Perhpaps we should realize that we have gone this long without it? Could the system be "better" I'm sure but I am also sure I don't know how to get it there. I am also sure that socialized medicine is not the answer. If you NEED care, then you will be seen regardless of coverage. The settlements from not seeing you would make the hospital bill look like tip money. Sorry everyone doesn't get "health care".
The government healthcare plan is BS. The Feds will continue to pay less than cost for procedures and the rest of us will have to make up the difference only the difference will be larger now. Meanwhile, waiting lines for doctors will get longer. Just ask Canada about that.
i don't see why the government just doesn't give huge tax breaks to businesses that offer their employees coverage, and have huge penalties for insurance companies that drop patients, and deny claims. why do they have to step in and take full control.
Why don't you read the actual health plan then? No one is proposing socialized medicine. No one is proposing Canadian-style health care. Actually, the average family's health costs would go down. Our premiums have doubled since 2000, this growth rate is unsustainable. companies are dropping medical coverage because of it. Wall Street Journal: Why Obama's Health Plan Is Better
in reference to the population, not individuals. more people will have coverage. most uninsured are young and require less medical care, so its relatively cheap. these same people also, because they are not covered, contribute to the high costs of gratis care. some plans make businesses (over a certain size) contribute to employee premiums or pay penalties. im not sure what your exact problem with obama is on this issue. he cannot create legislation. seems like he is leading an ongoing and evolving discussion on how to reform health care. it is up to others to propose bills and push them through congress. there are a few. i prefer the senate HELP committee's--washingtonpost.com full version here---http://help.senate.gov/BAI09A84_xml.pdf only 615 pages, should have enough details for you.
I never said anyone was. :huh::huh: Make no mistake, we definitely need reform. We just need to do it differently than what is proposed. From your article: Translation - The government will come up with a standard treatment plan for a set of symptoms that doctors must progress through to get the highest payment. On top of this, Obama has declared there will be no tort reform so the risk is these doctors do what the gov't says and don't move aggressively enough to skip steps. This concerns doctors and I wonder what it will do to wait times. Overall, this is actually a decent plan the question is how do you implement it and who decides the best course of action. There's no way this plan comes into place any time in the next 3-5 years as it is a massive undertaking. Great in theory, unfortunately, the medicare and medicaid programs don't cover the cost of the care. Doctors are not working hard to do procedures on gov't patients because they don't get paid for it as it is. Just ask Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia about this. This is great!! If I get sick, I will no longer have to pay higher premiums because everyone pays the same amount. Awesome!! What happens if I don't get sick though. What if I'm healthy as a horse, work out, eat right, take care of myself etc. I get a discount right? Not quite. You pay the same as the guy who never exercises, eats right or takes care of himself at all. Is this fair? Great plan. We need to do this. It shouldn't be driven by the gov't though, rather by insurance companies or inidividual corporations. What a crock. The real expenses are the under funding of medicare and medicaid, not to mention, a family making 125k/year will be hit not only with taxes on what he pays in health insurance, but also taxes on what his employer pays. Me personally, taxes on an additional 12k/year without getting any benefit. On top of that, we will be paying more for health insurance if there are more gov't sponsored participants paying less than their fair share.
By the way Red, you would call someone out if they posted an article so obviously bias like this and didn't point out the note at the bottom of the page..... I wonder which side of the aisle he lines up on.
