And those would be most of the country’s population, would they not?
I seem to recall a poll during the primary season that said something like 70 to 80 percent of the population is pleased with their health care and coverage. So we’re gonna screw up what works very well for most people in order to provide substandard care for everyone, and that’s a good thing?
This is one of the things I find most troubling about the liberal/communist approach to things. Rather than trying to come up with plans or programs to lift up the have-nots, they seek a solution which lifts the have-nots only marginally while at the same time dragging everyone else down to that same substandard level.
I have no objection to some sort of program to assist people who have no health care coverage in obtaining it, but I am adamantly opposed to forced universal health care financed and administered by the government.
Of course it does, but given the amounts of money we’re talking about here, it really does make a difference. Can we justify spending a million dollars to keep a 96-year-old irreversably comatose patient alive for another month? How about a week? Even if it is your mom, it isn’t your million dollars. That’s an extreme example, but it shows that we have to draw the line somewhere.
The costs of procedures and treatments are often given as cost per QALY, or Quality Adjusted Life Year. A year spent in perfect physical and mental health is one QALY, a theoretic year that is completely not worth living is zero QALYs, and a huge body of tools exist to determine where a particular year of one’s life should fall in between.
So let’s say a $100,000 treatment can keep a person alive for 5 years, and we determine that quality of life during those years would be 80% of ideal. That would be four QALYs, and the cost per QALY of the treatment would be $25,000.
How much is too much? I’ve read more about this in regard to screening tests, and I know that a cutoff of about $50,000 per QALY is usually used to determine whether a particular screening test is cost-effective.
This all seems cold; it is, after all, putting a dollar value on human life. But it’s exactly the kind of number-crunching that has to happen behind the scenes of any health care system, regardless of who runs it. And any viable system has to limit or deny interventions that have enormous costs per QALY.
So, according to the U.S. government, 16% of the population had no health insurance. To solve that problem the idea is to scrap the *entire *system and have the government take over the whole thing instead of focusing on how to get the last 16% insured.
There is another issue that troubles me about the whole nationalized health care thing. If the government starts providing health care the program will never go away, even if it costs way more money and provides a worse outcome than the present system. IRL, every time I have spoken with a nationalized health care supporter I ask them what should happen if it doesn’t work. So far no one has an answer.
Because the current plan that is on the table does not scrap the entire system, I can not take you or Starving Artist seriously.
If it does not work, evidence will be produced and the plan will be terminated. This is by taking into account that if it fails the democrats will be blamed and the Republicans will be glad to end it. In any case, it is clear that the plan will only deal with the percentage of people that are not currently insured.
That’s all well and good, but I believe the discussion here has been with regard to the merits of ‘universal’ health care which would apply to everyone.
That would depend upon how long the plan was in effect, and how many people were covered by it by that time. The longer it’s in effect, and the longer that people pay into it, the more likely it is that such a program would become an untouchable like Social Security, because such a large portion of the population, having become so heavily invested in it by dint of having been forced to pay into it for so long, would scream bloody murder.
I would have no objection to a plan that seeks to provide health coverage (or even benefits) to people who have no access to health care otherwise…as long as it is limited to that. But government has a remarkable and undeniable tendency to try to expand itself (often with the aid of politicians only to willing to promise people the moon in return for their votes), and I don’t believe for a minute that once a limited government health care plan went into effect that a universal government plan wouldn’t be far behind.
But for that to work the Republicans would have to be on board, and I’m not under the delusion that Democrats will be forever in the majority. But I have to say that what I detect here is the fear that even the Republicans in congress will see that even a limited plan is better than the current option.
No, what you see is concern that the current liberal push for universal health care will eventually result in its being passed into law by a Democratic Congress acting outside its mandate and in concert with a sympathetic Democratic President, followed by concern that once such a gargantuan government bureaucracy becomes entrenched, there will be no getting rid of it.
Well, that happens when people notice the advantages also. IMHO this is the main reason why any change needs to be fought so hard by the insurance and medical industries.
People may find that they prefer to be freed from the feudal lords and not worry about preexisting conditions limiting their freedom to change jobs, or to start their own company without having to deal with onerous health premiums.
And by a sizable percentage of the nation’s population, I might add.
Or they may find, once they’re in the position of having to deal with government red tape, long waits for substandard care, and a the huge hit on their paychecks that such a system would most certainly require, that the notion of their previous coverage being administered by feudal lords is as laughable as I do.
I use that term as it shows what happens when a member of the family or the worker comes with a preexisting condition, in practice you lose some freedoms as you then have to remain in your current job as one usually can not afford the change in premiums that takes place once the new employer learns about the condition.
Not to mention that I think that many companies, with the economy as it is now, would be doing underhanded moves to avoid hiring people with preexisting conditions because of the cost.
So in response to my assertion that a sizable percentage of the nation’s populace does not want or is fighting against universal health care, you quote the following:
This does not say what you appear to claim it does. First and foremost, there’s no mention of universal health care.
Secondly, the seventy-two percent mentioned merely favor the government attempting to lower costs and provide coverage [apparently] to those who are currently without it. This is a far cry from saying that seventy-two percent favor universal health care. (In my opinion, though, it is an excellent example however of how the liberal media present things in such a way as to fool people into thinking there is greater popular support for a particular liberal agenda than there really is.)
And third, we have it said that six in ten are in favor of government-provided health insurance or of the government providing it itself. The question then becomes how many are for government-paid health insurance vs. government-run health care, because these are two entirely different things. I myself would not object to the government paying for peoples’ insurance policies, and raising the taxes necessary to do so, as long as that was the extent of the government’s participation. But the government is never content to pay out money in order to help people and otherwise stay out of the picture.
