The US has the best health care in the world?

[WhoWee]

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/health/uninsured/index.html
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/health/uninsured/map_flash.html

Also to be considered, the underinsured.

Obama says a lot of things...is it 45 million or is it 50 million? It makes a difference when we're talking about people.

I'm afraid the collective result of your posts is that you made my point for me.

Also, while I appreciate your posting of the 1017 pages of HR3200, I have to admit I can't comprehend what specific problems it addresses, the clear objectives of the Bill, or the intended solutions - or consequences of implementation.

When I hire an attorney to work on a complicated problem, I expect him to understand the problem and resolve it. I also expect him to explain all of the possible outcomes, remedies, and consequences of our actions/agreements.

I also expect our elected officials to do the same. Our elected officials need to understand the specifics of the problems they address, have a clear understanding of their objectives in dealing with the problem, and consider all possible solutions.

I expect every politician who votes on a Bill to read the Bill and understand what they are voting on - if they can't, maybe they aren't qualified to represent us.

This is too important. This is 20% of our economy. This is life and death. This should not be a political matter. Why is health care political?

Again, we need our elected officials to act like adults and address the problem in a professional manner - regardless of how long it takes.

 

[Count Iblis]

Many of those life expectancy factors have little to do with medical practice or insurance.
http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=psc_working_papers
If the deaths from homicides and accidents and the like are also corrected for the US moves to or near the highest in life expectancy.

Those other factors are related to the same "small government" ideology that makes health care reform so very controversial. There are many more extremely obese people in the US than in Europe, because a lot of the government policies we have in Europe to fight obesity would be regarded as unacceptable government interference in the US.

The reason why it took so long for the US to curb back on smoking is basicaly similar. In the end, you had to have a Senate hearing to prove that nicotine is addictive and only then could action be taken.

You also believe that people have the right to bear arms.

 

[mheslep]

...There are many more extremely obese people in the US than in Europe, because a lot of the government policies we have in Europe to fight obesity would be regarded as unacceptable government interference in the US...

To what government policies are you referring? What policies does Europe have to fight obesity, aside from research efforts which the US has as well?

 

[mheslep]

The Palin effect:

AKA the http://books.google.com/books?id=ep...p rangel nazis&pg=PA247#v=onepage&q=&f=false".

 

[Al68]

Hmmmm, any reform will have to include the government stepping in in one way or another.

Huh? How about stepping out instead?

I would consider actual "reform" to be a reduction of government involvement from what we have now, not an increase. Free market reform.

Adding corruption and regulation while using force to restrict individual liberty isn't "reform" just because the advocates use the word reform in the name.

 

[Al68]

Objectives:
1). Eliminate lifetime caps
2). Eliminate dropped coverage when illness strikes
3). Eliminate the denial of coverage due to preexisting conditions
4). Provide a means to affordably insure 50 million more people
5). Reduce the cost of medical care
6). Increase the efficiency of the medical care systems

So those of who currently choose to buy a policy with a lifetime cap (because it's cheaper), doesn't cover pre-existing conditions (because I have none and it's cheaper) or anything else I have chosen, should be denied our right to contract? My insurance policy is a private agreement between me and a private company offering the policy. The government is not a party to that contract.

Calling millions of individual private contracts a "system" doesn't change the facts. Government is too involved in our private lives and we should now accept the claim that it's not involved enough?

Why is it so difficult to understand that my health care is my private business?

 

[WhoWee]

Huh? How about stepping out instead?

I would consider actual "reform" to be a reduction of government involvement from what we have now, not an increase. Free market reform.

Adding corruption and regulation while using force to restrict individual liberty isn't "reform" just because the advocates use the word reform in the name.

Are you absolutely sure you don't want the IRS to enforce health insurance? If they are just half as effective as the (car insurance lobby) states enforcing car insurance mandates by suspending drivers licenses - everyone will either be insured or (in jail?), or homeless?

Can anyone find a section in HR3200 that addresses eligibility of persons made homeless by the IRS for not purchasing health insurance - will they still be eligible for medicare/medicaid?

 

[Evo]

Off topic posts deleted.

 

[DavidSnider]

The Palin effect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYlZiWK2Iy8

Palin effect? The woman in that video is a Lyndon LaRouche follower.