Standard plans make sense to me as long as the doctors still have primary decision making. For instance, doctors often order expensive CT scans for suspected kidney stones even though a regular X-ray will reveal kidney stones easily. It's wasted money and actually subjects the patient to unnecessarily high radiation. A standard plan would authorize an X-ray of suspected kidney stones and not authorize a CT scan unless the X-ray revealed no kidney stone and they needed to look for something more subtle. It's still the doctor's call but it gives him guidelines to follow that keeps costs lower and doesn't endanger the patient a bit. Hosptials are exploiting the insurance/medicare to pay for newer more expensive gear instead of patient care. Doctors should make primary decisions. But they should have guidelines to work from, also agreed on by doctors, but also guarding against waste and fraud by unscrupulous doctors, hospitals, profiteering middlemen, and medical supply companies. Waste in the medicare system is endemic. I've mentioned this before from my experience with my parents. It is set up so that the providers provide and get paid for every single thing that is covered, whether it is necessary or not, whether it is priced fairly or not (it never is) and whether the patient even wants it. Basic guidelines to prevent abuse of this system must be a part of the plan. The idea is to keep someone from being ruined by a catastrophic medical emergency. You can be healthy as a horse and still get run over by a bus and be in traction for a year. Your child could need a liver transplant. It's just the way insurance and risk management work. It evens things out for the individual. You pay less than what you would pay if you had to cover the worst possible scenario yourself, but in order to achieve this, you pay more than what you would pay if you were to stay perfectly healthy until death. But it's not socialized medicine, private insurance is still very involved and you can get what you pay for. I envision a system where the average middle-class citizen gets satisfactory and affordable health care for his standard medical premiums from regular doctors at regular clinics and hospitals. The wealthy can afford premiums giving them lavish and expensive heath care from concierge doctors at lavish clinics where there is never a wait. The poor would receive basic and subsidized health care from young residents in teaching hospitals and they might just have to suffer some waiting rooms and go to public clinics. They already are in the free charity hospital system, which is a gulag-style socialized medicine if there ever was an example. That would go away with national health insurance. Hillary's plan was that everybody would pay something, even a token payment for the poor, to invest them in the system and encourage them to move up to better care by paying more into it. I still think that is a good idea. You get what you pay for without leaving the elderly, the widows, the poor students, the disabled, and the handicapped with absolutely nothing. They should be included, but they could have done this already if they had any incentive to do so. Corporations are driven by profits and there is just too much profiteering in the medical industry right now. Underfunded but also over wasteful and should be addressed from both angles. The studies just don't show that. The plan is for everybody to get group rates, which helps an awful lot of small businessmen and sole proprietors now paying very high rates.
It was there to see, which is why I posted the link. You saw it didn't you? People here have been ranting about "socialized medicine" and "Obama vagueness" out of ignorance of the true plan, so it is entirely appropriate for an article detailing what is actually being proposed.
I agree I agree, but their cautiousness in assessment and over testing is due to malpractice cases that are up their ass if they screw up. Tort reform should probably be a part of this process. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about Medicare not paying retail rates, I'm talking about medicare not covering the actual cost to the hospitals and physicians for the services. If you don't believe this, just read about Northeastern Hospital in Philly (part of temple university). The patient mix got skewed so heavily to medicare/medicaid that they closed the doors and reopened as an ambulatory care service as they were losing money hand over fist. I understand the idea of a group plan, but to lump all groups together is not fair to healthy groups I meant to say. I understand the benefits to individuals but healthier groups will suffer. I'm not sure if this is good or bad but I can asssure you there will be a lot of people who will pay much more for healthcare, an issue that is glossed over in this article. Never said it was socialized medicine. I think it's close. We need ownership in our healthcare. I think we should do away with all co pay plans. Take the decrease in premiums and put them into an HSA, even if you do it all through a private insurance company's account. This way, you have an account with some cash in it if you wait your cold out instead of going to the doctor. You might also get off your ass and work out a little bit too if the education programs work. Insurance companies are starting to realize something has to change. A comprehensive plan could get them on board. Right now, they're just getting screwed as the government participants pay way less for services, which is okay until their payments are under cost. The question is whether or not gov't payments cover the costs of the services. I went to a seminar where it was explained that they don't. The seminar was done by an insurance company so I look at the temple hospital as evidence that it does not. If this is the case, you would agree with me right? If it isn't the case, I would certainly be more inclined to agree with you. You've now entered the spin zone. :hihi:
