SINGLE PAYER IS THE ONLY HEALTHY SOLUTION

[Conan71]

The cost of smoking is not higher health care costs, it's earlier death.

You obviously have no grasp of the cost of treating COPD and other respiratory and cardiac diseases which are related to smoking.

Meanwhile back in LaLa Land....

[Gaspar]

Goals of a good health care system:

1. Simplicity. (Mr. Obama and Ms. Pelosi, this means lack of complexity)
2. Available to all members of society, including the poor.
3. Offers good, basic lower cost health care options.
4. Portable. Not tied to employer or the government.
5. Prevention of exclusions for those who have had "pre-existing" problems.
6. Expandable. Option to purchase more extensive plans according to personal choice and ability. There is no Shangri-La. Wealthier people in Britain buy private insurance and those in Canada come to the United States for care. The Wyden plan proposes options for more extensive plans as well.
7. Shared, sustainable cost and some personal financial responsibility for all.
8. Patient health centered care. Preventive care with financial penalties for continued poor choices and rewards available for good health practices.


Solution:

1. Don't pass any of the Democrat health care plans. Savings of at least $3 trillion over the next five years.
2. Immediately do away with Medicare, Medicaid, and The Center for Medicare and Medicaid services. No other major industrialized nation has a separate system for the elderly, disabled and the poor. Scrap the Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation. Savings of nearly $1 trillion in federal tax dollars yearly, $1 trillion in savings for states and billions in savings by dissolving the tyrannical Joint Commission.
3. People should be responsible for purchasing their own health care, not the government or the employer, making health insurance completely portable. Scrap Hillary Clinton's HIPAA act at a savings of billions yearly. Let's make it HIPAA-posthumous.
4. A Health Insurance Company must offer a good basic low-cost health care plan with expanded health savings accounts. Taxpayer cost zero dollars.
5. No health exclusions for three years. Taxpayer cost zero dollars.
6. Health plans should promote healthy practices and preventive health. Taxpayer cost zero.
7. For the poor, government should subsidize the premiums, not be involved in paying providers. Taxpayer costs by my estimate around $600 billion per year.
8. Retired people of lower means should be helped as above but should not have a separate insurance plan run by the government. Sorry, Medicare is dead. Promises were broken, but we are mature people and we need to get over it. Let's not let it happen again! Taxpayer cost around $300 billion per year.
9. End tax penalties for individuals purchasing individual health insurance. Taxpayer cost zero dollars as these penalties are merely punitive, designed to make people dependent.
10. The health insurance companies in each state should have the option of creating a risk pool from some of their premium funds. Taxpayer cost zero dollars.
11. Laws should be changed to allow for private health co-ops to be formed as an option for those so inclined. Taxpayer cost zero dollars.
12. Patients should be free to change insurance plans at least twice yearly and since their insurance would not be controlled by their employer or the government no permission is needed from them. Taxpayer cost zero dollars.
13. There should be no legal right for insurance plans to dismiss competent and qualified contracted physicians for "no cause", when that no cause is really due to the physician acting as a patient advocate.
14. Tort reform with penalties for frivolous lawsuits and the loser paying some of the costs.

Well, there you have it. The savings for taxpayers over three years: Nearly $5 trillion.  Not requiring bills hundreds of pages long: Priceless!  A few short regulations and we have a viable health care system for the future covering over 99% of the population, devoid of the treachery of Medicare and without dependence on the federal government.  It's very simple, very sensible, and so easy even a government official can understand it. It's even short enough for Congress members to read fully, though some may require several days. Oh, yes, Mr. Obama, I want our $600 billion back.

Frank S. Rosenbloom, M.D.

[guido911]

CF, I have not been trying to convince you that med mal lawsuits are a large contributor to medical costs. My whole point is about frivolous med mal cases and how they must be stopped. I have seen so many awful cases get passed summary judgment and tried it sickens me. They burden our court system, the physician and his/her practice, the hospital, and all involved.

As for your argument, your stats don't lie. The costs of these lawsuits in the grand scheme of things are statistically insignificant. They are very significant, though, to the innocent individual practitioner who gets popped by one.

As for my skewed position, you are right. I became very cynical about the nature and extent of an injury after working in an er for two years as a medic. I have said on occasion that unless the doc does something mindless like cutting off the wrong limb or is whacked out of his/her mind on drugs, I just do not think docs are out to hurt anyone.

