Interesting perspective!
Quote
Universal health care: Private enterprise can't fix our ailing system
By PAUL DeMARCO
Special to the Herald-Journal
Published: Sunday, May 17, 2009 at 3:15 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, May 15, 2009 at 5:06 p.m.
I live in a town with a population of 7,000. I own a pair of shotguns, and I know how to use them â€" a wood duck and a turkey are mounted on my office wall. I drive a 2001 Dodge Dakota pickup with 150,000 miles on it.
(http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z276/fayeforcure/conservativeforsingle-payer.jpg)
I wear a coat and tie every day to work. I'm in church each Sunday and am not embarrassed to tell you that Jesus is my Savior. I believe in chivalry; I open doors for women and expect my teenage daughter's dates to come into the house when they visit.
My usual TV-watching dilemma is "The Andy Griffith Show" or "M*A*S*H." I'm about as old-fashioned, square and conservative as they come.
So where do I get off backing a single-payer national health plan, a plan where everybody's covered in one big risk pool and health care is publicly financed (but privately delivered)? Shouldn't I be a rugged individualist, telling people that if they want good health insurance they can pay attention in class, go to college and get a good job with full benefits just like I did?
Well, part of me could do that. No country can survive unless individual responsibility is at the core of its ethos.
But to the other part of me, the go-it-alone attitude just sounds downright mean.
That puts me in about the same mind-set as a Midwestern farmer in the mid-19th century. Farmers then and now are often independent, self-sufficient
and hesitant to incur a debt. But when a neighboring family needed a barn raised, that was a different story. No matter how hearty the farmer, he couldn't raise a barn alone. And there was a healthy dose of self-interest in the proposition. If I help raise your barn, then when mine needs repairs, I'll have your help.
So I look at single-payer health care in that conservative light. I recognize that a significant portion of America's chronic disease burden is self-induced (e.g., some people eat, drink or smoke too much and make themselves sick). But I also know that much of your health is beyond your control â€" it's either in your genes or not significantly altered by lifestyle. Think breast cancer and many other malignancies, flu and many other infectious diseases, Alzheimer's dementia or rheumatoid arthritis.
I don't suspect that farmers of yore did any research on the family who they helped. Whether the family was industrious or lazy, a barn was built because everyone needed a barn. Without a place to store hay and protect animals in the upcoming winter, livestock would die and the family would soon follow. No farmer, no matter how stoic, would consign his neighbor to that fate.
I support single-payer health care in this tradition. A single-payer program, which would expand Medicare to all Americans (rather than just those 65 and over), would create one large barn-raising community, 300-million strong. We would all chip in our share so that all families could have health care. Almost all of us would end up paying less than we do now (there would be no co-pays or deductibles), and we could choose any doctor or hospital we wanted.
Under our present setup, it's hit and miss. Money typically dictates who gets care and who doesn't.
A carpenter who works for a big company with insurance may get care; another who works for a small one can only dream about it.
A woman with lupus loses her job and her insurance and then becomes uninsurable because of her pre-existing condition.
A 60-year-old man with a bad knee is laid off when a plant closes in his rural hometown. Lame and unskilled in a region with rising unemployment, he will limp for five years until he qualifies for Medicare and can have his knee replaced.
Barn-raising worked because it is was a nonprofit enterprise. A farming community bound itself in a social contract. Many countries have single-payer social contracts, including our neighbor Canada, to ensure the health of all their citizens. There are many ways to inject a profit motive into the process, but they all taint it. Until the 1960s, medicine was also primarily a nonprofit endeavor. In recent decades, the huge profits available to for-profit insurance companies and hospitals have often elevated shareholders above patients, resulting in higher costs and inferior care.
All my instincts call for problems to be solved by individuals operating in a free-market economy. But private enterprise cannot solve this one. We have 40 years of evidence of the free market's failure to control costs or cover everyone.
The plain truth is that the public single-payer systems we already have (Medicare, Medicaid and the VA) provide better coverage with less overhead than private companies. I know that statement is hard for many, including me, to swallow, but it's true.
Medicare for all will not be a perfect system, but it will be far better than the fragmented, profit-warped system we have.
When America was younger, we knew not to turn our backs on new neighbors in need of a barn. In this older â€" and I hope wiser â€" America, we should not turn our backs on those who need health care. Tell your representative and senators to put single payer on the table in Washington.
