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ORIGINAL: OrionTheWolf

Yeah but at what cost effectiveness is that achieved?

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ORIGINAL: mnottertail

works for me, yanno, the government is pretty fuckin good in technology....look at the military.

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The private sector develops all the technology that the military uses.

Yeah thats right, those evil fucking capitalist pigs.
ORIGINAL: Sanity

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ORIGINAL: Sanity


The private sector develops all the technology that the military uses.

Yeah thats right, those evil fucking capitalist pigs.

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ORIGINAL: servantforuse

If there is no profit motive for making new drugs, there will be no more new drugs. I worked at AT&T for 33 years for one reason. I made money there. Take away the money and you take away incentive to do anything.

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ORIGINAL: eyesopened

Your answer is reasonable.  I think my point was missed entirely.  My point is that the cost for healthcare needs to become sane.  The way it is now, it is insane. 

The man spent $2mil saving his wife and was not unhappy about that.  What he needed was for that treatment (specifically the medicine) to have a sane and humane cost.  The drug company paid no money for research and development.  The pills were being sold at over $100 each.  This wasn't a designer "feel good" drug, this was life-sustaining.  I personally spoke to the manufacturer about the "help" they offer for people who cannot afford their medication and they said they could not help because of Administrative Costs.  When the man had insurance, the drug cost $80 a pill.  I assumed they had received their Administrative Costs out of that $80.  I suppose it costs more to file papers when a person isn't insured?

Procdure costs at hospitals have as many different charges as there are insurance companies.  They can preform a mammogram at $100 or charge for the same procedure 3, 4, or 5 times as much.  If healthcare costs were not usury that same $2mil could have lasted longer, a fool who didn't save or get and education could pop for a mammogram. 

You may not be old enough to remember but when I first started working we weren't even offered health insurance because anyone with a job could easily afford to go to the doctor if they got sick.  I know.  I went regularly back then and never gave a thought about it.  Now I admit I am stupid and never planned and didn't save and if I have to die because of my poor choices, well then, I accept that and I really don't care.  But I do care that health, like justice, goes to the ones who can afford it.

Edited to add:
Also, in the first example, I want people to understand that $2mil lifetime limit is not such a huge number.  Most people look at that and think it can never happen... but it does.  It is totally unreasonable to expect an insurance company to foot all costs with no limit.  My point was, we hear so many pie-in-the sky things like we can "fix" healthcare but madating that insurance companies insure without thought to pre-existing conditions or lifetime maximums.  It can't be done!  We would end up spending more in bailouts than the public option would ever cost us.

The only thing I can think of is to put a cap on malpractice awards, prevent tort lawyers from advertising for every single drug, procedure, accident and mishap, and get realistic charges for medical services across the board and revise the Federal subsidies for hospital bad debt, especially where said hospitals have already sold their bad debt to collection agencies and IRS collections.

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ORIGINAL: rulemylife

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ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

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ORIGINAL: rulemylife


You know, like the swine flu vaccine that conservatives complained about the Obama administration authorizing money for, and are now complaining that there is not enough of it.

ORLY. Exactly who complained about it?

Amazingly enough, the person you are trying to defend, among others.

You do know there is a search engine on this site?

ORIGINAL: servantforuse

When will the Obama administration be held accountable for the swine flu debacle ? How in the world can the government run national health care when they can't even distribute a flu vaccine ? If Bush were still in office the left leaning media would be demanding answers. They are also silent on this matter.


And by the way, does it really take so much extra time out of your busy life, dealing with important investment managers who talk to major CEO's daily, to do those few extra keystrokes to say "oh, really" instead of  "orly"

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ORIGINAL: eyesopened

Your answer is reasonable.  I think my point was missed entirely.  My point is that the cost for healthcare needs to become sane.  The way it is now, it is insane. 

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ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy


And how do you make costs for healthcare "sane"?

The answer is quite simple: Lower the quality or access(either now or the future potential) or lower utilization.

Health care is no different than any other service/product. It responds to supply and demand on both the purchaser and provider side (although the elasticity of demand on the purchase side may be lower than other services/products).

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ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

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ORIGINAL: eyesopened

Your answer is reasonable.  I think my point was missed entirely.  My point is that the cost for healthcare needs to become sane.  The way it is now, it is insane. 

