Obama Defends Including Public Health Insurance Option in Reform

His plan fails to address the fundemental reasons for runaway costs.
1.Defensive medical services…as a result of medical malpractice claims and consequential professional liability premiums/expenses.
2.Imbedded liability expenses in Pharmaceutical costs.
3.U.S. healthcare Consumer expectations.

We will go broke if we fix it Obama’s way.

In fact we are broke!

What exactly do you do for an insurance company? Sort mail? You certainly don’t seem informed about actual company operations or maybe you actually work for a bad player. Most insurance companies and employees are not crooks and don’t make outrageous amounts of money. Look a little deeper or find another job.

With all due respect, P and C agents aren’t likely to be all that well versed in Health Insurance.

Work together without greed getting in the way???? No, what’s going to happen is that my health insurance premiums that I pay are suddenly going to become taxable income, so that Obama can pay for some deadbeats insurance with my money. That’s not greed, that’s being annoyed yet again at Obama’s suggestion that those that earn their way will pay for those that don’t.

A good example of a failing government insurance system is Citizen”s of Florida. Their ability to pay claims is questionable in catastrophic losses and the state’s failure to allow rate increases is driving out private competition. Driving out private competition is not the way to solve the problem. I have great insurance and I don’t mind paying the premiums. Just leave my money alone!!!!!!!!

The government option will re-imburse like Medicare. Presently Medicare under pays the providers approx 20% to 30%. This underpayment is then cost shifted to the private insurer’s. Private insurer’s cannot compete when the government plan cheats this way.

If you read the articles on Obama’s proposals, insurance will be a mandate. Those who don’t have it will be forced to take it or pay a fine. Employers who don’t provide their own will be forced to provide or pay a fine to help with the Gov’t program. It’s complex, but the disappearance of private insurance is a real possibility. It is quite possible in these tough economic times that, with Obama’s proposal, my company could force its employees to carry more of the financial burden for its healtcare benefits, or it could decide that it is cheaper and better to drop the plan altogether and just pay healthcare taxes to support the Gov’t program. So much for a Gov’t option.
If the system needs to be fixed, fine. Work on fixing it. If people need insurance, fine. Help them get it. Don’t wrap it all together with mandates, taxes, and bloated Gov’t.
What Obama is proposing will give the Gov’t way more control over healthcare than it needs to have. It will also cost way more than we should be spending, especially when the president has already put us a bazillion miles from a balanced budget.
If you are truly concerned about helping people who don’t have insurance or have trouble paying for needed medical care, at least consider that this isn’t the only way to do it, and that we can’t continue, as a Gov’t, to spend money we don’t have.

btw- I think this proposal will drive up costs for consumers also. If the Gov’t mandates guaranteed insurance, mandates that you insure someone with preexisting conditions, and mandates that you can’t charge a higher premium for the increased risk, private insurers will have to raise everyone’s premiums to cover the additional risk. I believe NJ enacted these mandates and it is playing out as I described.

I wonder how many of the 43 million americans are actually illigal aliens.

What’s the difference if the Government pays or individuals pay, we all pay in the end. The problem is not how we pay, it’s the cost of care, the cost of educating our medical professionals and the cost of malpractice insurance. Find a way to lower these costs and you’ll solve the problem. If you want ideas, I have good ones. Think my reps are listening? Think again.

Some of us who work, pay taxes, volunteer to defend the country have a different view as to how we live. First of all, if we view the country as a living organism, wouldn’t it stand to reason that it should be healthy? We need healthy citizens to stand up for the country! Remember what JFK’s were suppose to do for us; Jay Leno’s remarks of “fat people”; preventive medication, and so on. So far, the usual diatribe appears from the “repeat” haters. These haters have no zest for life. President Obama and the “American vote” are right on this one huge and important issue. Some of you seem ready to enter a museum with a bazooka! Healthy people are the greatest defense this country has to stand up against those who are inimical to our way of life. Support the President!

TO: I’m concerned
Yes my husband did have cancer and had cancer surgery with another 6 or 7 months of radiation therapy – 5 days a week, then three days a week then 2 times a week and then down to once a week. His medical bills were over $100k and we ended up paying about $15,000 of that amount and insurance paid the remaining
of the contracted rate.
If you want to pay for someone else’s insurance then go ahead. Me I was grateful that all we had to pay was $15,000 and that the insurance paid the rest. The hospital & doctors gave us 3 years to pay it. We both have good jobs and we pay premiums for our insurance. I am just grateful that we only had to pay $15,000.

Don’t be blind in thinking that what Obama wants to do is good for the country. Read something from our founding fathers. They are not just turning over in their graves, they are spinning at the way this administration is ruining (yes ruining) the American way of life. My son is 12 and he will be paying for all of the deadbeats that you want insurance for for his entire work life.
By the way, most hospitals will write off medical care expenses for those that are indigent. Just call and ask for their financial office, they will tell you.

My mom fell down the steps, got taken to the hospital and incurred about $80,000 for her 5 day hospital stay. Medicare paid about 25% of that amount. Who do you think picks up the cost of that?
Who do you think picks up the cost of medicaid?
Who do you think picks up the cost of illegal aliens getting health care and then skipping on the bill?
Who do you think pays for ALL of these services that for some reason some people belive that it is a RIGHT – its not – its a priviledge to get these things – NOT A RIGHT.

You are right that Obama is not shoving this down our throat, but he will. When you get taxed 50% to 60% (just look at Europe) to pay for all this “free” stuff, then you can come tell us that the way we think is wrong.

Obama will NOT break the back of this country-no matter how much he wants to.

I’m looking forward to the 2010 election so we can get these morons out of congress & the senate.

This is like pouring water in a bucket with a hole in the bottom. One of our holes is the unsecure border that still lets illegal aliens enter our country….STILL! This is typical Washington politics….throw taxpayers money at a problem without fixing one of the main causes, and to hope we remain ignorant of other issues by focusing on what the media wants us too. I guess we should believe that we are owed something and are victims as this administration wants us to do.

In 8 years Bush ruined the great health care system Hillary had set up and running for 8 years prior. It will take a great one like Obama to repair what Bush/Cheney took away. It may take 8 years to right the ship so please be patient and support our leader.

