Hawke wrote:
What's irritating is that no matter how many times you show
these numbers
to
right wing guys it just doesn't sink in

Hawke

Just to irritate you some more, it still has not sunk in. The
problem is while it is easy to come up with those numbers, it is
a lot harder to know why. Correlation does not mean cause and
effect.

An easy way to decrease the cost of healthcare in the US, would
be to eliminate all procedures which will only prolong someones
life by six months and also eliminate all procedures that do not
have a proven success record. If we had done this say thirty
years ago, we would not have any heart transplants , artificial
heart valves, etc.

Dan

Until you have been involved in the decision whether to treat a
loved one aggressively to prolong life or let go ("let nature take
its course"), you don't know what you are talking about.

It isn't a question of treatment or not. The question is payment.
There isn't any reason a person shouldn't be able to buy insurance
to cover anything they need.
Their needs, and the needs of their families for emotional
placation, are not the needs of society.

JC

If you think payment is the question, not treatment, then I have to
ask payment for what? The cost of (let's say) a liver transplant
for a patient who is going to die soon, whether or not the
transplant occurs, is WAY more than the cost of palliative
treatment. I have to ask what we are insuring against. A basic
low(er) level of treatment costs, or the costs of treating
everything. IMNSHO, a asic level of insurance (however defined)
should be compulsory (yes, that bad word, and whether the employee
or the employer pays is ultimately only semantics). On top of that
a person should be allowed to insure against the costs of more
complex events/procedures. Freedom of personal choice, etc., etc.

Society needs some kind of insurance, and the current system is
dysfunctional.

Government in the medical business is a permanent solution to a
temporary problem. When I was a kid, when you got sick you went to
the doctor and he did what he could and it didn't cost much. Now he
can do a lot more but it's all cutting edge and the costs are
horrendous. A hundred years from now when the technologies have
matured and an NMR scanner is a child's plaything that you get at
Toys R Us for 50 bucks it's going to be back to where most people
can pay for most medical issues out of pocket without it hurting
particularly.

But if we get government involved now then government will still be
involved then.


So would you rather have the government be involved in health care or
just leave it in the hands of people like used car salesmen? There
are private alternatives that are worse than the government. How
about having Bernie Madoff handling your health care or the
management of AIG? Think they would be better than the government? I
don't. The greed of businessmen is what makes them unacceptable for
making decisions on people's health care. You need people that aren't
going to profit from your health problems making the decisions.
Hopefully, medical professionals without a financial interest would
decide what you need.

I'd rather have _me_ making the decisions thank you.