Healthcare Plan Misinformation Video-induced Debate

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No one is saying to utterly dismiss the statistic. However, I think it is fair to say we shouldn't overhaul our entire medical system based on it either.

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I may have to revise my opinion on this as I'm not quite sure it is accurate. This is what I was talking about.

 

The idea that America is some sort of perfect paradise where every single thing is better than everywhere else in the rest of the dark, deluded world is what seems to drive some of these criticisms. When you say it like that, of course it sounds silly, but nevertheless that seems to be the gist of some arguments from people who oppose more government run health care.

The thing that gets me is the scare tactics -- I've heard people talk about cheaper medicines from Canada, saying "oh, but they don't have the same quality controls that the US has." What utter horsedoots. We are a civilized, first world nation with very stringent controls and a pretty good (not perfect, but good) record when it comes to food and drug safety.

No system is perfect, and every system has the capacity to be improved. We're constantly arguing about this in Canada and I would bet dollars to doughnuts that most other civilized countries are doing the same thing. For these people to insinuate that our systems or controls are somehow deeply flawed when compared to the US one, especially in the face of lots of evidence to the contrary, well, it's really aggravating to say the least.

 

Ah, yes, that explains it. Languages are fun.

LKD, I've never heard anyone complain about the quality controls in Canada. I've never even heard anyone complain about medication from Canada, except accusations that some companies are bypassing US patent laws (no idea if that's true or not). It's Mexico that I hear horror stories about drugs from.

A lot of the anti-government drive I've seen has been fueled by simple fear of the government messing things up and the rest of us being stuck with it for decades (which is hardly without precedent).

 

One of my big objections, which upsets me that no one talks about, is that Medicare is anticipated to go bankrupt. The trustees of the Medicare fund are predicting it will be gone by 2019. Ignoring if Medicare is an efficeint way to treat people (and I believe this is open for debate) how on earth are we going to pay for healthcare if we are going to add on all of the uninsured to a "Medicare" type system. It boggles my mind.

 

You keep saying that over and over, however:

1. Things are "messed up" already.
2. Anyone who has not noticed that the government has been fixing all the crap that the private sector has jacked-up is delusional, in denial, or both.
3. Besides, what do you mean by "the rest of us" anyway?

The long and the short of it is that the government (we the people) have been bailing out all these morons who supposedly "know how" to do things so much "better than the governemnt." Events have proven that line of argument has no test in reality. Government does no better or worse, and in the instance of health care, as well as anyone else.

TGS - That's been brought up several times already. Do you know why it's going to be bankrupt in 2019?

 

This statement assumes a level of success which we have not seen yet (and realistically won't for at least another year). Replace "fixing" with either "attempting to fix" (for those who don't agree with the direction we're going) or "working diligently to fix" (for those who think it's going in the right direction) and I would agree with you.

Unfortunately, most of the populace seems to want to gage "fixing" in the short term. These programs (from "fixing" the economy to "fixing" health care) will take years to show a stabilizing effect. This is going to be bad for the democratic party in 2010.

To see part of why medicare is going bankrupt you can read the Trustee's Report, although it does not even mention the issue that many employers are allowing seniors to drop health insurance (and giving them a bit of cash) to have them use Medicare. To me this is the crux of health care reform as well -- we see it happening with Medicare, how will such actions be prevented with a universal health coverage?

 

Chandos, there are various levels of 'messed up'. On a scale from 0-10, where 10 reperesents Fine and Dandy, and 0 represents Ragnarok, the private system hasn't brought the overall healthcare of the nation down below 7 or so. The Government has the very real potential to take it down to 3-4 or so.

As T2 said, those are attempts, not successes yet. They also have the potential to just make things worse (though I don't think it likely for most of what's been done so far). We'll have to wait to see how they actually turn out, though.

Not the higher-ups in the Government. I expect Congress, the President, Supreme Court, etc. will have good health care regardless. The question is what will everyone else have?

It's like the difference between a monarchy and a democracy. The monarchy has the potential to be the perfect government, IFF the King is the perfect King. Democracy, no matter how well done, will never be better than good. On the other hand, the monarchy can get really screwed up really easily, while a democracy has a lot more safety.

