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Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson Stands Vs. Health Care Reform
This is what conservative Democrats are standing for when they take insurance company money and stand in the way of health care reform.
‘[T]hey confuse their customers and dump the sick, all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors,’ former Cigna senior executive Wendell Potter said during a hearing on health insurance today before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
Potter, who has more than 20 years of experience working in public relations for insurance companies Cigna and Humana, said companies routinely drop seriously ill policyholders so they can meet ‘Wall Street’s relentless profit expectations.’
‘They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment,’ Potter said. ‘…(D)umping a small number of enrollees can have a big effect on the bottom line.’
of course they do. the only suprise is someone is admitting it.
Health decisions should be made by doctors, not insurance CEO’s.
We need single payer.
How about not for profit insurance companies?
How about we make things less complicated rather than more?
How about not for profit insurance companies?
Haha, the conservatives must be realizing that their losing ground if they’re willing to start making huge concessions like these.
I used to think that non-profit health care credit unions would be an okay stop gap but the problems are huge!
1. They have no mandate to cover the poor or those with pre-existing conditions.
2. They don’t take advantage of the size of a nationalized constituency which further bring down costs for users.
3. Health care takes a huge investment of capital, where is the funding to create non-profit health insurance companies in every state of the union? Especially right now? Are you proposing that the government creates the setup funds for this and then passes all the control over to non-profits?
4. At least in the west, and probably in some other areas, Republicans for years have been on campaigns to remove the tax exempt status of credit unions because it’s unfair to big banks. We’d have to put up with the same attacks against these health care non-profits too.
5. It creates more bureaucracy, not less. A major problem with the current US system is that we have a huge amount of paperwork and doctors and hospitals spend a huge amount of time dealing with paperwork, it’s expensive.
6. Many countries save a huge amount of money because there’s a treat first mentality. Time is never wasted wondering if a patient is covered for a particular treatment because everyone is covered. Doctors are allowed to make decisions about care, not insurance company pencil pushers.
I can probably think of a dozen more reasons but I’m getting kind of tired.
Cons and blue dogs think God will protect them from cancer
Seventy-five percent of the currently uninsured, could be insured, either by purchasing insurance, or by signing up for federal plans they are already eligible for.
If you take away the ridiculous, state-by-state mandates to supply certain coverages (i.e. chiropractic), and allow companies to write policies for multiple states, you will gain the economies of scale you are referring too.
Get rid of the punitive malpractice laws, you lower the cost of healthcare by twenty percent.
Level the playing field for physicians, and develop a single set of requirements for paperwork (actually EMR/PMR) for health insurance plans.
The idea that government paid insurance will magically let doctors make the decisions is ridiculous. All it leads to is another form of rationing, making services we consider routine now, rare. Just ask Natasha Richardson’s family. Her injury would have been completely survivable had the extremely common (in the states) CT scanner been available, or had a surgeon with any stones and rudimentary training been there to evaluate her. What you find with these government mandated insurances is that you have a card, but no one willing or available to treat you.
A few points:
1. This is further evidence of how dumb it is to make insurance the centerpiece of health care. Insurance should be used for emergency and catastrophic events — heart attacks, cancer and the like. For other interactions you should pay out of pocket. Insurance is, by its very nature, very bureaucratic and used for unforeseen events in all other cases (auto insurance, home insurance, life insurance, etc.) With less insurance we would see lower costs and more competition.
2. Insurance companies that don’t live up to their agreements should be sued.
3. To the extent insurance should be used — for catastrophic and emergency care — you should be able to buy across state lines and create a national market. This would be cost-free to the feds and would do more than anything to drive down premiums with 1,300 health insurance companies already out there.
4. It is absolutely true that in the current system that people are denied care. It is also absolutely true that in single payer (i.e. government-run) systems that people are also denied care, through waiting lists and (less commonly) denial of care. This is because resources are not unlimited and trade-offs have to be made. There is no system on earth where everyone gets all the care they want exactly when they want it.
5. Our experiences with government interventions in health care thus far have not been positive. Doctors are leaving Medicare and the program is headed for bankruptcy next decade. TennCare is a mess. The MA program implemented by Mitt Romney is already suffering from cost overruns. Expanding government control to promote cost savings is almost a contradiction in terms.
excellent points Colin.
I agree about catastrophic insurance as well. Unfortunately people in the US have been sold a bill-of-goods about health care being a right, and so are of the belief that it should be given to them.
It happens every day: Well off people with good insurance will gripe endlessly about a $20 co-pay.
I don’t think we will be able to turn that mindset around in the current political environment.
Or translated if you don’t want to read “Colin” and “usualsuspect’s” drivel:
“I GOTS MINE–FUCK THE REST OF YOUS!!!!!!”
And durablend translated:
I WANT YOURS- AND IT’S MY CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO GET IT.!!!!! Besides, we won, so STFU and bend the F over.
Where’d you get this story, Oliver? The Bureau of Really Obvious Things? Can anyone honestly say this is a surprise?
There is no system on earth where everyone gets all the care they want exactly when they want it.
What a bold and insightful statement. I’ll also go out on a limb and suggest that some systems are better than others. Some are more cost-effective than others.
Our experiences with government interventions in health care thus far have not been positive.
VA, bitch.
Health decisions should be made by doctors, not insurance CEO’s.
We need single payer.
Under a single payer, government run plan, the health decisions will be made by gov’t bureaucrats.
So how exactly does this improve anything?
Unfortunately people in the US have been sold a bill-of-goods about health care being a right,
Who are these “people” who think they can vote for stuff they want? Forget that part of the Preamble about “…promot[ing] the general welfare.”
Do you think you have a “right” to publicly financed roads? Water delivery systems? Sewage removal? Electricity from hydroelectric dams?
Do you think each citizen should build the part of a road he needs, to any set of specs, and dump his sewage at the edge of his property, or do you think the citizens of the United States are entitled to vote for projects that improve the lives of all and take advantage of economy of scale to reduce individual costs?
If 72% of the country wants something that every other industrial nation has, are the other 28% entitled to deny them?
From last night’s Gov’t HealthCare infomercial:
Gov’t care for the masses but not for the Obama family. Got it.
I’ll take the Gov’t Public Plan seriously when Obama and Congress pledge to put themselves and their families on the plan and abide by the health care decisions made by the gov’t.
In other words, never.
Under a single payer, government run plan, the health decisions will be made by gov’t bureaucrats.
My only experience with “socialized” medicine was when I was in the Army, and it seemed to work pretty well. As the largest consumer of medical supplies, the Army got the best prices. Unlike the private hospital where my wife now works, the Army hospital didn’t have ONE THIRD of the staff engaged in money handling rather than health care. The “bureaucracy” at a modern hospital is a staggering amount of the cost.
What health “decisions” are you terrified a government “bureaucrat” might make that an insurance company exec can’t make already?
Give us an example.
The public option was never intended to cover everybody. It was always intended to coexist with private plans/care, which would still be available to those who could afford it.
So basically what I’m getting is that you guys will bitch either way. If we used single-payer, you’d scream ‘SOCIALIZED MEDICINE!’ If it’s a public option among many private options, you’ll point to the fact that wealthy proponents of the plan aren’t using it as somehow damning evidence that it shouldn’t be instituted.
Which is kind of a nutty argument. I’m a proponent of all sorts of things I don’t actually use. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist.
As the largest consumer of medical supplies, the Army got the best prices.
This is often (if not always) the case with public health care.
VA, bitch, indeed.
If 72% of the country wants something that every other industrial nation has, are the other 28% entitled to deny them?
If 89 percent of Americans (both with and without insurance) are satisfied with the quality of care they receive, are the other 11% entitled to toss out the current system and replace it with a gov’t run one?
From the survey, what 80 percent of the public is dissatisfied with is the cost of care. Believing that a gov’t run system, which realistically will have no real incentive to reduce costs, will somehow provide the same quality of care at a lower costs is sheer fantasy. But if Obama and the Dems truly believe this is possible, why not demonstrate it on the current gov’t run systems (Medicare & Medicaid) first? Could it be because they know that this WON’T reduce costs and once this is shown to be a fact it will eliminate their chances of ever implementing a single payer, gov’t run system.
Just ask Natasha Richardson’s family.
She refused medical treatment. If she had wanted a CT scan, she would have gotten one.
Pull the other one.
‘…(D)umping a small number of enrollees can have a big effect on the bottom line.’
So here’s my question: does the enrollee have any recourse whatsoever? If I make my premiums religiously and I get sick and my provider dumps me, I want my fucking money back. Now. All of it. How would that help the bottom line?
Can enrollees call the cops and get someone busted for larceny? Wire fraud? Conspiracy to commit fraud?
VA, bitch.
VA hospital makes mistakes disappear: Cancer unit botches 92 of 116 treatments and covers up errors
Please note that the mistakes made by a gov’t institution were covered up with the concurrence of federal regulators.
VA, bitch.
VA, bitch, indeed.
8 years of republics in charge.
Oh and I hope you’re not too attached to your grandparents. Because Obama wants to kill them.
Hey Dennis
Get the fuck off the roads that I paid for and quit using the sewer that I paid for. Oh yeah, when your house catches fire the first thing I want to hear from you is “where’s my garden hose” and not “WAAAAA–WHERE’S THE FIRE DEPARTMENT?!?!?!?!?”
Oh right, you cons have a constitutional right to that…I forgot.
Ah, the “Bush did it” defense. Is your guy EVER gonna take responsibility for ANYTHING? Obama ran on the issue. So he rightly gets the blame when nothing has yet been done about it.
duros said: 8 years of republics in charge.
SHHH–that’s Obama’s fault too…in between that steamy affair that he’s (and the “leftist media”) been covering up.
The “bureaucracy” at a modern hospital is a staggering amount of the cost.
And what do you think the majority of that hospital bureaucracy is focused on? I’ll give you a hint: Medicare & Medicaid documentation and billing. And that’s going to get better how under a “public” plan?
What health “decisions” are you terrified a government “bureaucrat” might make that an insurance company exec can’t make already? Give us an example.
How about disallowing screening, tests or treatments because they are only useful for statistically small segments of the poulation? Sucks for you if you or one of your loved ones happen to be one of them. How about disallowing treatment for chronic conditions or cancer based on the cost? How about deciding that above a certain age, certain life-saving care is no longer justified based on cost or effectiveness?
Show me cites where insurance companies are routinely doing this.
And don’t forget that while insurance companies can refuse to pay for the treatment they can’t stop you from getting it (and paying for it) yourself. Under a gov’t plan, you bet they can and will do just that. Don’t believe me? Go to the UK’s NHS and try to get a woman a pap smear when she’s under 25. Not only won’t they give it to her, all labs will refuse to do the test for her even if she has the money to pay for it herself.
Get the fuck off the roads that I paid for and quit using the sewer that I paid for.
Dura, since my wife and I are in the “over 250K a year” taxpayer category, I’m confident that we paid far more taxes for that road and sewer than you did.
Get the hell out of my way and get to the back of the line, bitch.
Can enrollees call the cops and get someone busted for larceny? Wire fraud? Conspiracy to commit fraud?
You can at least file a lawsuit and try. Same goes with a doc, clinic or hospital that botches treatment.
With a gov’t run public plan? Good luck. Have you ever heard the phrase “sovereign immunity”?
“Dump” The Sick
Are you talking about that awesome program that Michelle Obama spearheaded during her time at the University of Chicago?
SaveFarris: Oh and I hope you’re not too attached to your grandparents. Because Obama wants to kill them.
Yes, that’s the level of intellect we’re dealing with, folks.
CORPORATE BUREAUCRATS DICTATE YOUR HEALTHCARE under the current system unless you are insanely wealthy.
