Government Universal Health Care, from Ezekiel Emanuel

[Old Rocks]

And this has what to do with the fact that the preventive care practiced under their systems are more effective than the reactive care practiced under ours? And do you like the fact that 700,000 American families face bankruptcy every year because of our medical system?

 

[alan1]

And this has what to do with the fact that the preventive care practiced under their systems are more effective than the reactive care practiced under ours? And do you like the fact that 700,000 American families face bankruptcy every year because of our medical system?

I don't like the idea of some bureaucrat deciding what my medical care is.
Do you?

Nice dodge at avoiding my point though.
Do you not understand that the reason most Americans are unhealthy is because most of them are fat and lazy? Universal heal care doesn't fix that. They are still going to be fat asses and unhealthy.

 

[PoliticalChic]

no PC, just very releived that she was given the A-OK...

I am not googoogahgah over a single payer universal health care plan nor a government run system paying private insurance companies....or even just a private insurance alone system here in the USA with no government assistance...

Our entire healthcare system is broken imo and needs major reforms, but I lean towards wiser, regulations of the industry, in some cases more regulation, but in other instances deregulation is needed....and perhaps only a non-profit system for hospitals being allowed, and major reforms in the PHARMA arena, allowing free market purchasing from other respectable countries and allowing the negotiation for Bulk Discounts for the major medicare drug purchases by our governent, and a simplification of billing can be looked at for savings among just some of the things to reduce these uncontrollable rises in our health care costs, I am also for each state to buy their own insurance for their medicaid recipients/ and/or indigents, that have been using the costly emergency room for their normal health care....buying these recipients a private insurance policy could be much cheaper than paying the bill once they make it to the emergency room...

Also, states restrict the insurers allowed in their states. for whatever reasons and this needs to be slacked to let other individual health insurance companies permission to opperate within their own states so that competition can increase....

So much can be done and has to be done....even if a Universal plan came in to effect, single payer or with our private health insurance companies....to reduce the costs of these other things, before they take on paying the bill...imo.

Care

I hear many folks talking about how broken our system is, but when you look closely, there are too many point in the opposite direction.

Over 80% are satisfied with their particular healthcare.

The oft-quoted figure which puts us at 37th in the world is wrong, as the WHO uses factors not actually associated with healthcare to arrive at the figure, and they accept whatever a country tells them. ( Cuba:" but antibiotics and aspirins are hard to come by")
U.S. Policies Called Bitter Pills for Cuban Women

The nation grows at about 3%/year, number of physicians grows by 1%, and nurses almost zero. (lawyers have doubled in a decade)

The only possibility is rationing. A gvt. agent will decide whether or not you get the procedure, the drug, the hospital bed.

And if you think we will get the same plan as the elite, the politicians, dream on. Remember "Animal Farm," 'some animals are more equal than others.'

I for one, would like to see a very healthy, no pun intended, profit motive, as that is what gives us innovation and new drugs.

And, as the smartest Democrat in my memory said: ""Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from birth what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government to do good." Daniel Patrick Moynihan

 

[alan1]

no PC, just very releived that she was given the A-OK...

I am not googoogahgah over a single payer universal health care plan nor a government run system paying private insurance companies....or even just a private insurance alone system here in the USA with no government assistance...

Our entire healthcare system is broken imo and needs major reforms, but I lean towards wiser, regulations of the industry, in some cases more regulation, but in other instances deregulation is needed....and perhaps only a non-profit system for hospitals being allowed, and major reforms in the PHARMA arena, allowing free market purchasing from other respectable countries and allowing the negotiation for Bulk Discounts for the major medicare drug purchases by our governent, and a simplification of billing can be looked at for savings among just some of the things to reduce these uncontrollable rises in our health care costs, I am also for each state to buy their own insurance for their medicaid recipients/ and/or indigents, that have been using the costly emergency room for their normal health care....buying these recipients a private insurance policy could be much cheaper than paying the bill once they make it to the emergency room...

Also, states restrict the insurers allowed in their states. for whatever reasons and this needs to be slacked to let other individual health insurance companies permission to opperate within their own states so that competition can increase....

So much can be done and has to be done....even if a Universal plan came in to effect, single payer or with our private health insurance companies....to reduce the costs of these other things, before they take on paying the bill...imo.

Care

I hear many folks talking about how broken our system is, but when you look closely, there are too many point in the opposite direction.

Over 80% are satisfied with their particular healthcare.

