To those opposed to comprehensive universal health insurance

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bigballsbilly wrote:

Pepe Silvia wrote:

bigballsbilly wrote:

Yeah! I'm really looking forward to paying for every body elses medical insurance. I can't wait. It's just not enough that I pay for everyone elses kid to go to public school while I pay good money to send mine to Catholic schools. Just can't wait.

And oh yeah ... we're going to let our government run this? Are you joking me?

Can't wait.

but i guess you are ok with paying for needless wars, no bid contracts and bonuses to them even after they have been found to have committed numerous counts of fraud against the government in their billing? or the tens of billions we spend to fight drugs, take pot smokers to court and then lock them up?

No, I'm not OK with those things either. Why would you assume I would be?

But do you think we shouldn't have those things?

FiveB247x

Please stop being rational, logical and using common sense.... there's no place for it on the MT

kenny olav wrote:

and here's a question.... if you dont work and dont pay taxes, should the police not give a fuck about you if a crime is commited against you? its the same principle of only getting what you pay into, right?

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kenny olav wrote:

no one should go broke because they are sick. if you agree, let's solve this. if you don't agree, i have no time for you.

........

and here's a question.... if you dont work and dont pay taxes, should the police not give a fuck about you if a crime is commited against you? its the same principle of only getting what you pay into, right?

kenny olav

know1 wrote:

Can someone name one government program that works well, though?

None of them do. Anyone notice that the Post Office likely won't be around much longer?

The solution to the health PAYMENT problem is simple:

1. Make HSA's much more common so that people are putting away pre-tax dollars and paying for their healthcare essentially out of pocket up to their deductible. You can't tell me that healthcare costs won't be lower without insurance involved. After that, health insurance kicks in. Premiums would be much lower.

2. Allow insurance companies to compete across state lines.

I also think companies should get out of the business of providing health insurance. People should purchase their plans on their own with the extra money their employers can afford to pay them.

The IRS works pretty well. :twisted: And I don't think people are complaining too much about the existing Medicare program. The Post Office is only hurting because of e-mail and the internet. C'mon now.

I'm sorry, but we need to cover everyone, not just work on schemes to lower payments. And by taking competition out of the equation, we can lower the cost of healthcare because competition requires advertising and such.

Kel Varnsen

kenny olav wrote:

I'm sorry, but we need to cover everyone, not just work on schemes to lower payments. And by taking competition out of the equation, we can lower the cost of healthcare because competition requires advertising and such.

Not only that but if you take out competition health care becomes non-profit. So instead of companies that make X% profit that gets paid out as dividends, that money gets invested back into the system to keep costs that people have to pay lower.

mikepegg44

kenny olav wrote:

mikepegg44 wrote:

i don't really care for any government run programs, I also don't care for entitlement programs. Unfortunate as it may be, the health care industry provides too many jobs in our economy to just be scrapped for something like other countries have. It will do more harm than good in my opinion. thats not to say I want people to be uninsured, but people have to work for what they have. Major medical coverage is not very expensive at all, I could afford it when I was unemployed for over a year. sure it doesnt get you a check up, you may have to pay out of pocket for that, but major medical coverage is affordable if you look for it. The government running this program is not a well thought out plan. Sure other governments have figured out a workable system for them, but I am a government employee, and it is sad to to see the waste in each and every program we run.
If you put nothing into the system, you should get nothing out.
I don't know who said it, but to paraphrase, "as soon as the masses realize they can vote themselves money, that will be the end of democracy as we know it."

may seem harsh, but in the long run it would be better for us as a country if more people felt that hard work and determination were the way to get something in life. Sitting around and not working should not get you anything.

edit

A democracy can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. ...
this is the exact quote

here's the thing... these people pay their health insurance premiums, but they are undercovered. this could happen to any of us, including those who buy health insurance.

no one should go broke because they are sick. if you agree, let's solve this. if you don't agree, i have no time for you.

i agree part of the problem is that our government is dysfunctional. i think this country is too big for the feds to run everything, personally... but you still could have a federal payout system and have all of the hospitals and doctors be private. i think it works like this in canada, maybe someone could enlighten us on that?

and here's a question.... if you dont work and dont pay taxes, should the police not give a fuck about you if a crime is commited against you? its the same principle of only getting what you pay into, right?

