We Need Single-Payer Public Healthcare — NOW
Barbara O’Brien has a superb post explaining why relying on private insurers to provide anything like universal, affordable, accessible healthcare is a fool’s game:
The must-read new story today is by Lisa Girion of the Los Angeles Times. In “Health insurers refuse to limit rescission of coverage,” we find the clearest case yet why the private health care industry will never, ever, not in a million years, come even close to solving the health care crisis.
In a nutshell — yesterday three big insurance company executives — WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. — told the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations that their business models depended on being able to cancel the health insurance policies of customers who cost them too much money. An investigation by the Committee had found that over a five-year period, these companies had canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people in order to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims.
One of the execs claimed the rescissions — industry jargon for canceling coverage — were necessary to protect the companies from fraud. People lie about preexisting conditions on their applications, he said, and this drove up the cost of insurance for everyone else. I’ll come back to this point in a moment.
In practice, this means insurers target people with high-cost conditions such as breast cancer and lymphoma and direct employees to examine patients’ paperwork for any pretense to cancel coverage. People with innocent mistakes and inadvertent omissions; people who were unaware of a preexisting condition at the time they filled out the application because the symptoms hadn’t developed yet; people whose preexisting conditions were minor and had nothing whatsoever to do with the disease costing the insurer money — such people found themselves dumped out of the health care system at their time of greatest need.
[...]
Of course, you might remember that Michael Moore documented this practice quite nicely in Sicko. We all knew this was going on. Members of the House Committee feigned surprise.
But I want to go back to the part about rejecting people with preexisting conditions. Who above the age of 40 does not have a preexisting condition? For that matter, what percentage of young adults freshly cut loose from their parents’ policies find they cannot obtain insurance because they failed to get through childhood without a preexisting condition?
The insurance companies are saying they can’t make a profit unless they deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions. How is this not an admission the private health insurance industry is a big, fat FAIL?
[...]
My next question is, how obvious does this have to get before people see it?
I’m sure some people do lie on their insurance applications in order to obtain coverage. But in most industrialized democracies, this wouldn’t even be an issue. You’re a citizen, you get health care. Whether you once had acne treatments or took Lipitor or had a gallstone or even had a life-threatening disease, you get health care. Because the purpose of the health care system in most countries is delivering health care, not making a profit.
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46 Responses to “We Need Single-Payer Public Healthcare — NOW”
Grow up, please — we need nothing NOW! [tm] — and stop using weasel language like a coward. WHO'S THE PAYER?
I have more respect for those who are hard-core lefty but honest and up-front, who say “Medicare for All.”
“Because the purpose of the health care system in most countries is _delivering_health_care_ [at cost or at a subsidized loss], not making a profit.”
OK, fine — it's a form of public utility.
But it's not magical, and once you start, where do you stop? I'm very thankful that the conceited elites in the Obama administration and their counterparts among the Congressional Dem members and staffers and related think-tank fad-followers weren't faced with the airline bankruptcies at the same time GM and Chrysler finally reached the end of their thirty-year self-destruction. After all, the feds already provide huge subsidies for money-losing flights in and out of small-market airports that can't sustain these on their own, often airports located in Dem states. Imagine if we have a federal airline, too, in other words, to name something else plenty of ignorant or childish people would want, NOW!
Any cost savings projected from a conversion from private to public service (even if you deliberately steal from people and don't compensate them for 20-30+ years lost rising profits, as you should if you wish to remain legally and morally as well as Constitutionally sound in the USA) will only be temporary. The public advantage lies in “streamlining” as a logistical benefit and providing at least some health care to everyone, including those who can't get it because they can't afford it currently. It won't save costs in the long run; nothing will other than rationing, which knowledgeable people long have anticipated eventually.
Keep things mature and honest, or change to this where you are in need of it.
