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Thu 2 Aug, 2007 08:00 am
House Headed Toward 'Socialized Medicine'
by John Gizzi (more by this author)
Posted 08/02/2007 ET
"By the time your story appears, the U.S. House of Representatives may have taken a big step toward socialized medicine!"
So said a breathless Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) at 5:30 p.m. on August 1. The congressman was just back from the House floor, where she called me after a day-long battle against what appeared to be inevitable enactment of SCHIP -- that is, the State Children's Health Insurance Program -- as a permanent entitlement.
Recalling how the program to provide health care for lower-income children was enacted in 1997 by a Republican-run Congress and run as a bloc grant to the states, Blackburn pointed out that the newly-minted SCHIP that Democrats are trying to shoehorn through the House would "make drastic changes" and make the program "a permanent entitlement costing $159.9 billion over the next ten years."
Under the new SCHIP -- the brainchild of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich) -- that she and her colleagues will vote on almost momentarily, there is no income limit for eligibility to the program that was originally designed for those in lower income brackets. As Blackburn noted, "if this becomes law, and someone makes up to $82,000 a year and pays the AMT [Alternative Minimum Tax], they are rich by IRS standards and poor by SCHIP standards:they are eligible for SCHIP!"
The Rangel-Dingel changes in the program include no sunsetting (it is reauthorized indefinitely), an end to state control of it ("open-ended federal funding, even if states go over budget," observed Blackburn), and further incentives for illegal immigrants. At a time when municipalities such as Hazeltown, Pennsylvania and Prince William County, Virginia are passing measures to discourage the arrival of more illegal immigrants, SCHIP would actually permit illegal aliens to receive Medicaid by watering down citizenship verification standards.
As to how it would be paid, Blackburn noted that it would cut Medicare by $32.9 billion over ten years and increase cigarette taxes by 39 cents per cigarette package and and add an 84 cent tax increase to each dollar in the cost of cigars.
"Basically, Democrats are saying ?'kill seniors to pay for a bigger entitlement -- smoke more, and pay more taxes," said Blackburn.
The Tennessean recalled how there has been no hearing in either committee chaired by Dingell or Rangel, that it was brought to the floor today under a closed rule, and that the Democratic majority in the House has without hesitation struck down Republican motions to amend the SCHIP entitlement package. Blackburn herself unsuccessfully battled for an amendment to deny eligibility to those convicted of a drug-related crime. But her proposal lost, as did all the other GOP-sculpted amendments, on a near-party line vote.
Human Events
Miller
If you want to have a conversation about improving access to health care, stop calling it "socialized medicine."
Do you consider Medicare and/or Medicaid "socialized medicine"?
"Socialized Medicine" is the scare term used by those wanting to protect their profits, such as the medical insurance, HMO, and drug industries.
BBB
Golly. Shut the windows. Lock the doors. In the dead of night, under the full moon, oozing stuff, it is coming...
Blatham
blatham wrote:Golly. Shut the windows. Lock the doors. In the dead of night, under the full moon, oozing stuff, it is coming...
If my memory is right, it was physician members of the John Birch Society that coined the term "Socialized Medicine." I met a few of them when I was a representative of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists and in the American Medical Association, another group whose interests were protecting their incomes.
BBB
Re: Miller
BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:If you want to have a conversation about improving access to health care, stop calling it "socialized medicine."
Do you consider Medicare and/or Medicaid "socialized medicine"?
"Socialized Medicine" is the scare term used by those wanting to protect their profits, such as the medical insurance, HMO, and drug industries.
BBB
Well, no surprise that Miller uses the term then.
Re: Miller
BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:
Do you consider Medicare and/or Medicaid "socialized medicine"?
I don't consider Medicare to be "socialized medicine", since only those individuals, who've paid into and participated in the SS/medicar program can qualify for medicare benefits.
I do consider MEDICAID to be "socialized medicine". Why isn't it called WELFARE MEDICINE?
Wikipedia can always be counted on to have a liberal slant.
The term Socialized Medicine is used to describe a system of publicly administered national health care. This system can range from programs in which the government runs hospitals and health organizations to programs in which there is national universal health care.
*
Re: Miller
Miller wrote:I don't consider Medicare to be "socialized medicine", since only those individuals, who've paid into and participated in the SS/medicar program can qualify for medicare benefits.
Same's true for virtually all universal health care systems. Do you consider universal health care to be "socialized medicine", Miller?
Re: Miller
Coolwhip wrote:
Well, no surprise that Miller uses the term then.