And how do you make costs for healthcare "sane"?

The answer is quite simple: Lower the quality or access(either now or the future potential) or lower utilization.

Health care is no different than any other service/product. It responds to supply and demand on both the purchaser and provider side (although the elasticity of demand on the purchase side may be lower than other services/products).

That is the reason that Obama's claims that health care will bankrupt the US without change is the big lie of the health care debate. As in the above example, there is some $ threshold where people will just not pay for life sustaining treatments and end of life care (by far the largest component of health care costs). There is some % of GDP where demand for healthcare MUST go down. And when purchase demand goes down is when costs will become "sane".

And what happens if, through government intervention, costs are forced to be "sane"? Then there is pressure on supply...ie you lose access and or quality, because if being a doctor isnt going to pay for the education and sacrifice taken to become one there will be fewer and lower quality doctors. If developing drugs becomes less profitable because they are unaffordable or because of price controls, then they wont be developed.

Supply and demand is an immutable law...Pelosi cant fool mother nature.

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ORIGINAL: rulemylife

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ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy


And how do you make costs for healthcare "sane"?

The answer is quite simple: Lower the quality or access(either now or the future potential) or lower utilization.

Health care is no different than any other service/product. It responds to supply and demand on both the purchaser and provider side (although the elasticity of demand on the purchase side may be lower than other services/products).

Yes, it is very different.

The more comparable analogy would be to government provided services that you already take advantage of.

Would you consider the military to be another service/product?  The police?  The fire department?

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Gallup: Most Americans Oppose Government Health Care




The debate over health care reform seems to have had a curious effect on peoples' attitude toward government health care. Gallup has found that a majority now does not agree that it is a government responsibility to provide health care coverage.

The Gallup Poll found that 50 percent disagreed that the government should cover people while 47 percent agreed. This represents a remarkable shift in attitude among the American people. As recently as 2007, 69 percent of the American people believed that the government should provide health care coverage, while just 28 percent disagreed.


Splitting the results by party affiliation shows that Democrats still favor government involvement in health care coverage by 74 percent to 23 percent, while Republicans disagree by 77 percent to 21 percent.


Gallup professes not to know why the incredible shift in just two years, but Hot Air's Ed Morrissey suggests that one reason might be that people are starting to realize the real cost of a government insured universal health care system and do not much like it.

"People have begun seeing what the bill would be to deliver that kind of system — and not just in dollars and cents. It has costs in choice, in access, in options for care that only became clear when Democrats rushed to impose such a system on the US. Before 2008, the question existed almost entirely as an academic one, and people gave a response based on broad concepts and lazy thinking."


Full article here

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ORIGINAL: eyesopened

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ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

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ORIGINAL: eyesopened

Your answer is reasonable.  I think my point was missed entirely.  My point is that the cost for healthcare needs to become sane.  The way it is now, it is insane. 

And how do you make costs for healthcare "sane"?

The answer is quite simple: Lower the quality or access(either now or the future potential) or lower utilization.

Health care is no different than any other service/product. It responds to supply and demand on both the purchaser and provider side (although the elasticity of demand on the purchase side may be lower than other services/products).

That is the reason that Obama's claims that health care will bankrupt the US without change is the big lie of the health care debate. As in the above example, there is some $ threshold where people will just not pay for life sustaining treatments and end of life care (by far the largest component of health care costs). There is some % of GDP where demand for healthcare MUST go down. And when purchase demand goes down is when costs will become "sane".

And what happens if, through government intervention, costs are forced to be "sane"? Then there is pressure on supply...ie you lose access and or quality, because if being a doctor isnt going to pay for the education and sacrifice taken to become one there will be fewer and lower quality doctors. If developing drugs becomes less profitable because they are unaffordable or because of price controls, then they wont be developed.

Supply and demand is an immutable law...Pelosi cant fool mother nature.

Your example doesn't hold water.  Supply/demand will work only if there is an even playing field.  For example, the very poor and those elibile for Medicare can get healthcare and utilize services.  There are many who simply do not go to doctors because of the cost.  Of course they should have saved for that, but individually one cannot negotiate the price or even be TOLD the price of a procedure.  There is one price for insurance company A, a different price for Medicare and different price for Medicaid and that price differs from state to state and in some cases, tier of Medicaid, a different price for self-pay.  Who would shop at any store whose prices were determined at the check-out stand based on whose membership card you held?  it happens every second of every day. Affinity cards/coupons/buyer points etc.That would be insane.  As is our method of healthcare.