This is fine with the insanely wealthy, their sycophants, and the corporate bureaucrats that are looting the system.
Look at the right wing defenders: The “usual Republican suspect” wants to increase the unaccountability of the corporate bureaucrats and even destroy basic consumer protections even while absurdly asserting that the people that can’t afford the exorbitant corporate-medical-insurance costs should just magically be able to buy it, without noting that this is an article that points out that even the those WITH insurance get dumped as soon as they are sick.
As usual, the “usual ‘Republican’ suspect” just flat out lies, making up numbers and inventing falsehoods.
Con artist and corporatist “Colin” is more slick, but just as deceptive. His solution for basic medical care is “you should pay out of pocket.”
So the question is, is corporatist “Colin” insanely wealthy, one of the insanely wealthy’s sycophants, or one of the corporatist bureaucrats that are looting the system?
The last time I went to the emergency room for a simple half-dozen stitches the corporate-hospital handed me an obscene $1,200 bill.
$1,200 for a half-dozen stitches done by a foreign intern.
When I was younger there was no “out of pocket” magic $1,200.
And what’s a needle and thread cost a student learning to do stitches these days?
And isn’t it cute that the “usual ‘Republican’ suspect” wants to get rid of consumer protection laws while corporatist “Colin” offhandedly suggests that “Insurance companies that don’t live up to their agreements should be sued.”
How easy that sounds. When you are sick. And immediately need healthcare. And your giant, eternal corporate-medical-insurance company can just send an army of lawyers to drag out the court cases until you go away or are dead.
But con artist “Colin” isn’t done, nope, he’s got to throw in a few bald faced lies including the classic right wing canard suggesting gubmint can’t control costs. Than put all the numbers on the Internet and let the American Citizenry help control the costs.
You know who can’t control costs? A corporate-hospital that sticks someone with a $1,200 bill for a needle, some thread, and the time of a foreign intern learning how to tie stitches.
Corporate looters and their sycophants are the problem.
And in this case, government really is the solution.
The complaint by the right is the “government” might be controlled by the American Citizenry.
To right wingers, government is supposed to be controlled by the corporations.
Which goes back to The Root of the Problem: Corporate Looters and Their Sycophants.
VA, bitch
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/health/21radiation.html?ref=health
SaveFarris: Oh and I hope you’re not too attached to your grandparents. Because Obama wants to kill them.
Yes, that’s the level of intellect we’re dealing with, folks.
He’s right Farris. You should have more properly phrased it as “Obama wants to allow them to die because it will be more cost-effective”. I thought Rethuglikkkans were supposed to be the heartless ones?
But in fairness to Obama, he’s just following Tom Daschle’s lead.
My only experience with “socialized” medicine was when I was in the Army, and it seemed to work pretty well. As the largest consumer of medical supplies, the Army got the best prices. Unlike the private hospital where my wife now works, the Army hospital didn’t have ONE THIRD of the staff engaged in money handling rather than health care. The “bureaucracy” at a modern hospital is a staggering amount of the cost.
My father served as a dentist in the US Army for 20+ years and has first hand experience with this form of socialized medicine. He says it is the very reason that we shouldn’t implement it in the rest of the country.
I will also note that the clinic he commanded at one assignment was named the best clinic of its size for Western Europe, so this isn’t a case of him f***ing up and then trying to blame the system.
Under a single payer, government run plan, the health decisions will be made by gov’t bureaucrats.
i.e., “bureaucrats” who are not influenced by shareholders salary bonuses -problem being?
“Dura, since my wife and I are in the “over 250K a year” taxpayer category, I’m confident that we paid far more taxes for that road and sewer than you did.”
36% marginal rate to 36 cents of your tax obligation = wah.
The last time I went to the emergency room for a simple half-dozen stitches the corporate-hospital handed me an obscene $1,200 bill.
$1,200 for a half-dozen stitches done by a foreign intern.
You do realize that ERs provide the most expensive care of all, don’t you? That their primary mission is to provide life-saving care? Which is often quite expensive. If it’s just some stitches you needed, why didn’t you find an urgent care clinic to have a doctor or a Physician’s assistant sew that up for you instead? It would have cost you a hell of a lot less and more importantly, not wasted the ER’s expensive and specialized resources.
If all you need is a simple fence built, but you decide to go to an engineering firm that specializes in large and complex structures, don’t bitch when you’re handed an expensive bill for their services.
And why the angst over a “foreign” intern? Are you afraid of those people who look different from you? If a “foreign” doctor is treating patients in a US hospital, he or she either has a US medical license or he is treating people under the direct supervision of someone who does.
As usual, the “usual ‘Republican’ suspect” just flat out lies, making up numbers and inventing falsehoods.
Then you will no doubt be able to quickly provide examples and then provide cites proving these “lies”.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that making ridiculous statements like “Corporate looters and their sycophants” and then bolding BOLDING them are a substitute for facts or rational thought.
i.e., “bureaucrats” who are not influenced by shareholders salary bonuses -problem being?
Nope, they’re influenced by lobbyists and whichever party happens to be in power at the moment.
What could go wrong?!?
i.e., “bureaucrats” who are not influenced by shareholders salary bonuses -problem being?
Bureacrats who are influenced by politics and are completely immune from lawsuits for their decisions.
Example
If the insurance company declines to pay, you still have the option to find another insurance plan or pay yourself. However, if a government bureaucrat decides you don’t need it, you are SOL.
If the insurance company declines to pay, you still have the option to find another insurance plan or pay yourself. However, if a government bureaucrat decides you don’t need it, you are SOL.
Wait, what? If the government bureaucrat decides you don’t need it then you can’t buy the test at any price from any source?
Dave in SoCal: So this is a good idea
when you suggest it, but not when Michelle Obama does?
SHHH–that’s Obama’s fault too…in between that steamy affair that he’s (and the “leftist media”) been covering up.
Oh, right. That affair with the nice lady at Vital Records in Hawaii.
Sort of OT, but Farrah has died.
My father served as a dentist in the US Army for 20+ years and has first hand experience with this form of socialized medicine. He says it is the very reason that we shouldn’t implement it in the rest of the country.
Big whup! My daddy served in the US Army and he thinks the VA R0XX0rs teh B0XX0rs. And my daddy could totally beat up your daddy. So there.
You pseudo-libertarian Republicans (“McArdles” for short) are a collective piece of work.
However, if a government bureaucrat decides you don’t need it, you are SOL.
Only in the case of the evil bureaucrat scenario, the public can put him out of a job. Try doing that with a private insurer.
Public accountability -still a foreign concept to some.
Say PD,
Would you like to expand on how the public can put a bureaucrat out of a job?
Attn: Technical staff
I have no idea why this site is now showing me as having a website. I don’t.
Of course, military health care benefits from serving a population that is younger than the population as a whole. They’re also, generally, in better shape and exercise more than the population at large. Add in that most of the people served by military health care providers are required to get preventive care and are paid by their employer while at dr. appointments and the like.
Here in the Greatest Country on Earth we have tens of millions of uninsured, prices of drugs and medical services going hiroshima, people losing their coverage for chronic conditions, unable to buy insurance for prior conditions, losing their coverage when they lose jobs, going bankrupt and losing their homes because of medical expenses, businesses going bankrupt because of the rising costs of insuring their employees, patient health being held hostage to corporate profiteering etc., etc.
Nearly every other country avoids many if not all of those problems with government-run health programs, none of which are perfect, but many of which provide universal coverage, vastly reduced patient costs, reduced burdens on employers, reduced bureaucracy for health-care professionals, comparable access to services, comparable if not superior freedom of choice in doctors and portability of access, and equal or better health outcomes.
I still have not heard from any of our conservative friends here why they think it is so completely impossible for us to do something similar here. Anybody got an explanation?
“Would you like to expand on how the public can put a bureaucrat out of a job?”
You mean if a private industry is shifted to the gubnit’ sector, funded by tax dollars- Therefore accountable to the taxpayers? Never contact your representative or congress member before- Who you pay? Ever see a voting booth?
Have I struck brain yet?
We’re 37!
We’re 37!
We’re 37!
Right behind Morocco!
W00T!!!
We’re 37!
And every country ahead of us in those WHO rankings has at least a public option, if not single-payer.
But then again, the WHO isn’t named Fox News, the WSJ or John Zeigler, so cons are unlikely to care.
I still have not heard from any of our conservative friends here why they think it is so completely impossible for us to do something similar here. Anybody got an explanation?
Maybe because, as I said before, every government-run initiative we have had thus far has been a mess.
Medicare
Doctors hate it and are turning away patients:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/business/retirementspecial/02health.html
It’s headed for bankruptcy:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/04/26/midday1/
Meanwhile TennCare has been beset by problems, with Gov. Bredesen promising in 2003 to fix a program that had only been around since 1994. RomneyCare is also proving more expensive than advertised in MA with tens of millions in cost overruns even though it has only been around a few years.
Meanwhile problems at the VA have already been detailed elsewhere in the comments while we can all remember the scandal at Walter Reed where wounded vets were subject to terrible care.
It starts to suggest a pattern. I have no idea why we would want to proceed further down this path.
We’re 37!
We’re 37!
We’re 37!
I find this statistic trotted out constantly by the left, it must be part of the playbook or something. In any case you may want to give this a read:
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_12667987
I’ve contacted my congressperson NUMEROUS times about the wastes of oxygen currently working for the DMV. Unfortunatly, they’re in a union, so they can’t be fired unless they murder someone on the clock, and even then they get to stay on 90 days pending a board review.
Nearly every other country avoids many if not all of those problems with government-run health programs
None of those other countries…
* are the policeman of the world and contribute next to nothing when it comes to defense spending.
* don’t spend nearly as much as we do on R&D.
* don’t have the population we do. The largest developed country with a nationalized system is Japan who A) have 1/3 the population we do B) just “lost” a decade of economic growth and C) are still having problems paying for it.
Colin, SaveFarris, thanks for trying, but none of your answers are satisfying.
Maybe because, as I said before, every government-run initiative we have had thus far has been a mess.
Yet as the success in other countries shows, it is not the fact that they are government-run that makes them a mess (assuming for the moment that they are as bad a mess as you say and more of a mess than the private health care system in this country). The question is why can’t we run as good a government program as other countries? Are Americans stupider? Lazier? Or is that it we have too many conservatives constantly trying to drown their government in the bathtub?
* are the policeman of the world and contribute next to nothing when it comes to defense spending.
* don’t spend nearly as much as we do on R&D.
Leave out of it that fact that the R&D difference is a pretty miniscule slice of the pie to begin with, particularly in comparison to the per-capita expenditures in countries like FR, DE and UK — Both of these items are irrelevant because they represent things we already pay for in addition to spending more on providing healthcare. We could reduce our spending in both those areas to zero and we’d still be spending more and getting, in many respects, less for it.
* don’t have the population we do.
Irrelevant. We have more people than Japan, but we also have more money per person – our per-capita GDP is higher than Japan and higher than a lot of countries, including FR and UK, with working government healthcare systems.
In any case you may want to give this a read:
That’s an opinion. I have mine. WHO has theirs.
Tell me again how it isn’t racketeering?
The writer who wrote the article the reporter Colin linked to is discussing the methodology which WHO uses to achieve their ratings, and flaws in the reporting on the ratings. The original paper can be found here:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/bp/bp101.pdf
BLUF: The rating of the United States in the WHO is unusually impacted by the WHO’s choice of weighting the value which the WHO tracks. The USA is “punished” in the WHO ratings for not having a national health care system, despite the actual results of health care in the US being among the best.
