So I was wondering what you thought of ......

[Carl Heinz]

One thing I've asked our congressman about is why I've heard nothing about tort reform as a means of reducing health care costs.  Marginally needed or otherwise unneeded tests are a component in health care costs.  High malpractice premiums are another component.

California has had a State Compensation Insurance Fund (SCIF) for many years.  I worked for them when I left the Army nearly forty years ago.  The purpose of SCIF was to provide employers with an alternative source of workers' compensation insurance.  It sure hasn't put private insurance companies out of the workers' comp business in California.  Could there be a parallel for a government health insurance company?

As an aside, I'm retired and have been using Medicare for several years.  Admittedly, I've not needed major medical intervention, but I've had no trouble getting specialist referrals and testing when needed.

I think Congress is going down the wrong track, but I agree that something is needed.

[RSLeask]

Cannot recall the name of the group though it included the letters H-M-O in their name.

Think you're referring to HOM.  They were decent.  I wouldn't go so far as to say good.  But there was less red tape in getting proper care.

[Breandan]

Key components to improving healthcare- 1. Tort reform, because when my father- a small town regional doctor- is having to pay $200,000 a year in malpractice insurance, over 2/3rds of his practice's GROSS income, there's a problem. Punitive damage caps ($2mill is working well in California) are a part of that as well. 2. Guaranteeing private insurance will not be driven out of business by taxpayer-subsidized healthcare, and restrict government healthcare to those unable to afford or qualify for it otherwise. 3. Keep the control of the healthcare in the hands of the patients and their doctors, not politicians or government bureaucracies.

The current bill does none of the above, though I will admit it will probably be next week before I finish reading the damn thing. It bloats FedGov, jacks taxes up in the middle of a financial crash (always guaranteed to make a recession worse, and if 75% of congress were businessmen/women instead of lawyers, they would've learned that in Economics 101), and doesn't do most of what it's hyped to do.

Now, as someone who has worked in an ER as a trauma medic, I can tell you this- NO ONE goes without basic medical care, not the poor, not illegals, no one. Anyone who goes into an ER MUST be treated, regardless of insurance status. It may not be top-tier care, but its free and ensures a basic quality of life. The myth that people are dying because they cannot get basic medical care is just that: a myth. I have been on ambulance calls to pick up elderly people with no insurance and get them to an ER, and its written off and budgeted for by most agencies.

It ain't perfect, needs fixing, but I've been to many other countries and seen the alternative, so it's pretty damn good by comparison.

[Noble Dreg]

Cannot recall the name of the group though it included the letters H-M-O in their name.

Think you're referring to HOM.  They were decent.  I wouldn't go so far as to say good.  But there was less red tape in getting proper care.

I want to say Group Health HMO.  I remember they re-organized after I left the program (Booted out when I moved away from home to go to school).  Today I am one of the fortunate and have a good plan through my wifes work...But there are grumblings the plan will soon change adding about $2,500 per year to the premiums.

[Xanthenes The Unbalanced]

Cannot recall the name of the group though it included the letters H-M-O in their name.

Think you're referring to HOM.  They were decent.  I wouldn't go so far as to say good.  But there was less red tape in getting proper care.

I want to say Group Health HMO.  I remember they re-organized after I left the program (Booted out when I moved away from home to go to school).  Today I am one of the fortunate and have a good plan through my wifes work...But there are grumblings the plan will soon change adding about $2,500 per year to the premiums.

Not terribly surprising, actually.  Double-digit inflation is unsustainable over the long term.  I cringe every year when our Blue Cross rates show up.  We were told this year that we could keep the increase down to only 5%...if we dropped down three full tiers of coverage.  Well, three plan tiers would result in one hell of a lot less take-home for my employees.  We've gone as is for the next three months, but might wind up getting them just catastrophic (quite a bit cheaper) and setting up a reimbursement pool for doctors visits and prescriptions.

If that doesn't work, I'm going to expressly forbid sickness among the workforce. 

[Charlotte Rowan]

Worse was going to the University of Minnesota and having to use their health service (forced to sign up and pay for as a part of admission).  "Would you mind if 65 students came in to help with the examination of your schwanzstucker"?  "All right class, who would like to go first?  One glove each please"!   

