It's simple. Forget health insurance. Destroy the health insurance industry as quickly as possible.
Build a public healthcare facility (doctor's office/dentist office/clinic/pharmacy/small hospital) at or as a part of every public school in the United States. This would allow preventive medicine which is much less expensive. It would also create millions of good jobs.
In addition, build a public health clinic/dental clinic/pharmacy/hospital combined with a public 'nursing home' or 'elderly care facility' in every community in America.
This would ultimately be cheaper than allowing the private insurance companies to syphon off and vaporize 10% of America's GDP each year.
Those who can afford to can still go to private healthcare providers for their care.
Qualified, prospective health professionals could not only receive a paid for education but also receive a salary while obtaining their education. There would no longer be a need for malpractice insurance, saving more tens of billions.
Such programs would be better built on the individual state level instead of the federal level so that with 50 different systems, the better methods might become obvious.
Unfortunately, it's about 64 years too late to start building such reform and I doubt the current reforms going on in Washington will even start to address the real issue.
PeakOil is You
THE Healthcare Industry Thread (merged)
Re: "Why We Lost Healthcare"
by hillsidedigger » Thu 24 Dec 2009, 11:42:06
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Re: "Why We Lost Healthcare"
by evilgenius » Fri 25 Dec 2009, 17:08:33
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Bas', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('HeckuvaJob', '
')
Instead of asking how every other industrialized country provides its citizens with healthcare -
we should have first asked why.
')
Instead of asking how every other industrialized country provides its citizens with healthcare -
we should have first asked why.
this is the most intelligent remark I've heard in the whole healthcare debate so far.
I think that in most countries it's part of the social contract between government and the people, which basically comes down to this: the government can tax if it protects the people. So protection against ill health is there for much of the same reason why countries have firedepartments, police, and armies.
Exactly!
So, when was the last time that you called 911 and you got hold of an answering service that asked you which of the competing fire or police services you would like to come out and help you and for how much? The absurdity in trying to tell someone that shopping for healthcare is ethical is remarkable. It amounts to telling someone who has broken their leg that they should feel free to go out and see which of their options will take care of them the cheapest. Does anybody ever ask their doctor what he or she charges and then try to enter into negotiations? What this is all about is allowing an industry to take advantage of the fact that this is so terribly important to every person. We, yes we, have allowed a one sided situation to boil and boil because we are afraid to involve the government as the representative of democratic (with a small d) man in America. Our collective failure to understand government as the representative of democratic man in society has allowed corporate and individual interests involved in the issue to grab more and more every year at a rate far exceeding reason and receive praise for doing so because they were either great capitalist heroes or they had some part to play in a very important, almost sacred, endeavor. Even with the ship listing we are afraid to rock that boat in order to salvage the notion of care.
When it comes down to it, the people will always shout, "Free Barabbas." They love Barabbas. He's one of them. He has the same dreams. He does what they wish they could do. That other guy is more removed, more inscrutable. He makes them think. "Crucify him."
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evilgenius - Intermediate Crude
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Re: "Why We Lost Healthcare"
by smallpoxgirl » Sat 26 Dec 2009, 21:33:13
Healthcare in the US is just too expensive. Somebody has to control the costs. We just can't spend 100% of our GNP on healthcare. Unless we accept that reality, the rest of this is just spit in the wind, because we're not going to be able to afford it.
In most countries that somebody is the government. If your doctor proposes some stupid overpriced course of treatment, it's the government that comes down with the hammer and says no. People in the US, for good reason IMHO, do not trust the government to make those decisions. Nor do they trust insurance companies. To wit the horrible hue and cry a few years ago when the Oregon Health Plan decided it wasn't going to cover kidney transplants. I firmly believe that the social contract is far too battered, and the track record for effective reasoned governance far too sparse to ever trust basic decisions about such life and death topics to the US government. Stupak is the exact sort of thing that can be expected to occur over and over if healthcare funding is entrusted more completely to the US government. Rather that decisions based on efficacy, affordability, and human decency, such decisions will be made based on superstition and political pandering. If you don't want the government or your insurance company making those decisions about what is and what isn't reasonable cost wise, then the only other option is to put those costs, unobscured back on the consumer, and let them decide for themselves what is and isn't a reasonable expense. Handing carte blanche to your doctor makes about as much sense as handing it to your auto mechanic. If I wreck my car, I'm probably not going to drag it all over town looking to competing estimates. OTOH, if I take it in for a tune up and he decides it needs major repairs, we're going to have a long talk about how much this is going to cost, how sure he is that the work is needed, what other repair options are available, etc. The only people that have those discussions with their doctor these days are the uninsured, and you can bet that they spend a pittance of the average on healthcare costs. Most times if I try to discuss the cost of various treatments with patients, they give me a scowl and say "It doesn't matter, I have insurance."
