Presidential Health Care Plans

I take exception to both ebrown and edgar suggesting that those who oppose more socialization of healthcare are opposed because they don't wish to help the less fortunate. I did not make the converse argument in the points I made.

I want a system that is accessible to all but is not reduced to substandard healthcare, that does not discourage the brightest and best from going into medicine or that discourages pharmaceutical research. I don't want to be in the position of our Canadian friends who sometimes have to come HERE to get healthcare because the waiting lists are so long in their own country. I don't want the government making decisions about what healthcare I should have or what doctor I can see or what medicines I can take.

While it is obvious attention is needed to curb rising costs and make it more accessible, I think we need to think outside the box to fix what's wrong without scrwing up evething that in many ways makes the U.S. healthcare the best in the world.

You people always object when we make that charge, but I will continue to make it. Let the shoe fit whom it does and everybody else knows who they are.

Costa Rica has universal health care and no military. The developed countries in the world all have universal health care, and they include England, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. As the richest country on this planet, it's shameful that our own citizens are arguing "how" instead of "when."

How many Americans go to Costa Rica or England or Denmark or Sweden or Norway or Germany or Canada or Japan or Australia or New Zealand to have a serious ailment diagnosed and/or treated? Very few. How many come to the U.S. to have serious ailments diagnosed and/or treated? Thousands and thousands.

Ask a Brit or a Canadian how long they have to wait for surgery for anything that isn't immediately life threatening.

Is this what you guys really want? To diminish quality and access just to have the government pay the bills instead of writing a check? Do you honestly think the U.S. government will do any better job than these other countries that have tried it?

How do you know it will "diminish quality?" The US has always been the front runner in quality medical care. We develop most of the instruments and pharmaceuticals that are used around the globe. As a individual that has excellent health insurance, I want others to share my good fortune. 20 percent of the cost of health care costs in this country goes to paper work. We can easily transfer that cost by increasing the use of computers, and letting doctors determine what needs to be done for each patient rather than paper pushers in offices.

I would personally like to be able to choose between doctors, and socialized medicine would make that very hard. I was in the military, and they used a socialized medical system... and believe me... it is a very bad system.

I don't think the choices are necessarily between high quality and low cost.

Much of the problem comes from the fact that our system is currently being run by FOR-PROFIT insurance companies. Look, I'm all for profit in business, but health care, like education, IMO, ought not be a business, certainly not a for-profit business. The goal of business is to make money, rightly so, but the goal of health care is something quite different, don't you think ?

Whatever money insurance companies take in profits is money that a non-profit government agency wouldn't take, and therefore money that would go right into services without costing a penny to taxpayers.

re the cost of drugs: I know we need to do research, and I know that costs money, but that fact is used ad nauseam to justify price gauging by pharmaceuticals. How about some balance ?


I think it's a tough, complicated issue and one that cannot be simplified into low quality vs. high cost. America has some of the best & brightest minds in the world. We can make decent health care affordable and we can cover our poorer citizens as well.


The dialog needs to be re-opened in a serious manner after the campaigns are over. Our legistalors (those not owned by insurance companies) need to address this issue with truly sincere bi-partisan effort, something that has never been done.

How is that significantly different from the situation in which many Americans who are enrolled in HMOs or other health plans find themselves?

angie, You're my kind of people; let's find solutions. Nobody said it will be easy, but the efforts to provide universal health care in this country is well past due. The right always seems to use "fear" and "cost" for not doing something. What ever happened to "humanity?"

In the United States people have the option of joining an HMO or choosing one of numerous other options. If the government takes over the health care system, options will be extremely limited if we have any options at all. Yes, the U.S. has the best health care in the world and is at the forefront of research and development of new and better ways to treat and cure the ailments of humankind. Why? Because we have not socialized medicine.

Wherever we have socialized healthcare; i.e. medicade, medicare, VA, Champus, etc. you may find good doctors, but for the most part the best doctors take as few of these kinds of patients as possible because it is too costly to the doctor. Remove the incentive for doctors to do their own thing and be the best they can be, and you will diminish the quality of the people who enter the medical profession and you will diminish the quality of healthcare overall. How do I know? Because it has happened in ever other country that has nationalized its healthcare system.

And there is still the problem of those long waiting lists where people wait sometimes for years before they can get a needed procedure.

Indeed lets look for solutions. There has to be a better way to do it than the way we are doing it. But I will vote for the government to provide incentives and encouragement to be better, but leave it in the private sector. If the government takes it over, in the face of all the evidence out there, there is no reason to believe it won't get worse.