Using an extreme example is not going to prove your point any faster. I do think that health care COSTS are out of line with what they should be, but that doesn't mean I want to pay for INSURANCE for other people. Policeman and fireman, US soldiers, anyone who keeps the public generally SAFER is not a one person problem, just like in the clinic I work at we do public health work and prevent the spread of std's, hiv and TB. That is a risk to the whole public, so really it is apples and oranges. I think many people are really ignorant to the wealth of programs that are already out there to help pay for their medical care, at least in the great state of minnesota

Godfather.

( Anyone notice that the Post Office likely won't be around much longer?)

that's a odd thing to say..why ?

Godfather.

mikepegg44

FiveB247x wrote:

Please stop being rational, logical and using common sense.... there's no place for it on the MT

kenny olav wrote:

and here's a question.... if you dont work and dont pay taxes, should the police not give a fuck about you if a crime is commited against you? its the same principle of only getting what you pay into, right?

logic is great, but it is flawed here. Cops are for PUBLIC safety. someone who is underinsured getting sick is not a public health risk unless it is with a disease or virus that is deemed a public health risk. In which case there are already programs that take care of people with these problems. you cannot compare the two. In fact, I will jump and say yes you can, but you can only compare them as public safety and health issues, bob johnson getting cancer is not a public risk and should not be paid for by the people who pay the taxes. Sorry if you disagree, but it always seems as though people are always able to spend other people's money. I work hard for everything I have and I don't expect a hand out from anyone, I have been unemployed for a long period of time and scraped and saved and got back on my feet. Universal Health Care, especially in the form that is before the house and senate will be a disaster. I certainly feel terrible for people who go broke because of an illness, I actually donate a lot of my salary (lucky enough to have made my share) to our meds program for Ryan White clients, but I don't think I should be forced to do any of it. This will be health care for all but at a huge cost to everyone else, and I don't think they measure up. Until they come up with a system that won't cripple more people than it will help I cannot support it

aerial

kenny olav wrote:

I hope you suffer the same fate as some of my clients who are being completely bankrupted by their medical expenses. Honestly, there is ZERO excuse for allowing this to happen to people in this country!! It could happen to any of us.

96% of Canadians prefer their health system to ours. They still bitch about their system, and that's good. They should make sure it works as well as possible. But our system is not working at all. Pisses me the fuck off!!!!!!!!!!!

Do you hang out with Sean Penn?....you two have the same ideas

FiveB247x

That's actually not a clear determination of these issues. Fact is just as healthcare costs and premiums, the amount of services and goods needed and used reflects costs for everyone. So in that respect it is exactly the same. And albeit in theory you are correct in hoping that citizen x shouldn't have to pay for citizen y, but in reality and practice, the way our system is setup, it forces us to have this type of resolution and unless we plan to move our entire healthcare industry to a non-profit arena, it will never change.

Also, and this is more of a sidenote, one of the main tenets our nation was founded upon was the idea of majority protecting the silent minority. Obviously throughout history this hasn't been followed or done, and yes we do have an inflated welfare state now, but do people not realize we have this in a basic sense because it's for everyone's best interest? Sometimes I think people forget this fact and yes there are scams and lazy people in society but as a whole, we should aim to help and create policies which benefit all, not just those that can afford basic necessities we can offer, but irrationally do not.

mikepegg44 wrote:

logic is great, but it is flawed here. Cops are for PUBLIC safety. someone who is underinsured getting sick is not a public health risk unless it is with a disease or virus that is deemed a public health risk. In which case there are already programs that take care of people with these problems. you cannot compare the two. In fact, I will jump and say yes you can, but you can only compare them as public safety and health issues, bob johnson getting cancer is not a public risk and should not be paid for by the people who pay the taxes. Sorry if you disagree, but it always seems as though people are always able to spend other people's money. I work hard for everything I have and I don't expect a hand out from anyone, I have been unemployed for a long period of time and scraped and saved and got back on my feet. Universal Health Care, especially in the form that is before the house and senate will be a disaster. I certainly feel terrible for people who go broke because of an illness, I actually donate a lot of my salary (lucky enough to have made my share) to our meds program for Ryan White clients, but I don't think I should be forced to do any of it. This will be health care for all but at a huge cost to everyone else, and I don't think they measure up. Until they come up with a system that won't cripple more people than it will help I cannot support it

mikepegg44

FiveB247x wrote:

Obviously throughout history this hasn't been followed or done, and yes we do have an inflated welfare state now, but do people not realize we have this in a basic sense because it's for everyone's best interest? Sometimes I think people forget this fact "

