Impeding changes to our Health Care system

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by sugarpop

I didn't say state taxes didn't matter, I said they had nothing to do with the federal government or with federal taxes. If a state govt. raises taxes to balance their budget, that is a STATE ISSUE, and the federal government has no say in the matter, as far as I now. So you can't blame that on Obama. New York has apparently raised all kinds of taxes on their citizens, and other states probably are not far behind.

So wait, you are giving Obama a pass because NY state already has high taxes, and now that Obama is raising them that is not Obama's (Demoncrats) problem? WTF? Higher taxes is higher taxes for everyone, those in high tax states will be penalized more as more of their income goes to pay for those who don't. That is BS.

[sugarpop]

We can only hope...

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

...but we'll have to wait until the final version comes out of the joint committee.

That much is certainly true.

[sugarpop]

I'm not really happy the insurance industry is having so much influence on the bill. Or big pharma.

[Clodfobble]

Had a funny conversation with my dad today. For the last 6 months he's taken every opportunity to turn the most tenuous of unrelated subjects into "well, if you think X is bad, just wait until the government is running your healthcare."

I generally don't rise to the bait, because he's my father and I know it's pointless. But today, the topic meandered into how he is self-employed and chooses not to have medical insurance at all, and I pointed out that there are people who don't have that option because they have a chronic medical condition which is by definition more expensive than any plan could ever be, and he said, "Exactly, and the government thinks they're going to make me pay for it! I'm going to have to pay for the other people--"
"Yes, that's what insurance is, Dad."
"--like people with AIDS, there's an expensive disease, their medication costs $4000 a month, can you even imagine it? That's what they want me to pay for!"
"Well, yes, I can imagine it, Dad. That's about what ABA therapy costs."
"What? You're not paying that much, are you?"
"No, because we can't afford it." (Technically, our insurance did just start covering it, and our kid isn't a good candidate for it anyway, but that's not the point and I didn't mention that to him. ) "I was just pointing out, the government doesn't just want to help the guy with AIDS, they want to help your grandson get therapy, too."
"Well..." [abrupt change of topic.]

[Flint]

I wasn't talking about you, I was talking about the country.

--Robert Duvall in The Handmaid's Tale

[TheMercenary]

.

[TheMercenary]

Ok, this is rich. Who does he think is going to do the work and does he think they are going to work for free?

Budget chief: Docs fees not paid for in Obama bill

Jul 21 04:14 PM US/Eastern
By DAVID ESPO
AP Special Correspondent

WASHINGTON (AP) - A senior administration official says billions of dollars to raise fees for doctors treating Medicare patients are not covered by President Barack Obama's pledge to pay for health care legislation.
Budget Director Peter Orszag said Tuesday that's because the administration always assumed the money would be spent to prevent a cut of more than 20 percent in doctor fees.

The Congressional Budget Office said last Friday the higher payments cost $245 billion over 10 years. It said including the money in the overall bill would result in deficits totaling $239 billion.

On Friday, a few hours earlier, the president declared: "I've said that health-insurance reform cannot add to our deficit over the next decade. And I mean it."

Ok, now it is becoming worisome that this guy has no frigging clue about what he is doing with health care....

[TheMercenary]

Maybe everyone is not so happy...

Cardin Town Hall Meeting On Health Care Gets Angry

http://www.wusa9.com/rss/local_artic...?storyid=88729

[Griff]

Matt Miller in the NYT-
An alternative strategy for Congress would be the new “fitness club” model offered by some doctors, in which members pay $65 a month for same-day or next-day access to primary care services. This would involve no insurance companies, so it would save administrative expenses.

We could then pair one of these primary care plans with high-deductible insurance coverage for catastrophic care, but limit total annual out-of-pocket payments to, say, 15 percent of family income. For a member of Congress whose family had no other income, that limit would be $26,000. If this kind of plan were extended to other Americans, a family earning $25,000 a year would have a limit of $3,750.

This kind of hybrid plan would honor the values of both parties even as it cut the cost of covering each politician by perhaps one-third. It would give members the incentive to shop for less expensive health services, thus encouraging doctors and other providers to compete to offer better value. At the same time, members would know they are protected in the event of a costly illness. Those who wanted greater coverage could pay for it out of their own pocket.

This is interesting stuff and a damn site simpler than many of the ideas being floated.

[TheMercenary]

An interesting opinion piece in the local paper.

Sawyer: Canadians visit Maine for care
W. Tom Sawyer Jr. | Saturday, July 18, 2009 at 12:30 am
Contextual linking provided by Topix As a former Maine state senator, former mayor of Bangor, a small business owner who provided health insurance for our employees and their families, a past board member of Maine Blue Cross & Blue Shield, and a current corporator for Eastern Maine Medical Center, I've spent a lot of time discussing health care and government's role in its delivery.

As Congress debates implementing a "public option," I can't help but wonder where Americans will go.

In Maine, our health care facilities are frequented by many Canadians who cross the border to access our responsive and more advanced health care delivery system.

Consider a few statistics:

-- The breast cancer mortality rate in Canada is 9 percent higher than in America.

