Consider where we are today, where will be tomorrow, and socialized medicine

[Stinky The Clown]

Poll question: Consider where we are today, where will be tomorrow, and socialized medicine

I like the term 'socialized medicine'. Some prefer 'universal single payer health care'.

I also prefer "espresso" to "half caf decaf vanilla hazelnut soy latte"

Anyway ......

The simple fact is, that if we wish to give a HUGE boost to business, cut them free from providing health insurance. Sure, smaller companies already fail to provide it. But it would cut a major cost line from many of the "too big to fail" companies.

Do you think we'll see socialized medicine in a year or two? Five? Ten? Never?

[mike_c]

1. I'm gonna say "never" because it's going to become very difficult...

...to fund a REAL socialized medicine approach-- unless we drastically cut military expenditures. More likely, I think, are a few stopgap semi-socialized medicine programs for some but not others, in essence creating yet another haves-against-the-have-nots class division. It won't work well because it'll be half-assed from the beginning, but that will provide arguments against expanding it into the real universal health care reforms America needs. There will be massive waste and inefficiency, and the idea will sputter into disrepute.

I'm just a ray of freakin sunshine today, aren't I?

[Runcible Spoon]

5. exactly. It will be formed with the covert support of the insurance industry...

and designed to fail, just to "prove" how we need to privatize EVERYTHING, including Medicare and fuck maybe even veteran's care. :evilfrown:

I'm not very optimistic.

[DesertFlower]

2. within the next 2 years

because it would take that long to implement it.

[Hippo_Tron]

3. I think step one will be socializing catastrophic coverage

Which will drastically reduce the cost and the price of health insurance. The left will call it a corporate giveaway and the libertarians will call it socialism.

[Cleita]

4. Socialized medicine is not correct.

Single payer means the government collects the money to pay the health care providers. Doctors, and other health care workers are in the private sector and operate like any other business. There is nothing socialized about it, only the payment method.

We will never have a decent system until someone figures out how to get the parasitical insurance carriers out of the business.

[DesertFlower]

6. i agree. we don't

need a 3rd party making money.

[Runcible Spoon]

7. "get the parasitical insurance carriers out of the business"

exactly. Nothing will happen until they are cut out of the entire loop. Even in my wildest dreams they will still survive to make money on "premium" care, since unless they are completely fucking killed off they will do everything in their considerable power to make government care barebones or rife with bureaucratic process. Insurance agencies infect every level of healthcare, from the hospitals you use to the drugs you take to the ambulances that carry you to the ER. Their fingers are in everything..People will choose to pay for premium care if only to avoid filling out the mountains of paperwork I foresee...

[CTyankee]

8. If you say that they can't deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions,

the insurance companies will not be able to make a profit. Then, they will go out of business and we'll have our government health care.

Color me crazy but I think the insurance companies already see the handwriting on the wall...

[Stinky The Clown]

10. I agree with you

I think it is coming and it is inevitable.

The insurance companies are looking for ways to cash out before they dry up and blow away.

[CTyankee]

20. Isn't it remarkable? A year ago I remember being very fearful that we could even GET

health care reform and now we're looking at socializing it.

I think what's driving this is the interest business has in making profits. If they have to pay employees health insurance, it cuts into their profits and they are less competitive than their rivals in countries with socialized medicine. Look at the auto industry...

[Stinky The Clown]

49. The car biz is the **perfect** example of this.

[leftofthedial]

9. it will take a revolution and a fundamental shift in the US economic structure

to get the banks to let go of insurance, inside banking, public banking, mortgages, etc.

[jody]

11. I answered but 'socialized medicine' is undefined. IMO in this century we will see fantastic

discoveries and unbelievable new procedures in medicine.

Bottom line is society probably can't afford all the new things for all people.

For example, open heart surgery can easily cost $400k or more and society must decide whether that is a reasonable treatment for someone who is 100 years old or 90, 80, 70 ...

That's just one example and costs of open heart surgery might go down considerably but new medical procedures will top the list.

The issue of who receives medical care and who doesn't is a moral question and I don't trust politicians to make those decisions.

I don't see any interest among the largest religious groups to seek answers to that dilemma and certainly leaders from the Humanist community should participate.

Perhaps we could approach the problem by discussing the "minimum level" of medical care to which all citizens are entitled as a privilege?

[Cleita]

12. Oh, my! All those insurance company talking points in one post.

What we need is not a "minimum level" but access to the health care any individual needs at the time he needs it regardless of his ability to pay. Not everyone needs open heart surgery, just those who actually need it. If doctors are allowed to order the tests they believe are needed for their diagnosis, I'm sure you will see wasted procedures go down because they won't have to jump through insurance company hoops to get where they want to get to.

