Now, I'm genuinely curious as to people's opinion on this- what's the difference between socialized security (the police and other law enforcement agencies) and socialized medicine? Why is one good and proper and the other a sign of Communism? After all, everyone gets free police protection, but, if you're wealthy, you can splurge and get a personal body guard or private investigator. How is that any different?
You don't have to wait six months to talk to the cops about your house being robbed.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
Now, I'm genuinely curious as to people's opinion on this- what's the difference between socialized security (the police and other law enforcement agencies) and socialized medicine? Why is one good and proper and the other a sign of Communism? After all, everyone gets free police protection, but, if you're wealthy, you can splurge and get a personal body guard or private investigator. How is that any different?
Several reasons.
The police and the fire department are an emergency service. People don't have to pay for them (except through taxes). However, there are many protective services those agencies don't provide (for example, 24 security around their homes, hard wired fire alarms into dispatch and/or bodyguard services). If someone wants services beyond the taxpayer funded ones, they can contract with private agencies at their own expense. Essentially, a "wealthy" person has the freedom to chose whatever they want and can pay for while a "poor" person still receives the benefit of the basic emergency service.
Like the police and fire department, we have emergency medical care which is taxpayer funded. It includes free treatment at emergency rooms, ambulance services and public assistance. However, there are many medical services which aren't provided (for example, elective surgeries, designer eyeglass frames, cosmetic procedures). If someone wants services beyond those taxpayer funded ones, they can contract with private doctors at their own expense. Essentially, a "wealthy" person has the freedom to chose whatever they want and can pay for while a "poor" person still receives the benefit of the basic emergency service.
The idea of socialized medicine is that the government pays for all services (or at least those it deems "worthy") and effectively (either through legislative fiat or through the elimination of private competition) prevents people from having the freedom to make decisions outside the government realm.
Furthermore, the police are taxpayer funded because they are AN ARM OF THE GOVERNMENT YOU STUPID FUCK. Their whole purpose in existence is to ENFORCE GOVERNMENT LAWS AND REGULATIONS. They aren't working for individuals they are working for THE PEOPLE to see that the laws are carried out fully and fairly. Therefore it makes perfect sense for THE PEOPLE to pay their salaries.
This is different than doctors who are providing A PERSONAL, SPECIFIC, SERVICE TO AN INDIVIDUAL PERSON.
An 83-year-old woman from Östergötland in southern Sweden was forced to pay for back surgery out of her own pocket after doctors at her local public hospital told her she was too old for the treatment.
"Without the operation, I might have lived another five years in incredible pain. But what kind of life is that?" Marianne Skogh told the Östgöta Correspondenten newspaper.
Skogh has suffered from pain and numbness in her legs since 2004.
After waiting for more than a year to see a specialist in the public health system, Skogh was finally told that the pain was likely to do problems in her back.
Doctors told her she suffered from spinal stenosis, a disease that involves a narrowing of one or more areas in the back.
The narrowing puts pressure on the spinal cord or on the nerves that branch out from the compressed areas, often causing cramping, pain or numbness.
But despite the lengthy wait for the diagnosis, Skogh was then told that, even though the ailment was treatable, she was too old for the surgery.
In addition to Skogh's age, the fact that she had previously undergone heart surgery also made her ineligible for the operation, doctors explained.
In lieu of the surgery, Skogh was prescribed painkillers, which didn't alleviate her symptoms.
Christer Andersson, head of medicine at Linköping University Hospital, denied that age was the deciding factor in the diagnosis.
He told the Östgöta Correspondenten that county health official don’t prioritize patients based on age, but that age can play a factor if it is deemed the patient is unable to handle a course of treatment.
With her condition failing to improve, however, Skogh eventually became worried about her ability to walk and finally decided to finance the operation herself by seeking treatment at Sophiahemmet, a private hospital in Stockholm.
"I would have been confined to a wheel chair if we hadn't called a private hospital. I immediately got an appointment and the doctor didn't say anything about me being too old," Skogh told the Expressen newspaper.
