IAP Political Forum

I just had a thought...

If socialized medicine gives the majority of the public access to healthcare whenever they need it, that would mean that people would be entitled to get check-ups freely.  Doesn't the concern for health early on help reduce serious illness in the future?  That would mean that socialized medicine actually reduces costs. 

I mean all of the insurance companies are implenting incentive policies in which customers who take prevenative medicine procedures get discounts on premiums.  Unfourtunately, everyone is not insured.  Everyone is not entilted to these benefits and eveyone is not healthy enough to provides enough benefit to our current insurance system. 

If everyone had access to healthcare, could this be one of the cures for rising healthcare costs?

Here's an interesting study to help supplement my post:

Linky --> http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-healthcare.htm

An intersting comment from the article:

Interesting, actually.

But there are still genetic disorders and unavoidable illnesses that still cost money to treat, be it with medication or surgery. These are simply unavoidable.

Of course, these are also the most expensive, in some cases.

No.  Reducing user cost to zero increases demand infinitely.  Unless you ration procedures, more will be spent on them.  This is why the UK and Canada both have waiting lists.

More to your point, preventive care may alter when a person becomes ill, but it doesn't change the fact that each of us will die of something.  Oddly, unhealthy people often have lower healthcare costs over the span of their lives.  The man who has a heart attack at 55 uses fewer resources that the healthnut who goes senile at 80 and spends the next 20 years in a assisted living.

Preventitive treatment would helpt to reduce healthcare costs in the long run.  However, universal access does not equate to preventitive care.  It relates to access.  It means you can go to the doctor everytime you feel sick.  This would in fact increase healthcare costs.  Not only would there be more money spent on the time and resources of seeing these people.. but the current state in which medicine is practiced it would mean more prescriptions.  Needless prescriptions.

For example, more "cold" or "flu-like" symptoms can be treated over the counter.  Your physician has nothing more in their arsenal to help you.  Antibiotics are not appropriate in about 65%+ of these cases.  (I suppose your physician does have better cough suppressants).

If the country were to push to a more socialized medicine (or if insurance companies want to reduce cost) they need to change some fundamental ways we think about "going to the doctor."  Emphasizing the allied health professions of dieticians, pharmacists etc to promote prevention is one thing.  Then also correcting the idea that when you goto the doctor that doctor must "fix" you and a prescription is the cure.

A certain type of diabetes that is caused by improper diets can easily be avoidable.  So can some other genetic disorders and unavoidable illnesses be treated effectively where the cost is very low.  I have a serious case of eczema and the only way I can keep it from inflaming is by constant routine moisturizing and monitoring my lifestyle.  This routine would not have been possible with out my health insurance covering simple check ups by doctors.

I think that other genetic disorders and unavoidable illnesses can still be supplemented by the government while still reducing costs unlike our current system.  A lot of the costs attributed with the system is pressure caused by insurance companies not paying the bills.  Most people in the U.S. who have these illnesses are paying out of pocket and severely in debt. (or worse, don't get treatment at all)   Trying to get insurance companies to pay just makes the costs worse.

The economics is right.  I don't know how to get around it but looking at other health care systems you kind of ponder whether it is...

The waiting lists are not that bad in the UK and Canada as much as everyone says it is.  Many bureaucratic procedures help in screening patients first before actual doctors are to make decisions.  Then again, you leave our health care system in the hands of bureaucracy.  But is the alternative better?  Or back to my OP, is it cheaper?


This is a good point.  However, health nuts (not hypochondriacs) are very pro-active in their lifestyle putting forth a lot of productive energy themselves in making healthy choices.  They spend lots of time reading, planning and budgeting their time and money to fit their healthful needs.  There is only so much a doctor can do.  Maximized nutrition isn't one of them.

I was talking about families prone to certain types of cancer (prostate and skin cancer are big in my family) as well as mental retardation, asthma, chronic heart desease (that's genetic, isn't it?), MS...

There are a host of things people are simply born with or aquire regardless of early detection.

Those are also the most costly.

I think your line of reasoning works to a degree, but in the long term, we'll just have too many people and not enough doctors, as zuk mentioned.

It obvious that trying to figure out what causes such huge amount of costs is exhausting and then trying to find a solution could cause even more unforeseen costs.  In relation to your post, we all assume that every American is going to rush to the hospital every time they feel sick.  Once they go, their cares should have been handled.  Does not that mean that doctors are not serving their patients the way they should be?  Because insurance companies pressure them to do certain procedures, and not others, which causes many patients to get poor treatment? 


