All I know is that the current health system costs way too much. The insurance companies understand that 10% of a bif number is more dollars than 10% of a small number. As costs go up, their cashflow goes up. They have no incentives to reduce costs so long as all other insurance companies do the same thing.

The current system is a license to steal, because doctors can load up tests, specialists, medications, therapy, and more tests to monitor medications, and the insurance companies pay for it. The numbers get ever bigger, and insurance primiums do too.

saiga on June 18, 2009 at 2:17 PM

I agree that the healthcare system is expensive, but not for the reasons that you suggest…

To put it bluntly, our nation is infested with sue-happy lawyers waiting to cash in on every opportunity, no matter how small.

Medical students graduate with the equivalent of a 2nd mortgage in student loans. Add on several thousand dollars a year in malpractice insurance, and things aren’t looking as rosy as they first appear.

Many, many additional (and probably unneeded) tests are ordered to guard against further lawsuits that increase the prices for everyone.

Tort reform is needed to lower the artificially high cost for medical care. Until that happens, prices will continue to soar.

The idiot liberal mindset is that if everyone can’t have state of the art health care, then by God no one will.

The same with wealth, property, and wages/salaries.

Between the economy-killing, free-market destroying health care proposals, and the cap-and-tax economy-killing, backwards-thinking energy agenda, it is not hard to reach the conclusion that Obama wants America as we know her to fail.

That’s right. Obama wants America to fail.

The current system is a license to steal, because doctors can load up tests, specialists, medications, therapy, and more tests to monitor medications, and the insurance companies pay for it. The numbers get ever bigger, and insurance primiums do too.

saiga on June 18, 2009 at 2:17 PM

Unfortunately, because of high liability premiums, doctors call for these tests in order to cover themselves from frivolous litigation. PA has lost many doctors– obstetricians, heart specialists, gerentologists, etc. (who have either left the profession or gone to another state to practice) because of out-of-sight liability insurance and no caps on lawsuits.

Modern diagnostic tools, as they increase in sophistication, are also expensive. Procedures that were once nonexistent or exotic are now more plentiful. With the demand for organ replacement, artificial organs, medications for chronic conditions that once upon a time spelled early death have also driven up costs.

As I tell HS kids when I make presentations on history and business… the government doesn’t have a job. All government does is leech off of the market. If they drain too much blood, BOTH get sick.

The government pays for NOTHING. They simply take from one and give to another. The idea that government can “provide” anything on its own is nonsense.

mankai on June 18, 2009 at 2:36 PM

And what is their response? (sorry about the mess up above.)

As I tell HS kids when I make presentations on history and business… the government doesn’t have a job. All government does is leech off of the market. If they drain too much blood, BOTH get sick.

The government pays for NOTHING. They simply take from one and give to another. The idea that government can “provide” anything on its own is nonsense.

mankai on June 18, 2009 at 2:36 PM

And what is their response?

So if the govt does not pay for the total cost of care with Medicare what do you think the govt. will pay when we have a single payer plan?

Vince on June 18, 2009 at 4:04 PM

Two choices. One – They could not afford it – severe rationing of care.
Two – Forced labor of healthcare providers including support staff (You think all those janitors and sterilizers of equipment and cafeteria workers come free?) Resulting in a mass exodus of best and brightest, hello foreign doctors ala what is going on in England.

Ed:

Has anyone ever suggested increasing the supply (i.e. making med school more affordable/accessible as well as removing barriers to multi-state insurance policies) as a means of increasing competition and lowering costs across the board? If there is a role for gov’t in healthcare, it seems it should be to 1) remove/preempt stupid state-based legislation that currently prevents multistate policies and/or multistate accessibility (i.e. by enacting fed statute that specifically preempts state laws and allows insurance policies that meet the stated criteria to be sold in every state of the union); and 2) if the gov’t wants to spend tax dollars on health care, then do so by subsidizing the education of health care providers and possibly subsidizing construction/creation of health care facilities (through guaranteed loans, subsidized interest rates, etc). Thoughts?

secarr on June 18, 2009 at 2:07 PM

As I have mentioned previously, it takes minimum 7 years post undergraduate (starting July 1 of any particulary year)to train an general doctor, even if education was free. What happens if this is passed this summer? It will be 8 years before an increase comes via this route.

That’s why the AMA is so important. They set the amount of doctors that come into the system artificially low.

My proposal is that they could train doctors WITHIN the military and fund everything through military spending if they wanted the federal government to increase the supply of doctors. I think your idea is good. They need to expand the VA clinics and make them available to everyone for a fee – and staff them with military doctors.

