I Can't Wait For Government Run Health-Care!!!

Kotov Syndrome wrote:

Kel Varnsen wrote:

slightofjeff wrote:

Here's the other thing. If I decide I don't need or want health insurance, I don't have to have it. Under UHC, as far as I understand it, it's tough shit again. You pay for it, via higher taxes, whether you want it or not. You don't really have the option to decline, even though they say you do.

there are ways to pay for UHC without jacking up taxes. Ive explained how to get $1.5 trillion, the easy way. i'm sure they could come up with plenty more.

and what kind of argument is that anyway.,

you don't mind that your tax dollars are being used to kill children in Iraq or Afghanistan, but when it comes to saving lives? fuck that huh? right.

used to kill, not to heal.

jlew24asu wrote:

I dont recall seeing your post, what "easy" way can we get 1.5 trillion. and yes, we all mind that our tax dollars are used for war. what we dont mind is that they are used for defense. that is one of the basic jobs of the government. I absolutely think we need to cut back military spending, but I'm not about to dissolve the military so we have have UHC

inmytree wrote:

jlew24asu wrote:

um, no you dont. thanks for asking though. I only ask your age because you act like a little kid. someone with not much life experience. like some college kid who thinks he has all the answers but really has no fucking clue. I was being really generous when I said u might be 20 or 21. you post like you are about 15 or 16...but I'm just assuming you might be at least college age.

come on, now...I know you have a crush on me...

seriously, Jlew...I'm just having a bit of fun with you...no need to be so serious all the time...you have your views and I have mine....you do tend to come off with a holier-than-thou sort of attitude at times...that's cool with me...I just don't like being told how to respond...and if I want to ask a question after being asked a question, I'm going to do so...

you won't have to deal with me for at week or two as my sweet ass will be sitting on the beach all next week, as I will be staying in an Oceanfront House with the family, and then heading to Asheville for a Phish show...

remember: hugs and drugs...or was that hugs not drugs...either way, I guess...

Abookamongstthemany wrote:

I wanted to share this opinion piece I stumbled upon. He makes a lot of sense and some pretty solid points, imo.

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The Supposed Difficulties of Converting to Single-Payer
By Joel A. Harrison

I’ll leave the political difficulties aside, e.g. lobbyist, bought and paid for politicians. Let's just go down the list:
1. We already have FICA and Medicare Taxes, so employers and individuals will just continue paying them, except the Medicare tax will be called the Single-Payer Tax and the percentage of income up to a cap will be increased. Compare this with employers having to negotiate each year with insurance companies, paying separately to them, and each year having to renegotiate, or change policies as rates spiral up. Gee, I think the former a no-brainer.
2. Doctors and hospitals already submit bills to Medicare and to umpteen additional insurance companies, each with numerous different policies, e.g. with different deductibles and copays. So with Single-Payer, they continue to submit; but just to Medicare, now the Single-Payer. This may be national, regional, or even by State; but now they will submit to just one entity. Gee, I think this also a no-brainer.
3. Doctors and hospitals every year have to negotiate contracts with a myriad of different insurers. With single-payer, for instance, each specialty medical society will negotiate with one entity. The negotiations will probably be based on the Resource-Based Relative Value Scale (see article in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource-B ... alue_Scale). Basically, researchers looked at all medical diagnoses and procedures and based on things like training needed, level of skill, time taken, etc. created a scale. One then decides on how much each point on the scale is worth and adjust it for cost of living differences. Just to simply, imagine an office visit is given 1 point and an appendectomy 24. One could negotiate $50 per point so an office visit would get $50 and the surgeon performing an appendectomy $1200. One can then add an additional 5% for New York City doctors because of cost of living. This isn’t the real points; but just to give an idea. Medicare and many insurance companies already use this system. So, once a year, instead of a myriad of negotiations, the medical societies, perhaps regionally, or state-wise, will negotiate with the single-payer board. Gee, once more I think this a no-brainer.
4. An electronic database for patient records will need to be developed. The VA already has an excellent one in the public domain which could be used as a starting point. A panel could be created by our National Academy of Science to bring the best experts together to develop a user friendly version with appropriate safeguards. Then all doctors’ offices should be given computers and appropriate training, paying the doctors for their time. While this will cost money upfront, it will save tons down the line.
5. I am not an expert; but understand enough about databases, having created a few complex ones in Access, to know that whether one contains 1,000, 100,000, etc., once the fields are created, the data entry for additional records is not a problem. Modifications to the Medicare database can be made or see above point # 4 - Medicare will need to hire more data entry personnel and train them; but there will be plenty available who previously worked for the for-profit insurance companies.
6. Many current employees of the for-profit insurance companies and in the billing offices of doctors and hospitals have medical training or, at least college degrees. Those with medical training will be get jobs using them with patients. Others will need training. Well, after World War II we had the GI Bill which in many ways created our middle class and gave an enormous boost to our economy. If we could offer training, education, and living allowances to 10 million returning veterans, I’m sure we can manage with a half million or fewer who lost their jobs working in the conversion to single-payer. Remember that the GI Bill applied at a time when our national debt because of the war was enormous; but the debt added by the GI Bill shrunk as GDP grew because of it. Also keep in mind that most health insurance companies cover more than health insurance and so many of their personnel will remain. The others can be retrained for jobs that actually benefit our society rather than administrative waste that actually harms us by creating a fragmented complex counterproductive system. Some will get training as nurses, lvns, other auxiliary medical personnel, teachers, social workers, school counselors, etc. We really need more home health care nursing personnel. Many who end up in a nursing home can remain at home with the right support network. This is not only better for the patient; but cheaper. Through Medicaid we already pay for most nursing homes, under single-payer we will cover home health care, saving money and allowing many to retain their dignity and independence.
7. All citizens and legal residents will be issued a card. In 1966 we began enrolling seniors in Medicare, 10s of millions of them. It took a couple of years altogether; but it wasn’t that difficult. With single-payer people will fill out a simple form and mail it in or, perhaps, we could just automatically mail the single-payer card to everyone registered with Social Security and just need to register children and newborns. I’m sure an efficient method can be developed. Will it guarantee we get every last person, probably not, and will it guarantee we won’t include some illegals, probably not; but neither does our current fragmented system cover everyone, in fact, we know it doesn’t with almost 100 million either un- or underinsured, and some illegals manage to get medical care. Single-payer will eventually cover everyone, and it will be easier to police for fraud.