Skogh ended up paying 130,000 kronor ($17,500) for the surgery needed to relieve the pain caused by the spinal stenosis.
Less than a month after the surgery, she is living pain-free and says the price she paid for private treatment was worth regaining her quality of life.
"There are thousands of people in my situation. With a meager pension, they don't have the ability to do what I did. It's important that they receive assistance in preserving their right to a dignified life," she told Expressen.
Skogh is particular upset that county health officials didn’t inform her about options for seeking a second opinion or about options for private care in the area.
But Anders Olai, a spinal specialist at the department of orthopedics at Linköping University Hospital, said that it is not common practice to refer patients to other doctors.
"We have no policy of directing people to another doctor for a second opinion. If someone is dissatisfied with one doctor's assessment, they can turn to the county in order to try and get another diagnosis," he told Östgöta Correspondenten.
The who episode has left Skogh questioning the value she received from all the money she’s paid in taxes over the years.
"I can understand that the county feels it is expensive to 'fix' us elderly, there more and more of us, but in general, I am healthy," she told Östgöta Correspondenten.
"We end up paying for healthcare for younger people, but we don’t get anything ourselves."
So what is the driving philosophy underpinning the Obama health care plans for all of us? Let's begin with a few short quotes and one definition that outlines the idea succinctly.
• President Obama; "There is a whole bunch of care that's being provided that every study, every bit of evidence that we have indicates may not be making us healthier."
• Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University: "Life as a whole has no meaning. Life began, as the best available theories tell us, in a chance combination of gasses; it then evolved through random mutation and natural selection. All this just happened; it did not happen to any overall purpose."
• America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 as introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R.3200) by Congressmen Dingell, Waxman, Rangel, Stark and others: "The Secretary shall establish within the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality a Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research…with respect to the outcomes, effectiveness, and appropriateness of health care services and procedures."
• QALY: Quality-Adjusted Life Year. A formula devised by left-wing policy wonks that purports, as David Catron has so ably illuminated on these pages, to measure the worth of your life by assigning a numerical value to each year of your existence. In Catron's words: "A year of perfect health, for example, is given a value of 1.0 while a year of sub-optimum health is rated between 0 and 1. If you are confined to a wheelchair, a year of your life might be valued at half that of your ambulatory neighbor. If you are blind or deaf, you also score low. All that remains is to assign a specific dollar value to the QALY and, voilà, your life has a price tag."
So. Who will tell Michael J. Fox he needs to die?
the philosophy behind ObamaCare, as promoted just a week ago in the New York Times Sunday Magazine by Professor Singer, is the hard cold necessity Obama sees for government to ration health care for people like, well, Michael J. Fox. As Mr. Singer says: "Health care is a scarce resource, and all scarce resources are rationed in one way or another." And quite obviously, with Mike Fox's QALY being what it is (and Singer is a big proponent of using QALY to judge the worth of a life), the time to cut his treatment off was... yesterday. Actually, a lot of yesterdays ago.
This is what President Obama believes when he says "there's a whole bunch of care" that someone -- this would be the government -- will have to decide not to employ in treating someone like Mike Fox. What about the idea that Michael J. Fox -- not to mention his wife and children, extended family and friends who might actually love the little lug -- think Mike's spirit should count for something here? After all, he did an entire documentary on The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist. In the President's words: "I don't think that we can make judgments based on peoples' spirit. That would be a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules...."
Right. Rules. Got it. Government rules. Which is another way of saying decisions on Mike Fox's life will, if Obama and company get their way, be resting in the hands of this whiz bang group of policy wonks and bureaucrats
If you read the fine print in the Congressional plans, you'll find that a lot of cherished aspects of the current system would disappear.
In promoting his health-care agenda, President Obama has repeatedly reassured Americans that they can keep their existing health plans -- and that the benefits and access they prize will be enhanced through reform.
A close reading of the two main bills, one backed by Democrats in the House and the other issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy's Health committee, contradict the President's assurances. To be sure, it isn't easy to comb through their 2,000 pages of tortured legal language. But page by page, the bills reveal a web of restrictions, fines, and mandates that would radically change your health-care coverage.
