[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('efarmer', 'h')ttp://chartingtheeconomy.com/?cat=18

So here are some data.

Plantagenet, you have consistently told what the solutions are NOT. Please guide us to the alternative with the best plan to implement to get the US Healthcare % of GDP under control.

I will preempt you and admit that Bush and Obama are simply not it so no need to go there.

What do you want for Alaska, your home state?

Who has the best plan for America, our shared nation?

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '
')
4. In Alaska we have a state funded insurance pool for people who can't find any insurance at all.

[efarmer]

This is pretty much the Ryan notion of the Republican party notion of how to address the issue.
Thanks for your input.

I spent an 8 year part of my career in Health Informatics, specifically Health Care Data Processing,
and unfortunately, the 'free' emergency care that is mandated by law to all who arrive and qualify in the ER, is simply transferred into the cost of the institution and divided to be recouped via the insured and cash paying (very few of those) clients being treated.
It was easy for Washington to mandate, but ends up taking a guy with the stomach flu without insurance and amplifying it to a multi-thousand dollar hit to divide and spread out on the insured or cash clients, instead of a $150 charge at a Doc in the Box, or clinic. The trial lawyers drive redundant procedures and testing and insurance premiums, but if you work in the system, and I have, you will see the system drives a lot of this on their own because it is so darned lucrative. So if you magically remove the trial lawyers, the system is still broke, IMHO. The way out of this is not political, it is a systems design and I believe it will require a public clinic model, to remove the burden from our high quality insurance driven system so that it can be profitable and cost effective. The clinic model should essentially make you sign your rights away to suing the system in return for means tested, ability to pay care. Health Care consumers should be allowed to buy their caliber of care versus cost instead of their deductible amounts, but this will not be on the table either. Pharmaceuticals are a separate issue where both parties in Washington have prevented the free market from allowing global prices from reflecting in America because they have been bought off by lobbyists. If Apple was a pharma company, and Ipods were lifesaving, you would not be able to buy a $150 one from outside America, and instead would buy the same unit for $1800 and the theory would be that you were paying for their R&D costs. This is perversion of free markets by lobbyists.

The urban situation is very critical, because there are about 20 American cities with a population greater than the 700,000 total population of Alaska, and the top ones are about 12 X the Alaskan population. Every urban ER swimming with minor cases for 'free' treatment is a back breaking cost avalanche to be passed along, marked up internally, then externally in the insurance industry, and then drive premiums through the roof, once it is split out and tacked on to all the individual premiums.

On a personal note, my brother married young, his wife had a child while they were uninsured and spent 4 days in the hospital in 1970, he only made $300 a week and the total bill was $1200 or a month's work. This same treatment and care regimen would represent 6 months to a year's wages at this point. (He ended up making payments for a year direct to the hospital, my niece is now 40.)
This system is very broken and isn't even viable for the general practice physician anymore.


Nice to trade opinions with you.

[xerces]

There is nothing inherently unworkable with Socialist healthcare, the only issue is whether we(collectively) are willing to give up some high end services for much MUCH cheaper basic services.

So for example, would you be able to accept not ever having a liver transplant, if the cost of a venipuncture session is reduced by 50%, and the cost of common arthritis drugs is reduced by 90%?

[Keith_McClary]

On CBC Radio a doctor discussed treatments that give elderly patients a few more months of painful,miserable, unproductive life. Said if he was in that situation he would refuse the treatment.

[kildred590]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '1'). First the lies have to stop. Obama and the dems lied when they said everyone could keep their existing plan under Obamacare....that clearly isn't true for 30,000 presently insured workers at Mickey D's or for 1.4 million other restaurant workers, because their existing insurance plans are in violation of the new Obamacare law. Soon it will be clear that Obamacare will destroy the existing insurance plans for millions of other Americans. The first law of medicine is to do no harm. Obamacare is doing immense harm by destroying successful existing health care plans.

[xerces]

I have to wonder whether socialistic medicine is all that bad. Sometimes, a centralized approach can yield better results. If you take the eradication of polio for example, central governments around the world set up a separate budget, hired a bunch of epidemiologists and other medical staff and systematically immunized the entire population.

[SeaGypsy]

Coming from a country with socialized medicine, I consider anyone arguing against it, is either rich or a fool.

