Quote: I presume those who wish can still elect for private care in these cases and pay out of pocket?

Not exactly, outside of simple medical procedures, or superficial plastic surgery (Which the state doesn't provide), most of the private hospitals don't have the required facilities to provide advanced medical treatment. To be honest, it doesn't really appear like they have any incentive to, since they fit themselves comfortably into a niche which wants fast treatment for small procedures.

Unfortunately, there are private health insurers which actually offer coverage for some advanced procedures. This results in people checking into a private hospital, only to be driven to the state hospital.

Quote: Original post by Oluseyi

Quote: Original post by CirdanValen
(And don't get me started on ACORN)

Don't start on ACORN. It just marks you as a bullshit conspiracy theorist - and a selective one at that, because all presidential candidates have their "questionable" associations.

Get over it.

So because "all presidential candidates have their 'questionable' associations" that makes it acceptable? There is no denying that ACORN committed voter fraud.

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
The criteria used to rank America's system 37th was ridiculous.

Are you claiming to have greater expertise in the subject than the World Health Organization?

Quote:
...
The World Health Organization (WHO), in 2000, ranked the U.S. health care system as the highest in cost, first in responsiveness, 37th in overall performance, and 72nd by overall level of health (among 191 member nations included in the study).[11][12]
...
A 2008 report by the Commonwealth Fund ranked the United States last in the quality of health care among the 19 compared countries.[14]
...
Health care in the United States

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
America has the best Dr.'s and the best medical equipment in the world.

We're number one!!!

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
The problem is that it isn't as widely available as the healthcare in socialist countries, and for obvious reasons. Compare Slovenia and American health care on a practical level and the differences should be obvious.

Obvious reasons? You mean because rich white people are scared they might have to pay more taxes to provide health care for poor blacks and Mexicans? If we provide free health care for everyone, the illegals will overrun us and we'll go bankrupt!!!

Obvious reasons? You mean because Americans are fat, dumb and lazy and prefer to let yahoos like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity do their thinking for them?

What exactly do you mean by obvious reasons?

Here's a great irony, the health care crisis is greatest in rural areas: Healthcare reform seen critical for rural U.S.

Quote:
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For many of the 60 million people living in rural America, inadequate and unaffordable healthcare is an immediate and growing problem.

"Reform is a big deal here. We're on the edge," said Brian Wolfe, an Iola family doctor. Half his patients rely on government aid for the poor and elderly and some who need care don't seek it because they can't pay.
...
A study released on Tuesday by the Center for Rural Affairs argued that rural areas need a public option. People living in rural regions tend to be older. They suffer from more chronic health problems, but have less access to private employer-based insurance because so many are self-employed or work for small businesses.

"Rural people have much to gain from inclusion of a public health insurance plan option in health care reform legislation, possibly more than any other group in the nation," said Jon Bailey, director of analysis at the Center for Rural Affairs.
...
Many small towns like Iola, with its population of 5,500, have no dentists or hospitals and only one or two doctors.

A government-supported community health center that operates five clinics in southeast Kansas for those who can't pay and don't have insurance has seen a dramatic jump in patients in the last two years. Some travel up to 100 miles (160 km) for an appointment, said Krista Postai of the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas.
...

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
And it's not that private insurance runs healthcare, they simply provide plans. It allows people to choose which plans they need and can afford.

Yeah right. They do such a great job we've got nothing to worry about...

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
The government pretty much screws up everything it's involved with anyway.

Everything? Gosh, don't leave your house... wait, that includes your house too!!! Run for the hills!!!

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
Do you really think that we should send medical records to the same people that leaked the nuclear sites info?

Do you really care if the Chinese find out about your Viagra addiction? I find this complaint the most humorous. One of the reasons why medical records are supposed to remain confidential is to prevent insurance companies from discriminating against you for having a preexisting condition. Stamp that with a giant FAIL.

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
I understand the need for healthcare reform. I just don't think that a single-payer health plan will work. Didn't hawaii try this already and revert within like 6 months?

Single payer works in several other countries. Are we too stupid to make it work ourselves? It seems that the Republicans and Blue Dogs in Congress think so. I don't know about Hawaii. Apparently you don't either. The fact is that the United States has been running a single payer insurance system for more than 40 years. It's called Medicare. It works so well that the Taiwanese modeled their entire system on it. Furthermore, the United States has been running a socialized medical system for an even longer time. It's called the Veterans Administration.