Why do we need healthcare when we have such entertainment available to us on the issue? Beck inferring we are headed for communism, and the atlantic rigging up a chart that totally ignores public services and organizations the government runs: http://www.newsy.com/videos/obama_shakes_up_hea… That said, it strikes me that the real problem with the healthcare debate is that we are worried about money. This is one area where money shouldn't be that big of a deal, shouldn't protecting the health and wellbeing of its citizens be the government's main job? We go into deficit for everything else, what's the big deal with spending more for a good program?
WHO'S THE PAYER?
The government. But you knew that.
DLS, Your total disrespect of those who do not believe as you do has become boring.
WHO'S THE PAYER? The government.
There is no such possibility. The government creates no wealth; it either takes it from its citizens or it borrows it (to be repaid with interest by its citizens).
Of course, unless you believe in communism, that is.
Where I live, the roads are owned and operated by the government, some county, some state, some federal.
And I'm certain that this government-provided infrastructure helps people to create wealth.
Nice to see the advocates of single-payer health care dealing seriously and honestly with the possible problems and legitimate concerns raised by such a transformation.
Oh. Wait.
@And I'm certain that this government-provided infrastructure helps people to create wealth.
I disagree (respectfully, of course). If private citizens' tax dollars paid for the infrastructure, the private citizens' money created any wealth eminating therefrom.
If libs want a single payer system, why drag non-libs into it? Obama got 62M votes…….that's the world's biggest mutual insurance company right there. Sheesh, enjoy yourselves already!
Steve K., don't bother failing any more today. You're frequently irrational and you make false accusations. I'm moderate but am not compelled to be mushy about things, particularly about others' misconduct (both Kathy's and yours on this thread).
* * *
“The government. But you knew that.”
That's not the point. (Actually, it's us, the taxpayers, and any foreign bondholders, but that's not the real issue.) “The [federal] government” is fine, but that's what you should be saying instead of avoiding saying.
It's like liberals who avoid saying the word “liberal” (or misusing “moderate” frequently, as on this site) because they're scared of the stigma. (Why is there such a stigma? How was it earned over so many years and decades?) The same is true for government health care. That's no excuse for evasion (weasel language or cover-up euphemisms).
“If libs want a single payer system so damn bad, why drag non-libs into it? Obama got 62M votes…….that's the world's biggest mutual insurance company right there. Sheesh, enjoy yourselves already!”
One friend of mine from Seattle days (who had a high IQ but also chose to be sharp and caustic where it was appropriate, even sharper and more caustic than I have been at times, and who also eschews the most fancy vocabulary he can handle for plain, to-the-point down-to-earth language as I do) made the point succinctly in one of our debates with some quite-far leftists (“right-wing media,” “tax everything!”):
“Socialize yourself. Leave me alone.”
That _burns_ those who are especially collectivist and authoritarian-leaning.
Casualobserver–
Do you think that if private citizens' tax dollars were to fund a single-payer system, it wouldn't be a government program?
DLS–
Does this friend of yours live in a cabin without power, water and sewage connections? Never uses paved roads?
How about you?
“That said, it strikes me that the real problem with the healthcare debate is that we are worried about money. This is one area where money shouldn't be that big of a deal”
1. It is a huge amount of money at this time, and please consider the state of affairs 10-30 years from now when our population ages substantially. Of course normal people are going to worry about their having to pay for all of this.
2. Where will we get the money? That is a serious problem. It has to be found somehow, somewhere. We can't just get away with the clever, childish trick of making it “mandatory” spending out of general revenues, leaving others to answer the question, sometime later. That is no “solution” to the problem. Conyers-Kucinich's Medicare-for-All bill is notorious for this (expressly intending this to be paid for largely out of general revenues that would be financed, the intention is openly stated, through highly progressive income and possible wealth taxes. This is supplemented by tricks like a tax on stock and bond transactions. That still doesn't solve things, though it does attempt to explain some and channel some future efforts, at least. The current mess rushed through Congress is a nightmare that has no attention being paid whatsoever to financing, or even estimating initially the costs of the effort! We need to know how much in new taxes we have to pay, and what kind of taxes (consumption, sumptuary, income or wealth taxes, future “service fees” or “co-payments” that are simply taxes but not presented as such).