Wow, I was right, the cons are freaking out. And they’re right to: every other industrial nation has some sort of government health care, and all of them are magnitudes more popular than the current US system is. Cons might be realizing that if the government system is implemented then they won’t be able to run on their “government is the enemy” schtick anymore. They won’t be able to do what Bush did for eight years, where he proved that government doesn’t work (when run by Republicans who want to tear it apart). People will notice immediately if you start fucking with their health care and you’ll be voted out of office.
72% of Americans want to give Obama’s option a try, that’s a considerable overlap with the 89% (who are lucky enough to have insurance) who are satisfied with their insurance.
No con has explained how the current system can be adjusted to cover pre-existing conditions. No con has explained how the current system can be fixed so that those who are cured of cancer don’t have their premiums raised to the point of effective cancellation. The current system is broken, the American people know it, the more cons fight changing the current broken system the longer Americans will want nothing to do with them.
when you suggest it, but not when Michelle Obama does?
I think directing non-life threating cases (which is a lot, if not most, of the patient load at most ERs) to less costly “urgent care clinic” type settings is a good thing.
As far as Michelle Obama, I was just pointing out that she was one of those same greedy “corporate looters” (sorry, I mean Corporate Looters!!!) guilty of “dumping the sick” that Oliver and others here are wagging their fingers at. And she didn’t just participate in the program at the Univ of Chicago, she initiated it.
Okay, we just can’t have nice things, that’s all. We will just continue to lag behind the rest of the industrialized world and wonder why we aren’t a superpower anymore. Fine. We can just continue to have our health care system run by criminals, suits, bureaucrats and mob bosses.
Our forefathers would be so proud.
I think directing non-life threating cases (which is a lot, if not most, of the patient load at most ERs) to less costly “urgent care clinic” type settings is a good thing.
Right. The “urgent care clinic” that is only open until 7:00 and is across town. The one that is run by a for-profit corp and prefers cash.
Good plan.
Why do you think there are so many non-life threatening cases in the ER? Because people who go there HAVE to be treated, maybe?
As far as Michelle Obama, I was just pointing out that she was one of those same greedy “corporate looters” (sorry, I mean Corporate Looters!!!) guilty of “dumping the sick” that Oliver and others here are wagging their fingers at.
Her “patient dumping” scheme consisted of exactly the same thing you recommended. Making sure people get the treatment they need at reasonable cost to the patient and the provider is exactly the opposite of patient dumping.
Duros,
In the instance of Ms. Obama and the Urban Health Initiative, the University of Chicago Health Center found they were, indeed, seeing a lot of non-urgent patients in the emergency room while clinics in the same neighborhood were underused.
Ms. Obama developed a program to improve the situation for patients and providers. Dave in SoCal (and other of Ms. Malkin’s flying monkeys) like to point at this program and holler “Patient dumping!” as if it’s the same thing as canceling someone’s health insurance.
that’s a considerable overlap with the 89% (who are lucky enough to have insurance) who are satisfied with their insurance.
As I noted above, that 89% are people both with and without insurance.
The current system is broken, the American people know it, the more cons fight changing the current broken system the longer Americans will want nothing to do with them.
Who said conservatives are fighting to save the current system? I think everyone can agree the systems needs to be reformed. We just think the Democrat’s solution to replacing a broken system with a gov’t administered and subsidized plan based in part on existing and equally broken systems (Medicare, Medicaid, VA, etc.) is pretty stupid and not much of a solution at all.
As I said before, let’s try incorporating all those cost saving measures that Obama is continually promising (with no details or proof to back him up) into Medicare & Medicaid and see whether or not they work.
Yet as the success in other countries shows, it is not the fact that they are government-run that makes them a mess (assuming for the moment that they are as bad a mess as you say and more of a mess than the private health care system in this country). The question is why can’t we run as good a government program as other countries? Are Americans stupider? Lazier? Or is that it we have too many conservatives constantly trying to drown their government in the bathtub?
Tell you what, you reform all the government-run programs here and make them models of efficiency and then we can talk about applying that model to the rest of health care.
But I don’t really get the logic where the Feds screw up Medicare and can’t manage it so as a prize we award them the rest of the health care industry.
We just think the Democrat’s solution to replacing a broken system with a gov’t administered and subsidized……yadda, yadda, yadda.
So what’ the Republican’s plan?
*crickets*
That’s an opinion. I have mine. WHO has theirs.
Which is fine, as long as you acknowledge the WHO report as such. But please stop trotting out this WHO study as some kind of completely objective rating when by design it awards higher rankings to those that have government-run programs.
Ms. Obama developed a program to improve the situation for patients and providers.
Quaker, are you suggesting that Dave is being less thtn honest?
Q’uell Suprise!
Tell you what, you reform all the government-run programs here and make them models of efficiency and then we can talk about applying that model to the rest of health care.
So we have to overhaul the entire engine before we change the flat tire?
Talk about inefficient.
Colin and Dave in SoCal either have access to documents I haven’t seen or they’re clairvoyant.
Just where are you guys getting stuff like,”replacing a broken system with a gov’t administered and subsidized plan” and “award them the rest of the health care industry”?
So far, the only proposal I’ve heard is a plan to allow some folks to buy health insurance from the government.
Or we could stop wasting time and start fixing the problem.
Did you even read that Kaiser Family report you linked to? It’s incredibly damning of the US health care system. You picked the one point of data that was slightly supportive of your position and milked it. Even then I think it’s a misinterpreted statistic: 89% are satisfied with the quality of the care they receive when they receive care.
Seriously, read the report Dave in SoCal linked to: http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/upload/7572.pdf
It completely ruins half the arguments made in this thread. And the statistics on Universal Health Care are enlightening seeing as the report was compiled before the recent Democratic gains, the recession or before Obama started laying out an argument in favor of it to the American people so I bet the statistics in it would have changed considerably. Thanks Dave in SoCal!
I know that by now this jaw-droppingly inane comment from Dave in SoCal (does he make any other kind?) may have scrolled by but I felt it bore addressing…
Dave, in all seriousness, can you please address how you imagine this happening? I’d really like to visit the planet you live on. Because where I live, the Earth, your scenario would play out like this:
Person X works for company Y, which provides medical insurance Z. Company Y pays X’s insurance premiums by deductions from X’s salary over the course of X’s years long tenure with Y.
Suddenly late in middle age X discovers he needs an expensive cancer treatment. Insurer Z has agents look over X’s life history going back before X joined Company Y, and discovers that X didn’t mention going to a clinic for a bad hangnail this one time when he signed his insurance papers at Y. Z decides it’s not going to pay for X’s treatment because of this.
Now, what does X do? You say X should “find another plan”? Well (a), company Y doesn’t offer any other plans. It’s insurer Z or nothing. Even if X tried to buy some other insurance independently on the open market (nevermind that he’s now foregoing any benefit from the thousands of $$ in premiums he has wasted over the years) – any new insurance still wouldn’t pay for his cancer treatment because it would then be a “pre existing condition”. Oh, of course he could “pay himself”… of course since the cost of said treatment is more than the value of his home, X is now bankrupt, has no retirement or savings for his kids’ college, and is homeless.
Tell me what I have wrong here… I have never heard of an outcome where someone in X’s case (which, according to Congressional testimony given this week, is altogether common) would result in any ability to just “find a new plan” and everybody live happily ever after. You appear to have a fantasy scenario all worked out. Enlighten us.
In any case you may want to give this a read:
How nice of you to select something from my own hometown newspaper. I should tell you that I have been reading Mr. Carroll’s work for many years and have learned from hard experience not to take anything that appears beneath his name at face value.
Shall I rehearse all of the logical fallacies and distortions or would you rather continue to assure yourself that you have taught us lefties a lesson?
Who said conservatives are fighting to save the current system?
Anyone who notices that conservatives regularly describe any proposed change as “a gov’t administered and subsidized plan”.
Tell you what, you reform all the government-run programs here and make them models of efficiency and then we can talk about applying that model to the rest of health care.
Tell you what, you don’t get to decide what we do. Three quarters of Americans are in favor of President Obama’s plan.
We had 8 years where no significant health care form was enacted and the wheels came off. Now we have a chance to try some rather moderate steps to see if we can get a better system. But you’d rather try nothing and not solve any of the major issues with the system listed in this thread.
Seriously no one came up with an answer to my questions: Pre-existing conditions coverage? Raising premiums on sick or recently cured patients? These are two of the many many major issues that a private insurance based system can’t resolve and that Obama’s plan solves the moment it is instituted.
Bah!
Who said conservatives are fighting to save the current system?
Anyone who notices that conservatives regularly describe any proposed change as “a gov’t administered and subsidized plan”.
Tell me what I have wrong here… You appear to have a fantasy scenario all worked out. Enlighten us.
Um….er… because shut up, that’s why!
So we have to overhaul the entire engine before we change the flat tire?
No, conservatives are saying we don’t have to buy Ford & GM in order to fix the tire.
Which is fine, as long as you acknowledge the WHO report as such. But please stop trotting out this WHO study as some kind of completely objective rating when by design it awards higher rankings to those that have government-run programs.
No it does not. It rewards programs for “financial fairness” without reference to how that fairness is achieved. Your assumption that only a government-run program can provide financial fairness is a very interesting one – and quite revealing.
Earlier Dave in SoCal, I believe, posted a link to that Cato institute article calling into question the WHO rankings. Like most everything that Cato puts out it has an strong anti-government bias, but the authors do have a valid point or two to make. With such a complex subject as “health care”, no ranking system is infallible. There are just too many factors and too many variables that different people doing the rankings will attach different weight to.
What the authors fail to do, however, is offer any alternative ranking system by which the US ranks ahead of other developed countries. One suspects that if they had been able to do so using a ranking system that was not even more slanted and questionable than the WHO’s, they would have done so. They mention a few areas in which the US has been shown to do well, but a few areas do not an entire health system make.
So when Dave says that the article demonstrates
the actual results of health care in the US being among the best.
He is not describing the article accurately.
And even if it did show the US as “among the best” in some sense, is “among the best” good enough for you all? Not for me. For the amount we pay in excess of other countries we should be so far ahead that the rest of the world would be clamoring to be like us.
Instead, in the realm of health care, they’re pointing at us and snickering.
We can just continue to have our health care system run by criminals, suits, bureaucrats and mob bosses.
Our forefathers would be so proud.
Or we can turn it over to the government and have it instead run by criminals, suits, bureaucrats and mob bosses. Good plan.
Right. The “urgent care clinic” that is only open until 7:00 and is across town. The one that is run by a for-profit corp and prefers cash.
Hey, I’m all for putting serious federal money into supporting 24 hour urgent care clinics that take insurance, Medicare and Medicaid but cost far far less than ERs.
Why do you think there are so many non-life threatening cases in the ER? Because people who go there HAVE to be treated, maybe?
Because they know they are not likely to be turned away. And because people without private insurance have no incentives (like an additional $50 or $75 copay for ER visits) to go anywhere else for treatment, even if it’s clearly not an emergency (i.e. Patient: “I’ve been been coughing for two days now” ER Doc: “You have a cold”).
Of course, military health care benefits from serving a population that is younger than the population as a whole. They’re also, generally, in better shape and exercise more than the population at large.
Army hospitals also serve dependents, children and wives who are not selected for their fitness, and older NCOs in terrible physical shape.
One of the MAJOR “illnesses” I saw in the Army was the effect of alcohol abuse by the “lifers” who spent four or five hours every night in the NCO club. My impression of the Army in the ’60s was that a much higher percentage of the career military was alcoholic than the general population, because it was cheap and like cigarette smoking, it was encouraged. Generally though the tobacco induced disease killed them after they retired, while the alcoholism required treatment during their enlistment.
