What's wrong with for profit healthcare

[jreeves]

I'm not clear on what you are saying??

What in the heck does this mean? "I don't want to trust my healthcare to government who has spent itself in debt to the tune of 9 trillion dollars, who has admitted that it's entitlement programs are fiscally unsustainable. If you want to that's your choice, I would rather still live with my freedoms, thank you."

You are happy with the way the healthcare problem in the United States and the way it is going right now, today, and if nothing is done ... will be tomorrow???

Or did you happen to mis-type and YOU live in a foreign country? I am confused.

I am happy with my healthcare, I don't feel I should be forced to partake in a massive government run system. I don't want an inefficient government running my healthcare, stated a different way. Does that answer your question?

 

[CA95380]

I am happy with my healthcare, I don't feel I should be forced to partake in a massive government run system. I don't want an inefficient government running my healthcare, stated a different way. Does that answer your question?

Much, much better, thanks!

 

[Chris]

1. BS not in the US
2. More BS......by a report heavily skewed toward healthcare costs
3. Even more BS you mean if we tax everyone into the poor house

Ridiculous post.

1. We have never had a single payer system in the U.S. We have a patchwork of systems, 100 different insurance companies, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.. We have the worst of both world.

2. No, other countries treat everyone cheaper and do a good job of it. Studies of outcomes show the other Western democracies have just as good an outcome or better than the U.S.

3. Tax everyone into the poor house? That is what is happening now. Because our system is so inefficient we pay almost twice what everyone else pays for healthcare and don't cover everyone and in some cases get worse results.

 

[Chris]

What he is simply asking/pointing out is that our U.S. government has been shown to be horribly inefficient at administering pretty much everything. That being the case I really have no desire to entrust my healthcare to them.

So when you turn 65, you are going to refuse to take any money from Medicare?

 

[Chris]

As I have pointed out over and over, that link you keep putting up that rates health care systems leans towards access to health care as the most important factor in a high rating. If you rated systems on quality of care alone, the US would rate much higher. As they saying goes. The US has the best health care MONEY can buy.

No, the U.S. has a system that allows the insurance companies, the lawyers, the doctors, the hospitals, and Big Pharma to make the most money off the sick that they possibly can.

 

[jreeves]

Ridiculous post.

1. We have never had a single payer system in the U.S. We have a patchwork of systems, 100 different insurance companies, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.. We have the worst of both world.

2. No, other countries treat everyone cheaper and do a good job of it. Studies of outcomes show the other Western democracies have just as good an outcome or better than the U.S.

3. Tax everyone into the poor house? That is what is happening now. Because our system is so inefficient we pay almost twice what everyone else pays for healthcare and don't cover everyone and in some cases get worse results.

I never said we have had a single payer system on the federal level. What we can look forward to if UHC is passed....
SPRINGFIELD, Ore. - Barbara Wagner has one wish - for more time.

"I'm not ready, I'm not ready to die," the Springfield woman said. "I've got things I'd still like to do."

Her doctor offered hope in the new chemotherapy drug Tarceva, but the Oregon Health Plan sent her a letter telling her the cancer treatment was not approved.

Instead, the letter said, the plan would pay for comfort care, including "physician aid in dying," better known as assisted suicide."I told them, I said, 'Who do you guys think you are?' You know, to say that you'll pay for my dying, but you won't pay to help me possibly live longer?' " Wagner said.

Dr. Som Saha, chairman of the commission that sets policy for the Oregon Health Plan, said Wagner is making an "unfortunate interpretation" of the letter and that no one is telling her the health plan will only pay for her to die.

But one critic of assisted suicide calls the message disturbing nonetheless.

"People deserve relief of their suffering, not giving them an overdose," said Dr. William Toffler. He said the state has a financial incentive to offer death instead of life: Chemotherapy drugs such as Tarceva cost $4,000 a month while drugs for assisted suicide cost less than $100.

Saha said state health officials do not consider whether it is cheaper for someone in the health plan to die than live. But he admitted they must consider the state's limited dollars when dealing with a case such as Wagner's.
Media dis&dat: Oregon offering assisted suicide instead of cancer treatment?
2.

