Cubans are exporting their great healthcare, they have such an abundance. Costa Rica as well.
Its just such a shame that this will change soon once the evil capitalists have their way
And it looks like its getting closer and closer to happening!
National Healthcare for the USA
by sammielee24 348 Replies latest jw friends
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Toronto_Guy
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Sailor Ripley
Sure, people have tough times. We have too but we pulled ourselves up. So, I should feel bad and continually feel sorry for people and give them stuff? When does it stop? I'm not a total selfish jerk but I also don't want to pay for other people's medicine or welfare for continual hardship.
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sammielee24
Businesses fold. Sometimes the people working for them planned and saved just like you. Is it still their fault? Did they make bad decisions? Does that mean that they are not deserving of health insurance?
Think Enron.
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looking_glass
Well as someone who pays 175 bucks a month for insurance (which does not include dental or meds). I pay 50 bucks a month for dental. I pay for the pill out of my own pocket (which I buy thru planned parenthood as they all provide at a more affordable cost to the public). All that being said, I still have a 500 buck deductible. So in the end, because I am a healthy woman and I only see my primary care physician once a year and my gyney once a year, the insurance company makes a whole lot of money out of me.
Insurance companies are the ONLY industry that can set their own prices in ALL things. Let me give you an example: Insurance companies tell the doctors/treaters/hospitals/clinics what they are willing to pay them and the providers either accept it or they are not part of the "network" and a person who is "covered" under that insurance companies' polices can either go to another doctor or pay more for keeping their doctor who is not "in network". Insurance companies tell lawyers/law firms what they are willing to pay (i.e., on this case, we are only willing to pay a percentage of what you normally bill on the same type of case). All vendors have to agree to set prices that an insurance company sets. Insurance companies will not negotiate with a customer, it is either take it or leave it. Wouldn't you love to have the power to say "I am only willing to pay ....." like an insurance company.
There are many countries that have national health care and they are not hurting for doctors or treatment. Until the American people realize that the only people benefiting from the system that is current set up in the US are the lobbyists, politicians (who are supported thru the lobbyists) and the insurance companies, we will continue to pay for far more than what we are getting.
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Robdar
So, I should feel bad and continually feel sorry for people and give them stuff? When does it stop? I'm not a total selfish jerk but I also don't want to pay for other people's medicine or welfare for continual hardship.
Nobody said that you had to feel sorry for anybody. Nobody said that you are a selfish jerk or that you should feel badly for not being a socialist. Why don't you re-read what I wrote? Nobody is attacking you. And yes, we all have to stand up straight and suck it up. No arguments there. I was merely saying I used the word "fortunate" because feces occurs to everybody, not just the lazy ones. .
We have welfare, which I think is likely exploited by a lot of people. We adopted some evacuees from Rita. After two months, and many dollars funding them we asked them to at least begin to look for work. They refused. They were on welfare and they were not going to jeopardize their "benefits." She told me that verbatim, "I'm on welfare, I ain't working." Before you start, I know, that's one bad person. Okay. Those were a bunch of green dollars too.Of course it's exploited. I know of a few cases myself. But that does not mean that everybody who needs health insurance is on welfare or lazy bums. Many are hard working, tax paying citizens.
BTW, How do you feel about corporate welfare?
We had a job fair in my city for the evacuees. They said they had no way to the auditorium. A bunch of buses were sent out. One person attended.Sad story, but what does it have to do with national healthcare which is the topic of this thread?
Should I feel bad that I'm not a socialist. 3 pages down only 7 more to goAre you implying that those of us who support a national healthcare are socialists?
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sammielee24
Should I be penalized, or forced to pay for someone that hasn't paid as much attention to their health and savings as I have? I hope not.
Of course you shouldn't be penalized but maybe we are looking at it all wrong. Are we defining it as a penalty or a contribution? I don't have children but I paid property taxes - out of those taxes, some of the money went to the public education system which is attended by children - do I care? No. Do I feel penalized because I'm paying a share of taxes to educate kids even though I don't have any of my own? Of course not. My taxes also go into the pot to help pay for roads, parks and pensions - I don't feel this is being penalized, I feel it is my contribution to a more equitable society of which I'm a part of. I think there are some people more fortunate than others and there always will be - I know of families where kids have had to quit school before finishing high school in order to go to work and help pay the rent. Kids who have parents who are addicted and who take on the parental role for the rest of the family. They work hard but it will take years for them to get ahead of the obligation that is part of their world. Do I think they should be penalized because of their life circumstances? No. I think they are just as deserving as you and I and they deserve to access the same health services we do without prejudice for their gender, locality, culture, social contacts or finance. swife.
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Fangorn
The Cuban medical system is so great that people are sailing out of Miami in small leaking boats and on homemade rafts so they can get to Havana and enjoy the wonders of Castros paradise.