Ms. Obama developed a program to improve the situation for patients and providers. Dave in SoCal (and other of Ms. Malkin’s flying monkeys) like to point at this program and holler “Patient dumping!” as if it’s the same thing as canceling someone’s health insurance.
Gee I can almost picture the halo over Mrs. Obama’s head while simultaneously imagining the evil insurance company executives rubbing their hands together and chortling “Excellent”.
Sorry to burst your fantasy, but to be factual Mrs. Obama developed a program to improve the situation for the hospital, not for the provider and not for the patient.
Here are some select excerpts from the story I linked:
Let’s get a look at the program in action, shall we?
University of Chicago ER sends kid mauled by pit bull home
Clearly, forcing this woman and her son into an hour long bus ride to another hospital was in the best interests of the patient, wasn’t it?
So Quaker, O noble hair-splitter, maybe you can explain to us why one is “patient dumping” and the other is not. Because the facts and common sense seem to state otherwise.
No, conservatives are saying we don’t have to buy Ford & GM in order to fix the tire.
Maybe not, but it’s going to take more than a wad of chewing gum.
If the reporting on non-US health care systems focused on their wait-times, delays-in-treatment, denial-of-care, or what the true cost will be to people’s wallers instead of the fact they’re “free” they’d probably be a bit less popular.
I’m yet to see anyone who supports a national health care system explain how the government will be able to deliver the same, let alone improved, results for anyone without a massive increase in taxes or signifigant reductions in patient care. You can only squeeze so much efficiency and money out of improved automation of records.
Quite frankly I call bullshit on the assumption that US health care lags behind the rest of the industrialized world in any measure which actually tracks the effects of health care. I’m willing to bet that most of the differences we’ve seen in all of the various “world rankings” that have been thrown about here are far more related to differences in the demographics in the US as well as differences in our culture. These are not things which a health care system will be able to affect.
I deeply object to the government increasing its involvement in its citizens’ lives based on faulty assumptions about what a national health care will be able to deliver. Given that the government health care options we already have are massivly inefficient, I also object to the assumption that, because we allow the government to handle even more people they will be more efficient. Given the anti-market forces involved in health care in the US in the form of restricting enrollment at medical schools, restricting people who can practice medicine to those who complete more than half a decade of expensive training, and requiring that people be insured for services they may not use, or have no desire to use, I find it hilarious that folks like Michael Over There think the health care system in the US is a “failure” because the market doesn’t work. What we have in the US is no more a free market for health care than the national systems so many fantasize about.
Michael Over There, you wanted a “con’s” suggestion for making health care more accessible for the sick and risky? Here’s one: Lower the cost of health care by expanding those who can provide it. There is no reason a simple procedure like an appendectomy or to correct a sports hernia needs to be performed by a surgeon with their decade plus of school and residency. Allow more people to practice medicine by providing the ability for people to get into the field, but have them limited to what they can do. This will allow more people to obtain treatment for routine procedures, while also reducing costs through increased competition. This will also have the side benefit in that, the people who specialize in these procedures will become more and more proficient which will make their treatment better. The reduced costs will allow insurers to afford to take on riskier customers.
Also, remove the Federal and State requirements for what “insurance” must cover. Allow people to purchase insurance for what they want. For example, currently a young, healthy person cannot simply purchase an insurance policy which will only cover a catastrophic event (say falling off a roof and breaking their back or being diagnosed with some disease). If that person wants health care they need to enroll in a plan which will provide them with services they don’t plan to use, and may not ever need. Allowing people to purchase insurance which suits their needs will allow the poor ,who everyone is so worried about, to mitigate the risks of a catastrophic illness or injury.
Ha! Dave in SoCal shares another story on why we need to get rid of insurance and institute a universal health care system! Thanks Dave in SoCal!
Instead, in the realm of health care, they’re pointing at us and snickering.
Let’s see if they’re still snickering when the US medical care system is no longer the primary subsidizer for expensive drug R&D and Big Pharma can no longer go along with the Rx cost caps that Canada and Europe are so proud of. They don’t like to acknowledge this fact because it would show that the ONLY reason they can get away with it and the only reason that Pharma companies have an incentive to develop new drugs and therapies is because the US generally still pays premium prices for meds.
No, conservatives are saying we don’t have to buy Ford & GM in order to fix the tire.
But you already do.
SFC B, I hope you keep arguing against universal health care. There is no one that I’d rather have as the poster boy for the current system.
Ha! Dave in SoCal shares another story on why we need to get rid of insurance and institute a universal health care system! Thanks Dave in SoCal!
I guess you’re a little slow, but the example I pointed to is an example of a hospital, not an insurance company, restricting access and care in the name of cost savings. Who do you think will be providing care under a gov’t run system? Yes, that’s right. The same hospitals.
I’m yet to see anyone who supports a national health care system explain how the government will be able to deliver the same, let alone improved, results for anyone without a massive increase in taxes or significant reductions in patient care. You can only squeeze so much efficiency and money out of improved automation of records.
The saying in medical circles on health care is “Quality, Accessible and Affordable. Pick Any Two”.
Sorry, you can’t have all three. No matter how many times you try to add 2+2 together it is never going to equal 7.
No, conservatives are saying we don’t have to buy Ford & GM in order to fix the tire.
But you already do.
And riding on the rim isn’t gonna do you much good either.
True, but the spouses of young servicemembers tend to be young also, so the military healthcare system is able to avoid the very expensive and resource-consuming senior age group. Even the older, broken down servicemembers are still more likely to be in better health than the population at large for their age group simply because those who are too out-of-shape are separated from the service, and those who are too unhealthy are medically retired and shunted off to the VA.
The population which the military health care system supports is simply too unique for its results to be applied to an attempt to provide health care to the civilian world.
Although I’m sure some investment capital firm would be more than happy to support starting up a health care system which only serves young, healthy, physically fit people who are pre-screened before enrolling and can be denied enrollment for pre-existing conditions. And then the enrollees can be compelled by law to receive preventive care. Give it the right pricing and it sounds like a way to almost print money.
Dave in So Cal, dude, close the italics.
It’s almost cute the way the naive believe Obama’s bullshit about his plans for healthcare. Like watching little kids talk about Santa Claus. A shame it has to have such serious consequences for the rest of us if the gullible get thier way.
Which is fine, as long as you acknowledge the WHO report as such.
Fine.
We’re 23rd!
We’re 23rd!
There. Feel better?
(like an additional $50 or $75 copay for ER visits)
I wish. It’s $100 cash up front where I live.
I hope you keep arguing for it because, frankly, your support for it is very similar to Alec Baldwin’s rant against corporations at the end of Team America.
And to go along with SFC B’s suggestions:
As I noted above, expand availability of 24 hour urgent care clinics for routine and non-emergency treatment. Push for insurance portability (no longer tied to a specific employer. Allow insurance companies to pool policies across state lines in order to make the pool larger and bring premiums down. In addition to the ‘catastrophe only’ policy, how about giving people more flexibility and control in selecting exactly what their policy will, and more importantly, will NOT cover, which would then directly impact the premium cost. Make people put at least the same effort into controlling their health care as they do now for “what car to buy?” or “where to vacation?”.
But according to Democrats, it’s all or nothing. Either you want gov’t run universal health care or you want to sit by and do nothing at all. That’s utter bullshit, even when Obama says it.
Exhibit A: SFC B, I hope you keep arguing against universal health care. There is no one that I’d rather have as the poster boy for the current system.
Dave in So Cal, dude, close the italics.
I know. My goof.
Or we can turn it over to the government and have it instead run by criminals, suits, bureaucrats and mob bosses. Good plan.
Or we can do nothing, which seems to be what you and the republic party are advocating.
Michael Over There, you wanted a “con’s” suggestion for making health care more accessible for the sick and risky?
Psst. Your cards are showing.
So Quaker, O noble hair-splitter, maybe you can explain to us why one is “patient dumping” and the other is not. Because the facts and common sense seem to state otherwise.
Facts and common-sense? You bring me one decision made by one on-call doctor (copied directly from Ms. Malkin’s site). Calling the entire program patient dumping based on one case is like calling Babe Ruth a stiff for one strikeout.
You have yet to show why it’s a bad thing for the University of Chicago program to practice what you preach as necessary.
the example I pointed to is an example of a hospital, not an insurance company, restricting access and care in the name of cost savings. Who do you think will be providing care under a gov’t run system? Yes, that’s right. The same hospitals.
The hospital wants to get paid. By the insurance company. Under a gov’t run system (or more accurately, a gov’t FUNDED system) their payment is guaranteed.
Kind of like Section 8 housing. As a landlord you’d be stupid to refuse it. It’s guaranteed rent, and on time.
I hope you keep arguing for it because, frankly, your support for it is very similar to Alec Baldwin’s rant against corporations at the end of Team America.
Zing! The ol’ no, you are!
Did you skip right over the lede to that story you linked, Dave?
And that makes her a Socialist.
the example I pointed to is an example of a hospital, not an insurance company
A hospital refusing care because of lack of insurance! In the country I recently lived in your example never, never happens because everyone gets emergency treatment. Doctors never sit around in emergency situations wondering if a patient has a certain level of coverage or not. They have some of the best emergency treatment in the world, they have incredibly high approval ratings for our medical system, everyone gets coverage for pre-existing conditions, and there is still a place for private health care.
That also happens here. The young boy in this case was treated in the ER.
Doctors in the US don’t sit around in emergency situations wondering what insurance will cover also. If the ER doctor decides that a treatment is necessary to save an emergency patient’s life, they will get that treatment and the insurance will pay. All that will prevent that would be if the treatment isn’t coded properly on the paperwork. And even then it will be paid after corrected. For patients without any insurance, and who cannot afford the treatment, you’d be surprised how much you can get taken off a bill or have the price reduced if you ask for it from the right folks. Of course this all requires people to be self-sufficient which is a condition our government is rapidly trying to reduce.
Army hospitals also serve dependents, children and wives who are not selected for their fitness, and older NCOs in terrible physical shape.
Repack
That is not true. Most of the military medical facilities now send people out into town to get care. The military is underfunding medical care wherever possible to fight wars.
Similiarly the VA. For any complex or serious case, they send them out to the civilian hospitals
This is what you all miss. The private health system in the US is a pop-off valve for sick people everywhere. The military, VA and foreign nationals use it when they have really sick or complicated people. You can’t easily measure the effect of this care. The canadians and europeans come here in droves, both to get care and to get training. Why is that, if this system sucks so badly? It is cheap to run a program that takes care of the “healthiest” of the sick, and then dump the tough cases. This is exactly what the military, VA and most of the socialised medicine systems do. Well, in the case of the socialised medicine systems, only the people that can afford to leave the country get the care…
And whatever knuckle-head said that Natasha Richardson “refused treament or she would have had a CT”…is completely making things up. There was no scanner where she was. If you let a young patient with a traumatic, expanding epidural hematoma “refuse treatment” you are a worthless physician.
That also happens here. The young boy in this case was treated in the ER.
Did you even read the article?
Instead of rushing Dontae into surgery, however, Angela Adams said, the hospital’s staff began pressing her about insurance.
She ended up having to take an hourlong bus ride with the bleeding boy to another hospital because the ER wouldn’t give him stitches to reattach his lip after they pressured her about health insurance. Both of you have claimed that the article proves your point when it shows the opposite!
Whether the young man was treated in the hospital emergency room is not in dispute. He was.
There is disagreement over whether the correct treatment was prescribed. Even in hindsight, the U of C medical center insists they made the right call. Your opinion may differ.
Here are some select excerpts from the story I linked:
Yes. Those are quite “select.”
