Health Care for America Now = A bankrupt government later

Elizabeth Edward’s status of cancer patient does not make her healthcare expert, and her husband’s credential raise suspicions for the conflict of interests.

If I believed that the Dems would do single payer healthcare correctly, I’d be for it.

(As AR points out above, the way it will be done, will bankrupt the country)

Perhaps they should put that $40 Million to care for the uninsured.

It’s interesting to see the union involvement. They, de facto, run the public school system by way of owning enough Dem politicians who, in turn, give them all that they want. Now they want to do the same with medical care.

You can bet that your government health insurance will only cover health treatment in facilities the union deems acceptable. I wonder what the criteria that will be. They will gain enormous power if this plan is implemented.

Market solutions alone have destroyed our healthcare system. Universal healthcare in partnership with the healthcare market stakeholders is our only chance to fix our broken system. IT’s time to get real.

This has got to be the absolute height of hypocrisy. Her husband (and the entire Democratic/trial lawyer machine) have been responsible for the current dismal state of medicine, the soaring cost of medical care and reduced access to physicians.
Don’t believe me? Read the 2005 JAMA article that reported 93% of physicians were practicing “defensive medicine” due to the volatile malpractice environment. This included ordering unnecessary diagnostic tests and avoiding patients/situations that may increase their risk of malpractice claims.
The authors’ conclusions: Defensive medicine is highly prevalent among physicians in Pennsylvania who pay the most for liability insurance, with potentially serious implications for cost, access, and both technical and interpersonal quality of care.
Nice going John and Elizabeth Edwards!
(BTW… The doctors sued by John Edwards are still waiting for an apology now that the science has vindicated their care of the patients for which they were sued).

I am not surprised to find the readers of the WSJ hostile to the dismantling of the for-profit health care delivery system (insurance). This gigantic enterprise exists in parallel with the already-in-place medicare/VA system. Both are of about equal size interms of the dollars that flow through them, but the government run system has much lower overhead (about 1%) than the for-profit system. In other words it is more efficient. It is absurd to maintain these two systems. So, which one should we dump? Obvisously, the less efficient one. QED.

Medicare, efficient? Now those are two words I haven’t seen used (outside of a joke) in the same sentence lately. Have you seen the financials of Medicare - both current and projected? Were you reading the WSJ a few days ago when the issue of Medicare payments to Dr’s was discussed at length? More importantly, do you honestly believe that the level of care you and I would receive under a State run system will remotely compare to what we have access to now? While imperfect, we should be proud of the level and accessibility to care we offer in this country and not rush to a “solution” that will reduce us to collectivism in a misguided attempt to assuage our guilt over the oft stated “health care crisis.”

Retired AZ doc - Maybe if people in your profession would stop letting patients dies like what happened in Psych ER in New York City, you would haven’t lawsuits. For those of you think that is an isolated incident, think again as evidenced with the Hispanic lady who died in an LA ER last year.

Anyway to the issue - as usual, no one is addressing the issue of people like me who are uninsured and unemployed. I can’t buy a “reasonable” policy due to pre-existing conditions. As a result, if I wanted health insurance, it would cost $1100 per month.

Todd, regarding accessibility, I have a friend who knew someone who would have waited weeks for an orthopedic doctor in spite of having a broken foot.

When I had bronchitis, it would have taken me days to get an appointment with my primary care doctor.

Anyway, I am so tired of hearing why we can’t have universal health coverage. We call ourselves a great country but to deny people health care based on economic need proves otherwise.

Am tired of Americans bashing the Canadian Universal Health Care System. Our health care system is just as competant and far more compassionate. And all this talk about having to wait for specialized care is pure hogwash. God help America, land of greed, war mongering, bankrupt, and one terrible president. Wake up America! The rest of the civalized world laughs at you.

