trashleg said: Viper1 said: trashleg said: a page a day would take more than 65 years, lol We'd have replaced every single member of Congress by that point and the cycle would have started all over again.  not to mention that they'd all, more likely than not, have kicked the bucket. in fact, a lot of vgcharterz will probably have croaked it by then too, because they'll still be waiting for their super-duper health care bill to be passed

This is the miss conception.

I have better healthcare then you, and so does most of America. Only about 5-10% have worse healthcare then you who wish they had better.

The rest who have worse healthcare then you, have it by choice (chose not to have insurance).

There are so many ways to help those 5-10%, without a 25,000 page bill that screwed the rest of America.

No. Again, for most people, it's better then anything else in the world.

Look, the US government is very good at stepping in and fixing issues where your rights are violated. If this was a civil rights issue, and say some large percentage of healthcare providers would not treat people based on race, or age, or sex, or whatever, then I would be all for the US taking it over.

Any hospital will help anyone who can pay for it. So that's not the point.

It just needs to be more affordable, and this is where this bill fails, and where the Democrats have a problem with there philosophy. The Democrats like to take things over and run them through the government, and it's imposable to improve or maintain our healthcare quality as a government program. The way they paint this as the lesser of two evils, is to claim the opposition wants to just keep it the way it is.

Everyone on the street who is a Democrat has Republican friends, and they all know that everyone wants reform. So that lie is not working.

Also, for all the things you can bash about the free market system, affordability is not one of them. Republicans want it more free market then it is and democrats want it government run.

If the problem your trying to solve is to make it cheeper, then government run is the last way to go.

Here is a solution that would work, for example, and it's the opposite of what Washington is going after at the moment:

Make 4 new laws.

1. Your employer is not allowed to provide you insurance. They can put money in an HSA that you can only spend on healthcare expenses if they wish to provide you that benefit, but they can not buy you a policy.

2. Allow healthcare providers to sell insurance across state lines.

3. Remove the restrictions on how much it has to cost.

4. As long as a person is paying there premiums, they can not be dropped for any reason.

These simple rules would solve the problem. This would make healthcare much more like car insurance. A system that works extremely well, and people can afford.

I have had the same car insurance for 15 years, across 3 states. In that same time (not by my choice), my health insurance has changed 8 times. This would eliminate the issue with preexisting conditions, as you have no reason to change providers. If I had cancer 10 years ago, I would still be on the same policy, across 2 states and three companies. Right now if you change where you work, your screwed if you have a real problem. Remove that connection.

Also, the real way to get healthcare costs down, is to build a healthier country. The best way to do that, is to incentivize healthy living. Right now that's against the law. If you removed restrictions on how much health insurance cost, then we could really move towards a healthier US. And before you go into it then costing way to much for old people, or what have you, I could today open up a store and sell shirts for $10,000 each. There is no restriction on what I can sell a shirt for. Still, you can buy one for 6 bucks in walmart.

This would go a LONG way to solving the problem, but none of this is in the 2,500 page bill. None of it.

You said
"Any hospital will help anyone who can pay for it. So that's not the point."
What about those that can't pay for it? I thought this was about providing health care to all including the 40 million (yes I got that from a RATM song so please correct me if it's wrong) that can't pay?

Also one thing I don't understand is it sounds like from people on here that your employer provides the insurance policy and you have very little say on that. If you change jobs do you then have to change policy? can you go it alone and chose your own provider? and if you move state is your policy still valid?
What about if you are out of state and need treatment? How much of that is covered by your policy?

It sounds very messed up and like you guys have very little say, choice, or control over your health care.
Sorry about all the questions. Don't answer if you don't want to I'm just curious and want to know more. Might help me understand the objections

mrstickball answered your questions I think, but with respect to this line.

What I meant by it, is we are not looking to government to solve a civil rights issue. If we were, I would understand the added cost of government, to make sure everyones rights were protected.

Along the same lines of a police force. Police would be a complete waste of government money if everyone followed the laws. They don't, so it's a needed expense.

That's what I mean't by "So that's not the point". I meant the only reason we are looking to government, is to solve a money problem.

