Can We Really Justify the American Healthcare System on Any Measure?

[FayeforCure]

on any measure?



Why do we keep voting in people who try to justify the unjustifiable?

Medicare was created in 1965...........it is high time we extended it to everyone: Medicare for ALL!!!

[NotNow]

Faye, what would be the cost of extending Medicare to every US citizen?  How about everyone that resides here?

[FayeforCure]

Faye, what would be the cost of extending Medicare to every US citizen?  How about everyone that resides here?

Thank you for asking NotNow!

The answer is: NOTHING, enrollees would pay the cost of their Medicare coverage.

Here is one of our very own Florida Congressmen with the courage to introduce an amendment with absolutely no pricetag..........ie budget neutral:

Grayson Introduces the Medicare You Can Buy Into Act
Congressman Alan Grayson
Press Release
March 9, 2010

Congressman Alan Grayson, D-Fla., today introduced a bill (H.R. 4789) which would give the option to buy into Medicare to every citizen of the United States.  The “Public Option Act,” also known as the “Medicare You Can Buy Into Act,” would open up the Medicare network to anyone who can pay for it.

Congressman Grayson said, “Obviously, America wants and needs more competition in health coverage, and a public option offers that.  But it’s just as important that we offer people not just another choice, but another kind of choice.   A lot of people don’t want to be at the mercy of greedy insurance companies that will make money by denying them the care that they need to stay healthy, or to stay alive.  We deserve to have a real alternative.”

The bill would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to establish enrollment periods, coverage guidelines, and premiums for the program.  Because premiums would be equal to cost, the program would pay for itself.

“The government spent billions of dollars creating a Medicare network of providers that is only open to one-eighth of the population.  That’s like saying, ‘Only people 65 and over can use federal highways.’  It is a waste of a very valuable resource and it is not fair.  This idea is simple, it makes sense, and it deserves an up-or-down vote,” Congressman Grayson said.

http://grayson.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=175363

H.R. 4789 â€" “Public Option Act” or “Medicare You Can Buy Into Act”:
http://thomas.loc.gov/ Click Bill Number. Enter H.R. 4789. Click Search. From there you can access the text of the legislation (very short bill), cosponsors, and other information.

Video of Grayson’s introduction of H.R. 4789 to House (5 minutes):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/10/grayson-offers-medicare-b_n_492831.html

Article XVIII, Sec. 1818
http://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/ssact/title18/1818.htm

Article XVIII, Sec. 1818A
http://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/ssact/title18/1818A.htm

Medicare premiums for 2010
http://questions.medicare.gov/cgi-bin/medicare.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2260

http://pnhp.org/blog/2010/03/12/graysons-public-option-act-or-medicare-you-can-buy-into-act/

[NotNow]

Thanks Faye!

[urbanlibertarian]

So would they take the total annual outlays for Medicare and divide that by the total number of people currently on Medicare to get the annual premium they would charge?

[FayeforCure]

So would they take the total annual outlays for Medicare and divide that by the total number of people currently on Medicare to get the annual premium they would charge?

No, the way the Medicare You Can Buy Into Act was set up, you will be age rated:

According to Congressman Alan Grayson, the Medicare You Can Buy Into Act scores at zero or better by the Congressional Budget Office because the bill “specifically says that it has to pay for itself.” Grayson says the premiums are “very reasonable â€" barely $500 month for people in their 60s, down to $100 a month for children.”

As health insurance premiums in California and around the nation increase more people will be dropped from private insurance coverage for failure to pay their premiums â€" which means a bigger burden to society when people become ill and appear at hospital emergency rooms.

Grayson’s simple public option plan is more cost-effective for many individual’s who are held hostage now by the BIG Four. Buying into Medicare’s larger insurance risk pool brings down individual premiums.

The BIG Four acts similar to an Oil Cartel that controls supply and profit. With insurance companies, the profit comes in the form of higher insurance premiums and from limiting and excluding treatments.

The BIG Four’s double-digit rate hikes in CA are:

■19-29 % for Blue Shield’s 250,000 customers;
■14-20 % for Anthem Blue Cross’s 800,000 individual policy holders;
■An average 19 % for 65,000 Aetna policy holders; and
■16-25 % for Health Net’s 38,000 individuals.

http://www.laprogressive.com/political-issues/healthcare-issues/congress-pass-medicare-act/

[Ocklawaha]

Colombia’s health insurance reform: Is managed competition for the poor working?

February 22, 2006 in International Health Care Systems | Permalink

In 1993, Colombia enacted ‘la Ley 100′ (law 100) transformed the way in which the poor are able to access health care.  Previously, the poor could go to public hospitals and receive free or inexpensive care if the hospital would accept them  This was financed through higher prices for customers who were able to pay for medical procedures.  La Ley 100, gave local authorities the funds to finance a system of competitive private managed care organizations.  The local authorities would compensate the health insurance organizations with risk adjusted premiums for every individual covered.  Because Colombia mandated a strict benefit package (with an emphasis on primary and preventative care) for each insurance company to provide, competition in this sector was based mostly on quality and not on price.