Seriously. I work at the U of M, and my primary clinic is Health Partners, but I went to Boynton once because it's close to work (obviously) and all I wanted was to have a strep culture taken. Oh boy, was that a mistake. I already KNEW that if I didnt' have strep, it was jut a bad cold, but my throat was really sore so I thought I better check. They took the culture, it was negative, but then they made me stick around for another hour while they took blood tests, AND waited for the results! They had decided it was necessary to check for mono. Whatever. That test was negative too.

After a 2 hour visit, they announced that I just had a bad cold. I could have found that out in less time if I'd have driven out to my clinic in Minnetonka!

[Grov]

Not sure if this has been addressed in the thread yet but with the incredible expense of supplying health care to the entire population, why not just buy health insurance for everyone that doesn't have it right now.  Rather than shake the entire tree and put control in the governments hands.  It would cost a hell of a lot less.  But alas, maybe this isn't about the health of our population at all...  maybe it's about power and control.

I did no research on the numbers but after seeing the cost of anything else the Pres puts out, I'm sure the cost of the health plan has more 0's than a bowl of Cherrio's.

[Xanthenes The Unbalanced]

Not sure if this has been addressed in the thread yet but with the incredible expense of supplying health care to the entire population, why not just buy health insurance for everyone that doesn't have it right now.  Rather than shake the entire tree and put control in the governments hands.  It would cost a hell of a lot less.  But alas, maybe this isn't about the health of our population at all...  maybe it's about power and control.

I did no research on the numbers but after seeing the cost of anything else the Pres puts out, I'm sure the cost of the health plan has more 0's than a bowl of Cherrio's.

The problem isn't just the lack of insurance among so many millions of Americans, the bigger problem is the rampant inflation rate in the health sector over the last decade.  As is, it's simply unsustainable. 

Cumulative inflation since 2000 was 44%.  Cumulative wage growth since 2000 was 29%.  Wage growth in the middle class between 2001 and 2008 was -2.8%. 

Cumulative health care inflation since 2000 was over 120%. (source:  NCHC "Facts About Healthcare")

The reason people in single-payer systems don't suffer from their system is simple, and it's something that a lot of people in this argument don't want to wrestle with:  Insurance companies bring NOTHING to the doctor-patient relationship.  They don't prescribe, they don't diagnose, they don't treat.  They're a middle layer of fat; expensive fat.  They're middle-men, siphoning off large chunks of cash and bringing nothing to the table in terms of wellness, care, treatment or recovery.

In terms of paying for a revamped health care system, any decent plan would more than pay for itself.  We spend $2.4 trillion a year on health care as a nation.  That's the baseline.  Anything under that and we're saving money.  Anything over that and there's no point to doing it.

I provide insurance to my employees.  Were a single-payer system put into effect which offered better information management (which reduces costs, and is embarrassingly bad as it stands now), and removed a lot of profit gouging out of the middle, my taxes as a business would go up.  Sound bad?  Not so fast.  My premiums for my employees disappear.  Now, I realize tax is a bad word, but as a business owner, I don't care if the number says TAX or the number says INSURANCE PREMIUM.  It's just a number.  If the description changes to TAX and the number goes down, I couldn't be happier.

The most tenured talking point in the battle against single-payer is "I don't want a government bureaucrat deciding what I can get treated".  Okay, fair enough.  But right now you have an insurance company bureaucrat with a very real PROFIT MOTIVE deciding when you can get treated.  The all-too-real result is that there are people who take home larger bonuses for denying patients care they need. 

I'm a capitalist and a business owner, but I simply don't believe we need unbridled profit motive in every single sector of our society; I don't believe we need it in police protection, I don't believe we need it in our utilities, I don't believe we need it in national defense, and I surely don't believe we need it in health care.  It's good for a few, unsustainable for the rest.

At the very least, a panel should be put together to see if we could scale up a VA-like system for the rest of the country.  Even uber-neo-conservative Bill Krystal admits that the VA is the best health care system in the country, private or public (and yes, I know it's not perfect...nothing is perfect).  It even runs at about 70% the per capita cost of Medicare. 

Bill Krystal just doesn't think regular Americans deserve health care that good.