Health Care Discussion

Expect plenty of disagreement. Just keep it civil.
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Rspaight
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Postby Rspaight » Tue Sep 14, 2004 12:37 pm

If the government is monitoring this board:

STOP WASTING OUR MONEY READING THIS AND GO FIX HEALTH CARE!

Thanks for listening.

Ryan
RQOTW: "I'll make sure that our future is defined not by the letters ACLU, but by the letters USA." -- Mitt Romney

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Grant
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Postby Grant » Tue Sep 14, 2004 1:01 pm

Rspaight wrote:If the government is monitoring this board:

STOP WASTING OUR MONEY READING THIS AND GO FIX HEALTH CARE!

Thanks for listening.

Ryan


The republican answer to that would be to shut up, get a job, and make enough money to BUY your own healthcare, all while these rich lawyers and shareholders continue to send OUR jobs to India.

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lukpac
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Postby lukpac » Tue Sep 14, 2004 1:07 pm

I find it amusing that Bush always mentions "small businesses need a larger risk pool to make health insurance affordable." Wouldn't public health care (risk pool = US population) thusly be the most affordable by that logic?
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Rspaight
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Postby Rspaight » Tue Sep 14, 2004 1:22 pm

Wow, I'm disoriented and dizzy. I was just over in the Snakepit and now I'm here. Good thing I've got health care.

Seriously, although my post was just sort of a flip response to Grant's "the government is reading this board" post, I just don't see how the politicians and insurance companies who back the current big-profit system sleep at night. (Well, they can afford health care, so they probably take pills.) I'm no wild-eyed Marxist, but health care ought to be one of the things all taxpayers get, like police and fire departments. We're expected to go through insane insurance hoops to *avoid* socialized medicine, while being told that we can't have socialized medicine because of the bureaucracy.

I'll readily concede single-payer isn't perfect, but the current house of (insurance, prescription, supplemental coverage, dental, buyers' club, HSA, Medicare, Medicaid, HMO, PPO, EPO) cards is getting more untenable all the time.

Ryan
RQOTW: "I'll make sure that our future is defined not by the letters ACLU, but by the letters USA." -- Mitt Romney

Dob
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Postby Dob » Tue Sep 14, 2004 7:08 pm

The thought of socialized medicine makes me a bit queasy. It reminds me of the quip by P.J. O'Rourke - "If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it's 'free'."

Two tiers of treatment can quickly develop - one for the paying customers and one for the government customers. Perhaps Cliff can weigh in on this, but I believe that Canada has socialized medicine, and waiting lists for many operations can be months long. If you're willing to pay, however, the wait is measured in weeks.

It seems like industries that get the majority of their paychecks from insurance companies, like health care, can become very "fat." Too many of the participants -- doctors and patients (fully insured or indigent) -- need more incentive to keep the costs of care down.

A couple of months back I read an article proposing that certain patients should be paid to take their medicine. The rationale was that some individuals (depending on the illness) would tend to slack off on taking their meds, and it would be cheaper to pay them than to give them the extra care that they would inevitably require. The kicker was that the patients most likely to do so were the ones that got their medicine for free, or for a small copay.

If that isn't evidence of a broken system, I don't know what is.
Dob
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Patrick M
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Postby Patrick M » Tue Sep 14, 2004 8:42 pm

You guys are all missing the point: the problem is frivolous law suits! We need tort reform now!
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Dob
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Postby Dob » Tue Sep 14, 2004 10:37 pm

Patrick M wrote:You guys are all missing the point: the problem is frivolous law suits! We need tort reform now!

Sounds like a quote from John Edwards... :lol:

Kidding aside, the asbestos litigation "pass the buck" quagmire is enough to make a lot of the lawyers disgusted (the lawyers representing plaintiffs actually sick with mesothelioma and the lawyers representing the insurance companies).

We keep hearing about the problems caused by "frivolous" lawsuits...but why aren't judges throwing these out? Don't they already have all the tort guidelines they need to do so?
Dob

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Patrick M
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Postby Patrick M » Tue Sep 14, 2004 11:56 pm

Dob wrote:We keep hearing about the problems caused by "frivolous" lawsuits...but why aren't judges throwing these out? Don't they already have all the tort guidelines they need to do so?

I have wondered that myself many times.
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Patrick M
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Postby Patrick M » Wed Sep 15, 2004 12:04 am

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases ... 830-6.html

In order to make sure you've got good health care here in Michigan, we need to stop these frivolous lawsuits that are running docs out of businesses and raising your costs. (Applause.) See, I don't think you can be pro-doctor, pro-hospital, pro-patient and pro-plaintiff attorney at the same time. I think you have to make a choice. My opponent made his choice, and he put him on the ticket. (Laughter.) I made my choice. I am for medical liability reform now. (Applause.) In all we do to improve health care here in this country, we will make sure the health decisions are made by patients and doctors, not by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. (Applause.)

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases ... 40829.html

We will continue to spend dollars on research, so we can help find cures for terrible diseases. We'll work to modernize the health care industry. But I'll tell you one thing we need to do to make sure you've got health care that's available and affordable: We need to stop these junk lawsuits that are threatening our docs. (Applause.) This is an issue in this campaign. You see, I don't think you can be pro-plaintiff attorney and pro-doctor and patient at the same time. (Applause.) See, I don't think you can be pro-small business and pro-plaintiff attorney at the same time. I think you have to make a choice. My opponent made his choice, and he put him on the ticket. (Applause.) I made my choice: I am for medical liability reform now. (Applause.)