TheRealMafoo said: trashleg said: Viper1 said: trashleg said: a page a day would take more than 65 years, lol We'd have replaced every single member of Congress by that point and the cycle would have started all over again.  not to mention that they'd all, more likely than not, have kicked the bucket. in fact, a lot of vgcharterz will probably have croaked it by then too, because they'll still be waiting for their super-duper health care bill to be passed This is the miss conception. I have better healthcare then you, and so does most of America. Only about 5-10% have worse healthcare then you who wish they had better. The rest who have worse healthcare then you, have it by choice (chose not to have insurance). There are so many ways to help those 5-10%, without a 25,000 page bill that screwed the rest of America.

chill d00d, i was only kidding. im happy with my healthcare, and i don't know anything about yours really. i was only sharing a joke with viper about the length of bills

You see, I think healthcare in the USA is not all it's cracked up to be, in both quality and costs.

You first claim it is better for most people than anywhere else in the world, I'll grant that yes, it probably features in the top 20 or so healthcare systems. But it does have major failings. This paper from Nolte and McKee found that the USA had the highest mortality rate from preventable diseases than any other first world country at 101 deaths per 1,000,000 population, that's a total of between 75,000 to101,000 preventable deaths a year in the USA. these are pretty damning figures, it paints a picture that the USA has one of the lowest quality healthcare systems in the first world as it's cure rate for preventable diseases is so low.

You then talk about something that had me a little confused. I didn't mention rights. I was talking about healthcare quality for most people, not infringement on civil rights. I did not mention that certain races or ages are discriminated against. You carry on to say hospitals don't discriminate and will help anyone who pays, I know that, I'm not arguing that people value money over prejudice at all, of course they do.

You then get on to the point about the need for medicine to be more affordable, I couldn't agree more Mafoo. This study shows that healthcare is the most expensive in the USA per capita by quite some way at $5,711, the next being Iceland at $3,159. I know that the next argument will be about government spending more on healthcare as percentage GDP than any other country, I accept that. However, according to The American Journal of Medicine insurance and other medical spending outweighs government expenditure. It even goes on to say 62% of bankruptcies were caused by medical costs when a serious injury or illness occurs (up from just 8% in 1981), most middle class Americans are one serious illness away from bankruptcy because they have limited access to healthcare.

Your reform suggestions will help sort out many problems to quite some extent though, as you said.

But I'm afraid that I see healthcare as inherently problematic in the USA. It is behind many first world systems and to compete it needs to adapt.

Don't worry, I've read the thread. The problem with Medicaid and Medicare is that they are fragmented and inefficient, to be honest for the good it does you might as well either scrap them and find alternative ways of providing healthcare to people who have no access or make a Universal system where a more dynamic approach is taken from the start to produce a better system... From what I can tell the current Universal system proposal isn't exactly as good as it could be.

Uh, highwaystar... did you actually read that paper?

There are a number of issues involved with it.

to start.

1) It doesn't take into account disease occurence.    It only accounts disease occurce versus total death.  For example... the Japanese have almost no IHD deaths?  Is this because the Japanese have REALLY great heart attack treatment?  No, it's because for some reason The Japanese NEVER get heart attacks.  Italians widely see their healthcare are broken... why is their healthcare so good?  Culture partially and they eat less fatty food.

2) Weird choices for diseases.    Ischaemia heart disease?  Why only that heart disease?  Could it be because many of the europeon nations actually have a higher prevelance of overall heart disease deaths?  

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_dis_dea-health-heart-disease-deaths

Is that also why that number was arbitrarily cut in half?   Also, because it's effected by diabetes?  A huge problem in the US? 

Treatable cancerse?  Explain treatable?  Is this yet another distinction made simply because the US actually has better mortality rates for cancer?

http://www.conferenceboard.ca/HCP/Details/health/mortality-cancer.aspx

They never explain why they  actually pick the diseases they do, and why they make the arbitrary decisions they do in measuring it.

How does this data jive with  the above in general?  Does this mean the US is just a lot better at somehow stopping "unstoppable" deaths of the older?  Or is it general cherry picking of data being used?

Either one of those has to be the case, and either one is damning it my opinion.  It either means that healthcare like the UK is funneling money away from old people to young people... or well, the data was cherrypicked.

In general, there is a LOT wrong with it.

They admit culture is a huge part of diseases, and stuff not healthcare related like obesity and smoking... and instead of actually trying to account for this... they cut a number in half arbitrarily... for everyone?  That ignores the whole reason they're cutting the number in half!