Apparently, very stupid.
Talk to most conservatives these days about health care and, generally speaking, they will tell you two things about the three health care plans floating around Congress right now.
One, if the government takes over health care, there will be rationing. In other words, old people, WATCH OUT! When you are old and sick, the US Government is going to take you out back and shoot you like a wounded horse.
Two, you will no longer be able to choose your doctor. The government will be choosing them for you.
Both of these points are fucking hilarious when you consider that both of them happen constantly with private insurance RIGHT NOW! As I often do, I tend to look at big issues like health care from the standpoint of my own kitchen table. So, let's take a look at these two points shall we?
About a year ago, a friend of mine from volleyball keeled over while biking and died. He was only 48 years old. We found out later that he his arteries were blocked and had he heeded his doctor's warnings about his high cholesterol, he might've lived. I asked my doctor about what options there were for me to check my arteries, other than the standard cholesterol check, and he said there were a variety of things I could do.
He then informed me that because I was under the age of 55 ALL of them were not covered by insurance. In fact, a simple chest scan, which would say whether or not I had blocked arteries, was never covered even after 55. Why? It is always deemed unnecessary by the insurance companies. All of them think that the blood test is just fine. The exam takes all of five minutes.
I live in a suburb of Minneapolis. This suburb has a Park Nicollet clinic that has served our family well for 13 years. Two months ago it was announced that due to budget issues, the clinic would be closing and the doctors scattered around the metro area. The doctors we go to will now be farther away than doctors at another clinic in neighboring suburb. So do we stick to our old doctors and spend the extra time and gas in the car? Or do we go to the new ones? Sounds like we are being forced into a choice of doctors.
So, you see that the "fear-shit your pants" scenario that is being floated out there by the right is really a load of shit. They don't actually have any real solution to health care. They just want to foment anger and fear in a very vocal and ignorant group of Americans...Americans, I might add, that we are now seeing yelling at town hall meetings because they are believing the two lies above.
Certainly, the plans linked above are not perfect. But they do address a very serious problem and at least attempt to do something about them. Read them for yourselves and see what you think. I will be talking more about them throughout the course of this week. In the meantime, ask a conservative what his plan is for a country that spends 16 percent of its GDP on health care and can't insure 46 million of its citizens. When he or she is done griping about lawsuits and sucking the cock of the status quo, ask him or her why we rank 50th in the world on life expectancy? Or why Costa Rica and Dominca have better health care than we do?
Ask them how they can be pro life and allow a system which currently is at least partially responsible (and that's being generous) for 7 out of 1000 babies dying every year after live births and 28,000 babies dying before they turn 1. We hear a lot of talk about what is wrong with the bills in Congress but there aren't many of them (1 by my count) who offer any sort of solution.
Think about this statement from comments yesterday.
I don't WANT to delegate something as personal and important as my healthcare decisions to a faceless bureaucrat thousands of miles away.
Exactly how is that any different from what insurance companies are doing now?
14 comments:
Did your doctor say it was necessary for anything more than a blood cholesterol screening? If not, why are you pissing and moaning about it? You could have it done if it means that much to you - just pay for it yourself. It's your goddam life/health - why should I help pay for something that isn't necessary either via a private or public system?
Is this really what passes for thinking in your mind?
How is it different from insurance companies? If I don't like what my insurance company offers, I can go use ANOTHER one. Not so with government. My insurance company can't FORCE me to use their plan under threat of fines and/or jail. Not so with government. If you can't see that fundamental difference, then I don't know what to say.
"The doctors we go to will now be farther away than doctors at another clinic in neighboring suburb. So do we stick to our old doctors and spend the extra time and gas in the car? Or do we go to the new ones? Sounds like we are being forced into a choice of doctors."
Looks like you only have to make a choice of how far of a drive you want to make. Thus far, nobody told you that you have to stop seeing your old doctor. You're being forced to drive over to a neighboring suburb.....oh the hardships you face, such brutality. Who will you blame when the doctor voluntarily moves his office across town or decides to relocate his family to another area of the country (something that happens all the time)?
"yelling at town hall meetings"...as opposed to yelling in the streets. Dissent was so patriotic, until this year.
Folks can also ask a liberal how they can cut costs of a medical plan (medicare) while participation into it is increasing at an alarming number (medicare). Why the hell should conservatives answer any of your questions...it's your plan that you need to sell.
Bitching about insurance companies and calling conservatives stupid doesn't mean squat when you consider the fact that your side holds a veto proof majority in both houses of congress.