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
And the "mandatory death counseling" is something that is purportedly in the house bill, mentioned by several different sources as a way to cut costs and "ration health care". This seems to be one of many corners cut to pay for the new bill

I hate to break it to you but health care in the United States is heavily rationed already. It's heavily rationed for the 50 million people with inadequate coverage and it's a near complete scarcity for the 50 million people with no coverage. Rationing is what markets do, except somehow we've come to believe that the arbitrary and capricious roll of the dice is a morally superior means of dividing and distributing supply, so we don't blink when the invisible hand sweeps the sick into the gutter of destitution.



In Poll, Wide Support for Government-Run Health (June 20,2009) The national telephone survey, which was conducted from June 12 to 16, found that 72 percent of those questioned supported a government-administered insurance plan — something like Medicare for those under 65 — that would compete for customers with private insurers. Twenty percent said they were opposed.

Health Care Rationing Rhetoric Overlooks Reality (June 17, 2009)

Quote:
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In truth, rationing is an inescapable part of economic life. It is the process of allocating scarce resources. Even in the United States, the richest society in human history, we are constantly rationing. We ration spots in good public high schools. We ration lakefront homes. We ration the best cuts of steak and wild-caught salmon.

Health care, I realize, seems as if it should be different. But it isn’t. Already, we cannot afford every form of medical care that we might like. So we ration.

We spend billions of dollars on operations, tests and drugs that haven’t been proved to make people healthier. Yet we have not spent the money to install computerized medical records — and we suffer more medical errors than many other countries.

We underpay primary care doctors, relative to specialists, and they keep us stewing in waiting rooms while they try to see as many patients as possible. We don’t reimburse different specialists for time spent collaborating with one another, and many hard-to-diagnose conditions go untreated. We don’t pay nurses to counsel people on how to improve their diets or remember to take their pills, and manageable cases of diabetes and heart disease become fatal.
...
Milton Friedman’s beloved line is a good way to frame the issue: There is no such thing as a free lunch. The choice isn’t between rationing and not rationing. It’s between rationing well and rationing badly. Given that the United States devotes far more of its economy to health care than other rich countries, and gets worse results by many measures, it’s hard to argue that we are now rationing very rationally.
...

Quote: Original post by Eelco

Quote:
Another funny argument. Wait a minute. I thought the government was so inefficient and ridiculous that it could never match the "efficiencies" of a free market. But then the biggest complaint I hear about government provided health insurance is that it would be unfair competition because they'll be able to offer better service. What's that? I thought the government was incompetent and couldn't possibly provide a working product.

It isnt hard to offer a compelling offer out of someone elses pocket.

And the fact that I pay for insurance for years and then get rejected for coverage the minute anything serious to me, and the money gets funneled into some executives pocket as profit, isn't taking it out of someone elses pocket?

Let's be honest here. You think people should have a right to steal as long as its called business. The second a governed populace gets together and decides that maybe those thieves should give a little back or even start playing fair, you start screaming tyranny. It's very transparent.

Quote: Original post by CirdanValen
There is no denying that ACORN committed voter fraud.

Actually, there's no denying that ACORN reported voter registration fraud. There's also no denying that FoxNews and related ideological friends have spun "reported" into "committed" and confused voter registration fraud with voter fraud. The real crime is that FoxNews (et al) has duped so many people with this story, that's the biggest fraud of all!

Are voter fraud fears overblown? (October 19, 2008)

Quote:
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“It’s hyperbole because there’s no good evidence that voter registration fraud leads to election fraud that changes elections. And it’s irresponsible because it gins up worries that the election is going to be stolen,” says Richard L. Hasen, a professor specializing in election law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

Research into voting fraud by Lorraine Minnite at Barnard College in New York has turned up no contemporary cases of an election thrown out or overturned due to fraudulent registration. She found only two prosecutions for people faking others’ registrations between 2002 and 2005, involving a total of 13 false applications.

The anti-ACORN rhetoric, she says, is on the verge of “complete distortion.”
...
“When you hire 13,000 employees, you are going to have some who won’t do the job,” says ACORN spokesman Charles Jackson. The “rogue workers” who submitted phony registrations were fired immediately, he adds. The faked registrations were sent to election officials – as required by the law in many locales – but filed separately and flagged.

