As opposed to now when health care is left in the hands of corporate bureaucrats, whose only job is to maximize profits.

At least government bureaucrats are there to ‘promote the general welfare’ of the people.

By the way, I live under universal health care, and it’s the doctors who make the decisions here, not bureaucrats.

Go to bed, Jay. You’ve been judged and found wanting by this entire thread.

And please continue to take care of your health, even if it means you need another hand-out. That’s what people in advanced societies do — they take care of one another.

Generally in the neighborhood of $50-60,000/annually. Oh woe, woe is them.

In Australia, because of their dual public/private system, it’s anywhere from 60-150K.

All of the quotes you provide point to a shortage of doctors, not an inability to “git mo’ money.”

Patients are waiting more than a month to see their family physicians or internists,

What is this, fucking Canada?!

Was that back when he was flipping or flopping?

Why? How so? Doctors still get paid. I think it more boils down to how much a doctor or medical supplier can charge. That shit needs to be reined in. $600 for an IV Saline bolus?
C’mon.

No, not really. He’s a Senator and he’s sick and using his federally funded, one-payer health insurance.

I wouldn’t mind a piece of that.

Forgot to mention; she’s 20 years old and has no insurance. One of those young healthy kids going without.

From the Boston Globe, December 23, 2007:

To comply with the new state insurance law, a Burger King franchisee in Boston expanded coverage from just his salaried staff to all full-timers. To control his costs, he halved the share he pays. Only three of the 27 newly eligible employees took the insurance; others say they can’t afford it.

A large human service provider toughened eligibility for coverage in response to the new law, requiring employees to work 30 hours a week to qualify. That took away the option of work-based coverage for nearly 100 low-wage workers, but made them eligible for cheaper, state-subsidized insurance. It could reduce the company’s costs while increasing the state’s.

Another employer split his firm into separate corporations, each with fewer than 11 full-time employees, according to his insurance broker. That way he does not have to offer insurance, nor pay a fine.

Boston Globe, January 24, 2008:

Spending on the state’s landmark health insurance initiative would rise by more than $400 million next year, representing one of the largest increases in the $28.2 billion state budget the governor proposed yesterday.

The biggest driver of the cost increase is projected growth in the number of people signing up for state-subsidized insurance, which now far exceeds earlier estimates.

State and federal taxpayers are expected to bear nearly all of the additional cost.

So, if the Massachusetts plan goes national, who will the federal government turn to for assistance?

Blogger “Giacomo,” of Joust The Facts, who is also a doctor, July 25, 2007:

It isn’t only the primary care doctors that are in short supply here. Specialists are hard to recruit to Massachusetts, as my group has noted, as the best candidates can make much more going elsewhere. The Mass Medical Society survey gives the gloomy details.

Seven of 14 physician specialties studied by the Society have been listed as in severe or critical shortage for at least four of the six years of studies: anesthesiology, cardiology, gastroenterology, general surgery, neurosurgery, orthopedics, and radiology. Urology was examined for the first time in the 2007 study.

The shortage is particularly stark outside of the Boston teaching hospitals. One of the problems of looking at the macroeconomics of healthcare is clearly shown. Sure, costs of health care are rising. Sure, America already spends a large chunk of GDP on health care, much more than is typical in other nations. But reimbursements for individual diagnoses and procedures, at least in Massachusetts, have been squeezed down, with roughly 90% of patients here in government programs or HMO’s, and physicians find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place. If you try to make up the loss with volume and efficiency then you end up providing less personal care in shorter visits – which patients hate – and you open yourself to mistakes, missed diagnoses and malpractice. So you watch your income fall as your overhead rises, or you can just work longer and longer hours.

My group of well-trained orthopaedic surgeons, three trained in Boston and one in Philadelphia, made a decision about 18 months ago, and we’ll be moving our practice to southern New Hampshire around the end of the year. There are several reasons for it, but suffice it to say that we finally realized that we had to move when, after five years, we were unable to recruit a surgeon to join us. We needed to find ways to improve our group’s finances in order to be able to make an attractive offer to a recruit. And the economics of medicine in New Hampshire, while not comparable to most of the country, is a significant step up from Massachusetts.

American Medical News, December 22, 2008:

Groups in Wisconsin, Massachusetts and Connecticut are the latest to say more doctors are needed to meet patient needs, with primary care physicians in especially high demand.

From your own TNR link:

There are two main drawbacks: One, while it’s still early, compliance with the individual mandate hasn’t been universal, and two, it’s been somewhat more expensive than supporters envisioned–but only because the state had more uninsured residents than it previously realized.

Neither of these problems is very worrisome, though. On the cost front, as Ezra notes, the plan was aimed solely at expanding access, not controlling costs.

Daily News Tribune, Waltham, MA, October 7, 2008:

The number of primary care practices closed to new patients is growing as the state sees shortages among those doctors and other specialities, according to a study being released today.

In its annual survey of the labor market for physicians, the Massachusetts Medical Society says patient demand is outstripping supply in primary care. Other specialities with shortages include neurology, oncology and vascular surgery.

Patients are waiting more than a month to see their family physicians or internists, and more than a third of family physicians and nearly half of internists are not accepting new patients, according to the survey.

The society expects this situation will be further stressed by the roughly 440,000 new people who have health care insurance as a result of the state’s health care law. The survey said that only 2 percent of people reported not having health care, compared to 6 percent last year.

