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Posted: 10/6/2009 4:13:07 PM | I don't know about you folks but trying to get all the info about the health issue is like being presented with pieces of a mosaic, one at a time.
The best questions I can think of to ask is the following;
Do American health care professionals feel the system is in need of fixing or replacing? And where does this info come from? Gallup, Pew, ect.. good. Heritage Foundation, NPR, FOX, CNN...ect...bad. Can we please leave Moore and Rush out of the conversation?
If fixing then what do the doctors/providers all agree on? If not all then what are the most common things they say?
I know that I am re-hashing an old topic but I tire of trying to put the puzzle together, and this one is a whopper. | |
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Posted: 10/6/2009 4:56:23 PM | SD unless you are a doctor, is it what doctors think that is critical to you? (being sarcastic here, when the airline pilots threaten to strike I do not assume their interests and mine are the same).
Assuming you think doctors are the opinion you most seek, 70% of doctors polled in a Tipp/IBD poll 2 weeks ago opposed it, 45% said they would retire or quit the profession creating massive shortages in supply while demand skyrockets.
The gold standard for rating costs is the Congressional Budget Office. They estimate the costs of the bill (which bill?, there are at least 5 I know of and estimates of amendments run to 500 since the CBO number) is $900Billion over the next 10 years and into the trillions in the second 10 years. The medicare system is approximately 100 times more expensive than originally conceived in the 1960's, so you know the mess is substantially worse.
Some economists I respect say the addition of 30 million people currently uninsured would cause them to double the healthcare spend and create delays in obtaining care (the State of Mass plan has an average wait time of 50 days for primary care).
Personally I think Obumbler care is simply a pallative on an inevitable societal crash landing with $50 to $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities. The UAW for example has $90B in unfunded medical liabilities they cannot pay out as a result of paying their deadbeat union employees $73 an hour making crappy cars no one wants.
Each of the states, as a result of promising their deadbeat unions and state employees more than can possibly fund are seeking the same type of bailout.
It's shared misery time, only idiots think this is anything more than a big lie to hide the malfeasance of politicians over several generations, and the incompetence of the greater mass of our fellow citizens now obtaining more from the government than they put in. | |
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Posted: 10/6/2009 6:59:18 PM | this is going to take one colossal ace bandage to hold the pieces together...
good luck | |
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Posted: 10/6/2009 9:38:42 PM | Forgive me if you find some of this content is elementary to you, it seems the current administration is targeting the insurance companies unjustly. If you are sincerely looking for sources to read and wade through all the political conjecture then please read these:
Kaiser Family Foundation "Trends in Health Care Costs and Spending" Mar 09
McKinsey Global Institute "Accounting for the cost of U.S. Health care: A New Look at Why Americans Spend More" Dec 08
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services "National Health Expenditure Projections 08-18 March 09
Paul Ginsberg "High and Rising Health Care Costs: Demystifying U. S. Health Care Spending" Research Synthesis Report No. 16, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Oct 08.
Katherine Balcker and Amitabh Chandra "Medicare Spending, the Physician Workforce and Beneficiaries Quality of Care, " Health Affairs Apr 7, 04
Myth: Higher health care costs are the result of continually rising insurance premiums, inflating the price of health care.
Fact: Because insurance is a means of financing health care, premiums have to track the underlying cost of health care services. Those underlying costs have been rising and insurance premiums have simply kept pace.
Health care costs drive insurance premiums, not the other way around. Over the last decade, health care costs have risen about 7.7 percent a year on average, and insurance premiums have also risen at 7.7 percent.* The overall rise in health care costs is a result of higher rates of chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease, more expensive technologies and procedures becoming available, and "cost shifting by the government" – that is, doctors and hospitals charge privately insured patients more to offset the losses that come from Medicare/Medicaid underpayments that do not cover costs. In fact, about 11 percent of the average family commercial Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) premium stems from government cost shifting.** Other drivers of cost include waste in the system and how providers are reimbursed for delivering health care services; they are paid by procedure, which many believe leads to unnecessary care.