3. We're spending money in gargantuan amounts under Obama already (and gorging on debt to be repaid somehow, vaguely, later, by others) and haven't even set up taxes yet to cover the huge costs we are now undertaking. This is without any massive new health care initiative. Normal people _of_course_ are worried about where to find the money for this. We can't promise everything magically to everybody.
4. What of the future when we will have to raise taxes anyway as Social Security as well as Medicare fail financially? (This has been known and warned about for years, but so many are in denial about it.) Are we being set up eventually by Obama for higher taxes to get used to them as a matter of routine practice (more like European nations, higher taxes as fraction of GDP) or to prepare for more tax increases later as Social Security and Medicare fail? (Redemption of trust-fund bonds requires new taxes or borrowing.) And how does a vast new expansion of federal health care spending get paid for, in this context?
“Does this friend of yours live in a cabin without power, water and sewage connections? Never uses paved roads?
How about you?”
No, and no. We just think more about various things than other people appear to do.
“Do you think that if private citizens' tax dollars were to fund a single-payer system, it wouldn't be a government program?”
Who's the payer, George? What kind of monopsony, public or private, do you have in mind here?
DLS–
My comment was made in response to comments by Austin Roth and Casualobserver.
Go back up the thread, you'll see.
@@Do you think that if private citizens' tax dollars were to fund a single-payer system, it wouldn't be a government program?@@
You like to debate by employing leading questions, I see.
Ok, I'll play. Of course, it would be a government program, but the source of funding is not determinative of a programs success or value. A government roads program has value because there are no useful alternatives readily available to the individual citizen whereas a government healthcare program is not because resourceful people do have more useful alternatives readily available.
Again, don't let me stop you from setting your program up. Just recognize you don't have the right to have me participate.
Casualobserver–
I was trying to answer Austin Roth's point that government programs don't produce wealth. And I think I did it.
There was a time in America when there were no roads. The debate over internal improvements raged over the 19th century. Eventually we ended up with what we've got. It works pretty well. There are plenty of benefits for everyone.
There doesn't have to be a single-payer system, although I think it is the best idea. That debate is ongoing. There may not even be a public option. But in a system that included a public option, you'd have other choices.
By the way, pacifists still have to pay taxes that support the military. And people who send their children to private schools still have to pay taxes that support public schools.
DLS, you're overlooking the magic ingredient that will make single payer a success: Other People's Money.
You may be paying a lot for health coverage, and so am I. But there are people who are not, so we can just average all our expenses together and save money. Well, I mean you and I save money, them not so much. Best of all, those people haven't been born yet, so unlike a lot of otherwise bright ideas, single payer is a political slam-dunk. Bring it on, I say!
this government-provided infrastructure helps people to create wealth.
And your point was to agree with me? That the government did not create the wealth, but perhaps created circumstances where private citizens did?
And more and more roads are being built and operated by private enterprise, such as toll roads, or as a precondition to get required permits (to create wealth).
@@By the way, pacifists still have to pay taxes that support the military. And people who send their children to private schools still have to pay taxes that support public schools.@@
Well, to those tired notions, to those failed policies of the past, I say…….It's time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.
Austin Roth–
You were originally up there complaining about communism, right?
Government owned and operated roads enable them people who use them to get to work and to transport goods for sale. Those are things that create wealth.
Dr J–
On the other thread, you said the role of government in this (you also agreed it was a crisis) was to write to checks to people so they could write checks to their doctors. Whether or not that's feasible, you've already come out in favor of the government paying for some people.
Casualobserver–
Thanks for the quote from Obama.
Dr J–
The whole thing about people not being born paying the price?
As you may know, there's already a very large deficit because the people currently alive didn't want to pay for the government services they were consuming.
Maybe you think the people currently alive should suck it up and pay more taxes now so future generations won't get stuck with our bills?
Or maybe you declaim any responsibility for our current deficit?
It seems you're the one with a fondness for asking questions, George. And for taking non-positions laced with innuendo.
Maybe you think the people currently alive should suck it up and pay more taxes now so future generations won't get stuck with our bills?