I guess that is where we will disagree fundamentally. I don't believe it is fact, I think it is great in theory, but you cannot prove either way as FACT that welfare benefits everyone. For every person who claims this i say, doesn't it make people realiant on the government for their needs. And they usually shoot back with yes but crime rates may sky rocket without these programs. There are definitely two sides to this coin, I just don't believe that giving someone something is good for them. Working for it is so much better in terms of benefits to society. I think if we eliminated all types of welfare in this country there would be a quick period of, for lack of a better term, chaos which would be followed by people beginning to realize they need to work hard to succeed in life and passing that value on to their children and their children's children. That may be a pipe dream, but it is the only thing that keeps me from completely throwing in the towel and moving to a self sustaining hobby farm and saying screw off to everyone. I have seen the welfare programs in action, I experience first hand the sense of entitlement that comes along with programs and it is disgusting. Who the fuck complains about a little bit longer wait when they pay ZERO for the healthcare we give them? it is maddening to no end to deal with people who are getting something for free and believe they are doing you a favor
edit:
this will be my last post as I have hijacked this thread. . . if anyone would like to continue in discussion just pm me, I would be happy to discuss this forever, of and thanks to all for the decency shown in the replys, that is a rarity on the internet these days

SundaySilence

know1 wrote:

Can someone name one government program that works well, though?

Sewers

bigballsbilly

Pepe Silvia wrote:

how would giving people healthcare force you to work 3 jobs??

That's not what I said, is it? Stop putting words in my mouth. That's the second time you did that.

I made my point. Our government can't govern, yet we're supposed to let them run a health care system? hardworking people bust their ass to provide and do the right thing for their family, and I don't think they should have to pay for those that DON'T. I'm not saying our medical system isn't messed up, just that THIS is not the way.

I am done on this subject. Let's just enjoy the PJ shall we? My bad for commenting on this. I should have known better. Sorry.

Starfall

know1 wrote:

Can someone name one government program that works well, though?

None of them do. Anyone notice that the Post Office likely won't be around much longer?

:roll:

Oh wow. Some of you people need to stop swallowing right wing talking points and look at the facts. To name a few:

The highest customer satisfaction for health care insurance goes to 1. The Veterans Administration and 2. Medicare. The private insurance companies are a distant second. Guess who runs those two? The government.

You know how many payments Social Security has missed through its entire 40+ years of existence? I'll tell you at the bottom of this post.

Lastly, if the conservatives would stop undermining our current government safety nets (they've consistently borrowed from the Social Security trust fund for other funding, instead of, oh, submitting a PAYGO system like the so called fiscal conservatives they claim to be, or stop giving tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires) we would have a well run system of publis programs - we'd easily be able to fund Medicare Part E (Everyone), fully paid, if we stopped this stupid adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan. If we restore tax rates to when Nixon was still President, we could easily restore our public school systems, public hospitals, and all of our crumbling infrastructure. Even with a simple thing like allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices would have been hugely helpful, but the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress wouldn't allow that with Medicare Part D, and it was stripped out of the current health care bills even as Senator Dorgan had huge bipartisan support for this amendment.

The solution to the health PAYMENT problem is simple:

1. Make HSA's much more common so that people are putting away pre-tax dollars and paying for their healthcare essentially out of pocket up to their deductible. You can't tell me that healthcare costs won't be lower without insurance involved. After that, health insurance kicks in. Premiums would be much lower.

The issue of health care costs are a different matter, and can be addressed elsewhere. What you fail to see is that your proposal still doesn't solve a salient problem: in every country where there's a non-profit system of health insurance, they spend an average of 3-6% of their GDP on costs. In our country, we're already spending 20%.It also doesn't prevent private insurance companies from dropping patients when they're deemed too sick to be covered (recission) and prescreening them for "pre-existing conditions". In a public program like Medicare, or in Canada or the UK, nobody's excluded from coverage.

It also doesn't prevent private insurance companies from jacking up their rates to whatever level they want, which is what we recently saw with Anthem/Blue Cross in CA - they just proposed rate increases up to 39%. It also doesn't prevent them from paying their CEOs hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation, including luxury resorts, private jets, and gold plated utensils. Considering that not one single insurance company provides any sort of health care - all they do is take our money, take their cut, and pay our doctors - I have no reason to believe they should exist.

Furthermore, we already know this system of "savings accounts" doesn't work, as evidenced by the way our pension systems were systematically undermined by the Reagan administration by proposing things like IRAs - which are subject to the whims of the stock market and will expire after they're exhausted - to replace pension funds, which are lifetime and do not expire. When the financial meltdown occured, IRAs were hit very hard, while very few pension funds were. And you're still asking people to pay a lot of money up front, whereas with a single payer system like Medicare, or Canada or France, you wind up paying a much smaller amount up front and you don't have to worry about things like deductibles, copayments, and other ways you're milked by the industry.

