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Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

LOL

I think the internet hates you Frazzled.

Man I hope so.

Here is an appropriate image:

So how big of a wall of quotes do you want to build from this Frazzled?

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

LOL

I think the internet hates you Frazzled.

Man I hope so.

Here is an appropriate image:

So how big of a wall of quotes do you want to build from this Frazzled?

Its not that big

Gibbsey wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

LOL

I think the internet hates you Frazzled.

Man I hope so.

Here is an appropriate image:

So how big of a wall of quotes do you want to build from this Frazzled?

Its not that big

I'm saying it could get bigger.

WarOne wrote:

Gibbsey wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

LOL

I think the internet hates you Frazzled.

Man I hope so.

Here is an appropriate image:

So how big of a wall of quotes do you want to build from this Frazzled?

Its not that big

I'm saying it could get bigger.

Yeah but its got to stop sometime

Gibbsey wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Gibbsey wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

LOL

I think the internet hates you Frazzled.

Man I hope so.

Here is an appropriate image:

So how big of a wall of quotes do you want to build from this Frazzled?

Its not that big

I'm saying it could get bigger.

Yeah but its got to stop sometime

But not yet.

Frazzled wrote:

Gibbsey wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Gibbsey wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

LOL

I think the internet hates you Frazzled.

Man I hope so.

Here is an appropriate image:

So how big of a wall of quotes do you want to build from this Frazzled?

Its not that big

I'm saying it could get bigger.

Yeah but its got to stop sometime

But not yet.

Should Mods be encouraging this?

Gibbsey wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Gibbsey wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Gibbsey wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

LOL

I think the internet hates you Frazzled.

Man I hope so.

Here is an appropriate image:

So how big of a wall of quotes do you want to build from this Frazzled?

Its not that big

I'm saying it could get bigger.

Yeah but its got to stop sometime

But not yet.

Should Mods be encouraging this?

Probably not. Why do you ask?

Frazzled wrote:

Gibbsey wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Gibbsey wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Gibbsey wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

LOL

I think the internet hates you Frazzled.

Man I hope so.

Here is an appropriate image:

So how big of a wall of quotes do you want to build from this Frazzled?

Its not that big

I'm saying it could get bigger.

Yeah but its got to stop sometime

But not yet.

Should Mods be encouraging this?

Probably not. Why do you ask?

Just Curious, i dont think there's anything agaisnt it in the posting rules though

Gibbsey wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Gibbsey wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Gibbsey wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Gibbsey wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

LOL

I think the internet hates you Frazzled.

Man I hope so.

Here is an appropriate image:

So how big of a wall of quotes do you want to build from this Frazzled?

Its not that big

I'm saying it could get bigger.

Yeah but its got to stop sometime

But not yet.

Should Mods be encouraging this?

Probably not. Why do you ask?

Just Curious, i dont think there's anything agaisnt it in the posting rules though

I am sure there will be an update soon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

WarOne wrote:

Elmodiddly wrote:Oh I dunno. The UK has their fair share of village idiots.

I bet you don't have a raving lunatic as a person in the limelite like we do *cough* Sarah Palin *cough.*

To be fair, its more about her lack of depth in the knowledge pool and her decisions more than anything else.

Don't care if she's a lunatic, she'd get one from me. A vote too. If I were allowed to vote in the US.

Elmodiddly wrote:

Gibbsey wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Gibbsey wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Gibbsey wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Gibbsey wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

LOL

I think the internet hates you Frazzled.

Man I hope so.

Here is an appropriate image:

So how big of a wall of quotes do you want to build from this Frazzled?

Its not that big

I'm saying it could get bigger.

Yeah but its got to stop sometime

But not yet.

Should Mods be encouraging this?

Probably not. Why do you ask?

Just Curious, i dont think there's anything agaisnt it in the posting rules though

I am sure there will be an update soon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

WarOne wrote:

Elmodiddly wrote:Oh I dunno. The UK has their fair share of village idiots.

I bet you don't have a raving lunatic as a person in the limelite like we do *cough* Sarah Palin *cough.*

To be fair, its more about her lack of depth in the knowledge pool and her decisions more than anything else.

Don't care if she's a lunatic, she'd get one from me. A vote too. If I were allowed to vote in the US.

Why? she just seems to have to common sense and she's already resigned from being a governer

legoburner wrote:

halonachos wrote:As to having to pay the NHS and a private person for seeing the private person, yes there is a flaw there.

