You’re forgetting, of course, that the diehard Republicans know that they won’t have a catastrophic illness. After all, they’re responsible. If one of the plebians has outrageous medical costs, well, he/she obviously didn’t plan very well.
Silly me, I was sort of hoping for debate on the merits of the issue, not ad hominem “you can’t believe anything from people who don’t vote like you.” Was a time that sort of thing was discouraged around here.
You keep switching back and forth as regards to what the discussion is about. To be clear, I made two separate points in my initial post here (#22). 1. that the argument that Voyager (& you) put forth in favor of preventive care being cost effective is flawed. And 2. (identified by the words “in addition to the above …”) that there are those who say preventive is sometimes bad for health in addition to being not cost effective. You had never heard of the latter argument, and assumed it was idiotic so you responded by mocking it. I pointed to several sources that gave expert opinions backing it up, upon which you weaseled by pretending I had argued that individual people who feel symptoms should not have them checked out.
And now, when I point this out, you turn around and start talking about cost effectiveness. Yes, that’s nice (more below) but that’s not what this particular exchange - and the words you quoted and replied to - is about.
Operative word here is “hopefully”. But it’s naive, IMO, to create massive government programs and uproot a system and create a new one based on the notion that “hopefully” a new system will be better. Unless you have concrete reason to think that it will be better, that’s a foolish way to do things. So far I’ve not heard anything that would suggest that it would be better as regards to be ing more discerning, and frankly past experience does not suggest that politicians will be more discerning about what works and what doesn’t than insurance companies.
One thing that would help is tort reform, which might address the defensive medicine issue that you noted. But that is not part of the current effort and for the most part, the people leading the charge on the current health reform issue are opposed to meaningful tort reform.
[I’ll throw you one bone, and note that preventive medicine will be more cost effective under a single payer system than under an employer/insurance system. But that still doesn’t mean it will be effective, on the whole, for reasons noted.]
So are you going to explain how European demographics have anything to do with the USA’s poor showing in life expectancy and infant death rates? Hmph. I thought not.
I’ll help you out just a little bit. The obesity epidemic in the US could account for some of the life expectancy data, but not all of it. I see no accounting for the infant mortality rates other than quality of care.
As someone else wrote above, the more salient issue is that we in the US are paying twice as much per capita as they do in other industrialized nations.
You’re invited to show the numbers being used by the arguments against UHC are accurate.
It has nothing to do with how they vote. It has to do with having a track record of honest discussion or dishonest political spin. At some point the dishonest BS deserves dismissal until they can demonstrate a change in attitude, concern about the actual issue and solving serious problems rather than lying for a political agenda.
That goes for both parties.
Find a conservative with a track record of honesty and I’ll examine their arguments. In fact, I’m interested in George Will’s take on the subject.
It’shere
I don’t always agree with Will but I usually trust him to give an intelligent honest take on an issue.
It seems the repetitive mantra of the 50 million uninsured is a deceptive representation of the details. Still, my limited understanding is that it isn’t just about those with no insurance. It’s also about those who can barely afford the insurance they have and those who are one medical emergency away from being buried in debt. It’s also about insurance companies increasing their profits by denying coverage or dumping patients with preexisting conditions.
I find it entirely believable that this admin is steering us toward a single payer system and is using this as a first step. What I’d like to see is a good argument against that. One that clearly shows it’s a horrible idea and there’s an better way that is demonstrated by evidence. Will does mention an experiment by Secretary of HHS Mike Leavitt that sounded interesting. In the last link he explains that Leavitt implemented a program of competitive bidding for certain expensive equipment. It showed promise until the equipment vendors got congress to repeal it.
Personally I don’t trust the Dems in congress much more than I trust the GOP members when it comes to making an honest informed argument. That makes it even more frustrating and the job of trying to be accurately informed even harder.
Here is the problem.
You buy into republican talking points so much, are so in agreement with the party of “no” you seem willing to let the status quo remain despite its profound short comings.
Here, I’ll give you a Republican Senator’s view on this. A senator who was once a physician as well (technically still is I think).
Leave insurance companies as the arbiters of proper health care decisions? That is putting the fox in charge of the hen house.
More from that article:
These are economy breaking issues. They are dragging the whole country down and are simply unsustainable. People seem to think the new system will be making us pay for something we don’t pay for now because our employers pick up most of the insurance bill. That is incredibly short sighted. As costs rise companies decrease coverage, place more cost burden on employees, refuse to hire new employees because they are too expensive or go bankrupt because they cannot compete while bearing such costs.
The insurance companies have been piloting this ship for decades and they have us pointed squarely at a big honking ice berg.
We can certainly debate what fixes are best and which aren’t but it absolutely needs fixing.
You might want to look a little more closely. The obesity epidemic also accounts for some of the infant mortality rate. Another reason is that the US often reports as a live birth an infant that dies within twenty-four hours of birth, while other countries would report that as a stillbirth (cite).
Regards,
Shodan
No, that’s not the problem. Here is the real problem.
The problem is that I made specific points relating to a narrow issue - the value of preventive care - and you are ignorant about these matters, but feel free to respond forcefully based on the vague notion that anything that supports your broader position must be true and anything that undermines it must be bad.
As part of your general mindset, you feel free to repeatedly misrepresent what I’ve said. Apparently to your mentality, anyone who disagrees with any particular argument in support of A is obviously in support of every argument in support of B, and you can attack them on that basis, and if that gets you off the hook from having to defend what you actually said, all the better.
So for those keeping score at home, contrary to whack-a-mole’s claims, the following are things that I’ve not said or implied anywhere in this thread
[ul]
[li]someone who has symptoms of an illness should refrain from seeing a doctor[/li][li]the status quo is OK.[/li][/ul]
What I have said, again, is
[ul]
[li]the argument that Voyager (& whack-a-mole) put forth in favor of preventive care being cost effective is flawed.[/li][li]that there are experts who say preventive care is sometimes bad for health in addition to being not cost effective.[/li][/ul]
If you have anything substantive to say about either of these issues, feel free. Otherwise we are done.
Thank Og!
Your persistent personal attacks are tiresome not to mention against board rules.
So what I’m hearing is:
- Healthcare costs are ruining the economy.
- We need to spend MORE money to cover the uninsured.
What’s unsaid, is the proof that (2) will fix (1). In fact there have already been strong arguments against it. So why don’t you sit down and supply an actual argument?
I’ll leave that to the OP. Sorry, don’t have time to get into a detailed debate this week.
I agree.
Explain how it will be more expensive. Have you considered other costs to the system? For instance, medical costs are the biggest cause of bankruptcy in the US.
Explain how it is you think we are not already currently paying for the uninsured?
The US spends far more on health care than any other country I can think of. 17% of GDP and rising. That is in comparison to other countries that provided universal health care which we currently do not provide. For that we get worse results. In what world do you see that as sustainable?
There may well be an initial spike as you provide coverage to everyone. Overall though it is about flattening the dramatic upward trend in medical costs in this country.
The Democrats’ House plan is focused on maximizing coverage while doing very little of that cost control that the Dems talked about. “The increasing cost of healthcare” is now a reason to OPPOSE this plan.
Now explain how this will save us money. No vague “things are bad now” posturing. Explain how your idea will make this better.
It’s a revelation to see the GOP and its partisans express such concern about the cost of government programs and the value of limiting the deficit. Warms my cockles, it does.
Now, if they only had some sort of alternative to offer …
Cite for this (note most are insured and employed in decent jobs). Not sure how you quantify all the costs involved with this but I think it is safe to say it is expensive to the country and an overall Bad Thing[sup]tm[/sup].
I provided you numbers just above your post that cite the costs of the uninsured today and the cost to insure them in the future. That falls short of your number to fully recoup the loss but then does not take into account such costs as bankruptcy and all the other social ills that attend families in financial upheaval.
I am also curious if the extra costs assume the massive inefficiencies that currently exist within our system or try to account for a more streamlined system. Administrative costs of health care in the US are frankly absurd.
I’m a little saddened that someone who had to barter for dental services would think our system is hunky dory. What if the dentist didn’t need computer services? What if a particular patient doesn’t engage in a trade that physicians or dentists will never have need of?
Arguing that because you did something everyone else should too is pretty poor support for a given position, especially when the issue at hand is a basic necessity and your specific circumstances include something atypical, like trading computer services for healthcare.
Another cite (and honestly, does anyone know if projected costs assume new efficiencies or assume current wasteful spending…I really do not know):
Before y’all start pillorying the insurance companies, consider the following figures from NPR:
PER CAPITA HEALTH CARE EXPENDITURES
Country, Total Spending, Gov't Spending
United States, $6,402 , $2,884
France, $3,374 , $2,693
Germany, $3,673 , $2,518
United Kingdom, $2,723 , $2,371
Netherlands, $3,580 , $1,733
Switzerland, $4,177 , $2,493
Japan, $2,358 , $1,927
The surprising thing to me was that the US Government spends more per capita on health care than the government of any of the other countries shown. I would never, ever have guessed that.
This indicates to me that we are getting ripped off, but not by the insurance companies as everyone claims. The problem is that we’re not getting anything like the value per dollar from our government expenditures that we should be getting.
And this, in turn, definitely suggests that while health care reform is desperately needed, insurance reform is not the main necessity. The problem is … wait for it … US government inefficiency. Color me surprised.
Given our horrible record in getting value for government money, shifting more of the burden onto the government might not be the best plan for health care reform. If we got the same bang for our governmental buck that the other countries get, we wouldn’t need insurance reform, it would be paid for already.
Just sayin’ …
PS - the other oddity? In the US, 55% of the health care tab is picked up directly by the consumer.
In the Netherlands, 52% of the health care tab is picked up directly by the consumer, and in Switzerland, it’s 40% … so they’re not that much different than we are. I wouldn’t have guessed that either.
Haven’t you heard? Our health care system is the envy of the world! It MUST be true; it gets repeated often enough.