I had to wait 5 months for surgery with my private health insurance.

Do they really? They have a lot more incventive to provide their customer with good service, but usually "the customer" is your employer, not you. You are just a liability to them. Their incentive to you is to tell you "that is not covered by our insurance". One favorite way of doing this is to set up a series of hurdles for you to leap before you get medical care. If you do not leapo the hurdles they do not pay.

Of course, in the case of "emergency" care, you do not have to follow their procedures...except they say what is or is not an "emergency." My current insurer has declared that surgery for a ruptured gall bladder conducted at 3 a.m. after being rushed to the emergency room in extreme agony was "elective" (and they still have not paid for it). Presumably the patient could have "elected" simply to have the bleeding stopped and lived in extreme agony for several weeks until doctors and specialists and second opinions for each had been obtained and then paperwork filed and, eventually, approved.

The problem with te argument the Republicans make is n't that they are necessarily wrong, it's thehat they are fundamentally arguing that being attacked by a real dog is better than being attacked by a hypothetical bear...and they are pretending that the dog is a cute little puppy that just wants to share its love.

Unfortunately for their argument, the insurers are snarling, mean and ugly as hell and right out in the open were we all can see them, so the argument that they provide awesome care is obviously bullshit. That does not mean the government system will be better than the present one, but it's hard to trust the Republicans on the issue when they are clearly being disingenuous.

It is also a problem that it is an issue for experts, not politicians. Republicans will say that government healthcare involves rationing or long waits...and that is simply not true of *every* system of government healthcare. It's certainly true of some of them, and questions of how you avoid those problems are complicated issues that only experts can intelligently debate.

They also like to say that America has the best healthcare in the world. That's an extraordinary claim for which they offer limited evidence. Certainly the American lifespan, infant mortality and various other measures don't back that up (and there are good arguments for why that is not at all dispositive of the question). We do have a lot more specialists and a lot more in the way of fancy technology than a number of other nations, but how is that "the best" when it doesn't necessarily save any additional lives over alternatives like "free and abundant preventative care?" In the end claiming we have "the best" healthcare is more of a slogan than a fact.

I personally think it is clear that we need healthcare insurance reform.

 

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Obviously this is a bad argument, since taxes are not "stealing."

Also, if I impose a tax and it takes the crust of bread out of the mouth of a starving man, that is socially worse than taking the same crust oif bread out of the mouth of a billionaire fatcat, who can always order hos servants to bring him more bread. So there is a moral difference based on practical concerns between taking things away from the poor and taking them away from the wealthy.

 

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never said it was, but their healthcare systems are superior to ours.

So?

Free market is no the end all be all of everything, regulatory systems are necessary for almost all economic models.

Centralized organization, election of qualified leaders and dedicated system management are in fact superior in most cases then ad hoc systems.

Basically. It why Robin Hood is a Hero and not a villain. Your proposing a system were everyone would freely exchange, were the rich would be generous, in reality the rich are rarely generous, this is just forced generosity. To the rich it is a minor payout, they can handle the loss, compared to thousands of Americans every years that lose job and home over disease they can't pay for.

 

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You're also forgetting that if your insurance company gives you shit service, you can always switch plans/companies. When the insurance company is the government, you're fucked.

 

For more people the plan is stuck with the company, and when the service gets shitty there not much you can do because no one else is going to insure you now that you have been diagonosed with what ever it was the your insurance company did not want to pay for, you paid them already, you die, end of story. At least when the insurance company is the government they aren't going to deny your claim because it cuts into their profit dividend, when you come into the hospital with a fingers cut off the government of many other countries automatically pay to have them reattached, the American insurance company on the other hand weasel out of paying or put you in the sad choose of choosing which finger they will reattach because they aren't going to pay for all of them, and you lose your fingers.

 

Right, because it's definitely not the rich who control those jobs. When the rich end up having to pay more, guess where the money comes from: Oh yeah, that's right, the jobs that they control.

Sounds like a stellar plan, I say put 95% taxes on the rich.