OK, so you solution is to let the government quintuple spending commitments in the first 150 days, nationalize huge corporations, introduce the concept of the government creating pay rules for ALL companies that are publicly traded, create vast new agencies to oversee any company they decide is 'to big' with the authority to force them to change their business model if they feel 'that is best' for the country, and increases taxes to whatever level is required so they can pay for their new programs.
And then deride me for calling out the fact the fact that those tendencies and directions are socialist/communistic in nature.
Honestly, Dr J, we've both been asking questions on these threads.
I'd guess you're satisfied with the answers you've been giving.
Austin Roth–
The deficit didn't just appear in the last 150 days. And much of that newer spending has been in continuation of the previous administration's policies.
And I confess, the cry of “Communism!” is always going to make me roll my eyes.
You said, “The government creates no wealth”. I think my response–government owned and operated roads create plenty of wealth was a good response to that.
GS – think my response–government owned and operated roads create plenty of wealth was a good response to that.
I disagree. The government, in the case you describe, may set the table for private creation of wealth, and I agree that is the case, but that is not the same as the government creating its own profit revenue stream.
Even in the case of government owned toll roads, those tolls are almost always to replay the bonds floated to build them. Who, pray-tell, is paying said tolls? Citizens.
I think everyone's position is clear here, and the discussion no longer goes anywhere. Those on the right do not want the government to “meddle” in health care. So apparently for them there is no problem and no need for change. Dr. J and I have already explored our positions and I think his is a bit more nuanced than that, admitting that for some desperately poor or ill the government might reluctantly be allowed to help them buy insurance, but mostly we should just pay out of pocket or a HSA. Most on the right are far to the right of that, demonizing government and especially Obama as communism that “steals from us.” They see no role government in anything (well, except the military I suppose. support the troops!).
So I'm not going to bother debating this any more. I understand. This group does not consider that we have a legitimate public interest in health care for our citizenry. I'm tired of the name calling and unproductive non solution-oriented barbs and insults.
If I'm wrong about that, go ahead and correct me. My conclusion is that this group is stuck in a selfish place in which individual gain and keeping what's gained is the highest goal. Everyone should just fend for themselves.
For those of us who think it is in our national interest to have available care for sick or injured people, the discussion about how to get there without breaking the bank will go on. Elsewhere I suppose.
The thing that frustrates me in this discussion is how impervious the left is to anything the right says. GreenDreams, I believe you're sincerely trying to echo back my position on the subject, but you've missed the gist of it, and I feel like I've said it about 50 times.
No one on the right has said anything resembling “keeping what's gained is the highest goal,” so if that's really your takeaway, that's disheartening.
“My comment was made in response to comments by Austin Roth and Casualobserver.
Go back up the thread, you'll see.”
I looked. Thanks for the directions.
“By the way, 'monopsony' seems like a mighty fancy word.”
The older I get, the more I prefer simple language (and the more down-to-earth I am; I'm no good old boy, but something like it as opposed to the typical lefty youth). In this case, “monopsony” works quite well. (It means “single buyer,” a clarification and correction of the common term “single-payer.”) Lefties hate monopolies and oligopolies so much, but they don't mind something equivalent for a government role in health care (they not only want government to provide it, but insist strongly on universality and thus to prohibit a “private option” for anyone, typically). If I wanted to get _really_ fancy, I'd say “federal government health care command-and-control monopsony.”
* * *
“DLS, you're so fixated on costs and funding sources that you're overlooking the magic ingredient that will make single payer a success: Other People's Money.”
As with other benefits, especially when Other People are “contributing” most of the money. Oh, yes. However, at this time it would at least be halfway serious of the advocates and supporters of the current effort and legislation to have an idea what the (initial, underbid to the point of euphemism or even comedy) cost projections or estimates will be, along with suggestions, ideas already at hand, for taxes to pay for these, i.e., how we will get Other People to “contribute” their Money. Payroll tax boost? A VAT? A tax on motor vehicle fuels to please the little green fascists (for that's what so many of them are) at the same time? Et cetera. I'm honestly not fixated on the costs, but rather on the lack of attention given to them in the current legislation and by the current advocates pushing this initiative. They and their silliest fans may be satisfied with “Act NOW! Pay Later” (with Other People's Money), but that's not good enough for the rest of us.