ACORN says it flagged 80 percent of the registrations that raised officials’ eyebrows.

Neither Mr. Hasen nor Ms. Minnite find the reported problems to be disproportionate to the size of ACORN’s operation.
...
In the affidavit, fired ACORN workers described fudging registrations out of laziness or because of the heat – not because of orders from above. ACORN leaders also appeared to be cooperating with Nevada officials.

The raid was undertaken because officials believed there were other phony registrations that workers weren’t catching, says Bob Walsh, spokesman for the Nevada secretary of state, a Democrat. But, he adds, “There’s a big difference – a quantum leap – between registration fraud and voter fraud.”
...

Now, if you're really interest in demonizing groups engaged in voter registration fraud, here's where you ought to look:

Voters say they were duped into registering as Republicans (October 18,2008) SACRAMENTO — Dozens of newly minted Republican voters say they were duped into joining the party by a GOP contractor with a trail of fraud complaints stretching across the country.

Ontario police arrest man in voter fraud case (October 20, 2008)SACRAMENTO — The owner of a firm that the California Republican Party hired to register tens of thousands of voters this year was arrested in Ontario over the weekend on suspicion of voter registration fraud.

[Note: Folks outside of California should know that there's a city in Southern California named Ontario, so this guy did not flee to Canada.]

Californian who registered voters charged with fraud (Oct 20, 2008)

US election: Republican operative faces voter registration fraud charges (22 October 2008 )

Owner of registration company pleads guilty to voter fraud (June 16, 2009) The owner of a voter-registration company pleaded guilty Tuesday to voter-registration fraud, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Quote: Original post by Mithrandir
And the fact that I pay for insurance for years and then get rejected for coverage the minute anything serious to me, and the money gets funneled into some executives pocket as profit, isn't taking it out of someone elses pocket?

This is what bothers me the most. Even if the gov't insurance costs the same, and we have some silly bureaucracy, at least we won't have to worry about getting blatantly cheated.

I have a friend whose husband worked at the same place for 20 years, paying private insurance for their family. He lost his job, and couldn't afford COBRA. While laid off, she was diagnosed with cancer. Her husband got another job after some time, and his new insurance wouldn't cover her cancer treatments, because it was a "pre-existing condition". They're now hundreds of thousands in debt, and are going to have to sell their house, and change their retirement plans. It doesn't seem fair (legal?), since they paid in for all those years, and basically got nothing in return.

This is very concerning for me, (family of 4, health insurance cost of ~$15,000 / year), since coverage is based on my being employed constantly, which I don't necessarily have alot of control over. From what I understand, if you opt into this new gov't plan, these situations will be mitigated, which seems like it would make it worth any of the other headaches it might introduce.

Quote: Original post by Mithrandir
It constantly amazes me that people actually think that a company that has no obligation to anything but profit would be more beneficial to your health than a government that you elect.

How is it exactly that any business is relieved of their need to have paying customers and still be a viable model? I see this idea thrown around constantly. Obviously in cases when artificial barriers to entry are created by federal or state governments to create a monopoly or pseudo-monopoly the responsiveness to the client is mitigated, but even then the "obligation to anything but profit" requires paying customers does it not?

Quote:
Another funny argument. Wait a minute. I thought the government was so inefficient and ridiculous that it could never match the "efficiencies" of a free market. But then the biggest complaint I hear about government provided health insurance is that it would be unfair competition because they'll be able to offer better service. What's that? I thought the government was incompetent and couldn't possibly provide a working product.

Hmm. Someone's being dishonest it seems.

I've seen this argument as well. I believe the beef is that everyone will be required to pay for government provided health care whether it meets their standards or not. Similar to public schools in that whether you have children or not, whether your children attend public schools or not, you are still required to fund public schools.

If the proposed solution was a cooperative where the government levied an opt-in tax and in exchange you were provided with public health care I don't think the idea would be nearly so controversial. In this manner those that prefer private or specialized insurance could do so without also paying for insurance they do not want.

The proposed solution will force you to pay for insurance whether you want that specific insurance or not. In addition, the costs will be disporportional to the consumption. Finally, people that don't smoke, eat healthy and exercise will foot the bill for people that live a poor lifestyle and don't take care of themselves.