Quite frankly I call bullshit on the assumption that US health care lags behind the rest of the industrialized world in any measure which actually tracks the effects of health care.
Perhaps, but the US certainly lags behind the rest of the industrialized world in: cost of health care, universality of coverage, number of people going bankrupt because of healthcare, etc. etc.
I’m willing to bet that most of the differences we’ve seen in all of the various “world rankings” that have been thrown about here are far more related to differences in the demographics in the US as well as differences in our culture. These are not things which a health care system will be able to affect.
You’ll have to be more specific than that. This isn’t the “we eat more cheeseburgers” defense is it?
The saying in medical circles on health care is “Quality, Accessible and Affordable. Pick Any Two”.
And the rest of the developed world says “bullshit.”
Let’s see if they’re still snickering when the US medical care system is no longer the primary subsidizer for expensive drug R&D and Big Pharma can no longer go along with the Rx cost caps that Canada and Europe are so proud of.
I know Big Pharma wants you to believe that, and I’m surprised that you buy into their corporate PR so gullible.
Still I’ve seen no coherent reason advanced for why the US can’t manage to do what just about every other developed country has been able to do. Basically the opposition of the conservatives seems to be based on three things a) they hate government b) they love the idea of the invisible hand of capitalism solving everything even though the preponderance of evidence shows that this is far from the case c) they’re afraid of change.
I feel your pain, guys, but we’ve got a country to run, so get with the program or get out of the way.
Of course I did, and I am glad to see I’m not the only one.
Thanks Quaker.
From what the article said it looks like the mother refused to provide the information necessary to transfer her child from the ER to the hospital for surgery. I empathize with a parent who has an injured child, but a torn lip, even one torn off, isn’t a life-threatening emergency. The U of C Medical Center probably didn’t do everything it should have to have helped this boy and his mom. However I’d be willing to bet that his mom wasn’t helping the situation by being cooperative with the folks trying to help her child. If he’s got Medicaid I fail to see why she didn’t want to provide them with that insurance information.
At least two non-health care factors play a part in the end numbers which drive the rankings. We drive more and we put a relatively huge percentage of our population into prison (more people dying in auto accidents and prisoners suffer from a higher rate of HIV infection and have lower life expectancies than the population at large). Of course what role this plays in the end results isn’t clear since structural differences in countries isn’t accounted for by the WHO.
I originally heard it from my engineer mom who said it “Good, fast, cheap. Pick any two.” And it seems that, instead of bullshit, at least Canada chooses Good and Cheap. If you need something fast you’re SoL in the Great White North.
Health care can be made more affordable without needing to have the government take over the whole she-bang.
What the hell does that even mean? Are you referring to people having access to health care providers? Or being covered by insurance? If it’s the former, the only limiting factor is your distance from a treatment center. If it’s the latter you’re assuming that universal coverage is a good thing. Personally, I don’t think that people should be required to pay for something they don’t want, don’t need, and don’t reasonably anticipate using.
Actually the number of people filing for bankruptcy, and this includes medical-related bankruptcy, had declined from 2001 until 2007, and even with the recession they’re no where near where they were prior to 2001. But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good line right?
I’m constantly amazed at the extraordinary abilities of some of the people who show up here.
Just this afternoon, I’ve seen folks who can diagnose treatment for a severe dog bite injury without ever seeing the patient, and from that diagnosis determine the motives of doctors and hospital administrators. And if that’s not enough to astonish you right out of your Hush Puppies, these same people are able to extrapolate from the motives of these medical honchos to predict the content of a yet-to-be-written piece of legislation and divine the effect of that legislation on our medical system.
I’m honored you people let me hang around.
I’ve seen severe dog bite injuries. What the child had wasn’t a severe dog bite injury. A severe injury to the face from a pit bull would have resulted in his face or jaw being torn off. And in that case he would likely have been admitted without too much concern for his insurance status.
I’ve been around bureaucratic administrations long enough to know that, what many people consider cruel indifference, is the matter-of-fact way that the drones need to go about their business to make sure things are taken care of.
I’ve got 4/5ths of the commenters here telling me how this yet-to-be-written piece of legislation will reduce costs across the board, improve results, and propel America from hyperpower status to ultra-riffic power status.
Sorry B. You seem to think I was pointing at you.
Mistake.
Methinks I doth protest too much?
We drive more and we put a relatively huge percentage of our population into prison (more people dying in auto accidents and prisoners suffer from a higher rate of HIV infection and have lower life expectancies than the population at large).
Ah yes, two other issues that conservatives tell us we can’t do anything about. The differential between us and most other countries on these factors is significant, but not significant enough to have much of an impact on total health-care expenditures. Plus there are other cultural factors that make us less likely to spend on health care: we smoke less and jog more, do less binge-drinking and are less densely populated (hence less contagion-prone) than many of our peers. There is no evidence that any such cultural/demographic factors explains more than a hair of the vast difference in health care expenditures.
least Canada chooses Good and Cheap. If you need something fast you’re SoL in the Great White North.
If the entire country of Canada could take voice, it would be screaming “bullshit!” at you right now.
Health care can be made more affordable without needing to have the government take over the whole she-bang.
Perhaps so, but can it be made affordable enough so that everyone can get the health care they need and businesses are not driven into bankruptcy covering their employers? There is no paradigm we can point to where free-market forces alone have produced such a health-care system, and despite decades of conservative predictions to the contrary, letting the health care market work things out for itself has just made things enormously worse. On the other hand, we have plenty of examples of public systems that do make decent health care accessible to everyone at a reasonable price. Why not go with what has been proven to work?
Actually the number of people filing for bankruptcy, and this includes medical-related bankruptcy, had declined from 2001 until 2007, and even with the recession they’re no where near where they were prior to 2001. But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good line right?
They could decline 90% and we’d still be the number one industrialized country for people getting financially ruined as a result of getting sick. USA! USA!
Still I’ve heard no reasons why we here in America cannot have the cheap and effective public health-care system that other developed countries have.
Because there is no way that a couple hundred thousand injury accidents could have measurable affect on the cost of health care in a country when compared to countries with lower car use and traffic injuries. Nope. No way at all.
If you were to magically reduce the rate of traffic injuries and fatalities in the US to the same rate as the other industrial countries how much would that reduce the health care costs for Americans? How much would that increase life expectancy? 1%? 2%? .5%? A .5% increase in life expectancy would move the US ahead of 6 countries when comparing life expectancy at birth. Given the way the WHO weighs expenditures in its ranking, a slight change which means fewer people get injured results in relatively huge movements in positions. These “not significant enough” variables might actually have great significance, but hey, it’s easier to just dismiss it since that better fits your narrative that it’s all about the greedy corporations.
That’s why the Canadian government has allocated a few million dollars in an attempt to reduce wait times, which succeeded in reducing them to a mere 18 weeks. You know, about 8 weeks longer than the longest wait time for services in any state. Yup. They’re screaming “Bullshit”… no doubt.
If you think that what we have here in the US represents anything like a free market for health care, you are sorely, sorely wrong. There is no paradigm you can point to because no one has bothered to try. Between special interests like the AMA who want to retain their monopoly on doctors, and politicians and regulators who prefer to do whatever will get them elected in the next couple years instead of what will benefit the people the most over decades. Whatever it is that we have in the US, it is not the result of a free market.
That’s only fair since I’ve heard no reasons why what the Administration wants to do would result in a cheap and effective public health-care system.
Have any of you folks that support this intrusion into your medical affairs actually read what Tom Dashle wrote in his preliminary report on the subject or read the remarks of Rahm’s brother the doctor who is the current go to expert on the Obama staff regarding rationing? Or read Obama’s backing away from his earlier stated promises on keeping your current plan intact?
What many of you fail to realize is even taking into consideration ceo pay, marketing, profit, etc. it is very hard for private enterprise to make government supplied anything look cheap when all of the government costs are accounted for. In short greedy private enterprise can’t steal as much as government programs waste.
Why do you think govt. run healthcare is going to be any better than the service at the local DMV?
Or read Obama’s backing away from his earlier stated promises on keeping your current plan intact?
I have.
Essentially, he realized that his initial wording was making promises on behalf of employers, so he made it a little clearer. What did you think he said?
Why do you think govt. run healthcare
Who’s talking about “government run healthcare”? Like I said back upthread, the only people who think conservatives are defending the existing system are those of us who notice that any proposed change is reflexively labeled “government run healthcare.”
Because there is no way that a couple hundred thousand injury accidents could have measurable affect on the cost of health care…
Who said anything about no measurable effect? The issue is whether this differential, combined with other positive and negative factors, accounts the colossal difference in health care expenditures between the US and other countries. The answer is: nowhere close.
That’s why the Canadian government has allocated a few million dollars in an attempt to reduce wait times, which succeeded in reducing them to a mere 18 weeks. You know, about 8 weeks longer than the longest wait time for services in any state. Yup. They’re screaming “Bullshit”… no doubt.
Those figures depend on what you’re waiting for, and as always, whether you include in the US figures all the cases where people postpone or forgo non-emergency treatment for economic reasons. And yes, most Canadians I know (and I lived there for several years) do, in fact, scream bullshit when they hear what US conservatives are saying about their health care system.
Whatever it is that we have in the US, it is not the result of a free market.
However you want to describe it, it is the result of health care being provided first and foremost with the goal of maximizing profits for the providers of goods and services and their investors, public health being a secondary goal which can be pursued only insofar as it is compatible with the first.
That’s only fair since I’ve heard no reasons why what the Administration wants to do would result in a cheap and effective public health-care system.
You may be right here, but if you are it is because the admin is bending to pressure from to leave too much of the current monstrous system intact (the point of Oliver’s original post way up there somewhere). Much of that pressure coming directly or indirectly from conservative nay-sayers like the ones on this board.
Amused Observer: “Have any of you folks that support this intrusion into your medical affairs…”
When you say something this stupid, we can safely ignore the rest of your posts. You are, after all, supporting a system of corporate intrusion into your medical affairs.
By the way, how’s your health? You seem so concerned about mine, I thought I would return the favor.
Whatever it is that we have in the US, it is not the result of a free market.
Under no circumstances will the US health care system ever be twisted in to your libertarian dream system. Liberals don’t want that and neither do most conservatives. I’d even hazard a guess and say that a true “free market” health care system would be much worse than the bad (and incredibly unpopular) system that we have now.
Now that we’ve taken that off of the table the democratically elected president and congress are going to try enacting something new that’s no where near what I’d love to see but it’s definitely better than what we have now. If it doesn’t work out then in 3 years the Republicans can put forth an alternative plan and get elected on it. My prediction: it’ll be very popular and in 20 years Republicans (or whatever party that replaces them) will pretend they invented universal health care.
Shall I rehearse all of the logical fallacies and distortions or would you rather continue to assure yourself that you have taught us lefties a lesson?
Yes, enlighten me.
So we have to overhaul the entire engine before we change the flat tire?
Talk about inefficient.
The better analogy is that you already wrecked the Pinto and now you want the keys to the Lexus.
Fine.
We’re 23rd!
We’re 23rd!
There. Feel better?
In what? According to who?
Now that we’ve taken that off of the table the democratically elected president and congress are going to try enacting something new that’s no where near what I’d love to see but it’s definitely better than what we have now. If it doesn’t work out then in 3 years the Republicans can put forth an alternative plan and get elected on it. My prediction: it’ll be very popular and in 20 years Republicans (or whatever party that replaces them) will pretend they invented universal health care.
My prediction: It will be vastly more expensive than originally advertised with reductions in quality. In other words, it will be just like every other big government social program ever implemented. Seriously, your track record is awful:
* Social Security a fiscal mess
* Medicare a fiscal mess
* Department of Education corresponding with worse education outcomes.