It would be like having to pay the USPS(United States Postal Service) whenever we use FedEx or UPS.

Just wanted to point out here though that the quality of care with private in the UK is equal to the best of the US, and while you are technically paying twice (really though it is more like paying for a more luxurious service like an upgraded seat on an airplane), you could pay about 15 times over and still come out cheaper than the US cost for the equivalent best case options for a treatment. That is the crux of the debate in my opinion - the crazy inflated cost of the US's healthcare rather than any subjective quality measures.

Actually, I was just pointing out that paying for something you don't use is kind of silly. Unless you also decide to look at it like the same deal, with the NHS being basic and private being the First Class seats that gets an in flight movie.

Also, we have a higher ratio of specialists to gen.practicioners than you fellows do. You have more of a 50-50 split while we have about a 65-35 split with specialists in the 65%. I also believe that in terms of why things cost so much, we really don't have the 'free' university educations like you guys do, our medical students must take a thing called the MCAT in order to get into medical school, and for the most part they have to attend graduate school in order to even think about going to med school.

That's an additional 3 years for graduate school on top of the 4 for medical school that most people have to take a loan out for.

Then there's the fact that we don't accept the medical degrees from some of your institutes, not saying that we don't accept any, but only certain schools of yours are 'certified' for the degrees to transfer.

Now I'm not tooting our medical system's horn, but you guys made it easier to get into med school than we did and that means it costs more so our doctors are going to want more to pay it all off. In 2009, the average debt was $157,990. I can't find the comparable cost for the british students so I guess that you guys have free medical school as well.

Seriously though, I can't find the costs so if someone can for comparison that would be fantastic. The stat above is from 2009.

halonachos wrote:Also, we have a higher ratio of specialists to gen.practicioners than you fellows do. You have more of a 50-50 split while we have about a 65-35 split with specialists in the 65%. I also believe that in terms of why things cost so much.

Thats because even for simple procedure you are recommended to a specialist

Gibbsey wrote:

halonachos wrote:Also, we have a higher ratio of specialists to gen.practicioners than you fellows do. You have more of a 50-50 split while we have about a 65-35 split with specialists in the 65%. I also believe that in terms of why things cost so much.

Thats because even for simple procedure you are recommended to a specialist

That's because they 'specialize' in those 'simple' procedures.

halonachos wrote:
Actually, I was just pointing out that paying for something you don't use is kind of silly. Unless you also decide to look at it like the same deal, with the NHS being basic and private being the First Class seats that gets an in flight movie.

Not really. Not if you consider it to be the fallback system. Its like the welfare estate. You might not need it at this exact point in time, because you have a well paid job, but the safety net is there if anything ever happens. Think of it as paying into a guaranteed medical fund. You'll always be treated for illness, not matter how well your job pays. Or an adult who sends their children to private school paying for state education with their taxes. If you lose your job, and can't afford to send your child there any more, your child will still be educated.

It's the basic socialist principles, that everyone should be guaranteed a basic standard of life. gak happens to everyone, and whilst you might bemoan paying for it whilst you're rolling in money, you'll be thankful its there if the day comes when you're not.

legoburner wrote:That is the crux of the debate in my opinion - the crazy inflated cost of the US's healthcare rather than any subjective quality measures.

Yes, everyone agrees that the US pays a whole lot for its healthcare. The debate, such as it is, comes from a certain portion of the US population who refuse to recognise what is driving those additional costs (very high overhead costs, very high legal costs for hospitals to pursue patients and insurance companies for payment, very high legal costs for patients to force insurance companies into paying for treatment, very high costs of drugs) and refuse to accept that despite paying so much more, US health metrics are equivalent to other developed countries at best, and frequently much worse.

This isn't to criticise individual doctors and healthcare professionals in the US, who are amongst the best in the world, but to criticise a system that three or four decades overdue for a massive overhaul.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frazzled wrote:As long as its still better than Britain's

It is no better, and it cost you almost twice as much. At some point you really just have to start accepting the basic realities of the situation, and begin to build an argument from there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

halonachos wrote:Now I'm not tooting our medical system's horn, but you guys made it easier to get into med school than we did and that means it costs more so our doctors are going to want more to pay it all off. In 2009, the average debt was $157,990. I can't find the comparable cost for the british students so I guess that you guys have free medical school as well.

Seriously though, I can't find the costs so if someone can for comparison that would be fantastic. The stat above is from 2009.