The oft-quoted figure which puts us at 37th in the world is wrong, as the WHO uses factors not actually associated with healthcare to arrive at the figure, and they accept whatever a country tells them. ( Cuba:" but antibiotics and aspirins are hard to come by")
U.S. Policies Called Bitter Pills for Cuban Women

The nation grows at about 3%/year, number of physicians grows by 1%, and nurses almost zero. (lawyers have doubled in a decade)

The only possibility is rationing. A gvt. agent will decide whether or not you get the procedure, the drug, the hospital bed.

And if you think we will get the same plan as the elite, the politicians, dream on. Remember "Animal Farm," 'some animals are more equal than others.'

I for one, would like to see a very healthy, no pun intended, profit motive, as that is what gives us innovation and new drugs.

And, as the smartest Democrat in my memory said: ""Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from birth what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government to do good." Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Exactly.
Care4all says, "Our entire healthcare system is broken".
The truth is, it isn't entirely broken. I have health care I am happy with at a price I am comfortable with. As do the other 80% of the population, yet she and her liberal pals want to completely redesign and change the entire system for a mere 1/5 of the people that aren't happy.
The goal? Make everybody as miserable as the 1/5 minority? That just doesn't sound very smart to me.

 

[Care4all]

no PC, just very releived that she was given the A-OK...

I am not googoogahgah over a single payer universal health care plan nor a government run system paying private insurance companies....or even just a private insurance alone system here in the USA with no government assistance...

Our entire healthcare system is broken imo and needs major reforms, but I lean towards wiser, regulations of the industry, in some cases more regulation, but in other instances deregulation is needed....and perhaps only a non-profit system for hospitals being allowed, and major reforms in the PHARMA arena, allowing free market purchasing from other respectable countries and allowing the negotiation for Bulk Discounts for the major medicare drug purchases by our governent, and a simplification of billing can be looked at for savings among just some of the things to reduce these uncontrollable rises in our health care costs, I am also for each state to buy their own insurance for their medicaid recipients/ and/or indigents, that have been using the costly emergency room for their normal health care....buying these recipients a private insurance policy could be much cheaper than paying the bill once they make it to the emergency room...

Also, states restrict the insurers allowed in their states. for whatever reasons and this needs to be slacked to let other individual health insurance companies permission to opperate within their own states so that competition can increase....

So much can be done and has to be done....even if a Universal plan came in to effect, single payer or with our private health insurance companies....to reduce the costs of these other things, before they take on paying the bill...imo.

Care

I hear many folks talking about how broken our system is, but when you look closely, there are too many point in the opposite direction.

Over 80% are satisfied with their particular healthcare.

The oft-quoted figure which puts us at 37th in the world is wrong, as the WHO uses factors not actually associated with healthcare to arrive at the figure, and they accept whatever a country tells them. ( Cuba:" but antibiotics and aspirins are hard to come by")
U.S. Policies Called Bitter Pills for Cuban Women

The nation grows at about 3%/year, number of physicians grows by 1%, and nurses almost zero. (lawyers have doubled in a decade)

The only possibility is rationing. A gvt. agent will decide whether or not you get the procedure, the drug, the hospital bed.

And if you think we will get the same plan as the elite, the politicians, dream on. Remember "Animal Farm," 'some animals are more equal than others.'

I for one, would like to see a very healthy, no pun intended, profit motive, as that is what gives us innovation and new drugs.

And, as the smartest Democrat in my memory said: ""Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from birth what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government to do good." Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Exactly.
Care4all says, "Our entire healthcare system is broken".
The truth is, it isn't entirely broken. I have health care I am happy with at a price I am comfortable with. As do the other 80% of the population, yet she and her liberal pals want to completely redesign and change the entire system for a mere 1/5 of the people that aren't happy.
The goal? Make everybody as miserable as the 1/5 minority? That just doesn't sound very smart to me.

The double digit increases in health Care costs and insurance prices every year for the past 10 years and as far as the eye can see in the future, are unsustainable.

Unsustainable by our government, who will have more people on Medicare than any time in our history with all of the boomers coming in to retirement...

and also unsustainable by all of these businesses that ARE paying for more than 50% to 80% of the cost of our health care policies that "We are so happy with...." while other countries that we compete with in the business world, on the Global market, have the health care of their employees paid for by a government plan, or simply, by the people themselves, which makes us less competitive....which makes us LOSE jobs or global bids for business done here in this country.

These things have to be addressed...

I too am happy with the present Insurance, matthew and I have now, and am pleased to only be paying about 40% of the price of it while his corporation pays about 60% of it for the two of us...

this does not make me BLIND to the problems going on out there Mountain Man or less of a realist....

