Thought on Socialized Medicine and Reduction of Healthcare Costs

jpn of Seattle

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Re: Thought on Socialized Medicine and Reduction of Healthcare Costs

« Reply #30 on: October 21, 2007, 07:07:55 AM »

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.


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Gojira

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Blasphemy!

Re: Thought on Socialized Medicine and Reduction of Healthcare Costs

« Reply #31 on: October 21, 2007, 08:10:07 AM »

Quote from: jpn of Seattle on October 21, 2007, 07:07:55 AM

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.


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jpn of Seattle

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Re: Thought on Socialized Medicine and Reduction of Healthcare Costs

« Reply #32 on: October 21, 2007, 08:31:30 AM »

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.


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Patton

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Re: Thought on Socialized Medicine and Reduction of Healthcare Costs

« Reply #33 on: October 21, 2007, 11:01:59 AM »

Quote from: jpn of Seattle

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

Like every other developed nation on the planet.

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....


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jpn of Seattle

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Re: Thought on Socialized Medicine and Reduction of Healthcare Costs

« Reply #34 on: October 21, 2007, 07:27:50 PM »

Quote from: Patton on October 21, 2007, 11:01:59 AM

Quote from: jpn of Seattle

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

Like every other developed nation on the planet.

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

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.


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Patton

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Re: Thought on Socialized Medicine and Reduction of Healthcare Costs

« Reply #35 on: October 22, 2007, 07:43:58 AM »

Quote from: jpn of Seattle on October 21, 2007, 07:27:50 PM

I think the rest of your post is not important...

Why am I not surprised....

Quote

...since the one of the main arguments for universal health insurance is that it SAVES the nation money, not costs more.

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.


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jpn of Seattle

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Re: Thought on Socialized Medicine and Reduction of Healthcare Costs

« Reply #36 on: October 24, 2007, 08:29:24 PM »

Quote from: Patton on October 22, 2007, 07:43:58 AM

Quote from: jpn of Seattle on October 21, 2007, 07:27:50 PM

I think the rest of your post is not important...

Why am I not surprised....

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!

Quote from: Patton

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:

Quote

Your search - "Like every other developed nation on the planet" - did not match any documents.

But thanks for the compliment, unintended though it was.


« Last Edit: October 24, 2007, 08:34:32 PM by jpn of Seattle »	Logged

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jpn of Seattle

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Re: Thought on Socialized Medicine and Reduction of Healthcare Costs

« Reply #37 on: October 26, 2007, 06:44:27 PM »

Paul Krugman:

Quote

Bill Kristol had this famous memo during the defeat of the Clinton health care plan saying, we as Republicans must ensure that there is no plan because if there is a plan, if Clinton gets something, it will legitimize, re-legitimize the welfare state, and he's right. Universal health care is important and worth doing in its own right, but it also clearly would be a demonstration that you can do good things, that government can make society safer and more equitable, which is why conservatives are so hysterical over even S-CHIP. If we can get heath care, and I think we have slightly better than even odds that we can, it does change the whole set of norms.

source

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

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

Quote

The big three auto makers are enthusiastic supporters of single-payer health care … in Canada. It's an interesting question why they won't say that in the United States, and I think a lot of it is social pressure on the executives and political fear that they will be punished by a dominant right. And it's interesting. If we get this, I think there will be a real marginalization of the hard right in the years ahead, and we may also find that corporate American speaks up for single-payer health care and maybe for other things too, because they realize those policies are good for heading off erratic protectionism and draconian immigration restrictions.


« Last Edit: October 26, 2007, 06:46:22 PM by jpn of Seattle »	Logged

What you got is everything-and I mean everything—run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis. --John DiIulio, former White House official

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