* * *
“By the way, pacifists still have to pay taxes that support the military. And people who send their children to private schools still have to pay taxes that support public schools.”
They should get a tax deduction if they send their kids to private schools instead. And to address the more general point here (you sometimes have to pay for what you don't like or want), just wait until federal health care is extended to child-bearing-age females and the abortion-and-judicial-activism militants demand that services include abortion. I wouldn't be surprised to see not only some GOP opposition but public revulsion if the abortion militants and related lefties became too obnoxious and offensive about it, as I suspect they might (especially if they felt such a service was threatened).
* * *
“Most on the right are far to the right of that” … “I understand.”
You do not, as exemplified by what you say above, alone, but also by other statements, such as –
“My conclusion is that this group is stuck in a selfish place in which individual gain and keeping what's gained is the highest goal. Everyone should just fend for themselves.”
This does not follow logically from what we have been writing on this thread, as well as being incorrect when describing popular objection to governmental overreach.
“For those of us who think it is in our national interest to have available care for sick or injured people, the discussion about how to get there without breaking the bank will go on.”
Failure to address the costs and how to pay for them was a primary defect in the current legislation, as well as having been launched much too early; logically it should wait until both the economy recovers _and_ federal finances are put in order (the second of which is unlikely, so we are likely to settle for only the first).
“The national interest” is grandiose and really isn't applicable here. Sadly, nor at this time are the more intellectually powerful and profound issues relevent any more, such as if the federal government has any legitimate role whatsoever in individuals' lives or direct role as opposed to indirect through state and local governments, or if it's constitutionally authorized to provide health care. Nobody cares about such things, particularly on the Left (whatever is in the Left's way is ignored or attacked and disparaged into a false state of illegitimacy) and we have the Medicare precedent, and most of the public accepts some role for government in health care, and is comfortable with federal health care for reasons of mobility within the USA if nothing else (standardization and theoretical simplification). I've foreseen federal health care as a “default” option after most of the public sees no other reasonable alternative. (Doctors as well as the public hate insurance companies; the doctors hate junk lawsuits, too.) There are a number of ways to get this done. I've been better than most lefties at identifying the best ways or means (consolidating Medicaid, VA, and Indian Health, etc., into Medicare, and extending Medicare to more beneficiaries, the ultimate being everyone, including non-citizens if Dems want this; giving citizens the same benefits that members of Congress and other federal officials and their staffs get, etc.) and I've at least wondered about the taxes (payroll, VAT, income or wealth taxes, the stock-and-bond transfer tax advocated by some) but I also am not naive or fulminantly activist; I know that government control will replace insurance company and HMO control as an intermediary that will meddle; that government control can make things worse as well as better; that our history of politicizing things by government when lefties run things — PC madness, “social responsibility” demands of business, and other lunacies — will infect medicine (words chosen well here), that the current effort is not only premature and childishly rushed (to appeal most of all to the childish) but defective (“Act Now, Pay Later”), and also smacks of rushing to addict the public to a vast new entitlement which never will be subsequently reversed or attenuated, but is being done so almost in a cynical as well as careless manner by neglecting the necessary details while seeking at the same time to be monstrously, unnecessarily, hopelessly complex. (615 pages or so, 388 amendments)
“how impervious the left is to anything the right says”
Much like the Arabs (the Left) versus Israel (the Right), in fact, in this and in other ways. Stellar analogy.
GD – where have I said the government has NO role? I have much less of an issue with the social safety net as a concept, just as it has been implemented and expanded to be much more than a safety net for the needy. It is the classic 'slipperly slope' in practice.
This proposal isn't even close to that definition, either. It is turning health care into a basic right for all. Not just life-saving and emergency care, but ALL aspects of health care. And yes, I am such a meenie that I do not think health care is a basic right for everyone.