When Insurance companies set premiums for the year, it looks at how such costs are growing and prices accordingly. The primary factors responsible for price increases can and should be addressed through health care reform that emphasizes, for example, the importance of wellness and preventive medicine, administrative simplification, investment in health information technology (HIT), emphasis on evidence-based medicine and health delivery payment reform.
We want to slow rising costs, “bending the cost curve” of medical treatment. To draw more national attention to this issue, the Commonwealth Fund, are sponsoring the September/October 2009 edition of Health Affairs, the leading journal of health policy, focused exclusively on cost drivers in health care. More information will be available on this health spending edition after Sept. 9.
* CMS, National Health Expenditures Data, 2009
** Milliman, "Hospital and Physician Cost Shift" December 2008
I hope this information helps you to make a more informed decision about Health Care Reform. | |
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Posted: 10/6/2009 10:40:06 PM | Can anyone show me what part of our Constitution authorizes the United States to provide health care--in any form? Let alone where it authorizes the U.S. to compel its citizens, by law, to buy health insurance? Or where it authorizes the U.S. to tax private insurers so heavily as to drive them out of business?
Just wondering. I don't really care what form of this who favors, because I think it's clear the whole thing is unconstitutional. | |
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Posted: 10/6/2009 10:43:47 PM | | I'm not a Constitutional expert, but it doesn't talk about slavery or women's rights either. This health care issue is about patient's rights v. the big bad health care industry. | |
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Posted: 10/7/2009 12:08:58 AM | Bajaslider
If 1+1=2 sheds some light on this then I will hold it near and dear to my heart. I'm not above anything. I have some reading to do.
Here's something I found in the meantime; http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200909/091709a.html. I'm no doctor but I cant see what's wrong with this. | |
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Posted: 10/7/2009 12:20:43 AM | patient’s rights v. the big bad health care industry
HAHAHAHAHAHAH, oh FFS. Do you even WORK in the healthcare industry?
Don't get me started on your BS healthcare "rights"! Until the government makes people accountable for their own health, you can count me out of wanting to contribute into a system where people get free health care and can continue to smoke, do drugs, have unprotected sex and eat until they're obese.
(sit back for the liberal retort, "but that's infringing on their rights to be fat, carbon-lunged, tweekers who sleep with each other and spread disease")
So excuse me while I check in a frequent flyer who is using the ER (for the 6th time in a month) to get their fix of Dilaudid. Add to that the 400 pound man who is complaining because his wife (who is 28 and smokes) only got 3 breathing treatments. Another lovely is the patient ( here on refugee status and gets free healthcare) who comes in with "fever and chills," orders meal trays for the family (of 6) and finds out...............she's menopausal.
This and we're doing compressions on a woman in another room who has a AAA, an honest to God legitimate emergency.
Until you walk a mile in a healthcare worker's shoes, you're talking from a place of darkness, delusion, ignorance and media hype. | |
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Posted: 10/7/2009 12:24:37 AM | Health care costs are high because no one has the interest or the option to reduce it. The culprit is the third party reimbursement system itself. You can twist it or turn it, inside out or upside down, its evils will remain the same.
Insured patients would naturally have the incentive to lower prices but, A: why would they care if they are not the ones paying for it, and B: even if they cared about it, they do not have the option to shop for lower priced providers because they are locked into their policies and are bought and sold like cattle in the fall of each year when employers and insurers jostle for new contracts.
Health care providers (as well as makers of consumables such as drugs, sutures, beds etc) obviously do not have such an incentive on a primary level. But even if they would like to compete against one another with lower prices, there is no free healthcare market (except for unnecessary procedures like plastic surgery), thus the current private insurance system locks them into rigid contracts; meanwhile the government simply dictates reimbursement, there is not much room for maneuvering there.
And the reimbursers (laughably called "insurance companies" or, even more hilarious, "managed care companies", they have nothing to do with care itself) have only one interest: to minimize "medical loss" vis-a-vis their income from premiums. As long as the balance is significantly on the side of the premiums, there will be bonuses to pay, shareholders to satisfy. When their costs go up, they will raise the premiums. When health insurance is mandatory, this is a no-brainer.