Thing is, US expenditure on healthcare is about 15% of GDP, almost double what it is in the UK. If that cost difference was being driven by education being privately funded, you'd see the UK spending much more public money on it's tertiary eduction, somewhere around 7 or 8%. The actual difference is about a third of that, and that's for all education, not just medicine.

So that really isn't much of an explanation at all.

At some point you really need to accept that the US system is very badly broken, for no other reason than that the system is badly broken. There's a real debate to be had on how to fix that problem, but all this stuff that tries to explain why it costs so much to get no better treatment than anyone else is nonsense.

halonachos wrote:
That's because they 'specialize' in those 'simple' procedures.

Needlessly, in many cases.

Ever had to go to a specialist in order to discover that your GP's diagnosis of a hairline fracture was correct?

I mean really, I could have read the X-Ray with that level of certainty.

dogma wrote:

halonachos wrote:
That's because they 'specialize' in those 'simple' procedures.

Needlessly, in many cases.

Ever had to go to a specialist in order to discover that your GP's diagnosis of a hairline fracture was correct?

I mean really, I could have read the X-Ray with that level of certainty.

Sometimes a doctor isn't sure and they want a second opinion to make sure they don't cause bodily harm, I guess that second opinions are a bad thing?

As far as treatment goes, we get a lot of bangin' treatment. Does it cost money, hell yeah it does.

The problem is that not everyone can get the treatment right? Oh wait, our system costs a lot too I guess. So if we add more costs then everyone can get champagne and pills right?

So we need a way to get everyone care while lowering costs. If we just look at the medical issue at the hospital level we're going to miss solving it.

Doctors are a hot commodity, the hottest available. They're also one of the most expensive commodities in the market today(save for maybe a gold plated escalade), we reduce the cost of doctors and increase the number of doctors then we can start with lowering costs.

The medical system itself isn't the issue, its the availability/cost that is. If we had free med school or didn't have to take 4 years of undergraduate studies before even trying to become a med student then I think we could reduce the cost and increase availability. When a hospital sees 10 new doctors that he can hire for the price of one old doctor a couple of things are going to happen; old doctor works harder to make himself seem worthy of the pay, old doctor gets a pay cut, or old doctor gets fired and 10 new doctors are added to the staff. So, we could see the cost stay the same, but the new doctors are a source of revenue that has now increased 10 fold so the hospital may have a higher profit with which they can lower prices or offer more services to those without insurance.

We also have a medical system set up similar to the NHS, except that our government doesn't like to pay doctors for their services so it often gets turned away. If the government decided to pay on time, then maybe we could see an improvement.

Now, the uninsured do get treatment in the ER that's a given. However, who pays for their services?

I'll use the same example I've used before because I was actually there to see everything done.

Illegal immigrant(knew he was illegal because he had no identification on him and because his friends who brought him said so) comes in suffering from a bad reaction to cocaine.

His heart is messing up and there's a medicine that can take care of that, it costs a lot of money though but it calms his heart down and returns him to almost normal. A catheter is inserted so he doesn't pee all over the place seeing as though his motor skills are impaired as is his mind. The patient calms down and starts returning to normalcy so the catheter is removed. He later starts to pee so I quickly grab some gloves and put a plastic jug next to his member and direct him to pee into said jug. He makes a full recovery and is sent off with papers(in spanish) that tell him the bad things about drug use.

Okay we have; the cost of the medicine given to the patient, the cost of the catheter used on the patient, the cost of cleaning the area, the cost of the gloves, the cost of cleaning the other supplies, and of course the nice paper gown.

Overall the visit cost over a thousand dollars and then some and no one was going to pay for it. This happens all the time and its part of why hospitals charge so much, they have to absorb costs attributed to the uninsured. Would mandatory insurance fix this, no because in this case the guy was an illegal immigrant.

I guess all I can say is that our health system is all sorts of screwed up, but its not the system's fault. The government needs to actually pay for services rendered, the government needs to either remove medicare/medicaid and replace it with a new system or fix both, the government needs to give incentives for people to become doctors, and of course we need to solve our illegal immigrant problem. Couple that with changing the american mind set to work less and we could hit the 80 year lifespan Germany is.

halonachos wrote:I guess all I can say is that our health system is all sorts of screwed up, but its not the system's fault. The government needs to actually pay for services rendered, the government needs to either remove medicare/medicaid and replace it with a new system or fix both, the government needs to give incentives for people to become doctors, and of course we need to solve our illegal immigrant problem. Couple that with changing the american mind set to work less and we could hit the 80 year lifespan Germany is.