In most countries that somebody is the government. If your doctor proposes some stupid overpriced course of treatment, it's the government that comes down with the hammer and says no. People in the US, for good reason IMHO, do not trust the government to make those decisions. Nor do they trust insurance companies. To wit the horrible hue and cry a few years ago when the Oregon Health Plan decided it wasn't going to cover kidney transplants. I firmly believe that the social contract is far too battered, and the track record for effective reasoned governance far too sparse to ever trust basic decisions about such life and death topics to the US government. Stupak is the exact sort of thing that can be expected to occur over and over if healthcare funding is entrusted more completely to the US government. Rather that decisions based on efficacy, affordability, and human decency, such decisions will be made based on superstition and political pandering. If you don't want the government or your insurance company making those decisions about what is and what isn't reasonable cost wise, then the only other option is to put those costs, unobscured back on the consumer, and let them decide for themselves what is and isn't a reasonable expense. Handing carte blanche to your doctor makes about as much sense as handing it to your auto mechanic. If I wreck my car, I'm probably not going to drag it all over town looking to competing estimates. OTOH, if I take it in for a tune up and he decides it needs major repairs, we're going to have a long talk about how much this is going to cost, how sure he is that the work is needed, what other repair options are available, etc. The only people that have those discussions with their doctor these days are the uninsured, and you can bet that they spend a pittance of the average on healthcare costs. Most times if I try to discuss the cost of various treatments with patients, they give me a scowl and say "It doesn't matter, I have insurance."
"We were standing on the edges
Of a thousand burning bridges
Sifting through the ashes every day
What we thought would never end
Now is nothing more than a memory
The way things were before
I lost my way" - OCMS
Of a thousand burning bridges
Sifting through the ashes every day
What we thought would never end
Now is nothing more than a memory
The way things were before
I lost my way" - OCMS
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smallpoxgirl - Expert
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Re: "Why We Lost Healthcare"
by evilgenius » Sun 27 Dec 2009, 12:58:00
I disagree that the government is not the logical arbiter. Nobody says that the fire department is rife with influence and corruption (not unless you live in an exceptional community). A government that is properly dispossessed of its pestering gadflies of money grubbing interest and neanderthal fearmongers could manage just fine.
Remember the government is the people. Whether it represents the people's laxity or their vigilance is up to the people, not some sketchy disturbing master. If we don't want to approach this issue I think you will find that it is far more likely that it is because there are deep seated issues within the populace that people are simply afraid to approach, rather than the issues that are actually being referenced. Possibly we are more worried about whether the American ideal of capitalism, as received from the Cold War era, is viable. The whole thing might boil down to taking a principled stand for the old ways over all of the conflicting evidence and all of the moral imperative.
Remember the government is the people. Whether it represents the people's laxity or their vigilance is up to the people, not some sketchy disturbing master. If we don't want to approach this issue I think you will find that it is far more likely that it is because there are deep seated issues within the populace that people are simply afraid to approach, rather than the issues that are actually being referenced. Possibly we are more worried about whether the American ideal of capitalism, as received from the Cold War era, is viable. The whole thing might boil down to taking a principled stand for the old ways over all of the conflicting evidence and all of the moral imperative.
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evilgenius - Intermediate Crude
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Re: "Why We Lost Healthcare"
by smallpoxgirl » Sun 27 Dec 2009, 15:17:19
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evilgenius', 'I') disagree that the government is not the logical arbiter. Nobody says that the fire department is rife with influence and corruption (not unless you live in an exceptional community).
What do you think would happen if you put FEMA in charge of your fire department? We're not talking about the county health department here. We're talking about the federal government.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')A government that is properly dispossessed of its pestering gadflies of money grubbing interest and neanderthal fearmongers could manage just fine.
I think that if such an entity were ever invented, it would be best to call it by another name to avoid confusion.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')emember the government is the people.
Perhaps on the film strip we all watched in middle school social studies class that was the answer. The real world doesn't work like that. The US Constitution was written specifically to obviate the need for such accountability to the people. Spend some time studying Shay's Rebellion. They wrote the Constitution specifically because the merchants in Boston wanted to keep ripping off the farmers in rural Massachusetts. The people of Massachusetts all knew what was going on and none of them would join an army to fight the farmers. They wrote the Constitution so they could raise an army from South Carolina and Virginia, ignorant of the local politics, to go kill the Massachusetts farmers and take their land. Thus it was. Thus it is. Thus it will always be. Local governments, by and large, are accountable. National and international governments exist specifically to avoid accountability.
"We were standing on the edges
Of a thousand burning bridges
Sifting through the ashes every day
What we thought would never end
Now is nothing more than a memory
The way things were before
I lost my way" - OCMS
Of a thousand burning bridges
Sifting through the ashes every day
What we thought would never end
Now is nothing more than a memory
The way things were before
I lost my way" - OCMS
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smallpoxgirl - Expert
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- Joined: Mon 08 Nov 2004, 04:00:00
You could be using that money for a world-class nuclear arsenal, aircraft carriers, war robots / aerial drones, and billion dollar stealth bombers.