[Loki]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'C')oming from a country with socialized medicine, I consider anyone arguing against it, is either rich or a fool.

[SeaGypsy]

I was born in Pennsylvania and have lived in 8 countries. The worst by a long way was the USA. Why? Because in the 3rd world there is a real reason why people have to beg and die young.

[Perfector]

If a person is denied some expensive treatment by a "death panel", then they wouldn't have been able to afford that treatment anyhow.

But here's another article which shows how messed up the US medical system is:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/th ... l?hp&_r=1&

"Albuterol, one of the oldest asthma medicines, typically costs $50 to $100 per inhaler in the United States, but it was less than $15 a decade ago, before it was repatented."
I can buy an inhaler over the counter here in Australia for $6. Its even cheaper in many other countries. For mild to moderate asthma this is a life changing medication.

In the article it describes how drug manufacturers are routinely able to keep drugs perpetually patented by slightly changing the formula, or re-branding them to treat slightly different conditions. With Albuterol, they took a different approach. The drug itself is no longer under patent, but they somehow got the FDA to make new rules on what inhalers are permissible - and they managed to patent all the permissible inhaler designs.

[Shaved Monkey]

This article was in the Australian broadsheet a few days ago.
We have just had a federal government's Commission of Audit on healthcare.
It compares private and public health spending over multiple countries and their overall % of GDP spends
Lots of graphs
The US doesn't do too well in the comparisons despite spending the most

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/ ... 34vh7.html

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Shaved Monkey', '
')The US doesn't do too well in the comparisons despite spending the most

[Lore]

Sorry, those misleading ads about rate increases were pulled.

[Plantagenet]

I haven't seen any ads, but all the data coming from the private companies that sell O-care suggests that rates are going to skyrocket in some parts of the country next year.

Here's a news story about that:

obamacare-premiums-are-about-to-skyrocket

Cheers!

[Subjectivist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('xerces', 'I') have to wonder whether socialistic medicine is all that bad. Sometimes, a centralized approach can yield better results.

[americandream]

@ subjectivist

The debate in the forum (on this issue) largely relates to how better to manage our resources and one aproach is to collectivise so as to remove infinite growth from the equation.

Others of course believe that technology will enable us to create resources out of thin air. Graeme for example waxes eloquent over projects where CO2 can be used for this and that.

At the end of the day, that issue will be decided objectively. Current forms of socialisation are not without problems, often enough because this one amongst a number of a modes for subsidising the private sector and incudes rules to achieve this outcome.

But like I said, objective forces will,determine where we go (unless of course we come through with something for nothing machines).

[PrestonSturges]

The opposition comes from the neoconfederate south where the population is overwhelming white, poor, unemployed, malnourished, with very low high school graduation rates, and an extremely high death rate due to violence and lot lots of drug overdoses. The main economic activity is collecting government handouts.

Yep these are the folks that will rant from day after day (the meth probably helps) about government interference and how they are too "smart" to be fooled by anyone.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'E')thnically, 2.7% of the total population, among all racial groups, was of Hispanic or Latino origin (they may be of any race).[39] As of 2011, 53.8% of Mississippi's population younger than age 1 were minorities (note: children born to white hispanics are counted as minority group).[40] For more information on racial and ethnic classifications in the United States see race and ethnicity in the United States Census.

[PrestonSturges]

It has been discussed before how the life expectancy (for whites) is falling fast in the neoconfederate south, and their life span may be shorter than Mexico's in GOP strongholds.

The next stage in their massive resistance to "socialist medicine" is closing down their already crappy hospitals. Without Medicare expansion and Obamacare, a number of rural southern hospitals are in very bad shape financially and will close, leaving rural populations with no hospital less than 60 miles away over crappy roads. But their GOP politicians have told them that ER care is "free" (until the bill arrives). This is also true for some very well known urban charity hospitals in red states.

Oh and close Planned Parenthood, which is one of the few points of contact people have for medical care. We'll see a corresponding increase in syphilis in these areas.

The thing is that the Tea Partyish politicians representing these areas think "socialist medicine" is any public medical service, just like "socialist education" is any public education. So close the schools and hospitals because freedom. Of course, these Tea Party take their government healthcare, and the hell with the goobers back home.