Healthcare discussion (sicko)

[miir]

Thought I would bring this conversation over from the Movies forum.

[miir]

Could you imagine if you had to get Police Protection Insurance?
If you live in a high risk neighbourhood where there is a lot of muggings, homicides, break-ins and rapes maybe you couldn't find an insurance company that would cover you. Could you imagine if you got stabbed and had to pay your insurance deductible before the police would start the investigation? Would be cool for criminals to find out who doesn't have insurance. They could rob, rape and kill without any fear of police intervention.

What if your home caught fire and the closest fire station was not approved by your insurance company... and they had to send firemen from a station that was 5 miles away. Or maybe the house next door to you caught fire and they didn't have fire department insurance.




Healthcare should be the same as the police and the fire department. All deal with life and death situations. All services should be accesable to everyone, regardless of income or social stature.
There could (and should) be private companies that offer additional heathcare, police protection and fire protection services to those who can afford it, but any service that deals with life and death situations should NEVER EVER be put exclusively into the hands of private companies.

[Fash]

I really liked the movie and hope the discussion of a nationalized healthcare system returns to the forefront. Our government turned over our collective health and well-being to private industry more than 35 years ago, and it's spiraled into a profit-stealing clusterfuck that costs people their lives and seriously impacts the 'living wage' all over the country.

One of the key parts of the movie, to me, is how he showed that Hillary was pushing Nationwide Healthcare really hard until she took almost a million dollars to shut up about it. She's not alone, they're all taking their cuts and profiting off of our shitty situation, and I don't know how we can get where we need to be without making serious changes that affect more than just healthcare. Big Business has infested our ruling bodies and thrown justice out the window along with the american dream.

[Kluden]

I'm glad we can continue this topic, its very interesting to me.

Its like a lot of people are saying, none of the systems are perfect, there are just better ways to do things, and some countries do things closer to perfect than others. the US just has to change "health care" from a business to a service. That would make me happy enough. Doesn't have to be an NHS. We get enough people coming to this country, if we started offering truly superior free health care, immigration (both legal and illegal) would step up, bigtime...and the US would be left holding the bag for all those costs, along with the multitude of other social services offered to those in need...increasing the number of "those in need" would destroy the debt even further. Granted, the war is doing that now, but that's a different topic.

Like I said in my post under the sicko movie thread, regulations are what get my vote. With a proper group of people to define the guidelines. The government, the AMA, Health Care "insurers", and citizens to do the write up. If they are forced to restrict the profit center of health, and be completely open book, then the regulations can restrict what costs what to the citizen. Again, no denials and no drops of insurance are legal. If you pay your premium, you are insured. You're premium is based on how many "pre-existings" you have, and those max premium fees are government set. That way, if an insurance company needs more people to buy their insurance, they can offer a lower premium...charging less than the government set max fee for each item. If an insurance provider has too many customers, they just quote people the max fees. That would create a nice capitalistic approach, allowing each insurance providers to make money in the process, and keep everyone insured who can afford it.

As for the uninsured, that's where the government comes in. Taxes on the insurance provider should provide enough money for this. With an open book accounting scheme that the government audits yearly, they can tax the insurance companies based on their profits. If they write 1000 policies, and no one uses them, the company will make an extremely high amount of profit...so they get taxed higher. The Government then takes this tax revenue and directly uses it to pay for the uninsured.


Ok, now I know that my ideas are pretty much crap in the eyes of probably 90% of folks, because that's just not the way this country runs...but its an idea. Its not perfect. I personally don't think it is "fair" to take the business completely away from health care providers and insurers. We do have a free economy. But it is fair for the government to restrict the hell out of that profit and how you do your business, in my mind, when it deals with "health and wellbeing". They do it with the auto manufacturers (I know, fairly loosely) when it deals with the environment's health and wellbeing...so why not its people?

[miir]

I have 100% support for privatizing some areas of healthcare.
I see no reason that private clinics and hospitals should not be able to offer premium service.