 

[adrenaline]

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single_payer_resources.php

I have become a member of PHNP ( physicians for national health plan) after over a decade dealing with all the games the private insurances play. ( And, no national health insurance is not socialized medicine anymore than medicare ( national health insurance for the elderly) socialized our health system.

I personally deal with less beaurocracy from medicare and medicaid.

For anyone who thinks the private sector automatically means less cost and greater efficiency and better care, they don't know about the failure of medicare advantage plans ( privatized medicare ) and privitization of medicaid into HMOs. https://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=8265&type=0 As a physician, I would have had to hire at least a dozen more administrative personell just to deal with the administrative paperwork from these plans. Thousands of patients in my community who opted into those private plans suddenly were without a single doctor who would take them. ( By the way, none of the medicare advantage plans pays for your first three days in the hospital or past 3 days in rehabilitation...as for the latter, if you are an elderly with a stroke, you only get three days of rehab...)

Remember this, private plans ration to protect their corporate interests and profits. And believe me they do.
The government may ration but ethically, I can stomach rationing based on resources available vs. frank greed.

 

[turbo]

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single_payer_resources.php

I have become a member of PHNP ( physicians for national health plan) after over a decade dealing with all the games the private insurances play. ( And, no national health insurance is not socialized medicine anymore than medicare ( national health insurance for the elderly) socialized our health system.

I personally deal with less beaurocracy from medicare and medicaid.

For anyone who thinks the private sector automatically means less cost and greater efficiency and better care, they don't know about the failure of medicare advantage plans ( privatized medicare ) and privitization of medicaid into HMOs. Google 'failure of medicare advantage plans". As a physician, I would have had to hire at least a dozen more administrative personell just to deal with the administrative paperwork from these plans. Thousands of patients in my community who opted into those private plans suddenly were without a single doctor who would take them.

Remember this, private plans ration to protect their corporate interests and profits. And believe me they do.
The government may ration but ethically, I can stomach rationing based on resources available vs. frank greed.

Thank you for weighing in with a doctor's viewpoint. My wife and I had a wide selection of doctors on her old insurance plan, but then her employer switched to BCBS. There are practices here that operate with a single doctor and one or two staff, and they can't afford all the administrative overhead that some HMOs place on them (denials, re-coding, resubmission, delays in payment...) My wife had to find a new doctor, after having had a wonderful country-doctor for years. I was able to keep mine because his multi-doc practice is affiliated with the local hospital.

I was the network administrator for a very large multi-location ophthalmic practice, and I was shocked to see the aging of the practice's receivables. Much of it would get paid eventually, but in the meantime, it limited the practice's line of credit from the commercial banks. When a patient's vision is at risk, they would get prompt treatment, then the insurance companies would play games with coding requirements, bouncing claims, etc. I wrote accounting programs for other businesses before taking that job, and I can assure you that manufacturers, large trucking companies, etc would have had their lines of credit pulled if their receivables were in such a sorry state.

My cousin was that practice's top coding specialist, and she currently works for a pediatric ophthalmologist who takes a lot of Medicaid referrals. She loves her job now - the coding standards for Medicaid are more transparent and the rules don't change without notice. That leaves more time for her to fight the private insurers for payment.

 

[DavidSnider]

I was the network administrator for a very large multi-location ophthalmic practice, and I was shocked to see the aging of the practice's receivables. Much of it would get paid eventually, but in the meantime, it limited the practice's line of credit from the commercial banks. When a patient's vision is at risk, they would get prompt treatment, then the insurance companies would play games with coding requirements, bouncing claims, etc. I wrote accounting programs for other businesses before taking that job, and I can assure you that manufacturers, large trucking companies, etc would have had their lines of credit pulled if their receivables were in such a sorry state.

I've just started writing software geared towards automating some of the administrative work in the health care industry. I am convinced that the overhead is largely due to administrative waste and not "value added services" as the insurance companies claim.