I have a friend who cured herself of a disease that cost her $600 per day in medicine. She avoided sugar and white processed. She used natural organic food. She did not die and she is studied by medical experts internationally. We need to get America healthy by stopping the government from colluting with the ceral companies and all the large companies like Coke from killing us. We need to drill for water like the Artician wells in Hot Sprinngs that help local there to live long and those in Greenland who drink hot spring water. Our water is killing us with the clorane. I want to see American live without cancer, obesity. McDonalds I hear put addictive substance to keep us coming back and alot of the foods we eat have the same problems. C-Span 2 is talking about tracing imported foods. I thing they have less chemicals and I eat mangoes as they are healthy and chemical free. I want local foods that are organic and money to pay farmers to raise fress organic foods cutting out big profit lobbist for dangerous preserved food that are our real terriorist. Our foods are more of a danger than the attack on the buildings. More of our people are diseased and dying daily from diseases than were killed in the 911. We need a nation wide trillion dollar budget for local farmers to have an income to produce foods to give us life now not ten years from now. Ritilin in schools are not the answer to the diseases caused from the diet our children consume in all thse pretty prepacked lunch boxes. Diabetes, high colestrol, etc. need to stop.

For - here in Canada

Ever hear of Claude Castonguay? Maybe not, but those who follow the health-care debate have certainly heard of his creation. Castonguay fathered the single-payer system in Quebec that locked out private insurance, the one which advocates of nationalized health care in the US love to cite as a success story. However, Castonguay has reached a far different conclusion about his creation:

Back in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.

The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: “the father of Quebec medicare.” Even this title seems modest; Castonguay’s work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast.

Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in “crisis.”

“We thought we could resolve the system’s problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it,” says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: “We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice.”

Castonguay has realized — a little late — that socializing medicine creates a shortage-management system. It limits the resources available, which drives down the level and the quality of service. Without free-market competition and under a burdensome regulatory scheme, there are no incentives for investment, and not even “massive” amounts of government spending can solve those core problems.

What does Castonguay suggest for Canada? He wants the immediate legalization of private insurance. Since the government now owns all caregiving facilities, Castonguay recommends that they lease space to entrepeneurial physicians and care-giving companies to get more services available to Canadians. Right now, the Canadians actually pay Americans to see their citizens, those whose urgent needs cannot be addressed in a timely manner. Not only is that a gigantic hypocrisy — the state system paying private-sector providers in another country — but it also sends money outside of Canada that would remain in Canada if they had private sector health-care options.

The Gov already can’t get a handle on Gas, Energy, Employment, Housing, Education, Social Security or it National Debt, so why would we want to add 16% more of our GDP to that list? How much do they actually want to screw up for us, haven’t they done enough? You want to bring healthcare back in line cut off the illegals, or bill their governments.

Bush can’t get a handle on Gas, Energy, Employment, Housing, Education, Social Security or the National Debt.

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Market-Based Failure on U.S. Health Care Costs: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/358/6/549

Who do you think pays for all of the unreimbursed care now? Hospitals pass the cost of unreimbursed care onto the insured and to a lesser degree, taxpayers. In our current system, our personal health care costs almost never equal the cost of the care we recieve individually. If you’ve got group coverage through your employer, your group includes people who start thier day with a quart of soda, a sausage biscuit, and a handful of camel lights. That guys policy costs the same amount as yours do, but will ultimatley drive up the cost of that group policy next year when he’s diagnosed with type II diabedes. Where on earth do we get the idea that we’re only paying for ourselves?

The article submitted by Universal Health Care is all the more reason why that system is worse off that what we have now. The article states the reason for high costs of care are the poor diets and lifestyles of citizens along with the fact that the insured do not look into the cost of care they receive. Regardless of who underwrites the system it will continue to spiral downword until the US population takes ownership of how they live thier life. Until the Soda drinking, sausage biscuit eating, smoking people RMULLIGAN mentioned change their lifestyle the healthcare system will struggle. If you live that life you should pay more for insurance, or be declined until you change your habits. Heck if you get enough speeding tickets you can’t get insurance and your license will be revoked, why not have similar penalties for people who can’t get the grease out of their face. Try fruit instead of Boston Cream Pies. If the government wanted to really make a difference they would ban high fructose corn syrup, and all other useless ingredients that have no nutritional value that are known to have serious health side effects. Any why are there commercials in regards to prescription medication, are any of us qualified to determine which is better for us? You are not even if you think you are, leave it up to your physician and stop trying to think you are smarter than you are. In fact, the next time you want the purple pill, or a cigarette stop and shove a carrot down your throat instead.

