Well I leave for a few hours and you guys have had a great conversation. But I had to work.
A small comment about IBD. Obviously some of you are less familiar with it than others. The main section of their paper is about investments and is very good – try investors.com. The IBD Editorial page is VERY right leaning. Sometimes good. Sometimes way over the top.
I attempt to read / listen to both the right and the left on subjects like this (all subjects for that matter). The dems in Congress and WH appear to be attempting to ram a $1.5 trillion dollar piece of legislation through Congress before recess in August. Wouldn’t want the taxpayers to have a chance to learn about the bill I guess.
I’m all for helping out. And I’m not against the idea of socialized medicine. But I also don’t have much faith in our federal government to do a better job than the private sector. If we’re already hearing numbers like $1.5 trillion, it’s likely to cost significantly more. What big government program has ever come in under budget? Typically it seems like they come in about 50% over. So now we’re talking $2.25 trillion.
Nope.
I figure that such scary numbers have about the same reality as the numbers which showed that the reconstruction of Iraq would pay for itself.
The numbers come from the same team after all, and there’s no evidence they’ve gotten any better at “the math” in the past couple years.
Yes, it is true that not all preventative treatments are effective. Yes it is true that politicians like to overstate (or understate depending on their inclination) how much may be gained via preventative treatments.
It is also true that preventative medicine can indeed provide substantial cost savings. The trick is separating the effective tests/treatments from the ineffective tests/treatments. For instance screening everyone in the US for Malaria is arguably a poor use of resources. A lot of cost for little to no benefit.
Again, it is for the medical profession to sort these out and we need an economic incentive to find the useful treatments and downplay the not so useful ones. Right now your doctor may as well test you for anything and everything. Why not? If you are insured it’s not your dime.
The incentives are all out of whack. As mentioned add in suing your doctor and the incentive is for the doctor to take a cover-their-ass approach.
This does not argue against preventative treatment. Pointing to one thing and saying, “See? That doesn’t work!” is missing the bigger picture. Some things do work. Hopefully any new system would stress the importance of the effective treatments. Clearly our current system is not doing this effectively so arguing for keeping it is absurd. It is clearly broken in some fundamental ways.
Nope, it’s got nothing to do with two wrongs. This is the old “these guys suck at math, and they’ve sucked at it for years, so why the hell should I believe their math this time around?”
That’s completely different from the old two wrongs make a right scenario.
Ah, it’s the old “conflate two different issues by pretending that all the people who supported one are automatically the same ones supporting the other, as if neocon foreign-policy analysts and libertarian health-care policy analysts are the exact same people.”
Well, I’ll admit that they’re trying very hard to pretend that they’re different, or massively changed, people.
Can you point out a couple Republican congress critters who support the current reform plan?
If not, I’ll just carry on assuming that your putative “different groups” are in reality one and the same group as went wild for an inexpensive invasion of Iraq.
So you can’t find a Republican congressman or two who support the dem plan?
I’m not surprised.
I suppose, there might be a Libertarian or two with a split agenda, but who cares? The only politically potent factions are the dems and reps. Everyone else is irrelevent.
Got anything else that might point to there being any air between your “two distinct groups”?
If you don’t, then my point about accepting figures from people who suck at math stands.
-So sorry, furt.
Of course they cost money. But it costs a hell of a lot more to treat a cancer patient than it does to help someone stop smoking. I mean, the comparison isn’t even close.
ie the lackeys of the congresscritters.
Did we not have our fill of dishonest right wing lackeys in the leadup to Iraq?
Much as some would like us to believe otherwise, the advent of a new national issue, and a new national debate, does not bring with it a mantle of virginity for the think tanks, policy analysts and political commentators. Their record still is what their record was, and anyone who doesn’t take that into account in wading through the current hysterical cacophony is a fool.
Had the Republicans any intention of taking an honest approach to health care reform, they would have gotten on board with the Democrats last January. That way they could have had significant input and forged a relationship with a president who was reaching out to them to form a bipartisan concensus.
Now (see link) they want a do-over? They want to scrap everything and start over, so we can have a ‘real’ concensus? And besides that, they want the scrapping to go on in an environment where they get to scream bloody murder about fiscal responsibility, and talk about how this’ll kill the president’s agenda?
Fuck em, the ship has sailed. They weren’t on it, and America doesn’t like them anyway.
The part I always found most amusing about this is how the cigarette taxes that were supposed to go to getting people to quit always ended up in stupid ad campaigns instead maybe subsidizing nicotine patches for the poor. Up until a few years ago, the patches were nearly twice the cost of cigs.
No, and neither does it mean that the right-wing slanderers and rumormongers are suddenly saints.
Or did you really think the old “Never mind what is happening here-look over there!” ploy was actually going to work here?
It depends on what you think is a reasonable cost. I had two fillings done in the last month, the work is great and you can’t see any evidence that the teeth have even been touched. Total out of pocket costs for me - around US$25. No filling out of insurance forms, no correspondence with medical staff or bartering necessary. I pay the money and walk out, never having to think about it again. Of course the dentist makes more than that US$25, because he gets paid from the pool of compulsory insurance that almost everyone pays, so he drives a mercedes. Everyone is happy.
And this is one thing I don’t understand about the resistance to a UC system. It actually makes planning your life a lot easier when you don’t have to prepare for unknowable expenses. None of us know what illnesses might happen to us.