 

[adrenaline]

at least half of the physicians or more favor a single payor national health insurance
http://www.homepages.indiana.edu/011604/text/docs.shtml

Jama has a survey that shows a majority of physicians favor it, and here is one where a clear majority favored it http://www.pnhp.org/news/2004/february/most_physicians_endo.phpand

all in part due to the waste we see on the admininstrative end

 

[Evo]

at least half of the physicians or more favor a single payor national health insurance
http://www.homepages.indiana.edu/011604/text/docs.shtml

Jama has a survey that shows a majority of physicians favor it, and all in part due to the waste we see on the admininstrative end

My doctor is against it, he also said the majority of doctors (at least those he's affiliated with) are against it. I wonder if it depends on the doctor's practice.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

but no one takes such claims seriously, do they?

Yes. Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh have orchestrated this fiasco in an effort derail legitimate reform. I don't know if they are delusional or crooks, but they have a large enough audience to distract the media from legitimate discussions. News Fauxs like Fox eat this stuff up! I would wager that 20-30% of the country believes this idiocy.

The irony is that while these people persuade their audiences that they are fighting for America, fighting for freedom, fighting for this that and the other thing, they are in fact trying to steer the public herd right over a cliff. We desperately need health care reform in this country, but these people will do everything in their power to prevent it in order to "hand Obama his Waterloo", as one Republican put it. What they are really doing, whether they know it or not, is working to hand the American people their Waterloo.

This is the paradox of American politics today: It is in the best interest of the Republican party to block health care reform, whether it best serves the public interest of not, because, if successful, Obama will almost certainly be reelected in 2012. The Democrats will have taken-on and handled one of the biggest problems that we face - something the Republicans have never even tried to do.

 

[adrenaline]

My doctor is against it, he also said the majority of doctors (at least those he's affiliated with) are against it. I wonder if it depends on the doctor's practice.

Probably, the specialties most against it are radiologists ( who never have to get precerts or priorauthorizations since the primary care docs do all the work) and anesthesiologists ( once again, the elective surgery has been begged for by the surgeon or primary care doc.) They don't have to hire extra personell to deal with precerts and denials, extra coders and billers etc. In addition, many doctors are republicans and they tend to listin to the misinformation propagated by hannity, rush, etc.

There is just as much misinformation among doctors about national health insurance being "socialized medicine". My retort is ...as a provider for medicare patients, are you in any way a salaried government employee or restricted in ordering necessary tests and treatments ? ( Medicare has far less restrictions than many of the HMOs). Granted, they pay me less but for every 100 dollars I collect from medicare I use probably 3 dollars for administrative work vs almost a third of the 100 dollars I collect from private insurers.

These doctors may not have much sense of the business end of their practice, as senior partner who does not believe all the business end should be handeled by accountants, I am acutely aware where every cent goes to.

 

[mheslep]

at least half of the physicians or more favor a single payor national health insurance
http://www.homepages.indiana.edu/011604/text/docs.shtml ...

The study is in a respected peer reviewed journal. I also read that, the lead author of this study purported to determine the opinion of physicians regarding single payer insurance Dr. Aaron E. Carroll, is on the the board the physicians group advocating single payer insurance - PNHP. It also appears he is a fairly single minded advocate for single-payer from his statements on the web.
http://pnhp.org/about/board_of_directors.php

The PNHP http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/april/physician_opinion_ti.php" of the study also states:

The findings came from a random sample of 5,000 physicians from the AMA Masterfile. ...

About 500 questionnaires were undeliverable, 197 were returned by physicians no longer in practice, and 2,193 were completed (51% response rate) and returned to Drs. Carroll and Ackermann.

Thus they reported results come not from a random population, but from those that responded.

It also seems odd that PNHP would have only http://www.pnhpwesternwashington.org/about.htm" members in a country with 800,000 physicians, the majority of which per Carroll's study support single payer.

 

[turbo]

(Medicare has far less restrictions than many of the HMOs). Granted, they pay me less but for every 100 dollars I collect from medicare I use probably 3 dollars for administrative work vs almost a third of the 100 dollars I collect from private insurers.