Paul DeMarco, MD is a general internist who lives in Marion. He is a member of Physicians for a National Health Program (www.pnhp.org).
http://www.goupstate.com/article/20090517/NEWS/905159940/1132/OPINION?Title=Universal-health-care-Private-enterprise-can-t-fix-our-ailing-system
A couple of days ago I sent in a guest column to the Florida Times Union with my own views on universal healthcare,..............will see if they publish it.
QuoteUnder our present setup, it's hit and miss. Money typically dictates who gets care and who doesn't.
It seems to me you're substituting "money" for big government and big government is going to tear the barn's down because of the high cost diagnosis to fix them... or the high cost of long term rehablilitation. You're going to find more barn's becoming organ donor's than getting the treament needed for a fighting chance.
It is a interesting perspective. I grew up in a part of the country where this sort of thing is still done. There is a small... wee difference. Barn raisings were done as cooperation amongst productive hard working farmers who traded services. It really made no difference if it was a barn raising, help with the planting or harvest, mechanical help with equipment. He also states...
QuoteI don't suspect that farmers of yore did any research on the family who they helped. Whether the family was industrious or lazy, a barn was built because everyone needed a barn. Without a place to store hay and protect animals in the upcoming winter, livestock would die and the family would soon follow. No farmer, no matter how stoic, would consign his neighbor to that fate.
This tells me a few things. I suspect his story is made up due to this statement...
"I don't suspect that farmers of yore did any research on the family who they helped. Of course they did!! They knew exactly who they were helping and why. He states "everyone needed a barn" while this is true if he let his new barn fall into disrepair and was continually requiring the helpful intervention of his neighbors he would soon find the community less and less likely to come to his aid. You could not force them to help... it was voluntary.
That said there are members of this community who are suspicious of being forced to help our neighbors by the government. Some neighbors deserve help... while others will take advantage of the help.
The replies I see,...... kind of mocking this straight laced gentleman's piece ( like "I suspect his story is made up") ......, prompt me to put in perspective the times we find ourselves in. Check out these fine words from our President which are right on the mark:
QuoteSo, as we stand at this inflection point and gradually move from what Jonas Salk called Epoch A (our survival-focused past) to Epoch B (our meaning-focused future), we have to ask ourselves what this remade world will look like -- and what steps we need to take to get there.
At Notre Dame, Obama offered a devastating teardown of Epoch A and its "economy that left millions behind even before this crisis hit -- an economy where greed and short-term thinking were too often rewarded at the expense of fairness, and diligence, and an honest day's work."
The problem, according to the president: "Too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism; in which the world is necessarily a zero-sum game. The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and power find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of poverty and injustice."
I see no mocking replies at all. I know mine was certainly not mocking. I responed to various aspects of his article that I disagree with. Why do you see views different from yours as mocking?
Universal healthcare fits into the conservative perspective. Here is a Financial Post piece:
QuoteU.S. health care terminal
Diane Francis, Financial Post
Published: Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Universal health care is a cornerstone of smart economic policy. If a worker in Canada or Europe or Japan has lost his or her job this recession, it's a psychological and financial blow.
But if a U. S. worker loses his or her job, the family faces financial ruin if sickness strikes any member because they are without health-care coverage. Bridge coverage is available but unaffordable for anyone but the wealthy.
Worse yet, if a major illness is diagnosed during unemployment, a workers become unemployable, bringing on a life sentence of poverty.
Little wonder, then, that consumer spending has ground to halt in the United States, which makes the economic meltdown that much harder to combat or ever solve.
This underscores the fact universal health care is not just smart and fair social policy but also smart economic policy. But this fact may get lost in the shuffle as the vested interests in the lousy health-care system in the United States start their propaganda.
In fact, there are so many economic advantages to universal health care that it's puzzling why the Republicans, conservatives and business interests haven't been pushing for it. Here's are the economic advantages to decent, universal health care:
-The United States spent 16.2% of its GDP on health care plus up to 3% more on litigation over medical bills while other countries spend 10% and nothing on litigation because bills are paid by everyone. This is America's No. 1 competitive disadvantage going forward.
-People with serious illnesses are uninsurable and are stuck in jobs they cannot leave or remain unemployed because they are unemployable.
-Tens of millions of uninsured people end up with health problems that become a drain on society and the U. S. economy in the long run.
-U. S. doctor, nursing, hospital and drug costs are out of control because of the profit motive, compared to countries where universal health care provides the basic underpinning. U. S. costs are higher because doctors can over-service those with health insurance, and patients can over-demand. Litigation also leads to over-doctoring as well as high expenses in the form of malpractice insurance.
