Health Care Debate

[_JohnStuartMill]

So what? If he can't cut it in the private insurance market, he doesn't deserve to live.

All hail our Lord and Master, the free market!

[_Brackite]

Health care concession riles left; right unmoved:

[_JohnStuartMill]

Here's a good video showing BHO's dishonesty about Health Care.

http://www.freedomslighthouse.com/2009/ ... house.html

Wow, what a shamelessly dishonest ad. I'm familiar with the clips of Obama it uses, and I can tell you that they've been stripped of context so as to be drastically misleading. Of course, the conclusions that the ad draws from the clips are false.

For example: Obama is only in favor of single-payer health insurance in theory. He doesn't think it's workable given the scenario we face today. Importantly, it's not what he's proposed to Congress. Even if he were, that wouldn't be a government takeover of health care it would only be a government takeover of health insurance. The Canadians have a single-payer health care system, but physicians are not government employees, and patients still get to choose their doctors.

[_bcspace]

Anyone can throw out SOB stories. For example, I could link you to the recent situation in BC where surgeries are going to be cut from the program due to uinderfunding (what's the tax rate there by the way?) or how a British woman delivered on the pavement because she was refused service. But the bottom line is that the left has never at any time been able to justify uhc. They don't know how it works. They don't know how it will work. They haven't really examined the effects of such a program.

They will throw out life expectancy vs. percentage of GDP without showing how they might correlate. In fact, in this case, they don't correlate and some on the left have acknowledged that this is just political hype without any basis.

The left doesn't know anything at all about economics. They will set price ceilings without understanding what affect they have on the market and yes, a uhc IS a market; a disastrous one and not a free one. A uhc still rations. They must and it comes at a huge cost and with inefficiencies on a scale never seen in the free market. The other difference is that in a uhc, you can't do anything about being rationed out service whereas in a free market system, you always have access.

[_richardMdBorn]

Here's a good video showing BHO's dishonesty about Health Care.

http://www.freedomslighthouse.com/2009/ ... house.html

Wow, what a shamelessly dishonest ad. I'm familiar with the clips of Obama it uses, and I can tell you that they've been stripped of context so as to be drastically misleading. Of course, the conclusions that the ad draws from the clips are false.

For example: Obama is only in favor of single-payer health insurance in theory. He doesn't think it's workable given the scenario we face today.

Yes, the people won't stand for it. So he wants to introduce it gradually. That’s what the clip states.

Importantly, it's not what he's proposed to Congress.

Has he proposed a bill. There are various bills out there in the house and the senate. Has Obama proposed a bill.

Even if he were, that wouldn't be a government takeover of health care it would only be a government takeover of health insurance. The Canadians have a single-payer health care system, but physicians are not government employees, and patients still get to choose their doctors.

The Canadians have a fixed budget and widespread rationing.

Whereas 100 new drugs were introduced in the United States from 1997 to 1999, only 43 became available during the same period in Canada. When the government pays for health care, saving money is more important than saving lives. So bureaucrats have an incentive to delay — or deny — the introduction of new, costly drugs.
It’s not just limited access to drugs that hastens the deaths of the ill and the elderly. Diminished access to physicians, surgeries and other procedures harm ordinary Canadians, but such rationing is necessary for the Canadian government to keep costs down.
The average wait in Canada between a referral from a primary care doctor to treatment by a specialist was around nine weeks in 1993, but now it takes over four months. That’s almost double what doctors consider clinically reasonable.
Indeed, over 800,000 Canadians are currently on waiting lists for surgery and other necessary treatments. Many Canadians can’t even find a doctor — about 10 percent are currently seeking a primary care physician. Canada now ranks 24th out of 28 countries in the number of doctors per thousand people, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. When the government took over the health care system in the early ’70s, Canada ranked second.
Why the decline? Over the last decade, about 11 percent of physicians trained in Canadian medical schools have moved to America.
That’s because doctors’ salaries are paid for by provincial governments and subject to cost-conscious budget analysts. In fact, the average Canadian doctor earns only 42 percent of what his U.S. counterpart earns.
But it’s not just about money. Doctors feel they can’t practice the type of medicine they’re trained for due to budget restrictions set by bureaucrats.

http://www.modbee.com/opinion/national/story/46695.html
Obama’s promise that you can keep your health plan is obviously wrong. The government can at any time give employers’ a strong incentive to switch to the public option by reducing its cost.

