Health Care Stories

I agree with doctorj 100%, except for the leaving the US part.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/7/751100/-How-I-lost-my-health-insurance-at-the-hairstylists

D'Oh!

By the way, at least in New York State, it wouldn't have gone down this way, since health insurance companies are not allowed to reject people for a pre-existing condition.

I'm not trying to take this off topic but here's a great article on the Dutch Socialist system

vidro3 wrote: they split everything 50/50

zing!

ba-dum-ch

HAHAHA.

Congressional Physicians Voice Opposition to Obama's Health Care Agenda

Yesterday, the Media Society of D.C. hosted a gathering of congressional physicians to discuss the nation’s health care debate. This is so far the only forum composed entirely of health care providers and included the following medical doctors: Reps. John Boozman (AR), Charles Boustany (LA), Paul Broun (GA), Bill Cassidy (LA), John Flemming (LA), Phil Gingrey (GA), Tim Murphy (PA), Tom Price (GA), and Phil Roe (TN). The town hall meeting at George Washington University Hospital Auditorium gave doctors and patients alike the opportunity to bring medicine back to the personal one-on-one relationship of the past. Legislators discussed everything from patient needs to insurance reform, expressing their ideas and concerns about what standardized health care would mean to the American public.

The congressmen discussed numerous consequences of a government-takeover of the health care industry, both for patients and the private insurance companies. Flemming made clear the adverse effects on private health care if a government system becomes mandate. He explained that public programs like Medicare and Medicaid are subsidized by private health care, driving costs higher and higher. By implementing standardized health care, the government will place even more pressure on the private sector, inevitably leading to its collapse. The government, according to Murphy, will undoubtedly set itself up to win against other programs, further driving the private sector out of business and giving consumers less options for their health care. In addition, Gingrey cited an estimate that over 120 million people would be dropped from their current plans by employer changeovers, taking more business from the private sector.

Public health programs in general, they discussed, have proven inefficient or have failed to be fully attentive to the needs of different patients. Without options, says Flemming, the United States would soon resemble Europe, allowing only the wealthy to opt out of the public system and purchase their own care. Roe also expressed concerns about the large discrepancies between cancer treatments in the United States and United Kingdom. He explained that in Europe’s government health systems, certain age groups and patients with specific diseases are not considered “cost beneficial” to treat and so do not receive care when needed. Also, programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, explains Murphy, were constructed and implemented in an age when x-rays were considered advanced procedures, making them outdated and due for revision. Accordingly, he revealed that the 110th Congress alone had proposed 452 bills to change Medicare and Medicaid, revealing the government’s own dissatisfaction with the programs.

The congressmen’s solutions ranged far and wide and accentuated a restructuring of the current situation. Murphy emphasized the need for individuals to be allowed to buy insurance across state lines, an idea that many conservatives have rallied around in years past. State mandates banning such limit the ability of patients to purchase the care they want, need, and can afford. He also proposed that insurance premiums be a tax write off, not a punishment. In addition, Price expressed a strong desire for liability reform, a component he believes could be an area of common ground between opposing sides of the health care debate. The hundreds of billions in liability costs are unnecessary and could be saved for better usage, as both sides would agree. However, Price pinpointed the true solution to the health care dispute: the patient must be in control. Individuals and their families must own and control their insurance policies. “Insurance companies have to be responsive to patients’ needs,” Rep. Price said, adding that the only way for this to occur is to give patients legal control over their own destinies.

Yesterday’s discussion was revealing and insightful, given the attendance of men both committed to government and the practice of medicine. As trained physicians, these legislators provided a unique insight into the current debate on health care. When all was said and done, their comments and arguments boiled down to one principle: the patient must come first. A one-size-fits-all government plan does not accomplish this, and until we can devise reforms that attend to the needs of patients as individuals, the whole system will continue to suffer.

eggcream wrote: And I've yet to hear from you how this is going to be paid for??

doctorj said it better than I ever could, which I notice you didn't respond to.

Americans spend more money on health care and get less per dollar than any other advanced nation on Earth. There's really no defense for this status quo, which I guess is why you refuse to address it.

eggcream wrote: [quote=Boygabriel]Labeling health care reform as 'socialism' is intellectually lazy.

I see yet another response from you not dealing with rescission or the fact that Americans spend more money on health care and get less per dollar than any other advanced nation on Earth.

If you don't think Barry is a socialist you are intellectually lazy. Barry believes everyone has a right to healthcare, the Socialist Party USA believes the same.
Barry believes that labor unions should be allowed to organize without a secret ballot. The Socialist Party USA believes the same.
The Socialist Party recognizes the right housing for everyone. Barry and ACORN workers worked to secure mortgages for unqualified people in sufficient numbers to collapse the housing and home-financing industries. And on and on.