... yes, boys and girls, for your friendly insurance company, what the doctor or the hospital gets for services provided, is "medical loss". I did not make it up, it is their term. Loss, of course, has to be minimized, right? The next time you get the crappy generic instead of the brand, just remember that you are suffering for such a truly good cause. | |
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Posted: 10/7/2009 7:16:19 AM | Governments killed 100 million of their own citizens in the 20th century, I'll take the insurance company option thank you, I can fire their dumb butts, pay out of my own pocket, or simply decide apricot pit enemas (a little Steve mcQueen trivia for you old ones) are my best cure. I won't need a government accountant assuming my particular useful life index, or be mandated to take a vaccine in my paranoid, tin foil helmets delusion I feel will make me sound like a liberal.
I am old enough to recall when insurance was for major events. people paid medical bills like most of us pay our dentist. Healthcare today is really more like a prepaid approach which likely causes overuse/misuse by people without friends or family to talk to they go in to see ATC simply to have a caring human interaction.
Having said all the above I love my HMO, doctor, access, etc. Should you be one of the unhappy ones, consider the possibility you are simply lonely, incompetent, alienated libtards who want a frequent flyer card to visit ATC for free lol. | |
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Posted: 10/7/2009 7:50:50 AM | As a recovering "Libtard", may I suggest that the "RepublIncompetents" take a chill pill.
I'm more concerned with my Health Records being Online. Someone assure me that no hacker is going to be able to access my records and I'll believe that this policy Won't compromise a patient's ability to disclose all salient facts about their condition to their medical provider.
Sometimes people do things that are considered Illegal, have psychological issues, etc. that are pertinent to their care. They won't want to disclose those issues when they know it is going into some databank (ON THE INTERNET!) that could be hacked.
Next stop: UPC codes tattooed onto our forearms.
wait...isn't this the "Conspiracy" thread? | |
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Posted: 10/7/2009 7:56:34 AM | Natasha this recent series of innoculations is having an amazing impact on your clarity!!!And you are correct, the centralized, electronification of records is reason enough to reject this public option.
In an argument concerning efficiency over privacy, give me the privacy.
And I'm sorry saying libtards 4 times a day with scorn is one of my few remaining, consistent sources of joy | |
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Posted: 10/7/2009 8:50:12 AM |
Sometimes people do things that are considered Illegal, have psychological issues, etc. that are pertinent to their care.
These are issues which ARE pertinent to ones care. If you came in as a trauma patient and no one knew your history and started administering drugs to help you survive, wouldn't you want your trauma team to know if you were presently on any kind of substances, legal or otherwise, which might have an effect on the efficiency of your care?
Thinking that your life is private is delusional. When someone accesses a health record, an electronic stamp is placed on that record for auditing purposes (and yes it goes for IP addresses as well). Why do you think all those people were fired for accessing celebrities’ records?
You guys really don't get it do you? You want free/cheap health care based on your conditions. Well guess what, nothing is free. | |
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Posted: 10/7/2009 9:12:12 AM | wouldn't you want your trauma team to know if you were presently on any kind of substances, legal or otherwise, which might have an effect on the efficiency of your care?
Of course, but my point is, people will be hesitant to divulge this important information to their doctor's in the first place because of the very real fear that it can be accessed by Hacker's (and insurance companies and thereby present/future employers).
Why do you think all those people were fired for accessing celebrities’ records?
Because they were medical personnel, not Hacker's. They just got greedy and were too stoopid to cover their tracks. | |
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Posted: 10/7/2009 9:13:39 AM | ATC I think the "public records" argument is one of government centric vs. health care centric. Put one's IRS record next to ones medical records and there is not a single bit of privacy remaining, nor ability to move about without government knowledge or permission.
I'm a cowboy, if I want someone to know something about me they can ask. And maybe I'll tell them. Or not. I work in knowledge management. Centralized means single point of failure (failure TBD). | |
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Posted: 10/7/2009 9:32:53 AM |
Can anyone show me what part of our Constitution authorizes the United States to provide health care--in any form? Let alone where it authorizes the U.S. to compel its citizens, by law, to buy health insurance? Or where it authorizes the U.S. to tax private insurers so heavily as to drive them out of business?