In all we do to improve health care, we will make sure the health care decisions are made by doctors and patients, not by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. (Applause.)

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases ... 828-6.html

In order to make sure your health care system is viable, and in order to make sure there's docs available, we've got to stop these frivolous lawsuits that are running up the cost of your medicine. (Applause.) You cannot be pro-doctor, pro-patient, and pro-plaintiff attorney at the same time. I think you have to choose. My opponent made his choice, and he put him on the ticket. I made my choice. I'm standing with the docs, and I'm standing with the hospitals, and more importantly, I'm standing with the patients. I'm for medical liability reform now. (Applause.) In all we do to improve health care in America, we'll make sure the health decisions are made by doctors and patients, not by Washington, D.C. bureaucrats.
Chuck thinks that I look to good to be a computer geek. I think that I know too much about interface design, css, xhtml, php, asp, perl, and ia (too name a few things) to not be one.

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Patrick M
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Postby Patrick M » Wed Sep 15, 2004 12:32 am

Chuck thinks that I look to good to be a computer geek. I think that I know too much about interface design, css, xhtml, php, asp, perl, and ia (too name a few things) to not be one.

Dob
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Postby Dob » Wed Oct 20, 2004 10:25 am

From the Wall St Journal, an editorial on how the Canadian health care system is working. Edited for brevity by me.

"Voters yearning for the federal government to start rationing American health care might want to take note of a study just released by our neighbors up north. The Vancouver-based Fraser Institute yesterday published its 14th annual report on hospital waiting times in Canada.

Under Canada's government-run health-care monopoly, Fraser reports that the average wait for hospital treatment is 17.9 weeks. To take just one example, the projected wait for hip-replacement surgery in British Columbia is 52 weeks. These waiting times are the longest that Canadians have ever experienced. And they exist despite record levels of health spending.

Patients seeking to avoid the pain or inconvenience of long waits increasingly seek treatment in private clinics. (This in part explains why the B.C. Health Ministry finds the actual median wait for a hip replacement is only 22 weeks.) Paying a private clinic for a hip replacement or a cataract operation isn't always strictly legal -- there are laws limiting the treatment private clinics may provide -- but the government understands the political expediency of looking the other way.

The government itself uses private clinics for Royal Canadian Mounted Police, provincial workman's compensation cases and prison inmates. Thus the Canadian joke about the prisoner who asks his cellmate, "What are you in for?" Answer: "Hip replacement."

What the Fraser survey demonstrates is that Canada's universal health care system has created shortages that leave sick Canadians wanting. There are many things to admire about Canada, but medical care is not one of them."
Dob

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Postby Gee Oh Are Tea » Wed Oct 20, 2004 10:42 am

What the article left out is the "right-wing" Fraser Institute. The Fraser Institute has long lobbied for tax cuts and, of course, a lot of the higher taxes we pay in Canada do go to socialized medicare. They have often lobbied for a two-tier, pay-if-you-want-to system (with the requisite tax cuts).

Unless you're a Republican, the Fraser Institute is not likely echoing your views and certainly speaks for very few Canadians.

Cliff

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Rspaight
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Postby Rspaight » Wed Oct 20, 2004 11:26 am

Yes, a study from a right-wing institute being quoted on a right-wing editorial page (WSJ). Hell will freeze over before the WSJ says for-profit health care is a bad thing.

There's no use pretending wait times aren't higher for non-emergency surgery under single-payer programs -- they are. Canada's worse than New Zealand and Australia, but better than the UK. The US for-profit model definitely cuts the wait time (and encourages unnecessary non-emergency surgery that clogs up the system). But overall satisfaction with health care is about the same (these are Fraser numbers, BTW).

My view: a short wait time is pretty useless if you can't afford the care in the first place.

http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/admin/boo ... s36-45.pdf

Code: Select all

                                       AUS CAN NZ  UK  US
Seeing a specialist:
Very or Extremely Difficult            12% 16% 11% 13% 17%
Somewhat Difficult                     23% 28% 23% 22% 22%
Not Too or Not at All Difficult        60% 51% 61% 53% 59%

Wait Times for Non-emergency surgery:
Less Than One Month                    51% 37% 43% 38% 63%
1-3.9 Months                           26% 36% 31% 24% 32%
4 Months +                             23% 27% 26% 38% 5%

Overall Satisfaction:
Excellent                              26% 20% 27% 21% 22%
Very Good                              37% 34% 40% 32% 35%
Good                                   26% 32% 23% 30% 28%
Fair                                    8%  9%  6% 13% 10%
Poor                                    2%  3%  2%  2%  3%


Ryan
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lukpac
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Postby lukpac » Wed Oct 20, 2004 11:36 am

I'd be curious about:

1) How actual wait times compare to those in the US

2) How many people are getting need treatments that otherwise wouldn't in the US (due to no or poor coverage).
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Dob
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Postby Dob » Wed Oct 20, 2004 6:24 pm

Gee Oh Are Tea wrote:They have often lobbied for a two-tier, pay-if-you-want-to system (with the requisite tax cuts).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but (practicaly speaking) don't you already have a two-tier, pay-if-you-want system? Without the tax cuts?
Dob

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"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance" -- HL Mencken