Foxfyre,

You are confusing two very different aspects of healthcare.

Everyone agrees that the US has been at the forefront of research and development. This is because of heavy government investment (of taxpayer dollars) into medical research and basic science. I don't think that anyone would argue that this use of taxpayer money was mis spent.

The problem is the delivery of healthcare and there are big problems.

1) There are 43 million Americans who do not have health insurance. This is a very big problem for both economic and humane reasons.

2) According to the CDC, the US pays 14.1% of its GDP on healthcare. This percentage is rising annually. Other industrialized nations which offer Universal coverage spend less, yet do better on many measures including infant mortality.
(source - http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml)

3) The health care system causes uncertainty. Coverage for a family of four costs about $9,000. This is not something to look forward to if you are unemployed.

As you know, the cost to businesses is also dramatically increasing each year (I don't have time to get numbers right now, but I will if asked). This is a difficulty for small business

The US does medical research very well. This is not a problem.

Healthcare delivery in the US is great, provided you are well employed, wealthy and not sick. Unfortunatly the number of people who are not in this category is way too high. With continuing rising costs, this number will only increase.

The evidence is that it is getting worse.

Rising costs are well above inflation each year and the percentage of GDP spent on healthcasre is continually increasing. This can not continue.

We will be forced to do something at somepoint. The suggestion we ignore the clear evidence of a problem is now ludicrous.

ebrown, can you find anything anywhere in any of my posts that does not suggest we can and should do better? For me the issue is not whether we have a problem. We do.

The issue is the best approach to fix it. Based on the experience of other countries who have socialized their healthcare, I do not support that as the best option to fix the problem. I say lets think outside the boxes and find a better way.

Okay Fox, You start.

I don't trust the federal government to do anything effectively. They have no business administering health care.

The only thing the federal government should deal directly in is national security and foreign policy.

The fact of the matter is that John Kerry will play almost no part in the decision to socialize health care. ultimately, he will propose legislation, that most likely, won't ever get off the floor of congress. If , and that is a BIG IF, it gets past congress, he will have th opportunity to either sign it or veto it. It is unlikely he would cut down his political baby.

Okay, tony, let's keep the government completely out of universal health care. HOw do you propose to do it without government involvement?

Why do you say that?

Other countries offer universal healthcare (including Canada) to their citizens and spend less of their GDP doing it.

Wealthy Canadians coming to the United States for healthcare is not evidence that the Canadian delivery system is bad. Quite the contrary, Canadians have better public health using several measures, including infant mortality rates.

I want to keep Government spending levels for Medical research and training.

I would trade our delivery system for that of Canada, (or Sweeden or Germany or ....) without a second thought.

Can you show me numbers that say I am wrong? (Remember that I care about Americans as a whole, not just the wealthy ones).

Why doesn't the Government start to regulate the Medical Insurance industry?

Why, for instance, are premiums so high? Is there a reason for this, or are we the patients being taken advantage of?

This particular gov't isn't going to regulate anything, Miller!
Yes, the insurance industry is a huge scam.

I don't think universal health care is an undertaking that would benifit very many Americans. Competition is the most effective and only price control in the free world. Inevitably, universal health care will cost more than health care does currently. What services and drugs don't cost more, will not be available.

ebrown writes:



I think you haven't read what I've written on this thread as I addressed this quite emphatically. Those Canadians with all that free health care are among those thousands and thousands who come to the United States for surgery that they have to wait years to get in Canada. Canada is but one example. So we socialize our medicine and make it like theirs. Then where do we go for surgical procedures when the waiting lists are too long?

All you will do by regulating insurance companies is drive them out of the healthcare business altogether. What we can do is eliminate malpractice suits for all but gross negligence. We can make doctors and hospitals and pharmaceutical companies immune from lawsuits when something goes wrong that nobody could have foreseen. We can cap malpractice suits. We can make it practical and attractive for the patients to review their own bills and question excess charges. We can allow doctors to order those tests and medicines that s/he deems appropriate instead of having to order everything whether needed or not in order to avoid a lawsuit.
The GOP medical savings plan idea alone could help just about everybody and would go a long way to bring healthcare costs down.

And once those protections are in place, we can just let the free market work. The two main reasons that your private healthcare insurance is so high is 1) because of the risk of litigation and resulting high malpractice and liability premiums, and 2) because artificially low payments from Medicare and Medicaid and Military insurance do not cover enough of the costs so that the insurance companies are forced to shift the burden to those who aren't poor or 65 or in the military.