Just wondering. I don't really care what form of this who favors, because I think it's clear the whole thing is unconstitutional.
Match, I agree with you 100%. There are so many things wrong about the bill but if a bill is unconstitutional it is null and void from the get go.
Isn't there some RICO laws that pertain to taking away rights? | |
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Posted: 10/7/2009 9:56:36 AM |
Isn't there some RICO laws that pertain to taking away rights?
The best way to deal with a government bent on taking away individual rights is to vote them all out, and then demand better--for ourselves, and, of ourselves. We can't expect the candidates to be better than the people are. | |
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Posted: 10/7/2009 10:12:51 AM |
but it doesn't talk about slavery or women's rights either
I'm not a constitutional expert, either, but I know a few things about it. The 13th Amendment prohibited slavery, and the 19th gave women full voting rights. And amendments to the Constitution are "valid to all Intents and Purposes" as parts of it, when they are ratified by three-fourths of the states. U.S.C., Art. V | |
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Posted: 10/7/2009 10:14:17 AM | The best way to deal with a government bent on taking away individual rights is to vote them all out, and then demand better--for ourselves, and, of ourselves. We can't expect the candidates to be better than the people are.
The trouble is the two party system, the money it takes to win, and that the constitution has been ignored.
We always seem to have two bad choices. Admittedly one might be somewhat better but still bad just the same.
I'd rather be ruled by 500 people taken out of the phone book at random than our Congress. I disagree, the candidates are generally worse than the people they represent.
Another problem is the media. No one seems to know what the Republican health care proposal is. The media fails to point out that the Republicans have been shut out of the process since last April.
We know the govt run health care is unconstitutional. However, they just don't care. It may take years for a Supreme Court case to emerge and then there is no guarantee we could reverse course.
Secession is looking better and better. | |
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Posted: 10/7/2009 10:59:01 AM | there is not a single bit of privacy remaining, nor ability to move about without government knowledge or permission
You're making my point, since when has it been otherwise?
You guys are all worried about hackers, well brothas and sistas, the world as you know it is over. Ya better come clean now because it's easier to get forgiveness than permission. You want healthcare but you don't want the fact that you did illegal activites or suffer from a pre-exhisting condition to be disclosed.
It still cracks me up that the soy-drinkers want everything given to them, at the cost of others people's entitlements.................but lordy-be, don't take their blessed privacy away.
The best way to deal with a government bent on taking away individual rights is to vote them all out
Hellooooooooooooooooo, they just voted the very "being" in.
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Posted: 10/7/2009 11:19:51 AM |
It may take years for a Supreme Court case to emerge and then there is no guarantee we could reverse course.
True enough. The Court did invalidate the National Recovery Act--the centerpiece of the early New Deal--in 1935. But then it also upheld the clearly unconstitutional Social Security Act. Worst of all, when the Court did that, it knew the act was unconstitutional. It allowed the government's lawyer to persuade it to believe otherwise, though, because FDR's threat to pack the Court had intimidated it into rolling over. And for the next several decades, it pretty much kept rolling over for the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society. | |
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Posted: 10/7/2009 1:33:21 PM |
they just voted the very "being" in.
That too will change. His party's on track for a big fall in the elections a year from now. Obama's already had his run, on his way to becoming an incompetent, one-term chump like Jimmy Carter. And come the day--good riddance. | |
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Posted: 10/7/2009 2:28:33 PM | Has anyone actually read the Republicans Health Care Reform Bill?
Here is the bill summary for HR 3400
http://rsc.tomprice.house.gov/UploadedFiles/RSC_EPFA_Three-Page_Summary--FINAL.pdf | |
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Posted: 10/8/2009 9:55:57 AM | Here is a link to a video I had sent to Boxer, Feintein and Filner. My supposed reps on the Hill.
They are blinded by their current power and so bent on getting something passed they don't care what these bills will actually do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZZfwuN3zIk&feature=email | |
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Posted: 10/8/2009 10:05:08 AM | ^^^^^^^^^
Dang Tomboy! That is some video. You GO Girl! | |
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