1-you’d never get denied coverage for “pre-existing” conditions

2-you don’t have high premiums that keep getting jacked up

3-there’s no middleman between you and your doctor

4-quality of service is high, despite the fear-tactic lies you hear…in fact quality in the Canadian system only dropped when the conservatives cut health-care funding to try to force it to become like the US for-profit system.

5-its not for-profit, so its guaranteed to cost much less.

Thinkagain, you obviously need to, um, think again.

Back to front: for-profit companies often cost less than not-for-profit industries, especially those run by the government. For-profits have an incentive to run as efficiently as possible; they innovate in business the same way that Apple innovates in technology.

Consider that your grocery store, computer store, car dealership, local Wal-Mart, and kitchen appliance manufacturers are all “for profit” corporations who attempt to maximise profit for their greedy shareholders. The result is that you can inexpensively buy iPods, cell phones, laptops, cars, $4 generic drugs – an endless list – for less and less money every year. Moore’s Law doesn’t apply to the government, dahlin.

4 – proof? Besides, most Americans (like 85%) are thrilled with their health care coverage and believe that the quality of service is high. We pay our doctors hundreds of thousands of dollars a year so that they will go into medicine and not i-banking; we pay them a lot so that they can use their brainpower to heal us.

Oh, yeah, the high quality of pharmaceutical drugs that Canadians get? Thank us – we pay for most of the R&D costs. High quality of medical imaging or diagnostics? Thank us – we pay for the R&D.

Without America as a for-profit health care system, the rest of the world will suffer.

3 – um, the GOVERNMENT will be the middleman between you and your doctor. Some bureaucrat who is too much of a snivelling pansy to get a job in the private sector will decide whether or not you really need care. Don’t like it? Sovereign immunity: you can sue a private insurance company for denial of coverage, but you can’t sue the government. Oh, and if we end up like Britain, you’ll be forbidden, by law, from purchasing private insurance or getting medical care outside of the government plan. How’s that for a middleman?

2 – yes, you will: they are called taxes.

1 – it’s more complicated than the moronic talking points from the left. The denial of preexisting conditions is due to the reality that waiting to buy health care until you get sick is like waiting for an accident before purchasing car insurance. (In fact, letting insurance companies deny preexisting conditions is one of the best ways to keep costs down for everyone, which in turn enables people to buy insurance, even when they aren’t sick. The alternative is the death spiral.)

Besides, if your concern were really denial for preexisting conditions, that would be an easy fix: require insurance companies to cover people who have been continually insured under the same or a substantially similar plan (in terms of benefits) for the duration of the illness. Oddly enough, that doesn’t involve taking over 16% of our economy.

Insurance companies make between 2 and 3%…’record profits’ is a canard. All we do is transfer the money from the evil insurance companies that provide pretty good coverage for most of us to the government which will provide pretty crappy care AND we get to pay for for the privilege…

As the Canadian High Court noted, access to a waiting line is not access to health care. Paying more for poorer care is not a solution to anything except the lefts grab at political power.

A “parasitic, for-profit” model inspires innovation. Risk taken must have a reward at the end of the tunnel. Otherwise, why would someone put up capital and invest in an unproven, but potentially break through technology (such as tomotherapy was) when there is no reward (profit) down the road? Don’t give me this socialistic “work for the common good” crap. That’s not human nature, and why the USSR is no longer around.

search4truth on November 30, 2009 at 1:02 PM

Some innovation, 50 million Americans not covered and are a burden to the rest, insurance companies denying you your much needed heart-operation due to ‘pre-existing’ conditions, sky-high premiums, double that of other nations, etc, etc.

Trust me I’m no socialist, I’ve ran my own business in the past and loved it. However we need a socioeconomic system that is a decent mix of both capitalism and socialism.

Unbridled capitalism leads to monopolies and eventually fascism, which then lets to revolution and a swing in the opposite direction Communism, which is just as evil.

Why should your need to fix your broken leg be dictated by profit, especially when the cost is coming out of your pocket? The fact that social programs exist at all means the dictates of the market cannot account for all the difficulties people encounter.

So if you can’t pay (and get denied by insurance companies due to a pre-existing condition) for a simple operation you’re expected to be a cripple for the rest of your life or just lay down and die? I’m sure we’ve all heard of people who’ve gotten shot in the head, showing up to a hospital but were denied help since they have no insurance and they later died outside the facility that could’ve saved them. Seriously is this the kind of health care system we want?

Capitalism is good for creating products/services, generating prosperity but it requires checks and balances or it’ll go out of control. We have a police force and military-are they privatized and exist ‘for-profit’? “Pay us more and we’ll give you better protection?” Who wants to live in a country like that. Some parts of Latin America function this way and we know how awful life is there.

Recall the examples of where privatization spectacularly failed, like when a utility was turned over to a private company what happened? Their drive for profits led them to cut costs, the water quality dropped, people got sick and also the water supply became unreliable. There are certain essential services that private industry should never get their grubby hands on, especially when it comes to managing our health, since profit always takes precedence over people.

There is also a question of accountability and transparency, private companies can get away with a lot more than public/government services-which is why the public sector is generally more reliable.

JIMV on November 30, 2009 at 12:41 PM

The whole point of Obama’s health care plan was to make it a universal “single-payer” system, (see this video) but due to political pressure from the right and insurance companies, he’s floated the “public option” so people can choose who they want to go with (government or private insurance).

The government option would of course cover everything and I think that’s the misinformation that’s being spread-the idea that there are huge hidden costs they’re not telling us. I blame Obama and the cowardice of the Dems, they should’ve come clean with the costs and took a firm stand for their position.

But despite their mistakes, they’re still offering us a great deal. Would you rather pay $6 trillion vs close to $20 trillion you’re paying now? Its a bit of a no-brainer. And let’s say their math was faulty, even if you pay $12 trillion you’re still saving a lot of money for BETTER (universal) health care.

