that ends when I retire. I will be on Medicare, but my wife is ten years younger than I am, and has major medical problems. Problems that would have already bankrupted me had I had to pay for treatment out of my own pocket. According to Gord and others of that type on this board, she should just be left to die. Not acceptable.

 

[Gord]

What bullshit! Get off of it. I think for your humanity, you need to go bankrupt, and be forced to take a minimum wage job to survive. Then you would see the impossibility of the idiocy that you are pushing.

Taiwan decide in the '90s that they needed a universal health care system. They sent representatives to almost all the industrialized nations to see how each system worked, and what would adapt best to Taiwan. When asked if they had sent representives to the US, the head of the Taiwanese Health Care System just gave the interviewer a "You are kidding me, right?" smile. That is exactly the approach we should take. See what is working, what is not working as well, in each nation, and adapt what fits us best, and let go of our 19th century health care system and move into the 20th century.

Thank you, thank you! I consider you my contrarian liberal bell weather on this bulletin board. Whenever you disagree with something, then I know the issue is definitely pointed in the correct direction...

 

[Old Rocks]

Thank you, thank you! I consider you my contrarian liberal bell weather on this bulletin board. Whenever you disagree with something, then I know the issue is definitely pointed in the correct direction...

Well, after 20Jan09, things will be headed in the right direction.

 

[Gord]

Well, after 20Jan09, things will be headed in the right direction.

You call THIS

http://www.usmessageboard.com/politics/65561-obama-is-a-liberal-period.html

"headed in the right direction"?

 

[Cecilie1200]

There are three reasons American health care is more expensive:

1. High malpractice insurance caused by

2. Too high litigation awards that Democrats refuse to allow limits on

3. Illegal aliens

There is a much better system than either the current one or single payer. It is called Medical Savings Accounts. You buy catastrophic insurance with an anywhere from $5000 to $10,000 deductible. This would cost $150 to $300 per month. This covers all medical expenses above the deductible in case of a major medical problem, including long term. Then you set up a tax free savings account and place the rest of your money that you would pay to medicare, medicade taxes or any other current medical insurance expenses into it each month. Over time you pay for your medical care as you find it necessary up to the deductible then the insurance takes over. If your family is healthy you keep building the account, receiving interest along the way and when it is topped up to your deductible amount you no longer need to spend any more than your insurance premium each month. One benefit of this system is that it takes the government out of the decision making process completely. You are in complete control of your family's health care. This also adds incentive for people to take care of themselves with a visible benefit of saving more money for how healthy your family is. Another benefit is that you will not be bankrupted by a major health problem. And the government doesn't go bankrupt trying to sustain an inefficient medical care system. And you can will the savings account to your children.

Some sort of government insurance program may be needed for those at the extreme wrong end of the societal bell curve. But anyone who works or receives any sort of pension is already paying more now than would be necessary for medical savings accounts simply because it is a much more efficient system.

An additional way to pay for medical care would be to allow for the sale of your own organs upon death. You sign a contract to allow your organs to be harvested and the money paid goes to your medical savings account and on to your family.

Nope. While the need to foot the bill for people who don't pay for the medical care they receive is a big contributing factor, and litigation puts a huge crimp on the system, the biggest reason essential healthcare costs so much in this country is . . . ::drum roll:: the government and the third-party payer system.

Leftists like to bitch about capitalism in the healthcare industry, but the truth is, it doesn't really exist. People don't shop for essential healthcare - aka that healthcare that is covered by health insurance or by Medicare/Medicaid - the way they do other consumer products, because they aren't shopping with their own money, at least not directly. Most of the time, people have no idea whatsoever what's being charged for the services they're getting, because THEY never see the bill. Even if they receive an explanation of benefits sheet, they don't read it, because they're not being asked for the money out of their own pockets.

Look at those medical services people DO pay for out of their own pockets, like laser eye surgery or cosmetic surgery. When Lasik first came out, it was priced like a luxury item, because there weren't many people who could do it, so there weren't many places you could get it. The market rapidly became saturated with providers who were competing for the increasing numbers of people saying, "Give up wearing glasses? Woo hoo!" and the price dropped like a rock. And the more the price dropped, the more people wanted it, etc. And people shopped around for providers, instead of just going to the first guy listed in the phone book. They comparison-shopped for prices as well as quality of service and so on. Providers advertised, and offered sales and specials and coupons, just like any business, and the prices got even lower. It's never going to be priced like a cup of coffee at the convenience store, because it's still a medical procedure requiring lots of training and special equipment, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper now than when it first became available . . . because people pay for it themselves and are plugged DIRECTLY into the cost.

