A Couple Good Reasons for a National Health Plan v HSAs

[The Whiskey Priest]

This debate did not start last night. It has been building since the Republicans took over in 92, Newt loved Golden Rule (He with gold rules).

HSAs have been labeled “consumer driven” plans. As if any of us who have not attended medical school would be competent to diagnosis an illness. Case in point, much of a diagnosis relies upon blood test, etc. Do you feel competent to draw blood, run the test (provided you had the necessary equipment) and then provide an analysis of those test?

Another point about consumer driven plans is that those selling them assume that you will have access to information that does not even exist. Say that you need a health care provider and you want to be an informed consumer, that is, get the best care for the least cost. Okay, how do you find out if health care provider X has better outcomes than does health care provider Y, and which is cheaper. You have no information to go on, no is reporting this type of information. So you go back to the health care provider that you have always had provide those services or care. They may not be the best and they may not be the cheapest.

Now, what make a national health care plan better? Two reasons, first, with a national health care plan, provider reimbursements can be set prospectively, like Medicare. Most large employer who have self-funded plans do this, they contract with health care providers and establish a fee schedule prospectively. There is also the matter of balance billing, most large employer with a self-funded plan contract where the health care provider agrees to the prospective fee and cannot balance bill the patient. In other words the plan establishes $65 for an office visit and the provider agrees to that fee, he cannot bill $100 and charge the patient the remaining $35 dollars.

The last point goes back to the point made in the statement about the HSA, with a national health care plan, information on which providers are doing the best, that is obtaining the best outcomes, can be captured in a national data base. We can then start to evaluate what works and why.

A National Health Care plan is the only way to go.

[leftstreet]

1. Check out Ted Kennedy's Medicare For All plan

snips

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0112-37.htm

An essential part of our progressive vision is an America where no citizen of any age fears the cost of health care, and no employer refuses to create new jobs or cuts back on current jobs because of the high cost of providing health insurance.

The answer is Medicare, whose 40th birthday we will celebrate in July. I propose that as a 40th birthday gift to the American people, we expand Medicare over the next decade to cover every citizen - from birth to the end of life.

For those who prefer private insurance, we will offer comparable coverage under the same range of private insurance plans already available to Congress. I can think of nothing more cynical or hypocritical than a Member of Congress who gives a speech denouncing health care for all, then goes to his doctor for a visit paid for by the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan.

I call this approach Medicare for All, because it will free all Americans from the fear of crippling medical expenses and enable them to seek the best possible care when illness strikes.

The battle to achieve Medicare for All will not be easy. Powerful interests will strongly oppose it, because they profit immensely from the status quo. Right wing forces will unleash false attack ads ranting against socialized medicine and government-run health care.

But those attacks are a generation out of date - retreads of the failed campaign that delayed Medicare in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, we are immunized against such attacks by the obvious success of Medicare. It is long past time to extend that success to all.

[Yollam]

2. How about the fact that they work great in every country theyve been tried

HSA's are NOTHING. People can already sock money away in all manner of tax-deferred accounts as it is. Problem is that most people don't have money to sock away to begin with.

And in countries with Universal/Single-payer schemes, they cover all or nearly all of the people, with better care, shorter waits, less overhead, and at a fraction of the cost per capita of what we spend here.

In Japan, I paid $70 per month to cover my whole family (which was matched by employer contribution) This covered FULL MEDICAL & DENTAL, with $5 for an office visit, $5 for prescription drugs, we could pick ANY doctor as a PCP, we could go anytime without an appointment, and the wait time was almost never more than 1/2 hour, even without an appointment. There was less paperwork and hassle to see a specialist, etc, etc, etc.

It was AWESOME. The US system (for those who have it) SUCKS.


My only complaint about Japanese health care was that a lot of the medicines come in powder form that you just have to put in your mouth and wash down with a drink. Man, some of them tasted BAD.