Healthcare reform

[Y2HH]

Really? You actually went there? Our health care system is fine because the poor get killed off by it and that's ok because the rich are better?

 

Actually, what I said in so many words is that it wasn't my place to decide who gets to live or die.

 

And it isn't yours either.

[Y2HH]

This is EXACTLY the point of a public option and why it's necessary.

 

If you attempt to put cost-controls in without a public option, you wind up with exactly the sort of thing that you're talking about...insurers still spend the same amount of money trying to drive people out of their markets, but then they also realize they can't make as much money on certain procedures so they start favoring all the areas where they can make money, and the price controls wind up screwing everything else. So you wind up with treatments being approved or not approved based on what the cost controls say, and you wind up with all sorts of creative techniques (See; the pharmaceutical industry) coming out of the industry with no benefit to people that do nothing except allow health care providers and insurers to charge more.

 

What we're saying is...a public option is more efficient. Which is why it's necessary. It cuts down on the paperwork and the overhead dramatically because everyone can be insured and because insurers won't be able to increase their profits by only insuring the healthy (as they do now). If an insurer then wants to produce a profit...it has to be profitable by outdoing the public option in efficiency, not by finding creative ways to avoid payment.

 

You truly are delusional, aren't you?

 

You think adding a public option is magically going to cut down on red tape and paperwork -- one of the specialties of our government?

 

When has anything you've done with the government resulted in easier/less wasteful? I mean f***ing honestly.

[Balta1701]

That's kinda my point. There are already shortages of doctors and nurses all over the country, and that is with the big 17% OF GDP getting spent for health care. Every facility I have been to for myself, my wife, and my kids is packed the gills. We have no more capacity in the system. There are no more doctors, in fact we are importing them for emergency situations from other countries. Why do you think you see so many more Doctor Patel's than Doctor Smith's anymore? There aren't any more nurses to be hired. I know for a fact that the state of Indiana has such a huge shortage of them that they are trying to figure out how to bribe more people to go to school to be nurses. Our hospital just had to add on at 50% of our old capacity just to keep pace with the need for beds.

 

The idea that somehow we are going to add the new comical number of eighty million people to the system, and somehow we are going to get better care for cheaper is completely illogical. There is no where to treat the people we have now. We don't have enough personel to treat the patients we have now. But somehow we are going to treat all of our uninsured, plus 20 million of Mexicos, and things are going to be BETTER? Really?

 

If they are serious about cutting the doctors wages, the shortage of staff is going to exaggerated, not to mention the attrition of supposedly asking these people to do about 30% more work (new patients totals according to Balta) who now have NO reason to be prudent in their pursuit of whatever health care they want because now someone else is paying for it. You will crush the system.

As a free trader I'm surprised you don't come up with the other option.

 

One of the reasons why there is a doctor shortage is that we refuse to allow free trade in so many industries; we only allow manufacturing to have to go up against foreign competition, so it gets dismantled.

 

There are schools all over the world who can turn out quality doctors who would be easily willing to come work in the U.S. for a fraction of the wages that U.S. doctors currently make, but they aren't allowed to do so because health care providers are protected from foreign competition. Meanwhile, U.S. schools can't open up more slots to train doctors because they aren't allowed to by quotas; if more doctors were trained, then that would cause competition that would bring down the amount that a doctor can earn. It's a wonderful setup for anyone except the consumer.

[Balta1701]

Actually, what I said in so many words is that it wasn't my place to decide who gets to live or die.

 

And it isn't yours either.

However, Blue Cross Blue Shield, that's who I want deciding who lives and who dies.

[Balta1701]

When has anything you've done with the government resulted in easier/less wasteful? I mean f***ing honestly.

Medicare and the Veterans Affairs Health Plan both have DRAMATICALLY lower overhead costs than private insurance. By at least 50%. Maybe more, depending on who's estimates you believe.

[Y2HH]

However, Blue Cross Blue Shield, that's who I want deciding who lives and who dies.

 

Yes, because that's how it works.

[Balta1701]

Yes, because that's how it works.

Quite literally, yes it is.

[NorthSideSox72]

Yes, because that's how it works.

In part it does.

 

[Y2HH]

Medicare and the Veterans Affairs Health Plan both have DRAMATICALLY lower overhead costs than private insurance. By at least 50%. Maybe more, depending on who's estimates you believe.

 

You'd think via reading those liberal talking points memos you obviously lean on to make a point.

 

People in the VA and on Medicare will tell you a much different story of the "care" they received. But of course, we aren't going to listen to them, they're biased republicans!

 

If the VA and Medicare was so f***ing great, why do veterans and people eligible for medicare refuse to stop working so they won't lose their Blue Cross?

[Rex Kickass]

Yes, because that's how it works.

 

It is sometimes actually, although not nearly as often as proponents of universal health care coverage claim.

 

It's also how having a public option would work as well.

[Y2HH]

In part it does.

 

Yes, because the streets are littered with dead bodies of the people that insurance companies like Blue Cross refuse to care for...

 

I mean, they couldn't be in a hospital receiving care when on their death beds or anything, because then they'd be in the hospital -- but since they aren't they must be dying on the streets!

 

No, it doesn't work that way, literally or in any other way.

[southsideirish71]

However, Blue Cross Blue Shield, that's who I want deciding who lives and who dies.

 

All you are doing is changing the name from Blue Cross Blue Shield to Government. Because I can tell you that the same life or death decisions will be made by the government.

[lostfan]

Yes, because the streets are littered with dead bodies of the people that insurance companies like Blue Cross refuse to care for...