Susan: “Perhaps they should put that $40 Million to care for the uninsured.” That would be just enough to buy a bottle of house-brand asprin for each of the uninsured.

And the Edwards made their millions bilking the medical system with malpractice claims. They got rich adding costs to the system and now they wonder why it is so expensive. Other countries don’t have the litigious environment we do - that needs to be first to go.

Yes, John Edwards, from a poor family, became very wealthy in short order by suing, primarily OB docs for babies born with problems, even when the physician’s role in the bad outcome was dubious. He and his ilk are why many OB docs are paying $100,000 to $200,000 each year for malpractice insurance…..Yes that is right…EACH YEAR! Just another reason why health care in the US is so expensive, not to mention the billions of dollars spent each year on unneeded tests, etc. that doctors order to protect themselves from being sued.

i hope her oncologist charges out-of-pocket, millions, to the edwards’ to recoup the tens of millions he has stolen from honest hard-working physicians.

The person who wrote this sadly has had no home training. Wishing personal ill will to someone who has repeatedly beat cancer demonstrates both cowardice and the presence of bad character. We will pray for you.

Anonymous in Canada: It does not take much research. To wit:

Time to kill the user-fee zombie
JAY BRYAN, The Gazette
Published: Thursday, February 21
If there’s a single well-justified reason for the hasty, undignified demise of the Castonguay report, it is surely the authors’ enthusiasm for reforming Quebec’s health-care system through big, widespread user fees.
When it comes to health care, there’s no polite way to put it: User fees are stupid and counterproductive. They’re based on the idea that lots of us are blithely using lots of medical services for no good reason.
Maybe if we had to pay $100 a year for the privilege of belonging to a local clinic and $25 or more for each medical visit, we’d be a little less irresponsible. Or at least that’s the world of former health minister Claude Castonguay.

Could there be a dumber idea?
How often have you decided that you’d rather seek an unneeded medical procedure than get a coffee with friends? After all, the waiting rooms are so plush, and your doctor’s espresso is doubtless better than Second Cup’s. And what could be a more enjoyable pastime than sitting on a paper-lined bench in your underwear?
The hard truth is that user fees do discourage use of the health system, but they discourage justifiable, important medical care just as much as they discourage the tiny percentage of care that’s not needed. And nearly all of the discouraging is among lower-
income people.
What’s more, notes McGill University’s Antonia Maioni, user fees can actually increase the total cost of health care.
After all, it’s not cheap to monitor and enforce who has to pay which fees and who might be exempt. And there’s another cost: When people are discouraged from seeking help, delayed care can be much more expensive than prompt attention.
As well, there is evidence that doctors and hospitals act to protect their incomes if user fees discourage some visits or procedures. They simply boost the cost or frequency of other forms of care.
Economist Robert Evans at the University of British Columbia calls the recurrent demand for user fees one of the “zombies” of health policy: a thoroughly discredited idea that just won’t die.
Evans collaborated with three other academics on a 1998 study of user fees and other “zombie” ideas. It noted that user fees are in widespread use in only one rich nation: the United States.
Not coincidentally, this is the very nation that has been the least successful at restraining health-care costs.
And that, concluded the Evans study, goes a long way toward explaining the persistence of enthusiasm for user fees. They not only don’t restrain the expense of health care, but actually tend to increase it by creating a new stream of revenue to pay for rising costs. That boosts the incomes of health care providers.
User fees also have a pleasant effect on the rich, say Evans and his collaborators: “In general, a shift to more user fee financing redistributes net income from lower- to higher-income people, and from sicker to healthier people. The wealthy and healthy gain; the poor and sick lose.”
This tends to be confirmed by an early Canadian experiment with user fees.
When Saskatchewan tried imposing user fees for doctor and hospital visits between 1969 and 1971, says McGill health economist Lee Soderstrom, there was little or no effect on hospital and medical costs. But there was a significant decline in medical care for some, with doctor visits by low-income families plunging by 18 per cent.