 

[Chris]

I appreciate all your input Delta. Unlike most in here, you come at this from a practicality stand point, and not a purely partisan one.

All I want to know is that our quality of care will not suffer, and that the costs will not be so high as to destroy us.

You have done a lot to convince me on the first point, but the second point still scares the hell out of me. I am sure you would agree more massive unpaid for spending is the last thing we need right now, and with the way things are right now, I do not think Americans or our economy can afford the high taxes this might require.

As I have said in the past, I went many years with no coverage myself, so I am well aware of the need, I just want to know what it will cost us all.

I have posted link after link after link about how well the single payer system works in other countries. Did you read the Wiki link on Universal Healthcare at all??? The Germans have had it since 1880 for Christ's sake!

All this BS against it is just propaganda by the people who are making BILLIONS OF DOLLARS off of sick people.

 

[Chris]

I never said we have had a single payer system on the federal level. What we can look forward to if UHC is passed....
SPRINGFIELD, Ore. - Barbara Wagner has one wish - for more time.

"I'm not ready, I'm not ready to die," the Springfield woman said. "I've got things I'd still like to do."

Her doctor offered hope in the new chemotherapy drug Tarceva, but the Oregon Health Plan sent her a letter telling her the cancer treatment was not approved.

Instead, the letter said, the plan would pay for comfort care, including "physician aid in dying," better known as assisted suicide."I told them, I said, 'Who do you guys think you are?' You know, to say that you'll pay for my dying, but you won't pay to help me possibly live longer?' " Wagner said.

Dr. Som Saha, chairman of the commission that sets policy for the Oregon Health Plan, said Wagner is making an "unfortunate interpretation" of the letter and that no one is telling her the health plan will only pay for her to die.

But one critic of assisted suicide calls the message disturbing nonetheless.

"People deserve relief of their suffering, not giving them an overdose," said Dr. William Toffler. He said the state has a financial incentive to offer death instead of life: Chemotherapy drugs such as Tarceva cost $4,000 a month while drugs for assisted suicide cost less than $100.

Saha said state health officials do not consider whether it is cheaper for someone in the health plan to die than live. But he admitted they must consider the state's limited dollars when dealing with a case such as Wagner's.
Media dis&dat: Oregon offering assisted suicide instead of cancer treatment?
2.

Has our for profit system developed a cure for cancer yet?

 

[Chris]

And that is different from private insurers because...?

Because a the government is answerable to the people. The doctors, the lawyers, the insurance companies, the hospitals, and Big Pharma are only answerable to their shareholders.

 

[jreeves]

Has our for profit system developed a cure for cancer yet?

Has any European UHC system developed a cure for cancer? I would say that a lot of the treatments that allow people to live longer and in fact cured cancer in some people has been developed right here in the good ole USA.

 

[jreeves]

Because a the government is answerable to the people. The doctors, the lawyers, the insurance companies, the hospitals, and Big Pharma are only answerable to their shareholders.

That would go for not for profit healthcare providers too right?

 

[Chris]

Has any European UHC system developed a cure for cancer? I would say that a lot of the treatments that allow people to live longer and in fact cured cancer in some people has been developed right here in the good ole USA.

What if I told you cancer could be prevented for pennies a day?

 

[jreeves]

What if I told you cancer could be prevented for pennies a day?

That's not the question you asked now is it?

 

[Chris]

That's not the question you asked now is it?

But it is the goal of all healthcare, is it not?

No preventative for cancer. Do you know why? Because there is no money in it. All the money is in treating cancer after people get it.

 

[Charles_Main]

No, the U.S. has a system that allows the insurance companies, the lawyers, the doctors, the hospitals, and Big Pharma to make the most money off the sick that they possibly can.

That may be true, but it does not change the facts of my post. The link you use is skewed towards access to health care. To try and say the US does not have quality health care is a joke Kirk. We have great health care. The only problem is not everyone can afford it.

 

[CA95380]

No, the U.S. has a system that allows the insurance companies, the lawyers, the doctors, the hospitals, and Big Pharma to make the most money off the sick that they possibly can.

..... "to make the most money off the sick that they possibly can" You left off .... The Old.