You are correct that we pay more than just income tax. I was referring to base income tax rate however. England has to pay all that other crap as well.

Sales tax is around 15% in England! Yes, sales tax rates vary depending on the state, but the highest is in Arkansas I believe (7.25%) We still pay less.

42,997,250

Yeah, that’s crazy. Please no more taxes. Our government makes enough damn money, let me live my life.

As the new Bureau of new U.S. taxes Czar I must point out that you missed the new tax planned for soft drinks and the many new taxes and rules for gun owners.

Like a good Democrat I’ll take my cue from the Senate majority leader Harry Reid, “This war is lost…”.

Al,

About 18M of the 43M (supposedly uninsured) are illegal aliens. 13M are people making more than 50K a year who choose not to buy insurance or even pay the small amount that employers typically ask be contributed by employees for health insurance.

12M are people who qualify for medicare or medicaid, but haven’t registered for them.

The remaining 5M are uninsured for various reasons, but mostly due to some chronic addiction problem.

Of note is that no children are uninsured in the US, because all are fully covered under various state and federal gov’t. programs. About 25M children are covered under these programs. The children of illegal aliens are eligible for these programs, but the parents mostly don’t enroll them, because then the gig would be up and they’d be deported.

btw, there’s no way that “ins worker” is employed in the industry; he/she is way too stupid. Talk about biting the hand the feeds you.

Here are some other facts for you kool-aid drinking idiots who support baby Jesus Obama and the rest of the messianic, totalitarian Dems.

At least 80% of your lifetime health costs will be incurred in the last 6 months of your lives.

Almost 20% of all heathcare costs in the US are incurred by those who could have avoided the costs, but for their life-style choices. These include obesity, smoking, alcoholism, AIDS (from anal sex and dirty needles), & preventable accidents caused by carelessness and negligence.

So, put this in your pipes and smoke. Not that any lib, Dem, or other type of commies has ever let facts get in the way of the secular religion of the baby Jesus worship of our President. He is a product of affirmative action (as is Sotomayor) and doesn’t have the intelluctual heft to be president. Remember, Bush’s IQ was higher than Al Gore’s.

Wake up, fools.

It’s interesting that the state that added more jobs than the rest of the country combined this year (Texas) has no personal income tax and probably one of the lower overall tax rates in the country. The Left needs to wake up to the fact that less intrusive and less paternalistic government encourages prosperity- compare bankrupt California to Texas and you get the point…

You’re a fool and have no grasp of facts. Hillary care never passed and she tried to pass it during her husband’s first term. So W had nothing to with it.

In fact, W had nothing to do with much of anything regarding health care.

There’s no health care crisis, unless you’re an illegal alien, substance abuser, or engage in behavior that increases your odds of contracting AIDS.

Too bad fools such as you are allowed to vote.

No, that’s not a surprise IRO Texas wealth and taxes. As a general rule, the lower the taxes and gov’t. involvement in any aspects of economics, the greater the wealth of any such jurisdiction.

But then, such people wouldn’t be dependent upon politicians, so, of course, power-hungry politicians don’t want this.

Have you ever known a poor politician, including those who’ve done nothing their working lives except hold political office?

How do you spell crook? P-o-l-i-t-i-c-i-a-n

Oh, and btw, further to your comments on another phony, Sotomayor, read this little man:

Sotomayor defends women’s club membership
Judges’ code forbids joining groups that discriminate by sex, race, religion
The Associated Press
updated 3:25 p.m. ET, Tues., June 16, 2009
WASHINGTON – Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is defending her membership in an elite all-women’s club, telling senators the group doesn’t discriminate unfairly by gender and involves men in many of its activities.

Her explanation came in a letter submitted Monday evening to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which also included copies of several rulings, briefs and speeches the judge had not previously given the panel.

GOP senators had requested the material and questioned Sotomayor’s membership in the Belizean Grove, a group of prominent professional women, because federal judges are bound by a code that says they shouldn’t join any organization that discriminates by race, sex, religion, or nationality.

“I do not believe that my membership in the Belizean Grove violates the Code of Judicial Conduct,” Sotomayor wrote. She told senators that the group involves men some of its events and no man she knows of has ever tried to become a member.

You are incorrect on EVERY SINGLE REMARK you just made. I have only posted a few times on this forum, only under one name, believing, obviously incorrectly, that this would be a place for open-minded conversation from others in the industry. Clearly this is not the professional forum I believed it to be.

You really should get your anger issues analyzed.

I will continue within my own professional circuit of colleagues to debate this issue with sane and civilized human beings.

Best of luck to you JOE.

I have said in prior posts that I believe the entire system needs overhauled, inclusive of providers and pharmaceutical companies. It’s getting completely out of hand. And I am open-minded and willing to look at options. Whether that be a public health plan or some other option. The system is broken and until we start having sane discussions about this, nothing will ever improve and it will continue to go on the way it is. So I applaud the fact that the Dems are at least getting this out on the table and making people discuss it. Hopefully multiple options will come to the table. But I do think it’s not just the insurance piece that needs overhauled…the cost of healthcare and meds is a big driver in the insurance premiums, as well as the PL insurance the docs must carry. It’s a vicious cycle and it’s going to take a big shake-up to change things.

Who sets health care costs? How did costs get so high?

I think reducing the cost of health care (not insurance, but the actual cost to get treated) is worth taking a look at.

Yes, no gov’t insurance program has worked anywhere at any time in all of history.

There are a few simple solutions:

End mandates. NY is notorious for requiring that every health ins. policy issued in NY include coverage for chiropractors, counseling, & etc. Many potential insureds don’t want these coverages and mandating them increases the cost of insurance.

Allow for portability of health ins. policies between states. This would require action by the NAIC, because no one wants the fed gov’t involved in such a matter.

Caps on non-economic/soft tissue awards. But more important, the legal concept of duty owed has been broadened by courts over the last 50 years. It’s time for legislation to dial back the increasingly large circle of to whom is owed a duty by an alleged tortfeasor.