don’t bother praying for me - i don’t believe in your garbage “prayer” any more than i’d believe john edwards’ summoning the souls of disfigured newborns. Unfortunately hundreds of dumbass jurors bought his bad stage act, and it cost the medical profession & patients dearly.

Good luck next time you or a loved one is having a baby.

on health care, but 47 million are uninsured much of the time. We spend twice as much per person on health care as Canada but don’t cover 15% of our people. Economist Paul Krugman says we are off the charts in terms of what we pay for health care, but in the middle of the pack (37th, according to the World Health Organization) based on what we get for our money.

I don’t think universal insurance is the answer. Universal care is the answer. Get rid of the middlemen and we’ll all be better off.

Boy have we all heard this tune before! Universal healthcare, brought to you by the folks who brought you the TSA, the IRS, FEMA, the post office, and the VA hospitals. What a nightmare that would be!! I’m getting out of Medicare now…if we do this I am getting out of medicine completely…

The universal care proposals currently being unveiled require the expansion and dependence on administrators: health insurance companies, PBMs, trial attorneys, insurance defense attorneys, policy experts, marketing professionals, actuaries, accounting professionals, medical billing professionals and others without any apparent checks and balances.

You worry that so many people will be siphoning off the universal health gravy train that the patients and the medical professionals who treat them will get stuck in the middle or at the bottom of the feeding frenzy pile.

We’ll all have insurance, but so many of the costs will be spent upstream that the insurance will not cover necessary medical care and treatment. In the rare event that treatment is reimbursed, the patient and treating providers will probably be deluged by Medicaid and Medicare recovery units.

We need to scrutinize and get rid of all these adminstrative excesses. Maybe after this, we can get back to a system where financial and other resources are focused on the fair and reasonable reimbursement of quality medical care.

“If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when its ‘free.’”
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~ PJ O’Rourke

I’m not saying government run universal care. I’m proposing mandatory CATASTROPHIC insurance (like earth quake insurance, mandatory aurto insurance in California) and all other care, (mammos, blood work, office visits) cash.
Limited all hospitals, and catastrophic insurance providers to a 4% margin.
Provide for public health through public institutions. (Immunizations, TB screening, eyeglasses and hearing screening throuogh elementary schools).

We do spend 16% of GNP with many uninsured - but many of these uninsured are temporary uninsured and many are the “young and Healthy” who feel invinsible. The reason we spend more is we cover everything. In Netherlands for example, women get an annual exam every 3-5 years but here it’s once a year for no reason. Avastin, the cancer rx, costing upwards of $100,000 /year gets covered but best case prolongs life everage of 3 months. These things don’t lead to better outcomes but add lots to expenses not to mention malpractice. National healthcare will do nothing to control this or move us up in the pack - unless we make the decision to not cover these expenses - and there’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Portion of article in the Financial Times this morning (July 7, 2008):

A Barack Obama administration would seek to ban risk-based pricing on all individual health insurance plans to stop companies cherry-picking healthy customers, a senior adviser has said.

David Cutler, a Harvard professor who helped to draft the health plan for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said: “Under our plan you cannot be priced higher because you are sick.”

Insurance companies usually charge standard group rates to corporate scheme members but individuals have to pay different premiums, or not have some conditions covered at all, depending on their risk profile.

Mr Cutler said an Obama administration would consider automatically enrolling people in approved health insurance plans unless they chose to opt out.

