DescentBB

Now I'm completely in agreement that insurance companies don't provide nearly the quality of product....

tunnelcat wrote:I don't see conservatives coming up with any viable alternative ideas yet either.

Gooberman wrote:

Now I'm completely in agreement that insurance companies don't provide nearly the quality of product....

What is their product?

AlphaDoG wrote:http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html


Tell me where you stand AFTER you read THAT!

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Welfare
welfare n. 1. health, happiness, or prosperity; well-being. [<ME wel faren, to fare well] Source: AHD

Welfare in today's context also means organized efforts on the part of public or private organizations to benefit the poor, or simply public assistance. This is not the meaning of the word as used in the Constitution.

To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States

Consulting Firm Tied to White House Given Millions for Health Care Ad Campaign

While lobbying analysts say the move to hire a White House-connected ad agency is logical, some Republicans are questioning whether White House senior strategist David Axelrod stands to gain from the profits in the multi-million dollar deal.

CUDA wrote:and here I thought it was only the republicans that profited from healthcare

Consulting Firm Tied to White House Given Millions for Health Care Ad Campaign

While lobbying analysts say the move to hire a White House-connected ad agency is logical, some Republicans are questioning whether White House senior strategist David Axelrod stands to gain from the profits in the multi-million dollar deal.

CUDA wrote:and here I thought it was only the republicans that profited from healthcare

Consulting Firm Tied to White House Given Millions for Health Care Ad Campaign

While lobbying analysts say the move to hire a White House-connected ad agency is logical, some Republicans are questioning whether White House senior strategist David Axelrod stands to gain from the profits in the multi-million dollar deal.

CUDA wrote:dont get me wrong I wasnt accusing. I was just pointing out the Hypocracy of those that claim it is only one side thats getting rich off this issue

Will Robinson wrote:

CUDA wrote:dont get me wrong I wasnt accusing. I was just pointing out the Hypocracy of those that claim it is only one side thats getting rich off this issue

Yea, the stereotype that republicans are the ones who get rich in office is just as full of crap as the stereotype that democrats are the ones who care about the little people.

Duper wrote:"A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." - Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson wrote:"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Will Robinson wrote:

tunnelcat wrote:I don't see conservatives coming up with any viable alternative ideas yet either.

You are right but if that point is all it takes to make you ignore the substance of this topic then you are part of the problem.

….The reason for financing at least some of our health care with an insurance system is obvious. We all worry that a serious illness or an accident might one day require urgent, extensive care, imposing an extreme financial burden on us. In this sense, health-care insurance is just like all other forms of insurance—life, property, liability—where the many who face a risk share the cost incurred by the few who actually suffer a loss.

But health insurance is different from every other type of insurance. Health insurance is the primary payment mechanism not just for expenses that are unexpected and large, but for nearly all health-care expenses. We’ve become so used to health insurance that we don’t realize how absurd that is. …

…Every proposal for health-care reform has featured some element of cost control to “balance” the inflationary impact of expanding access. Yet it goes without saying that in the big picture, all government efforts to control costs have failed.
Why? One reason is a fixation on prices rather than costs. The government regularly tries to cap costs by limiting the reimbursement rates paid to providers by Medicare and Medicaid, and generally pays much less for each service than private insurers. But as we’ve seen, that can lead providers to perform more services, and to steer patients toward higher-priced, more lightly regulated treatments. The government’s efforts to expand “access” to care while limiting costs are like blowing up a balloon while simultaneously squeezing it. The balloon continues to inflate, but in misshapen form.

Cost control is a feature of decentralized, competitive markets, not of centralized bureaucracy—a matter of incentives, not mandates. What’s more, cost control is dynamic. Even the simplest business faces constant variation in its costs for labor, facilities, and capital; to compete, management must react quickly, efficiently, and, most often, prospectively. By contrast, government bureaucracies set regulations and reimbursement rates through carefully evaluated and broadly applied rules. These bureaucracies first must notice market changes and resource misallocations, and then (sometimes subject to political considerations) issue additional regulations or change reimbursement rates to address each problem retrospectively. …

…Health care is an exceptionally heavily regulated industry. Health-insurance companies are regulated by states, which limits interstate competition. And many of the materials, machines, and even software programs used by health-care facilities must be licensed by state or federal authorities, or approved for use by Medicare; these requirements form large barriers to entry for both new facilities and new vendors that could equip and supply them. …

…Not every hospital relies on paper-based orders and charts, but most still do. Why has adoption of clinical information technology been so slow? Companies invest in IT to reduce their costs, reduce mistakes (itself a form of cost-saving), and improve customer service. Better information technology would have improved my father’s experience in the ICU—and possibly his chances of survival.
But my father was not the customer; Medicare was. …
…The most important single step we can take toward truly reforming our system is to move away from comprehensive health insurance as the single model for financing care. And a guiding principle of any reform should be to put the consumer, not the insurer or the government, at the center of the system….