Equally important is that there’s a need to emphasize the fact that 20% of all health care costs are incurred due to the bad behavior of people; that is, alcoholism, smonking, other substance abuse, unsafe sex practices, over indulgence in food (obesity), and careless behavior (i.e., preventable accidents).

LA, Gov. Jindahl, and a few other states are taking the lead in this, but they are meeting resistance from some other state’s ins. regulators, the feds, the trial lawyers, and others.

I grew up in Canada and still have family there. I would love to see socialized medicine be in the USA. I never had to worry about being sick or laid off or too poor to buy medical insurance, It was always available for no charge for everyone. It is a shame that Lawyers and Doctors make up lies about the system that most countries use to take care of their people and I feel worse about the people who believe it.

I think we all agree something needs to be done to allow everyone affordable health care and health insurance. I’m sure some of the people who don’t want the government involved have health insurance as a “benefit” paid for by their employer. That is no longer the case for many including myself. The cost of the insurance has gone up over 40% in the last 2 years and so has the co-pays. I can not deduct this from my taxes yet I don’t believe those who get it as a benefit have to pay taxes on it. Maybe some tax incentives or tax breaks could be a help. But we do have to regulate some of the out of line charges that are made (such as $10 for one tylenol in hospitals).

I like the idea of refusing coverage for people who smoke, drink too much, practice unsafe sex, or are obese (from eating too much fast food), etc. Our behavior as a nation of excess is disgusting.

However it is certain that this would never be enforceable. Shame.

Do you ever wonder why we can buy medicine from Canada at 1/3 the price that we pay here??? And it is manufactured here in the USA by the same companies. It seems to me that if the government controls the price then they will save trillions of dollars that could pay for Medical Ins. The only ones to lose are the greedy Doctors & Med Cos.

Now that I am laid off and uninsured, I will send away for the prescription that my former health insurance would not pay for without a fight. Blood pressure med. that costs $84 a month and I had a $40 co-pay. They tried to get the doc. to prescribe something else. Maybe my blood pressure will go down now that I am not butting heads with my health insurance carrier. Good Grief!

Bubba I agree with you. As you know, we are a capitalist country. We appreciate free enterprise. Rewarding people for their efforts and getting pay them is a worthy endeavor. But remember “Faust” who sold his soul to the devil for power and worldly material things. How would you like to have Faust with a fibrillator treat you? “We the people” of these United States must mean something. We have value that should not be measured in dollars. Why must we resort to buying drugs from other countries? What does “being regarded as the best country in the world mean?” Surely our health is important! Faust types place one thing above all else: their self-indulgence. What we need are leaders that regard our health, safety, and welfare as foremost considerations for our existence in our capitalist world. There should be a balance between Faust and ourselves. At some point, Faust is overfed. There are excellent doctors and pharmas out there who are not Faust-like. They just need to come out and be recognized. Maybe they will, once our entire tax system is overhauled. We need a clean decent society. Our country is the lighthouse for it and for all people of all races. Enough of Faust! Yes, we have a capitalist system that is based on rules, fair rules. All Americans will succeed under this system. However, we must not lose our heads.

http://sanders.senate.gov/petitions/index.cfm?uid=7fd59f2e-88e1-477a-8eaf-762a5b050809

Happy with your health care? I am glad.
Unhappy with your health care or do not have, please consider signing.
Thanks.

read this if you think gov’t knows what it’s doing (like it knows with the bankrupt SS, medicare/medicaid/and zillions of other failed gov’t programs:

Health Reform and Competitiveness
Article Comments (17) more in Opinion »Email Printer
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Democrats have spent years arguing that corporate tax rates don’t matter to U.S. competitiveness. But all of a sudden one of their favorite arguments for government-run health care has become . . . U.S. corporate competitiveness. Political conversions on this scale could use a little scrutiny.

“Businesses now recognize that if we don’t get a handle on this stuff then they are going to continue to be operating at a competitive disadvantage with other countries,” President Obama recently remarked. “And so they anxiously seek serious reform.”

Sure enough, many business leaders who should know better have picked up the White House theme. “You won’t fundamentally solve the problems in business until you solve the problem of spiraling health-care costs, which is driving everybody crazy,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt the other day.

Messrs. Obama and Schmidt need to brush up on their economics. Employers may write the checks to the insurance companies, but workers still pay for the coverage they get from those employers. The total cost of an employee is what matters to businesses, and fringe benefits are as much a part of compensation as cash wages. When health costs rise, firms don’t become less competitive, as if insurance were lopped out of profits. Instead, nonhealth compensation drops. Or wages rise more slowly than they otherwise would.

A recent study from none other than the White House Council of Economic Advisers notes exactly this point: If medical spending continues to accelerate, it expects take-home pay to stagnate. According to the New York Times, White House economic aide Larry Summers pressured CEA chairman Christine Romer to make the competitiveness argument, “adding that it was among the political advisers’ favorite ‘talking points.'” Ms. Romer pointedly retorted, “I’m not going to put schlocky arguments in there.” How the schlock gets into Mr. Obama’s speeches is a different question.

It’s certainly true that the U.S. employer-based insurance system can dampen entrepreneurial spirits. There’s the “job lock” phenomenon, in which employees fear leaving a less productive job because they’re afraid to lose their health benefits. Another problem is that insurance costs more for small groups than the large risk pools that big corporations assemble, meaning that it’s harder to form new businesses that can offer policies. But all this is really an argument for developing the individual health insurance market, where policies would follow workers, not jobs.

As for the competitiveness line, it’s nonsense for most companies. The exceptions are heavily unionized businesses like auto makers that have locked themselves in to gold-plated coverage, especially for retirees. They have a harder time adjusting health costs and wages. Other companies might get a bit more running room in the short run if government assumed all health costs a la the single-payer systems of Western Europe. But over time the market would clear — compensation being determined by the demand for and supply of labor — and wages would rise. Or they might not rise at all if health-care costs are merely replaced by the tax increases necessary to finance Mr. Obama’s new multi-trillion-dollar entitlement.