He declined to say how much tax credits to help low- and middle-income earners buy insurance would cost. However, he suggested it might not be radically different from the $110bn-$120bn (€71bn-€76.5bn, £55.4bn- £60.5bn) a year that Hillary Clinton, Mr Obama’s former rival for the nomination, said would be needed to achieve universal coverage.

Mr Obama also proposes setting up exchanges where people not covered by corporate health plans could buy plans that meet federal minimum standards and have low administrative costs.

Mr Cutler said that, for this to work, it would be ­necessary to ban risk-based pricing on all health plans, including those sold off exchange. Otherwise the exchange would become a “high-risk pool” dependent on public subsidies. Banning risk-based pricing could result in healthy people – in particular young people – refusing to buy insurance at a price that did not reflect their own risk profile. It could also reduce the incentive for people to take better care of their health.

Mr Cutler said one partial solution could be to allow age-based premiums. He said that an Obama administration would also seek to find ways to build in incentives for healthy living.

He said that the Obama campaign, which proposes to automatically enroll people in 401(K) defined contribution pension plans unless they chose to opt out, would consider using this opt-out approach for health insurance too. “We are very much open to that,” he said. “That may very well be the best way to get people covered.”

However, Mr Cutler said that no decision had been made on an opt-out system for health and that there would be other options, such as a drive to “sign people up on their tax forms”.

Professor Cutler is an outstanding scholar on healthcare issues and is fairly middle-of-the-road in his policy prescriptions. In regard to universal healthcare (medical services) insurance this kind of proposal is essential. The problem though is that the risk-pooling can be much more easily (much lower administrative costs) done with a single insurer/payer, but politically the powers-that-be apparently still do not believe that is passable into law. Also a revision to healthcare insurance does nothing directly to address inflated medical service delivery costs that are the other, and ultimately much more important half of the issue regarding the abysmal system we have.

WRT to Wendell Murray. Thank you for posting.

One of the inherent problems with high risk pools is that they likely create a financial incentive for taxpayer subsidized health insurance plans to be overbilled. They also may create additional (and potentially unnecessary) dependence on taxpayer funded Medicaid and Medicare programs and the health policy ‘experts’ who may support these policies.

More worrisome is that high risk pools (and new medical error prevention regulations) also likely create a financial incentive for health care agents and others to knowingly allow preventable medical errors like contaminated Heparin to occur.

>>God help America, land of greed, war mongering, bankrupt, and one terrible president.
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Good little socialist. Want a cookie?
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>>The rest of the civalized world laughs at you.
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Civalized?
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LOL

Mrs. Edwards (and many Americans) confuse universal health care with universal health coverage. The two are not equal. While the government might be able to guarantee all Americans universal health coverage, there is no country on this planet where universal health coverage universally guarantees timely quality medical care. And what if more physicians like me refuse to sign government contracts - refuse to accept government money even if they increased reimbursement this year rather than decreased it. What if more physicians said, “Your Medicare card is no good here.” Then what?

Reading the hateful and selfish tone of many of these comments sickens me. From those who believe that illness is the patient’s fault, to those who go off track and attack John Edwards’ litigation track record, to the medical doctor whose training was subsidized by the citizens’ tax money. We have the money to provide health care, but not the will. To quote Uwe Reinhardt, he said that the reason why Americans do not have national health care is not because of money. It is because those in charge are selfish and mean spirited.

I have an earned Ph.D. in Management, and a second earned Ph.D. in Public Health (Epidemiology). I think that I’m going to take that education and go to a civilized country. Right now, Cuba looks better than the pack of greedy, war profiteering, war criminals who is currently running the United States. And when someone decides to slime me for my comments, I’m a Navy veteran as well. I suppose that you raised your hand, and took the Oath, too, and are qualified to flame me for lack of patriotism.

And a big salute to the WSJ, under Murdoch’s ownership. It used to be that only the editorial side sucked. Glad to see that the journalistic standards are soon going to match those of Fox News.