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blondie
Something my doctor said I should read...some good points.
http://www.pnhp.org/facts/dr_marcia_angell.php
Statement of Dr. Marcia Angell introducing the U.S. National Health Insurance Act
Concurrent with the publication of the Physicians’ Proposal for National Health Insurance in the JAMA, the proposal was adapted into legislative form by Congressmen John Conyers (D-MI), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Jim McDermott (D-WA).
The U.S. National Health Insurance Act (also known as the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act), HR 676, was introduced on February 4, 2003. The following is the statement made at the introduction ceremony by Physicians’ Working Group member and former NEJM editor Dr. Marcia Angell.
(A printable handout of this document is available by clicking here)
February 4, 2003
Washington D.C.We are here today to introduce a national health insurance program. Such a program is no longer optional; it’s necessary.
Americans have the most expensive health care system in the world. We spend about twice as much per person as other developed nations, and that gap is growing. That’s not because we are sicker or more demanding (Canadians, for example, see their doctors more often and spend more time in the hospital). And it’s not because we get better results. By the usual measures of health (life expectancy, infant mortality, immunization rates), we do worse than most other developed countries. Furthermore, we are the only developed nation that does not provide comprehensive health care to all its citizens. Some 42 million Americans are uninsured — disproportionately the sick, the poor, and minorities — and most of the rest of us are underinsured. In sum, our health care system is outrageously expensive, yet inadequate. Why? The only plausible explanation is that there’s something about our system — about the way we finance and deliver health care — that’s enormously inefficient. The failures of the system were partly masked during the economic boom of the 1990’s, but now they stand starkly exposed. There is no question that with the deepening recession and rising unemployment, in the words of John Breaux, “The system is collapsing around us.”
The underlying problem is that we treat health care like a market commodity instead of a social service. Health care is targeted not to medical need, but to the ability to pay. Markets are good for many things, but they are not a good way to distribute health care. To understand what’s happening, let’s look at how the health care market works.
Most Americans receive tax-free health benefits from their employers, who pay insurers a portion of the premiums for health coverage. But not all employers offer benefits, and when they do, the benefits may not be comprehensive. It’s; entirely voluntary. When employers are competing for workers, they offer good benefits; when unemployment rises, they drop them.The insurers with whom employers do business are mostly investor-owned, for-profit managed care businesses. They try to keep premiums down and profits up by stinting on medical services. In fact, the best way for insurers to compete is by not insuring high-risk patients at all; limiting the coverage of those they do insure (for example, by excluding expensive services, such as heart transplantation); and by passing costs back to patients by denying claims or as deductibles and co-payments. We are the only nation in the world with a health care system based on dodging sick people. These practices add greatly to overhead costs because they require a mountain of paperwork. They also require creative marketing to attract the affluent and healthy and avoid the poor and sick. Not surprisingly, the U. S. has by far the highest overhead costs in the world.
It’s instructive to follow the health care dollar as it wends its way from employers toward the doctors and nurses and hospitals that actually provide medical services. First, private insurers regularly skim off the top a substantial fraction of the premiums — anywhere from 10 to 25 percent — for their administrative costs, marketing, and profits. The remainder is then passed along a veritable gauntlet of satellite businesses that feed on the health care industry, including brokers to cut deals, disease-management and utilization review companies, drug-management companies, legal services, marketing consultants, billing agencies, information management firms, and so on and so on. Their function is often to limit services in one way or another. They, too, take a cut, including enough for their own administrative costs, marketing, and profits. I would estimate that no more than 50 cents of the health care dollar actually reaches the providers — who themselves face high overhead costs in dealing with multiple insurers.
What are the signs of the imminent collapse of this system? Private health insurance premiums are now rising at an unsustainable rate of about 13 percent per year, and as much as 25 percent in some areas of the country. Coverage is shrinking, as more employers decide to cap their contributions to health insurance and workers find they cannot pay their rapidly growing share. And finally, with the rise in unemployment, more people are losing what limited coverage they had. This is not a system that can be tinkered with. It needs to change.The program we are introducing today is the very soul of simplicity and efficiency, compared with our private health care system. It is a single-payer system, that is, health care funds would be distributed by a single, public entity, so that health care could be coordinated to eliminate both gaps and overlap. In many ways, our program would be tantamount to extending Medicare to the entire population. Medicare is, after all, a government-financed single-payer system embedded within our private, market-based system. It’s by far the most efficient part of our health-care system, with overhead costs of less than 3 percent, and it covers virtually everyone over the age of 65, not just some of them. Medicare is not perfect, but it is by far the most popular part of the U. S. health care system, and in my opinion its problems would be relatively easy to remedy — but that is another subject.
What are the usual objections to the sort of national program we are calling for today? They are mostly based on a number of myths.Myth #1 is that we can’t afford a national health care system, and if we try it, we will have to ration care. My answer is that we can’t afford not to have a national health care system. A single-payer system would be far more efficient, since it would eliminate excess administrative costs, profits, cost-shifting and unnecessary duplication. Furthermore, it would permit the establishment of an overall budget and the fair and rational distribution of resources. We should remember that we now pay for health care in multiple ways — through our paychecks, the prices of goods and services, taxes at all levels of government, and out-of-pocket. It makes more sense to pay just once.