People are never as penurious with someone else's money as they are with their own.

 

[Gord]

Nope. While the need to foot the bill for people who don't pay for the medical care they receive is a big contributing factor, and litigation puts a huge crimp on the system, the biggest reason essential healthcare costs so much in this country is . . . ::drum roll:: the government and the third-party payer system.

Leftists like to bitch about capitalism in the healthcare industry, but the truth is, it doesn't really exist. People don't shop for essential healthcare - aka that healthcare that is covered by health insurance or by Medicare/Medicaid - the way they do other consumer products, because they aren't shopping with their own money, at least not directly. Most of the time, people have no idea whatsoever what's being charged for the services they're getting, because THEY never see the bill. Even if they receive an explanation of benefits sheet, they don't read it, because they're not being asked for the money out of their own pockets.

Look at those medical services people DO pay for out of their own pockets, like laser eye surgery or cosmetic surgery. When Lasik first came out, it was priced like a luxury item, because there weren't many people who could do it, so there weren't many places you could get it. The market rapidly became saturated with providers who were competing for the increasing numbers of people saying, "Give up wearing glasses? Woo hoo!" and the price dropped like a rock. And the more the price dropped, the more people wanted it, etc. And people shopped around for providers, instead of just going to the first guy listed in the phone book. They comparison-shopped for prices as well as quality of service and so on. Providers advertised, and offered sales and specials and coupons, just like any business, and the prices got even lower. It's never going to be priced like a cup of coffee at the convenience store, because it's still a medical procedure requiring lots of training and special equipment, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper now than when it first became available . . . because people pay for it themselves and are plugged DIRECTLY into the cost.

People are never as penurious with someone else's money as they are with their own.

Shouldn't that "Nope" have been a "Yup"? After all you just made my case for me - thank you...

 

[editec]

Are they paid more than Canadian doctors? I am not sure about that.

I am.

One of the statistical game played on us is to quote everage MD's salaries based on every MD, including those who are retired, and those who are not yet beyond their residencies.

American MDs are the highest paid in the world by far.

Drugs are not included in the Canadian health care system, except for what is received in a hospital. They must be paid for out of pocket or through a employer or private insurance system.

The same drugs in Canada are cheaper than in the USA. We have buses going to Canada just so older people can afford to buy them.

Don't know about that either, but I do know in Canada many more medical students are speciallizing instead of going for a GP because of more pay and not wishing to work in rural areas where most GP's must start. This has led to a GP shortage in Canada.

GPs are the lowest paid MDs of all. Those working full time only make five or six times as much as the average FAMILY income, nationwide.

 

[Gord]

I am.

One of the statistical game played on us is to quote everage MD's salaries based on every MD, including those who are retired, and those who are not yet beyond their residencies.

American MDs are the highest paid in the world by far.

OK - I'll take your word for it.

The same drugs in Canada are cheaper than in the USA. We have buses going to Canada just so older people can afford to buy them.

You seem to have missed my point here. Drugs are not part of the one payer health care system coverage. It is a completely separate issue.

GPs are the lowest paid MDs of all. Those working full time only make five or six times as much as the average FAMILY income, nationwide.

Yes I know. Canada has a problem with GP's. There is a demand that is not being filled because it is not a market system. Government mandates on fees have made being a GP a poor choice, so there is a shortage.

 

[editec]

OK - I'll take your word for it.

You don't have to. the stats are there for all to see, but just bear in mind the game that's played with them.

If you can find an MD working full time in the USA making less than $100K a year, you will have found something mighty rare indeed

You seem to have missed my point here. Drugs are not part of the one payer health care system coverage. It is a completely separate issue.

Maybe we missed each others' points. It doesn't matter who pays for the drugs, what does matter his how much they cost. The same drugs in Canada cost LESS than they do here.

Yes I know. Canada has a problem with GP's. There is a demand that is not being filled because it is not a market system. Government mandates on fees have made being a GP a poor choice, so there is a shortage.

America has a problem with GP's too.

Bang for the buck they're the best doctors we have yet they get no respect and their salaries reflect that.

Damned shame in my opinion.