@cicerone imposter,
From the NYT (look at the date of this article):
Quote:April 12, 1992
PHYSICIANS REFUSE MEDICARE PATIENTS
By MILT FREUDENHEIM
Many doctors in Manhattan, Miami and other places where medical care is expensive say they are curtailing services for the elderly because of sharp reductions in the payments they receive from Medicare.
Medicare payments used to be based on the fees that doctors in an area customarily charged their patients. But starting March 1, Medicare adopted a national payment schedule that sharply narrows the gap between more expensive and less expensive places.
For example, Medicare now pays $54 in Manhattan for an office visit for which doctors typically charge a patient under private insurance $80 to $110. But doctors in Rochester, where the average charge is only $38 to $43, now get $41 from Medicare.
Hawkeye 10 wrote:
Re: cicerone imposter (Post 3579943)
Obama's jobs are kinda on the expensive side. His outside hope is to create 4 million jobs which ain't much. He also plans on a system with weak controls, where the wealth can be skimmed by the corporate class and never get down to those it was intended to help. Obama could have created jobs on the FDR scale (12 million) for the same or less money if he wanted to do so. He should have done this, let the system work itself out through bankruptcies but let all individuals who are willing to work do so doing stuff that is good for America in return for a government paycheck.
we could be through this mess in just a few years, and then start to rebuild. As it is we are going to drag out the collapse at great expense to our kids and not deal with the reforms and rebuilding for the foreseeable future
An Analysis of Government Waste and the Failure of Socialized Medicine
May 24, 2007 by Libertarian
The US government has a lot to learn from the private sector. Government bureaucracies are the most inefficient organizations in the entire world. Just consider that the US government cannot account for billions of dollars spent on the Iraq war. How on earth do a group of accountants overlook billions of dollars? Corrupt companies and rogue governments have many similarities. There is greed and laziness involved. Therefore, companies and governmental organizations should be held to the same standard.
Public employers are inefficient because they do not have competition breathing down their necks. Accountability is low in public sectors because there is less of a chance of a coddled public employee getting fired. It is no surprise that government bureaucracies are inefficient and wasteful in the use of money.
Centralized planning a public activities causes a loss of oversight of what is really going on in the trenches. On the other hand, nimble modern private companies know when an employee sneezes. The US government should follow this example.
Many would argue that public bureaucracies should be replaced by the private sector. Then once these private companies takeover activities they can be audited by a watchdog group. So the ultimate answer may not lie in making public bureaucracies more accountable but in taking the initiative to close them down and replace them with nimble businesses in the private sector.
Socialized medicine would be a disaster:
A wide ranging commentary and daily dialogue on the media, politics, today's headlines and the popular culture.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Coming Health Care Mess
From Nadeem Esmail in the Wall Street Journal:
President Obama and Congressional Democrats are inching the U.S. toward government-run health insurance. Last week's expansion of Schip -- the State Children's Health Insurance Program -- is a first step. Before proceeding further, here's a suggestion: Look at Canada's experience.
Health-care resources are not unlimited in any country, even rich ones like Canada and the U.S., and must be rationed either by price or time. When individuals bear no direct responsibility for paying for their care, as in Canada, that care is rationed by waiting.
Canadians often wait months or even years for necessary care. For some, the status quo has become so dire that they have turned to the courts for recourse. Several cases currently before provincial courts provide studies in what Americans could expect from government-run health insurance.
In Ontario, Lindsay McCreith was suffering from headaches and seizures yet faced a four and a half month wait for an MRI scan in January of 2006. Deciding that the wait was untenable, Mr. McCreith did what a lot of Canadians do: He went south, and paid for an MRI scan across the border in Buffalo. The MRI revealed a malignant brain tumor.
Ontario's government system still refused to provide timely treatment, offering instead a months-long wait for surgery. In the end, Mr. McCreith returned to Buffalo and paid for surgery that may have saved his life. He's challenging Ontario's government-run monopoly health-insurance system, claiming it violates the right to life and security of the person guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Shona Holmes, another Ontario court challenger, endured a similarly harrowing struggle. In March of 2005, Ms. Holmes began losing her vision and experienced headaches, anxiety attacks, extreme fatigue and weight gain. Despite an MRI scan showing a brain tumor, Ms. Holmes was told she would have to wait months to see a specialist. In June, her vision deteriorating rapidly, Ms. Holmes went to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, where she found that immediate surgery was required to prevent permanent vision loss and potentially death. Again, the government system in Ontario required more appointments and more tests along with more wait times. Ms. Holmes returned to the Mayo Clinic and paid for her surgery. . . .
The experiences of these Canadians -- along with the untold stories of the 750,794 citizens waiting a median of 17.3 weeks from mandatory general-practitioner referrals to treatment in 2008 -- show how miserable things can get when government is put in charge of managing health insurance.
