Healthcare & rationing

[MSimon]

Hey, I would even be happy if the US passed a law that limits the cost for health insurance and that does not allow insurance companies to deny insurance to an applicant. That would at least give people like me a chance and it would still not be "socialized" or whatever you guys are sooooo affraid of (to the point of being ridiculous).

While you are at it - to make sure you will be served by an insurance company how about the government guarantees the insurance companies a profit?

That way you get insurance you can't afford. The insurance companies stay in business and government steals the money from strangers to make up the difference (minus the usual service fees and big donor exemptions).

=========

"All of the actors in health care—from doctors to insurers to pharmaceutical companies—work in a heavily regulated, massively subsidized industry full of structural distortions. They all want to serve patients well. But they also all behave rationally in response to the economic incentives those distortions create. Accidentally, but relentlessly, America has built a health-care system with incentives that inexorably generate terrible and perverse results. Incentives that emphasize health care over any other aspect of health and well-being. That emphasize treatment over prevention. That disguise true costs. That favor complexity, and discourage transparent competition based on price or quality. That result in a generational pyramid scheme rather than sustainable financing. And that—most important—remove consumers from our irreplaceable role as the ultimate ensurer of value."

"To achieve maximum coverage at acceptable cost with acceptable quality, health care will need to become subject to the same forces that have boosted efficiency and value throughout the economy. We will need to reduce, rather than expand, the role of insurance; focus the government’s role exclusively on things that only government can do (protect the poor, cover us against true catastrophe, enforce safety standards, and ensure provider competition); overcome our addiction to Ponzi-scheme financing, hidden subsidies, manipulated prices, and undisclosed results; and rely more on ourselves, the consumers, as the ultimate guarantors of good service, reasonable prices, and sensible trade-offs between health-care spending and spending on all the other good things money can buy."

from:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care

H/T: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009 ... 1251644481

[MSimon]

Let me rephrase it, to make it more clear:

It is natural that a population of 8 million does not produce as many Nobel Laureates as a population of 300 million. Comprende?

Let me see if I can help. Jews are about .2% of the world's population. They have won about 20% of the Nobel prizes.

Austria is .1% of the world's population..........

[MSimon]

Hello Mr Tall! I have told you, nummerous times now, that you can not take Europe as a whole and compare it with the US. A large part of Europe is poorer and less developed.

We have those in the USA too. Can we exclude those too?

[Skipjack]

We have those in the USA too. Can we exclude those too?

Less than the EU has, but anyway...
Also, you have one healthcare system throughout the entire US, we have many very differnt systems over the EU.
We have different health standards, different educationaly standards, different hygiene standards, etc. It is counter productive to throw them all into one pot. The differences throughout the US are not that great. As I said, it would be more like the difference between the US and Mexico.

Let me see if I can help. Jews are about .2% of the world's population. They have won about 20% of the Nobel prizes.

Austria is .1% of the world's population..........

We do have some Nobel laureates too, actually. Most of them before WWII. I wonder why that is...

Those links you posted are not relevant.
I can post links to plenty of pages that say otherwise. There is no point to that unless these pages belong to some authority on that matter.

[Skipjack]

To me it seems that you guys want that some people dont have health insurance, that some people cant afford healthcare. Effectively you want to kill people.
Very nice company here.

[gblaze42]

Hey, I would even be happy if the US passed a law that limits the cost for health insurance and that does not allow insurance companies to deny insurance to an applicant. That would at least give people like me a chance and it would still not be "socialized" or whatever you guys are sooooo affraid of (to the point of being ridiculous).

Oh come on, this is stupid, you want all the benefits of the US and the safety blanket of being taken care of and you say were ridiculous? Next you'll want someone to hand over a million dollars because you think you deserve it.
You really don't seem to understand much, social medicine would pretty much destroy what's good about the US, the taxes would slow down the economy even worse than at present, and most likely not recover from! Then the people who work for the money end up having to pay for the people who do not.

Ya how ridiculous.

