Hillarycare

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Spoid @ 2007 09 18 20:56) [snapback]514649[/snapback]</div>

Neither am I. Priorities are based on need, not who's in line first or has the deepest pockets. I've had one within the hour, at a hospital 10 minutes from home.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hyo silver @ Sep 19 2007, 07:18 AM) [snapback]514782[/snapback]</div>

What is wrong with that? Why should deeper pockets trump medical need?


There is no reason to exclude small PROVIDERS in the name of efficiency. Obviously better ideas have grown from fresh thinkers. Problems come when the CONSUMERS are divided into inefficiently sized groupings. Insurance carriers are not health care providers. Profit makers do not have a motive to provide care if it is not profitable.

Incentives need to be lined up with the needed results. The needed result is quality health care for all.

If the system works, it is good. If it doesn't work, it needs to be replaced. That is the bottom line.

 

The bottom line is we have a 'for profit', 'voluntary', system now. It is mired in duplication, antique record keeping, and making a few CEO's rich while ignoring the needs of the many. The top tier earners are happy with the system which is a 'free' perk for them at their jobs. The majority of people are not as enamored with the system for which they have to pay out of pocket with after tax dollars.

In order to demonstrate to those privileged few who are content with the status quo, I suggest removing this perk from their compensation package and using that money to fund the exact same health insurance plan for the uninsured, while 'allowing' the newly uninsured to fend for themselves. They are certainly in a better position to do so. Let's give it, say, 20 years. Then reexamine the system and see who is bleating like sheep and who is crowing like crows.

Oh, and yes, I am a self-employed person who pays for health insurance, co-pays and deductibles with my own money. I feel fortunate to be covered at all, even knowing I have a plan which is a rip off to me.

I think one of the democratic presidential candidates stated it best. If there is not universal coverage in this country then we should refuse that perk to all congressional persons until the least of us is covered.

 

you imply that things are better here in the USA, spoid. and i will again beg to differ. you were also one of the lucky ones in the instance of your MRI.

 

i'm just saying our wait times can be pretty horrendous here too. at least, in our pretty extensive experience in the past 18 months or so.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Spoid @ Sep 19 2007, 01:43 PM) [snapback]514848[/snapback]</div>

I agree - the thought of the government running our health care makes me sick - and i think i would be as a physician much better off if they did -- we would opt out and run an entirely private clinic.

The thought that the government will know EVERYTHING about you - through dna mapping - is beyond frightening.

Whatever - i guess that if they do take it over, and the country gets thrown into a recession as the result of the govt controlling 20% of our GDP - it will take forever to notify everybody because of the govt run mail offices

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Spoid @ Sep 19 2007, 09:43 AM) [snapback]514848[/snapback]</div>

Well I am against private corporations runniing health care because they cream off astronomic amounts of money for profit with little regard for the well being of anyone but themselves.

But someone must run the system(s). Accountability is the only hope. Which has more accountability, a private corporation or an elected official? Neither has as much as they should in my experience, but at least the courts will uphold the responsibility of accountability in the public sector after all.

We have to divide up scarcity since there is not enough health care to go around. If we could afford enough health care to go all around, it would be better.

Of course the privelaged will elbow out the rest in the struggle.

The problem is that the privelaged are getting much smaller in number (as a percent of the population) and the rest are getting to the point of including an awful lot of us.

Where do you stand?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Allannde @ Sep 19 2007, 01:27 PM) [snapback]514881[/snapback]</div>

Government - from the womb to the tomb.

 

Well, this is pretty much just an intellectual exercise anyway. It's never gonna happen, when the vested interests hold their own welfare above the common good, and even the suggestion of universal care brings howls of 'socialism' and 'communist'. It's too bad we can't think further than our ideologies.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hyo silver @ Sep 19 2007, 01:32 PM) [snapback]514943[/snapback]</div>

Its to bad we can't think farther than the crumbling medical systems of the socialized countries.

Our system is expensive, but it's in really good shape. Except in CA where the illegals swamp the system and don't contribute their fair share of taxes

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Devil's Advocate @ 2007 09 19 15:46) [snapback]515011[/snapback]</div>

There you go again, turning it into a political argument instead of looking at ways to make things better. According to the World Health Organisation report, the US has the highest per capita healthcare spending in the world, yet ranks 37th in quality of care. That doesn't sound like something to brag about. Some countries, who happen to have socialist governments, score significantly higher, yet spend less money. That's not anybody's definition of "crumbling."

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Spoid @ Sep 20 2007, 10:17 AM) [snapback]515257[/snapback]</div>

From my previous post with a link...

Yet even as Stockholm and Saskatoon are percolating with the ideas of Adam Smith, a growing number of prominent Americans are arguing that socialized health care still provides better results for less money. “Americans tend to believe that we have the best health care system in the world,†writes Krugman in the New York Times. “But it isn’t true. We spend far more per person on health care . . . yet rank near the bottom among industrial countries in indicators from life expectancy to infant mortality.â€

One often hears variations on Krugman’s argument—that America lags behind other countries in crude health outcomes. But such outcomes reflect a mosaic of factors, such as diet, lifestyle, drug use, and cultural values. It pains me as a doctor to say this, but health care is just one factor in health. Americans live 75.3 years on average, fewer than Canadians (77.3) or the French (76.6) or the citizens of any Western European nation save Portugal. Health care influences life expectancy, of course. But a life can end because of a murder, a fall, or a car accident. Such factors aren’t academic—homicide rates in the United States are much higher than in other countries (eight times higher than in France, for instance). In The Business of Health, Robert Ohsfeldt and John Schneider factor out intentional and unintentional injuries from life-expectancy statistics and find that Americans who don’t die in car crashes or homicides outlive people in any other Western country.

And if we measure a health-care system by how well it serves its sick citizens, American medicine excels. Five-year cancer survival rates bear this out. For leukemia, the American survival rate is almost 50 percent; the European rate is just 35 percent. Esophageal carcinoma: 12 percent in the United States, 6 percent in Europe. The survival rate for prostate cancer is 81.2 percent here, yet 61.7 percent in France and down to 44.3 percent in England—a striking variation.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Spoid @ Sep 20 2007, 11:17 AM) [snapback]515257[/snapback]</div>

Instead of citing subjective studies that include many non-medical criteria how about judging our health care system vs any other in the following categories:

1. Cancer Survival - immediately following the diagnosis of any cancer.
2. Cardiovascular Disease Survival rates - for patients following heart attacks, for patients with coronary artery disease
3. Average complication rates and length of stays following major surgery like: coronary artery bypass, neurosurgical procedures, etc
4. etc.

Then factor in the following:
1. the number of illegal immigrants the country has - this is generally a drag on statistics since they do not want to access health care unless forced to
2. the population diversity of the country - again, different cultures have different approaches to health care.


I would bet the US is near the top in any of the medical categories studied vs any other country. it is one of the major reasons our hospitals and health care facilities are filled with foreigners who pay out of pocket for care - they choose to come here.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Spoid @ Sep 20 2007, 12:38 PM) [snapback]515293[/snapback]</div>

You are wise too.

HillaryCare ver 2.0 will be no different or better than ver 1.0.