What is your sollution, let it all be, because you are not one of the 46 million Americans without Health care insurance coverage? What happens when your company no longer contributes towards the cost of your health care because they no longer can afford it? Could you really afford the health insurance plan, a grand a month for a family, for minimal coverage?

I Am not too thrilled about letting all of our businesses paying for 50% of the health care costs of the working class today off the hook, with a Universal plan paid only by tax payers....it would be a gift horse to them...unless they gave us all a portion of what they were paying in these benefits to us in our salary, so we could afford to pay the higher taxes a universal plan would cost us? I dunno...

And I can also see the writing on the wall, with our government having to make decisions on what they will or WILL NOT pay for, under a universal, single payer plan...I am not blind, and am concerned with these "negatives"....

BUT there are negatives to every proposal involved...staying the way we are, changing to s single payer, and keeping private insurance companies but spreading out to more people.... with the insurance companies STILL getting a third of the money we spend on healthcare, simply for passing paper...just crazy as well...

We do need analysis and reform in our healthcare system when it comes to "price" or the cost of it, and if this could be solved, with healthcare being competitive and reasonable priced because of such, then we would not be faced with the problems we have today, now would we? We all could afford our own coverage, without businesses picking up the most of it, or whether we were in the lower, middle, or upper ranks of the workforce...it would be affordable if capitalism were to work with it...you would think? But this is simply not the case, and it is about time, someone starts asking why?


What I do know, is that whatever the path we choose as a country, we better damn well think it through from head to toe, before we jump head first in to it...

care

 

[alan1]

The double digit increases in health Care costs and insurance prices every year for the past 10 years and as far as the eye can see in the future, are unsustainable.

Unsustainable by our government, who will have more people on Medicare than any time in our history with all of the boomers coming in to retirement...

and also unsustainable by all of these businesses that ARE paying for more than 50% to 80% of the cost of our health care policies that "We are so happy with...." while other countries that we compete with in the business world, on the Global market, have the health care of their employees paid for by a government plan, or simply, by the people themselves, which makes us less competitive....which makes us LOSE jobs or global bids for business done here in this country.

These things have to be addressed...

I too am happy with the present Insurance, matthew and I have now, and am pleased to only be paying about 40% of the price of it while his corporation pays about 60% of it for the two of us...

this does not make me BLIND to the problems going on out there Mountain Man or less of a realist....

What is your sollution, let it all be, because you are not one of the 46 million Americans without Health care insurance coverage? What happens when your company no longer contributes towards the cost of your health care because they no longer can afford it? Could you really afford the health insurance plan, a grand a month for a family, for minimal coverage?

I Am not too thrilled about letting all of our businesses paying for 50% of the health care costs of the working class today off the hook, with a Universal plan paid only by tax payers....it would be a gift horse to them...unless they gave us all a portion of what they were paying in these benefits to us in our salary, so we could afford to pay the higher taxes a universal plan would cost us? I dunno...

And I can also see the writing on the wall, with our government having to make decisions on what they will or WILL NOT pay for, under a universal, single payer plan...I am not blind, and am concerned with these "negatives"....

BUT there are negatives to every proposal involved...staying the way we are, changing to s single payer, and keeping private insurance companies but spreading out to more people.... with the insurance companies STILL getting a third of the money we spend on healthcare, simply for passing paper...just crazy as well...

We do need analysis and reform in our healthcare system when it comes to "price" or the cost of it, and if this could be solved, with healthcare being competitive and reasonable priced because of such, then we would not be faced with the problems we have today, now would we? We all could afford our own coverage, without businesses picking up the most of it, or whether we were in the lower, middle, or upper ranks of the workforce...it would be affordable if capitalism were to work with it...you would think? But this is simply not the case, and it is about time, someone starts asking why?


What I do know, is that whatever the path we choose as a country, we better damn well think it through from head to toe, before we jump head first in to it...

care

I never said it needed to stay the way it was. I said I don't want the government making decisions about my health care.
Has the governments war on poverty reduced poverty in the last 40 years? No
Has the governments war on drugs reduced drug use in the last 20 years? No
Has the governments war on terrorism reduced terrorists in the last 7 years? No
Why would you expect anything different if they got involved in health care decisions?

 

[Care4all]

The double digit increases in health Care costs and insurance prices every year for the past 10 years and as far as the eye can see in the future, are unsustainable.

Unsustainable by our government, who will have more people on Medicare than any time in our history with all of the boomers coming in to retirement...

and also unsustainable by all of these businesses that ARE paying for more than 50% to 80% of the cost of our health care policies that "We are so happy with...." while other countries that we compete with in the business world, on the Global market, have the health care of their employees paid for by a government plan, or simply, by the people themselves, which makes us less competitive....which makes us LOSE jobs or global bids for business done here in this country.