If you prize choosing your own cardiologist or urologist under your company's Preferred Provider Organization plan (PPO), if your employer rewards your non-smoking, healthy lifestyle with reduced premiums, if you love the bargain Health Savings Account (HSA) that insures you just for the essentials, or if you simply take comfort in the freedom to spend your own money for a policy that covers the newest drugs and diagnostic tests -- you may be shocked to learn that you could lose all of those good things under the rules proposed in the two bills that herald a health-care revolution.
In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage -- including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money -- but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can't have. It's a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.
Let's explore the five freedoms that Americans would lose under Obamacare:
1. Freedom to choose what's in your plan
The bills in both houses require that Americans purchase insurance through "qualified" plans offered by health-care "exchanges" that would be set up in each state. The rub is that the plans can't really compete based on what they offer. The reason: The federal government will impose a minimum list of benefits that each plan is required to offer.
Today, many states require these "standard benefits packages" -- and they're a major cause for the rise in health-care costs. Every group, from chiropractors to alcohol-abuse counselors, do lobbying to get included. Connecticut, for example, requires reimbursement for hair transplants, hearing aids, and in vitro fertilization.
The Senate bill would require coverage for prescription drugs, mental-health benefits, and substance-abuse services. It also requires policies to insure "children" until the age of 26. That's just the starting list. The bills would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to add to the list of required benefits, based on recommendations from a committee of experts. Americans, therefore, wouldn't even know what's in their plans and what they're required to pay for, directly or indirectly, until after the bills become law.
2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs
As with the previous example, the Obama plan enshrines into federal law one of the worst features of state legislation: community rating. Eleven states, ranging from New York to Oregon, have some form of community rating. In its purest form, community rating requires that all patients pay the same rates for their level of coverage regardless of their age or medical condition.
Americans with pre-existing conditions need subsidies under any plan, but community rating is a dubious way to bring fairness to health care. The reason is twofold: First, it forces young people, who typically have lower incomes than older workers, to pay far more than their actual cost, and gives older workers, who can afford to pay more, a big discount. The state laws gouging the young are a major reason so many of them have joined the ranks of uninsured.
Under the Senate plan, insurers would be barred from charging any more than twice as much for one patient vs. any other patient with the same coverage. So if a 20-year-old who costs just $800 a year to insure is forced to pay $2,500, a 62-year-old who costs $7,500 would pay no more than $5,000.
Second, the bills would ban insurers from charging differing premiums based on the health of their customers. Again, that's understandable for folks with diabetes or cancer. But the bills would bar rewarding people who pursue a healthy lifestyle of exercise or a cholesterol-conscious diet. That's hardly a formula for lower costs. It's as if car insurers had to charge the same rates to safe drivers as to chronic speeders with a history of accidents.
3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage
The bills threaten to eliminate the one part of the market truly driven by consumers spending their own money. That's what makes a market, and health care needs more of it, not less.
Hundreds of companies now offer Health Savings Accounts to about 5 million employees. Those workers deposit tax-free money in the accounts and get a matching contribution from their employer. They can use the funds to buy a high-deductible plan -- say for major medical costs over $12,000. Preventive care is reimbursed, but patients pay all other routine doctor visits and tests with their own money from the HSA account. As a result, HSA users are far more cost-conscious than customers who are reimbursed for the majority of their care.
The bills seriously endanger the trend toward consumer-driven care in general. By requiring minimum packages, they would prevent patients from choosing stripped-down plans that cover only major medical expenses. "The government could set extremely low deductibles that would eliminate HSAs," says John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a free-market research group. "And they could do it after the bills are passed."
4. Freedom to keep your existing plan
This is the freedom that the President keeps emphasizing. Yet the bills appear to say otherwise. It's worth diving into the weeds -- the territory where most pundits and politicians don't seem to have ventured.
The legislation divides the insured into two main groups, and those two groups are treated differently with respect to their current plans. The first are employees covered by the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974. ERISA regulates companies that are self-insured, meaning they pay claims out of their cash flow, and don't have real insurance. Those are the GEs and Time Warners and most other big companies.