In answering my own question why we assume Americans will all rush to hospital at once could be explained by an elaboration of your point. 

From the link posted in OP:

Instead of America needing a more revamped health care system, maybe we should revamp our foundational values and interests.

 

I understand.  Check my latest conclusion.*


*Is it wrong to quote yourself?  :D

Possibly.  Very hard with so many working in sedentary occupations and childhoods spent with computers.

Plus the fact that what is always the most healthy isn't always the fastest.

People are always racing around thinking they have no time to cook a decent meal or the money to buy one... hence the conception of fast food in the first place.

Plus, you can try and instill healthy eating habits... but you can't enforce them.

 
I can't say this with absolute certainty but I imagine that if you looked at cost vs. doctor visits that people on social services (lowest to no co-pays) have the highest attendence.  I'm sure there are other factors in this equation (why did they need assistance etc) but there is probably a relationship going on there.
Any good study would also track what people were going to the doctor for (ER, primary, etc) and plot that against the same "copays" spread.  
The answer would help to see if people paying less went to the doctor more often and for more minor things.  My gut feeling is that they do but I don't know for sure

This assumes that problems could be handled.  Going to the doctor for colds, most flus, stomach upset blah blah blah are not 'fixable'.
However, it's not to say that these visits are what is driving up our costs.  I think increased demand, expensive tests, lawsuits, price gouging etc is our problem.  And it's a big problem.

A very big problem...

NO, it means that people will be FORCED by the government to get routine check-ups, vaccinations, and medical proceedures they may not want or need.  Failure to do so could result in the loss of benefits, fines, penalties, or in some instances, JAIL TIME!!!


NO.  If 300 MILLION Americans are getting free healthcare, whenever the federal government decides it will pay for you to have it, it is not, nor will it ever be cheaper than if the federal government payed for NOONES healthcare, and stayed the hell out of healthcare regulation altogether.  Have you ever wondered why healthcare is tied to our jobs?  Ever wondered why, under Hitlery-care, you would be required to have insurance to have a job?  Just what does healthcare have to do with employment, anyway?

Where, in the Constitution, does it give anyone in the federal government the right, the authority, or the power to make any decision, whatsoever, regarding the healthcare of Americans?  If the power to regulate healthcare is not specifically listed in the enumerated powers of the Constitution, the 10th Amendment FORBIDS the Congress from regulating what would otherwise be a STATES RIGHT!!!!


Yes, right now insurance companies are instituting, "incentive policies," but for some reason, you want the federal government to institute their own set of, "incentive policies," regading healthcare, so instead of being able to tell your insuarnce company to take their rediculouos policies and invasive practises, and  and shove 'em, however, you would rather these, "incentive policies," come in the form od laws and regulations that could have you in jail for failure to follow these, "incentive policies." 
 
You'll say things like, "why should we have to pay for a lung transplant when he got lung cancer from smoking?" or, "why should the American taxpayer pay for a liver to replace the one he drank to death?"  Or even, "why should the American taxpayer pay for dental work on that drug addicted criminal," and seek to outlaw things like smoking, drinking, obesity, and any other, "vice," you want the population to discontinue. 

Further, the federal government, and people like you, will use the threat of taking away your healthcare to force you into complaince with ANY laws relavant to and irrelevant of healthcare.  "We shouln't have to pay for the healthcare of murderers.  They don't care about anyones healthcare, why should we?"  I can hear it now.  "He raped a 13 year old, he doesn't deserve viagra."  "He robbed a liquer store using a gun, no more asthma medication for him."

A non-ending invasion into the rights and freedoms of every American citizen in the country, under the threat of losing healthcare for failure to comply with any law they see fit to enforce and any time in te future.  And what about our right to privacy?  Instead you want to force the American people to tell the government what is wrong with them, and keep the federal government informed about the status of your health at all times.   Just like you endorse the federal government knowing how much money you make, and what property you own. 


Has making the government pay for anything been the cure for rising costs?  Has the government been the cure for anything?  There is NOTHING more inefficient or inept as federal goverment buracracy, yet you want to add it into an already expensive healthcare system.  Why is that?  Ask a Brit what it takes to get a non-emergency dental appointment in their country.  Ask a Canadian how long the wait is for elective non-essential surgery.  Multiply that times 10 for the population difference, and you might just get some idea of how tragically COMMIUNIST a program like socialized medicine is.