The efficiencies gained from adding under-insured and uninsured people to a public option might make opting out of CIGNA, BCBS, and other plans look like a good deal for smaller practices. Slash administrative costs and reduce the aging of receivables to something attractive to your lenders, if you should need new equipment, etc. Maybe the big HMOs would have to curb some of their greed in order to keep docs participating in their plans. That certainly would not be a bad thing for the doctors. Private practices have been fattening insurance companies (involuntarily) with floating lines of credit in the form of denials and delays, and that's robbery. The banks were forced some time ago to clear our checks promptly instead of holding them for a week or two and investing the "float" - it's time that insurance companies were held to similar standards.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Granted, they pay me less but for every 100 dollars I collect from medicare I use probably 3 dollars for administrative work vs almost a third of the 100 dollars I collect from private insurers.

As mentioned earlier, I have heard that 50-80% of the cost of running a doctors office can be attributed to paperwork and insurance regulations. Do you think these are somewhat inflated and that the real number is more like 30%, or could the numbers legitimately vary between 30-80%, when everything is considered and depending on the office?

Also, do you have any thoughts as to how the cost of medical care, from an operational point of view, can be reduced [beyond illness prevention]?

 

[mheslep]

...

There is just as much misinformation among doctors about national health insurance being "socialized medicine". My retort is ...as a provider for medicare patients, are you in any way a salaried government employee or restricted in ordering necessary tests and treatments ? ( Medicare has far less restrictions than many of the HMOs). Granted, they pay me less but for every 100 dollars I collect from medicare I use probably 3 dollars for administrative work vs almost a third of the 100 dollars I collect from private insurers...

How do we address losses attributed to Medicare fraud? That is, one can make the argument that Medicare saves administrative costs by not hiring the staff to properly administrate, and this is reflected in the http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/May/09-ag-491.html" in fraud losses every year. Extend such a system as is to the entire country and either the fraud breaks the treasury or the new system must also vastly ramp up administration costs.

 

[WhoWee]

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single_payer_resources.php

I have become a member of PHNP ( physicians for national health plan) after over a decade dealing with all the games the private insurances play. ( And, no national health insurance is not socialized medicine anymore than medicare ( national health insurance for the elderly) socialized our health system.

I personally deal with less beaurocracy from medicare and medicaid.

For anyone who thinks the private sector automatically means less cost and greater efficiency and better care, they don't know about the failure of medicare advantage plans ( privatized medicare ) and privitization of medicaid into HMOs. https://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=8265&type=0 As a physician, I would have had to hire at least a dozen more administrative personell just to deal with the administrative paperwork from these plans. Thousands of patients in my community who opted into those private plans suddenly were without a single doctor who would take them. ( By the way, none of the medicare advantage plans pays for your first three days in the hospital or past 3 days in rehabilitation...as for the latter, if you are an elderly with a stroke, you only get three days of rehab...)

Remember this, private plans ration to protect their corporate interests and profits. And believe me they do.
The government may ration but ethically, I can stomach rationing based on resources available vs. frank greed.

I'm curious as to how much HIPPA has cost your practice and network - any estimate?

 

[adrenaline]

How do we address losses attributed to Medicare fraud? That is, one can make the argument that Medicare saves administrative costs by not hiring the staff to properly administrate, and this is reflected in the http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/May/09-ag-491.html" in fraud losses every year. Extend such a system as is to the entire country and either the fraud breaks the treasury or the new system must also vastly ramp up administration costs.

There is fraud with private insurance as well, separate issue but does not negate the benefit of single payer insurance.

Now let me also define what is medicare fraud... if I see a single mother who is uninsured and I treat her sinus infection for free, and I charge a medicare recipient 35 dollars to treat the same problem, that is fraud. In other words, medicare won't let me play robin hood doctor.

If I admit a patient for what I presumed is systolic congestive heart failure and she ends up with diastolic heart failure ( the latter pays less), that is fraud. In the meantime, I have admitted the patient while on call for another doctor at 2 am and coded it as systolic chf, the attending doctor gets an echo that shows it is diastolic heart failure ( two days later) so he codes it diastolic heart failure. Did I commit fraud? No, I coded it according to my clinical assessment for the night. In other words, medicare definition of fraud is very, very broad.

 

[WhoWee]

There is fraud with private insurance as well, separate issue but does not negate the benefit of single payer insurance.