* The entire war on poverty
Hell, the biggest public policy success in the last 15 years was reducing welfare with the 1996 reform act.
In contrast the free market works everywhere it is tried.
It takes some real bizarre logic to look at the competing track records and then assume that the free market would be the worse option.
Strangely no one has actually responded to my query regarding what has actually been written by several of the preliminary architects of Obamacare regarding health care rationing.
Quaker, You honestly think that the Federal Govt. won’t have some serious management input if they are able to ram this new paradigm down our throats?
CS, It’s primarily your mental health one worries about. Of course first we worried you weren’t taking your meds on schedule, then it was blood pressure with your ranting and raving, but now that it is understood that you can lose control of your temper and mental facilities without any physiological changes it appears that perhaps you are a sociopath. Your lifestyle may be exerting pressure upon you in ways you can’t perceive. Sitting alone in front of a screen reviewing endless dvds or pounding at your keyboard berating your political opponents in a foriegn country suggests a detachment from reality may be harming you in ways you can’t see yourself.
This is my personal experience, nothing more, nothing less. I have coverage at work with a major p;rovider. Luckily, my health has been good, but I needed minor day surgery last January. A few days before the surgery, the billing department from the hospital called and asked (sort of)if I could go ahead and pay the $800 I would owe as a result of deductibles and co-pays. Since the surgery, I’ve gotten $2500 more in bills for things the insruance company has decided not to cover, and the bills are still coming. Some of it seems to be deductible related, but not all. The total bill was $28,000, so I’m glad the bulk of the bill was covered. But I’m still out $3000, even with a policy from a major provider. My best friend at work has had six hip-replacement related surgeries and says her bills keep coming to. I don’t know the answer, but private sector insurance still leaves a lot of gaps.
In contrast the free market works everywhere it is tried.
…as long as you define “free market” as “that which works” and everything that doesn’t work as “not really free market”.
Health care in the US has been run on more of a free-market principle than anywhere in the developed world, and the result has been a wildly unpopular, massively inefficient and antidemocratically inequitable system. You could roll all the problems with those government programs you mention into one big ball and it would not rival the massive shitpile that is the US healthcare system. That shitpile is growing bigger every second, and will drown us if we don’t do something about it.
So what to do? We can tinker yet again with the current free-market system (always being sure to protect the profits of big pharma and the bonuses for insurance execs) and hope that this round of tinkering works where all others have failed, or we can move toward the sort of system which has been shown to work quite well in a number of our closest peer countries.
This is as close as any of us will ever come to a no-brainer.
…as long as you define “free market” as “that which works” and everything that doesn’t work as “not really free market”.
No, not really. The free market even works in health where it is tried. Cosmetic surgery, which isn’t covered by insurance (which is subsidized through tax breaks by the government) has little cost inflation.
Health care in the US has been run on more of a free-market principle than anywhere in the developed world, and the result has been a wildly unpopular, massively inefficient and antidemocratically inequitable system.
Yes, and we also produce more drugs and medical advances than anywhere else. (thanks to capitalism and the profit motive)
http://www1.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/06/23/obamacare_kiss_your_access_goodbye_97122.html
Just a decade ago, more than two-thirds of all drug research was conducted in Europe. Now, 60% is conducted in the United States. Because Europe’s government-dominated health care systems dictate prices, there is a serious negative impact on innovation. From 1998 to 2002 there were only 44 new drugs launched in Europe, compared to 85 in the United States.
As for being “wildly unpopular” most Americans (80%) are actually satisfied with the quality of their care:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/19/health.care.poll/index.html
Now, they hate the costs, which I am sympathetic to. The answer there, of course, is competition, which works everywhere it is tried. Government and cost control, meanwhile, are not exactly synonymous. Ditto for efficiency.
Right winger “Dave in SoCal” swings and misses: “a “foreign” intern? Are you afraid of those people who look different from you?”
What do foreigners look like “Dave in SoCal”?
Clearly you think ‘foreigners’ look different than you.
But why would you make the assumption that anyone else does?
Corporate-medical-industry sycophants have certainly made it their mission to try to misinform and distort the debate about healthcare.
And in a thread where a corporate-medical-insurance executive admits that insurance companies are dumping paying insurance customers.
47 million Americans don’t have healthcare the last I heard and there is also a vast and growing amount of evidence that those Americans that technically have insurance are one corporate bureaucrat away from getting the health care the paid for rescinded, getting their health care taken away because some corporate bureaucrat was/is getting paid bonuses to eliminate coverage from those customers that were faithfully paying their premiums.
AO: “CS, It’s primarily your mental health one worries about.”
And you were wrong about that as well.
Then again, you are wrong about nearly everything, so that doesn’t surprise anyone.
“Sitting alone in front of a screen reviewing endless dvds…”
Jealous much?
By the way, I noticed you didn’t answer my question.
So… How is your health? Have you gained weight since Obama was elected? Have you been smoking more? Having trouble sleeping?
Colin: “No, not really. The free market even works in health where it is tried. Cosmetic surgery, which isn’t covered by insurance (which is subsidized through tax breaks by the government) has little cost inflation.”
That’s cause you don’t have a sudden increase in medically necessary breast implants. Cosmetic surgery, the kind that isn’t covered by insurance, is purely elective. This is not true of real HEALTH CARE.
Better health care will INCREASE the cost of health care. This is because people will survive diseases, accidents, etc. that would have killed them before. Survive, but cost a lot to fix.
“From 1998 to 2002 there were only 44 new drugs launched in Europe, compared to 85 in the United States.”
And how many of those drugs actually do anything?
A lot of new drugs that are released are no more effective that previous treatments that were about to be released a generic alternatives.
“Now, they hate the costs, which I am sympathetic to. The answer there, of course, is competition, which works everywhere it is tried. Government and cost control, meanwhile, are not exactly synonymous. Ditto for efficiency.”
Then how do you explain where there’s less overhead in Canada?
Are Canadians better than Americans at running health care?
Right wing cultish corporatist “Colin”, whose religion is the ‘buck’, has made so many unverifiable assertions that trying to correct him is like trying to correct a fanatic.
There has been “competition” in the corporate-medical-industry for, what, 100’s of years, and the costs of health care just get worse when it’s more unregulated.
Regulated health care costs less and provides better outcomes.
That’s the facts.
Corporatist “Colin” is here to represent the looters and moochers of the corporate-medical-industry that has abysmally failed nearly 1/6th of the American people.
That wasn’t a swing and a miss at all. Why did you even mention ‘foreign’ interns? What did adding ‘foreign’ have to do with your point of unnecessarily high hospital costs? An intern is an intern. You said it in your usually degradingly bigoted way and he’s what you have against ‘foreign’ interns as opposed to any kind of intern when it comes to hospital costs.
Actually the number of people filing for bankruptcy, and this includes medical-related bankruptcy, had declined from 2001 until 2007, and even with the recession they’re no where near where they were prior to 2001.
You mean it’s DOWN to 65%? Fantastic.
Shall I rehearse all of the logical fallacies and distortions or would you rather continue to assure yourself that you have taught us lefties a lesson?
Yes, enlighten me.
Very well. Let’s take a closer look at Mr. Carroll’s work.
Mr. Carroll mixes absolute dollars with percentage of total income. What Mr. Carroll asserts–that countries devote a greater portion resources to health as they grow richer–is true, but only at the bottom of the scale. At the top of the scale, the opposite is true. In fact, the Cato Institute critique of the WHO study makes precisely this point to explain why wealthy families spend less on health care than poorer ones.
Except it doesn’t mean the ranking is flawed. The ranking may be misused, misconstrued, or even misrepresented by those who cite it. The ranking to which Mr. Carroll refers is one that measures an odd metric–the efficiency of expenditures. That someone on either side of the debate misunderstands doesn’t denote a flaw in the study’s method.
Bad analogy. It’s more like the general manager of the Denver Nuggets being recognized as GM of the year for building a team that went to the conference finals and nearly won with a payroll half of what the Lakers spent.
Some such comparisons do indeed exist–including in the very same study Mr. Carroll spends so much time maligning.
Mr. Carroll only obliquely explains what the offending WHO ranking attempts to measure and never reveals to his readers that it’s one of two sets of rankings developed in the study.
Carroll concludes by conceding the very point made by the WHO study:
And then he waves away the study’s results as well as his own recognition of the study’s accuracy:
Can you see why I don’t take Carroll at face value?
We drive more and we put a relatively huge percentage of our population into prison (more people dying in auto accidents and prisoners suffer from a higher rate of HIV infection and have lower life expectancies than the population at large).
One simple way to reduce both: legalize Marijuana.
*joking.
The better analogy is that you already wrecked the Pinto and now you want the keys to the Lexus.
Fail.
Not only was it a student who was learning how to sew and tie thread that was used as an excuse by the corporate-medical-company to charge $1,200, the corporate-medical-company was insourcing foreign students to do the job.
It’s bad enough that right wingers support exporting American jobs but it’s surreal to me that the right wing leadership also supports importing foreigners to do American jobs.
So are right winger’s “Dennis” and “Dave in SoCal” supporting insourcing foreigners to do American jobs?
Certainly right wingers have been selling out American workers for decades with their support of outsourcing American jobs, but right wing support of insourcing workers to take over American jobs clearly needs to be given more attention.
Still I’ve heard no reasons why we here in America cannot have the cheap and effective public health-care system that other developed countries have.
Same reason we don’t have bullet trains. NIH. (not invented here)
As for being “wildly unpopular” most Americans (80%) are actually satisfied with the quality of their care:
…when they have it.
This is not true of real HEALTH CARE.
What about open heart surgery? Does that count? You can go to India and get it done for about 4 times cheaper than the US. Why not have that kind of competition here in the US between hospitals?
And how many of those drugs actually do anything?
A lot of new drugs that are released are no more effective that previous treatments that were about to be released a generic alternatives.
Your speculation doesn’t negate actual statistics that I cited.
Then how do you explain where there’s less overhead in Canada?
Are Canadians better than Americans at running health care?
Well, yes, I assume that cumulative overhead from running 1,300 health insurance companies as opposed to one. I still don’t see how that makes the care for single payer. By similar logic we should only have one car company, one cell phone company, one airline, etc. in the country we could eliminate lots of overhead, but I don’t think that it would be a smart move.
We drive more and we put a relatively huge percentage of our population into prison (more people dying in auto accidents and prisoners suffer from a higher rate of HIV infection and have lower life expectancies than the population at large).
It probably would help our healthcare problems somewhat if we could reduce our free-world-leading incarceration and auto accident rates, but of course if we actually tried to do anything about either of those things our conservative friends would fight us tooth and nail on that as well. The irony of that seems lost on them.
“From 1998 to 2002 there were only 44 new drugs launched in Europe, compared to 85 in the United States.”
And how many of those drugs actually do anything?
And how many of those new drugs are snot drugs and boner drugs? You know, the kind that big pharma spends billions marketing to the snotty and limp among us?
Can you see why I don’t take Carroll at face value?
Quaker, you rule the kingdom of Shityeah!
…when they have it.
Except 70% of the uninsured also say they are satisfied with their health care.
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/26/health-cares-big-secret/
The Regulation magazine article closely examines a survey released in October 2006 by the Kaiser Family Foundation, ABC News and USA Today. The survey is unique in that the publicly released data allowed analysis regarding how happy the uninsured are with their health care. While 93 percent of the insured say that they are “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their own health care, fully 70 percent of the uninsured who indicated their level of satisfaction said the same thing.
Quaker — I responded to your post but — for the second time today — my comment has been eaten by the site and is failing to appear. I really don’t feel like retyping it — let’s see if it eventually shows up.