This is where the real competitiveness argument is precisely the opposite of the one pitched by Messrs. Obama and Schmidt. Consider the European welfare states, where costly entitlements and regulations make it extremely expensive to hire new workers. The nearby table lays out the tax wedge, the share of labor costs that never reaches employees but instead goes straight to government. In Germany, France and Italy, the tax wedge hovers around 50%, in part to pay for state-provided health care.

By contrast, the U.S. tax wedge was around 30% in 2008, according to the OECD. In other words, the costs of providing insurance would merely be converted into a larger wedge, which would itself eat into compensation. This is why Europe has tended to have higher unemployment and slower economic growth over the past 30 years.

If Democrats really want to increase U.S. competitiveness, they could look at the corporate income tax, which is the second highest in the industrialized world and a major impediment to U.S. job creation when global capital is so fluid. Or drop their proposals to raise personal income-tax rates, which affect thousands of small- and medium-size businesses that have fled the corporate tax regime as limited liability companies or Subchapter S corporations. Or cut capital gains rates, which deter risk taking and investment. Or rethink their plans to rig the rules in favor of organized labor by doing away with secret ballots in union elections.

On all these issues and more, Democrats want to increase, not reduce, the burdens on U.S. business. Their health-care line is, per Ms. Romer, “schlocky” political spin.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A12

Joe – here’s the deal: use your SSI bennies and get that script for Viagra filled and then you and your ‘little man’ (why are you so fond of the term?) go somewhere and chill. (It goes without saying that you’ll be alone). YOU are the loser on this site, pal. My guess is that you are an overweight recluse wearing filthy sweat pants, spewing your vituperative hateful rant on a PC that runs on Windows 95.

Interesting reading. Your statistics are probably not based on lies but on facts. However, Mark Twain might still be scratching his head in his grave. You would have us believe that the freeloaders are so numerous that our national leadership is so myopic as to ignore their presence and their contribution as as worthy Americans. The old remedy was to stop feeding the freeloaders and their stomachs would force them to get off their duffs. Some may argue that only superhumans are entitled to life. The weak links should all be gathered and tossed into the Grand Canyon or the Royal Gorge. That would be incompatible with our Christian-Judeo faith and upbringing. Health is wealth and not the other way around. Since you appear to have done your homework on statistics, would be so kind as to post the profit ratio of health carriers. Nothing against profit, but you mentioned “charity” from the more fortunate to the less fortunate. How are profit and charity compatible where millions upon millions of Americans have a stake in health? We must be healthy to contribute to our existence. Health is our wealth. Then come paying the bills!

So, YMale, your logic is this: You post that “…weath equals health.” So, according to you, for this reason, those with money should pay for the health care of those w/o money. But if health = wealth, then those who pay would have to lower their standard of health care to help those who don’t pay.

That’s what’s national health care, communisim, socialism, nazism, and facsism. In other words, nobody has a right to much of anything. So, nobody works hard.

This is what killed such socialist systems. Do you want to know where to find the best health care? It’s in Hong Kong. HK is the most free of all nations. The fact is this: greater overall wealth of a nation raises the living standard for all. This doesn’t mean that the living standard is equal, just that it’s better than that of nations where there’s less freedom. Such as China, Russia, Vietnam, UK, Canada, France, & etc.

Do you know that the average welfare recipient in the US has a better chance of surviving life-threatening illnesses such as cancer and heart disease.

Stop blogging your foolish opinions and do some reading and research. For this reason, I have no respect for you and your opinions and I have no sympathy for whatever problems you seem to have in your life, because I believe that it’s your I-need-a-handout attitude that’s the source of your problems.

In other words, I’m telling you to grow up.

Your last post is a classic example of my criticisms of your posts. You just offer jibberish. First, there are very few people in the US who can’t afford health care. Second, some choose not to buy health insurance, so I feel no obligation to subsidize them. If buying insurance means having less money for dining out, vacations, & etc. that is how is should be in a free society.

If I subsidize someone else’s medical health insurance, I’m not really subsidizing their health insurance. What I’ve subsidized is their right to use their money, that should’ve been spent for health insurance, for something else, such as more expensive clothes and etc.

Why is it that you don’t research more? You just engage is mindless leftist politicing with no facts or figures. This is why I consider you a fool. And so do many other bloggers on the IJ.

Again, you need to grow up. I have no obligation to make your life better. That’s your responsibility. If I live in a 4 story townhouse, I have no obligation to make it possible for you to live in a better home.

Stop being a helpless child. I have only contempt for you and your attitude, because you’re a free loader.

There you go again. Don’t you get tired of your repetitive non-sensical rant! Please use your health coverage to help you. We are not impressed by your idiocy. Surely there must be an asylum near you. Your long-winded diatribe just runs on and on without a rudder. You keep posting under different names to support yourself. I suggest that you scurry over to the edge of an abyss before you respond. Either way we expect you to post under another name, as usual, to support your lunacy. Can’t you direct your energies to support something useful for our country? Or should we expect more of the same: communist, socialist, fascist, etc., etc., etc.,open ended labeling from you. In other words, more of the same rant! Give it a rest for God’s sake. Don’t you have a family with whom you may experience happiness? Do you know that the sun arises from the East, perhaps? It appears that you’ve wasted your life on this good earth.

Of course, Yellow Male will think that I’m exchanging posts with myself.

BTW Yellow Male, I’m still at work, because there are things expected from me by others. So, I effectively post on my own time.

Everytime you post, I only develop more contempt for you. Quite frankly, my friend, you’re incredibly stupid. First, it wouldn’t be multiple personalties if each moniker you allege I use has, in your opinion, the same “M.O.” The same MO means that the personality is the same, but the identity is different. There’s a difference between “personality” and indentity, but you’re too dense-headed to know this. This lack of attention to detail on your part shows that you lack the intellect to engage in any type of reasoned discussion.

So, of course, you don’t respond to any facts presented by any blogger, but merely continue with your obsessive and compulsive ranting about Bush. The fact is, your 401K most likely included GM stock and/or bonds. So, some of your 401k drop is courtesy of Obutthead, Commander-in-Chief-Fly-Swatter. Your 401k’s unprecedented rise from 2001 to mid-2008 was courtesy of Bush’s policies. Most likely, even though your 401k has declined in the last 9 months, in the long run, it’s still much more than it would be today were it not for Bush’s tax policies.

