AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

Apparently you believe in magic.

Doing nothing certainly is an option. I doubt that the Democrats will opt for it however. They will likely come up with something that will restrict our freedom, create new entitlements and we will end up with some form of government imposed de facto rationing.

Doing nothing is only an option if you are comfortable with the status quo. Now, you personally likely are quite comfortable with the status quo, George, so I can see how you might think this. However millions others are not. The health care industry in America works great for the rich and well-off, not so much for the rest of us.

Large majorities of Americans have indicated that they wish to see a change from the status quo and that is what is giving Obama his mandate to enact that change. Also, it's difficult for me to see how we cannot achieve greater efficiency by cutting down on/cutting out the parasite known as for-profit health insurance, an odious industry which makes money only by not paying for people's necessary treatments.

Cycloptichorn

2 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

It seems georgeob has the same difficulty as the other conservatives on a2k; he arrives at conclusions before we even know what Obama's health plan looks like and how it will work. All georgeob does is talk about "fear" of what Obama's health plan will do or won't do without knowing what the plan even looks like. Their use of their imagination always seems to run away from them. How does one critique anything without a written document that shows what the plan is?

0 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Large majorities of Americans have indicated that they wish to see a change from the status quo and that is what is giving Obama his mandate to enact that change. Also, it's difficult for me to see how we cannot achieve greater efficiency by cutting down on/cutting out the parasite known as for-profit health insurance, an odious industry which makes money only by not paying for people's necessary treatments.

Cycloptichorn

The problem here is the ststus quo involves our basic freedoms to contract indivifdually for the services we wish to use.

The socialist central planners of the Soviet Union boasted of the efficiencies they would obtain in wiping out all the redundant and duplicative administrations of competing business enterprises, bringing their (captive) population the glorious benefits of rational centrally planned economic activity. Oddly it didn't turn out as they predicted. Government managers tended to focus on careers, quotas and the like, killing innovation and creativity; their bureaucracies were unable to cope with the complexities of supply and demand; increasing force and control was required to keep this system in operation; and everyone settled into drab poverty with inadequate supplies of poorly designed, badly manufactured goods and even worse customer service.

Any American can opt out of the "parasitic insurance scheme" any time he/she wants. Just pay your own bills and save the insurance premium. If you truly believe the government can organize and operate a more efficient system, then I suspect you of suspending your powers to observe and think. Have you visited a DMV office lately?

2 Replies

@georgeob1,

Quote:

The problem here is the ststus quo involves our basic freedoms to contract indivifdually for the services we wish to use.

Sure goerge. Tell that to anyone trying to get health insurance with a pre-existing condition. Making it affordable would take away their freedom.

1 Reply

@parados,

parados wrote:

Sure goerge. Tell that to anyone trying to get health insurance with a pre-existing condition. Making it affordable would take away their freedom.

Certainly we see in the various European systems some ... well, defects.
Some, like the Swiss model, are doing extremely well. Others, like our German, came in the days after having run 125 years more or less unchanged.

But nevertheless: an affordable health insurance for all and everyone is better than none.

0 Replies

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Large majorities of Americans have indicated that they wish to see a change from the status quo and that is what is giving Obama his mandate to enact that change. Also, it's difficult for me to see how we cannot achieve greater efficiency by cutting down on/cutting out the parasite known as for-profit health insurance, an odious industry which makes money only by not paying for people's necessary treatments.

Cycloptichorn

The problem here is the ststus quo involves our basic freedoms to contract indivifdually for the services we wish to use.

The socialist central planners of the Soviet Union boasted of the efficiencies they would obtain in wiping out all the redundant and duplicative administrations of competing business enterprises, bringing their (captive) population the glorious benefits of rational centrally planned economic activity. Oddly it didn't turn out as they predicted. Government managers tended to focus on careers, quotas and the like, killing innovation and creativity; their bureaucracies were unable to cope with the complexities of supply and demand; increasing force and control was required to keep this system in operation; and everyone settled into drab poverty with inadequate supplies of poorly designed, badly manufactured goods and even worse customer service.