Finally, once it IS a government run program, and costs escalate (and they will), we will be stuck with it forever as it, like ALL government bureaucracies, grows and grows, and more and more of the budget is consumed by it, and more and more of that budget is consumed by administrators.
Austin Roth–
Thanks for further clarifying and agreeing that the government may set he table for the private creation of wealth.
“GD – where have I said the government has NO role?”
It's a form of straw-man argument. Next to nobody in the world advocates true anarchism. That is true of most Americans, who share in various ways the English heritage of libertarianism (the true liberalism or so-called “classical liberalism”). Government is a necessary evil, but of course necessary; it's a fine line that should have as little possible on the “government” (compulsory) side and as much on the “private” (free, where “liberal” is derived) side as possible. Where to draw the line is then the basic question to be settled, with as small government as possible the best (for it tends to do wrong and to oppress people; even Obama's most faithful believers can recall how evil they felt the Bush Administration to have been).
Many of us even yield to public sentiment; I've said for ages that federal health care is likely eventually. I know it won't be a magic solution to the current ills, and that we'll exchange one set of problems for another, and I'll be critical of what's wrong with anything that is advocated or advanced.
Speaking of which, CBO has just come out with its assessment of, yes, the costs, as well as failure to achieve spectacular results by the “public option” in the Kennedy health care bill. This is only a prelim assessment, but it shows that the “public option” is not going to achieve what proponents necessarily believe.
Read it for yourselves.
* Projected to cost over one trillion dollars over the next 10 years
* Reduces the number of uninsured by (only) 16 million.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/103xx/doc10310/06-15…
Yes, Austin Roth, once it's started, it will last forever, and that may be one reason why the Obama camp is rushing to do this before the federal government is in a fiscal position (not to mention that of the many taxpayers) to afford this. The idea is to get it started now, and it will never go away. Additionally, it will be crafted largely to suit lib-Dem preferences, and lib-Dem politicians, first and foremost Obama, will claim the credit for the grand new achievement (and establishment of a new entitlement, ideally universal), and even enjoy a boost in the polls if the story reaches its full as well as happiest ending (for them).
* * *
In thinking ahead about health care (not that it's imminent — sorry, activists — but because there are all kinds of other issues related to this and other kinds of growth of government), I wonder if the costs of any vast new health care entitlement specifically are going to not only be the budget breaker (Medicare already is projected to harm federal finance more than Social Security), but be identified in the future as what may lead to inflation by the Obama team (which doesn't hesitate to rush things, as we see), be it merely through monetization of the vast new debts this President has already “secured” for us, or (this is quite likely given the nature of lib-Dem elites) that we may eventually see inflation, not merely as an escape from our slump or from deflation (which would merely be an excuse, a rationalization), or to help meet entitlement costs for retirees (also merely an excuse, but likely), but also because it would enable in the meantime more spending and a low inflation would be the true “opiate” of the masses which Obama and people like him in Washington would like to exploit. It could advance to substantial inflation but not necessarily intentionally, but resulting from another experiment by Obama-team types gone awry.
Once again, been away all day.
Dr.J: No one on the right has said anything resembling “keeping what's gained is the highest goal,”
I know I have put it harshly, but that is the message of “the virtue of selfishness.” Perhaps I've over-composited the opinions of “the right” in the same way you homogenize “the left.” That composite includes the way every government action and plan (except military) is reviled as bureaucratic and inefficient and as DLS put it, “stealing from us.” AR seems even to think interstate highways were not the legitimate province of government. The composite attitude is that “the right” hates government and wishes they could, as Norquist put it, “shrink it to a size that we can drown it in the bathtub.” “Conservatives” seem to agree with Reagan “government is not the solution. It is the problem.” None of the conservative icons, Friedman, Reagan, Thatcher, have made any secret of their philosophy: “privatize, deregulate, cut social services.” Conservative commenters here consistently slammed Social Security and Medicare, “entitlements”, poverty alleviation and the “safety net” AR speaks of, “the nanny state.” Every single thing that is proposed is blasted if it means the government, using tax revenue, does something for the less fortunate, while tax cuts and deregulation and everything that advantages the wealthy is heralded as “good for America.”