Anyway, go back to your cubicle and be of some use to society. You’re a parasite with a decidedly low intellectual capacity. You need affirmative action, but don’t deserve any such consideration. You’re a perfect example of what’s wrong with America and why America is falling beind other countries in various measures of raw IQ and education.

Please be satisfied that anyone even employs an idiot such as you.

Anyway, similar to my prior posts and others’ posts and comments to you, I’ve toyed with you enough and it’s such a one-sided fight, that it’s just too boring, so ta-ta little brain.

You are the epitome of stupidity. Too bad the US doesn’t have a monarchy, becaue then, at least, you could be a court jester. You’d merely have to be yourself, no acting required, and everyone would be laughing at you, as in not with you.

Present some facts and logic and maybe, other bloggers may show to you some respect.

Ciao,

Here’s what I don’t understand. How do you call the last 8 years a trauma, in light of what is going on now? Sure, George Bush is no saint, but we’re doing stuff now that generally doesn’t turn out well. The deficit is larger than George Bush could have ever dreamed of, we’re printing money at an unprecedented rate with no real assets to back up that money, we’re proposing massive new spending without shrinking the current budget, and the president is appointing people to rule over us who are outside the bounds of law and accountability.
Unemployment under Bush was 5% and the economy was half decent. Yes, there were bad things going on behind the scenes that Bush should have brought to light and dealt with early on, before they became real problems.
We elected Barack Obama on the basis of change. The federal deficit is astounding, unemployement is at 10%, the value of the dollar is going down, and countries like China are preparing to take over as economic leaders in the world if the American economy goes down the toilet. What kind of change is that?

Bev, sorry, but you are wrong. Almost all drug research is conducted in the US and Switzerland (with some done in Japan), because there’s no money in it in other countries. Please don’t think for a minute that there’s any drug research in Canada. There’s zero. Also, Canadians pay the same price for drugs as do Americans, but Canadians pay via their taxes. Also, every year, thousands of Canadians and europeons come to the US for medical care.

The only research in other countries is testing herbal remedies, but this is done by universities and private research centers, not the govt. The reasons herbal remedies are tested is that such remedies aren’t subject national health care, so there is some profit in manufacturing and selling these remedies.

Google Canada and health care and you’ll find hundreds of sites with stories that dispute your claims.

Google pharmaceutical research and you’ll find that most of it is conducted in the US and Switerland or by entities owned by companies domociled in other countries, but which companies incorporate their drug research subsidiaries in the US or Switzerland.

We are not friends. Your research is fallacious. Mark Twain is right about you: “Lies, damn lies, statistics”. No matter what your lame brain puts out there as research, the fact is that you’ve lost all credibility. It doesn’t make a difference what you post, because quite simply no one reads it as having any value. No matter how you tweek it, it won’t fly. You are so full of contempt and other malodorous crap. You need an enema right up the gazoo. It is never advisable to tangle with an imbecile, lunatic, or a skunk. You are all three. You don’t make any sense. Why don’t you take a hint from Bev. She’s right on point: wants something constructive out this tread. Someone else has already read your “vituperative rants” and quite properly classified you as a “little man”. Research, what research. We don’t need your stinkin’ research. If your rants are even minimally regarded as research, then it is as fallible as you are. You disqusting fruitcake. Let decent people make business-like use of this blog.

Yes but Canada gives more money to the schools and Universities that are doing the research. I just read about Canada finding a cure for a certain type of cancer. The tuition costs to go to the University in Canada is also much less than the US because they are supported by Gov.. I have 8 brothers and sisters and hundreds of relatives who live there-ask me.

Yes–My daughter passed away 2 months ago from cancer. So it is near and dear to my heart.

All of you need to do much more research. Being Canadian or having lived in Canaday makes you no more qualified to comment on health care than being a US citizen makes one more qualified to comment on US health care. You seem to be reasonable people, so, here’s some more research:

THE rush to remake the 17 percent of America’s econ omy known as its health- care system is matched only by the muddle of the motivations driving it. Above all else, consider the confusion of health insurance with access to actual health care.

The reality is that having insurance is not the equivalent of having access to care. In America and abroad, people with coverage (government or private) can lack access to timely care — while those without insurance in the United States may in fact receive timely care while paying little for it.

Official counts place uninsured Americans at roughly 46 million, an alarming 15 percent of the population. Yet a closer look paints a less scary picture. Of the 46 million, one in three, or 17 million, live in a household with an income greater than $50,000. Four in 10 are 18 to 34 years old — an age range where health spending averages less than $1,000 a year out of pocket.

As many as 14 million — including many children — are already eligible for taxpayer-funded health insurance via Medicaid or SCHIP, but simply haven’t signed up. One in five, or 9.7 million are noncitizen immigrants, a portion of whom are here illegally. Seven in 10 people are uninsured for a year or less.

Then, too, health insurance often doesn’t make financial sense for people with few assets, good health and limited income. They can pay out of pocket for routine care — and rely on the social safety net for large, unexpected and unlikely events.

In the United States, that safety net includes: federally funded health centers, open-door policies at hospital emergency rooms, extra payments to hospitals that treat large numbers of uninsured, and charity care. Together, these work to insulate Americans from catastrophic medical bills.

In 2008, uninsured Americans consumed an estimated $86 billion in health care, or $1,686 per person. This was (predictably) less than Americans with insurance, yet evidence suggests the system functions as an informal insurer.

The uninsured reached into their pockets for only $536 of the care, less than the $681 that privately insured patients paid out of pocket. The other 65 percent of that care was paid for by either existing government transfers or absorbed by the institutions providing care. In short, anyone living in America — citizen, immigrant, documented or undocumented — has access to health care on multiple levels. The same is not always true under “universal coverage.”

In Canada, the country of my birth, a person needing non- urgent care faces long waits — last year, it averaged 17.3 weeks — between seeing a general practitioner and getting treatment by a specialist, according to the Fraser Institute.

