"Sicko" is a revelation.

georgeob1 wrote:

Believe it or not as you choose. I can assure you that the insurance premium paid by the employer is indeed adjusted continuously, based on the actual claims submitted by employees. Annually we review the growth in our costs and, if necessary, contain their growth by either limiting coverage; setting higher deductables; or raising the portion of the premium deducted from employee paychecks.

By the employer. That's essentially the pool. Each person, however, pays according to the risk of the whole pool and the size of their family. My premium is based on which plan I choose, not my own risk.

If each person actually paid according to their own expense, what would be the purpose of insurance? I still do not see how how forcing people to purchase insurance is significantly different from taxing them and using that money to pay for universal health care.

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FreeDuck wrote:

I still do not see how how forcing people to purchase insurance is significantly different from taxing them and using that money to pay for universal health care.

Is there supposed to be a difference? Because this ("forcing people to purchase insurance") is exactly how the German system works. There is no tax, and premiums are paid to the insurance company. There are statutory insurance companies and private ones, but the system is still considered a universal health care system.

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If they are not different, then how can someone support one while decrying the other as socialism?

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I don't know.

Ideology? Because in one system, you have a single payer, which usually is the government, so it's just a step away from communism? Whereas in the other system, you have several insurance companies, so it's the free market regulating everything, so it's really all-out capitalism?

Sure, the effect of that is really negligible, as you'll end up with a solid universal health care system either way - but if you can have a good fight about the underlying ideology, why not go for it?

(That said, if you wanted to "market" universal health care to Americans, I'd choose a statutory, well-regulated but private insurance model over socialized single payer one.... Same effect, but people will believe that glorious Capitalism once again triumphed over the evil forces of Communism...)

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old europe wrote:

(That said, if you wanted to "market" universal health care to Americans, I'd choose a statutory, well-regulated but private insurance model over socialized single payer one.... Same effect, but people will believe that glorious Capitalism once again triumphed over the evil forces of Communism...)

Hmm, who was it again who did that of exactly that reason and when ....

Ha, Bismarck, in 1883.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

Ha, Bismarck, in 1883.

Yeah.

That bloody ol' capitalist ....

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FreeDuck wrote:

georgeob1 wrote:
Believe it or not as you choose. I can assure you that the insurance premium paid by the employer is indeed adjusted continuously, based on the actual claims submitted by employees. Annually we review the growth in our costs and, if necessary, contain their growth by either limiting coverage; setting higher deductables; or raising the portion of the premium deducted from employee paychecks.

By the employer. That's essentially the pool. Each person, however, pays according to the risk of the whole pool and the size of their family. My premium is based on which plan I choose, not my own risk.

If each person actually paid according to their own expense, what would be the purpose of insurance? I still do not see how how forcing people to purchase insurance is significantly different from taxing them and using that money to pay for universal health care.

I guess my point was that in the information age data can be sorted and accessed so easily that "pools" of shared risk can be maintained only through administrative controls or legislation. My company's insurer can easily collect and assemble the costs of health care claims for our employees along with those of the thousands of other companies they insure. That gives them the ready ability to adjust individual or family policy premiums to costs based on fairly accurate statistical modelling and then to update it with actual claims history -- as is already done by automobile insurers.

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georgeob1 wrote:

I guess my point was that in the information age data can be sorted and accessed so easily that "pools" of shared risk can be maintained only through administrative controls or legislation. My company's insurer can easily collect and assemble the costs of health care claims for our employees along with those of the thousands of other companies they insure. That gives them the ready ability to adjust individual or family policy premiums to costs based on fairly accurate statistical modelling and then to update it with actual claims history -- as is already done by automobile insurers.

Sounds like a good thing. I can't see why that wouldn't work in a national system as well.

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I suppose it would. A good deal depends on the payment structure and coverage requirements of what have been referred to as the "statutory" insurers in Germany. What services are covered, what are not, and how it is all paid for. This is indeed far different from the government operated systems of the UK and Canada (and, for all I know, France.) Perrhaps these systems work well in those countries. However, I doubt they would work well here.

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Most MDs in the U.S. do not favor socialized medicine.

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What exactly IS socialized medicine, to your thinking?

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Moore and the millions of people like him who believe in socialized medicine usually deny that what they are proposing for the United States is in fact socialized medicine. Finally, in a live interview on Larry King Live on CNN on June 29, 2007, Moore used the "S" word. The set up was a brief question near the end of the program from a woman on the "King cam" who said she was concerned about soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, and if their medical needs would be met-after which this exchanged occurred:

Moore: Oh boy, this is going to be a big problem.

King: They're covered, though, they're all, aren't they-

Moore: They're covered, but-well, they're covered, yes. The VA is actually-it's a good system of socialized medicine-

King: That's what it is.

Moore: That's what it is.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/07/medicine_at_gunpoint_the_sicko_1.html

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Miller wrote:

Most MDs in the U.S. do not favor socialized medicine.

Are you referring to the health sstems in the foremer East European countries?

Though that worked quite well, it indeed didn't when they changed their political systems. That's one of the reasons, probably the most important, that they changed their system of health insurance.
(Well, East Germany got ours, and others are very similar.)

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HokieBird, perhaps you could answer my question then.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

Miller wrote:
Most MDs in the U.S. do not favor socialized medicine.

Are you referring to the health sstems in the foremer East European countries?

Though that worked quite well, it indeed didn't when they changed their political systems. That's one of the reasons, probably the most important, that they changed their system of health insurance.
(Well, East Germany got ours, and others are very similar.)

I'm not sure I follow you here Walter. Are you saying the public medical program in the GDR orked "quite well", but that following the reunification of Germany the quality of the medical services avaolable to formert citizens of the GDR declined?

I find that odd in that the GDR was (1) broke; (2) unable to sustain the loyalty of its citizens in the face of new opportunity in the West; (3) a totalitarian police state.

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FreeDuck wrote:

What exactly IS socialized medicine, to your thinking?

"Evil."

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Moohoowahahahaha

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georgeob1 wrote:

I'm not sure I follow you here Walter. Are you saying the public medical program in the GDR orked "quite well", but that following the reunification of Germany the quality of the medical services avaolable to formert citizens of the GDR declined?

I find that odd in that the GDR was (1) broke; (2) unable to sustain the loyalty of its citizens in the face of new opportunity in the West; (3) a totalitarian police state.

If you asked someone who experiened the GDR-health service and that from 1990 onwards, many will say that the one in the old system was better.

(On the oher hand, if you asked me about our pre-1990 service, I would say the same Laughing

)

One of the achievements in the GDR certainly was that the party/governent could hide the economic failures by .... not showing them where possible and giving a relatively good and fre service for many every-day things, like e.g. a lot of hospitals and doctors, even in the smallest backwood village.

I'm not saying at all that they delivered a good and modern medical service all over their country. Not at all, it mostly below our 1960 standards even in 1989.

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"Sicko" is a revelation.

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