(/sarcasm)

 

Makes perfect sense that why back in the 1950-1960's when some of the richest were paying up to 90% income taxes (compared to lower 30's today) we had the largest growth rate of middle class and upclassing of poor to middle class living, extermely low unemployment, and largest growth in GDP... oh wait those facts make no sense at all with what your saying, in fact they disprove what your saying, my bad.


that how sarcasm is done.

 

Heard of recision? Pre existing conditions? By far, most people just ignore their health insurance until they need it. Once they really need it, their options are generally severely limited. No one is comparison shopping when they have a serious illness.

Go on any international forum, and ask how many citizens of western countries that have UHC would like to trade for our system. You should be able to read this thread even though you aren't a member, http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3175649

And you might watch this (if you can stand to watch pinko PBS) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundamerica/view/

 

Your one example means nothing. I had a problem in 1998 ...went to the doctor, he sent me to the specialist the following day; he scheduled my MRI that same day. The following day, I took the MRI to the specialist, he wanted to schedule my surgery for THAT SAME DAY!! I couldn't do it that fast for various personal reasons, but arranged it for the following day.

Wham, bam, thank you, Ma'am ......and I was done, gone and paid and cured.

See how great the existing system is???? Why change such a great medical system?

Baron Max

 

Bullshit. You're claiming that a Dr. diagnosed you and prepared you for surgery within 72 hours for a non emergency? Who's your health care insurance provider?

 

The #1 cause of bankruptcy in America is health care costs. Closing in on 70% of all bankruptcies are a direct result of health care costs according to a recent Harvard/University of Ohio study. Currently at 6X% but rising relatively fast.

More than 98% of those filing bankruptcy have insurance. People who worked hard, some with high paying jobs, built a life and etc, the American dream. They got sick and lost everything.

More people in the US receive a death sentence with a cancer diagnosis than the entire population of Canada. I always see the 'cancer rate survivor' statistics put up. Those statistics don't include ~50 million people(more than all of Canada) who are going to die if they get cancer because they have no insurance. They will get no cutting edge treatment, no miracle drugs. They will quietly die so a corrupt health care industry can make a corrupt buck. The statistic doesn't cover the millions more WITH insurance who get their treatment costs refused by their insurer, if not their policy outright canceled, who then die needlessly young. Those people fall off the record books.

Also the politicians who are owned by big pharma and insurance and hospital corporations love to talk about Canada's single payer system, sometimes Britain's system, but never countries like France, or the Netherlands, or Swiss or Swedish systems. I would hope we modeled after those systems. They are a different story than Canada, which does have it's share of issues.

Bill Moyers is a rather far left liberal, I rarely watch his show because of this, but this show he did on health care reform was excellent. I would guess I would be called a 'conservative' by most. I don't go in for the labeling bullshit of the political arena myself, by my views are pretty staunchly conservative in most every area.

For all the nonsense being spread around by both 'sides'(I guess), this is an excellent show with some real insight into health care..

All three parts are here. The section with Wendell Potter is especially informative as he was an executive VP at Cigna Insurance company. I linked directly to that section.

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The Blue Dog Democrats have been bought. The Blue Dog PAC has had money pouring in, primarily from big pharma and insurance, but also from big business who have a vested interest in this debate(hedge funds invested in big pharma not being the least). The Blue Dog PAC has received more money in the first six months of 2009 than it did in the entire years of 2003 or 2004(a presidential election year no less). It's not a question as to why suddenly the Blue Dogs have a problem with health care reform and are stalling. They've been bought and paid for.

Many other dems are in the pockets of the health care corporations, almost all politicians are. They hold sway over our government.

I doubt we'll see any meaningful health care reform because of this. Anyone who claims we don't need serious health care reform, and regulation of these corrupt companies that control our lives is a fool.

 

ElectricFetus: The only way that your response to my comment says anything to the point I was trying to make is if you were suggesting that raising taxes on owners of small businesses in this economy will make them create jobs and not cut them... If you think that that's true, then so be it. I disagree.

 

Small businesses? I said nothing about targeting small businesses, I'm all for not targeting small businesses, the progressive taxes of the 1950's and 60's did not target small businesses, small businesses prospered during this time and became big business, that 90% income tax on the super-rich did not target small buisnesses, etc.