-Detroit's three automobile companies have gone bust in large measure due to "legacy" or gold-plated health-care promises. This is not unique to the auto sector and has driven many jobs offshore in manufacturing.
Canada has a better health-care system than does the United States. Even developing nations, such as Ecuador or Mexico, look after the basic needs of their populations better than the United States looks after its citizens.
As an American living in Canada, I find it embarrassing that the United States -- rich and smart --has such a mediocre health-care system.
I find it embarrassing that even educated and financially astute Americans buy the lies that the AMA and others spew about Canada and other "socialized" medical schemes.
Facts are that governments in the United States are suckers. They cover the high-risk populations --indigent, elderly and veterans -- and leave the gravy to the private-sector health insurers. These companies, by the way, make profits off their operations that are the same size as Canada's entire health-care tab for 32 million people.
It's pretty shameful, but delusions persist and the medical myth-makers are girding for battle. But Americans are capable of skepticism and deep down most realize their health-care system is sick, maybe terminal, and needs treatment as soon as possible.
http://www.financialpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=5306ad6d-ad0a-45a7-8cf1-1b28ab5c804f
Blaming healthcare for the economic problems we're having is a cornerstone of the Obama administration's strategy for pushing through widely unpopular national healthcare. It is ridiculous to blame our current crisis on Healthcare costs when the Housing bubble and credit crisis are the main culprits. It is even more ridiculous to believe the government could run the healthcare system more efficiently than the private sector. Just look at the hole Medicare is in.
It is probably Faye's job to post Obama administration propaganda to blogs.
I would simply ask anyone to post one program, of the scale and size that would be socialized medicine, that the federal government has ever successfully administered. Can anybody do it? Can anyone explain the benefit of forcing citizens to rely on government for decisions of life and death? I fail to see the mystery in solving this issue. Institute tort reform (even though I am a trial lawyer). Afford every working American the ability to fund medical savings accounts with pre-tax dollars, and to purchase catastrophic medical insurance policies that only cover treatments and costs over a certain high amount. We insure our homes in case they catch on fire or get hit by a hurricane, not to step in when the neighbor's kid hits a ball through a window. Why do we need health insurance to cover getting a cold? It should only cover cancer or heart disease, etc. The premiums for that sort of coverage would be quite low. You know your health better than anyone else. You have a pretty good idea how much pre-tax money to put into your medical savings account month to month for your personal general upkeep. If you get killed by a bus (BRT, I'm sure), the money in the account goes into your estate because it is still your money.
This system ties nobody down to particular doctors. If you can get cheaper treatment from competent doctor "A", go to her. Doctor "B" will see that he is losing business and lower his prices.
"But what about the poor people who don't work? What benefit is pre-tax dollars, etc... they don't work or pay taxes and cannot utilize a medical savings account..." Anyone who goes to a hospital ER will be given treatment. Nobody is denied in that circumstance, so truthfully there are 0 people in this nation who cannot obtain health care. Use what would likely amount to no more than 1/50th of the trillions socialized medicine would cost this nation and establish reliable competent public clinics for the everyday sniffle. If something truly awful happens, that is what medicaid is for.
I want to ask you one thing Tripoli in regards to your statement, "Can anyone explain the benefit of forcing citizens to rely on government for decisions of life and death? "
Did you hire a private firm to protect you and your family from criminals, fires and in the event you need a ride to the hospital? Or to you call 911 for the socialize Police, Fire Dept and EMT's?
I call the police and the fire department because these are functions that the average citizen cannot adequately perform for himself. Scores of localities around the nation still have only volunteer fire departments. That will not work somewhere like Jacksonville. I cannot house a fire engine and fight my own fires, nor can you. So the general population has decided that we need police and fire protection on a large scale and the most efficient way to do so is to pay taxes for a fire and police department.
On the other hand, I can save my own money. In a free market I can find the health care that suits my needs at a price that I am willing to pay. I do have the capability to contract for those services and pay out of my health savings account. I do have the ability to contract for catastrophic injury insurance, and shop for the policy that has the coverage I am looking for at the premiums and policy limits I want.
Not only am I willing to undertake the task of acquiring care for me and my family, I believe it is my personal responsibility to do so. I'm not going to defer to somebody behind a desk in D.C. with 50,000 applications for treatment to decide when and where and to what extent I can get treatment. That is shirking my responsibility to myself and my family, just as trying to put out a fire engulfing my whole house with a garden hose. Your argument is specious. Personal responsibility in a free society is what made this the greatest nation on Earth, and it is what the doctor ordered for our health care system.