 

[jreeves]

But it is the goal of all healthcare, is it not?

No preventative for cancer. Do you know why? Because there is no money in it. All the money is in treating cancer after people get it.

Is this the type of healthcare you are referring to?

Unfortunately Sicko is a dishonest film. That is not only my opinion. It is the opinion of Professor Lord Robert Winston, the consultant and advocate of the NHS. When asked on BBC Radio 4 whether he recognised the NHS as portrayed in this film, Winston replied: “No, I didn’t. Most of it was filmed at my hospital [the Hammersmith in west London], which is a very good hospital but doesn’t represent what the NHS is like.”

I didn’t recognise it either, from years of visiting NHS hospitals. Moore painted a rose-tinted vision of spotless wards, impeccable treatment, happy patients who laugh away any suggestion of waiting in casualty, and a glamorous young GP who combines his devotion to his patients with a salary of £100,000, a house worth £1m and two cars. All this, and for free.

This, along with an even rosier portrait of the French welfare system, is what Moore says the state can and should provide. You would never guess from Sicko that the NHS is in deep trouble, mired in scandal and incompetence, despite the injection of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.

While there are good doctors and nurses and treatments in the NHS, there is so much that is inadequate or bad that it is dishonest to represent it as the envy of the world and a perfect blueprint for national healthcare. It isn’t.

GPs’ salaries – used by Moore as evidence that a state-run system does not necessarily mean low wages – is highly controversial; their huge pay rise has coincided with a loss of home visits, a serious problem in getting GP appointments and continuing very low pay for nurses and cleaners.

At least 20 NHS trusts have even worse problems with the hospital-acquired infection clostridium difficile, not least the trust in Kent where 90 people died of C diff in a scandal reported recently.

Many hospitals are in crisis. Money shortages, bad management, excesses of bureaucrats and deadly Whitehall micromanagement mean they have to skimp on what matters most.

Overfilling the beds is dangerous to patients, in hygiene and in recovery times, but it goes on widely. Millions are wasted on expensive agency nurses because NHS nurses are abandoning the profession in droves. Only days ago, the 2007 nurse of the year publicly resigned in despair at the health service. There is a dangerous shortage of midwives since so many have left, and giving birth on the NHS can be a shocking experience.

Meanwhile thousands of young hospital doctors, under a daft new employment scheme, were sent randomly around the country, pretty much regardless of their qualifications or wishes. As foreign doctors are recruited from Third World countries, hundreds of the best-qualified British doctors have been left unemployed. Several have emigrated.

As for consultants, the men in Whitehall didn’t believe what they said about the hours they worked, beyond their duties, and issued new contracts forcing them to work less. You could hardly make it up.
Quack Michael Moore has mad view of the NHS | Minette Marrin - Times Online

 

[Charles_Main]

Health care in France: facing hard choices

It will be the generation now entering the workforce who will pay for the years of deficit spending through some mix of higher taxes and reduced access. All of this is made worse by a looming demographic crunch. With the number of French aged 65 and older expected to grow from about 16% of the population (according to Council of Europe projections in 2003) to an estimated 24% by 2030, the pool of workers contributing to the social security system will be greatly outnumbered by those needing increasing care and medical services.

Thus far, the government has responded by restructuring oversight of the system and it will be interesting to see what comes of the decision by new French President Nicolas Sarkozy to split the health and social security ministries. The former Ministry of Health and Solidarity has become the Ministry of Health, Youth and Sport. With the change, responsibility for the country's Social Security scheme is no longer with the health department, whose officials worry about patients, but with the new Ministry for the Budget and Public Accounts, whose officials worry about deficits. Any changes made to the coverage offered under the insurance funds will be outside the health ministry's control.

The economic forecasting group Global Insights has projected that removal of the social security mandate from the Health Ministry should ultimately cut the social security deficit in half, to under $5.52 billon by year's end.

During last spring's election campaign, Sarkozy promised to introduce minimal out-of-pocket charges on consultations, treatments and hospital visits, up to a yearly spending cap, exempting children and seniors. Over the summer, Sarkozy made good on that promise, with a e2 ($2.76) charge for ambulance rides and 50 centime (69 cents) fee to fill a prescription, to a maximum e50 ($69) per year. The new Health Minister, Roselyne Bachelot, hopes the reforms will instill patients with a greater sense of responsibility toward the health care system.