And diagnostic technology is severely controlled. Dr. Brian Day, the immediate past president of the Canadian Medical Association, notes that Canada is a country in which a dog can get a hip replaced in under a week but a human waits two to three years.

In Great Britain, everyone enjoys free health care — in theory. But the rationing is explicit and out in the open. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence denies the latest drugs and biologics to patients if the agency deems them not cost effective — even though they may be medically effective. So while Americans have access to Orencia for rheumatoid arthritis, NICE has denied the care to Britons.

Massachusetts’ ongoing reform experience illustrates that insurance doesn’t equal access. The Bay State’s bipartisan reform imposed an individual mandate, built a quasi-public insurance regulator and greatly expanded taxpayer-subsidized health care — and the result has been a warning on the quest to achieve universal coverage.

After three years, it has succeeded in cutting the percent of uninsured in half to 2.5 percent, the lowest in the nation. But the taxpayers have paid most of the price: The majority of the formerly uninsured were either added to Medicaid or to heavily subsidized plans. A mere 41,000 — less than 10 percent of the once uninsured — have purchased individual plans. And, 60,000 have been exempted by the government from having to purchase insurance.

Costs are rising and many promised savings aren’t materializing. Bay State residents use emergency rooms at the pre- reform rate of 23 percent. Today, 20 percent of residents are having trouble securing a doctor. The Health Safety Net fund, which pays hospitals to care for the uninsured, still spent $410 million in 2008.

Most startlingly, to control costs, the state is considering “payment reform” that resembles a giant HMO. Price controls and explicit rationing will surely follow.

Americans need to think through Washington’s rush to reform. The last thing we want is what we’ll likely get. Trade a system that provides excellent, responsive care to the fully insured, uses taxpayer money to cover seniors and low-income families and children, and highly subsidized care to those without insurance, for one where everyone pays more for less.

Sally Pipes is president and CEO of the Pacific Research In stitute. Her latest book is “The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care.”

And some more,

Physicians fear that near-mindless efforts to find cost savings . . . will damage our very ability to practice.

WONDERING why the American Medical Association came out against a “public option” in health reform — that is, against government-offered health insurance for every American? For this MD, at least, it’s a simple matter of learning from experience.

As a practicing internist, I’ve been dealing with two government insurance programs, Medicare and Medicaid, for more than two decades. Over the years, I’ve seen the government shrink reimbursements under first Medicaid and then Medicare — to the point that, in 2005, I finally decided that I couldn’t stay in business unless I stopped taking Medicaid patients, and saw no more than a few Medicare patients each day.

It was costing me more to file the Medicaid paperwork than I got back from the government. I now either charge Medicaid patients a few dollars, or just see them for free.

It’s getting tougher to take Medicare patients, too: New drugs and new technologies are wonderful health-care tools — but keeping current, and making sure to choose the right tool, uses up more and more of my time. Yet Medicare’s reimbursement for my efforts keeps on shrinking.

I’m not alone. Each year, I find I have fewer specialists to refer my Medicare patients to. The best mammographer I know no longer accepts Medicare, so I find myself trying to persuade my patients to see her anyway (and pay $300-plus out of pocket) because she’s so good.

Nor is this just my impression. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission reported that 28 percent of Medicare beneficiaries looking for a primary-care physician last year had trouble finding one, up from 24 percent the year before. And a survey last year by the Texas Medical Association found that only 38 percent of primary-care doctors were taking new Medicare patients. Here in New York, less than half the internists affiliated with New York Presbyterian Hospital accept Medicare.

The problem is even worse with Medicaid — which only half of physicians accept, according to a 2005 Community Tracking Physician survey.

The problem is spreading to private insurers — who often follow the lead of Medicare and Medicaid. HMOs, in particular, have cut reimbursements to doctors; many of my colleagues have dropped out of HMOS as a result (giving me fewer options of who to refer my patients to).

Recent New York state surveys show doctor participation in HMOs is still far better than for public insurance — but the dropout rate is 10 percent a year from the state’s largest HMO, the Health Insurance Plan of New York, and 14 percent from the also-large Health Net of New York.

The bottom line, I think, is that primary-care physicians fear that near-mindless efforts to find cost savings — the kind we’ve seen in existing government programs, and spreading to private plans — will irrevocably damage our very ability to practice, to prevent and treat illness.

We’re told a “public option” will mean insurance for people who now don’t pay — but it seems to me, based on hard experience, that it will mean worse health care for everyone.

Marc K. Siegel is a practicing internist at NYU’s Langone Medical Center and a Fox News medical contributor.

And, yet one more:

President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the legions of liberal political activists trying to ramrod nationalized health care through Congress face an insurmountable obstacle in the Internet. There are mountains of data available today regarding the decades of experience with similar systems in Canada, Great Britain and elsewhere, and the facts about that data are within a few mouse clicks of every American. As the debate in Congress and the nation’s public policy forums heats up, key facts gleaned from that abundance of data are becoming ever more prominent.

Take, for example, the report out last week from the Wait Time Alliance (WTA), a group of 13 Canadian medical groups, including the Canadian Medical Association. For cancer patients, the report found that “the median wait time for radiation therapy was almost seven weeks.” That figure exceeded the recommended maximum wait time of one month. Note, too, that as a median figure, there were just as many patients who waited longer than seven weeks as who waited less than seven weeks. The WTA report also found unacceptably long delays for people seeking emergency room treatment, with an average of nine hours for patients who were treated and released. The average for patients who needed to be treated and admitted to the hospital was 24 hours! And patients needing psychiatric care for major depression are being forced to wait up to six weeks before starting treatment, according to the WTA report.

Long waits for critical treatment are inevitable in government-run health care systems for one simple reason: Making health care “free” creates an infinite demand for medical services. But no country can satisfy an infinite demand, so government bureaucrats always end up rationing health care. Long lines of people waiting for services are the result. It’s the same process that produced long waiting lines for decades in the Soviet Union for basic necessities like bread and housing.

Obamacare advocates can only hope their friends in the mainstream media do a better job of carrying their water for them in the weeks ahead than The New York Times and CBS with their latest poll. Using a sample with exactly twice as many Obama voters as McCain voters, the Times/CBS pollsters got a result in which 57 percent of their respondents said they would pay higher taxes “so that all Americans have health insurance that they can’t lose no matter what.” But, as anybody who has taken a basic statistics course knows, a warped sample and an “apples-to-oranges” comparison has zero credibility.

And more:

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/medicarehealthinsurance/i/nathealthins.htm

And more:

‘Too Old’ for Hip Surgery
As we inch towards nationalized health care, important lessons from north of the border.
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By NADEEM ESMAIL
President Obama and Congressional Democrats are inching the U.S. toward government-run health insurance. Last week’s expansion of Schip — the State Children’s Health Insurance Program — is a first step. Before proceeding further, here’s a suggestion: Look at Canada’s experience.

Martin KozlowskiHealth-care resources are not unlimited in any country, even rich ones like Canada and the U.S., and must be rationed either by price or time. When individuals bear no direct responsibility for paying for their care, as in Canada, that care is rationed by waiting.

Canadians often wait months or even years for necessary care. For some, the status quo has become so dire that they have turned to the courts for recourse. Several cases currently before provincial courts provide studies in what Americans could expect from government-run health insurance.

In Ontario, Lindsay McCreith was suffering from headaches and seizures yet faced a four and a half month wait for an MRI scan in January of 2006. Deciding that the wait was untenable, Mr. McCreith did what a lot of Canadians do: He went south, and paid for an MRI scan across the border in Buffalo. The MRI revealed a malignant brain tumor.

Ontario’s government system still refused to provide timely treatment, offering instead a months-long wait for surgery. In the end, Mr. McCreith returned to Buffalo and paid for surgery that may have saved his life. He’s challenging Ontario’s government-run monopoly health-insurance system, claiming it violates the right to life and security of the person guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

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Shona Holmes, another Ontario court challenger, endured a similarly harrowing struggle. In March of 2005, Ms. Holmes began losing her vision and experienced headaches, anxiety attacks, extreme fatigue and weight gain. Despite an MRI scan showing a brain tumor, Ms. Holmes was told she would have to wait months to see a specialist. In June, her vision deteriorating rapidly, Ms. Holmes went to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, where she found that immediate surgery was required to prevent permanent vision loss and potentially death. Again, the government system in Ontario required more appointments and more tests along with more wait times. Ms. Holmes returned to the Mayo Clinic and paid for her surgery.

On the other side of the country in Alberta, Bill Murray waited in pain for more than a year to see a specialist for his arthritic hip. The specialist recommended a “Birmingham” hip resurfacing surgery (a state-of-the-art procedure that gives better results than basic hip replacement) as the best medical option. But government bureaucrats determined that Mr. Murray, who was 57, was “too old” to enjoy the benefits of this procedure and said no. In the end, he was also denied the opportunity to pay for the procedure himself in Alberta. He’s heading to court claiming a violation of Charter rights as well.

These constitutional challenges, along with one launched in British Columbia last month, share a common goal: to win Canadians the freedom to spend their own money to protect themselves from the inadequacies of the government health-insurance system.

The cases find their footing in a landmark ruling on Quebec health insurance in 2005. The Supreme Court of Canada found that Canadians suffer physically and psychologically while waiting for treatment in the public health-care system, and that the government monopoly on essential health services imposes a risk of death and irreparable harm. The Supreme Court ruled that Quebec’s prohibition on private health insurance violates citizen rights as guaranteed by that province’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.

The experiences of these Canadians — along with the untold stories of the 750,794 citizens waiting a median of 17.3 weeks from mandatory general-practitioner referrals to treatment in 2008 — show how miserable things can get when government is put in charge of managing health insurance.

In the wake of the 2005 ruling, Canada’s federal and provincial governments have tried unsuccessfully to fix the long wait times by introducing selective benchmarks and guarantees along with large increases in funding. The benchmarks and the guarantees aren’t ambitious: four to eight weeks for radiation therapy; 16 to 26 weeks for cataract surgery; 26 weeks for hip and knee replacements and lower-urgency cardiac bypass surgery.

Canada’s system comes at the cost of pain and suffering for patients who find themselves stuck on waiting lists with nowhere to go. Americans can only hope that Barack Obama heeds the lessons that can be learned from Canadian hardships.

Mr. Esmail, based in Calgary, is the director of Health System Performance Studies at The Fraser Institute.

And more:

Nationalized Healthcare Would Be a Middle Class Disaster
February 27, 2009 03:09 PM ET | Bonnie Erbe | Permanent Link | Print
By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.

I’m not as thrilled with the O’budget on health care as on education. Nationalized health care has been a disaster for the middle class wherever it exists. Yes it gives access to the deeply impoverished, but at the expense of the middle class. The rich can always buy their way out of any health care system and get the best of care. Here’s what the Obama administration will do:

Obama’s prescription for the nation’s ailing health care system comes with Medicare cuts and tax hikes. Obama is asking Congress: If you’re going to cover 48 million uninsured Americans in the world’s costliest medical system, how do you pay for it? His plan would set aside $634 billion over 10 years in a major effort to cover all Americans – a goal that could cost more than $1 trillion. Half would come from tax increases on upper-income earners, half from cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

The only reason Canada’s health care system works, for example, is that 90 percent of Canadians live within 100 miles of the U.S. border and they come here for urgent needs. A personal friend whose sister is Canadian brought her sister here for a brain C-T scan. The waiting list in Canada was six months long, due to its wonderful nationalized health care system. Her sister had a brain tumor and needed a scan and surgery immediately. If not for America’s more limber system, her sister would have died waiting for treatment in Canada.

Another friend is Italian by birth. His sister still lives in Italy. She has an illness that requires expensive medication. The Italian healthcare system doles out her pills three days at a time. So every three days she must go to the local health care center and wait for hours for her next three days-worth of medicine. Would Americans stand for that? I don’t think so.

And more:

Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Nationalized Health Care’s Failures

Jillian Bandes cites an interesting new report about Canand’s government-run medical system.