Well, Appealing to Extremes can make any argument look bad. But that doesn't mean it isn't a logical fallacy. There exists a wide spectrum between our current system and the Soviet Union.

Quote:

Any American can opt out of the "parasitic insurance scheme" any time he/she wants. Just pay your own bills and save the insurance premium. If you truly believe the government can organize and operate a more efficient system, then I suspect you of suspending your powers to observe and think. Have you visited a DMV office lately?

Actually, yes. I made an appointment ahead of time. It took 15 minutes, if that. You made a poor choice in your question if you wished to prove a point.

The health insurance industry acts as a cost multiplier for health care; without reducing it's influence, costs will never stop going up.

As I said before, you aren't exactly in the same position as many other Americans, and likely cannot understand people's desire to see a frustrating and inefficient system reformed. Yet these majorities do exist (as I think you know) and we are going to see some sort of nationalized health care pretty soon; I'd plan on getting used to it, were I you, George.

Cycloptichorn

0 Replies

While I dont know what the Obama health care plan looks like, there is an example of govt run health care we can look at.

If the Obama plan will look anything like the VA healthcare system, then I for one wont use it.

The VA is a fairly messed up system, with many flaws and holes in its system.

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Quote:

Careful - your fellow Republicans are going to start bitching at you for being Protectionist.

I happen to agree with this post for the most part.

Cycloptichorn

Why do you keep calling me a repub?
I have told you many times that I am NOT a repub.
I am a conservative, but that is not the same thing at all.

How can my plan be considered to be even remotely protectionist?
All I am suggesting is that we use the same trade laws and regulations as they use on us.
For example, American cars exported to Japan are given a complete inspection once arriving in Japan,so much so that they are almost stripped to the bare frame.
I suggest we do the same thing to their cars, after all if their rules are perfectly fair, like they claim, then they should have no objection to us using those same rules against them.

I am willing to bet that if the US did that, the playing field would become more level, or they would stop exporting cars from Japan.
That would put US auto makers back to work, which would cause all of the parts suppliers and steelmakers to increase production, so they would add more workers, etc.

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@mysteryman,

Romney--pretty MACean in most of his views--put together what was supposed to be the answer in Massachusetts too, but the problems are already beginning to emerge and will almost certainly become worse. Romney may be conservative, but even he couldn't pull off efficient socialization of healthcare.

There may be something, but I've never seen the federal goverment get involved in much of anything that didn't make it more expensive, more inefficient, and more ineffective and that includes our healthcare system that is already nationalized such as the VA and Medicare and partial funding for Medicaid. But they have changed the healthcare system in what appears to be difficult to reverse ways and most of those tied into those systems seem to be pretty much 100% dependent on them now. There's lots of talk about reforming them, but there is no easy way out now without devastating many innocent people.

Why in the world would we think putting it all under government control would produce any different results?

1 Reply

@Foxfyre,

Foxie wrote:

Quote:

Why in the world would we think putting it all under government control would produce any different results?

Very simple: our health care system is broken, and the costs keeps escalating without any end in sight. More Americans are losing their health care - in addition to their jobs and homes.

They are all broken, and unless there is government intervention, what Bush started in this downward spiral of lost jobs will continue. As jobs are lost, more people lose their homes and the equity left in their retirement savings.

Give us solutions if you have better ones, but quit shouting "the sky is falling," if you can't even help resolve this current financial crisis.

How do "you" intend to stop this job loss of over half million every month?
How much will your plan cost, and when will we begin to see a turn-around of this blood-letting?

Numbers and time-lines, please.

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That GOP 'budget'--okay it isn't a budget at all but it is a plan--would turn it around in short order and start putting people back to work. The ideas they are suggesting are not ideas invented in a vacuum but reflect concepts that have worked every time they have been tried.

Get business up and running and profitable again and put people to work and they can afford to buy their own healthcare if the government would just get out of it and let the free market work. Healthcare was affordable and accessible to most people before the government got involved in the 1960's. The VA, medicare, and medicaid aren't going away and those take care of the veterans, elderly, and dirt poor until we can figure out a way to phase them out without hurting anybody.