I mean, it was one of Lennin's planques in his COMMUNIST MANIFESTO!!!  But what does Lennin know about being a commie, right?

FreeinTX

No one is forcing anyone to do anything.  It just makes availability universal.


Health-care is tied to our jobs because of a stupid tax incentive given after WWII so that returning soldiers from the war can receive health care from employers without having to dip into their paycheck.  Now, both employees and employers are having a hard time keeping employer-provided health care because costs have become so high.  So employees drop it.  The insurance pool shrinks.  Premiums have to rise.   



That is your interpretation of the constitution.  What does it have to do with decreasing health-care costs?


Again no one is forcing anyone.  People don't bother with preventative care because a) they don't have insurance or b) the costs outweigh the benefits.  The idea is that if people were given unlimited availability of health-care, they may be able to get check-ups now so that they can prevent higher expenses later. 
 

That's not the point of my post.  The point is that with universal availability of health-care, people would be more inclined to get preventative care which is MUCH cheaper than emergency care.  Look at my article if you are so inclined to debate that.   


Rant much?  ::)


Socialized medicine actually gives many Americans the opportunity to freely make choices about their health.  The Federal Government is not the health care industry.     


The government has had a tremendous amount of progress in fulfilling the needs of the American people...why should a plan for health-care be denied when so many progressive legislation has been enacted before it that actually benefits American society? 


Lenin didn't write the Communist Manifesto; Marx did.  And if you read the communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, you would understand socialism is not communism and that communism is not a command economy. 

I have a question, feel free to answer it if you have an answer.

Why are the insurance companies charging so much now? When I was a child, one of my parents paid $100 per month for coverage for a family of 5. Now, it's $500 a month or so, depending. Even $200/month is inexpensive if you can find it offered for that much. When and why did the price jump up so much?

The uninsured. 

Health-care was a mess already due to administrative costs.   Insurance companies are now adding pressure because of the decrease in the insurance pool.  Because this pool is decreasing, insurance companies still need to cover the cost of claims and must increase premiums because of the more people dropping out of coverage. 

So since health-costs have increased premiums, and most insurance packages offered didn't vary much, people preferred to just drop health insurance all together and pay out of pocket.  If they ever need emergency care,  the Federal Government will be there to foot the bill.  However, it takes forever to get these funds, and so hospitals have to spread that cost amongst all of it's other bills, set their invoice pay periods to 90 day instead of the usual 30 day, and are forced by both Insurance and Federal government to spend resources during this 90 day period to try and get someone to privately pay for it.

I have a couple of insurance adjusters in my family, not for health care, but for auto and other types of insurance. One of them tried to explain to me how insurance companies pay for accidents, which is through the stock market and other types of investments. I didn't fully understand what she was trying to explain to me, but the gist was through the stock market. Is health insurance different from other types of insurance in this aspect?

Ooops sorry, your right.

And what I am saying, is that the healthcare systems like the one proposed by the communist candidate is only LABELED socialized medicine, it is nothing of the sort.  FASCIST (the command economy) and COMMUNIST (total control), yes, socialized, NO!!!  HITLERY Clinton seeks to institute the very basic planque of nationalized healthcare,. and institute it in total communist fashion. 

And, your wrong, it is a matter of time before they FORCE you to do things.  Use rhetoric like "Well, if you don't get your vaccine, we aren't going to cover you if you get sick."  And its a slippery slope.  But even today in a world of voluntary vaccinations, you could lose custody of your children for refusing certain vaccines.  As one example.  Can you imagine the restrictions on smoking? 

The idea of instituting this on a federal level, just screams, waste, fraud, and abuse.  In addition to the potential for neglect, politicization, and rampant increases in costs, to a country and its taxpayers that are both already pretty broke.

But the main issue and the one you just completely blew off because you know the answer already.  Where, in the CONSTITUTION does the federal government have the right to regulate or provide a government run healthcare system of ANY kind, good or bad?  Before you go and suggest that the government do something, maybe you should first look and see if the government is allowed to do something.  This federal government has absolutely no business determining my healthcare needs, or my healthcare requirements.  The CONSTITUTION has NO provisions for that, which means SPECIFICALLY, by definition of the 10th Amendment they are NOT allowed to do it.

