How to Make Health Care More Efficient

In China, the fellow that headed the company that put the contaminated baby food on the market was summerily shot. We should have done the same for the CEO of the peanunt butter company whose contaminated product killed several people here in the US.
 
So, importing a contaminated communistic model for medical services is supposed to be any better than contaminated peanut butter imported from communists in what way??

Ok, I think he meant importing food from China without FDA oversight. Go.

We had contaminated AMERICAN peanut butter with FDA "oversight".

On top of that, did the FDA get sued for approving Vioxx or Phen-Fen??.....Nope.
 
How to Make Health Care More Efficient

Be careful of whose definition of “efficient” we use; especially if the government’s definition means in reality “too much of”. This seems to imply that if we spend less on a service, like health care, that then it’s usage would be more efficient, when in actuality it’s maximum benefits would just become less available to the greatest number of users.

On Monday June 1st, 2009 President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers released a report called "The Economic Case for Health Care Reform." The report argues that Americans must curb their consumption of medical care in order to avoid soaring federal deficits, which are unsustainable burdens on family budgets, and damage to the economy. All of these claims are untrue.

Why does the Administration make that calculation? Federal deficits; the White House report makes the argument that there must be controls on what all Americans spend on health care in order to avoid government programs running huge deficits. Wow! How cool is that?

Their theory is that only federal legislation can slow what all Americans spend on health care in order to avoid government programs running huge deficits. That will be the new model for healthcare, and will be the first justification for rationing, but of course it will not be called exactly that. Instead the euphemism of the day will be efficiency. We already know how that rationing will be done; the viability of medical procedures will be calculated on a cost effectiveness basis; that has already been stated.

And how does the government make that calculation? Personally, I believe one of those calculations will be based on the ability of the patient to be able to pay it back through revenues to the government in the form of future federal income taxes. One group we know who will not be able to do that will be the old who are already in retirement. They obviously have little potential for future income.

The other set of individuals will be the severely handicapped; likewise the same standard also holds true for them . On that basis, who else? Well we already know the “very young” are already expendable; 45 million abortions make that very clear.

How about those who have a low survivability rate? That standard might well apply to certain cancer victims, like colon cancer, skin cancer, breast cancer and many others fitting that description. The costs are high and the benefits are calculably limited to their future earnings, which will be less than the costs of treatment.

As partial proof take one example: take breast cancer, a condition not confined to the elderly: Under the rubric of making our health care system more efficient, we are actually on the road to making it more like Europe’s. Almost no one here on this forum would argue with that statement. But according to the Concord 2008 Five Continent Study, and the Commonwealth Fund, women in the U.S. are more likely to have a regular mammogram so their breast cancer is detected sooner and treated faster resulting in higher survival rates here than there. This is a situation which promotes the growth of cancer until it becomes uncurable, or at least economically inefficient to cure.

So now the NEW first standard for who gets high cost healthcare will be how much harm will produced to the economy, or, on the other hand how much will it enhance the economy to deny services to certain classes of people? These are purely economical considerations removed from the hands of the effected individuals and placed in the hands of the federal government.

In reality, all this tinkering has to take into account that any health care reform will have to confront the fact that the biggest single reason costs keep rising is that the American people keep buying more and more health care services.
 
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I hope that those of you who say "abolish medicare/medicaid" never need it. That is amazing self-centeredness.

I don't consider it self-centered at all. I believe in personal responsibility not in quasi-socialist programs. I don't think anyone else should have to pay for MY healthcare and by that same token, I don't believe I should have to pay for theirs.

The simple fact is that the way these programs are run, runs up the premiums for the rest of us on top of the taxes we already pay to have those programs in place...so we actually pay for them twice. I get to hear on a daily basis how both these programs fuck the doctors that are willing to take these patients. They set unrealistically low reimbursement rates, reimburse on a screwed up scale (for example, a doctor can do a procedure at a surgery center or a hospital and be paid differently based simply on where he did it even though it's the EXACT SAME procedure and only the location changed) and they've also recently started tacking on more and more reasons for which they WON'T reimburse a doctor at all. Some are valid and some are outside the doctors control and have more to do with patient compliance which the docs can't control.

All of the above makes the doctors charge more for their services to those patients who have something other than the above 2 which makes other insurance carriers jack up their prices. Get rid of these two and open up insurance to interstate trade and you'd see premiums come down fairly quickly and with the money not being ripped out of their checks in medicare/medicaid taxes people could probably afford at least some basic insurance on their own.

The basic result would be very cheap premiums for healthy younger people, and a denial of coverage to anyone over the age of 65. Great idea.

The basic point of using the Interstate commerce clause to remove state by state limitations on health ins. policies is that you can also tell them "no denial of service." So, in essence, you are creating one big pool, the United States. If you are health insurance provider, you can either choose to offer health insurance in the United States, or not. You can't choose to whom you offer it.

More later.
 