I don't trust politicians to make medical decisions either, anymore than I trust insurance company bookkeepers to do so as well. The government by being the single payer will not be making those decisions, doctors will and the government will pay them to do so. It's not rocket science.

Also, health care is not a "privilege" like having a chauffeured limousine. IT"S A HUMAN RIGHT!

[jody]

13. I see we disagree on several points but please provide me with a SCOTUS decision supporting your

assertion that "health care . . . IT"S A HUMAN RIGHT!"

[Cleita]

14. Ha ha and another insurance company talking point.

Ten years ago even before there was a DU I was arguing for health care as a human right and that's the first thing you guys on the insurance company side of the coin come up with. It's not a human right guaranteed by the Constitution and the Supreme Court, yakkity, yak, yak! Well the Constitution can be amended to include health care as a human right. Most of the western world have health care guaranteed as a human right in their constitutions along with the other rights like freedom of speech. Let's face it, if we allow the bearing of arms as a human right, I think we can include the right to health care perhaps even to take care of all those gunshot wounds. On a moral and ethical level, most Christian churches consider it a human right. The Catholic church founded their hospital system back in the Middle Ages with the purpose of providing health care to everyone. Physicians were clerics trained in Catholic Universities using whatever knowledge had survived from the ancient world as evidenced by the fact that we still acknowledge the Hippocratic Oath as a standard for physicians to follow.

No it's not in the Constitution, yet, but I think if you call yourself a Christian you will be hard pressed to find any pastor or priest who doesn't think so. If you are not a Christian I think you will find most religious leaders do believe it as well. So morally it is a human right whether you want to believe it or not.

[jody]

21. Apparently you need to reread the history of rights and a good place to start is the several books

given at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rights

PA (1776) and VT (1777) acknowledged natural, inherent, inalienable/unalienable rights in their constitutions and enumerated some of them.

Our Bill of Rights enumerated eight rights and recognized unenumerated rights in the Ninth Amendment.

I find no evidence in our Constitution for acknowledging health care to be provided by government through taxing others is a natural right.

Although the Declaration of Independence is not the Supreme Law as is our Constitution, its statement "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" clearly summarizes the intent of our nation's founders.

As so many have pointed out before, the intent of creating our form of government was to allow each person to freely engage in "the pursuit of Happiness". The intent was not to guarantee "Happiness".

SCOTUS has said repeatedly that government is not obligated to protect an individual unless she/he is in custody, most recently in CASTLE ROCK v. GONZALES

Self-defense is a personal problem and the right to keep and bear arms is protected by the Second Amendment as SCOTUS said in D.C. v. Heller.

Using that line of argument, whether a person receives health care or not is also a personal problem.

[Cleita]

25. SCOTUS has nothing to do with it. It's just a straw man you are introducing

here. Morally health care is a human right. All societies agree that murder is a crime. Murder by neglect is a crime. I know that no one has brought this to court, because usually it's some poor person, who has lost his job through illness and his health coverage with it. Thousands of people die every year for lack of health care coverage who would have been cured if they only could have gotten treatment. There was an incident here in my county of a homeless man, discharged from the hospital who went into a wet field to die. His homeless friends were witness but none of them have the means to shake up the system on this. But I believe neglect is murder every bit as much as sticking a knife into someone's heart. Take your straw man some place else and burn him.

[jody]

29. If you want to force society through its representatives in government to pay for health care

without limit, I expect those laws and policies will be challenged in court and eventually appealed to SCOTUS.

At that time SCOTUS will have an opportunity to say whether government is obligated to protect an individual by paying for health care.

I expect some lawyer will use SCOTUS' decision that government is not obligated to protect an individual against death from a criminal, to argue that neither should government be obligated to protect an individual against death from a disease.

[Cleita]

31. I think society once it has the worry of not having enough health care, or

of going bankrupt and losing all their assets because of illness in the family, or of not being profitable as a business because of health insurance costs removed, will be pretty much like the Canadians and embrace it. Also, all those auto workers who lost their jobs when the factories moved to Canada because they don't have to provide health care will be able to get their jobs back hopefully. The only entities probably doing lawsuits will be the parasitical middle men insurers who have lost their cash cow.

[jody]

32. You asserted health care is "A HUMAN RIGHT!" and I asked for proof that it is a right protected by

our Constitution.

You still have not provided proof for your assertion so I must conclude health care is a privilege granted by society through our representatives in government.

[Cleita]

34. If you don't have any other argument than that straw man that you keep

introducing into this debate, there is no proof to be given because you have no proof that it isn't a human right. Health care is NOT A PRIVILEGE. A country club membership is a privilege and unfortunately our health care is being delivered like this. It's not just for privileged people only.