The bottom line is that every American citizen should have the right to free healthcare on par (or better) with what we receive in Canada... and not have to worry about having insurance. Without having to worry about if their insurance is going to cover their medical expenses. Without having to worry about if they are being taken to a hospital that their insurance company approves.. and not having to worry about the potential financial strain of having to pay sometimes outrageous deductibles.

[Kluden]

I think all of those points could be regulated on the insurance providers through the government. I would prefer for it all to just be a no questions asked, it just gets taken care of, but I don't see how the US could turn it around to that point. My idea is more of a baby step, although its a big assed baby, but a step in that direction.


The other idea is for the government to setup the NHS, and "charge" companies just like insurance companies do, and collect that money, rather than making a tax, and using that for the NHS purpose. Like, every employee of a company counts as $100 a month to the government NHS, payable by the employer. Employees should still be responsible for the non working members of their family though, in my opinion, unless the employer decides to pick that tab up as well (like my company does now).

The fallout there would be the amount of jobs lost due to putting the insurance companies out of business. Sure, it would create a wing of the government that would need 5000 employees, but I'm thinking the insurance companies have more than that staffed...that's a large economical gap created there.

I'm a smart person, but I don't kid myself into thinking I could come up with a competent NHS type system. While I would prefer a system that takes care of all its citizens, I just don't know how to roll one out. I've been meaning to write my congressman a letter asking him what his thoughts are, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I would like to know what types of NHS style bills have been presented for laws, but dismissed or disregarded and never heard of to the public.

edit: wanted to add a note though, how do you stop people from abusing the system? We have a lot of peices of shit in this country that would just use it as a rotating door to get more pharmaceuticals. You would have to have a way to keep that in check. Also, how do you keep the doctors in check that just do whatever to get the payment? Abuse of referencing and whatnot? Lastly, what about malpractice issues in Canada? how are they handled? Because you know that the US is a sue happy country!

[Fairweather Pure]

Insurance has to be delt with. Not just health insurance, but all types of insurance. That is the single biggest hurdle in getting anything worthwhile accomplished.

What happened to the days of the great administrations? Presidents who built world wonders, started legacies, and changed the way the entire country functioned, no matter the odds or obstacles in thier way? Will we ever see one again? NHC is the prime example of how someone can step up and dramatically change this country for the better, or at least making us on par with the rest of the industrialized world.

Our educational system is suffering. "We can't afford to fix it"

National health care? "We can't afford to change it"

Meanwhile, how many billions and billions have we thrown at, and are we continuing to pump into the Iraq war? There was no question if we could or couldn't afford that. The war was more important than fixing the very basic issues we're having here at home.

We can't afford it? I don't believe you.

[Xatrei]

The war in Iraq aside, our "normal" defense spending is more than the next 16 biggest spenders combined. Think what we could for our own people if our spending was more in line with the rest of the world's? People talk about how we'll pay for health care. John Edwards says he'll have to raise taxes, which won't win him many votes, but he ignores this vast chunk of wasteful spending. We don't need the level of military spending that we have - it's just not justifiable, yet we allow it to continue with few or no questions asked.

I don't expect us to ever have a national health care system. The rich and powerful have their hooks too far into our system for things to change, unfortunately. Any national system we get will be owned and operated by the big, for-profit medicine establishment, which will be unsustainable and fraught with claims denials and restrictions and giant out of pocket costs for the "insured."

[Siji]

Insurance has to be delt with. Not just health insurance, but all types of insurance. That is the single biggest hurdle in getting anything worthwhile accomplished.

Unless we can get petty lawsuits under control, you'll never get insurance under control.

Corporations run this country.. not the government, and not the people. How do you change things when there's so much money/profit involved?

[Markulas]

I recently read that medical bills are the number one reason for homelessness in America.

Aye to the petty lawsuits complaint. But that's only a baby step to what needs to be done.