The House bill states that employees covered by ERISA plans are "grandfathered." Under ERISA, the plans can do pretty much what they want -- they're exempt from standard packages and community rating and can reward employees for healthy lifestyles even in restrictive states.
But read on.
The bill gives ERISA employers a five-year grace period when they can keep offering plans free from the restrictions of the "qualified" policies offered on the exchanges. But after five years, they would have to offer only approved plans, with the myriad rules we've already discussed. So for Americans in large corporations, "keeping your own plan" has a strict deadline. In five years, like it or not, you'll get dumped into the exchange. As we'll see, it could happen a lot earlier.
The outlook is worse for the second group. It encompasses employees who aren't under ERISA but get actual insurance either on their own or through small businesses. After the legislation passes, all insurers that offer a wide range of plans to these employees will be forced to offer only "qualified" plans to new customers, via the exchanges.
The employees who got their coverage before the law goes into effect can keep their plans, but once again, there's a catch. If the plan changes in any way -- by altering co-pays, deductibles, or even switching coverage for this or that drug -- the employee must drop out and shop through the exchange. Since these plans generally change their policies every year, it's likely that millions of employees will lose their plans in 12 months.
5. Freedom to choose your doctors
The Senate bill requires that Americans buying through the exchanges -- and as we've seen, that will soon be most Americans -- must get their care through something called "medical home." Medical home is similar to an HMO. You're assigned a primary care doctor, and the doctor controls your access to specialists. The primary care physicians will decide which services, like MRIs and other diagnostic scans, are best for you, and will decide when you really need to see a cardiologists or orthopedists.
Under the proposals, the gatekeepers would theoretically guide patients to tests and treatments that have proved most cost-effective. The danger is that doctors will be financially rewarded for denying care, as were HMO physicians more than a decade ago. It was consumer outrage over despotic gatekeepers that made the HMOs so unpopular, and killed what was billed as the solution to America's health-care cost explosion.
The bills do not specifically rule out fee-for-service plans as options to be offered through the exchanges. But remember, those plans -- if they exist -- would be barred from charging sick or elderly patients more than young and healthy ones. So patients would be inclined to game the system, staying in the HMO while they're healthy and switching to fee-for-service when they become seriously ill. "That would kill fee-for-service in a hurry," says Goodman.
In reality, the flexible, employer-based plans that now dominate the landscape, and that Americans so cherish, could disappear far faster than the 5 year "grace period" that's barely being discussed.
Companies would have the option of paying an 8% payroll tax into a fund that pays for coverage for Americans who aren't covered by their employers. It won't happen right away -- large companies must wait a couple of years before they opt out. But it will happen, since it's likely that the tax will rise a lot more slowly than corporate health-care costs, especially since they'll be lobbying Washington to keep the tax under control in the righteous name of job creation.
The best solution is to move to a let-freedom-ring regime of high deductibles, no community rating, no standard benefits, and cross-state shopping for bargains (another market-based reform that's strictly taboo in the bills). I'll propose my own solution in another piece soon on Fortune.com. For now, we suffer with a flawed health-care system, but we still have our Five Freedoms. Call them the Five Endangered Freedoms.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
No, helmet, I was making fun of you for thinking you're better than everyone else when in fact you're a retard who can't even defend himself with his own words or beliefs.
November 6th, 2012: Americas new Independence Day.
No, helmet, I was making fun of you for thinking you're better than everyone else when in fact you're a retard who can't even defend himself with his own words or beliefs.
You do reallize I didn't really think you were holding basams to the same standard that you have for me?
When did I say I was better than everyone else btw? Or is this something you feel emotionally?
Stay tuned for more warmed over Rush Limbaugh points!
you think a Swedish newspaper is run by Limbaugh? he really has you liberals brainfucked doesnt he?
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I've never seen BSAMS quote Limbaugh. You, on the other hand, are notorious for relying on such overtly partisan-if not fringe-sites as RAW story and Media Matters (the latter of which you have admitted is "clearly" partisan.