These things have to be addressed...

I too am happy with the present Insurance, matthew and I have now, and am pleased to only be paying about 40% of the price of it while his corporation pays about 60% of it for the two of us...

this does not make me BLIND to the problems going on out there Mountain Man or less of a realist....

What is your sollution, let it all be, because you are not one of the 46 million Americans without Health care insurance coverage? What happens when your company no longer contributes towards the cost of your health care because they no longer can afford it? Could you really afford the health insurance plan, a grand a month for a family, for minimal coverage?

I Am not too thrilled about letting all of our businesses paying for 50% of the health care costs of the working class today off the hook, with a Universal plan paid only by tax payers....it would be a gift horse to them...unless they gave us all a portion of what they were paying in these benefits to us in our salary, so we could afford to pay the higher taxes a universal plan would cost us? I dunno...

And I can also see the writing on the wall, with our government having to make decisions on what they will or WILL NOT pay for, under a universal, single payer plan...I am not blind, and am concerned with these "negatives"....

BUT there are negatives to every proposal involved...staying the way we are, changing to s single payer, and keeping private insurance companies but spreading out to more people.... with the insurance companies STILL getting a third of the money we spend on healthcare, simply for passing paper...just crazy as well...

We do need analysis and reform in our healthcare system when it comes to "price" or the cost of it, and if this could be solved, with healthcare being competitive and reasonable priced because of such, then we would not be faced with the problems we have today, now would we? We all could afford our own coverage, without businesses picking up the most of it, or whether we were in the lower, middle, or upper ranks of the workforce...it would be affordable if capitalism were to work with it...you would think? But this is simply not the case, and it is about time, someone starts asking why?


What I do know, is that whatever the path we choose as a country, we better damn well think it through from head to toe, before we jump head first in to it...

care

I never said it needed to stay the way it was. I said I don't want the government making decisions about my health care.
Has the governments war on poverty reduced poverty in the last 40 years? No
Has the governments war on drugs reduced drug use in the last 20 years? No
Has the governments war on terrorism reduced terrorists in the last 7 years? No
Why would you expect anything different if they got involved in health care decisions?

Has Medicare saved or extended the lives of Millions of Americans? Yes

Has Social Security saved or made manageable the lives of millions of Seniors? Yes

Has Early Death benefits kept millions of american families out of poverty when their Dad unexpectently dies? Yes

We have made huge improvements in our poverty levels since the Great Depression, though the last few decades have shown both good decades where more have gotten out of it and this past decade where fewer have risen above it, poverty levels have been fairly stagnet...but we do have a much lower poverty rate than we did in the days of past, before safety nets were put in, like social security.

there are programs that have done exactly what they were suppose to do...

Are they or were they perfect? No.

And then there are other programs like the war on drugs and war on terrorism that are only there because they are fronts for our fbi/cia or there simply as never ending funding holes...for someone or for some thing.

 

[Iriemon]

The double digit increases in health Care costs and insurance prices every year for the past 10 years and as far as the eye can see in the future, are unsustainable.

Unsustainable by our government, who will have more people on Medicare than any time in our history with all of the boomers coming in to retirement...

and also unsustainable by all of these businesses that ARE paying for more than 50% to 80% of the cost of our health care policies that "We are so happy with...." while other countries that we compete with in the business world, on the Global market, have the health care of their employees paid for by a government plan, or simply, by the people themselves, which makes us less competitive....which makes us LOSE jobs or global bids for business done here in this country.

These things have to be addressed...

I too am happy with the present Insurance, matthew and I have now, and am pleased to only be paying about 40% of the price of it while his corporation pays about 60% of it for the two of us...

this does not make me BLIND to the problems going on out there Mountain Man or less of a realist....

What is your sollution, let it all be, because you are not one of the 46 million Americans without Health care insurance coverage? What happens when your company no longer contributes towards the cost of your health care because they no longer can afford it? Could you really afford the health insurance plan, a grand a month for a family, for minimal coverage?

I Am not too thrilled about letting all of our businesses paying for 50% of the health care costs of the working class today off the hook, with a Universal plan paid only by tax payers....it would be a gift horse to them...unless they gave us all a portion of what they were paying in these benefits to us in our salary, so we could afford to pay the higher taxes a universal plan would cost us? I dunno...

And I can also see the writing on the wall, with our government having to make decisions on what they will or WILL NOT pay for, under a universal, single payer plan...I am not blind, and am concerned with these "negatives"....