[_richardMdBorn]

Another perspecitve on Obama's whopper that you can keep your own health plan:

The heart of the Obama reform, supported by virtually all congressional Democrats, is to treat health insurance companies as national public utilities. The federal government would determine the benefit packages they could offer. Pricing decisions would be strictly limited and profits capped.

An essential element of the reform is also a mandate that people purchase health insurance. If the federal government is requiring people to purchase health insurance, you can bet that politicians and bureaucrats will increasingly treat health insurance companies as federal subsidiaries, feeling free, even obligated, to meddle in every aspect of what they do.

And then there is the public option, which would be government-run health care. The notion that such an entity can exist without the government showing such favoritism that private competitors eventually die out defies logic and history.

So, the accurate way to frame the opposition point is that the Democrats are proposing extensive government control of health care, which may lead to government-run health care.

The most consequential misrepresentation in the health care debate is when Obama and other supporters claim that if people like their doctor and their insurance plan, they will get to keep them. The reason for the heavy stress on that reassurance is the belief that health care reform that jeopardizes what people currently have isn't going anywhere.

The promise is false, however, even by the terms of the committee bills. Existing plans are grandfathered in, but only for five years. After that, they have to meet the new federal mandates, whatever they turn out to be. In the interim, they can accept no new enrollees.

More fundamentally, the Obama reforms completely scramble the health care market. There will be new governmental mandates, huge new individual subsidies and different tax treatments. What employers will offer after everything is scrambled up and resettles is entirely unknowable.

Simply put, the health care coverage people currently have would be subject to considerable change. An honest health care debate would acknowledge that.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/08/22/obamas_health_care_whopper_is_bigger_97989.html

Obama off teleprompter is certainly prone to gaffes!

Yesterday during a town hall meeting, President Obama got his facts completely wrong. He stated that a surgeon gets paid $50,000 for a leg amputation when, in fact, Medicare pays a surgeon between $740 and $1,140 for a leg amputation. This payment also includes the evaluation of the patient on the day of the operation plus patient follow-up care that is provided for 90 days after the operation. Private insurers pay some variation of the Medicare reimbursement for this service.

Three weeks ago, the President suggested that a surgeon’s decision to remove a child’s tonsils is based on the desire to make a lot of money. That remark was ill-informed and dangerous, and we were dismayed by this characterization of the work surgeons do. Surgeons make decisions about recommending operations based on what’s right for the patient.

[_JohnStuartMill]

Wow, what a shamelessly dishonest ad. I'm familiar with the clips of Obama it uses, and I can tell you that they've been stripped of context so as to be drastically misleading. Of course, the conclusions that the ad draws from the clips are false.

For example: Obama is only in favor of single-payer health insurance in theory. He doesn't think it's workable given the scenario we face today.

Yes, the people won't stand for it. So he wants to introduce it gradually. That’s what the clip states.

No, the clip does not state that Obama is trying to introduce single-payer gradually.

Importantly, it's not what he's proposed to Congress.

Has he proposed a bill. There are various bills out there in the house and the senate. Has Obama proposed a bill.

Whether Obama has proposed a bill is immaterial to what he has proposed to Congress, because there are other ways to propose things to Congress than by proposing actual bills.

Even if he were, that wouldn't be a government takeover of health care it would only be a government takeover of health insurance. The Canadians have a single-payer health care system, but physicians are not government employees, and patients still get to choose their doctors.

The Canadians have a fixed budget and widespread rationing.

Whereas 100 new drugs were introduced in the United States from 1997 to 1999, only 43 became available during the same period in Canada.

That's a pretty short time period, so I really have to wonder if you're not cherry-picking data, or parroting someone else who was.

When the government pays for health care, saving money is more important than saving lives. So bureaucrats have an incentive to delay — or deny — the introduction of new, costly drugs.
It’s not just limited access to drugs that hastens the deaths of the ill and the elderly. Diminished access to physicians, surgeries and other procedures harm ordinary Canadians, but such rationing is necessary for the Canadian government to keep costs down.

The bureaucrats that run health insurance companies ration care too, you know.