-- The prostate cancer mortality rate is 184 percent higher.

-- The colon cancer mortality among men is about 10 percent higher.

Despite promises, the truth is that preventative medicine suffers under socialized medicine. For example, nine in 10 middle-aged American women like my wife, two adult daughters and my mother have all had a mammogram, compared to fewer than three-quarters of Canadians.

Nearly all American women have had a pap smear compared to only one in six Canadians. Nearly one-third of all Americans have had colonoscopies compared to fewer than one in 20 in Canada.

While the prep drink the night before is awful, my three procedures since turning 50 have helped keep me well and alive. Thanks to annual testing, early detection and timely treatment, my 88-year-old father, two uncles and best friend all remain prostate cancer survivors.

Waiting time also increases under socialized medicine due to Rationing. Currently, 827,000 people are waiting for some kind of medical procedure in Canada. It would appear Canadians enjoy greater "access" than Americans - "access to a waiting list" that can take months of utter terror awaiting the actual medical procedure.

I was able to detect, biopsy and have surgically removed a cancerous facial melanoma in only four months seeing physicians in Maine and Georgia last winter.

Americans also have better access to new technologies than patients in Canada. An overwhelming majority of American physicians identified CT scans and MRI's as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade. The U.S. has 34 CT scanners per every million Americans compared to only 12 scanners in Canada and 27 MRI machines per million compared to six machines across the border.

I understand Bangor has more MRI machines than the entire province of New Brunswick, our Canadian neighbor.

If Canadians are forced across the border to seek the quality care they need to treat often preventable diseases, where would Americans go if we are stuck with socialized medicine? Mexico? I don't think so.

Most of my Maine neighbors oppose a Canadian-style, nationalized health care system. Once all Americans have a better opportunity to fairly compare the pros and cons, I expect we'll all want to avoid painfully long waits for medical procedures, lack of access to tests and equipment, and having some bureaucrat "solve" our medical needs.

Our current system is expensive and demands strategic changes to high drug costs for instance, but it's the best system in the world.

I urge Congress to take a long, hard, look at Canadian and European health care systems before making any substantial changes to our existing world class system. The law of untended consequences, based on my own experience with public policy, is too great a threat.


W. Tom Sawyer Jr. lives in Richmond Hill during the winter and in Maine during the summer.

http://savannahnow.com/node/754347

[Shawnee123]

The prostate cancer mortality rate is 184 percent higher.

That's just because Canadian men won't let anyone mess around down there. They're proud like that.

eta: or, it could be a thousand other contributing factors as alluded to in my joking point.

[TheMercenary]

you crazy. :p

[TheMercenary]

The Obama administration is not looking out for you, but they are looking out for the drug companies as they change health care.

PhRMA, which represents the nation's drug companies, said it had taken part in two meetings with senior White House officials in the Roosevelt Room. Participants, according to Tauzin, included White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, along with the CEOs of some major drug companies. Both meetings were closed to the public.

In an interview, Tauzin said most of the "real negotiations" took place with the Senate Finance Committee. At its meetings with the White House, the drug industry reported on progress made with the Senate and got a briefing from Obama officials "about how they saw" healthcare reform unfolding, Tauzin said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,7434392.story

[TheMercenary]

John defines this perfectly.

July 22, 2009
Arrogance
By John Stossel

It's crazy for a group of mere mortals to try to design 15 percent of the U.S. economy. It's even crazier to do it by August.

Yet that is what some members of Congress presume to do. They intend, as the New York Times puts it, "to reinvent the nation's health care system".

Let that sink in. A handful of people who probably never even ran a small business actually think they can reinvent the health care system.

Politicians and bureaucrats clearly have no idea how complicated markets are. Every day people make countless tradeoffs, in all areas of life, based on subjective value judgments and personal information as they delicately balance their interests, needs and wants. Who is in a better position than they to tailor those choices to best serve their purposes? Yet the politicians believe they can plan the medical market the way you plan a birthday party.

Leave aside how much power the state would have to exercise over us to run the medical system. Suffice it say that if government attempts to control our total medical spending, sooner or later, it will have to control us.

Also leave aside the inevitable huge cost of any such program. The administration estimates $1.5 trillion over 10 years with no increase in the deficit. But no one should take that seriously. When it comes to projecting future costs, these guys may as well be reading chicken entrails. In 1965, hospitalization coverage under Medicare was projected to cost $9 billion by 1990. The actual price tag was $66 billion.

The sober Congressional Budget Office debunked the reformers' cost projections. Trust us, Obama says. "At the end of the day, we'll have significant cost controls," presidential adviser David Axelrod said. Give me a break.

Now focus on the spectacle of that handful of men and women daring to think they can design the medical marketplace. They would empower an even smaller group to determine -- for millions of diverse Americans -- which medical treatments are worthy and at what price.

How do these arrogant, presumptuous politicians believe they can know enough to plan for the rest of us? Who do they think they are? Under cover of helping uninsured people get medical care, they live out their megalomaniacal social-engineering fantasies -- putting our physical and economic health at risk in the process.

Will the American people say "Enough!"?

continues:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...nce_97561.html