Likewise, the government has the potential to be an absolutely great system, or an absolutely terrible system, while private industry won't really get that bad, or that good. No matter how screwed up you think anything the private industry in the US has made is, it's nothing compared to what governments can do.

 

NOG - The government bailouts have stabilziled the financial institutions, which brought themselves to the brink of ruin. That ruin would have taken the rest of the country with it. Whether or not the fix works in the long run is still an open question. There are still trillions of dollars in bad debt that needs to be secured through some type of program. And the commercial real estate failures are still looming on the horizon and single-home foreclosures still continue to accelerate. So the damage is not over yet.

Whether or not the government can fix GM is still on open question, as T2 points out. In the short-term they have helped, but whether or not GM can make it in the long run is still an open question.

Over the next ten years there will be fewer workers paying into Medicare for each senior who will be retiring and using the system. Add to that the rising cost of care, which is eating up the GDP and the entire system (not just Medicare) will be in crisis. When more workers start retiring and leaving the system, employers will experience the same thing that Medicare will be. Their solution will be to shift more cost on the workers, or start shedding the insurance benefits altogther.

Watch out for this "co-op" BS that is becoming the buzz word inside Washington. If we end up with co-ops, look for employers to stampede out of the health insurance benefits and just start giving a certain amount of cash to the workers to go purchase through a co-op. That means you will have to purchase your own insurance through a collective market. If you have a problem you won't even have your eimployer to turn to for an appeal, like you do now. There will not be any government help in that regard either. It will leave you and your family at the mercy of the insurance companies. And it will do next to nothing to control costs. That means that you can be paying about 25 percent of your salary for just health insurance, more than some people pay for their mortgages.

NOG, if you are eimployed yet, ask your employer how much he pays for your health insurance, and then consider that you may be picking up that tab. I understand that your employer will pay you some of the cash for that insurance so that you can enter a co-op, but remember the rate at which health care is rising. It won't be long until you will be paying most of it yourself, (or a much higher portion than you do now).

The coming crisis in health care will hit in the next 5-7 years and then we will have a similar melt-down like we just had, because of how much the cost of health care will damage the overall GDP. Then you will see people screaming as they lose their jobs and investemts all over again. And eventually the government will have to take over the entire system anyway in order to save the economy. It will be much worse next time because of the cost in human life and suffering as a result of the failed system - Thousands of people will go without care and die because of the sheer cost of care. Of course this just my opnion, but start really listening to what your emplouyer is telling you now about his "rising costs for insurance." The handwriting is on the wall.

 

Interesting, and with a point:

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Possibly, although it is rather debatable. First, when we are talking about potential, it is always there, for private as well as public options. What do you think will happen in the (very likely in case the current situation goes on longer/worsens) situation where employers start bailing out and trying to pay less and less, with stagnating wages and lower employment cutting the available money for the employees to afford healthcare? My guess would be "less insured, higher prices, and a complete mess spiraling out of control as the insurance companies try to keep themselves afloat." So yes, the government has a potential to mess things up. The current system, however, has that potential as well - and imo it is even more likely to mess up.*

Second, I realize you are guesstimating here (as, basically, are we all when we try to predict the future), but I don't see what evidence you are basing your guess on. How do you reach the conclusion government being able to make things several degrees worse**? Even if, by some miracle of politics and economy, it reduces the private sector to a sidekick and things become as they are in Canada or the UK, I doubt things would be that much worse than they currently are. There is simply no case (that I am aware of) that a country with the resources and infrastructure of the US has a universal healthcare that produces worse results for more money. There are several cases where countries that are, by and large, less developed (as the US tends to edge out most Western countries), spend less and get comparable or better results. Yes, we can not rule out the possibility things would get worse, as there is no way to prove it in advance. However, the evidence is overwhelmingly stacked against that possibility.

* If anything, imo the government tends to have a better record at (and is more geared towards) predictable outcomes at average levels, while the private sector tends to go for higher-risk, higher-reward solutions - and giving their profit margins and "administrative costs" the reward is not going to the customers anyway.

** or, for that matter, how you ranked the current system with 7/10

 

This is just speculation on my part, but it seems that the less you use it, the more you are inclined to think it's just dandy; the more people use it (like seniors), the less they are inclined to like it.