As it has been said, government can’t do anything for you except in proportion as it can do something to you, and I happen not to want health care done to me by the hugely bureaucratic, inefficient, cost-bound, uncaring and unanswerable United States government.
The bureaucratic, irrational, cost-bound, uncaring and unanswerable if you get sick private health care of today had plenty of time to correct those issues. Time is up.
The thing is - and especially when compared to goverment-run agencies - they’re not. And based upon what I’ve seen, people are relatively happy with the health care their insurance companies provide. Where the problem lies is with people who have no insurance, and there is no reason to force everyone to participate in a government-run health care system in order to solve the problem of those who are uninsured.
I could dissect your latest cite above but it’s late and I’ve got other things to do. But again this is just more verbal sleight-of-hand from the news media. Just suffice it to say that if someone said to me, would you pay higher taxes if everyone could have health care, I would say yes myself. But I would be thinking that my tax dollars would help fund health care for the needy, and not that everyone currently happy with their own health care would be forced to give it up in favor of government-run universal health care.
And besides, poll numbers have nothing to do with whether a particular issue is actually a good thing or not.
I have seen other reports that show that even if less people are covered (jobs being lost) the price of the coverage is not going down for the ones that remain covered.
As it was mentioned before, universal health care is not in the cards at this time. What is reprehensible is that in the end many Republicans would support efforts from insurers and the medical industry that would prevent even the needy from gaining health coverage.
Right, because we’re not allowed to vote – oh, wait…
I’m not sure why you think the US government is somehow more wasteful and bureaucratic than other governments.
It’s not a scientific sample, but I’ve spoken with a number of people who have experienced both systems, including people with chronic or serious health problems, and all of them have expressed a preference for the European model.
I have both had health insurance in the US, and been without it. I don’t think you can appreciate what it’s like to be without it until you actually are. The lock-out of service is almost total - it took me months to obtain a simple tetanus shot when I was without insurance last summer, which is… beyond stupid. There was an out-and-out refusal to give me a very simple and effective preventative vaccine which I could entirely pay for out of pocket on the spot simply because I didn’t have insurance. I’ll repeat that even though I had the cash to pay up front I was denied service because I had no insurance. And this occurred repeatedly. It is also a myth that if you are unemployed or low income you are somehow automatically eligible for Medicaid. You aren’t. A large slice of people work full time and have no health insurance at all. As my experience demonstrates, even if you have the money to pay up front getting basic health services can be very difficult.
I can’t believe that this is the “best” we can do.
You mean, like the way this country has gotten used to 1 in 6 people having no insurance at all and little or no access to health care? Gotten used to it to the point that many will not even consider an alternative.
Are you assuming you’ll always be in the 70-80% covered? If you knew you were going to be in the 20-30% left out in the cold would you feel the same way.
And when you’re uninsured you don’t get red tape - you get nothing. You don’t get so-so care, you get none. You don’t get “long” waits, you get infinite waits.
I think it’s insane that someone with cash in hand can be denied a freakin’ tetanus shot because medical providers won’t see someone without health insurance.
Funny, though - last I heard countries like Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Sweden, Finland, etc. are not communist yet have UHC that covers everyone.
Except that the system is not that in the countries I mentioend.
I used to work for a company that provided the health insurance for Congress. Dude, they have GREAT insurance and GREAT medical care - better than 90% of the country. Why shouldn’t I have health care insurance as good as Congress gets? Those people who ARE under the “auspices” of the US government get far better insurance than most other Americans.
I’ve heard that argument before. Funny thing is, though, that when my mother was in her final decline instead of throwing one treatment after another at her we took her home, made her comfortable, and were able to watch her die without hysteria. Yes, we could have put in a feeding tube and put her on a respirator and a dozen other things but we didn’t. In fact, we “gave up” before some of her doctors did (some interesting yelling went on) but we realized that she really was dying and that all those treatments would just drag it out and prolong her suffering.
So, no, it is not inevitable that “everything changes” when it’s your loved one. Sometimes, some of us find that the end of life affirms the beliefs and positions we already had on these issues.
Not necessarily. A lot of people’s health insurance is not as good as they think it is. Being insurance, most people don’t actually try to fully utilize it, but if you have a catastrophic illness or injury you may well be shocked at what isn’t covered. As an example, a lot of people with health insurance who get cancer still wind up bankrupt because insurance doesn’t cover everything.
The other thing is that people with serious or chronic illness often lose their jobs - and with the loss of their job comes the loss of health insurance.
Why do you assume UHC would automatically be substandard for everyone?
Can you provide a cite for a government entitlement program that affected 16% or more of the population* that has been terminated?
Slee
I can believe that there are minor entitlement programs that have been terminated though I do not know of any, but I cannot think of a major entitlement program that has been terminated.
Broomstick, where you live that you can’t pay cash for a tetanus shot without insurance? I live in a good sized city in the midwest and there are literally hundreds of doctors’ offices and clinics here where I can get a tetanus shot paid for with cash, with the issue of insurance never being raised other than as an option for payment.
And in the rural/suburban area where I live, the county health department provides them for free.
This doesn’t mean much, it requires one to ignore that very strong lobbies will remain to reform or kill any plan adopted. A well funded opposition like that was not available for other entitlement programs.
But here is also a denial that even Republicans do find that many entitlement programs do work.
Looking at programs like Social Security I would had thought that the colossal failure of the markets could have told Republicans what a huge bullet they dodged when the Bush private options were proposed but failed in congress.
The welfare reform from the 90’s showed that entitlement programs can be reformed to make them more effective.