No, you don't end up paying twice your GDP as other countries for an equivalent level of care because your government isn't paying some bills on time. That makes no fething sense. Stop inventing silly things and just accept that your healthcare system isn't working because of the system.

It doesn't work because it has all the problems of a market system (entities placing their profit over the health of customers) without any of the benefits (because individual consumers can't actually pick their own health insurer).

halonachos wrote:
Sometimes a doctor isn't sure and they want a second opinion to make sure they don't cause bodily harm, I guess that second opinions are a bad thing?

When they're excessively used, yes.

One of the things we should all learn in life is that certainty doesn't exist outside the incredibly stupid. Its all about making educated guesses according to our best standards of judgment.

Indeed, that's a large part of the argument for tort reform.

halonachos wrote:
As far as treatment goes, we get a lot of bangin' treatment. Does it cost money, hell yeah it does.

The problem is that not everyone can get the treatment right? Oh wait, our system costs a lot too I guess. So if we add more costs then everyone can get champagne and pills right?

No, the problem is that it costs too much compared to other nations that have similar returns.

This is a really basic idea, and it boggles my mind that many people refuse to accept it. I guess its just another pathetic grasp at exceptionalism?

halonachos wrote:
I guess all I can say is that our health system is all sorts of screwed up, but its not the system's fault.

Of course it is, it can't be the fault of anything else as the "system" is a totality.

halonachos wrote:
The government needs to actually pay for services rendered, the government needs to either remove medicare/medicaid and replace it with a new system or fix both,

Medicare and Medicaid have no impact on the overall cost of health care. Because, you know, the government does pay for services rendered.

halonachos wrote:
the government needs to give incentives for people to become doctors,

They already do.

halonachos wrote:
and of course we need to solve our illegal immigrant problem.

A minuscule percentage of the overall health expenditure.

You're literally arguing that a group athat constitutes about 7% of the population makes up about 50% of the excess expenditure. Its a ludicrous argument.

halonachos wrote:
Couple that with changing the american mind set to work less and we could hit the 80 year lifespan Germany is.

How does one change a mindset?

Honestly, your solution is terrible. Absolutely terrible. Maybe if you stopped making excuses you could come up with something better.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

sebster wrote:Stop inventing silly things and just accept that your healthcare system isn't working because of the system.

That can't be the case, America is the best at everything. Everyone else just leaches off our greatness. Especially Australia.

halonachos wrote:
The medical system itself isn't the issue, its the availability/cost that is.

Errr......So you have no problem with poor people going un or under-treated?The fact is, unless you have some sort of social program set up where everyone can get healthcare regardless of station, or income, I would regard the medical system as flawed.

If we had free med school or didn't have to take 4 years of undergraduate studies before even trying to become a med student then I think we could reduce the cost and increase availability. When a hospital sees 10 new doctors that he can hire for the price of one old doctor a couple of things are going to happen; old doctor works harder to make himself seem worthy of the pay, old doctor gets a pay cut, or old doctor gets fired and 10 new doctors are added to the staff. So, we could see the cost stay the same, but the new doctors are a source of revenue that has now increased 10 fold so the hospital may have a higher profit with which they can lower prices or offer more services to those without insurance.

So your solution to people not being able to afford healthcare, and ridiculously expensive drugs is to train more doctors? I'm not so sure it works that way....

We also have a medical system set up similar to the NHS, except that our government doesn't like to pay doctors for their services so it often gets turned away. If the government decided to pay on time, then maybe we could see an improvement.

Please outline it to me. I actually have no knowledge of this program, and would be interested to hear it operates, how it differs from the NHS, and what its pros/cons are.

Now, the uninsured do get treatment in the ER that's a given. However, who pays for their services?

I would assume the government who runs the hospitals. Or are ALL hospitals privately owned over there?

I'll use the same example I've used before because I was actually there to see everything done.

Illegal immigrant(knew he was illegal because he had no identification on him and because his friends who brought him said so) comes in suffering from a bad reaction to cocaine.

His heart is messing up and there's a medicine that can take care of that, it costs a lot of money though but it calms his heart down and returns him to almost normal. A catheter is inserted so he doesn't pee all over the place seeing as though his motor skills are impaired as is his mind. The patient calms down and starts returning to normalcy so the catheter is removed. He later starts to pee so I quickly grab some gloves and put a plastic jug next to his member and direct him to pee into said jug. He makes a full recovery and is sent off with papers(in spanish) that tell him the bad things about drug use.

