Is this the Federal Health Care you want?

A leading healthcare reform expert says she's not surprised that the new universal healthcare program in Massachusetts brokered by former Governor Mitt Romney and Senator Ted Kennedy is running several hundred million dollars over budget. Some Bay State residents are being put on waiting lists of 6-8 weeks to just get a physical because there are not enough primary-care doctors see all the people who now have insurance. Associated Press reports costs are soaring for the new healthcare law in Massachusetts. Barack and Hillary will send us all to the poor house with this stupidity.

Public Comments

1. No, I agree with you in there.
2. Let me see, your solution is to have all these "people" show up at emergency rooms and at tax payers expense which is usually at a rate 10x what it costs at a doctors office.
3. Yep! Think carefully for whom you vote. They are likely to ruin us BIG TIME.
4. So you think there should be no waiting lists for you by keeping a significant portion of the population uninsured and more than half underinsured. Ask not for whom the bell tolls.
5. agree, the idea is sick!!!! just look at Medicare if you want to measure the effectiveness and quality of a Fed gov healthcare plan. Keep the govmt out of healthcare! Vote for John McCain
6. Obama and Hillary will push this country into a deep depression with all the programs they want to create. Wake up people, it will come out of your pocket! Wouldn't you rather shop around for the best quality of health care rather than depend on the government to provide it?
7. Well I say the liberals should force all doctors to work for free and become the democratic party's slaves just so to save face. I might just have to cross the Mexico border to get seen by a real doctor after that.
8. Barack or Hillary will never pass universal health coverage. It is just a talking point.
9. Wrong. USA is the only leading counry with a chaotic over-priced "system." Gross corruption and waste in the present Medicare system and the HMOs and others providers are overcharging and ripping off everybody. The first candidate that endorses a single-payer system and greater openess and accountibility is what i am waiting to hear. Othewise it will sos. The seem afraid of the lobbyists support regarding a single payer system like Japan, Canada, Norway etc. Poorly managed and the U.S. Congress uses it as a political device to get support and bamboozle us. It does not have to cost any more. It does not have to have any tax increase. Besides, there is no more to squeeze from the low-middle class. Fixed budget and then make them compete to be in the business. Too much propaganda from the GOP has brainwashed knee-jerk neo-cons. It is a lie. Study the numbers, consider the facts, study other nations who have adopted this template.
10. Heck no!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Universal health care will be a disaster. McCain 08
11. Dear CoCo: This is an Important Provocative Issue! I tend to try & gain knowledge from things that WORK! (& Learn from Failures!) (To propose a Possible Failed System~ & ask folks if *That Is What They Want? Most will say NO!) I've been studying this issue for some time! What is more Important then the Health Of an Entire Nation? Right now? Do NOT Get SICK In America! Even if you are "covered" at work with an HMO! You will soon be BANKRUPT! So far I like the good points of the Taiwan System & the Swiss, German, Japanese & French. Canadians are making strides also! The UK is kind of a Mess! But EVERBODY Is Covered! The Mechanics are a Perplexing Problem. Here is what the Taiwan Govt. did. They studied all the current Health Care of many Governments. They took the good parts from each & tailored their Care. Capitalist Systems like Japan & Free Taiwan are serving their citizens BEST! What has to happen here in the USA? Less Corporate GREED from the Med. Community & the Drug Companies! The COSTS are just too high~ as our Broken System, is now! Our citizens & Politicians must start to EDUCATE themselves about a Heath Care System that will WORK! Most of the Citizens here in the USA are driven by FEAR! The "S" word comes up! (Socialism) I think we can craft a system like the Japanese & Taiwan did ~ in their Capitalistic System! It will take tremendous Efforts from ALL The Power Brokers in the USA! MUCHO Compromises must be made! A Key Focus is to Contractually Set The Costs for Every Medical Procedure~ like the Japanese did. (American Businessmen do NOT like to be told How Much They Can Charge!) Yet~ their GREED is Unacceptable! It will take a Herculean Effort to FIX our Health Care System in the USA. Yet~ It MUST be done! Almost ALL of the Industrialized Nations LAUGH at us for our Inability to Effectively CARE for our Citizens! I am hopeful for a bright new Future~ pertaining to our Health Care System. Spending Trillions on WAR does NOT Help a Congressional Effort to Fix our Health Problems. We need to get Politically Focused~ & Educate the Electorate, Positively! All of our Lives depend on it!
12. Definitely not. No, Universal Healthcare doesn't cover everyone. Most socialized systems are refusing care for the obese or smokers or drinkers or anyone that "isn't taking care of their health." That is not "UNIVERSAL" healthcare. Nor are these socialized plans paying for every treatment. They pay for what is medically necessary, just like your basic HMO. No, the costs are not cheaper. The cost of medicine is the cost of medicine. What the patient doesn't have to pay monetarily will be paid with less services, less diagnostic machinery, higher wait times and less Dr's. Single payer seems to make sense to the shortsighted who have no health issues. For patients such as myself who is a cancer survivor, I experienced first hand that one size fits all health care is as good as having nothing at all. I spent time and energy and stress fighting my one size fits all HMO for treatments and Dr.'s. BUT, after a year of being thoroughly disgusted, I had a choice to use a different plan. In a single payer system, you are stuck with the crappy service you have and pay the big bucks for. If you really want a reason why the cost of health insurance is so high, take a look at the people you want to take it over. The government has regulated insurance to the point where it is no longer affordable. For example, every health plan participant has to have maternity coverage. If you're post menopausal, a guy, or a child, you don't need it. But the government says you have to have it and you have to pay for it. Even if medicine were "Socialized" how fair is it to force a Dr to become a government employee and take a paycut? How many do you think will stay in the profession? How much are you willing to pay in taxes to support the health care workers, hospital administrators, insurance agents, actuaries, and underwriters out of a job because you'd rather buy yourself a HDTV than a good health care plan? Before you single payer advocates start disassembling industries and unemploying your neighbors, think about the big picture. Then pray you are never faced with cancer, diabetes, heart disease or any other degenerative illness with the government "helping" you with a socialized plan. (Which is just expanded Medicare by the way. Read up on how great that is.) FACT: The US has a higher population of kids than Western Europe and the Socialized nations stopped counting to beef up their death statistics. More people die on Socialized medicine than on our system. death rates for Cancer and other diseases are higher. "What happened in these countries is entirely predictable. There was an undersupply of medical services just as there was an undersupply of everything else. Yuri Maltsev tells harrowing stories of how people would suffer relentlessly in the USSR. When the death rate per hospital would grow so as to embarrass the state, the state would simply order the rate to be lowered, just as they ordered grain production to be higher. The hospitals would respond in perverse ways. Instead of providing better care, they started rolling people out the door if the personnel suspected that the patient was near death. The result was a decline in per-hospital death rates, but an overall increase in deaths. One thing that the state has not been able to lie about is vital statistics. The Soviet state did its best to keep them from being revealed. But once the data were collected, the truth came out. Between 1971 and 1986, the Soviet state faced a calamity. Life expectancy decreased. Infant mortality increased. In fact, the Soviet state stopped collecting data again. But later, once the truth was revealed again, it turned out that infant mortality was on the increase, in some cases as much as 58 percent between 1971 and 1986. A similar experience was repeated in every socialized state. Health declined. " --- Llewellyn H. Rockwell
13. If the USA learns from abroad rather than trying to appease the insurance companies, then Americans can get a healthcare system that doctors can be proud of. FACT - the US spends more money per person on healthcare than any other country in the world. FACT - treatment of emergencies is available to all in the US, but no treatment to prevent them where possible in the first place! FACT - the US has the western worlds higest death rates for kids aged under five. Kids die in the USA due to the healthcare system that would have had a better chance of life if born in a western European country with universal healthcare. Click the links, read the facts.
14. Absolutely not--don't support UHC--support a workable plan that is free market, thus sensible. QUALITY, ACCESSIBLE, AFFORDABLE health care for all. That means preventative care (physical with follow up). Real medication (no Medicare "donut holes" the really ill are ripped off again.) No bogus ridiculously low "caps" on needed medical procedures. No abuse of the ER. No paying for the silly with the sniffles to go to the doc for free. No more bankruptcies over medical bills. I want THIS plan that ends abuse of the taxpayer, takes the burden off employers, provides price transparency, and ends the rip-off of the US taxpayer at the hands of greedy insurance CEOs (which has been repeatedly documented). http://www.booklocker.com/books/3068.html Read the PDF, not the blurb, for the bulk of the plan. Book is searchable on Amazon.com Cassandra Nathan's Save America, Save the World That's my summary of the only plan I've seen that relies on TRUE cost problems and addresses in the larger chapter the WHOLE system, including our dire need for MORE doctors, nurses, etc. and how to get them without everyone going broke or continuing to steal them from poorer countries than ours which are also experiencing shortages of doctors, nurses, etc. So it's free market, it's moral, it's based on economics, and it looks towards our future needs as well. Key points of the plan which is basically in two stages. Whether the actual REFORMED government insurance offering is made or not (we HAVE Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP so we have to do something about those programs anyway) here are key points Nathan makes. Enforce CONTRACT law--now legit claims are routinely denied with impunity. Results in bankruptcies and rip-offs of the taxpayer as well as blood money in the multi-millions for the CEOs of insurance companies. Enforce ANTITRUST law--about half the major markets effectively have prices set by an insurer. That costs us big time. Require PRICE TRANSPARENCY--every provider should be required to post their procedures and THE CHARGES so that consumers can compare them. It's all in the computer, just HIDDEN now, and this is the ONLY field in which you can use the services and be completely clueless about what YOU will "owe." Again, those who are healthy and say "I pay my $20 to see the doc" are way off base. The ILL, the COSTLY to care for, are the ones who have NO guarantees about things being paid and THAT is where the REAL problem lies--not someone who sees the doctor twice a year. We need more DOCTORS, nurses, etc. Right now we turn out about 17K med students per year. We RELY on, for RESIDENCIES, NOT med school, that 25% of our slots will be filled by FOREIGN MED SCHOOL GRADS. This is a SIN. We are stealing from poorer countries who paid to educate these folks, then LOSE them to us AND we have issues with non-native speakers AND those who rely don't "get" American culture being the ONLY docs in many areas to serve folks. Again, big city folks can stay out of this--folks in rural areas frequently have to go 25-100 miles to get to the ONE doc they can see, so it's irrelevant that in L.A. you have thousands of docs. L.A. is NOT the center of the US. It's time someone who CARES about the ENTIRE US were listened to for policy decisions. That all CAN and SHOULD be done NOW. THEN we should reform the prior mentioned fed programs, roll them into ONE, and open that program to ANYONE who wants to sign up. Initially we let the feds run it (it is replacing Medicare, etc.) but the author hopes it transitions to a REFORMED private insurance industry or at least pays its own way, preferably administered by STATE level government, not a Constitutional violation. Key elements of the program include: it is sliding-fee scale so it IS affordable to all. Needs/resources are considered to set the PREMIUM, CO-PAY, and to hit that "catastrophic level" trigger. So a CEO may have $10K before it's "catastrophic" and the working poor could have $2K--and yes, that IS fair because the entire purpose of REAL insurance is to prevent bankruptcy. NONE of the existing plans do that; this one does. Bankruptcy eventually costs us ALL, so this is the most sensible, as well as moral way to handle it. Next, everyone on the plan gets: one physical with co-pay one follow-up visit with co-pay one ER visit with co-pay IF NEEDED all NECESSARY prescription meds at a discounted price--the plan would negotiate and bulk-buy so that folks got savings passed on to them The plan does NOT eliminate ANY existing PRIVATE plans whatsoever, nor stop a company from self-insuring, etc. After those basics, people pay their own med bills UNLESS AND UNTIL they hit a CATASTROPHIC level of expense. At that time, the insurance kicks in for NECESSARY treatment (breast augmentation is not necessary, a bone marrow transplant MAY be. It's not so hard as some pretend to weed out necessary). Included in the necessary is meds--so some folks getting chemo may have $1 co-pay or NONE for their needed meds. This ENDS medical bankruptcies. Because of the logical way the plan is structured we: eliminate a multitude of paperwork and nonsense. ALL legit doctors and providers are on the CATASTROPHIC insurance. IF a person needs a procedure that costs $50K to provide at the cheapest QUALIFIED facility within x miles of the patient's home, BUT the patient wants to go to another facilty that charges $55K, he can go. HE is on the line for the extra $5K. He may get that written off by the facility, paid for by donations, or work out a payment plan. You won't see a lot of HUGE price differences though because as most people will be smart enough to sign up for THIS plan if a facility wants customers, they'll have to be price competitive. It's unlikely anyone will shell out more for his health care than he does now, though he may see fewer doctors because he must pay his own way for part of his care and won't waste time or go to to high a level of care (like an ER for poison ivy--go to your doc or urgent care or a walk-in clinic--more than ample care for that minor issue). The uninsurable, who are NEVER discussed, are addressed by this plan. How to FUND it is discussed and it's NO employer mandate, no new taxes on people, and no fines either. Illegals are addressed, etc.