I notice you did not enlighten me with a comparable program that the government has ever executed successfully, properly and efficiently. (Aside from, at most times, the military.. although inefficiencies abound there as well).
Tripoli,
Again I'll point out some your arguments. First the reason the general population went with a tax based fire department is due to the fact the originally you had your Home owners insurance paying rewards to the volunteer fire departments so no rewards no fire protection. Second, I hate to break it to you, but YOU don't make the decisions on your medical coverage, the person who does sits at a desk, it's not in Washington DC it's at the corporate headquarters at Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Etna or who ever your insurance is.
Why don't you just check out these links about how other responsible adult were treated by the saints you call medical insurance.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26664727
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/3/26/713348/-Denied-medical-coverage-because-of-a-history-of-acne
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/amanda-lauren-transplant-2126601-sister-life
http://blogs.consumerreports.org/health/2008/08/denied-insuranc.html
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/health_science/the-uninsured/20081006_A_caregiver_is_denied_medical_care.html
I guess my problem is that I actually care about other people. I'm not always worried about me. I worry about the old lady down the street, or the couple in my church or the person behind me at Publix. Most of the people complaining about Universal Health Care are going to until they have a personal need for it. They'll need it the day after their insurance company denies treatment for a loved one.
QuoteI guess my problem is that I actually care about other people.
Oops! There it is again...
For uni care = good person, loves babies and old people
Against uni care = Evil person, hates babies and old people
This is the basis for most of the actual "discussion".
The entire point of my initial post is to place the decision in the hands of the individual. So your point of whether or not I currently make decisions regarding my care are entirely off point. The argument was advancing a proposal not talking about the way things are right now.
It is so very typical and not at all surprising that whenever one takes a position contrary to the liberal dogma the personal attacks begin. You haven't the first idea what my level of compassion, care, sympathy or empathy for others is. You haven't the slightest idea what I contribute to charity or how I spend my time. You have no clue how self interested, selfish or selfless I am. Yet, because I have not fallen lock-step behind the collectivist agenda, I must have a heart of stone and shout bah humbug at Christmas Carolers.
I am worried about all those people you mentioned. I am greatly concerned about a nation trending further and further toward reliance on the government and the loss of personal worth and individualism. At this point, however, I am just typing for the sake of typing. Your heart may bleed for the person behind you at Publix, but your mind snapped shut the instant someone disagreed with you, as evidenced by the personal attacks, so why should I bother to attempt reasoned discussion.
Ok, CrysG, when you start citing dailykos, you've lost credibility.
We appreciate your sob stories that you and Faye can dig up, and we don't like it anymore than you do so stop implying that we are uncaring and are not "good Democrats".
We disagree on the solutions. Posting sob stories as a basis for uni care is ridiculous! how about posting a government solution that a) has worked efficiently and b) has actually cost less than original estimates and c) can pay for itself without raising taxes.
Your heart may bleed for the person behind you at Publix, but your mind snapped shut the instant someone disagreed with you, as evidenced by the personal attacks, so why should I bother to attempt reasoned discussion.
Oh and your mind was wide open to my "liberal dogma" even though I'm a card caring member of the Republican Party.
Yeah to bad I also quoted MSNBC and the flagrantly liberal consumer reports. And I can tell your overwhelming concern for the human life and their nuisance "sob stories".
Quote from: Sigma on May 20, 2009, 02:26:01 PM
Posting sob stories as a basis for uni care is ridiculous! how about posting a government solution that a) has worked efficiently and b) has actually cost less than original estimates and c) can pay for itself without raising taxes.
First, they are NOT sob stories: they are an EPIDEMIC, with people dying on our soil, under our very eyes, for no other reason than us lacking a "civilized" universal healthcare system.
Frontline's Sick Around the World shows 6 successful universal Healthcare systems.
Of all systems you may want to know that according to the New England Journal of Medicine, the pure single-payer model would save our nation $350 billion off the current $2.1 trillion spent on healthcare in our nation.
Your a, b, and c would be covered under such a system. However pragmatic Democrats and Conservatives simply want to provide a public option, Medicare style, that would function alongside the private insurance you so love.
You can carry a card that says you are a Republican and support liberal ideas. They are not mutually exclusive. I believe I have made up my mind on the issue, but I am also alert to the positions and arguments in favor of the other side. If nothing else it helps me explore the issue more fully and be better able to argue from my perspective. An open mind is accepting of other viewpoints, even if it is not looking to be swayed. You have evidenced no such capacity. Anyone who disagrees with you is bad. You have said as much yourself. Hence my comment.