[Conan71]

CF, I have not been trying to convince you that med mal lawsuits are a large contributor to medical costs. My whole point is about frivolous med mal cases and how they must be stopped. I have seen so many awful cases get passed summary judgment and tried it sickens me. They burden our court system, the physician and his/her practice, the hospital, and all involved.

As for your argument, your stats don't lie. The costs of these lawsuits in the grand scheme of things are statistically insignificant. They are very significant, though, to the innocent individual practitioner who gets popped by one.

As for my skewed position, you are right. I became very cynical about the nature and extent of an injury after working in an er for two years as a medic. I have said on occasion that unless the doc does something mindless like cutting off the wrong limb or is whacked out of his/her mind on drugs, I just do not think docs are out to hurt anyone.

People are also quick to want to blame someone else for their own foolishness, life-long poor lifestyle issues, or just bad draw from the gene pool. 

[Gaspar]

People are also quick to want to blame someone else for their own foolishness, life-long poor lifestyle issues, or just bad draw from the gene pool. 

Conan,
We have a growing majority that wishes to shed responsibility for anything difficult. 

Addictions have become diseases (you are not responsible if it is a disease).

Every bad behavior is  now a syndrome (It's not your fault).

Wants and needs are becoming "rights" (houses, cars, jet-skis, medicine, food, tupperware, these are RIGHTS DAMN IT!).

Choices are being replaced by provisions.

Manufacturers are forced to carry the burden for the stupidity of their customers (If you're fat, sue Burger King.  If you're deficient in vitamin C, sue Froot Loops, yes it was a real case).

The days of the free American are almost over.  More choose the government yolk.  It promises freedom from the pain of responsibility.  It offers security, hope, and change.  A refuge from the choices that could lead to failure or triumph.  Risk is replaced by mediocrity.  Excellence is punished, and failure is elevated. 

The trap is ticking. 

[nathanm]

Have you been pounding aox's bong? The USPS is operating in massive deficits and has or is about to lay off 25K people. Doesn't sound like a very successful business model.

Yes, they are going through a transition period, as many fields are, thanks to the Internet. Also, if you hadn't noticed, a great number of private companies are also conducting mass layoffs. For some reason you expect anything related to the government to be perfect and if it's not it's trash, yet you don't really seem to mind when major corporations have similar issues with the lack of perfection.

You think that might have something to do with your anti-government bias?

Sort of like your work in defending medical malpractice suits might have something to do with your finding almost all the suits you've defended frivolous. Given that it's your job to defend your client, I'd hope you thought little of the cases brought against them!

[USRufnex]

The days of the free American are almost over.  More choose the government yolk.  It promises freedom from the pain of responsibility.  It offers security, hope, and change.  A refuge from the choices that could lead to failure or triumph.  Risk is replaced by mediocrity.  Excellence is punished, and failure is elevated. 

The trap is ticking. 

Once again:

Could you please stop being an anti-government idealogue for a few seconds and ADMIT that the Canadian system has some advantages over our own "big mushy" Russian-roulette private for-profit system?

Geez.

[guido911]

You think that might have something to do with your anti-government bias?

That's pretty weak Nate. It's not bias against the govt, it's that the govt cannot do anything right. The postal service is one example.

[USRufnex]

My mail service has been more dependable than almost any other utility I've ever used over my adult life.
Privatizing the postal service would be a HUGE MISTAKE.

Why do you insist on scapegoating the government for everything that's wrong in this country?

[FOTD]

That's pretty weak Nate. It's not bias against the govt, it's that the govt cannot do anything right. The postal service is one example.

The government issued you a licence to practice law.

[nathanm]

That's pretty weak Nate. It's not bias against the govt, it's that the govt cannot do anything right. The postal service is one example.

See, that's not accurate. The government is pretty good at lots of things, but folks with your worldview focus on only on the things that government does wrong. Similarly, you focus almost entirely on things the corporate world does right while ignoring the mistakes it makes. In the alternative, you seem not to mind corporate malfeasance as much as governmental malfeasance.

On the specific example of the post office, it gets things wrong about as often as FedEx and UPS do. Which is to say not very often. It's not perfect, but nothing is. You have a strong tendency to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

If anything, I dare say the corporate world's mistakes have cost us as a society far more in the last decade than government's errors. Well, I take that back. Other than the Iraq War, which wasn't so much a failure of government or its institutions but a failure of leadership. Hell, maybe even with the war thrown in the excesses of the banks and companies like Worldcom and Enron have cost us more. It would be close.