 

I mean, they couldn't be in a hospital receiving care when on their death beds or anything, because then they'd be in the hospital -- but since they aren't they must be dying on the streets!

 

No, it doesn't work that way, literally or in any other way.

Straw man alert.

[NorthSideSox72]

Yes, because the streets are littered with dead bodies of the people that insurance companies like Blue Cross refuse to care for...

 

I mean, they couldn't be in a hospital receiving care when on their death beds or anything, because then they'd be in the hospital -- but since they aren't they must be dying on the streets!

 

No, it doesn't work that way, literally or in any other way.

Sure it does, despite your ridiculous example that no one was claiming (except the straw man you built). Insurance companies decide coverage or not many thousands of times a day, including people with serious illnesses. And if people can't pay the ridiculously large bills themselves, nor can they just switch providers when they are diagnosed with somethign like that... then some are just plain screwed.

 

Now, if you are OK with that, then have the guts to say so. But to say it doesn't work that way is just patently false.

 

[Y2HH]

Straw man alert.

 

Easier to explain it away that way, isn't it?

[lostfan]

Sigh. The first half of this thread was great. The second half is retarded.

[NorthSideSox72]

All you are doing is changing the name from Blue Cross Blue Shield to Government. Because I can tell you that the same life or death decisions will be made by the government.

This is true. To the extent insurers do now, the government takes over that part.

 

But I'd argue there are both good and bad sides to that being the case.

 

[lostfan]

Easier to explain it away that way, isn't it?

No.

[Y2HH]

Sure it does, despite your ridiculous example that no one was claiming (except the straw man you built). Insurance companies decide coverage or not many thousands of times a day, including people with serious illnesses. And if people can't pay the ridiculously large bills themselves, nor can they just switch providers when they are diagnosed with somethign like that... then some are just plain screwed.

 

Now, if you are OK with that, then have the guts to say so. But to say it doesn't work that way is just patently false.

 

Well, I am ok with that and I'll openly say so. I didn't sit on my front porch drinkin' 40z with my boyz when I was younger, I went to the free public school system so I could learn something and get a job, then worked 2 part time jobs when going to college full time so I could build a future I may have never seen -- and now I'm not f***ing apologizing because my family is covered.

 

Edited June 22, 2009 by Y2HH

[NorthSideSox72]

Easier to explain it away that way, isn't it?

No. The easy path in these sorts of discussions is going to the extremes, creating straw men, and screaming bloody murder when no one else was doing so. Its the destruction of any sort of useful conversation, and its the cop-out method.

 

[southsider2k5]

Medicare and the Veterans Affairs Health Plan both have DRAMATICALLY lower overhead costs than private insurance. By at least 50%. Maybe more, depending on who's estimates you believe.

 

The VA is cheap because they are paying a fraction of the wages of their peers. They are paying military personal at whatever their paygrade is, not at a competitive wage as compared to most doctors and medical personel. They also have their own facilities which they own and care for, also at below market prices. Its easy to be cheaper when you can dictate WAY below market costs.

 

Medicare is cheap, because again, they force doctors to receive less than they would for other patients getting similar procedures. That's why many doctors don't want anything to do with Medicare, not to mention the nightmares of being involved in government paperwork for everything.

[lostfan]

No. The easy path in these sorts of discussions is going to the extremes, creating straw men, and screaming bloody murder when no one else was doing so. Its the destruction of any sort of useful conversation, and its the cop-out method.

Yes, this.

 

The only one who does that sort of thing is kapkomet but at least he offers no pretenses when he does and it's kind of funny.

Edited June 22, 2009 by lostfan

[NorthSideSox72]

Well, I am ok with that. I didn't sit on my front porch drinkin' 40z with my boyz when I was younger, I went to the free public school system so I could learn something and get a job, then worked 2 part time jobs when going to college so I could -- and now I'm not f***ing apologizing because my family is covered.

 

And there is some validity there, IMO, to saying that. You worked hard to get to where you are, to insure the health of your family. I can respect that.

 

[southsider2k5]

As a free trader I'm surprised you don't come up with the other option.

 

One of the reasons why there is a doctor shortage is that we refuse to allow free trade in so many industries; we only allow manufacturing to have to go up against foreign competition, so it gets dismantled.

 

There are schools all over the world who can turn out quality doctors who would be easily willing to come work in the U.S. for a fraction of the wages that U.S. doctors currently make, but they aren't allowed to do so because health care providers are protected from foreign competition. Meanwhile, U.S. schools can't open up more slots to train doctors because they aren't allowed to by quotas; if more doctors were trained, then that would cause competition that would bring down the amount that a doctor can earn. It's a wonderful setup for anyone except the consumer.

 

And as such a union proponent, I am shocked that you would encourage the undercutting of the AMA with cheap out of country labor.

[NorthSideSox72]

The VA is cheap because they are paying a fraction of the wages of their peers. They are paying military personal at whatever their paygrade is, not at a competitive wage as compared to most doctors and medical personel. They also have their own facilities which they own and care for, also at below market prices. Its easy to be cheaper when you can dictate WAY below market costs.

 

Medicare is cheap, because again, they force doctors to receive less than they would for other patients getting similar procedures. That's why many doctors don't want anything to do with Medicare, not to mention the nightmares of being involved in government paperwork for everything.

I don't know Medicare that well, but in the case of VA, it certainly isn't a good example of how government could do health care well. Quality of care has been awful, as we've seen all over the news for some time. It may be cheaper, but it isn't high quality.