And I've yet to hear from you how this is going to be paid for?? Hell, I'd like to see how many Dems are going to read the damn bill. I vote for none:

Washington (CNSNews.com) - House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that the health-care reform bill now pending in Congress would garner very few votes if lawmakers actually had to read the entire bill before voting on it.

“If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes,” Hoyer told CNSNews.com at his regular weekly news conference."

Change we can believe in, eh.

Talk about intellectually lazy! Major logic fail on your part. Let me illustrate simply:



Would you claim that Rush Limbaugh is a Nazi?

Mougar wrote: Limbaugh's generally out there, but where do you get anti-semitic from?

He's smart enough not to be overt about it. He speaks in code, with references to "shylocks" and "neo-cons."

His stance on Israel is more about being anti-Muslim, and about geopolitical strategy than about any love of Jews. Sure, he's not as obvious about it as Buchanan, Coulter, Hannity or even O'Reilly, but members of the tribe know anti-Semitism when we hear it.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/9/751537/-Healthcare-and-the-Quality-of-Life-in-the-South-of-France

Mougar wrote: Regarding wait times, my intuition would be that the US has significantly longer ER wait times because of the requirement of care, so the uninsured will go there instead of to a doctor's office in non-emergency situations. On the flip-side, I'd imagine it takes less time to see a GP or specialist since a smaller portion of the population is insured or can afford to see them.

With respect to the flip-side: it takes more time to see a GP in the US (especially tough after hours) and far fewer people have a regular GP. It costs a lot to become a doctor here, since tertiary education isn't free or heavily subsidized, so there's more pressure on doctors to specialize to repay huge student debt (and some are just in medicine for the money) which leads to a lack of GPs. In other countries, the education is paid for so doctors don't start out in debt, there's way more walk-in clinics where you can see the next available GP (for free or a tiny co-pay), or every person is required to pick or gets assigned a regular GP within x miles (with a backup system after hours) so there's no waiting.

In the US, you generally wait a shorter time to see a specialist in non-urgent cases if you can find one, with some exceptions. Depending on your insurance you can see a specialist without a referral here which is most uncommon in other countries. Took me a while to get used to. But it depends very much on your insurance what choices you have here and how hard it is to find a specialist who takes whatever network you're in. Also, the whole malpractice insurance nightmare in the US steers doctors away from certain specialities like OB; via various mechanisms, other countries don't have that problem so don't suffer those specific lacks.

Basically, in a dysfunctional market system like the US, the doctors tend to gravitate to where they can make most money, which is not general practice or high-lawsuit risk, whereas in other countries the playing field is more level or regulated so that you don't get so much oversupply of one type of doctor and an undersupply of another. If doctors' ability to make money is roughly constant with respect to specialization/GP, and is a function of both the number of patients seen and the hours worked, then patient demand over time ensures that you get roughly the distribution of doctors that the entire population actually needs, and doctors work on what they're interested in and good at, rather than perverse financial incentives skewing the supply (i.e. specialists in diseases of the rich). There's also less churn and less piecework to cover costs, so consultations can be longer as needed, and fewer unnecessary or marginal tests and interventions (each of which may bear a risk to the patient in addition to cost).

Oh, and doctors do way more healthcare and less paperwork, when there's only one standard electronic form to submit per consultation, when they don't have to fight insurance companies (the patient's or their own), and when everyone who comes in the door is guaranteed to be insured and getting paid is a non-issue.

Check out this interview, Bill Moyer with Wendell Potter. 20 minutes of fascinating discussion about the abuses in our healthcare system.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch2.html

has anyone been reading Atul Gawande in the New Yorker?

I found his article on health care costs between w Texas towns pretty compelling

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande

He argues, and I think convincingly, that heath care cost are driven by self interested physicians that have ownership in health are facilitates, e.g. x-ray labs

vidro3 wrote: this is pretty much what the Economist was saying a few weeks ago.

A well known communist rag! Oh wait.

In other news:

having your knowledge be on par with Cokie Roberts is not a good look.

Cokie was unable to report in the same thought that the House-proposed $500 billion would be transferred only from the very wealthiest Americans -- people like Woodward, Roberts and George Will (who would prefer to tax everyone else), that it's over 10 years, that it's offset by comparable amounts in reduced Medicare payments. Nor can she recall that in the exchange, we would provide coverage for nearly 40 million more Americans and end fraudulent practices like rescission, end prior condition exclusions and create a public choice for everyone else.