You, Dr. J, automatically assume that a public system is doomed to fail and cost too much, while DLS just sputters that no one should expect any “nanny state” help. I don't think I'm being too harsh to assume that you are biased against a public effort, and that most on “the right” here want everything to be entrepreneurial, profit-driven private enterprise.
I believe the best efforts of humans are driven by values and passion. If health care can be driven by people passionate about serving the health of patients, it can be compassionate and effective. When the passion is for selfish accumulation of wealth, or “maximize shareholder wealth,” the result will be suffused with the kind of obstructionist, stingy and greed-driven denial of care that we so often see from the current profit-driven insurance companies. I have no problem with profit and entrepreneurialism; indeed I am a successful entrepreneur, but let us try to buy low, sell high with widgets, not human health.
AR, damn. You are a meanie.
It's our decision what kind of a “tribe” we want. Some tribes abandon the old and sick to die, sparing their strength for the young and fit (oh, and fertile). I kinda hoped we were beyond that; that in the richest nation on earth, we could care for our sick and fallen.
GreenDreams, I don't see it that way at all. The virtue of private enterprise is that it makes more efficient use of our limited resources, to the benefit of countless future generations.
If a dollar we spend today might pay for a dollar's worth of someone's cancer treatment that they couldn't otherwise afford, or it might be invested in ways to make all future cancer treatments 0.01 cents cheaper, to spend it on the first is worse than shortsighted, it's a massive betrayal.
Over 9 billion people will be walking the planet within the next 30 years, almost all of them financially worse off than our 40 million uninsured. Even within the US the current generation of people who can't afford health coverage will not be our last. They will have children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so on–fewer and fewer of whom (on present trends) will be able to afford health care.
What will improve their lot is technological and economic development–making their incomes rise and the price of things like decent medical care fall. If you are really concerned about helping people, you won't confine your view to the short-term bills of a half-percent of the population in the richest country in the world.
I don't believe people on the left are truly unconcerned with the other billions and the generations yet to come. But they sure don't talk about them much when it comes to health care. Terms like “economic development” and “cost efficiency” don't pass their lips, which suggests they either don't appreciate the problem or don't have a plan for fixing it.
Instead, the plan they're advocating sounds to my ears distinctly retrograde: put in charge a government that has a lousy track record in health care and for that matter in any other field requiring good commercial execution and getting maximum value for resources. Government makes decisions based on politics, not on optimal resource allocation. Look at schools, or medicare, or ethanol subsidies, or NASA, or the DMV, or the war on drugs, or…well, you name it. I've seen Uncle Sam's resume, and he's simply not the right guy for the job. In fact he's so obviously not the right guy that I have to think anyone who would nominate him doesn't really understand how big the job really is.
We need this, we need that.. but all these “needs” cost a ton of money that no one has. The United States HAS the world's gold standard of health care already. I simply cannot fathom why anyone seeks to reduce us to the level of a third-world country in medicine, which is the only possible outcome of socializing the industry.
Dr J, and GerSan, we don not have the gold standard of health care? How can you argue that? Our outcomes lag well behind ALL modern first world nations, and many second and third world ones. So I guess we just disagree on what we're getting for our money. And Dr. J I've worked in economic development for over 30 years so screw your ignorant accusation. I've worked in those desperately poor nations where most people make under $2 a day. And I've worked in countries where anyone, rich or poor can walk in and get world class health care for free, no bill, no billing cost, no mountains of paperwork, no departments of claims denial experts, no “new product” developers trying to come up with a fancy new “product” or marketers trying to come up with slick methods of convincing “customers” that they're going to do better than company Y at paying your bill.