Okay we have; the cost of the medicine given to the patient, the cost of the catheter used on the patient, the cost of cleaning the area, the cost of the gloves, the cost of cleaning the other supplies, and of course the nice paper gown.

Overall the visit cost over a thousand dollars and then some and no one was going to pay for it. This happens all the time and its part of why hospitals charge so much, they have to absorb costs attributed to the uninsured. Would mandatory insurance fix this, no because in this case the guy was an illegal immigrant.

Soooooo.......illegal immigrants leeching off the system are a reason not to provide everyone with free healthcare? To be frank, I'd say treat the immigrants. They're a tiny minority, and as human beings, they have no less right to good health then I do, on a humanitarian level. They just had the bad fortune to be born elsewhere. Stick 'em back together, and then send them home. If there's a man bleeding to death on the porch, I don't care where he's from, I'd rather he survives. Its looking out for your fellow man. I don't resent my taxes paying for such a thing.

I guess all I can say is that our health system is all sorts of screwed up, but its not the system's fault. The government needs to actually pay for services rendered, the government needs to either remove medicare/medicaid and replace it with a new system or fix both, the government needs to give incentives for people to become doctors, and of course we need to solve our illegal immigrant problem. Couple that with changing the american mind set to work less and we could hit the 80 year lifespan Germany is.

Sooooo.......the system is screwed up, but its not the systems fault? Who's is it then? If the system is screwed up, as you've just acknowledged, its a bad system. Get rid of it.

So seriously, out of the entire post you guys decided to say that my prime reason for why healthcare is so expensive is because of illegal immigrants?

Well that would be true except for the fact that I was using my own personal experience to outline the general outcome for ANY uninsured person. I guess that as soon as someone sees "illegal immigrants" and imply a negative aspect to them others have to put on their blinders and run in saying "Illegal immigrants are people too!". Again, you guys missed the point there.

As to our system, hospitals tend to be privately owned with funding for free clinics coming from local or state governments. New York and most major cities have free clinics for the homeless/poor.

As to our system, it can be fixed and left the way it is as soon as we can find a way to make medical care cheaper. Increasing the amount of doctors and reducing the cost/time it takes to become a doctor is one way to reduce costs. Unless supply and demand don't apply to medical staff for some reason...

As to the cost of medicine itself, I never said that training more doctors would lower the cost of the medicine. I said that having more doctors will increase the profit for the hospital which can be used to either fund private free clinics or to allow free preventative care for the uninsured.

Now, this part is just an opinion, but I believe that people don't want to pay for some guy's healthcare when that guy is a complete and total stranger to them so the republicans will want to fight it. Now if the hospital was distributing its own wealth as a private entity then the republicans or any government official has no say in how the money is spent. If the government decides to entice the hospital with a nifty tax break if it does carry out charitable activities(such as providing preventative medicine to the uninsured) then the hospital would be more willing to do so.

As to our government paying for services rendered, they do, but it arrives months to years later which is why doctors tend not to accept it. Having insurance is good unless its not accepted anywhere. When we had the government insurance through the military I could only go on base for my prescriptions and only one hospital outside of the bases would accept it. Hell, my optometrist at SEARS didn't even accept it so we had to get another insurance on top of that.

halonachos wrote:
Well that would be true except for the fact that I was using my own personal experience to outline the general outcome for ANY uninsured person. I guess that as soon as someone sees "illegal immigrants" and imply a negative aspect to them others have to put on their blinders and run in saying "Illegal immigrants are people too!". Again, you guys missed the point there.

The problem is that your argument against mandatory insurance turned on the illegal status of the person in question, which is basically the same thing as claiming that illegal immigrants are responsible for excessive health care costs in the US.

Had you not brought up the guy's illegal status, or not used him as an example of why national insurance wouldn't work, there wouldn't have been a problem.

halonachos wrote:
As to our system, hospitals tend to be privately owned with funding for free clinics coming from local or state governments. New York and most major cities have free clinics for the homeless/poor.

Most hospitals also take state funding.

halonachos wrote:
As to our system, it can be fixed and left the way it is as soon as we can find a way to make medical care cheaper. Increasing the amount of doctors and reducing the cost/time it takes to become a doctor is one way to reduce costs. Unless supply and demand don't apply to medical staff for some reason...