What government can do is what has already been suggested: make insurance portable so folks don't have to give up their insurance if they lose or change jobs; make it more effective for small businesses and individuals to band together to form larger groups to spread the risk so the premiums do not have to be so high. And do some meaningful tort reform to limit class action and opportunisitic lawsuits against doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers to bring down the cost of their insurance. Most of the cost of a routine doctor's visit or check up goes to pay the cost of malpractice insurance. And then when those costs are brought down, let people start paying up front for the doctor's visit or flu shot or diagnosis of the crud of the week and paying a reasonable cost for a routine prescription or visit to the E.R. We all pay the maintenance costs for our automobiles; surely we can do that for our kids. And then save insurance for the big accident or necessity for hospitalization or long term care. That would be a huge savings in insurance costs right there.

There's all kinds of ways to address the system in positive ways without socializing the whole thing.

1 Reply

@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre wrote:

Healthcare was affordable and accessible to most people before the government got involved in the 1960's.

Any source for that? You certainly read Health Care in the Early 1960's?

Foxfyre wrote:

There's all kinds of ways to address the system in positive ways without socializing the whole thing.

Certainly. And no-one wants the socialised health care systems of the e.g. former GDR - those never could work.

But there are lots of other working models to be found ...

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@Walter Hinteler,

In the early 1960's we paid about $5 to see the doctor to see if we just had a routine sore throat or something more serious like strep. We usually could get in the same day we called too or the doctor came to the house. The kids' required shots for polio, pertussis, etc. were also about $5 as was an antibiotic shot or the usual routine prescription for an antibiotic or whatever. If expenses like these met a certain deductible, our medical insurance kicked in but they almost never did.

In the 1960's I worked for a hospital before Medicare went into effect and those who couldn't pay their hospital bill were set up on a payment plan, sometimes $10/month to pay it off. A hospital stay was around $25 or so/day; maybe $50 in a private room. But from Day 1 that Medicare went into effect--I was still at that same hospital when that happened--the costs began to rise and escalated thereafter. It took almost a couple of decades for the costs to reach the point that people could no longer easily afford routine medical care out of their pockets any more, and it has gotten much much worse since then. My emergency appendectomy including 5 days in the hospital was under $1000 in 1963 and the insurance paid all but I think a $100 deductible. It is not unusual for a stay in the hospital to cost many thousands of dollars per day now.

By the time I was working for the third hospital I worked for--this time in the radiology department in the late 1970's--a routine chest x-ray cost more than several days in the hospital.

Here's another perspective:
http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/AboutUs/ArticleView.aspx?id=2317

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@Foxfyre,

Well, I can't add personal experiences from the USA - neither of the 60's nor some more recently.

But I had a lot to do with health insurances (personally as well as from the historic perspective).
My father was a chief physician in a hospital since 1952 [and from 1945 till 1948 in a Franco-American POW-hospital as well].
Thus, I know a bit about the scale of charges and fees in hospitals and health insurance, too - but only in Germany .... and a couple of hospital run by the same nuns as my father's hospital in the USA.

Until the late 70's/early 80's routine chest x-ray was totally free here - we even had to do in school any year in the 60's.

But those costs have initially nothing to with insurance - though certainly (that's related to here) those with private insurances get more and more expensive extra treatment ... mostly totally unnecessarily.

1 Reply

@Foxfyre,

Not only did expanding and liberalizing insurance coverage push costs upward, greatly escalated as our society became more and more litigious, the government can't simply put in a reasonable benefit and leave it alone.

Check out this brief condense history of Medicare. (The same thing has happened to social security and there is no reason to believe it won't happen to universal healthcare forced by the government.):

Quote:

BRIEF HISTORY OF THE MEDICARE PROGRAM

1945 Harry Truman sends a message to Congress asking for
legislation establishing a national health insurance plan.

Two decades of debate ensue, with opponents warning of the
dangers of "socialized medicine."