In their 2001 article in Health Policy and Planning, Beatriz Plaza, Ana Beatriz Barona and Norman Hearst examine the implementation of la Ley 100 and its effectiveness using anecdotal and statistical evidence.  The authors found that the percentage of Colombians covered by any type of insurance rose from 28% to 57% between 1992 and 1997.  In 1996, the Colombian government added catastrophic illness (such as AIDS, cancer, major trauma, cardiovascular disease, etc.) to the package covered by the managed care organizations.

The authors cite three problems with the implementation of la Ley 100.  The first is a lack of institutional capacity.  Many hospitals did not have accounting procedures or satisfactory IT systems to administer this program.  Further, there was evidence of fraud.  Some managed care organizations would charge the local government for people to whom an insurance card was never issued.  Secondly, spreading information regarding la Ley 100 was a slow process.  While 94% of Bogota’s poor were enrolled in the program, smaller cities and rural areas experienced enrollment rates generally between 20% and 70%.  Finally, the implementation of the program was often delayed in many areas due to administrative problems.

While it has it's detractors, I have never experienced anything as good ANYWHERE... Care is excellent, in fact it is now considered the best in Latin America (which is already better then ours). Honest I went in as a caustic totally private US style medical trooper and came out convinced there IS a better way. Though they never were able to take care of the caustic part!

OCKLAWAHA

[FayeforCure]

Thank you Ock. They saved my life in Colombia when I was six years old and hit by a car put into coma, with a broken hip. I had to learn to walk all over again!

Excellent care even back in the 60's.

Yet my son collides with another soccer player in the US in the weekend and he gets passed around to 3 different hospitals in the first 24 hours getting just labs and a CT.........no MRI/MRA, ending up quadriplegic at age 7.

I found the exact same soccer injury in a boy in Istanbul described in the medical literature, and that boy is walking around after an emergency procedure successfully implemented in a timely fashion.

BTW, my son had a blood clot in the basilar artery that could have been easily been remedied by a simple clot buster like intra-arterial urokinase.

A YOUNG life could have been saved.

Yearly 100,000 people die in the US due to poor medical care according to old 2000 stats from the Institute of Medicine.

Another 40,000 people die in the US from lack of Healthcare insurance.

We should all bow our heads in shame for such a prosperous country not taking good care of their own.

[mtraininjax]

You can't get everyone to pay their taxes, what makes you think you can get everyone to buy in to healthcare? You will have the Constitutional zealots after you soon. How does someone find a way to pay for the high cost surgeries? Proton Therapy here in Jax, takes adult cases and uses the funds to treat children. How do children pay for cancer treatments?

Until the ERs shut down for people without coverage, cold-hearted, I don't see any way to ween people off this stop gap solution.

[MusicMan]

Well, if you don't pay your car insurance and get caught, what happens? Require folks to have health insurance and then provide an affordable non-profit option like Medicare Part E (for Everyone). It will also have an immediate impact on the unemployment rate as many folks 55-65 have jobs only to get the healthcare that comes with it. If they had an affordable option then many would retire earlier freeing up millions of job openings for the younger generation. 

[buckethead]

You are all on glue.

There is no cure for that.

[ChriswUfGator]

You are all on glue.

There is no cure for that.

I'd rather be stoned on glue than tea any day...

[wsansewjs]

You are all on glue.

There is no cure for that.

I'd rather be stoned on glue than tea any day...

What tea? -looks around and see a nice pile of "herbs"- There! I found my solution to the Healthcare crisis.

-Josh

[Dog Walker]

My distributor in Germany pays an overall tax rate of about 55%.  Sounds horrible until you realize that he pays NOTHING for healthcare and NOTHING for his kids university education and NOTHING for his parent's nursing home care and medicines.

What is your overall burden for the same things when you add them all up?  I'll bet it's more than 55% of your income. 

It's really cheaper to buy these things wholesale through the government than retail as we are required to do.

[ChriswUfGator]

My distributor in Germany pays an overall tax rate of about 55%.  Sounds horrible until you realize that he pays NOTHING for healthcare and NOTHING for his kids university education and NOTHING for his parent's nursing home care and medicines.

What is your overall burden for the same things when you add them all up?  I'll bet it's more than 55% of your income.  

It's really cheaper to buy these things wholesale through the government than retail as we are required to do.

+1

The reason the healthcare (well, and every other business) lobby fights this tooth and nail is simple business economics, they want to keep as many people as possible from gaining any real negotiating power.