In the wake of the 2005 ruling, Canada's federal and provincial governments have tried unsuccessfully to fix the long wait times by introducing selective benchmarks and guarantees along with large increases in funding. The benchmarks and the guarantees aren't ambitious: four to eight weeks for radiation therapy; 16 to 26 weeks for cataract surgery; 26 weeks for hip and knee replacements and lower-urgency cardiac bypass surgery.
Canada's system comes at the cost of pain and suffering for patients who find themselves stuck on waiting lists with nowhere to go. Americans can only hope that Barack Obama heeds the lessons that can be learned from Canadian hardships.
@genoves,
genoves usually does't know what he's talking about, so he cuts and pastes from articles that doesn't even come close to telling the truth. Here's the "official" white house policy on health care.
Quote:
THE AGENDA • HEALTH CARE
THE AGENDA
HEALTH CARE
On health care reform, the American people are too often offered two extremes -- government-run health care with higher taxes or letting the insurance companies operate without rules. President Obama and Vice President Biden believe both of these extremes are wrong, and that’s why they’ve proposed a plan that strengthens employer coverage, makes insurance companies accountable and ensures patient choice of doctor and care without government interference.
The Obama-Biden plan provides affordable, accessible health care for all Americans, builds on the existing health care system, and uses existing providers, doctors, and plans. Under the Obama-Biden plan, patients will be able to make health care decisions with their doctors, instead of being blocked by insurance company bureaucrats.
Under the plan, if you like your current health insurance, nothing changes, except your costs will go down by as much as $2,500 per year. If you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of new, affordable health insurance options.
A wide ranging commentary and daily dialogue on the media, politics, today's headlines and the popular culture.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Coming Health Care Mess
From Nadeem Esmail in the Wall Street Journal:
President Obama and Congressional Democrats are inching the U.S. toward government-run health insurance. Last week's expansion of Schip -- the State Children's Health Insurance Program -- is a first step. Before proceeding further, here's a suggestion: Look at Canada's experience.
Health-care resources are not unlimited in any country, even rich ones like Canada and the U.S., and must be rationed either by price or time. When individuals bear no direct responsibility for paying for their care, as in Canada, that care is rationed by waiting.
Canadians often wait months or even years for necessary care. For some, the status quo has become so dire that they have turned to the courts for recourse. Several cases currently before provincial courts provide studies in what Americans could expect from government-run health insurance.
In Ontario, Lindsay McCreith was suffering from headaches and seizures yet faced a four and a half month wait for an MRI scan in January of 2006. Deciding that the wait was untenable, Mr. McCreith did what a lot of Canadians do: He went south, and paid for an MRI scan across the border in Buffalo. The MRI revealed a malignant brain tumor.
Ontario's government system still refused to provide timely treatment, offering instead a months-long wait for surgery. In the end, Mr. McCreith returned to Buffalo and paid for surgery that may have saved his life. He's challenging Ontario's government-run monopoly health-insurance system, claiming it violates the right to life and security of the person guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Shona Holmes, another Ontario court challenger, endured a similarly harrowing struggle. In March of 2005, Ms. Holmes began losing her vision and experienced headaches, anxiety attacks, extreme fatigue and weight gain. Despite an MRI scan showing a brain tumor, Ms. Holmes was told she would have to wait months to see a specialist. In June, her vision deteriorating rapidly, Ms. Holmes went to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, where she found that immediate surgery was required to prevent permanent vision loss and potentially death. Again, the government system in Ontario required more appointments and more tests along with more wait times. Ms. Holmes returned to the Mayo Clinic and paid for her surgery. . . .
The experiences of these Canadians -- along with the untold stories of the 750,794 citizens waiting a median of 17.3 weeks from mandatory general-practitioner referrals to treatment in 2008 -- show how miserable things can get when government is put in charge of managing health insurance.
In the wake of the 2005 ruling, Canada's federal and provincial governments have tried unsuccessfully to fix the long wait times by introducing selective benchmarks and guarantees along with large increases in funding. The benchmarks and the guarantees aren't ambitious: four to eight weeks for radiation therapy; 16 to 26 weeks for cataract surgery; 26 weeks for hip and knee replacements and lower-urgency cardiac bypass surgery.
Canada's system comes at the cost of pain and suffering for patients who find themselves stuck on waiting lists with nowhere to go. Americans can only hope that Barack Obama heeds the lessons that can be learned from Canadian hardships.
Another perspective on the horrendous socialization of medicine.The British government says that, at any
one time, there are about a million people
waiting to get into hospitals. According to
the Fraser Institute, almost 900,000 Canadian
patients are on the waiting list at any
point in time. And, according to the New
Zealand government, 90,000 people are on
the waiting lists there.
Those people constitute only about 1 to
2 percent of the population in those countries,
but keep in mind that only about 15
percent of the population actually enters a
hospital each year. Many of the people waiting
are waiting in pain. Many are risking
their lives by waiting. And there is no market
mechanism in these countries to get
care first to people who need it first.
