IT'S TIME FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

What's a MAC ?

You can blame congress for their inaction of making the necessary adjustments to fund and correct the longivity issues. How can we trust them to do what's right on universal health care?

Under the single payer system (the boogeyman I hope is coming), longevity ceases to be an issue.

So does most fraud. Gone are the brigades of bureaucrats who police who qualifies for public care… and at what level, the legions of lawyers who dispute those decisions, the countless billions wasted on parasitic profit (insurance), the absurdity of paying emergency room rates, for treatment of things that could have been nipped in the bud with routine care, all along with the veritable horror show of knowing tens of millions of our fellow Americans suffer needlessly from treatable ailments, in a system that inevitably holds the carrot in front of maintenance drugs instead of cures.

Who are we as a people that this debate isn’t simply about how best to get universal healthcare rather than if? It is astounding to me how many people whimper about who they don’t want to get healthcare, while many of their friends and loved ones go without.

Disclaimer: Nothing in the above paragraphs should be interpreted as an endorsement of universal insurance.

Pathetic, Bill, totally and absolutely pathetic. Why don't you go to North Korea or Cuba, or maybe Venezuela where profits are considered to be evil then, and quit bugging us here.

That's all you got? You'll find few people further opposed to communism than me, and you damn well know it. Perhaps you like the idea of government mandated private profit for health insurers? I doubt it. Maybe you like the intrusion onto business that strangles private industry with healthcare costs? I doubt that too. Maybe you're not bright enough to have considered the wild growth business might experience with that anvil removed from their neck? Maybe. Perhaps you're stupid enough to believe there's a slippery slope between single payer healthcare and communism? ...

Sometimes it makes sense for all people to join forces to better serve us all. Seems to work pretty good with national defense, police protection, fire departments and schools. Perhaps you'd like everyone to pay their own way for those things as well?

It is perfectly reasonable to fear the government will do a worse job of managing healthcare than what's being done now. George and Finn, while I disagree with them, raise real issues that may very well be prophetic in the long run. It is also perfectly reasonable to believe the United States of America is capable of keeping up with the rest of the civilized world.

It is not reasonable to believe national healthcare is akin to communism. That's just plain stupid.

That, I think, is a big point. The ones to gain are the small and medium sized businesses who will be able to grow now. Removing employer paid insurance removes a barrier to entry to markets and will, in fact, increase competition.

And uneducated.

Well said; removing the high cost of health care from small business will also allow them to hire more people - which is job one for our economy. Some people can't see the trees for the forest, because they are hung up on one tree.

They continue to insist the universal health care is socialism, but they can't even provide evidence for such crap! No developed country today with universal health care is socialist by anyone's imagination except for okie. He's completely at odds with all the facts in the world today.

There's no cure for stupid.

So, if congress isn't able to include a public option into the healthcare bill, I don't think I can support any plan that includes an insurance mandate. That would make this bill much too expensive, and give us no hope of reducing the rising price of health care, in fact it would do the exact opposite by forcing insurance companies to take on a lot of people they would normally not insure (which I agree with), but it would indeed raise costs.

Then, your feeling is that insurance company profits would exceed the costs of government inefficiency? Just asking.

It is.

Thanks for clarifying. As I said, just asking.

My feeling is, we would have to pay for both inefficiencies which has to trump either. My question is; why pay for either? Single payer eliminates both the government qualifiers AND the private profit (which will now be mandated at the point of a government gun.)

P.s. Thank you for your brilliant job of offering a Reader’s Digest version of Medicare. I am sure that helped lots of us get a better understanding of the current situation.

Impressive evolution. Good on you!

Competition is the key to reduce health care costs. The very reason insurance companies are fighting the public option should be obvious to anyone with a speck of knowledge of elementary economics.

How would an insurance mandate increase costs to the general public? There are mandates for auto insurance that don't seem to increase costs to the general public. In fact, such mandates probably reduce costs to the general public. I might mention that Germany and, I think, Switzerland, have health insurance mandates and the per capita health cost is about half ours.

You're going to mandate and require insurance companies to insure everyone that is currently 'un-insurerable' because of existing medical conditions (often EXPENSIVE medical conditions, such as diabetes and cancer). I think this is the right 'idea', but it WILL increase costs to everyone.

You're going to add 20-40 million people, many with expensive medical conditions that will cause the insurance companies to lose money insuring those people, which will be fixed by raising prices on everyone who isn't sick.

You are only repeating what you hear from the conservatives POV: why is it that all the developed countries with universal health care system still continues to provide health insurance to every one?

Our country already spends the most for health insurance while millions go without health care. There are many variables why this is the case, but your's only looks at one issue as the culprit. Universal health care means the system cares for everybody - and all countries with universal health care are doing it at less cost. Not only that but they are healthier and live longer.

What's our problem? Inefficiency, waste and fraud? More than likely.

What did credit card companies do when we recently enacted the credit card reform bill, which made credit card companies lose money on customers who could pay their bills?


You actually believe that forcing insurers to insure the previously un-insurable will NOT increase their costs? And you think I have a problem with understanding economics?


And we're not talking about Universal Health Care, we're talking about Universal Health INSURANCE, which is what is currently being debated in congress.

You are absolutely right, but is that necessairily bad? If we're going to have the entire population adequately insured, the people with a few, small claims are obviously going to carry the freight for those with expensive, and long term conditions. That's the only way insurance can work. Whether you get there by mandating private insurance, private insurance with govt. option, or go whole hog and adopt a single payer system, the same principle is going to apply. Now, govt. involvement may involve some subsidies and make it look like the costs have just gone away, but the healthy are always going to be supporting the rest. The only way out of it is to require medical insurance, with each person's premium being relative to the expected cost of his or her treatment. This is not much different than what we have now, except for the word "required." If that is what you want, there are merits to the idea, but it puts us back where we started. The insurance costs for some people with, say, cancer, are going to exceed the total income of most people in the country, even the ones with the magical $250,000 per year incomes.

I don't see such a plan raising the costs to all, by the way, but it is definately going to shift costs from one group to another. Again, while a public option may take the worst risks out of the private insurance pool, they're still going to be in someone's pool, and losses in the public pool are going to be paid by the same old public.

I take that back. It won't be paid for by the entire public. But it is going to be paid for by the part of the public with taxable incomes. It is going to be paid for in reduced services, and oh yeah, it is going to be paid for with "savings from waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary treatment." That sounds like a choice between less benefits, or more distribution of wealth.