An issue like this makes clear what’s wrong with US, Americans on the right and left fail to listen to each other and this is why people keep suffering and the country goes in the wrong direction.

Just as Conservatives are right on bombing Iran and winning the war against Islam (which is today’s Nazism), the Democrats are right about giving Americans a universal health care system.

You’re all being royally raped by the insurance companies yet you’re defending the agenda of the same leeches and parasites that are charging you more than double the cost of other systems.

We all know insurance companies are making record profits while people are losing jobs and why doctors flock to the US, because the current system is a fat cash-cow, based on the backs of the common hardworking people.

I’m usually on the ‘we hate Democrats’ bandwagon because they make so many stupid decisions, but despite their incompetence, they at least have universal health care right.

thinkagain on November 30, 2009 at 12:33 PM

Not for shock but simply to note that the NEW spending by the government on health care is far more than advertised…folk get confused when they think the cost is all on the government side…the costs CATO listed are all government…the real cost is many times higher as it must include all the private spending nor laundered through government bureaucrats.

The bottom line is that this new scheme will not cut costs in any way but will instead mandate increases.

“Revenue Neutral” means that Congress has pawned the costs off on YOU!!!

JIMV on November 30, 2009 at 12:19 PM

I don’t know all the details of Obama’s plan and exactly what its going to cover and not-but as I understand he’s pushing for universal coverage or something close to it.

This figure ($6 trillion) was thrown out for its shock value and it implies that it’ll replace (or compete with) the for-profit system we have currently.

But if the goal is reducing costs while raising quality of service, then if Obama’s plan costs less than the $17 trillion Americans are paying currently, why wouldn’t everyone jump on that bandwagon?

I’d like someone to present a solid case why a for-profit, parasitic system serves Americans better than a universal non-profit health care system.

thinkagain on November 30, 2009 at 12:10 PM

I do not think you are seeing the big picture….the 6 trillion does not include the cost of medical care NOT laundered through government…If your private family plan costs $10K a year through the co-op with a private company, the numbers are not included…The $2K a year is simply the cost of new government efforts, which is on top of the money individuals must spend.

thinkagain on November 30, 2009 at 12:10 PM

excuse my math, I meant the $20 trillion you’re currently paying (over a decade).

The U.S. spends much more on health care than Canada, both on a per-capita basis and as a percentage of GDP.[5] In 2006, per-capita spending for health care in Canada was US$3,678; in the U.S., US$6,714. The U.S. spent 15.3% of GDP on health care in that year; Canada spent 10.0%.[5] In 2006, 70% of health care spending in Canada was financed by government, versus 46% in the United States. source

So right now Americans are paying nearly $7k per person (double the Canadians) in a for-profit system for a similar level of care. Ignore the silly anecdotal horror stories you hear of Canadians coming to the US to get service. There are far worse cases of denial Americans experience by their own system on a much broader scale, that the proponents fail to tell you about since they have a pro-insurance agenda.

People who support the parasitic, for-profit health insurance lobby have absolutely no leg to stand on. Under a universal healthcare system:

1-you’d never get denied coverage for “pre-existing” conditions

2-you don’t have high premiums that keep getting jacked up

3-there’s no middleman between you and your doctor

4-quality of service is high, despite the fear-tactic lies you hear…in fact quality in the Canadian system only dropped when the conservatives cut health-care funding to try to force it to become like the US for-profit system.

5-its not for-profit, so its guaranteed to cost much less.

America is paying the most in the world for health-care and getting the least back from it, while being lied to by their politicians and insurance lobby.

$6 trillion is much cheaper than the $17 trillion you’re currently paying right now (over a decade), so keep things in perspective people.

All I can say is I hope somewhere we can produce another George Washington, who to my knowledge is the ONLY military figure in history who ever led a successful armed rebellion only to lay down ALL power on it’s conclusion and help form a democratic republic.

wildcat84 on November 29, 2009 at 10:31 AM

Read the old testament of the bible regarding Israel’s existance. Both countries, America and Israel, relied on God for deliverance from their enemies and He provided victory.

2010 vote them out.

LOL

People are already voting with their feet. Conservatives are moving from blue hell holes to red enclaves of semi freedom in pretty big numbers.

Yes. We will go to Texas, if it means showing up with only a backpack of belongings, if things get bad enough.

Look what is left in those blue hell holes…victim groups, folk with their hands out and the politicians that pander to them. Their economies are in a death spiral.

JIMV on November 29, 2009 at 2:58 PM

Problem is there’s nowhere left to go, at least nowhere that doesn’t already have a significant indigenous population, any serious amount of land mass, and any real amount of natural resources.

Consider these unfunded mandates. The states will have plenty of those under ObamaCare, with the expansion of Medicaid eligibility. Cannon is right about the unfunded mandates on employers and individuals being part of the cost of the program. Thus far, no one has really pointed out that costs in this plan are not limited to federal expenditures, but also to the extra costs everyone will pay — for a reform that purports to “bend the cost curve” downward.

Ed, it’s not just the unfunded Federally Mandated expansion of Medicaid, but Obamacare cuts FFP (Federal Financial Participation) to DSH (Disproportionate Share Hospitals, aka “county hospitals”) and other medical providers of medical services to the poor. Consider the amount of money areas like Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, New Orleans spend on unreimbursed medical care – it’s near a billion dollars a year of FFP. Once that money is cut off, the services will either be cut off or the cost will go to the State.

The Governors of the States must wake up. This health care bill is going to cripple the States and further empower the Federal Government. The increase in the Medicaid rolls, the loss of FMAP, and the loss of the FFP to the DSH will collapse the state budgets.

Wake up Governors.