Did you know that your side holds veto proof majorities in both houses of congress?
Right now I can CHOOSE to be insured or not, just like EVERYONE else.
Those who don't have health insurance don't place as high a priority on it as, say, their cell phone, or their car payment, or their party fund or whatever. It's that simple. If it was important enough to them, they'd buy it. We've been conditioned to expect someone else to pick up the tab for medical care. How is that right?
Who goes to Costa Rica or Dominica for life-saving surgeries?
How many people from around the world come to the US every year for surgeries and procedures that are just not available in their own countries? Why are they not available there? Because socialized medicine kills the market in healthcare. It kills innovation. Profit is a GOOD thing. Profit DRIVES innovation. If a helath care worker is going to get paid the same day in day out, where's the incentive to improve? Many procedures here are simply not available in countries where healthcare is rationed - growing up in England, I recall several cases in the news where people were raising money to go to the US for life saving cancer treatment. Why is that?
"ask a conservative what his plan is for a country that spends 16 percent of its GDP on health care and can't insure 46 million of its citizens"
There's the fundamental difference. A conservative beleives it is those citizens' responsibility to insure themselves. The US certainly doesn't insure me and my family. I do.
Sorry for the multiple posts - I keep having thoughts after I hit the publish button. You know, we conservatives are slow like that...
Can't spell "believe" either...
"ask him or her why we rank 50th in the world on life expectancy?"
This tells me all I need to know about the measuring stick people like you and dick are using as you are gauging our healthcare system here in the US....and you're way off. You asked, so here's the answer.
The measure of a healthcare system is not life expectancy because that has many factors other than medical treatment. What chance you have for survival when you get sick is what you should be looking at.
There’s a big difference between health and health care. If you eat too many Big Macs, smoke a pack of marlboros every day for several decades and drink booze every night, that’s a lifestyle choice.
Once you suffer a heart attack or are diagnosed with cancer, the survival rates in the U.S. (especially for cancer) are the best in the world. For all your previous hoopla over Canada’s socialized medicine, the cross-border flows aren’t south to north (as the Stossel video shows). A study by the American Cancer Society looked at all types of cancer and where a person was most likely to survive. They studied the U. S., France, Britain, Germany, Italy, and other European countries. Whether it was breast cancer, prostate cancer, luekemia, melanoma or other deadly forms of cancer, the country in which people survived cancer and lived longest with the disease was the United States.
Mark, you're off-base complaining about not being able to get an expensive scan if your blood cholesterol test doesn't indicate you need it. Almost certainly the first indications of Bill's problems were a bad blood cholesterol count and a family history of heart disease, and any scan would just confirm the extent of the problem.
One of the reasons health care is expensive is that doctors do too many unnecessary tests to cover their asses. Tests are a great way for the health care companies to rake in the dough -- tests are usually cheap to do once you have the equipment, which does cost a lot, and they charge a lot for them.
The advice others gave you -- if you still want the test, you pay for it -- is valid. This is the real problem with the high cost of health care. Since most people don't pay for it themselves (or pay only a tiny fraction of the actual cost), they're not sensitive to the costs. That means that there's no real pressure to keep costs down, because the taxpayers are funding it all through the tax deductions the employers take.
If people actually had to pay for their care, they wouldn't put up with the high cost, and the prices would fall.
However, that same advice -- if you want it, you pay for it -- still holds true if the current proposals go through. No one is talking about a single-payer government-only plan. The claim that "I have fewer choices and the government will force me into a terrible miasma of pain and death" is patently false. If you don't like whatever government plan there is -- and it's not at all clear there will even be one -- you will always be able to buy your own health insurance or go to any doctor you want and pay them directly. Of course, if you have a serious problem you'll spend yourself into bankruptcy and eventually die, if the Republicans have their way.
The main points of the proposals are that insurance companies can't turn you down for preexisting conditions, they can't take your coverage away, and everyone has to buy coverage. Some Democrats want a public plan, and some don't. So it's kind of iffy that a public plan will even be an option. Another bone of contention is the employer mandate, and how it will apply to small businesses.
Employer-based coverage is a big part of the problem, and I'd like to see it eliminated completely. Everyone who breathes should be required to buy their own health insurance, just like everyone who drives is required to buy car insurance. Employers shouldn't be on the hook for health insurance, any more than they should be paying for their employee's food, housing and clothing. That's what salaries are for.