By the end of Truman's administration, he had backed off
from a plan for universal coverage, but administrators in
the Social Security system and others had begun to focus
on the idea of a program aimed at insuring Social Security
beneficiaries.

July 30, 1965 Medicare and its companion program Medicaid, (which
insures indigent recipients), are signed into law by
President Lyndon Johnson as part of his "Great Society."

Ex-president Truman is the first to enroll in Medicare.

Medicare Part B premium is $3 per month.

1972 Disabled persons under age 65 and those with end-stage
renal disease become eligible for coverage.

Services expand to include some chiropractic services,
speech therapy and physical therapy.

Payments to HMOs are authorized.

Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program is established
for the elderly and disabled poor. SSI recipients are
automatically eligible for Medicaid.

1982 Hospice benefits are added on a temporary basis.

1983 Change from "reasonable cost" to prospective payment
system based on diagnosis-related groups for hospital
inpatient services begins.

Most federal civilian employees become covered.

1984 Remaining federal employees, including President, members
of Congress and federal judiciary become covered.

1986 Hospice benefits become permanent.

1988 Major overhaul of Medicare benefits is enacted aimed at
providing coverage for catastrophic illness and
prescription drugs.

Coverage is added for routine mammography.

1989 Catastrophic coverage and prescription drug coverage are
repealed.

Coverage is added for pap smears.

1992 Physician services payments are based on fee schedule.

1997 Medicare+Choice is enacted under the Balanced Budget Act.
Some provisions prove to be so financially restrictive
when regulations are unveiled that Congress is forced to
revisit the issue in 1999.

1999 Congress "refines" Medicare+Choice and relaxes some
Medicare funding restrictions under the Balanced Budget
Refinement Act of 1999.

2000 Medicare+Choice Final Rule takes effect.

Prospective payment systems for outpatient services and
home health agencies take effect.

Medicare Part B premium is $45.40 per month
http://seniorjournal.com/NEWS/2000%20Files/Aug%2000/FTR-08-04-00MedCarHistry.htm

2008 - Medicare Part B premium is $67 per month and climbing but there is no way that this is covering more than a small fraction of the costs. The taxpayer is paying the difference.

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@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre wrote:

Not only did expanding and liberalizing insurance coverage push costs upward, greatly escalated as our society became more and more litigious, the government can't simply put in a reasonable benefit and leave it alone.

I don't think that the the intrduction of health insurance pushed up the costs - here, in Germany.

I mean, we talk about more than 120 years of mandatory health insurance, with a well documented history.

When you speak about the situation in the USA - you've no period at all (as far as I could find out) where you had 90% and more of all citizens health insured, not to speak about mandatory insurances.

So how do you know what will happen when and if everyone is insured?

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@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Well, I can't add personal experiences from the USA - neither of the 60's nor some more recently.

But I had a lot to do with health insurances (personally as well as from the historic perspective).
My father was a chief physician in a hospital since 1952 [and from 1945 till 1948 in a Franco-American POW-hospital as well].
Thus, I know a bit about the scale of charges and fees in hospitals and health insurance, too - but only in Germany .... and a couple of hospital run by the same nuns as my father's hospital in the USA.

Until the late 70's/early 80's routine chest x-ray was totally free here - we even had to do in school any year in the 60's.

But those costs have initially nothing to with insurance - though certainly (that's related to here) those with private insurances get more and more expensive extra treatment ... mostly totally unnecessarily.

No Walter, not totally free. In the 1970's a tube for a standard x-ray machine cost $10,000 in US dollars and there was a finite life to each tube. The costs of the x-rays had to cover that plus the cost of the machine itself, the technician's salary, film, processing, radiologist's fee or salary, transcripionist costs, storage, maintenance, clerical and other personnel expenses, and other general overhead. You didn't have to shell out a check but somebody did courtesy of the people of Germany via their taxes.

But if you were an American and had to pay say $200 in taxes for an x-ray that would have cost you $100 if you had acquired it from the private sector, how are you ahead? Unless of course you are in a tax bracket that doesn't require you to pay much, if anything in taxes, and others are paying taxes on your behalf. And when that becomes the case, there isn't too much incentive for you to care how much the x-ray costs.