In addition, we're already seeing private insurance plans with deductibles as high as $10k and $50k. I don't know what kind of income you have, but very few people I know in this economy can put away that kind of money in a regular savings account, much less an HSA.

2. Allow insurance companies to compete across state lines.

Another bogus claim. All you have to do is look at the deregulation of the credit card industry - two states wound up with all the credit card companies - South Dakota and Delaware - because they had very lax rules and very little regulation of the industry. As a result, states with strong protections for their citizens could not enforce those rules when the credit card company was based in a state with no rules. As long as there isn't a bottom line, strongly regulated insurance system, we're going to see the same thing happen.

I also think companies should get out of the business of providing health insurance. People should purchase their plans on their own with the extra money their employers can afford to pay them.

Youre missing the point of having insurance. When you have a lot of people under an insurance system, the system has the ability to cover catastrophic injuries or illnesses without depleting their funds, and they have more leverage to negotiate things like prices for medicines and medical equipment. Leaving people to buy stuff on their own will single handedly assure higher costs for the average citizen.
So when you have an entire government being able to negotiate better prices, it will reduce costs for everyone. It works not only in other countries, but with the VA, which routinely spends 50% less than we do for drugs and medicines.


(Answer to how many payments Social Security has missed in its entire history: zero.)

unsung

SS won't be around when I retire.

Starfall

bigballsbilly wrote:

Pepe Silvia wrote:

how would giving people healthcare force you to work 3 jobs??

That's not what I said, is it? Stop putting words in my mouth. That's the second time you did that.

I made my point. Our government can't govern, yet we're supposed to let them run a health care system? hardworking people bust their ass to provide and do the right thing for their family, and I don't think they should have to pay for those that DON'T. I'm not saying our medical system isn't messed up, just that THIS is not the way.

I am done on this subject. Let's just enjoy the PJ shall we? My bad for commenting on this. I should have known better. Sorry.

They run the Veterans Administration and Medicare just fine. if "socialized medicine" is good enough for our troops and our seniors, and they really, really like their systems, why shouldn't it be good enough for you and me?

As far as I'm concerned, it's the private insurance companies that don't deserve our money.

And finally, this incredibly selfish attitude I see among some of you here is appalling. The whole point of having insurance is to spread the risks around so that nobody has to suffer a bankruptcy because they can't afford the hospital bills if they've had a car crash, a heart attack, or long term dialysis.
Should I then be allowed to not pay for the roads you're driving on because I don't use them? Or unemployment coverage in your state because I don't live there? Or defund your police force because I will never use their services? If one of your kids develops leukemia, should you be expected to pay for the chemo, the radiation, the outpatient care, etc, all on your own?

Of course not. That's the point of having government - you ,know, "We The People".

unsung

The VA is a joke. I have friends who could go there for free but they refuse.

Starfall

unsung wrote:

SS won't be around when I retire.

Which highlights the problem I've pointed out before - if the conservatives would stop raiding Social Security for their own needs, we would still have it. And there's a really simple fix - remove the Social Security cap (currently at the first $100k). Do that and Social Security will stay robust for several generations at least, even maybe forever.

gimmesometruth27

unsung wrote:

The VA is a joke. I have friends who could go there for free but they refuse.

so your friends might have had poor experiences there, but many of my patients speak very highly of it.

Starfall

unsung wrote:

The VA is a joke. I have friends who could go there for free but they refuse.

Then why does our socialist military say this then?

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20, 2006 – Veterans continued to rate the care they receive through the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system higher than other Americans rate private-sector health care for the sixth consecutive year, a new annual report on customer satisfaction reveals.

For VA Secretary R. James Nicholson, the news is affirmation of what he called "the greatest story never told," that the VA offers top-quality care for its patients.

VA medical services received high marks during the annual American Customer Satisfaction Index, which has ranked customer satisfaction with various federal programs and private-sector industries and major companies since 1994.

Veterans who recently used VA services and were interviewed for the 2005 ACSI survey gave the VA's inpatient care a rating of 83 on a 100-point scale -- compared to a 73 rating for the private-sector health care industry. Veterans gave the VA a rating of 80 for outpatient care, five percentage points higher than the 75 rating for private-sector outpatient care and 9 percent higher than the average satisfaction rating for all federal services.

"Although VA has received many wonderful endorsements recently, the support of our veterans -- the people who know us best -- is the highest praise," Nicholson said.