The number of doctors isn't the issue. Our physicians per capita statistic is not significantly different from many of the Western nations with superior health care services (right between England and Australia), and is actually significantly worse than the same statistic in a number of nations with inferior health care (Cuba, Argentina, Latvia, Uzbekistan, etc.).

Either way, you're also basically arguing that we should try and fix a complicated issue, health care, by taking another complicated issue, the cost of education. If you're correct, it may be efficient in the sense that two issues would be dealt with simultaneously, but it may not be any easier, and could actually be far more difficult.

halonachos wrote:
If the government decides to entice the hospital with a nifty tax break if it does carry out charitable activities(such as providing preventative medicine to the uninsured) then the hospital would be more willing to do so.

That's basically what happens now, only its not generally tax breaks that are applied, but state subsidization on the condition of admitting emergency patients.

One way or another, people in this country will pay for the health care afforded to others. The question is merely about how open we are about acknowledging that fact.

halonachos wrote:
As to our government paying for services rendered, they do, but it arrives months to years later which is why doctors tend not to accept it. Having insurance is good unless its not accepted anywhere. When we had the government insurance through the military I could only go on base for my prescriptions and only one hospital outside of the bases would accept it. Hell, my optometrist at SEARS didn't even accept it so we had to get another insurance on top of that.

That's not especially different from any basic HMO. Try getting an out of network provider to accept your insurance, or the insurance company to pay, for that matter.

halonachos wrote:So seriously, out of the entire post you guys decided to say that my prime reason for why healthcare is so expensive is because of illegal immigrants?

No, I pointed out that your claim that US system wasn't working because government didn't pay on time made no sense. You'd ignored this because it was easier to make some vague claim about being jumped on for mentioning illegal immigrants than it was to defend your claims.

Now, this part is just an opinion, but I believe that people don't want to pay for some guy's healthcare when that guy is a complete and total stranger to them so the republicans will want to fight it.

How do you think insurance works?

As to our government paying for services rendered, they do, but it arrives months to years later which is why doctors tend not to accept it. Having insurance is good unless its not accepted anywhere. When we had the government insurance through the military I could only go on base for my prescriptions and only one hospital outside of the bases would accept it. Hell, my optometrist at SEARS didn't even accept it so we had to get another insurance on top of that.

You attempted to claim that this was the reason US health services are in a mess. Which is ridiculous.

Again, the fact that the person was illegal was not the issue. The issue was that the person lacked healthcare and that there was a good amount of fees that were reacked up during the care for the patient. The illegal immigrant status was used to provide background as to why the person lacked insurance in the first place.

If I said "a person with no insurance" instead of an "illegal immigrant" then I'm sure you would have not responded in the way you did.

Insurance is a service that is payed for on a gamble of whether or not you will get ill. People with pre-existing conditions are turned down because it is an almost guaranteed loss of profit while people who are healthy pay less because they have less of a chance that they will get ill. The money earned by insuring x amount of healthy people and y amount of unhealthy people is enough to cover the expenses when one of the y people get ill or in the statistically unlikely event that one of the x people get ill. Would a government policy be the same, yes and no.

Would it follow the same basic principle of gambling with illness, yes. But instead of a publicly owned corporation, which follows the typical american tradition of capitalism, it would be a government agency, which follows a non-typical american policy.

Another thing is when you buy insurance you are adding to a collective pot of others who have paid insurance. I will dare to say that this loosely fits the concept of depositing money into a bank. When you deposit money you give it to the bank to hold(instead of keeping the money for later use if you get sick) and that money is then used by the bank to help loan other members of the bank with the promise of earning a small amount of interest for the use of your money(similar to how the insurance company may use your money to help pay for the care of another policy holder in promise that you will receive similar help in turn).

A government healthcare would be like giving money to the bank without receiving any interest and best of all the bank gives the money away instead of loaning it. Similar to how we would be paying a tax for a service that we will not receive if we already have insurance and would instead give it to those who are most likely not contributing to that amount of money being used.

As to solving two issues at once being more difficult, yes it would be but taking the easy way out isn't going to help anyone. A half-assed universal healthcare bill will do more damage than good and all possible outcomes need to be considered.

We could fix overpriced medicine by capping the prices, but what possible outcomes would we see from that? We could see companies leaving america or we could see them producing less. Or we could see no change except for the price.