Therefore, BSAMS, comment about your tactics was, far from a cheap shot or a case of a "a republican [doing] it first," pretty accurate (in an obviously joking way). Yours, on the other hand had no basis in how BSAMS really posts. Accordingly, you deserve mockery and criticism that he does not.
It's funny how you feel republicans are entitled to treat others one way while holding others to a higher standard. Very manbaby of you.
If you want to post tranny pics G-man instead of political discussion don't bother trying to rationallize other bad behavior. You just don't have any credability.
Stay tuned for more warmed over Rush Limbaugh points!
you think a Swedish newspaper is run by Limbaugh? he really has you liberals brainfucked doesnt he?
I just saw your fake mem quote and returned the favor.
the only problem is your response insulted you. it's not your fault, you get your news from RAW, all you know is to blame Limbaugh if you don't have an answer. i have a feeling someday youll look back and realize you should have been thinkn g for yourself all these years.
Newsweek: President Obama tried to sell his health care overhaul in prime time, mangling some facts in the process. He also strained to make the job sound easier to pay for than experts predict. [list] ....The president said that the United States spends $6,000 more on average than other countries on health care.....
The findings show that Americans are not buying President Obama's claims that legislation would improve quality, expand access, and reduce costs among the general population, and the numbers get worse when people are asked how they think the proposed changes would effect them personally.
Specifically, the poll found a minority 44 percent thought legislation would improve the nation's medical care, while just 26 percent said it would improve their own; 47 percent said it would expand access overall, compared to 21 percent who said it would expand their own access; just 30 percent bought the idea that health care costs would go down, and only 18 percent said their own costs would fall.
Put it all together, and it means that Obama's arguments have failed to convince a skeptical public as it is, and his approval ratings continue to get worse with each passing day.
when asked about the plan now moving through Congress, a plurality of 47 percent was opposed and 42 percent said they were in favor, based on what they had heard about the plan so far.
[quote=Matter-eater Man]most people want a government health care option.
At the same time, the majority of Americans say they are satisfied with their own health care plans.
...
That poll is a couple of years old.
Polls these days show different results...
Health Care Hammers Obama Poll Numbers: Support for president's health care overhaul effort declines as proposal faces crucial tests in Senate, new poll finds
Liberals will get single-payer vote on House floor By Mike Soraghan Posted: 07/31/09 05:33 PM [ET] Seeking to dampen liberal anger about deals cut with centrists, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said House leaders have agreed to allow a floor vote on a government-run, single-payer system.
"A lot of members on our committee want a vote on that," said Waxman said in an interview. "I believe their wishes will be accommodated."
Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) offered a single-payer amendment in the Energy and Commerce Committee on Friday, but withdrew it after Waxman said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had promised a floor vote.
Waxman is trying to maintain the support a number of liberals on his committee who don't like the cuts that Waxman, the Obama administration and House leaders negotiated with centrist Blue Dog Democrats.
"I'm still not sure he has the votes," said Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.). "Some people who said they were a yes are not supporting it."
Legislation creating a single-payer system would be expected to lose, but would allow liberal members to record their support for the proposal. It will also be a tough vote for some Democrats who will be wary of upsetting the liberal base.
Many liberal lawmakers feel that the controversial "public option" that would compete with private insurers is a compromise from single-payer.
In another part of the deal, the House bill would allow the federal government to negotiate prescription drug prices and use the savings to lower insurance premiums in the health exchanges that would be established in the bill, according to a copy of the agreement obtained by The Hill.
Another provision calls for finding additional savings through other methods by simplifying Medicare and Medicaid administrative costs.
The cuts sought by the Blue Dogs would remain in place unless the drug negotiation and other initiatives yield savings. But any savings would be used to lower premiums.
Liberals do not talk down to people rex. Just ask Andrea Mitchell, she says that American's opposed to socialism just don't realize what is good for them:
"As I indicated before, I think that we're going to have to have some system where people can buy into a larger pool. Right now their pool typically is the employer, but there are other ways of doing it. I would like to -- I would hope that we could set up a system that allows those who can go through their employer to access a federal system or a state pool of some sort. But I don't think we're going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately."
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