If you go to a store to pruchase something, you are not told you will have to purchase other items so that you will not sue someone if the product doesn't work.  Doctors routinely order unnecessary and very expensive tests just so they can cover their ass if the patient later decides to sue.  That doesn't happen with other products and services.  of course it does, there are measures taken in the name of safety that add expense to virtually every product. That however is irrelevant to the issue of supply and demand.

No, healthcare is NOT just like any other product or service.  If it were, we would not even be having this debate.

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ORIGINAL: eyesopened

I was going to try to explain further why heathcare is not like every other product.  But I'm going to be busy now looking for all the BOGO sales and service coupons from my local heathcare providers.

COMPETITION.  Docs, at least where I live, do not compete for my healthcare dollar.  They turn away new patients.  I've never had Pep Boys tell me they cannot rotate my tires because they have enough customers already.

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ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

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ORIGINAL: eyesopened

I was going to try to explain further why heathcare is not like every other product.  But I'm going to be busy now looking for all the BOGO sales and service coupons from my local heathcare providers.

COMPETITION.  Docs, at least where I live, do not compete for my healthcare dollar.  They turn away new patients.  I've never had Pep Boys tell me they cannot rotate my tires because they have enough customers already.

All you have done is add another aspect of health care that IS like every other product...competition. Thank you for supporting the premise.

Now think about the consequences of adding 10s of millions of patients who otherwise felt they needed no coverage to the system on competition for services. Then think about the consequences of cutting medicaid reimbursements to docs and other providers by $500 billion on competition for services.

You want to talk about turning away new patients? How about patients waiting months and even years for treatment? That is the result of competition for services and is the inevitable result of government provided health care. Canada, England, Scandanavia...all have the same problems with access. Germany and France in particular have less problems with access because they have more doctors per capita...why? a robust private insurance system and in France's case huge government plan deficits.

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ORIGINAL: eyesopened

I was going to try to explain further why heathcare is not like every other product.  But I'm going to be busy now looking for all the BOGO sales and service coupons from my local heathcare providers.

COMPETITION.  Docs, at least where I live, do not compete for my healthcare dollar.  They turn away new patients.  I've never had Pep Boys tell me they cannot rotate my tires because they have enough customers already.

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ORIGINAL: eyesopened

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ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

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ORIGINAL: eyesopened

I was going to try to explain further why heathcare is not like every other product.  But I'm going to be busy now looking for all the BOGO sales and service coupons from my local heathcare providers.

COMPETITION.  Docs, at least where I live, do not compete for my healthcare dollar.  They turn away new patients.  I've never had Pep Boys tell me they cannot rotate my tires because they have enough customers already.

All you have done is add another aspect of health care that IS like every other product...competition. Thank you for supporting the premise.

Now think about the consequences of adding 10s of millions of patients who otherwise felt they needed no coverage to the system on competition for services. Then think about the consequences of cutting medicaid reimbursements to docs and other providers by $500 billion on competition for services.

You want to talk about turning away new patients? How about patients waiting months and even years for treatment? That is the result of competition for services and is the inevitable result of government provided health care. Canada, England, Scandanavia...all have the same problems with access. Germany and France in particular have less problems with access because they have more doctors per capita...why? a robust private insurance system and in France's case huge government plan deficits.

Well thank your for enlightening me.  My daughter discovered she was pregnant.  She had recently moved to a new state and did not have an ob/gyn.  She found ONE who was accepting new patients.  She had to wait 4 months for her fist appointment.  My daughter was already 5 months along before she was able to start recieving pre-natal care.  She does not live in a foreign country and she has insurance.  But thanks for letting me know how great we have it under our present system.

quote:

ORIGINAL: eyesopened

I was going to try to explain further why heathcare is not like every other product.  But I'm going to be busy now looking for all the BOGO sales and service coupons from my local heathcare providers.

COMPETITION.  Docs, at least where I live, do not compete for my healthcare dollar.  They turn away new patients.  I've never had Pep Boys tell me they cannot rotate my tires because they have enough customers already.