According to Myth #2, innovative technologies would be scarce under a single-payer system, we would have long waiting lists for operations and procedures, and in general, medical care would be threadbare and less available. This misconception is based on the fact that there are indeed waits for elective procedures in some countries with national health systems, such as the U. K. and Canada. But that’s because they spend far less on health care than we do. (The U. K. spends about a third of what we do per person.) If they were to put the same amount of money as we do into their systems, there would be no waits and all their citizens would have immediate access to all the care they need. For them, the problem is not the system; it’s the money. For us, it’s not the money; it’s the system.
Myth #3 is that a single-payer system amounts to socialized medicine, which would subject doctors and other providers to onerous, bureaucratic regulations. But in fact, although a national program would be publicly funded, providers would not work for the government. That’s currently the case with Medicare, which is publicly funded, but privately delivered.
As for onerous regulations, nothing could be more onerous both to patients and providers than the multiple, intrusive regulations imposed on them by the private insurance industry. Indeed, many doctors who once opposed a single-payer system are now coming to see it as a far preferable option.
Myth #4 says that the government can’t do anything right. Some Americans like to say that, without thinking of all the ways in which government functions very well indeed, and without considering the alternatives. I would not want to see, for example, the NIH, the National Park Service, or the IRS privatized. We should remember that the government is elected by the public and we are responsible for it. An investor-owned insurance company reports to its owners, not to the public.
Some people say that a single-payer system is a good idea, but politically unrealistic. That is a self-fulfilling prophecy. In my opinion, the medical profession and the public would be enthusiastic about a single-payer system if the facts were known and the myths dispelled. Yes, there would be powerful special interests opposing it and I don’t underestimate them, but with courageous leadership, such as Representative Conyers is providing, and the support of the medical profession and public, I believe there is nothing unrealistic about a National Health Insurance Program.
I want to mention one final and very important reason for enacting a national health program. We live in a country that tolerates enormous disparities in income, material possessions, and social privilege. That may be an inevitable consequence of a free market economy. But those disparities should not extend to denying some of our citizens certain essential services because of their income or social status. One of those services is health care. Others are education, clean water and air, equal justice, and protection from crime, all of which we already acknowledge are public responsibilities. We need to acknowledge the same thing for health care. Providing these essential services to all Americans, regardless of who they are, helps ensure that we remain a cohesive and optimistic country. It says that when it comes to vital needs, we are one community, not 280 million individuals competing with one another. In seeking to ensure adequate health care for all our citizens, we have an opportunity today to reassert that we are indeed a single nation.
Marcia Angell, M. D.
Senior Lecturer, Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Former Editor-in-Chief, New England Journal of Medicine -
Sailor Ripley
Sorry but I haven't taken the time to figure out how to copy and paste in different colors... I'm tired and want to go to bed. ...I had a little drink about an hour ago.
Sorry I got off topic and ranted about welfare. My thought was, someone has to pay for all the wonderful national healthcare. I don't want to. Regardless, I don't think it will happen due to powerful insurance lobbyist. Do I like rising premiums? No. Do I like watching under-insured people get crappy healthcare? Of course not. Do I have an answer? No.
Do I believe that we should institute more social programs with more government? No. The government is the most inefficient system around.
I know we have to pay taxes but man it seems like over $90K per year is just not right. We pay school taxes while our kid goes to a private school. I don't like it and I'm working to change it.
My dream: less government and better "private, for profit" providers that have to work inside the capitalist system with true market forces. Insurance companies have too much power and the cost of entry is too large to let true capitalism work.
Good night to you all.
p.s. I never thought anyone was attacking me. Y'all are too nice for that. -
sammielee24
<sailor>..no you aren't a jerk and sorry if you felt anyone was making any comments that implied that. I look at it this way - if your employer tells you he isn't going to contribute to any healthcare plan for you and you go out and get a high deductible plan with a copay for $1,000 a month - you pay on time but a few years pass and no matter what you do you can't get ahead. The plan keeps getting more expensive, you have 3 young kids by now - your $8,000 deductible is coming out of your pocket each year, plus $12,000 a year that you pay into the plan. You are stretched and stressed out. Now along comes the national health care plan. Your pay is taxed by an extra $200 but you can now drop your health insurance because everything it covered, your national plan for $200. now covers. There is no deductible so the kids get sick, you take them to the doctor without worrying about bringing a check with you. Your wife needs a mammogram so an appointment is made - she has it done without worrying about the money. The $20,000 that you spent last year is now reduced by thousands and with that money, you can plan for the car you need, the kids college education, that vacation you always wanted, or sock it way in your pension plan. I've had both types of healthcare and I will always choose national - single payer over the US style any day. swife. <btw -t he tax amount is just a figure I gave for an example - it is generally about 2 or 3% of your gross)