The information was released in an annual report produced by the Wait Time Alliance, comprised of Canadian doctors who are concerned over delayed access to care. The WTA was formed after the Canadian government vowed to reduce wait times in 2005, committing over $4.5 billion between 2005 and 2011.

The title of the WTA report, “Unfinished Business,” highlighted the glacial progress the country has made since that commitment.

“Although there are signs of improvement, the lack of uniform and timely information on wait times is just one symptom of the ‘unfinished business’ relating to wait times in Canada,” the WTA reported.

Psychiatric care averaged 5.7 weeks, nearly two weeks longer than was recommended by the Canadian Psychiatric Association’s maximum recommended wait time of four weeks. Eighteen weeks usually goes by before a patient is seen by a specialist after receiving a referral from his physician, with particularly egregious waits in the areas of ophthalmology, obstetrics and gynecology, gastroenterology, plastic surgery and orthopedics.

“In England, the maximum allowable target time set by the National Health Service for referral by family doctor to the day of treatment is 18 weeks,” said Dr. Lorne Bellan, WTA co-chair, in a release. “Our study shows that for many medical specialties in Canada that we examined, we don’t even come close to that.”

Sixty-two percent of specialists believed wait times would increase over the next five years, according to the WTA. Between 23% and 37% of physicians refused to take referred patients outright.

The report also complained that in more than a few provinces, there was no way to track wait times, meaning that the possibility for decreasing wait times is poor. In Newfoundland and Labrador, no mechanism exists for monitoring wait times

“People can go online and track the progress of a package they shipped from one end of the country to another, yet in many parts of Canada patients still cannot find out how long they can expect to wait for critical medical treatments and procedures,” said Bellan. “We need to do a better job of tracking and reporting on the full wait that patients experience to access necessary medical care.”

Sounds terrific, doesn’t it?

No to ObamaCare.

And, as a woman and the mother of a daughter who died from cancer, you should be particularly concerned that nationalized health care is the worst option for women with breast cancer, per this article about Canadian and UK national health care:

Nationalized Health Care and Breast Cancer Are a Deadly Mix
By: Jim Hoft
Democrats stepped up efforts this past week to introduce their disastrous socialized health care plan. President Obama already called on his Democratic colleagues to enact this legislation by August. To persuade Americans that this plan is needed Obama has often repeated, “The cost of health care now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds.” This, of course, is simply unsupportable. If you add up all bankruptcies in a year you barely get one every thirty seconds and not every bankruptcy is due to the cost of health care. Team Obama certainly understands this. You would hope so anyway.

Obama and democrats insist their program will benefit the 46 million Americans who they say are uninsured. This, of course, is not accurate either. According to The American Spectator, 9.7 million of this 46 million are not citizens of the United States. Another 14 million of the uninsured are eligible for Medicaid and SCHIP but have never signed up for the programs. They could be signed up for government insurance if they ever made a visit to the emergency room. Another 17.6 million of the uninsured had annual incomes of more than $50,000. This leaves you with around 5 million Americans without insurance which is a far cry from 46 million. But, why let facts get in the way? Barack Obama and Democrats have a plan to push on America. They want their socialized health care.

Like everything Obama does, this plan will have an enormous cost. That’s why Obama has already announced that he will get the rich to pay for it. And on the flip side, Democrats also plan to penalize those with adequate financial resources who don’t elect to get insurance. This mandate on adults who do not purchase insurance is something Obama said he would not do during the election.

But, not much is being said on how this plan will affect Americans and women in particular. Looking at the nationalized health care systems in Europe Obamacare will likely be a big step backwards for women’s health here in the United States.

Currently the United States leads the world in treating breast cancer. Women with breast cancer have a 14 percent higher survival rate in the United States than in Europe. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Breast cancer mortality is also 9 percent higher in Canada than in the US. Less than 25 percent of U.S. women die from breast cancer. In Britain, it’s 46 percent; France, 35 percent; Germany, 31 percent; Canada, 28 percent; Australia, 28 percent, and New Zealand, 46 percent. The European Network of Cancer Registries reported:

Breast cancer is also the most common cancer in females in Europe. It is estimated that in the year 2000 there were 350,000 new breast cancer cases in Europe, while the number of deaths from breast cancer was estimated at 130,000. Breast cancer is responsible for 26.5 percent of all new cancer cases among women in Europe, and 17.5 percent of cancer deaths.

In Britain, where they enjoy socialized medicine, breast cancer rates have soared by more than 80 percent in the past 30 years under their system. A big reason for this is early diagnosis. Nine of 10 middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to less than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent). Women who develop breast cancer in Europe are four times more likely to be diagnosed when the tumor has spread and survival is less likely than are women in the US.

The BBC reported that US women were more likely to survive breast cancer than their European counterparts because they are diagnosed earlier, research finds. The five year survival rate in the US was 89 percent compared to 79 percent in Europe. One reason was that 41 percent of the US cases were diagnosed at an early stage, compared to just 29 percent in Europe and this greatly improved the survival rate.

The failures of nationalized health care have been widely reported. The failures of nationalized health care in treating breast cancer have also been widely reported. Thousands of women will be affected. In fact, it’s hard to imagine anything worse for cancer patients than government-run health care. Nationalized health care and breast cancer are a deadly mix.

Let’s face it, nationalized health care is an idea whose time has not and never will or should come to the US:

Anyway, pleasea read this with an open mind.

(Yellow Male, Italian, So-so socialist, or whatever moniker you’re using today, I know longer respond to mentally challenged bloggers in need of psychiatric care. I note that you’ve literally copied and pasted to your blogs the very comments I’ve made about you on other blogs on the IJ site. Please get help soon before you go postal. Remember, God loves even people with your special mental health needs.)

Joe and other bloggers are right on about you Yellow Male, Ins Worker, and all your other names. You a very sick & scary guy and you scare me. Why the IJ let you post when you so crazy.

yellow male. Honestly, I don’t think anyone wants you to post on this anymore. Please, if you can’t contribute in any way, please leave.

Joe has touched on some great points. Even if articles were cut and pasted into this discussion, he still read through everything. At least he isn’t making crap up, as many of bloggers on here have done (unfortunately, mainly on the liberal side).

Thank you