Now let me also define what is medicare fraud... if I see a single mother who is uninsured and I treat her sinus infection for free, and I charge a medicare recipient 35 dollars to treat the same problem, that is fraud. In other words, medicare won't let me play robin hood doctor.

If I admit a patient for what I presumed is systolic congestive heart failure and she ends up with diastolic heart failure ( the latter pays less), that is fraud. In the meantime, I have admitted the patient while on call for another doctor at 2 am and coded it as systolic chf, the attending doctor gets an echo that shows it is diastolic heart failure ( two days later) so he codes it diastolic heart failure. Did I commit fraud? No, I coded it according to my clinical assessment for the night. In other words, medicare definition of fraud is very, very broad.

You're saying that Government regulations (regarding medicare) are the actual problem (in the context of 35% estimate of fraud in the system)?

 

[adrenaline]

Also, do you have any thoughts as to how the cost of medical care, from an operational point of view, can be reduced [beyond illness prevention]?

it is estimated we would save 700 billion a year if we did not have to practice defensive medicine.
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_12973517

we all do it. This is our line of thinking

1. What is the clinical diagnosis based on the symptoms and signs I have?
2. what tests do I reasonably order to rule in or out the disease?
3. And what tests do I need to order in case my a$$ gets sued?

Tort reform can mean something as simple as exonerating a physician if he or she practices evidence based medicine. That is not the case currently, a recent ruling where a 54 year old engineer agreed not to have his PSA done ( since it is one of the few cancer tests that has not really been shown to affect mortality) after being counseled extensively by a resident at a medical school and was aware of the risk involved in not testing. ( By the way the american cancer society and the united task force prevention service do not recommend routine psa screening). He ended dieing of prostate cancer and the family sued the medical school and won based on the fact that evidence based medicine was trumped by "standard of care". ( the latter by the way is not always the "best" care based on recent clinical evidence).

granted, there are doctors who over order tests for financial gain although the Stark laws have eliminated most of that, but the majority of us are just scared to death of being sued.

there is an adage in medicine " you don't get sued for the test you ordered, you get sued for the test you didn't order..."

 

[adrenaline]

You're saying that Government regulations (regarding medicare) are the actual problem (in the context of 35% estimate of fraud in the system)?

all I am saying is their definition of "fraud" is overencompassing and thus the numbers may be inflated. How much, I honestly don't know...

 

[adrenaline]

I'm curious as to how much HIPPA has cost your practice and network - any estimate?

I had to send my office manager to numerous classes that were not cheap, hired a consultant and software engineer to make our electronic medical records Hippa compliant, had to renovate our office ( put glass panels between nurses stations and patient rooms) and make our office hippa compliant, etc. probably 50-75 thous?

 

[turbo]

You're saying that Government regulations (regarding medicare) are the actual problem (in the context of 35% estimate of fraud in the system)?

That is an outrageously inflated number and I'd love to see where it came from. According to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud:

he U.S. spends more than $2 trillion on healthcare annually. At least 3 percent of that spending — or $68 billion — is lost to fraud each year. (National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association, 2008)

Medicare and Medicaid made an estimated $23.7 billion in improper payments in 2007. These included $10.8 billion for Medicare and $12.9 billion for Medicaid. Medicare’s fee-for-service reduced its error rate from 4.4 percent to 3.9 percent. (U.S. Office of Management and Budget, 2008)

http://www.insurancefraud.org/stats.htm

I didn't see any 35% fraud numbers in there. If you want to stop Medicare fraud, stop the companies that lease or sell really expensive wheelchairs, scooters, etc to people who either don't need them and/or never receive them anyway. Doctors are not responsible for initiating that kind of fraud, for the most part.

 

[adrenaline]

The study is in a respected peer reviewed journal. I also read that, the lead author of this study purported to determine the opinion of physicians regarding single payer insurance Dr. Aaron E. Carroll, is on the the board the physicians group advocating single payer insurance - PNHP. It also appears he is a fairly single minded advocate for single-payer from his statements on the web.
http://pnhp.org/about/board_of_directors.php

The PNHP http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/april/physician_opinion_ti.php" of the study also states:
Thus they reported results come not from a random population, but from those that responded.