This would mean a total restructuring of the business, with health insurance companies being unable to wine and dine corporate hotshots with perks to get the contracts for their employee health policies. It would drastically reduce the overhead in the system.
Health insurance would be consumer-oriented, rather than corporate largesse. It would be yours, and your responsibility, and you'd keep it no matter what happened with your job. Like all consumer-oriented businesses, cost savings would become the primary concern. Because coverage couldn't be denied or terminated, cost savings would have to come from preventive care. Some companies would try to save money by denying certain procedures, but after a few well-publicized deaths attributed to stingy corporate SOBs, appropriate regulations would be introduced and companies would clean up their acts.
Unfortunately, that won't happen, and we'll wind up with a hybrid system that still involves employers. It's a huge mistake, but the moneyed interests are too powerful for such a radical change.
Cover their asses from who? Couldn't be lawyers could it?
I agree that insurance companies try very hard to not pay bills but mandating that insurance companies cover preexisting conditions will have an unintended consequence...people who are young and healthy will have no incentive to get health insurance.
That being said, health insurance and car insurance are entirely different things. The reason for mandatory auto insurance is twofold. One, driving is a privilege, it isn't a right. You have to get a license. You have to prove you can drive down the road without mowing down people on the sidewalk.
Two, the reason we have mandatory automobile insurance is because when there's an accident, we want to make sure the victim is covered for any damage or injury. Whoever is at fault has to pay for whoever they harm. The person driving the car isn't the primary concern in terms of auto insurance. It's the person the driver hits...it's about the people innocently tooling around who get plowed into, making sure that whoever did the plowing into has insurance to cover the victim.
When you secure a mortgage to buy a house you have to have private insurance on the home, and to make sure you can afford it they put it in the monthly payment. That protects the lenders because the lender actually owns your home until you pay off the mortgage. Again, it protects someone else.
Here is a great representation of a plan similar to the president's plan in action:
http://joshuapundit.blogspot.com/2009/08/simple-video-how-universal-care-really.html
Yes, it is a big fail. I believe the Mass plan was the basis for this national plan.
Re "Fear-shit-your-pants" meme:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121668313890771925.html
http://markey.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=634&Itemid=249
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI_SqqJIU14
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8hMJVXt09E&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanconservativedaily.com%2F2009%2F02%2Fnancy-pelosi-dumber-than-a-doorknob-and-half-as-cute%2F&feature=player_embedded
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/04/AR2009020403174_pf.html
Please note that these aren't cranks like Glenn Beck or Keith Oldermann. These are 1) a former Vice President, 2) a sitting Congressman, 3) the First Lady, 4) the Speaker of the House, and 5) a sitting President. In short, the leadership and senior statesmen of the party you support.
I swear, you gotta have balls of titanium to claim conservatives are responding with a "fear-shit-your-pants" attitude solely for demanding the bill be at least READ and these things hammered out before it becomes the law of the land. Had it not been fought tooth and nail, we would only now be discovering flaws in law we would already be subject to, and you know it. The President and the Speaker tried hard for that very outcome, and used the kind of tactics I linked to above to accomplish it.
You dare to accuse anyone of fearmongering? Seriously?
Tsk-tsk-tsk, such language Markie! Go sit up at the front of class by Teacher.
GOF, I agree with you that bills should be at least read before it becomes law of the land. But that is what your rep is for...that's called a republic.
Now, as to your links, do you think those things have any sort of basis in fact? Is it just simple exaggeration or flat out wrong? Why?
The reason why I ask is that these ARE all people in the government who access to facts that we don't. Glenn Beck is on record as saying that he doesn't let things like facts get in the way and he is just an entertainer.
Now, as to your links, do you think those things have any sort of basis in fact?
Did you even look at them? They're all matters of public record. In all but one case, they are being said by the person themselves. If they are untrue, talk to
1. Al Gore
2. Congressman Markey
3. Hillary Clinton
4. Nancy Pelosi
5. Barack Obama
not the Republicans. The people named above are the ones who said it, no words were put in their mouths. It is a deliberate choice to create fear for personal and political advantage, in all 5 cases. Wasn't that what you were just griping about?
Glenn Beck is on record as saying that he doesn't let things like facts get in the way and he is just an entertainer.
Yes... and Nancy Pelosi is on record as not letting things like facts stand in her way, and she's Speaker of the House. It intrigues me that you consider an entertainer's willingness to ignore facts or flat-out lie to be more of a threat than that same willingness in the leadership of your own party.
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