In China, the fellow that headed the company that put the contaminated baby food on the market was summerily shot. We should have done the same for the CEO of the peanunt butter company whose contaminated product killed several people here in the US.

Care to post the types of people you would like to see taken out and summarily shot?

This seems to be the type of thinking the lefties like to engage in. For all their talk about the "Fascist" right wingnuts, we sure hear an awful lot about all the kinds of people that need to be taken out and shot.

So, immoral CEOs of food companies. How about the toy company CEOs, the one that let lead paint in on the toys? Them too? How about CEOs of the financial companies? How about CEOs that make over a million dollars? How about all CEOs? Where do we go next, who else is on your list for when the change comes and you get to haul people out of their houses and execute them?
 
Just out on FNC - Sen K. Conrad proposes not for profit cooperative for health care as an alternative to single payer system. He says several Republicans in the Senate also endorse the idea.

This would be an appropriate realm for not-for-profit orgs IMHO.
This would be a nationwide organization that would be able to consolidate the market for health insurance, and the US Government would have no role in its function beyond normal government regulatory compliance.
 
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If it doesn't involve less intervention of gubmint between the patient and provider, I'm against it.

Moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic does nothing for me.

Sorry once again, Dude, but we are long past an idealistic remake of the system unless we take direct action in that direction. Do you have any theories how we might accomplish that?

Here are a few of my own:
Constitutional convention
Succession of key states going separately to create constitutional crisis.
Constitutional amendment to re-invoke Federalism as primary US model.

Do you have any to add, or another route to re-establish our root ideals?

Btw
If it doesn't involve less intervention of gubmint between the patient and provider, I'm against it.
Dem. Kent Conrad would seem to accomplish that as an alternative to what we seem imminently faced with.
 
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We don't need a con-con.

Declaring that state laws which prevent citizens from shopping out-of-state for cafeteria style coverage null and void, via the oft-invoked interstate commerce clause, would do more to cut costs than anything else.

But that simple step does nothing to empower politicians and bureaucrats....Which is what virtually all the supposed "reforms" are all about.
 
We don't need a con-con.

Declaring that state laws which prevent citizens from shopping out-of-state for cafeteria style coverage null and void, via the oft-invoked interstate commerce clause, would do more to cut costs than anything else.

But that simple step does nothing to empower politicians and bureaucrats....Which is what virtually all the supposed "reforms" are all about.

Another would be to find some way to get the Media to actually do their job: inform the public without undue bias.
 
Health-Care-For-All_masthead.gif



There certainly are a lot of States that are trying to bring health care to everyone. Check out this index.

Healthcare for all - Google Search

When it comes right down to it we don't have a choice. The World Health Organization rates American Health Care #37 in the world! So other than about a third of the doctors, and most of the Republicans, we need to get health care for the 46,000,000 Americans who have no health coverage.
U. S. Senator Edward Kennedy has dedicated his career to this issue.​
 
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Three months after he was diagnosed with incurable brain cancer, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) vowed in an emotional Democratic National Convention address last summer that health reform would be "the cause of my life."

Nearly a year later, Kennedy has put that vision to paper in legislation that would provide government subsidies to families buying coverage, place significant responsibilities on employers, create a new long-term-care program for millions of people with disabilities.

The 170-page bill is by far the most progressive approach to health-care reform being discussed in Washington. The bill would require businesses to provide insurance for workers or pay penalties.
Kennedy-lb-10250667.jpg
 
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Fuck Tanqueray Teddy, too.

I see bad one-liners all over the Internet from this Dude character. For the longest time I did not know if he was a hippie, a fascist Repub, or some homeless guy who stole a computer.

I guess the Tangueray remark is supposed to be a cut on Senator Kennedy, but I couldn't figure it out. When the Senator used to enjoy refreshment his choice was Cutty or Jamison. So the Tanqueray comment could not have been about him. You think?

So, my quest began to find Tanqueray Teddy, and I found him. He is Edward Schiller, CEO of TANQUERAY RESOURCES LTD., Tel: (403) 263-9055. Tanqueray Resources is in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and they explore for gold, uranium, and nickel.

I am still at a loss for how this relates to American health care or Senator Kennedy. Maybe it is an attempt at humor. Maybe it is some kind of made up thing that only Dude understands.

A friendly thought Dude, before you hit your computer keys verify your facts.
 
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Go fuck yourself, little boy.

When you dry out behind the ears and start paying some of the freight for your beloved socialistic welfare state, then you can come around singing the praises of a career parasite, like Tanqueray Teddy.

That's the best you've got? And, your playing the Tanqueray Teddy card for the third time? "Dry out behind the ears," now that's original. When you've got something that isn't TRITE find me, and I'll hope for a laugh. You know the members pity you.

TRITE
1. lacking in freshness or effectiveness because of constant use or excessive repetition; hackneyed; stale: the trite phrases in his letter.
2. characterized by hackneyed expressions, ideas, etc.: The commencement address was trite and endlessly long.
3. Archaic. rubbed or worn by use.
 
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