[jody]

38. The issue of right versus privilege is relevant because under our Constitution rights protect a

minority against the tyranny of a simple majority.

Iff health care is a right protected as an enumerated right or covered by the 9th as an unenumerated right, then SCOTUS would rule that government is obligated to tax society and protect every citizen against threats to their health.

Until SCOTUS rules, neither you nor I will know what the court will do but if you are correct, then SCOTUS has already made such a decision. I asked for that proof and you have not yet cited a SCOTUS case for support.

You might place great value on your personal opinion but I don't nor do I expect you to value my personal opinion.

That's why I asked you to support your assertion. :shrug:

[Cleita]

42. Seems the minority has been tyrannizing the majority for quite some time now.

My assertion has nothing to do with your SCOTUS straw man. It has nothing to do with the issue. I'm sorry that you don't have anything better to back your claim, but you have no basis for your assertion that health care is a privilege. It's time for the majority to claim their rights against the tyranny of the 5% of the nation that owns 90% of the assets. Keep your privilege to own yachts and private jets and whatever else you think the minority has rights to, but health care belongs to all of us, like food, like shelter, and like decent wages. They are human rights engraved on stone since the beginning of the human race. SCOTUS can acknowledge it or not but it changes nothing.

[jody]

43. I've enjoyed our exchange. Have a pleasant day and goodbye. n/t

[Stinky The Clown]

51. May I just say to you ........

..... blah blah blah fucking blah ..........


:eyes:

[jody]

53. Hi Husb2Sparkly, you haven't lost your eloquent talent and extensive vocabulary for expression. n/t

[Stinky The Clown]

50. To go step further .... it is an UNFUNDED human right.

:thumbsup:

[jody]

54. "UNFUNDED human right" is your personal opinion and without value in creating public policy. n/t

[mike_c]

15. it's hard to imagine that anything involved in a single surgery...

...has $400K or more intrinsic value. I sincerely question whether the high costs you cite are more likely the result of gamesmanship designed to wring money from sick people or their insurance companies at every level of the procedure. The equipment is mostly reused and relatively cheap to prep for reuse (I actually did this in a previous career). It is expensive to purchase but the cost is distributed over many patients and I think medical equipment costs are highly inflated anyway. The disposable components are pretty inexpensive, at least in terms of their materials and manufacturing cost. There can be a lot of high-salaried people in the operating room, but nonetheless much of that outrageous cost is someone's profit-- or costs otherwise generated by the private insurance model.

Genuine cost control via the power of single payer universal health care could help a lot, I suspect. If the taxpayers pay the costs directly, then government has an interest in limiting costs, including price gouging.

on edit-- I recently incurred nearly $10,000 in ER cost for a two hour visit, an IV canula, some blood tests, and some nursing care. Insurance paid all but a few hundred dollars, but I can assure you that NOTHING my care consumed was actually worth anywhere near the cost. At best, I probably consumed a few tens of dollars worth of supplies (for which I was charged a few hundreds), a couple of hours of a couple of peoples' time-- which I shared with other users-- and I occupied a bed for a short time, for which the real value was probably only a few tens of dollars but which I rented from the hospital for a couple of thousand.

That is pretty obscene.

[Cleita]

17. What's happening today in ERs is happening because they can't turn anyone away.

People who are insured or who can pay are overcharged to make up for the people who can't pay. If hospitals had a guarantee of payment for everyone who comes to the ER, that wouldn't happen. The government single payer office would barter for a middle rate for all those procedures and it would be a cost savings as proven by other countries with NHC. It's really funny how the insurance companies don't do that. They deny coverage as much as they can but they don't bargain for a better price and yet according to all the supply siders, the private insurance companies are the most efficient way to go. I think they are the cause of waste not the great money managers those semi-fictional accounts would have you believe.

[jody]

22. The 400k figure is one instance in which I was personally the recipient. n/t

[Cleita]

27. Did you pay for it?

And how many people get the same procedure in your area?

[jody]

30. Your question is not germane to the point I raise. n/t

[Cleita]

37. It's very germane.

If you didn't have to pay for it, I'm assuming some insurer or Medicare did. What would you have done if you had to do it out of pocket?
Unless you are well off, you probably would have had to sell off assets to do so like your home.

[jody]

40. Please reread the OP and my post #11. Who paid for my medical costs is not relevant to the question

I raised about the moral issue society faces when deciding who should receive a medical procedure and who should not, when money for health care is limited.

[Cleita]

44. Here you are making another illogical argument.

You are claiming that money for health care is limited. I already showed you on one of my posts to you that it isn't with a link to an informative website that has all the facts and figures. Yet, you persist on pulling that factoid out of your ass.

