Health Care Reform

USN2MD

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As a medical Professional I have had a lot of time to see the practical effects. From my point of view more was right with our system than what was wrong prior to "Obama-Care". We should have addressed the parts that were wrong, instead a monstrosity was created that will have more wrong with it than what we had before and in a more telling way, the actual quality of care will be decreased.

In fact what is unintentionally being created is a two-tier system. If you defer to what ultimately will be government administrated programs you will have less health care options, providers and facilities to choose from causing longer waits and less quality.

Or you will (in addition to what your mandated to have and pay for) have your own personal physician and facilities that you pay for out of pocket. These professionals will not accept medicare/medicaid nor be part of an organized health care system. They will be entrepreneurs and will draw away talent and facilities from the rest of the population who can not afford to pay them as well as as their mandated government insurance.

So we will have a system where everyone who can not afford a private hospital as they could under their previous free market plan, will now basically be stuck in the same place as people on medicaid but will be still be paying for what was previously the Cadillac system.

The free market system had its flaws, but it is vastly superior to the majority of its users than what this government program will become.
 

FuzzyKen

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If the ability to have a true utopia where everyone did the right thing was real and viable this entire health care debate would not even be taking place. The unfortunate part is that the problems with the mess we have now are far and distant to most Americans. The man with common diabetes who is now uninsurable under the present system, he knows what the problem is. The fifteen year old kid who is successfully treated for Hodgkins Disease is now uninsurable once he is off of his parents medical plan. The man or woman fighting for reasonable care for the aging parent and then watches maneuvering on a level beyond belief to deny care to that individual is aware of the problems, they are aware because they have had to fight for the care for which they are paying or for which they have already paid.

Yes, those benevolent insurance companies want to blame litigation and it is because of their profit margins and denial of care that we have this litigation. Hey, we get rid of the litigation and it increases their profit margin by a great deal.

The main thing that is at stake here people in case you really do not realize it is first your rights as a person to recover any kind of damages when you are victimized and secondly and more important is that your right to simple survival has become contingent on a profit and loss statement.

How many realize how much you have already lost?

Did you know that if you file litigation in most medical cases be they against an MD or against an insurance carrier that your victory and settlement of the case includes a little thing called a "gag order". What this does is to prevent you by contract from telling anyone else about your experience. It protects the individual or organization from any more loss in profits from victimizing you, and it creates an intolerable situation where in essence your loss or the damage done to you by the MD or insurance company and their loss for their actions, is not at all a punishment for those actions my friends, it simply has now been reduced to a "business cost" where the profits and loss statement reflects litigation not as a horrible thing, but as a simple business expense.

Have you ever been involved in a case where a defective medical product caused the death of someone?

There was a company who shall remain nameless who made replacement heart valves some years ago. That company knew damn well that these valves were defective, and those that knew were told to ship out the defective valves to use up the stocks on hand. Getting rid of the valves after all removed the evidence of valves that were defective and the idea was to then go with the "fixed" ones. The valves on the shelves were worth a considerable sum of money and the executive staff of that manufacturer wanted to recover that money by using them anyway. After a period of time one of the parts making up the valve after several years of use would simply shatter. When that destruction took place the few pumps the heart had left would pump move fragments around, and the person was dead and even if the person had physically been on an operating table they would not have been able to be saved.

A family friend went through this and her Father was lost at age 56. I want you to imagine sitting in a legal office and having an insurance carrier sitting back and stating that the life of your Father was not worth anything, and that their payment when they in fact knew that what they were implanting was crap should be minimal.

I also think that at times Attorneys go way too far, BUT, compromise your rights for recovery and you have sold yourself down the river. It means nothing until it hits you like a freight train splattering your own life into a million pieces.

Do we have a legitimate solution, certainly, the company is forced to recall all the valves and pay for the surgery and hospitalization to replace them. Will we ever see that kind of solution? No because to do that they would have to admit that there was a problem and that would be bad publicity.

Health care reform has to be on a multi-level approach and it must include making people responsible for their actions on both sides. Those with horrific health habits which are under their own control and prove-able as such should of course pay escalated premiums for their coverage, but to deny coverage to some individuals because of simple age or pre-existing medical conditions is worse than bad by an incredible margin.

Single pay health care is not perfect, but, based on what I have seen and what my personal knowledge is from many others who have it, the superiority over what we have in the United States is blatantly obvious.

I know many in Canada and the U.K. and in France dealing with HIV. The care received by the individuals in all three of those locations is far superior to what those here in the United States are now receiving. This was not always the case, it is the case now.

The treatment of cancer is done much more aggressively in these three systems and their survival rates are higher. Their losses from unrelated infections contracted while hospitalized are lower, and the citizens of those countries are living more productive lives because of it.