As for insurance companies and a universal healthcare comparison. Insurance companies will pay on time if the doctors can prove the charges necessary, the government will pay months after the doctor proves charges to be necessary. The issue with doctors today is that they will try to avoid the more expensive diagnostic tests if there is a chance they may be considered unnecessary.

Overall, insurance is another key issue in healthcare. Its a more common belief though, so why stick with just that?

IMHO our healthcare system is like a dam with varying levels of cracks in them. There are cracks that are more obvious like the insurance companies and cost of medicine. Then there are cracks that are less likely to be seen, like medical education and illegal immigrants. After we solve the insurance and medicine cost issues the others will still remain and allow for leaks. These cracks may grow in time to be the same level of concern as the two original major cracks until they get solved.

Universal healthcare will be applied to american citizens, not to illegal immigrants so that issue will come up soon after the universal healthcare bill comes along and at that point it will need to be solved. Once that occurs we will see more people seeing doctors and at that point we will need to see to the demand of doctors and along with that education.

You can use all of the statistics you want; life span, quality of care, and others all you want, but this issue will most likely only dabble in political science waters. There are too many personal opinions and justifications to allow science to overcome philosophy so in the end it will come to how people feel about it. On that we can agree dogma, everything else not so much.

6 pages of people fighting is reward enough.

Peter Wiggin wrote:6 pages of people fighting is reward enough.

Even though people have shifted to healthcare in general....

halonachos wrote:Again, the fact that the person was illegal was not the issue. The issue was that the person lacked healthcare and that there was a good amount of fees that were reacked up during the care for the patient. The illegal immigrant status was used to provide background as to why the person lacked insurance in the first place.

Yes, generally, but you also explicitly stated that national, or mandatory, health insurance wouldn't fix the problem because the person in question was illegal. And that, as a result, national health insurance was an insufficient solution. This can only be taken to mean that the number of illegal immigrants in this country is central to the high cost of health care. Maybe that's not the point that you intended to make, but that's certainly what you wrote.

halonachos wrote:
If I said "a person with no insurance" instead of an "illegal immigrant" then I'm sure you would have not responded in the way you did.

Of course not, why would we? Using an illegal immigrant as a specific example explicitly changes the nature of what you're arguing. You could not, for example, say that national health insurance wouldn't be an effective solution, on its face, simply because there are people without insurance; because the explicit point of national health insurance is to reduce the number of people without insurance.

halonachos wrote:
The money earned by insuring x amount of healthy people and y amount of unhealthy people is enough to cover the expenses when one of the y people get ill or in the statistically unlikely event that one of the x people get ill.

Its actually as close to statistically certain as you can get. Anyone who has health insurance will use it. The question isn't regarding usage, its regarding cost when its used. Healthy people are statistically less likely to incur high medical bills, but not necessarily fewer medical bills. In fact, it has been argued that part of being a health person is regular doctor visits for the purposes of preemptive diagnosis; hopefully averting the aforementioned high medical bills.

halonachos wrote:
Would it follow the same basic principle of gambling with illness, yes. But instead of a publicly owned corporation, which follows the typical american tradition of capitalism, it would be a government agency, which follows a non-typical american policy.

Why does the "Americanness" of a thing matter at all? All wondering about that does is gravitate the debate towards "What is America?" That's a cute rhetorical trick, but it isn't particularly conducive to developing physically (as opposed to politically) pragmatic solutions.

halonachos wrote:
A government healthcare would be like giving money to the bank without receiving any interest and best of all the bank gives the money away instead of loaning it.

That's already a significant portion of what insurance companies do. You don't think that covered cancer patients actually pay an amount commensurate with the difference between their health care costs, and those of your average policy holder, do you?

halonachos wrote:
Similar to how we would be paying a tax for a service that we will not receive if we already have insurance and would instead give it to those who are most likely not contributing to that amount of money being used.

Unless of course said service also decreases the overall cost of health care, and thus causes insurance premiums to drop.

halonachos wrote:
As to solving two issues at once being more difficult, yes it would be but taking the easy way out isn't going to help anyone. A half-assed universal healthcare bill will do more damage than good and all possible outcomes need to be considered.

Simply because something is difficult does not indicate that it is the better course of action. Again, that's a cute bit of rhetoric, but it really is meaningless.

halonachos wrote:
We could fix overpriced medicine by capping the prices, but what possible outcomes would we see from that? We could see companies leaving america or we could see them producing less. Or we could see no change except for the price.