I think your suggestion innovation in technological advance is waste when it comes to insurance companies. What makes you think that any of the money paid to marketers, sales staff, brokers, product developers, claims denial or executive salaries to insurance Co. staff does anything to improve health care? I think there's a lot of ignorance, driven by conservative ideology, about how much profit is driving innovation. For example, our newest cancer drug was developed by the federal government through the National Institutes of Health in partnership with a drug company. We paid the cost. We bent the rules to make it easier to approve. They got the patent. We pay 12 times what the drug costs and 4 times what Europeans pay, your insurance company tacks on 17% more, and you call that innovation.
“DLS just sputters that no one should expect any “nanny state” help”
Again you fail to read, Green Dreams (at least for correct comprehension). I dispel the myths of government magic and express intelligent and obvious concern for the costs and well as other problems we'll acquire in exchanging private for public health care. But don't let me divert you from your fiction if you find it more entertaining. By all means, continue. But not without criticism…
GreenDreams: “How dare you accuse me of not even being willing to *talk* about the poor!!! Now enough about them, let's get back to why insurance companies are evil….<…blah blah claims denials blah…>…and that's why the solution is an even bigger, government-sponsored insurance company.”
You're just talking in circles that have no relation to anything I've said. I've never defended insurance companies, except to point out that their profits are insufficient to finance much new health care, even if we were to loot them as liberals demand. As I've said multiple times before, they're not the solution. They're a bunch of staffers. What matters is the line workers, who are making too much money doing too many tests that don't matter and treatments that don't work.
The only people defending anything resembling a big health insurer are you and the other single payer advocates. Only yours will be much better because it will be non-profit, low overhead, run by humble philanthropic civil servants. You simply won't hire any of the bureaucratic automatons who have infiltrated so many other government agencies. Yeah, whatever. It's still a bunch of staffers who have already proved they can't fix the line.
GreenDreams, I don't know if you can't do the math or won't do the math, but the math behind your position is not getting done. And your reading is weak too. I'm weary of you making the same arguments over and over again against positions I've explicitly disavowed. I did my best in my last post not to match your accusation of greed with another accusation, but you obviously read that differently too.
Anyway, you might as well get back to what you're saying. You know the poor better than I do, and they don't need innovation. They should just move out of the US to just about anywhere else, because health care is world class in country X. Bills are no problem there, because they're illegal.
Glad you've got that problem solved, Uncle GreenDreams. Now tell me again about those evil insurance companies.
Please review CDC statistics, the U.S. only had the gold standard in terms of the amount of money we spend, not the health outcomes.
Huh?
Since I cannot trust that government “statistics” tell the truth, I don't really care what CDC or WHO say. These are the same stats that tell us 47 million people are without health insurance, even though the true number is closer to 9 million. (One of the many reasons is that a person who leaves a job and drops that company's policy, and takes another job the next day that includes health insurance, counts as uninsured FOR THE ENTIRE YEAR! How can anyone quote such incredibly false numbers with a straight face – except to skew data in a particular direction…) And these stats don't include those who simply don't want to bother with insurance. 68% of households that are uninsured make more than $25K per year, including nearly 40% that make over $50K! Am I supposed to believe that people in those income brackets can't afford even a no-frills policy in the $50/month range?
Look instead at the number of people coming to the US for medical care from countries with socialized medicine. Canada is my favorite. They send many patients to the US for complex procedures. A great example: while in Seattle a couple years ago, there was a story in the local news that Canada was sending so many high-risk pregnant women to area hospitals that there was a shortage of beds for American patients. Another story in the Windsor Star newspaper a couple days ago says 55 Ontario cancer patients are sent to Buffalo and Detroit for treatment. Why? It's CHEAPER! Yet Canada is touted as an example of well-run socialized medicine.
I'm all for helping those in need. I just don't think we all are “in need” of a government takeover, nor do I think that using some other country's failed health-care system as an example is the way to go.
Look, I'm not a doctor or an insurance agent. I simply know what I see and I know what I see isn't nearly as bad as what the socialists/single payers say. I also know that a large majority of people in this country aren't interested in tearing down what we've built just because a small group of self-described “elites,” that claim to know what the rest of us need, say so.