And are you actually insisting that just because the government is providing for your healthcare that they will not know your healthcare status?  That the government will somehow be able to provide you with adequate healthcare coverage but be completely unknowledgeable about your health status?  How do you propose the government pay for your healthcare without looking at the bill and looking for themselves at what health conditions you may have?  How does that work? 

But hey when the government loses MILLIONS of identities of military troops with their personal information attached, no big deal right?   So, when they lose MILLIONS of identites of healthcare patients no big deal either, right?

Something to do with "fastest grown crime in the world."

FreeinTX

There are two ways to view the constitution:

1. Strictly
2. Loosely

You sir, prefer the first, I prefer the latter.  The essential foundation to our arguments.

You mean

1.  What the Constitution says
2.  What the sitting Supreme Court thinks it should have said?

Supreme Court - a group of 9 people appointed by 44 years of CFR controlled Presidents.

I put my allegence and the top office holders swear to uphold the values of the former, not the later.

FreeinTX

Whatever branches our understanding

LOL!!!!

 :o :o CHEERS  :o :o

FreeinTX

Gojira,

Did you read the post from FREEINTX?

He makes some good points.

Of course, all you need to know about why socialized healthcare is not a good idea can be summed up in a single quote.

The quote is the first one in your sig.

And concentrated power given to those who maximize profits at the expense of our nation's health would be just as better?

Watch yourself before I label you as a hypocrite.

Do you truly believe that the US government will bite the hand that feeds it?

How much money does the insurance industry spend each year on lobbying and campaign contributions?

How much is spent by the pharmaceutical industry?

How much is spent by the rest of the healthcare industry?

Obviously, this is the problem you have with our current situation and I have a problem with it as well.

It would seem that socialized healthcare would put an end to this, but I would bet everything I own that a socialized healthcare system in the US will be worse than what we have now.

I can't prove my opinion on this, it is just my opinion, based on history.

WASHINGTON, July 7, 2005 — The pharmaceutical and health products industry has spent more than $800 million in federal lobbying and campaign donations at the federal and state levels in the past seven years, a Center for Public Integrity investigation has found. Its lobbying operation, on which it reports spending more than $675 million, is the biggest in the nation. No other industry has spent more money to sway public policy in that period. Its combined political outlays on lobbying and campaign contributions is topped only by the insurance industry.

The drug industry's huge investments in Washington—though meager compared to the profits they make—have paid off handsomely, resulting in a series of favorable laws on Capitol Hill and tens of billions of dollars in additional profits. [See What the Industry Got.] They have also fended off measures aimed at containing prices, like allowing importation of medicines from countries that cap prescription drug prices, which would have dented their profit margins. Pfizer, the world's largest drug company, made a profit of $11.3 billion last year, out of sales of $51 billion.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/rx/report.aspx?aid=723

If you wish to believe that anyone in Congress is going to pass legislation which will solve this problem, then you are truly living in a fantasy world.

If socialized healthcare comes, you will not like it.

This is the first time I believe I COMPLETELY agree with Pond Scum.

Applaud for you today, sir.

An intresting observation from the trenches on the front line:

Having worked in both settings...Military=100% Socialized and the Private/For Profit-HCA facilities I will say that lack of income incentives for performance in a socialized setting leads to workers doing "just enough" to keep the bosses off their back...in an infrastructure that will see a vast increase when the "uninsured" darken the doorways...doing "just enough" translates to long waits for access.

If you plan on "income incentives" for a "socialized" system....you won't have enough money in the treasury for anything else.

What, you agree with me? Completely?

Now I am scared.

Quick, check to see if there are any really large asteroids headed towards earth right now. This might be the end of the world as we know it.

The cost of health care is driving Medicare and Medicaid into severe fiscal straights.
The cost of health care is a major source of overhead expense for business, and one of the primary reasons our auto industry is in crisis.

How to reduce the costs?

Posters here predict that socialized health care will break the bank. And yet all the other nations with socialized health care pay far less per capita and receive as good or better care.

How to reduce the costs and head off the Medicare/Medicaid/Business crises?
Socialize health care.

Like every other developed nation on the planet.

All you have to do is get over your ideological blinders.

Thanks for getting back to the topic of the post: reducing costs in health-care.

I would like to say that since every other developed nation on the planet has socialized healthcare and their costs are low, then it should work for us.  On a broader level I think it would work, but not for America necessarily. 

