Hold up. I think government’s involvement is necessary to keep the supply side properly trained. I’d love to find a better system, but for now we need government to do this job (training physicians).
How about something really extremist, kooky and radical…like, what’s actually in the bill? Can we see it?
About 2 seconds on Google. Do the trogs at the WSJ not know how to use it?
I suspect they do.
Your link is to the House bill. I think the WSJ is referring to the Senate bill, and more specifically, the amendments made by Dodd’s committee.
Here is mine:
The high care of health cost is due in part to the assumption that the deep pockets of insuance will pay it. With the even deeper pockets of the US government, won’t that tend to increase health care costs? If on the other hand, the US government seeks to control costs, will it result in sustandard care for those covered?
Saint Cad, I think that’s one reason for trying to build a system where individuals can choose between public & private options.
…which the present bills don’t really do, infuriatingly.
But the oft-repeated Republican talking point isn’t that “nothing should be done”; it’s that allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines would spark premium-lowering contests among fierce competitors.
Um, are state variations in the law going to disappear in this plan?
I guess that’s one of the legitimate questions folks should be asking.
Well, it’s an interesting problem. If we get national standards, that’s useful incremental reform, but it will be a “federal takeover.” If we don’t, then I’m not sure there’s any improvement to be made in competition between health insurers by, “allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines would spark premium-lowering contests among fierce competitors.”
The question the Conservatives should ask, is if nothing happens to change health care what will happen to it? The repubs stated it would eat 40 % of the budget in 20 years. That is unsustainable. So we have a chance to fix it. The repubs ran saying they would fix it but felt it was better to cave to the big money people when Bush was in power. He kicked it down field . Now someone actually wants to fix it. You should be ecstatic and should help him. It is not about getting health care for 50 million men, women and children without coverage. It is about almost everyone getting covered in the future.
I think for a LOT of people who have thought about this issue, the really big problem is “how do we bend the cost curve”
Health care is going to break this country and bankrupt our government within my lifetime if we don’t do something about it.
It only ‘breaks the country’ and ‘bankrupts the government’ if the government is paying for it.
If individuals put their own assets and resources at risk, and make buy/nobuy decisions accordingly, there is no way for it to ‘bankrupt the government’, because the government is not spending any money.
The % of GDP $$ spent on consumer electronics (computers, cellphones, plasma TVs) has also skyrocketed over the past few decades, at about the same rate as healthcare expense. Are we concerned that unless we launch a government-run consumer electronics program, it will ‘break our country’ and ‘bankrupt the government’?
To get fair and workable health care is going to be a very difficult task. I was raised in the depression very few people had health care. The doctor’s took care of many people for just a chicken, veggies or something else. We lacked the medical expertise we now have. People didn’t expect the doctor to be able to cure all, I do not know of any doctor who was sued. Many costs are added to protect the doctor’s and the tests they feel need to be done to prevent being sued because they didn’t make a proper diagnosis.
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I had a brother and sister die one at 3 years one at 7 days. There wasn’t antibiotics then. Many families lost children. I didn’t have health insurance until I was married and in my late 20’s. We were lucky that we had no severe illness. Now I have 2 grandchildren who have serious illnesses and lucky for them, their parents had, or they have insurance or medicaid.
One needs a supplement insurance even if one has medicare, as one ages the costs would not be covered with out a supplement, and those that do not have one have a rough go of it when they have a serious illness.