It also seems odd that PNHP would have only http://www.pnhpwesternwashington.org/about.htm" members in a country with 800,000 physicians, the majority of which per Carroll's study support single payer.

good points as to membership I can tell you I don't pay my membership dues. Only 25% of doctors in the country are technically members of the AMA but tthe AMA claim to represent us...Most doctors in general don't agree with all the tenets of the AMA or PHNP so we choose not to belong to anything in particular. As a whole, doctors are lousy at organizing our group into a collective voice...

 

[Al68]

There is just as much misinformation among doctors about national health insurance being "socialized medicine".

The current proposal outlaws private contracts, imposes income tax penalties on those that don't join the "system", and uses force to confiscate wealth from some Americans to give to others. Calling it socialist is misinformation?

What other word could be used to describe government controlling the economic activity of citizens?

 

[adrenaline]

I didn't see any 35% fraud numbers in there. If you want to stop Medicare fraud, stop the companies that lease or sell really expensive wheelchairs, scooters, etc to people who either don't need them and/or never receive them anyway. Doctors are not responsible for initiating that kind of fraud, for the most part.

I think people assume if there were improper payments that fraud was involved when many times it is a matter of coding ( as I showed in my example.).

It's interesting that when I went to electronic medical records I found that I had undercoded by over 100 thousand a year. Naturally, this caught the attention of medicare since my charges were so much higher, they could not find any overpayment (thank you electronic medical records) and still found underpayments. It's amazing, they will collect from us if we over charge but they donn't reimburse us when they found we undercharge...I'll bet that is not in any of these studies.

 

[adrenaline]

The current proposal outlaws private contracts, imposes income tax penalties on those that don't join the "system", and uses force to confiscate wealth from some Americans to give to others. Calling it socialist is misinformation?

What other word could be used to describe government controlling the economic activity of citizens?

outlaws private contracts? here is a fact check, for the record, britain ( the standard of socialized medicine) has a very health private insurance market ( half the population uses the private sector.)


http://factcheck.org/2009/08/private-insurance-not-outlawed/

In fact, the bill envisions a wide variety of private policies being offered to the public through a new national health insurance exchange resembling the Federal Employee Health Benefits plan, which makes 269 different private plans in total available to federal workers, including members of Congress.

What page 16 actually says is that those who like their current policies are "grandfathered" and can keep them, even if the policies don’t meet new standards.

The false idea that H.R. 3200 would prohibit insurance companies from accepting new policyholders stems from the conservative Investors’ Business Daily, which made the claim in a July editorial:

Investor’s Business Daily, July 15: It didn’t take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House’s "health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal. … The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:

"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised – with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

Here, however, is the paragraph immediately preceding IBD’s quote:

H.R. 3200: Subject to the succeeding provisions of this section, for purposes of establishing acceptable coverage under this division, the term “grandfathered health insurance coverage” means individual health insurance coverage that is offered and in force and effect before the first day of Y1 if the following conditions are met.

In other words, the quote IBD references is part of the definition of “grandfathered” health insurance coverage. That quote doesn’t say that insurers can’t take on new enrollees; it says that if they do, that won’t be considered grandfathered coverage. In other words, any new individual policies would have to meet minimum standards and be offered through the new health insurance exchange.

The proposed health care model would indeed encourage individuals not already covered by employer-provided health policies to buy coverage through the nationwide insurance exchange. The choices would include a range of private plans meeting the new standards, as well as a new federal plan, as the House bill is currently written. People with individually purchased insurance who wish (or need) to change their grandfathered plans will have to purchase insurance through the exchange. If an individual would rather keep his plan, he can do so for as long as the insurance company keeps offering it. At any rate, nobody will be forced into the federal health insurance option – they’ll have their pick of private ones.

In fact, some say the biggest change will be that individual insurance gets better. "In a lot of ways it would improve options for people buying coverage on the individual market right now," said Sara Collins, vice president of the Commonwealth Fund, a nonpartisan organization that supports “a high performing health care system." The exchange plans would not be underwritten, and would be required to provide a minimum level of service to everybody. There would also be subsidies available for individuals and small employers to offset the cost of purchasing insurance through...