 

I disagree. First off, realize that what the private system has done (and is likely to do if left alone) is probably about the worst it could do to the system. I mean, I'm not saying it's tennable, or acceptable, but it's pretty much damage done (with fallout still coming, but the real damage is done). The government has the potential (note that potential) to turn this into the IRS (taking months or years to approve anything, and almost never admitting mistakes), the CIA (everything is locked into a government black box and you only know the outcomes), or worse, FEMA (the whole system collapses and sticks the common citizen with the bill not just for their healthcare, but for the collapse, too). Of course, they also have the potential to do well, but most people don't like risk like that in their health care.

Realize, I'm not talking about the likely outcome of any particular bill (because there are too many and they're all too fluid to say anything really concrete about at this point), but rather the overall potential of government interference of any kind. That, I think, is also what most Americans are looking at (for good or ill).

10/10 = Ho, hum, I wish it were cheap and easy, but it's not a big issue
7/10 = Oh, sh*t! This isn't working. We better do something, and soon.
3/10 = WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!! *children playing with dingos in the back yard, cars burning in the streets, etc.*
0/10 = ... *chirp* ... *chirp*
Does that explain it any better?

 

They're just getting started. Health care has become such a huge scam, that white collar con-artists everywhere are trying to get in on the action. Just a few weeks ago the Justice Dept. picked-up a bunch of them here in Houston.

Why would you TRUST the government with your health care?

1. Millions of people already do, and despite what has been said on this board, the satisfaction with government insurance (Meidcare) has a surveyed approval rating of 95 percent by the public.

2. We already "trust" them with the entire nation's security and defense, the air we breath, the water we drink, and the food we eat (to name just a few items). Given those very "minor programs" with which we already trust them, can we really trust them in the "big time" with health care? Well, yes.

3. Should government just "leave business alone?" Have we learned ANYTHING over the last year about the need for regulation in important industries that affect the nation's security? Maybe not.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/17/potter.health.insurance/index.html

An intersting article about Insurance Company Tactics to stop reform....

 

Exactly, and at this point people are being arrested and jailed over it. That's a serious control of the private industry that tends to become iffy in the public sector (not that it's not there, or that private industries can't avoid it, just that it's less likely in public entities).

And it's going bankrupt.

The profit from all those. There has been serious concerns about Congress being exempt from their own health bills. Of course, depending on the system, that could be automatic (regulating the private industry would likely not impact the public plans for gov't employees) or a good idea (if there's a public 'safety net' option, I don't want it good enough that Congress is happy with it for themselves). Still, though, if Congress set up it's own special FDA to go through all the food they wanted to get, or it's own special defense force, the public would be very suspicious.

One industry does not an absolute rule make, or a rule of thumb, even. We've learned we can't trust the 'free market' 100%, but that doesn't mean we can trust the gov't 100% either.

 

Hey, I already gave DR the Yoda title, stop trying to steal it! Seriously though, having the Fed as a watchdog sure wouldn't hurt either. IMO it is needed. Obviously something nees to change, let's just see where Congress takes us with this one.

 

So you fund it. That's what we do. If the army was running out of money, what do you do? Send everyone home?

I don't quite get this....

You mean like they are now? Who has this "serious concern" suddenly? And where have these "concerned" people been the last 80 years?

 

Chandos, right now there is no National Health Plan for them to be exempt from. Now, I'll agree that these concerns may not be entirely valid, but when Congress starts proposing harsh regulations for the industry, but specifically exempts their own plan from those regulations, you have to wonder.

Blades, I do think some government involvement is needed, but I also understand why so many people are nervous about it. A government watchdog program, some light regulation to ensure fair business practices, etc. are all well and good. Saying you can't charge a drug addict any more than a fitness expert is ridiculous and dangerous, though.

 

Many of them are old enough to qualify for Medicare (a national health plan), yet they still have their own plan, which they get as Congressmen and Senators. Nevertheless, those plans are still government plans. I'll tell you what: How about if we make the plans THEY have through the government available for everyone else in the country?

 

And just who will pay for such an extravagant health plan? If you wish to volunteer, go right ahead -- I would vote against it.

I know we pay for the health plan for Congress -- but that's only a few hundred, not millions.