Read the whole story here:
Health care in France: facing hard choices



Rising Health Costs Threaten Generous Benefits in Europe

Dr. Philippe Perez, a general practitioner in the Paris suburb of Thiais, used to think nothing of prescribing $500 worth of medicated salve a month for patients with painful herpes infection, because they would be almost completely reimbursed by the French national health insurance system.

But the state-run insurance fund, under Government orders to cut its huge deficit, is now threatening to take high drug costs out of the fees it pays to doctors if they write too many prescriptions. So Dr. Perez explains the problem to his patients, and some of them now pay for the medicine out of their own pockets instead of putting in claims.

Peter Konig, a retired post office employee in Bonn, has found that German doctors, too, are becoming more reluctant to prescribe remedies like cough medicine that used to go on the insurance bill. Television in Bonn, he says, is now full of advertising pitches to get people to buy over-the-counter remedies that used to be reimbursable by insurance.

In Britain, more than half of the general practitioners in the National Health Service now have budgets they cannot overspend for patients' medicines and hospital care, forcing them to think twice or bargain hard with hospitals and surgeons about the costs.

The high level of health care offered by the welfare states of Western Europe was long the envy of much of the rest of the world, but they can no longer afford the vast amounts required to pay for unlimited benefits.

So in country after country, administrators are turning to the same kinds of market-oriented cost-control measures used by managed care companies and health maintenance organizations in the United States, and raising many of the same ethical concerns.

The techniques include measures like encouraging hospitals to compete with each other in offering value for money, pressing doctors to follow the most cost-effective treatment methods and to order expensive tests only when necessary, and using computers to monitor their compliance.

Just like Americans, Europeans are being forced to think about what comprehensive medical care costs, something that never worried them before.

Full story here:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpa...5A3575BC0A960958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all


Our own problems with Medicare/cade

Skyrocketing health care costs are taking a toll on the nation’s long-term economic well being, requiring an immediate “multipronged solution” before the “window of opportunity” to address the issue closes, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

The report, Long Term Federal Fiscal Challenge Driven Primarily by Health Care, was prepared Gene Dodaro, the acting U.S. Comptroller General. He says the federal government is on an “unsustainable long-term fiscal path” driven primarily by rising health care costs.

“Rapidly rising health care costs are not simply a federal budget problem,” the GAO report says. “Growth in health-related spending is the primary driver of the fiscal challenges facing state and local governments as well. Unsustainable growth in health care spending also threatens to erode the ability of employers to provide coverage to their workers and undercuts their ability to compete in a global marketplace.”

“The large fiscal gap is primarily the result of spending on Medicare and Medicaid, which continue to consume ever-larger shares of both the federal budget and the economy,” the report added. “Federal expenditures on Medicare and Medicaid represent a much larger, faster-growing, and more immediate problem than Social Security. Medicare and Medicaid are not unique in experiencing rapid spending growth, but instead this growth largely mirrors spending trends in other public health care programs and the overall health care system. A number of factors contribute to the rise in spending, including the use of new medical technology and market.”

Complicating the long-term economic issue the country faces is the fact that for years the federal government has financed other federal initiatives with surpluses in Social Security trust funds placing a heavy burden on taxpayers.

“When such borrowings occur, the Department of the Treasury issues federal securities to these government funds that are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government,” the GAO report says. “Although borrowing by one part of the federal government from another does not have the same economic and financial implications as borrowing from the public, it represents a claim on future resources and hence a burden on future taxpayers and the future economy. If federal securities held by those funds are included, the federal government’s total debt is much higher — about $9 trillion as of the end of fiscal year 2007.”

Full story here:
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/06/report-rising-health-care-costs-causing-serious-economic-woes/

 

[CA95380]

So the moral to this whole saga is ... stay where you are, suck it up, and pray for the best. I guess. But it is still

 

[jreeves]

So the moral to this whole saga is ... stay where you are, suck it up, and pray for the best. I guess. But it is still

We need to reform our system not scrap it completely.