There was a time when the U.S. was the medical leader. When it comes to technology in many ways we still are. The problem is the use of the technology we have invented and pioneered is being currently denied to the Americans who developed it.

There is no way unfortunately that we can clean this system simply because the money behind the profit is far too great. It is going to be either what we have no or a government run system and there is nothing in between that will be able to be had. Improvements in the present system will very quickly be overturned if we stick with it. We can't fix it without completely taking it apart and putting it back together again. If we were able to do that it would be great. We can't do it because the special interests would simply give us back a different version of what we have right now and tell us that it has been fixed when it fact it has not been.



 

davidjh7

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THe US healthcare system IS broken. I work in it. But it is broken for more reasons than people want to see. Right now, there is multi-tiered system. Those with private insurance that covers almost everything, those with partial coverage that excludes many of the more expensive procedures, those that have some for of government assisted payment (medicaid and medicare), and those without anything. The government talks constantly about "cutting wasteful medicare overpayments", which they do with great efficiency. A little known part of this is that about the BEST that medicare pays is 17% of what is billed. The bueracracy imposed by the government for this is an additional overhead cost of about 10%. The cost shifting games that brought down ENRON and MCI and other corporate giants is the rule in the US medical system. It is the only way to keep the doors open. Prices on procedures are inflated to try and pay for the complete LOSS that most of medicare and medicaid payments are. Every year medicare reimbursement goes DOWN--this has been the trend for several decades. Now, private insurance companies more and more are making the case that they should only have to reimburse what medcare pays. More and more people, do to the changing economy, even if they are working, have no medical benefits. More and more people are using emergency rooms as their primary healthcare system for themselves and their families. Hospital emergency departments are REQUIRED to treat to a level of stability without any payment. The insane costs of medical care come from many sources---everbody got their fingers in the pie and saw it as a feast--charge what you want, they'll pay it. So, the marvolous drugs and technology that have done so much to improve healthcare have come at an incredible cost. Is it any wonder why more and more doctors refuse to take on new medicare patients? You want to spout a good right wing line about good busness practice? Name me ONE business that can effictively STAY in business on 17% of what they bill, with an ADDITIONAL 10% mandated overhead cost (net-7% of what is billed). You can raise the prices, which is what has been done, to compensate, but the other end gets to keep lowering their payments. All this time, your suppliers get to keep INCREASING, at insane rates, what they charge. And you have to serve an increasing number of people with NO reimbursement, but at those same costs. You want the public to REALLY get behind reform, do one little thing. Remove the law that says hospitals HAVE to treat people in ED's without reimbursement. Draconian? Yes. Immoral? Certainly. But it will finally bring it to a head. The present system CAN'T keep going indefinately. This became evdent when for profit hospitals were allowed to form and not required to have emergency departments. They sucked the cream away, and left the remaining hospitals with only the under and non insured. Many of them closed. No money coming in means no way to keep the doors open. The trend now is that there is overall a lot less cream for everybody. But the need for the care is about to go through the roof, and most of those coming into the greatest need for it are without the ability to pay for it. If you can tell me how that is a sustainable system, with something other than rhetoric to back it up, I'll buy you a nice dinner. :)
 
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Frnkd213

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I was listening to a clip of Huckabee speaking about healthcare reform mainly about preexisting conditions. I assume the question was if you take away the part of the reform regarding preexisting condition that was not a good thing but Huckabee had a different take. Paraphrasing here:
If you own a house and needed insurance you go to your agent and he will more likely insure it. However is it fair if for instance that prior to going to get insurance your house burns down. You go to the company asking for coverage and they deny it because of a pre-existing condition- your house is burnt down. He likens this to having diabetes, and other disease and ailments and asking the insurance company to cover you in spite of your "preexisting " condition. He actually used this analogy to compare and convince his listeners that there is similarities to an inanimate object and a human being. Unfortunately, the audience acknowledged his logic. This is scarey, not the fact that an ex-governor is even attempting to use it but that people is falling for it.
 

davidjh7

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Ultimately, history has shown that there are only two sustainable models for healthcare: 1)Healthcare for the rich--if you can pay, you get treatment, if you can't pay, die. or 2) Some form on nationalized "healthcare for all" with enough problems that it would fill a library to list them all. Both really suck as solutions for a society. Pick one.
 

Klingsor

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Ultimately, history has shown that there are only two sustainable models for healthcare: 1)Healthcare for the rich--if you can pay, you get treatment, if you can't pay, die. or 2) Some form on nationalized "healthcare for all" with enough problems that it would fill a library to list them all. Both really suck as solutions for a society. Pick one.

We sort of know who will pick what, don't we? :)
 

Thedrewbert

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I was hoping for something along the lines of the German model. Everyone except the most destitute is required to buy their own health insurance, however you can buy as little or as much as you need/can afford, but it isn't tied directly to your employment. Only those at the very very bottom have their healthcare paid for by the government.