All of which is fine, if the person choose to receive and pay for that coverage. It is instead going to be coerced at gunpoint. Cheat on your taxes, and resist too fervently and you will have federal agents at your door.

Quote: Original post by Oluseyi
:sigh:

As usual, there's no actual discussion of solving the issues, just laying blame and claiming the other side is obscuring the truth. Who cares?

How do we fix our problem? If you think the private approach is superior, fine: how do we fix the private system to cover more people, provide the coverage they've actually paid for, and improve the quality of care? If you think the public approach is superior, fine: how do we design a public system that covers people but doesn't impose an undue tax burden, and maintains a high quality of care?

I think WazzatMan described an interesting approach in Malta, where out-of-pocket expenditure covers simple medical issues for which you want immediate care (the cheap or genuinely indigent can seek state care for these, too, I gather, but then they have to wait until the system can accommodate them), while state care is provided for significant conditions. I presume those who wish can still elect for private care in these cases and pay out of pocket?

I think that's a good starting point. There's no reason why we should be taxed to pay for anyone stubbing their toe, but paying to save a child with MS or a young adult with kidney failure is quite fine by me.

The problem with this approach is that to fix the private system would require a radical decoupling of regulatory and government bodies from the health care system. Billions of dollars from health care lobbies and pharmaceuticals are pumped in to D.C. every election cycle to insure this never occurs.

I'm not too old yet, all of 31. I still have my fair share of issues tough, perhaps more than my fair share. Nothing too serious but used to be I could suck it up and go pay my 10-20$ copay and get an appointment and get whatever looked into or dealt with. The last couple of years things have been different. I now have $2500 - $4500 of fear in between me and my health insurance.

I suppose it's somewhat smart for people to think twice about seeing doctors and having procedures done needlessly. But when you really could use something taken care of that bill doesn't go away. You still know that it will cost you more than you can afford. So what do you do when you're sick and the Dr. cost more than you have? Well if your like me you don't go. You let that thing in your arm they weren't worried about 2 years ago grow without getting monitored. You let the thing in your wrist that hurts like a bitch sit there pissing you off. You keep taking over the counter allergy meds and steroid inhalers instead of getting allergy shots because you would have to pay for most of it. Which ironically may cost the insurance company more in the long run. You let your wife with Diabetes go without any treatment but her 4$ prescription because she lost her job, her new one is half the pay and seems increasingly less likely to make her full time, and you can't afford to pay to add her onto your insurance. You cross your fingers and pray she doesn't get pregnant or that either one of you ends up with some sudden problem at all.

Now I don't know what out there could fix all my problems let alone everyone else's too. I do know things have been getting more problematic in a fast hurry. Anyone that thinks a massive overhaul isn't going to or shouldn't have a long list of shortcomings, is wrong and/or stupid. Anything we do will have issues that have to be worked out. I also know the current system has had that opportunity to work out the bugs and is getting worse. Something that leads me to believe the longer we sit on our thumbs and do nothing the more of the same we can expect. Doing nothing is an action and you know what they say about doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different outcome.

I'm no expert but I was under the impression that government run health care is something that other countries have been able to do with some great success. So if people are acting like its some new wacky idea that could never work then that seems a little odd. Sounds to me like a viable option to bring to the table and perhaps something worth a try. Trying nothing at all sounds like a bad idea, but the way a lot of people out there would prefer it. If someone dislikes the current offering then thats more reasonable but I think at this point it should also come with an alternative. We can keep putting it off but I don't think much of anyone thinks its going to get better in the process.

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
The problem with this approach is that to fix the private system would require a radical decoupling of regulatory and government bodies from the health care system. Billions of dollars from health care lobbies and pharmaceuticals are pumped in to D.C. every election cycle to insure this never occurs.

Okay, fine. But at least we can discuss it. I mean, the fact that the government might never implement it is a separate issue; why can't we, ostensibly free of pharmaceutical and lobbying influence, have an honest conversation on the issues?

I'm not particularly well informed. I don't read or watch the news much (I simply observe the intermittent nonsense about which sensationalistic outcries erupt - like Obama, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the Cambridge police), but some of you purport to: why, then, do your arguments devolve into finger-pointing and yelling the same old tropes?