How do I know what will happen when everybody is insured? I can't know any more than anybody else can. But if history is any indication, and so far it has produced the same results every single time, we can be pretty darn sure that if it is the government providing the insurance, the government won't do it more efficiently, effectively, or economically than the private sector can do it.

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:
Healthcare was affordable and accessible to most people before the government got involved in the 1960's.

Any source for that? You certainly read Health Care in the Early 1960's?

Walter, I took the trouble to read (most of ) your referenced article. I hope you don't mean to imply this is an objective study of the situation. It is instead an analysis, based on the explicit assumption that anything short of a uniform publically funded system equally acessible to all is unfair and socially regressive. In short it is an "analysis" based on the a priori postualte that a universal, publically funded system is best.

Foxfyre's statement that "... Healthcare was affordable and accessible to most people before the government got involved in the 1960's." , is fairly accurate. "Most people" means the majority, not everyone. The stratification of American society by race and class of that era wasn't unique to us then and it isn't unique now. I have noticed in my travels that the Turkish minority in Germany doesn't on the whole live quite as well as do the native Germans: moreover they don't appear to be treated the same way by the police and other officials.

I agree with you that there are alternatives other than a completely private system and one operated by government and insurers. Indeed we have such a system in this country today. I don't for a moment pretend that it is free of defects, or that these defects don't merit an effort to correct or reduce them. The argument here is about the tradeoffs involved in modifying the current system. Such tradeoffs exist for all such systems; including the government operated ones in the UK and Canada and the government-mandated insurance schemes in Germany.

Much is made of the supposed "unfairness" of our current "system". Implicit in that view are the unstated assumptions that in this area of life there should exist such a "system" that is free of individual cost, responsibility, and consequences for bad choices; or that such "systems" even exist that don't have costs and social consequences comparable (or worse) than the benefits they provide. Moreover, there is substantial distortion (sometimes by omission ) of the relevant facts in these arguments ."Uninsured" doesn't mean no access to medical care - one can pay himself or use public health facilities which are substantial. A large fraction of the uninsured are young, healthy and voluntarily choose to pay more for entertainment, electronic gadgets and other such discretionary expenses than they would for high quality insurance coverage (my company pays 80% of the costs for medical coverage and offers a fairly wide range of choices - still we find that a surprisingly large fraction of the young engineers, chemists and biologists we hire voluntarily elect to forego the insurance coverage just to escape the 20% charge.)

It is merely unfortunate that the political debate on this matter here and on these threads has degenerated mere polemics on competing abstract concepts of social values and design. In such an environment top-down "systems", designed by those who assign themselves the task of telling others how to live, always look better than freedom and individual choice and responsibility. Freedom is usually better.

Finally, I am bemused at the willingness of folks like Cyclo to believe that a government bureaucracy will serve them better, more efficiently and with more individual attention than even a "heartless" insurance company.

2 Replies

@georgeob1,

george, Fox keeps telling us about the cost of litigation increases health care cost, but I can find no such findings.

When anybody bases their opinion on their imagined causes for the higher cost of health insurance, it should be a red flag that that person's ideas are not only wrong-headed, but misinforms.

Quote:

Study: U.S. Health-Care Costs Most; Lawsuits Not to Blame

Posted on: Thursday, 14 July 2005, 18:01 CDT

1 Reply

@Foxfyre,

Quote:

Not only did expanding and liberalizing insurance coverage push costs upward, greatly escalated as our society became more and more litigious, the government can't simply put in a reasonable benefit and leave it alone.

Are you oblivious to the scientific advances in Medicine since the 1950 Fox?
How many people had pacemakers or open heart surgery in the 1950s?
How many people were on medicines for high blood pressure?
How many women were on contraceptives?
How many premature babies survived?

For that matter, what was the life expectancy in the 1950s compared to today?

I suppose health insurance would be cheaper if we only treated people medically the way they were treated in the 1950s. But don't you think that would be a little ridiculous Fox?

2 Replies

AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

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