[BanzaiBonnie]

24. And the part about not trusting politicians to make those decisions...

And you do trust insurance companies to make those decisions? Because they do now. They are making those life and death decisions based on monetary reasons.

Have you SEEN Sicko? I thought it was about people who had no health insurance. It was how decisions had been made to shaft the people who DID have health insurance.

That's why treatments must be up to doctors. Yes, there will have to be decisions about what needs to be covered, but this must not be left in the hands of insurance companies.

[jody]

26. I did not mention insurance companies. The problem I tried to pose was a moral question re who will

receive health care and who will not when there is limited funds.

IMO that's a moral question and discussion of how society should answer it COULD begin with leaders from major religious and humanist groups.

How do you propose to establish government policies rationing health care when society cannot pay for all costs?

[Cleita]

33. So why are there enough funds now, but according to you they will be limited

if we do this scary NHC thing? The facts are that we spend $7,000+ per person in health care and yet 40% are uninsured and more than that are underinsured. Canada can deliver quality, financially worry free health care to every citizen for under $3,000 per person. So it seems that we have more than enough funds. One of the links on my signature will take you to the Physicians for a National Health Plan website that has all the stats and figures there.

[jody]

41. Please prove that society has unlimited funds for health care and all other HEW, DoD, etc. programs

asking Congress for funds?

Where have you been?

Don't you know that our nation is $10+ trillion in debt and rising?

[Cleita]

45. Yes, but I didn't accrue that debt stealing everything I could from the treasury.

The money is there for health care from the sources I cited. Right now 30% of that money is going to executives of the health care industry and Wall Street. I don't know how the debt will be repaid but I don't think we the sick, the infirm and the elderly should be paying that debt off with money we need for our health care. Let them get the money back from the Bush administration and Halliburton and that rich 5% that owns everything but never pays for anything.

[madinmaryland]

47. "I don't trust politicians to make those decisions"

Do you trust Ken Lay (and his types) to make your medical decisions?

[jody]

48. What is your point? The op asked a question re government policy, not whether you or I agree with

individuals.

[madinmaryland]

56. I was responding to your post, NOT the op.

And can you answer my post?

[bemildred]

16. Other: Only when the US Congress fears for their jobs if they don't.

I don't think they are that scared yet.

[Cleita]

18. What I'd like to see John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich do is introduce a bill

that cuts health care benefits from Congress. You would see HR676 pass so fast that it would be a blur.

[bemildred]

19. Or: Congress shall exactly have the same health care as everybody else.

That would be fun to watch.

[Romulox]

23. Obama campaigned AGAINST UHC. So don't hold your breath. nt

[Cleita]

39. He did sort of but not exactly.

I think now that he has to seriously come up with something, he's giving the matter deeper attention. I went to his website and gave him some idea of what it's like for those of us who have to negotiate our health care system today and why the plans he was backing are unworkable. I know I'm just a small bell in a huge chorus of bells trying to get their thoughts heard but I'm always hopeful.

[Fumesucker]

28. My fear is that we are going to be forced to purchase private insurance

A la Hillary's quote about, "I can envision a day when you'll have to show proof of insurance at the job interview".

I think that is the most likely scenario.

[Cleita]

35. I'm fearful of that too.

I hope that wiser heads prevail and that they go with the Edward's plan to offer affordable Medicare coverage to all uninsured people and the ability for unions and companies to buy into it since it can offer better coverage for a lower price than private insurance plans. Of course if anyone wants to go ahead and waste their money on Blue Cross, let them.

[L0oniX]

36. This country would rather spend the money bailing out rich mother fuckers and on the war machine.

[Cleita]

46. The money is there. We have to divert the money that the insurance companies

are getting in premiums. There will be plenty to cover everyone with extended Medicare to all. We can't let them take it to pay down the debt. That's going to be done with rolling back the tax cuts to before the Reagan administration. I'll bet by the end of eight years Obama will be able to have a surplus, but this time we need to put that money out of the way of anyone who has an "R" after their names.

[kimmerspixelated]

52. One way to change the health care system is to

concentrate on educating the masses that they don't need to rely on prescription medicines to survive. ALternative meds and nutritional prescriptions are very much on the rise, and it is here to stay, and the Big Pharma folks will just have to get over it! THE FATHER OF MEDICINE-HIPPOCRATES- said "Let Food Be Thy Medicine", and "Medicine be thy food!" As our society becomes greener and greener, the old system will simply break down.

[leftstreet]

55. The back door to single payer is in opening up Medicare right now

to all ages. It's already a single payer system.