ThackerAgency on June 18, 2009 at 2:15 PM

Believe it or not many doctors in training used to be in the Reserves, until Desert Storm when they tried to activate them and it would have decimated the medical training facilities which rely on their slave labor to stay in budget. Then the supply of doctors in the Reserves plummeted.

An interesting thought to save money would be to eliminate ownership by the government of the VA facilities (i.e. sell the assets to the private market)and give the vets a health card that would be managed by a private insurance company and that they could use at the local hospital. Just thinking out loud.

I think I may have made her mad yesterday.

TXMomof3 on June 18, 2009 at 3:11 PM

Then I like you very much. Ann is the biggest evil I’ve seen on this board, because if she is real, she represents the kind of evil that is banal. She wouldn’t hurt a fly, but she is complicit in creating a tyranny here. She is an enabler of evil, by her very stupidity. A person like that NEEDS religion to guide her. Instead, she has Cindy Sheehan and Nancy Pelosi.

So if the govt does not pay for the total cost of care with Medicare what do you think the govt. will pay when we have a single payer plan?

Perhaps, but, do you really trust those who won’t provide the best long term treatment for our heroic soldiers with a medical file containing your DNA, or maybe a fatal allergy? I don’t.

kregg on June 18, 2009 at 2:13 PM

Grandmother @ 64 – oh, that tumor in your lungs? No reason to operate, we’ll just treat it with chemo…

ElvenPhoenix on June 18, 2009 at 3:13 PM

Father@64 – big, nasty tumor discovered in pancreas last month, inoperable because veins grew around it to get blood to heart, chemo only option.

Vietnam Vet dying for his country 40 years later because of the agent orange said country dumped on him for 4 years.

At some point we’ll know for sure how at least one heroic soldier is taken care of by the government…I pray that he has more than three months.

Tuesday we went to his second chemo treatment and it was an overwhelmingly disturbing experience.

Grandfather @ 52 – conflicting medications caused a fatal stroke.
Grandmother @ 64 – oh, that tumor in your lungs? No reason to operate, we’ll just treat it with chemo…three months later she was dead.

That’s what we’re in for with Gov’t health care…

ElvenPhoenix on June 18, 2009 at 3:13 PM

People such as yourself will have to speak out about the dangers of such a system. I am sorry for what you and your family had to endure.

Yep, just read the listing of specific grievances in the Declaration of Independence if you don’t believe that!

Oldnuke on June 18, 2009 at 2:40 PM

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

Seems to fit perfectly… and that’s just the first grievance.

Grandfather @ 52 – conflicting medications caused a fatal stroke.
Grandmother @ 64 – oh, that tumor in your lungs? No reason to operate, we’ll just treat it with chemo…three months later she was dead.

That’s what we’re in for with Gov’t health care…

I can’t wait til AnninCA joins this thread, spews her idiocy, ignores questions about her rants, then leaves in a huff. Same old verse, same as the first.

txag92 on June 18, 2009 at 1:47 PM

I think I may have made her mad yesterday.

I’m sure they will be the targets of the first wave of rationing care FOOD…

ladyingray on June 18, 2009 at 1:50 PM

I could have said energy… or something else. But I am hungry.

upinak on June 18, 2009 at 2:55 PM

Food is on the list of things for government to control.

Heck, they did a fine job in the USSR on the subject.

The bottom line is that doctors and hospitals are not going to provide services that they can’t make any profit on. If the government won’t pay enough, and other customers don’t take up the slack for government insurance, then the doctors and hospitals will stop doing the procedures they don’t make any money on.

Liberals will of course call this greed, but have no ground to stand on unless they’re working as healthcare providers for free themselves.

tom on June 18, 2009 at 3:02 PM

BTW, there’s only one way to fix the above problem, and that is to make all doctors federal employees, and all hospitals government institutions.

Yes, there are non-profit hospitals, but they watch their budget just the same as the for-profit hospitals. They still can’t afford to provide services they don’t get paid adequately for.

USSR 2
Johan Klaus on June 18, 2009 at 1:55 PM

USSR 2 on steriods – provided at no expense to the public.

So if the insurers are forced to jack up their rates to cover non-reimbursed costs and thereby become unafforable to more and more people – all of which spirals into insurers going out of business or be nationalized, then the providers – hostipals, clinics, etc would not be fully reimbursed and follow suit into bankrupcy or nationalizaton.

Does this mean Obama General National Hospital is just waiting to be born?

Further, since medical records will be digitized and easily compared to voter rolls, then will people be denied Obama care on the basis of not voting Democrat?