Argue with them for a while. I’m tired of your delusions, dipshit.

J.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91427522

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/07/03/143530.aspx

And hey, Jay’s favorite, FOX:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,390961,00.html

Obviously not perfect, but nothing can be given the outrageous costs involved in medical care these days. But intelligent people might look to MA and see a program that could work even better, given time and more thought.

Again Jay, glad to know you’re healthy now. By your own admission, you needed a hand-out and you got one at a critical juncture. Just not sure why it is you have so much contempt for fellow Americans who might need similar support in the near future.

Why do you hate your fellow Americans and selfishly take from the rest of us without giving anything back?

Jay, you define the worse aspects of America, the ones we’re trying to eradicate as we take our country into the 21st century.

But thanks for playing once again.

Except to point you in the direction of seeing just how Massachusetts’ health plan came to be (here’s a hint: Romney did little more than decide to ride the tiger instead of being eaten by it; the Massachusetts legislature has been over 85% Democratic since long before Romney took office), and point you to the Boston Globe (not exactly a conservative source) and its coverage of how the plan has played out. Nearly everything I ever wrote about that I took from Globe articles. If they have to admit the problems it’s having, then you can pretty much bet that the real problems are considerably worse.

J.

Except, you know, the ONE THAT SAVED YOUR GODDAMN LIFE.

“In Massachusetts, they imposed a mandatory health care law. And it’s already hurting the state.”

Bullshit. Neutral sources please. Most reports have said the experiment has been a success, even if it rubs your ideology the wrong way. (And nice to dodge the fact that it was a Republican governor who set the stage for this system to come into effect.)

And no doubt doctors make a lot. But under our current system the CEO’s of HMO’s make even more. Cut them out of the picture and we can start talking affordable health-care for all Americans.

Please spare us any more of your stupidity Jay. Please. If we can afford a billion dollars a week in Iraq, we can afford a basic health-care system that provides some time of coverage to all working Americans.

Oh, but now a Democrat is president again, so it’s all about fiscal responsibility.

Seriously… I probably would accept that.

It reminds me of a joke I heard recently:

Why can nobody please a woman?

Because nobody has a dick made of chocolate that ejaculates money.

Ted Kennedy… sorry, I can’t do it.

The health care provided for United States Senators is an incredible premium service. It’s top-notch, and I’m sure is incredibly expensive. And that’s setting aside bureaucratic expenses — I’d be surprised if they even have co-pays for doctor’s visits and prescriptions.

So I doubt that my premiums would cover Senatorial-level coverage.

Earlier today, in another thread, I mentioned aphorisms. One of the truest ones I’ve discovered is Robert Heinlein’s TANSTAAAFL principle — There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

Even if you eliminated every bit of the bureaucratic expenses involved in health care (and I don’t think that’s possible), at the core of any national health insurance (even if it’s “just” single-payer), it eventually boils down to limiting what medical professionals make. And I have deep, philosophical, principled, and pragmatic objections to what resorts to wage controls for medical professionals.

In Massachusetts, they imposed a mandatory health care law. And it’s already hurting the state. (Er, commonwealth, if anyone’s feeling particularly anal, but “state” is easier to type, so I’m sticking to it.) They’ve had to add more money to the budget for covering people signing up for the state’s plan. They’ve developed a shortage of primary care physicians as suddenly everyone needs to find one and sign up. And doctors are packing up and leaving the state — I know of one medical practice that relocated about ten miles, from Andover, Massachusetts to Salem, New Hampshire, purely to get out of the Bay State and its onerous regulations and taxes.

So yeah, if I could get the coverage of a US senator for what I pay now, I’d most likely take it. I’d also like a chocolate dick that ejaculates money. I just don’t think either is possible.

J.

I also don’t accept that the health care would automatically be “effective” if we resort to a single payer.

Okay, lemme put it this way. If you could get the same coverage that Ted Kennedy gets at no additional cost to you – in fact saving you money that you would be paying to a private provider, would you take it?

So, how about offering assistance for new companies starting up? Give them all the tax breaks in the world, and they aren’t going to do so right now. Do you have even a basic grasp of economics? Companies don’t make an investment and open up when there’s a credit crunch, not to mention a horrible economic downturn in general. If a company opens, who’s going to buy their stuff or purchase their services when the Bush economy has left unemployment at a staggering 7%?

As for me frothing at the mouth, I’m content to let our posts speak for ourselves in this thread (and others). You’ve got some really nasty cognitive paradoxes going on in your hateful little mind. You troll a liberal blog for lord knows what reason. You admit that government assitance saved your life and then go on to argue that nobody else shold get government assitance, evar.

As someone else suggested, you really do seem to hate yourself.

It also apparently escaped your notice that I never said anthing like “wait for another company to open up and hire them.” I specifically said we should offer assistance in new companies starting up, as well as established companies to expand or relocate.

You know, it’s too bad you’re such a frothing idiot. You’d probably agree with my ideas here if they were presented by anyone else. But you’ve got that fucked-up brain of yours that takes what I say, translates it into what you think I am saying that best suits your stupid prejudices and stereotypes, and then you go off on your tangents about what I never said and never would say.

I swear, I could post a blank comment and you’d go berserk denouncing that. I only have to show up; you make up whatever you want me to say, then argue against it.

J.