 

You're joking, I hope.

You do have some idea what "shit service" means, in this context, right? How are you proposing that people switch plans, etc, after the fact?

How are you going to "switch plans" if you get your insurance through your employer's choice of plan?

How are you going to determine if some other plan is better?

And so forth. The basis of a "free market" is simply not present, in health care delivery. It can't be set up. All you can set up is a charade and pretense, which the profiteers are quite happy to encourage.

A private insurance company has no positive incentive to provide any service at all - providing service is a cost, a debit entry on the ledgers. It should be minimized.

 

http://northshorejournal.org/canada-socialized-medicine-going-broke

The average Canadian family pays about 48 percent of its income in taxes each year, partly to fund the health care system. Rates vary from province to province, but Ontario, the most populous, spends roughly 40 percent of every tax dollar on health care, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

The system is going broke, says the federation, which campaigns for tax reform and private enterprise in health care.

It calculates that at present rates, Ontario will be spending 85 percent of its budget on health care by 2035. “We can’t afford a state monopoly on health care anymore,” says Tasha Kheiriddin, Ontario director of the federation. “We have to examine private alternatives as well.”

Yes the Canandian System is doing so well it is going broke.

http://www.financialgroup.cc/Articles/Canadian Health Care in Crisis.pdf

The federal government and virtually every province acknowledge there's a crisis: a lack of physicians and
nurses, state-of-the-art equipment and funding. In Ontario, more than 10,000 nurses and hospital workers are
facing layoffs over the next two years unless the provincial government boosts funding, says the Ontario Hospital
Association, which represents health care providers in the province.

If Zeliotis had been from the United States, China or neighboring Ontario anywhere, in fact, except Quebec — he
could have bought treatment in a private Quebec clinic. That's one way the system discourages the spread of
private medicine — by limiting it to nonresidents. But it can have curious results, says Day.
He tells of a patient who was informed by Ontario officials that since Ontario couldn't help him, they would spend
$35,000 to send him to the United States for surgery.
Day said his Vancouver clinic could have done it for $12,000 but the Ontario officials "do not philosophically
support sending an individual to a nongovernment clinic in Canada."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes, the Canadian Government spent $35,000 to send a man to the United States for surgery, because they couldn't deliver the services in Canada for at $12,000.

Yes, the Canadian System, what a great system at finding ways to go broke.

 

So then would you agree that passing an additional tax on small businesses and their owners would be detrimental to them and the unemployment numbers as a whole? I work directly with small business acquisitions and ownership transfers (Businesses worth anywhere from 1M-5M and some cases that are a bit larger) and a substantial amount of the owners would be considered "rich" by Obama. I'm not contending that you do, but if you believe that the taxes congress wants to pass on the "rich" will not affect small businesses then you're sadly mistaken.

 

So is the US system.

And it isn't doing well, in the mean time. If we adopt the Canadian system, and it leads to the current Canadian troubles, we'll at least have had forty or fifty years of decent medical care first - and be no worse off than Canada is now, instead of the disaster we have afflicted ourselves with meantime.

 

And where does this money to adopt the Canadian system come from when were already broke?

 

It might effect the owners, but our own history proves otherwise when we had high taxes on the rich and yet had the highest growth rate and standard of living increase in human history, so a tax hick on the rich is not going to hurt. A tax relief (or in this case insurance relief) on the people actually doing the work will be far more beneficial on the economy then the small pay cut in the rich man.

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All I proposing is that it does not plateau and drop after the 1% level but keeps going up.

We aren't, rather are rates of health care inflations are bring us there, similar to how canada falling tax revenue is cutting into their health care, rather we arn't broke but will be if we let things go as they are. By the way there are other countries with universal health care that are balancing there books, also canada is not nearly as good as some of them in terms of quality and services.

 

I don't get it. Isn't crappy free healthcare better than no healthcare at all ?
All this fuss, and people's lives hang in the balance. It's never black and white.. Why not adopt the Australian system (which has been mismanaged due to our own political problems), wherein you can choose private providers, but those work in conjunction with public hospitals. Some things can only be gotten in the private hospital, and others in the public..

EDIT: I hate having the last post on a page...