I opposed the obama health plan because it was not a single payer insurance, even the physicians for national health plan opposed it.http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/july/why_obamas_public_o.php

Why Obama's Public Option Is Defective, and Why We Need Single-Payer

the phnp support a flat tax to fund this on everyone. so they are not socialist.

As for a miniscule tax on someone who is irresponsible enough to do without health insurance ( even when the government gives it to you) , it's called responsibility, since the uninsured drive up the cost for everyone else around them, including the insured.http://www.usatoday.com/money/indus...-uninsured-costs_x.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno

as for the surtax on those of us who make more than $350,000... cry me a river...I'm not going to hurt one bit by the small surtax but then I didn't buy into the huge Mcmansions and luxury car "necessities"' that afflicts most of my collegues. ( In fact my house will be paid off in five years and all my cars are paid for ( old jeep, civic hybrid and silverado truck.)

 

[DavidSnider]

The current proposal outlaws private contracts, imposes income tax penalties on those that don't join the "system", and uses force to confiscate wealth from some Americans to give to others. Calling it socialist is misinformation?

What other word could be used to describe government controlling the economic activity of citizens?

God forbid they confiscate the wealth we are borrowing from the Chinese.

 

[Al68]

The current proposal outlaws private contracts, imposes income tax penalties on those that don't join the "system", and uses force to confiscate wealth from some Americans to give to others. Calling it socialist is misinformation?

What other word could be used to describe government controlling the economic activity of citizens?

outlaws private contracts? here is a fact check, for the record, britain ( the standard of socialized medicine) has a very health private insurance market ( half the population uses the private sector.)

http://factcheck.org/2009/08/seven-falsehoods-about-health-care/
http://factcheck.org/2009/08/private-insurance-not-outlawed/

Your link verifies that private contracts would be outlawed. I never said all private insurance would be outlawed. But mine will be, along with any type of policy I would ever be interested in buying. I, and many others, will have to buy the kind of insurance that we don't need or want, or are morally opposed to, or pay the tax penalty and live without medical insurance.

I notice you didn't answer my question: What other word could be used to describe government controlling the economic activity of citizens?

 

[adrenaline]

By the way, if it wasn't for government funded health care medicare, the private plans would not have been so economically prosperous. Medicare "socialized " the eldery and disabled, ( thus diminishing the subset of the population that over utilizes health care) and privatized the young, working class. Once again, I support a single payer system, not obama's patchwork of competing public options. And don't forget, the cry of socialization also was also cried in vain when l. johnson signed medicare into law, people screamed american medicine would become socialized. It didn't happen with medicare.

I still don't see where the link confirms private contracts will be outlawed.


Look, I'm not going to get into debating socialism. If you want unfettered libertarian free market go to calcutta India or look at what lack of government oversite does for china's level of industrial pollution and food contamination , child labor usage etc. And it was precisley the laissez free economics that destroyed the banking industry and put us in the mess we are in. We need to find that balance and we are looking for it now.

The bigger question, why are we the only industrialized, free nation that does not offer basic health care to our all of our population ? Investment in our infrastructure, our health , is as important as any other infrastructure investment..no?

Let's not forget, the best avante garde basic medical research is done by NIH, government funded, ( socialized) without profit motive. Health insurance companies don't do medical research, drug companies are resorting to "me too" drugs or slight modifications of existing drugs ( ie: nexium from prilosec, lexapro from celexa) for the quick profit turn around.

 

[Al68]

As for a miniscule tax on someone who is irresponsible enough to do without health insurance ( even when the government gives it to you) , it's called responsibility, since the uninsured drive up the cost for everyone else around them, including the insured.http://www.usatoday.com/money/indus...-uninsured-costs_x.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno

as for the surtax on those of us who make more than $350,000... cry me a river...I'm not going to hurt one bit by the small surtax but then I didn't buy into the huge Mcmansions and luxury car "necessities"' that afflicts most of my collegues. ( In fact my house will be paid off in five years and all my cars are paid for ( old jeep, civic hybrid and silverado truck.)

Who's crying for them? Strawman argument?

And I'm irresponsible because the new bill will outlaw my insurance? And yes, I know that temporarily there is a grandfather clause, and it doesn't apply to any new policies. The proposal outlaws all new policies that aren't part of the system.