rangerssuck wrote:
On Jun 14, 6:36 pm, "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.
Hawke
Here's another angle:
I pay over $10,000 per year for health insurance. A significant
portion of that bill is for prescription drugs. So why the **** is it
that for the two generic prescriptions I fill each month, it's cheaper
to pay the drug store directly than to pay the copays from the
insurance company?
Last week, I noticed a sign at my supermarket saying that their
pharmacy would fill antibiotic prescriptions for FREE, and many others
for $3.95.
My point is that there MUST be a less expensive way to do this.
There is - get the government out of healthcare entirely and watch
competition drive prices down. Prices are artificially high today
precisely because the providers are guaranteed government payment
for some part of the service or pharma vended. The current system
is an unholy mess that tries to retain the benefits of competitive
market-based medicine while inserting government control into the
system. This is no more possible than being kind of pregnant.
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Tim Daneliuk
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