The average wait in Canada between a referral from a primary care doctor to treatment by a specialist was around nine weeks in 1993, but now it takes over four months. That’s almost double what doctors consider clinically reasonable.
Indeed, over 800,000 Canadians are currently on waiting lists for surgery and other necessary treatments. Many Canadians can’t even find a doctor — about 10 percent are currently seeking a primary care physician. Canada now ranks 24th out of 28 countries in the number of doctors per thousand people, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. When the government took over the health care system in the early ’70s, Canada ranked second.
Why the decline? Over the last decade, about 11 percent of physicians trained in Canadian medical schools have moved to America.
That’s because doctors’ salaries are paid for by provincial governments and subject to cost-conscious budget analysts. In fact, the average Canadian doctor earns only 42 percent of what his U.S. counterpart earns.

Yes, and unlike in the U.S., Canadian physicians don't need to kill themselves with loans to become doctors, so it about evens out -- or it would, if the presence of the American system weren't such a huge incentive for Canadian doctors to socialize their education in Canada and fully privatize their compensation south of the border.

Obama’s promise that you can keep your health plan is obviously wrong. The government can at any time give employers’ a strong incentive to switch to the public option by reducing its cost.

I don't see how a reduction in health care costs is a reductio ad absurdum.

[_richardMdBorn]

Hi JSM,

Thanks for your interesting comments. I want to focus on what I consider to be the key one.

I don't see how a reduction in health care costs is a reductio ad absurdum.

An important element in health care inflation is the care which has little or no cost to the individual. Medicare/medicaid costs increased much faster than predicted.

The two primary lessons of Medicare are the chronic problem of woefully underestimating program costs and the impossibility of genuine cost control. A closer look at Medicare shows why these two problems are certain to plague a government-administered universal health-care plan.

The cost of Medicare is a good place to begin. At its start, in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that Medicare would cost only about $ 12 billion by 1990 (a figure that included an allowance for inflation). This was a supposedly "conservative" estimate. But in 1990 Medicare actually cost $107 billion.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/29339.html

Subsiding an activity results in more of it. Taxing an activity results in less of it (or more cheating). Giving away health care increases the demand for it. Controlling costs then requires rationing. Liberals are pro-choice on abortion. I guess that's the only aspect of health care in which choice is allowed.

[_bcspace]

The bureaucrats that run health insurance companies ration care too, you know.

They do. But even now, no one is denied access and you can switch plans if you don't like your current one (or you can also chnage your lifestyle).

But better yet would be to go back to where the consumer had almost infinite choice and the free market sets the price. Never under any other circumstance will the right price be charged and everyone can be supplied.

JSM and the other Obama pawns continue to fail to understand or even discuss this in real economic terms. Heck, I'll bet most of them have never read the plan.

Bottom line: Obama is a socialist. He is the New Party's darling candidate. He's has passed muster with the communist party. They've already said let's just take small bites and we'll get to uhc by and by. It's Napoleon and Snowball all over again.

Congressman Mike Rogers' opening statement on Health Care reform in Washington D.C.

He's read it. He get's it.

[_EAllusion]

They do. But even now, no one is denied access and you can switch plans if you don't like your current one (or you can also chnage your lifestyle).

If you can't afford it, you are denied access. This might be good or bad, but it's misleading in the context of comparing how things are rationed out.

There is a very poor freedom of movement in health insurance plans. I know I can't just switch plans and my plan sucks. And I make a decent living. My insurance denies every single claim I make by default. I'm pretty sure they automate denial of initial claims. I have to go through a dispute process to get anything paid for. Sometimes I have to go through multiple dispute processes, like when I went in for an annual physical. Mind you, they are one of the largest insurers in the country. They fight tooth and nail to deny anything they can.

This lack of freedom of movement is due mainly to insurance being coupled to employment. It's negotiated at the employer level en masse. That state of affairs resulted initially from wage caps during WW II. It was ingrained by tax subsidies shortly thereafter on into the present. Right now, the better your benefits, the more the government pays for them via tax break. This has the effect of raising costs the most for those least able to afford them. I can't see how anyone would defend this as awesome, especially those who favor free markets.

As far as commie Obama goes, it's that kind of language that makes it soooo easy to dismiss anything legitmate you might have to say. Do you think every other Western industrialized nation is communist? 'Cause we are the only one without some true national healthcare plan. That might make us the last holdout against a bad idea, but surely you recognize the absurdity in suggesting Canada, UK, Germany, Isreal, etc. are commie-lands.