BUT there are negatives to every proposal involved...staying the way we are, changing to s single payer, and keeping private insurance companies but spreading out to more people.... with the insurance companies STILL getting a third of the money we spend on healthcare, simply for passing paper...just crazy as well...

We do need analysis and reform in our healthcare system when it comes to "price" or the cost of it, and if this could be solved, with healthcare being competitive and reasonable priced because of such, then we would not be faced with the problems we have today, now would we? We all could afford our own coverage, without businesses picking up the most of it, or whether we were in the lower, middle, or upper ranks of the workforce...it would be affordable if capitalism were to work with it...you would think? But this is simply not the case, and it is about time, someone starts asking why?


What I do know, is that whatever the path we choose as a country, we better damn well think it through from head to toe, before we jump head first in to it...

care

I never said it needed to stay the way it was. I said I don't want the government making decisions about my health care.
Has the governments war on poverty reduced poverty in the last 40 years? No

Actually, poverty rates fell by about half in the '60s concurrent with Johnson's "great society" programs. Since then they've been relatively steady, going up a few points during the Reagan admin and down a few points during Clinton.

Historical Poverty Tables

Why would you expect anything different if they got involved in health care decisions?

The real question is can the Govt really do much worse than the current fucked up system we have?

 

[rubberhead]

How many of you watned the beancounters in the private insurance companies to interfere with you and your doctors' decisions about your health care?

None of you right?

Only that's exactly what's going on right now, too.

This complaint about socialized medicines is entirely specious, folks, because what you fear from socialized medicine is ALREADY happening to you all with PRIVATE HC insurance, right now.

You are right and no one would argue that evil insurance companies don't have death panels (sorry about the double negative, it's part of my rhetorical labyrinth). However, there is more than one insurance company, so at least these demons have to compete with each other. If we defer to our benevolent overlords, then there will only be one Leviathan and our power to make our own decisions about health care will be forever inhibited, and I would argue continuously eroded thereafter.

There are several points where I agree with Zeke Emanuel. Oddly enough, they happen to be the points that none of the mouthpieces are mentioning. In "The Perfect Storm of Overutilization" which was cited at the beginning of this thread, Zeke Emanuel et. al. states:

In normal markets, demand is modulated by cost. But
third-party payment for patients attenuates this control.

This is extremely insightful and I think it hits the heart of the issue. I don't think it is completely correct, though. Yes, price controls demand to some degree. But health care is an extremely inelastic commodity. That is, it is so essential to one's well-being that as the price goes up, certain individuals' demand for it does not diminish. Especially if the patient's life is threatened. This is the property of the health care market that created an opportunity for insurance companies to insulate people from the growing cost of health care. Thus, the problem is inherent to the fee-for-service system. That is to say, there is a moral hazard for health care providers that raise prices without considering the rigidity of demand. Notice this has nothing to do with insurance providers because they are merely filling a need because that's what creative people do in a market economy. Price regulation on providers seems to be a remedy that wouldn't interfere with medical decisions directly. However, pretending that health care is a right (like Teddy Kennedy wanted to do) will just turn people into slaves. Health care is a service provided by a firm and we show our appreciation for the provider of that service by paying them, because they are free to refuse to provide that service, even if we pretend that they are not.

It won't let me post a link to Zeke Emanuel's article, but you can find it in references section of the wikipedia article about him.

 

[jeffrockit]

How many of you watned the beancounters in the private insurance companies to interfere with you and your doctors' decisions about your health care?

None of you right?

Only that's exactly what's going on right now, too.

This complaint about socialized medicines is entirely specious, folks, because what you fear from socialized medicine is ALREADY happening to you all with PRIVATE HC insurance, right now.

I want neither. We can have that if we would stop choosing political sides. The system can be overhauled without government intrusion. Just because there are problems with insurance is no reason to run to the gov. to bail it out because they can't and will more than likely make it worse based on their previous track record with the PO and DMV and etc.

 

[hvacjones]

I think healthcare should not be profit driven with the exception of companies doing R & D for new drugs. Isn' t there a way for the goverment to handsomely reward companies who develop breakthrough drugs, then provide them to the public, getting health insurance companies out of the picture. They will not change on their own. Some sort of goverment intervention is required IMO

 

[alan1]

I think healthcare should not be profit driven with the exception of companies doing R & D for new drugs. Isn' t there a way for the goverment to handsomely reward companies who develop breakthrough drugs, then provide them to the public, getting health insurance companies out of the picture. They will not change on their own. Some sort of goverment intervention is required IMO

Eating is more essential to life than health care, do you want the government to take over grocery stores and to make food a non-profit entity also?