…A more consumer-centered health-care system would not rely on a single form of financing for health-care purchases; it would make use of different sorts of financing for different elements of care—with routine care funded largely out of our incomes; major, predictable expenses (including much end-of-life care) funded by savings and credit; and massive, unpredictable expenses funded by insurance. …

…First, we should replace our current web of employer- and government-based insurance with a single program of catastrophic insurance open to all Americans—indeed, all Americans should be required to buy it—with fixed premiums based solely on age. This program would be best run as a single national pool, without underwriting for specific risk factors, and would ultimately replace Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance. All Americans would be insured against catastrophic illness, throughout their lives. …

…How would we pay for most of our health care? The same way we pay for everything else—out of our income and savings. Medicare itself is, in a sense, a form of forced savings, as is commercial insurance. In place of these programs and the premiums we now contribute to them, and along with catastrophic insurance, the government should create a new form of health savings account—a vehicle that has existed, though in imperfect form, since 2003. Every American should be required to maintain an HSA, and contribute a minimum percentage of post-tax income, subject to a floor and a cap in total dollar contributions. The income percentage required should rise over a working life, as wages and wealth typically do….

…What about care that falls through the cracks—major expenses (an appendectomy, sports injury, or birth) that might exceed the current balance of someone’s HSA but are not catastrophic? These should be funded the same way we pay for most expensive purchases that confer long-term benefits: with credit. Americans should be able to borrow against their future contributions to their HSA to cover major health needs; the government could lend directly, or provide guidelines for private lending. Catastrophic coverage should apply with no deductible for young people, but as people age and save, they should pay a steadily increasing deductible from their HSA, unless the HSA has been exhausted. As a result, much end-of-life care would be paid through savings….

…For lower-income Americans who can’t fund all of their catastrophic premiums or minimum HSA contributions, the government should fill the gap—in some cases, providing all the funding. You don’t think we spend an absurd amount of money on health care? If we abolished Medicaid, we could spend the same money to make a roughly $3,000 HSA contribution and a $2,000 catastrophic-premium payment for 60 million Americans every year. That’s a $12,000 annual HSA plus catastrophic coverage for a low-income family of four. Do we really believe most of them wouldn’t be better off? …

…All of the health-care interest groups—hospitals, insurance companies, professional groups, pharmaceuticals, device manufacturers, even advocates for the poor—have a major stake in the current system. Overturning it would favor only the 300 million of us who use the system and—whether we realize it or not—pay for it. Until we start asking the type of questions my father’s death inspired me to ask, until we demand the same price and quality accountability in health care that we demand in everything else, each new health-care reform will cost us more and serve us less.

tunnelcat wrote:...
You don't see anything wrong with the CEO's of these health insurance companies making millions off of the suffering of sick and dying people? Doesn't that bother you AT ALL Will?...

tunnelcat wrote: How about our damned Military?

tunnelcat wrote:...

You use housing as an example of a 'for profit' entity. What about all those people that are homeless because they can't afford housing? Aren't homeless people a drag on society? They require charity or thievery to survive. As a nation, is that the way we want for our people to have to live or should we just kill them off to dispose of the problem?...

What's so wrong with a little socialism

tunnelcat wrote:

You talked about doctors and hospitals making profit. How much is too much to make in an inelastic market. There's an emergency room doctor who just built a new house worth a million dollars in my neighborhood (raising the local property values as well, grrrrrrrr!) all because he wanted a view that his old $800,000 house didn't have. I personally think he makes waaaaaaaaaaaay too much off of the suffering of others for this type of luxury.

tunnelcat wrote: since people will always see life and good health as a right and they will fight for it.

Will Robinson wrote: A police force or fire department funded by the government is not exactly a socialist entity. It is run by the local government not the federal government. But lets call it a little bit of socialism like you said.

so·cial·ism (sō'shə-lĭz'əm)
n.
1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
2. The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved.

pro·le·tar·i·at (prō'lĭ-târ'ē-ĭt)
n.

The class of industrial wage earners who, possessing neither capital nor production means, must earn their living by selling their labor.

CUDA wrote:

tunnelcat wrote: How about our damned Military?

I find this HIGHLY OFFENSIVE, I served in that DAMNED Military, I protected people like you. and I find this attitude totally unacceptable, if you don't like the government its one thing, but to smear the service of the men and women that VOLUNTARILY served this country with their lives

tunnelcat wrote:....We're going to have to decide how much is too much to pay to maintain our bodies and yes, even how much is too much to extend life. If everyone wants to live at all costs, who'll end up paying for it and how?

A year ago, the national debate over assisted suicide was inflamed by news that OHP administrators denied coverage for expensive cancer treatment to Barbara Wagner of Springfield, while promising to pay for end-of-life care.

At the time, The Oregonian's editorial board urged that this obvious \"ethics glitch\" should be corrected by eliminating OHP funding for doctor-assisted death.

The editorial board also observed that \"administrators of the Oregon Health Plan had to make a difficult call. But that's what they do every day in performing the tough, thankless job of rationing government-paid health care to the needy.\" If only President Barack Obama and the other proponents of national health care would be so forthright about the realities of any government-run health system. Oregon wasn't the first to ration, but it was among the first to admit to it.

There are only two ways to avoid rationing of government benefits: more tax dollars or less demand. We will never fund every beneficial medical procedure or drug for every American, even with continued unrestrained growth of the national debt. While there are constructive measures that could be taken to reduce demand, the approach most familiar to governments is the queue or wait list, a well-practiced method in other nationalized health systems. Otherwise, the only choices are to provide fewer services, reduce the quality of services or provide services to fewer people -- all forms of rationing.