Sorry but Dave was right you've lived in a socialist country way to long. You believe in all the lies!

[vankirkc]

Would they take someone with who had a heart attack?
I am only 34 years old, but I had one 3 months ago.
That is my problem...

It can't be a good idea to be battling on the forum if you have heart issues.

MSimon and TallDave aren't going to change their stripes no matter how convincing you make your argument. It's best to just let it go and stake solace in the fact that they have only two votes between them.

[gblaze42]

Would they take someone with who had a heart attack?
I am only 34 years old, but I had one 3 months ago.
That is my problem...

It can't be a good idea to be battling on the forum if you have heart issues.

MSimon and TallDave aren't going to change their stripes no matter how convincing you make your argument. It's best to just let it go and stake solace in the fact that they have only two votes between them.

Now considering how far "out there" most of the people on this forum are, the two you stated are the most reasonable and intelligent I've seen.

[vankirkc]

Would they take someone with who had a heart attack?
I am only 34 years old, but I had one 3 months ago.
That is my problem...

It can't be a good idea to be battling on the forum if you have heart issues.

MSimon and TallDave aren't going to change their stripes no matter how convincing you make your argument. It's best to just let it go and stake solace in the fact that they have only two votes between them.

Now considering how far "out there" most of the people on this forum are, the two you stated are the most reasonable and intelligent I've seen.

Ok three votes then.

Still minority.

[MSimon]

I can post links to plenty of pages that say otherwise. There is no point to that unless these pages belong to some authority on that matter.

We Americans are a cantankerous lot. We are not much respecters of authority. We prefer to discuss the quality of the argument. In fact I put the links and quotes up because it was a good rendition of several points I had already made.

As the Einstein feller said:

"It only takes one."

It appears at this time as if there might be two or five of us. Depending on how you count.

[MSimon]

To me it seems that you guys want that some people dont have health insurance, that some people cant afford healthcare. Effectively you want to kill people.
Very nice company here.

Well no. Some reforms are needed. One or three of us have suggested a similar course of action:

1. Sever health insurance from employment. A few things have to be done to accomplish this.
a. The Health Care Deduction goes to the individual.
b. A national market for insurance (see below)

2. Allow Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) to roll over so dollars can be accumulated. Over time most lower cost procedures (under $10K or $20K) will come under consumer pressure.

3. Catastrophic insurance coverage only. No coverage for minor or regular procedures. Those are handled by MSAs.

There may be some other things. I'm open to suggestions.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care

I’m a Democrat, and have long been concerned about America’s lack of a health safety net. But based on my own work experience, I also believe that unless we fix the problems at the foundation of our health system—largely problems of incentives—our reforms won’t do much good, and may do harm. To achieve maximum coverage at acceptable cost with acceptable quality, health care will need to become subject to the same forces that have boosted efficiency and value throughout the economy. We will need to reduce, rather than expand, the role of insurance; focus the government’s role exclusively on things that only government can do (protect the poor, cover us against true catastrophe, enforce safety standards, and ensure provider competition); overcome our addiction to Ponzi-scheme financing, hidden subsidies, manipulated prices, and undisclosed results; and rely more on ourselves, the consumers, as the ultimate guarantors of good service, reasonable prices, and sensible trade-offs between health-care spending and spending on all the other good things money can buy.

These ideas stand well outside the emerging political consensus about reform.

Except for the two or three of us on this forum who were calling for changes along these philosophical lines for quite some time now.

It all starts with what that Canadian Doctor said: empowering the consumer. To do that we don't need to turn the system upside down. Just alter the incentives a bit.

[gblaze42]

I actually like the idea of a flat-rate no limit health care;

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNe ... N620090707

But then that's US ingenuity for you.

[TallDave]

To me it seems that you guys want that some people dont have health insurance, that some people cant afford healthcare. Effectively you want to kill people.
Very nice company here.

Heh, it always comes down to this. "Capitalists are evil! Socialists are caring!"

Of course, the reality is almost no one is denied care. Medicaid covers the poor, the rest can borrow and hopefully repay.