I didn't write the article.
Re: Miller
Miller wrote:Coolwhip wrote:
Well, no surprise that Miller uses the term then.
I didn't write the article.
No, but you've posted several articles using that term. All of them with a certain 'bias'.
McGentrix wrote:Wikipedia can always be counted on to have a liberal slant.
As is Britannica:
Quote:Quite different, however, are socialized medicine and government medical-care programs. In these systems, which are usually financed from general tax revenues, doctors are employed, directly or indirectly, by a government agency, and hospitals and other health facilities are owned or operated by the government. The National Health Service in the United Kingdom and the hospitals operated by the Department of Veterans' Affairs in the United States are examples of such systems.
source:
"health insurance." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2 Aug. 2007
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9039703.
McGentrix wrote:Wikipedia can always be counted on to have a liberal slant.
The term Socialized Medicine is used to describe a system of publicly administered national health care. This system can range from programs in which the government runs hospitals and health organizations to programs in which there is national universal health care.
*
Right, McGentrix. If that's the definition, than about 50 percent of the US health care system are "socialized medicine."
(But it it's such a non descriptive term - and describes systems with minimal government involvement as well as systems where you have a completely state run health care system, why use the term at all?)
BBB
In case anyone hasn't noticed, the vast majority of physicians already work for HMOs and other health plans directly or indirectly through contracts or payment methods. The trend started in the 1970s and has escalated ever since.
BBB
Re: Miller
Miller wrote:old europe wrote:Do you consider universal health care to be "socialized medicine", Miller?
We have "Universal Health Insurance" in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. For those individuals living above the poverty level, this plan is not "SOCIALIZED MEDICINE".
For those living in POVERTY, their health plans are part of the
MEDICAID program and as such, are considered to be either
WELFARE or "SOCIALIZED MEDICINE".
Well, then the VHA is welfare "socialized medicine" as well....
So, are you in favour of universal health care, similar to what Massachusetts has implemented? Or only of the part that you don't consider to be "socialized medicine?"
Or do you not oppose "socialized medicine?"
(It's a bit hard to figure that out, from your posts.... You seem to
like the Massachusetts universal health care system, but you seem to
hate "socialized medicine"... That about right?)
Miller wrote:Old Euorpe; You often don't sound like an American. Are you
a citizen of the United States of America?
IRL, people often tell me I sound Irish.
Walter Hinteler wrote:McGentrix wrote:Wikipedia can always be counted on to have a liberal slant.
As is Britannica:
Quote:Quite different, however, are socialized medicine and government medical-care programs. In these systems, which are usually financed from general tax revenues, doctors are employed, directly or indirectly, by a government agency, and hospitals and other health facilities are owned or operated by the government. The National Health Service in the United Kingdom and the hospitals operated by the Department of Veterans' Affairs in the United States are examples of such systems.
source:
"health insurance." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2 Aug. 2007
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9039703.
So in German,
Quote:History of the term
The term began as a pejorative phrase first popularized in 1920s and 1930s United States politics by conservative opponents of publicly operated health care, proposed during the administration of US President Franklin Roosevelt and later championed by US Senator Spessard Holland of Florida, Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee and many more. Organizations that generally oppose expansion of government services still tend to use the phrase in that way.
However, others have pointed out that the US government already operates public health care. That approach to health care is provided by US Veterans Administration clinics and hospitals to former members of US military services.
translates the same as
Quote:Quite different, however, are socialized medicine and government medical-care programs. In these systems, which are usually financed from general tax revenues, doctors are employed, directly or indirectly, by a government agency, and hospitals and other health facilities are owned or operated by the government. The National Health Service in the United Kingdom and the hospitals operated by the Department of Veterans' Affairs in the United States are examples of such systems.
?
Otherwise I am missing your point again. You said it was a pejorative phrase, but then in your second post saying something else... So which is it?
We don't have therm "socialized medizine" (or similar) in Germany.
Better said before you get me on that: we don't use that term in the sense - neither in Germany nor in German - how it used by you and others here, McG.
I might have mistakenly done so, however. That was where, you said?
McGentrix wrote:You said it was a pejorative phrase, but then in your second post saying something else... So which is it?
Maybe it's only a pejorative term in American English. Just as "liberal" means something entirely different in the rest of the world.
Why don't we ask you, McGentrix - do you consider the term "socialized medicine" to be
- pejorative
- neutral or
- positive
(check one.)
Well, besides that, McG: my quotes are from Wikipedia and Britannica, as noted.
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