[guido911]

See, that's not accurate. The government is pretty good at lots of things, but folks with your worldview focus on only on the things that government does wrong. Similarly, you focus almost entirely on things the corporate world does right while ignoring the mistakes it makes. In the alternative, you seem not to mind corporate malfeasance as much as governmental malfeasance.

On the specific example of the post office, it gets things wrong about as often as FedEx and UPS do. Which is to say not very often. It's not perfect, but nothing is. You have a strong tendency to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

If anything, I dare say the corporate world's mistakes have cost us as a society far more in the last decade than government's errors. Well, I take that back. Other than the Iraq War, which wasn't so much a failure of government or its institutions but a failure of leadership. Hell, maybe even with the war thrown in the excesses of the banks and companies like Worldcom and Enron have cost us more. It would be close.

That's unfair and you should know that. I have hammered GM and Chrysler in the past several weeks, as well as AIG paqying out those bonuses with our money. In fact I lauded Obama for his position on this. As for what govt does well, please provide examples.

[nathanm]

As for what govt does well, please provide examples.

I will admit it's hard to find examples of things government does well here in Oklahoma, given that we elect people who believe that government is a big failure, thus leaving us with a bunch of people who refuse to fund the work we ask of the government, thus making it a failure.

My point wasn't to get into a pissing match with you, my point was that both government and private industry often get things right and often fail.

If you want to know what government does right, think of the things they do that you depend on every day. You get a weather forecast? Well, that's coming from the government. Yeah, you may see it on The Weather Channel or Fox News or a local station, but the model data? Those models are largely either run by NOAA directly or run by universities with NOAA's money. The inputs that go into those models? Say hello to government flown weather balloons. Like weather warnings? Better thank the National Weather Service for those nice radars that are about twenty times more useful than most TV station radars.

I presume you like firefighters and police, but maybe not. I like to have running water and sewer service to take away my poo. Heck, I like roads to drive on, Netflix films dropped in my mailbox. I like not having brownouts thanks to all the hydroelectric projects. I like that we have pipelines and fiber crisscrossing the nation thanks in part to NASA and the USGS and their topographic maps. I like having a system that can locate me to within 30 meters over 99% of the time and within 100 the rest of the time, should I find myself lost and in need of a map to tell me where I am.

I like having national parks and national forests in which to recreate. I like having an ozone layer and bald eagles, both of which we would have lost but for government regulation.

Government isn't the problem, people who believe that government is always the problem and therefore elect those who are like minded are the problem. Government, like any large organization will always have some issues, some malfeasance on the part of some employees, some waste, some graft, some plain dysfunction. The correct response to those issues are to bring them to light and fire or prosecute the offenders, not to cry government is the problem and "elect" an even more unaccountable group to supposedly solve our problems.

That's all for now, I've worked late enough and it's my bedtime.

[Gaspar]

Once again:

Could you please stop being an anti-government idealogue for a few seconds and ADMIT that the Canadian system has some advantages over our own "big mushy" Russian-roulette private for-profit system?

Geez.

No.  I like "Private"  and "For-profit."  Those are not bad words to me.  On the contrary, they are two of the most beautiful words in the world.  Sure the current system needs a major overhaul, but a surrender to government is beyond stupid.
I challenge you to name one single thing, besides defense and taxation, that our government has ever taken over and done well.

[Gaspar]

My mail service has been more dependable than almost any other utility I've ever used over my adult life.
Privatizing the postal service would be a HUGE MISTAKE.

Why do you insist on scapegoating the government for everything that's wrong in this country?

Lets see, it costs people a mere .44 cents to send a letter.  The government spends far more than .44 cents to deliver that letter, operating at a net loss.   As of last year, priority mail packages are now flown by FedEx under contract by the postal system for an excess of what the consumer is charged. 

Basically FedEx is receiving an unnecessary subsidy to deliver your package with US postal packaging.  The Post Office has chosen FedEx to deliver packages because they can do it at a far lower base rate than the postal service can provide internally.  Prior to this arrangement the USPS operated at a loss of $5.3 billion dollars for 2007.  After the private agreement, the USPS operated with a surplus of 900 million for 2008.  Privatizing just a small sector of the postal service saved over $4 billion.

The US post office is very good at sorting letters, they have a better mechanism than any private company in the world, but they do it at a loss.  Operating losses are met using federal tax money. In other words, sending a letter costs you far more than .44 cents, you just don't realize it.  Even if you don't send letters, you are paying for letters.  Most of what you are paying for is junk mail.  Billions of trees worth of junk mail.

Very dependable system indeed.