Socialism means worse outcomes for everyone.

You seem to want to strangle the world's main source of medical innovation. Do you realize how many people that would kill? We also do less rationing than Europe, when you consider marginal cases.

MSimon and TallDave aren't going to change their stripes no matter how convincing you make your argument. It's best to just let it go and stake solace in the fact that they have only two votes between them.

I'd be open to good arguments, but I haven't seen any convincing arguments for socialism yet. OTOH we've made many for capitalism, if any more were needed in addition to the weight of the last century of history. We've pointed out about a million facts that say socializing American health care is bad not just for America, but for the world. The counter-argument seems to be "You're mean! You want people to die because they can't pay!"

Shrug. We heard those arguments about "heartless capitalism" from Communists and their apologists for 50 years (I remember Dan Rather gravely intoning that Soviet citizens had "economic liberty" (freedom from want) while we had mere "political liberty"). Where are they today? Converted to capitalism or living in desperate poverty. Socialism sounds nice ("to each according to his need") but doesn't work in the real world. You can put the poor on welfare without damaging the economy too much, but putting everyone on welfare means everyone is poor.

Here's a Brit umimpressed with Canadian care:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/commen ... 814702.ece

Seven hours after the accident, in a country widely touted to be the safest and best in the world, he applied 16 stitches that couldn’t have been less neat if he’d done them on a battlefield, with twigs. And then the anaesthetist arrived to wake the boy up. In French. This didn’t work, so she went away to sit on the doctor’s chair because he was in another cubicle bring rude and causing pain to someone else.

He's not thrilled with U.S. care either, but his complaint seems to be related to nativist software.

[Skipjack]

Of course, the reality is almost no one is denied care. Medicaid covers the poor, the rest can borrow and hopefully repay.

Nope, that is not the case. They do deny you insurance, if you have a severe preexisting condition. That is my biggest gripe. It pushes those people out of the system. Medicaid, is as you said for the poor, though for some reason there are people that work two jobs and still are not applicable for either.
A lot of people also dont even know what they are insured for and are denied payments by their insurer due to some fine print.

We've pointed out about a million facts that say socializing American health care is bad not just for America, but for the world.

I am not even asking for socialised healthcare. All I want is health insurance for a reasonable price. Right now it looks like I either wont get any at all (most likely from what I have seen), or if, then at a price that makes the whole point of insurance mute.
That is my problem.
Besides, noone said that a public healthcare in the US would become mandatory for everyone. In fact Obama said multiple times that you "CAN KEEP YOUR PRIVATE INSURANCE IF YOU ARE HAPPY WITH IT". That would IMHO actually be very nice and something I would like here too (only some professions here can choose private insurance).
Only those that would otherwise fall through should IMHO get a chance to have healthcare provided by the government. I doubt that this would cost the US much if anything at all. At least the doctors would actually get their money. Right now, if someone cant pay their health bills the doctors get nothing or sued as a "thank you". I wonder how much that costs the US economy each year (including the court costs and the overload of US courts with bullshit claims).

[IntLibber]

To me it seems that you guys want that some people dont have health insurance, that some people cant afford healthcare. Effectively you want to kill people.
Very nice company here.

Nice demonizing straw man you got there, does he scare crows, too?

People who dont have health care insurance typically are individuals who dont NEED health care insurance. The young (18-35), for instance, at most need catastrophic insurance because 90%+ of the time, whatever care they need is due to some catastropic event: car accident, extreme sports issue, unusual terminal illness, violent crime. They tend to be the most physically fit and well nourished. Getting health care insurance is something to be motivated to strive to achieve and boosts productivity.

As Hanson showed, when provided free health care, such individuals use it without any significant benefit because they use it for things they were already paying their own money on: eye glasses, contact lenses, dentistry, flu shots, etc.

Universal health care is not about "saving lives" its about controlling people. Attacking people who oppose it with demonization tactics is typicaly socialist Alinsky methods and dont belong here.