“Colin”, citing raw numbers of drug patents that don’t do anything effective except keep drug prices obscenely high doesn’t illuminate a discussion looking for better health outcomes at lower costs.
But that’s kind of the point of your arguments: Obscure and spin the facts to protect the corporate looters that are betraying America and Americans.
The true outcome of your approach means that America has worse health outcomes on multiple measures compared to literally dozens of other countries and at a higher cost than any nation on earth.
Perhaps the question to put to those interested might be do you want access to new medical technology? I notice nobody wishes to discuss the already published plans to ration health care.
Good lord, and now corporate cultist “Colin” is citing Republican Messiah Moon’s propaganda paper Wahington Times?
Well if Republican Messiah Moon’s fictional numbers are going to be given play, here’ my response: 100% of honest people would never cite the fictional Wahington Times propaganda paper to back up their argument.
Except 70% of the uninsured also say they are satisfied with their health care.
That makes no sense. I suspect shenanigans.
Good lord, the right wing terrorist sympathizer “Amused Observer” was earlier trying to make judgements about other people’s mental health:
“it appears that perhaps you are a sociopath.”
And this in a thread where right wingers are trying to obscure the fact that their right wing ideology supports a sick corporatist culture where customers who faithfully paid their insurance premiums get rescinded by some corporate bureaucrat willing to F*** over someone whose HEALTH IS ON THE LINE. All for a ‘buck’.
Sociopathy IS the right wing philosophy.
The entire right wing philosophy has degenerated into celebrating sociopathy.
The right wing ridicules having a concern about a stranger.
The right wing ridicules empathy!
Right winger’s total lack of empathy is a classic sign of sociopathy.
Whatever the right wing once was, the right wing is now represented by sociopaths’ without consciences.
Lets be fair. Newsy makes a good point when he says:
“It’s bad enough that right wingers support exporting American jobs but it’s surreal to me that the right wing leadership also supports importing foreigners to do American jobs.”
See, just as in Britain, Canada etc, we are beginning to import doctors. Turns out, when you cut the pay, US citizens are less interested in more than a decade of post-baccalaureate training at less than minimum wage rates.
When being a physician gets you less pay than the average mortgage broker, youi won’t have any more physicians.
I’m not. But that’s a topic for a whole other day.
Colin, remember what I said about Vince Carroll’s editorials? Well that goes double for anything printed in the Washington Times and triple for anything on their editorial page.
The quote you provide…
…is yet another worthless, word-of-mouth fake “fact.”
It took a while to run it down, but here ya go:
The Washington Times editorial says:
In trying to run down this Regulation magazine (a publication of the Cato Institute) article, it does not appear to be in the issue labeled “Current Issue” at the Cato website. Perhaps there’s a newer issue that hasn’t been posted to the web. So I looked for more clues in the Washington Times editorial:
Checking for this comment at Fox News, I find an “analysis” by our old
fraudfriend John Lott. When you track down Lott’s article–surpise, surprise–this “fact” is stated a little differently:See the card up the sleeve here? It’s not “70 percent without insurance were satisfied,” it’s “70 percent of those without insurance get some kind of care and a majority of those are satisfied.
Wait. It gets better. If it’s necessary to read the Wash Times with a critical eye, it’s even more important when reading a John Lott analysis published by Fox News. Let’s look again:
Then Lott goes on to discuss the Kaiser Family Foundation study mentioned by Cato and the Wash Times. Obviously, that must be where the satisfaction of the uninsured data comes from, right?
Not so fast.
A link in Lott’s Fox News analysis takes readers to a different study, one published by–guess who?–John Lott. And in that study, Lott tells us:
Wow! Can that possibly be right? Kaiser never asked?
See for yourself. Here are the questions asked in the survey. Holler if you find the crosstab that shows the result the Wash Times was pimping.
Compare the Wash Times assertion with this ABC News story linked from the Kaiser Family Foundation website:
Amazing! See how this works?
We start with a survey that says 80 percent of Americans without health insurance are dissatisfied with the medical care they receive. John Lott writes a paper about it, obliquely promotes that paper on Fox News.com (misleading readers into thinking his data is taken from the original study), the Fox News item is picked up by the Cato Institute (and misquoted), and then picked up by the Washington Times. From there, the flying monkeys of the right carry the word to the four corners of the world.
I’m bushed. If you need any more fact-checking, do it yourself.
I notice nobody wishes to discuss the already published plans to ration health care.
Glad to. Point out a couple, will you?
Washington Times, AEI, and Fox News.
A trifecta of st00pid.
Quaker FTW.
Right winger “Amused Observer”: “health care rationing” is a central mission of the corporate-medical-insurance industry. It’s called rescission, that’s where a corporate bureaucrat decides to “rescind” your coverage by taking it away from you (“rationing” your health care) despite the fact that you’ve faithfully paid your corporate-medical-insurance premiums.
I figured out how Lott did it. The real number is 62 percent. That’s the portion of uninsured survey respondents who said they were satisfied with the medical care they receive.
The Kaiser Foundation didn’t report this crosstab and neither did its partners in the survey, ABC News and USA Today. However, USA Today did publish these numbers. They report the percentage of all of respondents very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, or very dissatisfied with health care received. They report the same stats for those who have health insurance. From that data, you can back your way in to the percentage of uninsured who are satisfied. It’s 62 percent.
If you factor out those who did not respond, you can fudge your way up to 67 percent. And if you assume extremes in rounding error, you can get within hollering distance of 70 percent.
That’s a lot of backdoor calculating on a small sample. The total number of uninsured in the survey was around 156. The margin of error for the entire sample (1,201) was 3 percent +/-. I didn’t do well in college statistics, but I’m pretty sure the margin is larger when the sample size shrinks to 156.
Bottom line–if you go hunting for the Wash Times’ 70 percent number, bring a lunch.
BTW, if you doubt me, compare my statement:
If you factor out those who did not respond, you can fudge your way up to 67 percent.
with the Wash Times editorial:
fully 70 percent of the uninsured who indicated their level of satisfaction
They factored out the No Responses to fudge the number a little higher.
Google is great!
Appreciate the investigative legwork. I am truly impressed. (no sarcasm)
Google is great!
Quaker’s in Basements using Google to systematically shred right wing lies is greater!-)
Phenomenal work, “Quaker”.
Just, Wow.
I can haz beer now?
Quaker,
I echo Colins admiration of your google work. I posted somewhere in one of these threads Mark Twain’s remark “Lies, damn lies, and statisics.
Google up Daschle’s remarks on solutions and check out Rahm’s brother’s words. He’s a doctor and his brother got him a gig at the Whitehouse.
I can haz beer now?
Oh, HELL yeah!
Tom Dashle is not relevant, so why should we care?
2006 Poll:
4. Thinking about health care in the country as a whole, are you generally satisfied or dissatisfied with the quality of health care in this country?
Satisfied: 44%
Dissatisfied: 54%
5. And are you generally satisfied or dissatisfied with the total cost of health care in this country?
Satisfied: 18%
Dissatisfied: 80%
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-10-15-health-poll1.htm
In 2006, 54% of Americans were dissatisfied with the quality of health care in America and 80% were dissatisfied with the total costs of health care here.
Duros,
Do you actually think his views and ideas were instantly discarded when he ran into a little tax trouble? You should care about the ramifications of this healthcare debate regardless of your position on the subject. It is the goal of everyone here to live long enough to actually be an old person.
I see a report for the Bipartisan Policy thingy Daschle did with Bob Dole. Is there more?
By similar logic we should only have one car company, one cell phone company, one airline, etc. in the country we could eliminate lots of overhead, but I don’t think that it would be a smart move.
If societal conditions and standards ever reach the point where they dictate that everyone should have access to affordable, good-quality cars, cellphones and air travel, and if private companies, after several decades of trying, prove themselves incapable of providing those things, then something of the sort might be necessary.
Till then, your analogy sucks.
Nobody is saying that you can’t keep your overpriced and underperforming corporate-medical-insurance.
The left is just asking for the inclusion of competition from a superior government health insurance system that has repeatedly been proven as more effective at providing better health outcomes at lower costs.
Why are right wingers afraid of competition?
(Answer: Because the corporate-looters right wingers are protecting won’t be able to steal as much from the health care system.)
Wow, great job Quaker in the Basement at exposing a stupid talking point for what it is. I could sense that the statistic was wrong (“I’m uninsured and I’m loving it!”) but you did the googling necessary to shoot it down permanently.
Your comment needs to be enshrined somewhere so that in the future the statistic can’t be used.
In contrast the free market works everywhere it is tried.
Fire fighters? Free market doesn’t work
Police? Free market doesn’t work
Military? Free market alternative is frightening
Drug testing and regulation? Free market wouldn’t be impartial
Justice system? Would lead to vigilantism
There are actually a lot of things where the free market completely fails. Particularly things where necessity is so great that people can’t negotiate fair prices. Health care is one of these things, when you need it most you can’t call up your insurance provider and discuss the cost. Actually they’ll call you up and start raising your premiums because you had the gall of getting sick!
Quaker,
I don’t know exactly what you’re looking at but that might be it. For something up to date check out the Doctor brother. I’d give you more if I had it on hand.
The rest of you whizz bang statistal wizards a 10-12% fudge on a partisan published report is pretty close to dead on. You think your talking point poll stats aren’t cooked?
Don’t be naive.
“[W]here the free market completely fails.”
On top of the socialized fire departments, the socialized police departments, and the socialized military that the left supports* add the socialized water departments, and socialized electric departments.
Every single time any of those public institutions have been ‘privatized’ and handed over to the predatory ‘free market’ they have failed miserably.
The private corporate-medical-industry has been shown to be a profound failure as well.
The private corporate-medical-industry has completely failed almost 1/6th of the American Citizenry but more than that, the corporate-medical-industry even fails those that paid for corporate-medical-insurance.
When corporate-bureaucrats decide to ration health care by arbitrarily rescinding coverage in pursuit of a bonus, that’s a profound failure of an extremely predatory ‘free market’ system that’s completely broken.
* why does the right wing hate our American Police Officers, Fire Responders, and Military Troops?
More broadly, why do right wingers hate Americans?
Maybe from people like this, when they are being honest with themselves:
Washington Post and Journo-List creator Ezra Klein speaking candidly at the NetRoots Nation 2008 Conference about the deceptive strategy of Obamacare:
Ezra Klein on the “sneaky” stalking horse of a public plan for single-payer
Ed Morrissey:Everything conservatives have been saying about the public plan is true, and that’s just fine with Ezra. He’d like to throw tens of thousands of people out of work and collapse an entire industry, one that satisfies over 80% of its clients mind you, because he doesn’t care for it. So instead of actually arguing for its elimination, as Ezra does more honestly than most of his colleagues, they trot out a “public plan” that Ezra concedes will do covertly what he wants to do overtly.”
Washington Post blogger and Journo-List Creator, Ezra Klein…
Why would you discuss the cost the health care services you’re receiving with your insurance? The person charging you is the hospital/ health care provider. Discuss the costs they’re charging with them, not the insurance company. Calling the insurance company to try and get the price of medical services reduced is like calling your bank to try to get the dealer to reduce the price they’re charging for a car.
Of course, I don’t know why you think you can’t call your insurer to discuss what they’ll reimburse the doctor or the hospital for. I did it before I went Active Duty after I had to have a minor procedure done and got them to cover some work they weren’t going to. However this requires people to take responsibility for their own well-being and actions. Again, this is something which is trying to be taken away from us, and we’re allowing that to happen.