This post was just a thought, nothing more.  Although I think socialized heath-care may have been best for other nations...maybe it isn't for America. 

We have a billion dollar insurance industry that has amassed a huge amount of capital and labor thanks from premiums paid by millions of customers every day. To completely wipe them out and just hand it over to the government may create much more of a problem than we have already.  (At least the transition would be devastating)

That is why I am more in support of health plans like Mitt Romney's and the newly proposed Hillycare.  It increases the insurance pool through subsidies for those who can't afford it at first, and hopefully everything will work out.  We don't have to take down an industry.  All we have to do is roll back tax cuts that never worked and everything should be fine.

It's always important to look at a side like socialized healthcare and see what other benefits would amass from it if it were implemented and then come to some conclusions about what could realistically be done and still create a huge benefit.

Yes, perhaps there's something in the water in America which makes us immune to socialized health care.

More seriously, the private insurance companies are a huge source of expense that the other nations don't suffer. First, of course, is the 10 to 20 percent profit margin skimmed off the top. Then there's the inefficiencies of having hundreds of different insurance companies with different procedures, forms, etc. that the health industry has to deal with.

Then there's all the expense that the insurance industry suffers from the difficult process of making sure they insure only healthy people and finding ways to exclude sick people from their coverage. Not a cheap process, I'm sure.

Nice sound bite J....get that from Hillary's campaign headquarters?

No other country on the planet spends what we do on Defense.

It must be nice to be Sweden:

The foreign policy of Sweden is based on the premise that national security is best served by staying free of alliances in peacetime in order to remain a neutral country in the event of war.

You recommend breaking every single treaty and alliance we have ever entered?

The US:

A comparison of the budgets for the world's greatest military spenders. Note that this comparison is done in nominal value US dollars and thus is not adjusted for purchasing power parity. The current (2005) United States military budget is larger than the military budgets of the next fourteen biggest spenders combined, and over eight times larger than the official military budget of China. The United States and its close allies are responsible for approximately two-thirds of all military spending on Earth (of which, in turn, the US is responsible for the majority). Military spending accounts for more than half of the United States' federal discretionary spending, which is all of the U.S. government's money that is not used for pre-existing obligations.[4]

It's all in WiKi....

Since it's true, odds are that it didn't come from any Republican campaign headquarters...

I think the rest of you post is not important, since the one of the main arguments for universal health insurance is that it SAVES the nation money, not costs more. It will address servere fiscal problems, for example, in Medicare and Medicaid.

Why am I not surprised....


You didn't comment on "incentives" to healthcare workers....how will a socialized healthcare system not suffer the same intrinsic "motivational" issues we see in the military system?

Do you think lack of "incentives" to perform will have any effect on workers who will be expected to increase their productivity?

If you do give these people "incentives" to perform...where will it come from and how much will it cost?

Ignorance truely must be bliss...must be nice to get ones "talking points' on issues from others....I come up with item after item from actually working IN the system.

Thanks for the gratuitous insult--it's nice to know you still care.
And thanks for the real-world insight.

So Patton, how do you suppose Germany and France grapples with the incentive issue you raise? What do you reckon? Do you figure it's an intractable problem?

And why am I not surprised that you ignore the reason why I dismissed the rest of your post? Pretty hard to refute my logic, isn't it? Better to make do with a dismissive wave of your hand than to acknowledge that your complaining about the cost of universal health care is irrelevant because it is the savings from having universal health insurance that is one of it's most impressive features! Jeeze!


Ah, couldn't miss an opportunity to slide a little insult in there with your answer. Good for you. I'm glad to know that you still care.

The reason that I didn't answer your incentives issue is because you refuse to anticipate the obvious refutation of your issue--which is that universal health insurance works in every other developed nation. Until you grapple with that fact, all your "issues" are transparently just smoke and mirrors to obscure the reality that the U.S. is singularly crippled with an idiotic free market health care system which simply does not perform as well as the obvious alternative.

p.s., my line, "Like every other developed nation on the planet", is original. Just thought I should make that clear. I even Googled it to see if it had been used anywhere else and I got this response:

But thanks for the compliment, unintended though it was.

Paul Krugman:
 source (http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=tap_talks_to_paul_krugman)

As the Brits say, "got it in one."

In the same interview, Krugman also had this to say: