Before I mention anything on the nationalization of health-care, I would like to reiterate Dan's point on the sense of entitlement. Every major global power in history has had a major weakness. America's weakness is a sense of entitlement and a tremendous apathy for government issues. We elected a president on superficial and ambiguous promises, rhetoric without support and for a chance to make history.
This country forgets that it already made history by being one of the last if not the last major country to abolish slavery. One election of one unqualified black man does not eradicate such large blemishes on the country's historical landscape.
Now on to the issue of health-care. Dan references tax shelters and the sort for big corporations. Something similar would occur in health-care. Currently, most Americans seeking an MD, do not want to be general practitioners. Why is that? Because they face some of the largest liability and large patient loads and relatively small...
This country forgets that it already made history by being one of the last if not the last major country to abolish slavery. One election of one unqualified black man does not eradicate such large blemishes on the country's historical landscape.
Now on to the issue of health-care. Dan references tax shelters and the sort for big corporations. Something similar would occur in health-care. Currently, most Americans seeking an MD, do not want to be general practitioners. Why is that? Because they face some of the largest liability and large patient loads and relatively small...
compensation. The general practitioners prefer other fields in medicine. What happens when you nationalize health-care? These same talented doctors get different degrees or practice medicine in other areas of the world. Turning a blind eye to the business side of medicine for the sake of the common good is just ridiculous. Brain surgeons and other doctors that received their free education in nationalized economies rush to America for health-care careers because they are paid well.
Our system may be expensive, but the expense is what gives the fuel to the advances in medical technology.
Food for thought: Fidel Castro claims his country's nationalized health-care system is wonderful yet had to bring in specialists from Spain to treat his illness.
Nationalization of health-care furthermore is not justified.
Our system may be expensive, but the expense is what gives the fuel to the advances in medical technology.
Food for thought: Fidel Castro claims his country's nationalized health-care system is wonderful yet had to bring in specialists from Spain to treat his illness.
Nationalization of health-care furthermore is not justified.
There are other corporate solutions. Some companies are running health-care clinics that significantly lower the costs of health-care for their employees. Other clinics offer treatment to uninsured populations and undocumented populations.
Hospitals CANNOT turn away uninsured citizens and there are solutions for payments for hospital bills (either they are waived or subsidized by the hospital in some fashion).
Nationalization is not the ONLY solution and it is not the best solution. For those that clamored for more diplomatic solutions for the War in Iraq, this issue is similar. I emphatically believe that there are more solutions out there. I may have my father post later to discuss those alternatives.
Hospitals CANNOT turn away uninsured citizens and there are solutions for payments for hospital bills (either they are waived or subsidized by the hospital in some fashion).
Nationalization is not the ONLY solution and it is not the best solution. For those that clamored for more diplomatic solutions for the War in Iraq, this issue is similar. I emphatically believe that there are more solutions out there. I may have my father post later to discuss those alternatives.
Apathy will crush America. This president claimed he would bring hope and change. Listen to his speeches and they are riddled with discussion of crisis, collapse, and depression. Fear tactics this country so loathed while President Bush was in command. The difference is that we are now in a climate of domestic fear rather than foreign fear.
Change? Obama is proposing the same audacious spending programs as Bush. Where the HELL is the change in that?
Change? Obama is proposing the same audacious spending programs as Bush. Where the HELL is the change in that?
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This is a link to an article that discusses Health Care reform Pro's and Con's.
Please review: http://www.ajc.com/services/content/printedition/2009/03/11/proconed0311.html
Here is the answer similar to mine:
By GRACE-MARIE TURNER
Alexandria, Va. —- President Obama’s plan for new taxpayer-funded health plans will stifle competition in the health sector and leave doctors and hospitals more beholden to the demands of politicians and government bureaucrats than to the needs of patients. More government is not the answer.
Medicine is a scientific process that is constantly evolving to create new treatments, new surgical techniques and new drugs, devices and technologies. America leads the world in medical advances because we value and reward innovation.
Countries that centralize decisions over health care and coverage stifle medical progress as doctors and hospitals respond, not to patients, but to the latest bureaucratic and political dictates.
In Britain, for example, politicians were getting pressure from constituents because hospital emergency rooms were so crowded that patients were left on gurneys in hallways awaiting care, sometimes for days. Politicians told the hospitals this had to stop and that they had to admit patients faster.
The response of some hospital administrators: Take the wheels off the gurneys because they then fit the definition of a “hospital bed.” The patients were no better off, but the statistics looked better to the politicians.
Europe lags behind the United States in medical advances, largely because the government controls payments and often refuses to pay, especially when it comes to new medicines that are proved to save lives.
We are veering down this same path. President Obama has signed legislation that creates a new federal health board in which 15 government officials will decide what medical treatments are good or bad. It’s only a matter of time before payment policies follow their dictates.
The president also envisions creating a new government health insurance plan for working-age Americans. While this initially may seem appealing, it could actually be the tipping point in government dominance of our health sector.
This plan would “compete” with private plans. But it would have federal policing and price-control authority, would benefit from government subsidies and could change the rules of the game to make sure it wins in the marketplace. Private insurance would not be able to compete on this uneven playing field, and soon Americans would have only the “choice” of this government plan.
A better idea is to provide a climate friendly to innovation and to offer new federal subsidies to help the uninsured purchase the private coverage of their choice. This could turn us toward a properly functioning market in the health sector so that doctors and patients, rather than politicians and bureaucrats, control medical decisions.
This decade has seen advances in making care and coverage more affordable, including convenient and affordable walk-in retail health clinics, TelaDoc phone access to physicians, and innovative health insurance offerings coupled with wellness and prevention plans.
We need more of this innovation, and we need fewer bureaucratic programs that are slow, rigid, unresponsive and rule-driven.
But if Congress and the Obama administration have their way and continue down this path, we will lose the dynamic creativity of the marketplace that can respond to the needs and demands of consumers and get us to faster-better-cheaper medical care and coverage.
> Grace-Marie Turner is president and founder of the Galen Institute, which is funded in part by the pharmaceutical and medical industries.
Report: US on short end of health care 'value gap'
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR – 9 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — If the global economy were a 100-yard dash, the U.S. would start 23 yards behind its closest competitors because of health care that costs too much and delivers too little, a business group says in a report to be released Thursday.
The report from the Business Roundtable, which represents CEOs of major companies, says America's health care system has become a liability in a global economy.
Concern about high U.S. costs has existed for years, and business executives — whose companies provide health coverage for workers — have long called for getting costs under control. Now President Barack Obama says the costs have become unsustainable and the system must be overhauled.
Americans spend $2.4 trillion a year on health care. The Business Roundtable report says Americans in 2006 spent $1,928 per capita on health care, at least two-and-a-half times more per person than any other advanced country.
In a different twist, the report took those costs and factored benefits into the equation.
It compares statistics on life expectancy, death rates and even cholesterol readings and blood pressures. The health measures are factored together with costs into a 100-point "value" scale. That hasn't been done before, the authors said.
The results are not encouraging.
The United States is 23 points behind five leading economic competitors: Canada, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and France. The five nations cover all their citizens, and though their systems differ, in each country the government plays a much larger role than in the U.S.
The cost-benefit disparity is even wider — 46 points — when the U.S. is compared with emerging competitors: China, Brazil and India.
"What's important is that we measure and compare actual value — not just how much we spend on health care, but the performance we get back in return," said H. Edward Hanway, CEO of the insurance company Cigna. "That's what this study does, and the results are quite eye-opening."
Higher U.S. spending funnels away resources that could be invested elsewhere in the economy, but fails to deliver a healthier work force, the report said.
"Spending more would not be a problem if our health scores were proportionately higher," Dr. Arnold Milstein, one of the authors of the study, said in an interview. "But what this study shows is that the U.S. is not getting higher levels of health and quality of care."
Other countries spend less on health care and their workers are relatively healthier, the report said.
Medical costs have long been a problem for U.S. auto companies. General Motors spends more per car on health care than it does on steel. But as more American companies face global competition, the "value gap" is being felt by more CEOs — and their hard pressed workers.
One thing the report does not do is endorse the same solution that countries like Canada have adopted: a government-run health care system.
The CEOs of the Business Roundtable believe health care for U.S. workers and their families should stay in private hands, with a government-funded safety net for low-income people.
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