I will agree that the market has failed to meet health care needs when the market is allowed to try to meet health care needs free of meddling from the political class. When I see someone purposing that insurers be allowed to offer catastrophic illness or injury coverage only I’ll believe they’re serious about reforming health care to help Americans hedge their risks. Until then it’s just another way to buy votes and reduce liberty.
Right winger “Dennis” doesn’t believe that corporations can compete with government.
A lot of right wingers clearly don’t believe that corporations can compete with government.
Right wingers that think corporations need to be protected from competition are clearly losing their faith in the predatory ‘free’ market-cult.
Sounds like right winger “Dennis” has taken his first step towards socialism.
Clearly right winger “Dennis” is following his Republican communist leader George Bush and the Republicans GIANT step into socialism/communism last September 2008.
Remember when the Republican Party nationalized banks in September 2008?
Funny times…
Ezra Klein, News Reference. Your liberal hero. He just confided exactly what this whole plan of Obama’s really is. What we’ve been arguing this whole thread. What you’ve been asking why we think that, along with your usual incomprehensible bull crap interspersed with the sweet nothings you throw at those on your side.
Refute him.
Chickenshit.
And do you use this site for cruising, or something? You’ve been doing the mushy thing a lot this past week. What’s up with that?
Right winger “Dennis”, who secretly has no faith that corporations can compete with government, demands that I refute something that some right wing extremist said someone else said.
Well, tell you what, it’s safe to say that I’d refute just about everything that the sick twisted minds of right winger of Ed Morissey and his militantly venomous sidekick Michelle “Concentration Camp Advocate” Malkin says.
But back to you, “Dennis”, if you have no faith in corporations don’t expect me to protect corporations from competition.
And “Dennis”, you’ve chosen to sell out Americans in favor of the corporations that have failed US.
While the left wing is concerned about American’s health, you are concerned that corporations won’t be able to loot our health care systems.
Why are you betraying Americans “Dennis”? Do you really hate America that much, “Dennis”? Or is someone sending you a tiny bag full of silver for all of your repugnant posts?
Which is it “Dennis”? Do you hate America? Or are you just a sell out?
It was Ezra Klein who was the subject of that post, Chickenshit News Reference, complete with video, of him telling us in no uncertain terms that Obamacare is nothing more than a sneaky stalking horse plan for single payer.
Why are you so afraid to refute him and his words and choose to instead go on another of your patented incomprehensible diversions? You’ve been saying how ridiculous it is to suspect that in Obama all day. Why don’t you call Better Than Ezra a right winger? You can’t, because he’s honest about it. Obama and Rahm just want to bullshit us and the rest of the country. Apparently he’s bullshit you effectively, too.
It’s obvious when you’re scared to address the subject at hand, Newsie, because your verbal diarrhea just goes all spastic.
Maybe you’re just not a visual. kind of guy, Chicken Newsie. Maybe a video of Ezra saying it isn’t your thing.
Here he is saying it in print at his former blog:
SINGLE-PAYER BY STEALTH
–Ezra Klein
The American Prospect
May 7,2008
…”The HCA {Health Care for America market} is created to compete with the traditional private market. With its more attractive terms, the hope is that the HCA will largely overwhelm the private market, becoming a sort of de facto single-payer plan. Indeed, the Lewin analysis factors in this competition, and the brutal effect it will have on the private market, explicitly….”
Bold mine. And hopefully I entered the ellipses correctly, knowing what sticklers folks are here about that, but in any event I included the link so everyone can read for themselves.
Right winger “Dennis” concedes that corporations can’t compete with government because governments can provide superior services.
“Dennis” is a closet socialist.
Ezra Klein, News Reference.
Fear not. Fortune favors the bold. You want to be like Quaker in a Basement, you have to do some digging, then step up to the plate and take a swing.
Don’t always be the back bencher.
How much does your total health care cost, “Dennis”?
I’m assuming you have health insurance coverage, or are you one of the 47 MILLION Americans that aren’t covered by health care insurance?
I’m serious, “Dennis”, tell the class as much as you can about your health coverage.
How much does it cost a year?
Did you buy the plan yourself?
Are you covered through a family member?
Does your employer cover you?
Seriously. What do you know about your own health care plan?
Are you covered by one of the corporate-medical-insurance companies that practice rationing health care coverage through rescission?
How would you afford your health care coverage if you were fired?
(and if your job is to troll websites, if your ‘employer’ ever institutes a quality control oversight program, you’ll be out of work sooner than you think)
That depends on what you mean by “compete”. If you mean that private enterprise can provide better services for cheaper while providing a profit for investors or owners, then private enterprise will kick the gov’t’s ass every day of the week and twice on Sunday. If you instead mean that it can provide products or services cheaper without regard for cost or profit, then it can’t.
The government has powers available to it which private enterprise does not. Game-changing powers. Like the power to establish and change the rules. Also the power to enforce the rules as it sees fit. It also has the ability to tap into the coffers of the public through taxes. Government is under no obligation to turn a profit, or even cover its own expenses. The government is also able to use its powers to compel other entities to comply with its wishes through any number of ways. The government is also immune to most forms of accountability as it can make itself immune from lawsuits for unsatisfactory performance. The government is able to establish barriers which limit competition.
What do you think would happen if President Obama’s dream of a health care exchange came to pass with a public option being available, and the public option failed?
“SFC B” you are accepting the looting of the private systems.
That’s corporatism.
Go make a profit on building a car, but don’t justify looting the health care system, too many lives rely on it.
And don’t underestimate the power of international corporations.
That’s where libertarianism is often just a mask for corporatists, absurdly pretending that a corporation like Wal-Mart doesn’t “use its powers to compel other entities to comply with its wishes through any number of ways.” It does every day.
China-Wal-Mart has crushed a legion of well-run American industries and handed those industries over to China. Companies that don’t comply with China-Wal-Mart’s demands die and even those that comply get squeezed in ways that all of the profit goes to a small family in Arkansas that is selling out America’s manufacturing base, selling out American workers, and empowering a fascist totalitarian China.
Also, most corporations are increasingly immune from any type of accountability.
That’s been a core part of the concessions that the corporatists (faux-libertarians) have gotten out of their unnatural relationship with the social-conservatives. In return, the social-conservatives have pushed (and in some cases won) the power to legislate morality (gay marriage, abortion, creationism taught in schools…).
Large corporations are increasingly turning to the right wing activist Judges on the Supreme Court to receive immunities from their actions.
And large corporations have dictated barriers to limit competition since the founding of our nation. That was a key complaint about the British Tea Companies immunity from accountability and the fact that they were given a tax cut.
The early American Colonists threw the original “Tea Party” to protest a corporations tax cut.
“SFC B”, can you read this:
“Not Enough Audacity.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/opinion/26krugman.html
It specifically addresses one of your questions: “What do you think would happen if President Obama’s dream of a health care exchange came to pass with a public option being available, and the public option failed?”
It basically says that if the program is watered down too much that it likely will fail.
Which is kind of the right wing’s intent in gaining concessions: The right wing is genuinely are trying to sabotage the President.
The right wing are looking for concessions that will cripple the President’s programs.
And a lot of right wingers are helping by screaming that if the President doesn’t give them the concessions (that will cripple his objectives) than he isn’t being “Bipartisan” enough.
I’m tired of watching the Dems play patty-cake with right wingers who are actively trying to sabotage not just the President, but America.
It’s why I have so little patience with the reprehensible chicanery of the right wing trolls here.
What do you think would happen if President Obama’s dream of a health care exchange came to pass with a public option being available, and the public option failed?
It won’t but I would think, since we live in a democracy, that an opposing party would be able to use this as a talking point to pull themselves out of the root cellar of public opinion where they currently reside.
Republicans should be happy if they truly think the Obama system is going to fell. The fact that they’re shitting themselves points to that they know it has a good chance of working.
fell=fail
FAIL!
Quite honestly, I’d much rather leave my well-being in the hands of the greedy bastard who will only get paid in full if I live a happy, healthy life over the altruistic do-gooder who thinks it is important for everyone to have access to health care. Here in the real world we can have the greedy bastard, but we won’t have the altruistic do-gooder. Instead we’ll have the indifferent drone who gets paid regardless of the outcome and who has an incentive to keep me as miserable and reliant upon his services as possible. Which is even worse.
I’m not. However I worry that you are underestimating the power of the state.
I worry even more that you’re aware of the power and relying upon it.
First that’s a demonstrable lie. Second, even granting it to be true, it is an immunity they enjoy at the leisure of the state. As soon as it is beneficial for the state to withdraw or limit that immunity, they are just as vulnerable as anyone else, save the state itself. The only entity which enjoys the immunity the state has is the state.
So the only way it succeeds in competing against private enterprise is if it is given more power, funding, and breaks than could even be available to a non-governmental agency. Yup. Totally fair.
This is why I love your commentary NR. You take what is a genuine, honest disagreement about a very important policy decision which will have long-reaching, possibly history-changing consquences, and those who disagree with the side you support are saboteurs. I remember it wasn’t that long ago when dissent was patriotic.
I know it won’t. This will make the “too big to fail” from the financial industry seem like change from the couch cushions.
They might not be able to pull themselves all the way out, but the nearly inevitable epic “fell” this will represent would probably lower those currently walking on water down into the cellar.
By similar logic we should only have one car company, one cell phone company, one airline, etc. in the country we could eliminate lots of overhead, but I don’t think that it would be a smart move.
My father would agree with this statement. “How many freaking batteries do we need anyway?!”
“comparable access to services, comparable if not superior freedom of choice in doctors and portability of access, and equal or better health outcomes”
common sense and a walk in many (?all) European cities shows a truth that is hard to prove with published Data. You guys seem smart enough to work on this:
I just returned from Winnipeg.
Spoke to two Canadian MD’s (specialist each) , and many “Joe Q patients”.
Everyone who doesn’t know any better is very happy with the medicine in Canada (ie not the MDs or the patients who were not routine).
SO if the Mediterranean diet is so good for you , as everyone already knows is proven ,
and a Mediterranean country then lives longer on less healthcare dollars than car-driving , non-wine drinking, stair-avoiding Americans,
why is it not exposed as moronic to conclude that the American healthcare consumer spending is the problem? (ie they get what they pay for here, mostly satisfied too, and I doubt magically switching all US doctors with the French would change our lifespans)
Yes , we need changes. We need menus with prices first. We need some USA government regulations in health insurance (remember how good banking was before we removed them). We need national plans, not inefficient 50 differnent state rules (but keep the state regulators , at least in the un-corrupt states).
We need real options like Not-for-profit Insurance companies (which is really all medicare is – with some national politics).
But I think we really just need to be less American.
Be honest, if American’s “Cars” are more expensive than the transportation of other countries’ , and those countries get around “better” , just show the data how:
What percent of people over 65 in “other medical systems” get dialysis? How do we get ARRP volunteers so we can lower our percentage here to the same number?
Publish the percent of respective national “populations” that get bone marrow transplants , and if higher in America just be honest with the number that will have to be limited here to control costs.
These restrictions are obviously done (to a traveler with a medical background) everywhere else and will “have” to be done here to save us from our own financial Entitlement “pig” in the snake this next decade anyway.
Just be honest so that the public can decide which citizens (poorer? a lottery? age based?) fairly can be denied lifespan-elongating Mercedes Benz’s and MRI’s.
I’ll get us started :
Prop 8 housing works for landlords, but isn’t that because of the risk that they could be evicted for not being a good tenant?
Which Americans are going to chose to have their appendix removed by someone who can’t afford to pay a settlement if a stitch pops? (even Micheal Jordan misses a free throw without being sued)
…. In the United States, the federal government has sovereign immunity and may not be sued unless it has waived its immunity or consented to suit. The United States has waived sovereign immunity to a limited extent…