IT'S TIME FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

Americans want freedom in selecting the source of health care, and they want their health care now, and at reasonable prices. Of course, this is leading to the nation's bankruptcy.


Jeremy Laurance: Rising healthcare costs can only end in bankruptcy


The border town of McAllen, Texas, offers America a lesson in the ruinous expense of healthcare. The over-65s who live there ran up medical bills of almost $15,000 a head in 2006, twice the national average. The truly alarming statistic, however, is that this was $3,000 more than the average annual earnings of a McAllen resident.


Ford already spends more on healthcare than on steel. Starbucks spends more on healthcare than on coffee. A US government report last week showed that national health spending grew at its fastest rate for 50 years in 2009, to $2.5 trillion, or 17.3 per cent of the economy, and is projected to rise to $4.5trn, nearly a fifth of the economy, by 2019.

America is the only leading industrial nation that does not guarantee universal healthcare for all its citizens. Yet, when challenged, Republicans respond to those who wonder how they can tolerate such a situation with the David Beckham question " if the England footballer had an ankle injury and was needed for a World Cup game, would we leave him to the mercies of the NHS?

To many Americans this encapsulates what is wrong with alternatives to their entrepreneurial, fee-for-service based system. Socialist medicine, UK-style, may be equitable, universal and cheap, but it cannot be relied on to deliver the right level of care at the right time " ie now. As the columnist Bob Samuelson put it at a recent Washington lunch: "Americans want care when they need it, they want freedom and autonomy to choose, and they don't want it to cost 100 per cent of the economy."

It is possible to have two of these but not all three at the same time. But Americans won't accept it. They are not prepared to compromise on access or quality and they believe they can innovate their way out of the cost problem " despite the lessons of history that show that medical innovation leads, inexorably, to increasing costs.

When the surgeon and writer Atul Gawande investigated McAllen's high medical costs last year he found a key reason was the dramatic overuse of tests, investigations and treatments driven by doctors who owned " and hence benefited financially from " the clinics and hospitals that provided them. Unnecessary medical care is estimated to cost between a quarter and a third of the total US healthcare budget.

Tom Daschle, former Democratic Senate leader and Obama adviser, spelt out the problems of rocketing costs, 50 million uninsured and the poor health of many Americans. "We have a health market, we don't have a health system," he said. But a suggestion that citizens had a right to health was noisily rejected by Republicans in the room who insisted health was neither a right nor a privilege, but "a desirable social good".

So too, is a health budget the country and its citizens can afford. On the basis of progress so far, it remains a distant dream.

Also, reconciliation is out once Congress passes the new budget resolution. Those instructions will expire then.

Time to scrap it and start fresh.

Why not, if Obama is sincere. Let's do it.

LET'S MAKE A DEAL

John Boehner and Eric Cantor have responded to Barack Obama's invitation to sit down and talk health-care reform. They answered in the form of a ransom note. Here are their demands:

1) "Assuming the President is sincere about moving forward on health care in a bipartisan way, does that mean he will agree to start over?"

2) "Does that mean he has taken off the table the idea of relying solely on Democratic votes and jamming through health care reform by way of reconciliation?"

3) "If the President intends to present any kind of legislative proposal at this discussion, will he make it available to members of Congress and the American people at least 72 hours beforehand?"

4) "Will the President include in this discussion congressional Democrats who have opposed the House and Senate health care bills?"

5) "Will the President be inviting officials and lawmakers from the states to participate in this discussion?"

6) "The President has also mentioned his commitment to have 'experts' participate in health care discussions....Will those experts include the actuaries at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), who have determined that the both the House and Senate health care bill raise costs?"

7) "Will the special interest groups that the Obama Administration has cut deals with be included in this televised discussion?"

8) "Will the President require that any and all future health care discussions, including those held on Capitol Hill, [be televised]?"

Just screams "we would like to cooperate with you to reform the American health-care system," doesn't it? But don't take my word for it: You'll really want to read the whole thing. These are not folks who concern themselves with the appearance of good faith. The only thing missing is an obscure riddle that Obama must answer before he can speak to Mitch McConnell.

But I think the administration should release a counter-proposal. They will agree to literally every one of the GOP's demands -- including the ones that don't make any sense -- in return for one, simple promise: The final legislation is guaranteed an up-or-down vote in the House and the Senate. No filibusters. No delays. No procedural tricks. If the GOP wants a clean process, I bet a deal can be struck here.

--Ezra Klein, Wash. Post

We have a constitutional system of government with a division of powers among the three branches and a fairly clear set of rules for the operation of the legislature.

The President is disingenuously proposing that all that be scrapped so he can engage in some set piece charade, perhaps like those that produced the special deals for Democrat Senators from Louisiana and Nebraska, and the one chaired by the President himself that created a blatantly unfair and unprincipalled exemption for labor unions from some taxes on which the Administration insisted were needed to achieve "deficit neutrality".

The Republicans have wisely asked in effect if he will consistently apply the principles he cited in his cynical offer. There is little likelihood that he will accept them, in the first instance, and no chance that they can be legally applied to circumvent the constitutionally established powers of the legislature in the second.

This administration, and its claques in the adoring liberal press, have become increasingly inclined to believe that no one can see the naked absurdity of its self-serving and cynical actions.

It' s going to be an interesting, and entertaining, year.

I'm not sure what constitution you have been reading. Ours doesn't mention filibusters, clotures, and super-majorities.

I think Obama and the Dems made deals to get the needed votes because they were small change compared to the need for HC reform. Moreover, the payoffs that occurred happen all the time in congress, and they have never been shown to be illegal. How can a nation sit back and allow 55,000 plus to die every year due to lack of coverage, allow business getting killed due to the burden of our HC system, allow HC costs to be over double what it is in other advanced countries, etc.?

I see nothing unconstitutional in what is proposed in the article. What exactly do you think violates the constitution?

Collusion of the Executive and the Legislature in an extra legislative forum that expressly calls for the parties to - in advance - surrender their constitutionally established independent functions and perogatives.

However that aspect of the issue is trivial compared to the juvenile "gotcha" cynicisim implicit in the Administration's offer.

As I noted earlier, it's going to be an entertaining year.

Just the facts, ma'am.

Whether it's one person, 18K, 22K, or 55K whom die each year for lack of coverage, it's a tragedy. But it's also a tragedy that 800,000 babies are killed each year because of a woman's choice. It's also a tragedy that 400K-800K people are homeless in this nation, more than 500,000 die each year from cancer and millions are currently without a job. In light of these far more egregious tragedies, deaths from lack of health care should be quite far down the list of problems the US should focus time, money and effort to solve.

And 2,500,000 million people die every year. I'm not all that concerned about 2%.

That being said; I could support a Universal HealthCARE bill.....it was the Universal Health INSURANCE bill I had a problem with (mainly the special interest giveaways).

You are going off on a tangent. 55,000 is a lot of people.

I assume then that the 3,000 who died in 9/11 were of no concern to you.

Do you also have a problem with Rep Sen. Shelby holding 60 judicial nominations until the administration gives AL two major government projects?

So, it's not 55,000. It's 22,000 and that's a half truth? Thank you.

Logic would say it is way over 55,000. Also, over half the personal bankruptcies are due to med expense.

Try to
Keep on topic...
O

Of course I have a problem with this.

And no, I don't really care about the people that dies on 9/11.

But like TKO said, this is all off topic.

Could you show us the logicical argument you're referencing?

Logic is often a substitute for facts.

Nothing Advocate?

Damn, I was really hoping to see your detailed logical argument you're apparently basing so much of your belief on.