Basically, the transition to a single-payer system will be from complexity to simplicity. Will it go smoothly? Probably not; but compared to what? Our current anything but smoothly functioning system. With proper planning it is doable. Not only will it save money, but actually simplify almost everything. Patients will choose their own doctors or hospitals. Scientific studies will be conducted to evaluate what really works, what works best, and what doesn’t work. It is currently estimated that over 1/3 of all medical interventions either are worthless or actually do harm.

A single-payer database will actually facilitate improvements in care. Just as an example, several years ago one doctor had a patient with a very rare disorder, something he had not seen before. He just happened to mention this at a table with other colleagues and one other had recently seen the same disorder, eventually discovering several more through e-mails. They all discovered they had given their patients the same drug and reported it to the FDA. It was fortunate that the first doctor had mentioned it in the vicinity of another who also had recently seen the rare disorder because it was rare. With a single-payer database, teams will run programs to screen for rare disorders and will be able much more quickly to investigate them. Clinical trials on drugs may use several thousand patients. If severe side-effects only occur with 1 in 100,000, they will often not discover them until much later through after marketing surveillance. Using the database they can compare various surgical and medical interventions for a particular diagnosis, leading to further research. It will be easier to track errors. And patient records will be transportable. After Katrina, VA patients from New Orleans could go to any VA hospital with their complete medical records available. No way with a myriad of private insurers.

Given everything that is wrong with our current system including:
1. Costly as percentage of GDP, taking monies that could be used for other important things such as schools, infrastructure, research and development;
2. Difficulties in obtaining comprehensive, coordinated, continuity of care;
3. Un- and underinsured, delaying care until needing more costly care which is often too late, also clogging unnecessarily our emergency rooms;
4. Doctors wasting up to 2 hours per day arguing with insurance companies;
5. Those insured facing delays and denials, bankruptcy, and even loss of insurance if they lose their jobs, including as result of long term illness;
6. Harming our international competitiveness, e.g. American manufactured car needs to add about $1600 to price because of health costs compared with Canada, France, etc.;
7. Forcing our companies to devote time and energy getting health care for their employees whereas they should be concentrating on their products and/or services;
8. Job lock where people either stay at a job or seek jobs because of health care rather than where their skills and talents lay, thus negatively affecting productivity; and
9. Higher rate of medical errors than many other countries, lower life-expectancy, higher infant mortality, higher number of premature deaths and disabilities for treatable medical conditions.

Many other modern industrialized nations have managed to develop some form of universal non-profit health care system with most offering comprehensive cost-effective quality care, often with far less wait than here, patient choice of doctors and hospitals, and at a lower cost.

Gradualism, given all of the above, is just a code word for keeping the unearned, disruptive, counterproductive profits of a dysfunctional fragmented for-profit health care industry that never should have been allowed to come into being in the first place (a recent phenomenon even in the U.S. basically starting in the 1980s).

Anyone supporting gradualism has either not really studied the problems we face (just as one example look at Barlett and Steele’s book, “Critical Condition), and all the research and studies on single-payer and international comparisons (many can be found on Physicians for a National Health Programs website at http://www.pnhp.org. Or is a shill for the for-profit health care industry.



Don't fall for insurance industry PR or compromised "reform" that keeps insurance middlemen at the table. Support Single Payer!


Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH, lives in San Diego, where he does consulting in epidemiology and research design. He has worked in the areas of preventive medicine, infectious diseases, medical outcomes research, and evidence-based clinical practice guidelines. He has lived and studied in both Canada and Sweden.

KDH12 wrote:

jlew24asu wrote:

profit does lead to innovation and this current economic crisis has nothing to do that. :roll:

Kel Varnsen wrote:

I think profit is a motivator in pretty much every business, but at the same time innovation and research and adopting new technologies are usually risky and not always profitable. But if you are already making a profit, most businesses will just keep on with the status quo. I see it all the time in my line of work, I am an engineer working on buildings. Contractors and landlords are totally not willing to take a risk on newer, innovative, more efficient technologies because they are usually more expensive and when there is competition you need to keep profits down to make a profit, so no one is willing to take a risk on innovation.

I could not have said it better myself, innovation is not profitable therefor we have been in a stalemate in this country......

yes profit is a motivator (there are thousands of people trying to create the next big social networking site to launch and sell to google for 200 mil, but that is not innovation) I am not debating that,

but profit does not lead to progressive change or innovations