Semi-OT: Satisfied with your health care?

I'll keep this short. We need single-payer health care in this country, NOW, just as exists in 36 industrialized countries who have better health care outcomes than we do, for half the price. If you believe, as I do, that our current system leaves each and every one of us vulnerable to bankruptcy due to a health care crisis, including those who are happy with their private insurance, then please, please, please, call and write your legislators EVERY DAY until we get a moral and equitable health care system in this country.

Remember, much more than half of the bankruptcies in this country are due primarily to a health care crisis. More than half of those people were already insured! One slip on the table saw, you can't work any more, thus you can't work, you lose your job, you can't pay the COBRA insurance payments (mine are in excess of $1000/month), and bingo, you are bankrupt. Without health care for your stump.

Reply to
scritch
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You want an argument, change the subject.

It will be interesting to observe the process as it happens this summer and maybe into the fall.

Before it is over, Obama will have to twist a few arms, but he can do that.

Lew

Reply to
Lew Hodgett

That is a very scary thought. Some reform may be in order, but not that.

Reply to
Ed

On 6/30/2009 7:12 PM scritch spake thus:

I'll keep this short too. I agree *absolutely*.

Will make more detailed arguments later.

Reply to
David Nebenzahl

Oh, like some of the european countries where healthcare is "free" and everyone pays 80% income tax? And you may have NO choice of provider (any MD or hospital is considered as good as any other MD or hospital).

No thanks.

Please check ALL the conditions before picking out just the ones you think are good.

Did you know that a German driver's license can cost $1500 to $2500?

John

Reply to
news

We need to collectively build a cross and nail to it everyone who makes off-topic posts to rec.woodworking concerning the desirability of this or that or the other political action.

Reply to
J. Clarke
[...]

There is no such country

There is no country where private health care is outlawed

ROFL

No, but I don't believe it.

Tim W

Reply to
Tim W

I am uninsured, but do not want the government to insure me nor force me to pay to be insured. I plan to wait until I'm 65 to become insured by Medicare or find a job where I can get on a group plan. But, it would be nice if it were illegal for an insurance company to deny anyone insurance or to deny a claim due to cancer or other serious illness. I wish the government would stop spending our tax money, get out of our face, start making better laws and drop the stupid ones.

Reply to
Phisherman

"Private insurance for medically necessary hospital and physician services is illegal in only 6 of the 10 [Canadian] provinces."

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African countries do not permit private medical practice.

" it will cost approximately 1500 bucks...maybe less also..."

"I did mine about 2 years ago in Frankfurt. The whole thing cost about ?2,000."

"An Australian friend of mine got his German license 6 years ago and only paid around ? 500..."

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"Many schools have set up simplified courses for experienced drivers, which will cost you about ?200 as opposed to the over ?1,000 that a beginner would have to pay."
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"This is understandable when you realize that a German driver's license costs about $1500-2000, after a minimum of 25-45 hours of professional instruction plus 12 hours of theory, and such a license is good for life."
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more...

Reply to
HeyBub

We already HAVE single-payer systems. Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA hospitals. And there are those who want the REST of the health-care delivery system to emulate them.

Sigh.

Reply to
HeyBub

I'm on Medicare (plus a supplement) and I think it works great. My wife is not old enough yet and since I was self employed I pay full cost for her insurance. Twice the cost of Medicare plus supplement for only catastrophic coverage.

Reply to
Larry Blanchard

Agreed, but you've just fed raw meat to the rabid right of this group :-).

That in itself is enough reason for single-payer. And despite the claims of the right, that does not necessarily mean single provider.

Something which I believe and seldom comes up in these discussions, it that it is morally wrong to get rich from the sufferings of others. Somewhat akin to the parasites that bought up the life insurance policies of AIDs patients at half price.

Now that I've tossed in a few more steaks, I'll duck :-).

Reply to
Larry Blanchard

Oh, Africa. Right.

Tim W

Reply to
Tim W

Picture a fish hanging in the air on a hook frantically thrashing about in a futile attempt to throw the hook.

Lew

Reply to
Lew Hodgett

want to pay a doctor out of your own pocket for services, you can.

From TFA:

"Before describing the constraints on direct billing and extra-billing, we want to clarify the concept of opting out. A Canadian physician may, at any time, choose to give up his or her rights to bill the public plan and take up practice in the private sector.

Although there are differences in terminology (e.g., "non-participation," "non-enrolment," "practising outside the Act," "not subject to the agreement"), every provincial plan permits physicians to opt out."

In Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Ontario the financial incentive to do so is significantly dulled because opted-out physicians cannot bill more than they would receive if they were working within the public plan.

In every other province, opted-out physicians can set their fees at any level. However, as the status disincentive row in Table 1 shows, all of the remaining 7 provinces except Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island have in place measures that prohibit the public purse from subsidizing the private sector. In other words, patients of opted-out physicians are not entitled to any public funds to subsidize the cost of buying their services privately.

A Citation is required for this statement.

scott

Reply to
Scott Lurndal

On 7/1/2009 9:44 AM Larry Blanchard spake thus:

In fact, it has *NEVER* meant single-provider. That's a myth perpertrated by those rabid right-wingers you referred to. (HeyBub, you there?) It has always been proposed that a single payer (the gov't) will pay for services from a multitude of providers. The provider can be anything from a private physician to a clinic to a hospital to some kind of medical co-op that hasn't even been dreamt up yet.

OK, chew on this for a minute: A single-payer system *should* be embraced *especially* by conservatives (speaking of true fiscal conservatives here), for two reasons:

  1. Conservatives are always bitching and moaning about bureaucracy this and bureaucracy that. Well, guess what? Under the current "system" (in quotes because, basically, there ain't no system), bureaucracy is rampant and needlessly large. Think about it: each insurer or other medical payer has its own redundant administrative operation--basically a gigantic bureaucracy, replicated hundreds of times over.

A single-payer system would overnight eliminate much of this bloat. There would be one administrative entity to take care of paying medical bills.

(I can already hear the Rushies saying "yeah, well it's only gubmint burocracys that are bad! private industry don't count!", which, of course, is bullshit and can simply be ignored.)

  1. It would *immediately* reduce the costs of doing business in the US, because employers would no longer be responsible for covering their employees' medical expenses through insurance. Instant boost for business!

Of course, don't let the fact that *every other* industrialized democracy in the world today has such a system in place sway you either ... (more American Exceptionalism at work here)

Reply to
David Nebenzahl

True. But, as the article states, private medical insurance is not allowed. Further, private physicians do not have privileges a government-run hospitals. This limits physicians to things like dermatology, ophthalmology, or primary care. Anything beyond that has to be cycled into the government system.

Reply to
HeyBub

"Some" reform? Fifty-million with no insurance, millions more under-insured, a tenth of health insurance premiums shifted by the health care industry to cover their costs treating uninsured patients, U.S. health insurance companies spending at least double on administration as in other industrialized countries, health care costs consistently outstripping inflation, companies moving overseas to duck the costs of employee health coverage, hospitals closing emergency rooms to stop losing money treating uninsured patients, people living in fear of bankruptcy from serious illness.... "May" be in order? Just how bad do things have to get before we decide substantial reform is certainly in order? I don't pretend to know what the solution is, and my instinct is the govt. can always make things worse. But I sure as hell can see that American health care today is broken and needs more than a little tinkering around the edges.

Reply to
DGDevin

I have never said anything even remotely concerned with single-provider (other than holding up the VA hospital system as a possible result of government intervention in the health-care system). As an aside, I think the VA hospital system should be abolished and veterans treated by local doctors at local hospitals with the government footing the bill.

The existing bureacracy - and there's a lot of it - IS the government's fault. Just today this issue was raised on a news program with an executive from the American Medical Association. He said streamlining HAS been tried, but EVERY time doctors, hospitals, and insurance carriers sit down in a room to develop standards, the federal anti-trust people have a conniption fit and bust up the committees, claiming collusion, conspiracy to restrain trade, and all sorts of nefarious motives. He said lawsuits and the threats of lawsuits have taken place at least six times in the last fifteen years.

It may be that the only way the process can be streamlined is to let the government take over the whole thing. The government can't sue itself for restraint-of-trade practices.

But it's a race: Walmart is rolling-out a medical records and billing system to its in-house clinics with plans to open it up to all practitioners and providers. The question becomes who is going to win the race to simplify and streamline the operations: Walmart or the government.

My money's on Walmart.

Uh, somebody's got to pay for it. And if employers drop employee medical coverage, that puts paid to the president's oath that you can keep your same doctor and same plan.

I don't. I am indifferent in the extreme to the thoughts, attitudes, institutions, and preferences of other nations.

I do have a position, however, on those who would hold up other nations as exemplars worthy of emulation.

Reply to
HeyBub

Not necessarily...if they thought there was money in it someone could open a private hospital.

Chris

Reply to
Chris Friesen

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