And if both of the outcomes were acceptable, then that would be a fine solution.

Either way, I'm not sure what you're trying to illustrate here. Well, other than the basic premise that certain choices involve certain outcomes, which isn't really a point, so much as a matter of self-evidence.

halonachos wrote:
The issue with doctors today is that they will try to avoid the more expensive diagnostic tests if there is a chance they may be considered unnecessary.

From nearly everything I've heard the exact opposite is true, and that the reality is that many doctors over use diagnostic testing. As such, it seems the goal should be to have more doctors be more cautious about the tests they order, which is where tort reform enters the equation.

halonachos wrote:
You can use all of the statistics you want; life span, quality of care, and others all you want, but this issue will most likely only dabble in political science waters. There are too many personal opinions and justifications to allow science to overcome philosophy so in the end it will come to how people feel about it. On that we can agree dogma, everything else not so much.

Actually, my point was that how people feel about the matter is basically irrelevant, and that the state should behave in consistence with a policy of "You're nearly all ignorant plebes." and work to develop the best possible system given the limitations of such an attitude.

But the best possible system will not be gained by compromise. Basic political philosophy follows that very principle and the fact that political philosophy follows to gain what is "just" and "good" means that by its nature it is not objective, but subjective. When you fall into the world of political science then we see more objective evidence being presented and that's when we see compromises being made and the solution we get is not the best one possible. If we want to get the BEST healthcare we will need to argue that it is "just" and sway people based on that concept. We do have two parties with two different concepts of what is just though. Democrats want hugs for everyone and the republicans want to push old people own the stairs.

Cute rhetoric, no, political philosophy, yes.

halonachos wrote:Insurance is a service that is payed for on a gamble of whether or not you will get ill. People with pre-existing conditions are turned down because it is an almost guaranteed loss of profit while people who are healthy pay less because they have less of a chance that they will get ill. The money earned by insuring x amount of healthy people and y amount of unhealthy people is enough to cover the expenses when one of the y people get ill or in the statistically unlikely event that one of the x people get ill. Would a government policy be the same, yes and no

It seems that I did acknowledge the fact that people with conditions do pay more than people who are healthy.

As to the undercoding:
http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2004/11/22/bil21122.htm
-Undercoding is common to physicians to avoid the hassle of dealing with "the system".

http://www.chiroeco.com/news/chiropractic-news.php?id=2382§ion=63
-Undercoding is a malevolent practice that lowers the value of procedures and does not allow the insurance companies to appreciate the actual value of treatment.

http://www.mgma.com/article.aspx?id=39246

mgma wrote:The audits revealed that, as a group, under-insured patients received the highest percentage of under-coded services. Despite the information – including how undercoding affected their production-based compensation – some providers said they were reluctant to charge under-insured and uninsured patients the full amount knowing that patients would have to cover the fees out-of-pocket.

When they stopped undercoding they had an increase of profit in the amount of $145,000 in office-visit revenue.

As to the system causing insurance premiums to drop, the system would have to be competitive. If we can use the USPS as an example, its hardly competitive.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

dogma wrote:

halonachos wrote:Again, the fact that the person was illegal was not the issue. The issue was that the person lacked healthcare and that there was a good amount of fees that were reacked up during the care for the patient. The illegal immigrant status was used to provide background as to why the person lacked insurance in the first place.

Yes, generally, but you also explicitly stated that national, or mandatory, health insurance wouldn't fix the problem because the person in question was illegal. And that, as a result, national health insurance was an insufficient solution. This can only be taken to mean that the number of illegal immigrants in this country is central to the high cost of health care. Maybe that's not the point that you intended to make, but that's certainly what you wrote.

Or it could be taken that under universal healthcare they would not receive healthcare(because they lack citizenship) and that later on we would have to deal with it, most likely because people would argue that they have the right to universal healthcare as well.

There are a lot of possibilities Dogma, sorry for not clarifying what I meant exactly.

halonachos wrote:But the best possible system will not be gained by compromise.

Why not? I mean, the legislative history of the United States doesn't support that idea (Social Security has performed remarkably well for an institution that hasn't been significantly modified in 60 years), and neither does the massive body of literature which states that consensus democracy (Sweden, Canada, Belgium, etc.) produces the best legislative outcomes.

halonachos wrote:
Basic political philosophy follows that very principle and the fact that political philosophy follows to gain what is "just" and "good" means that by its nature it is not objective, but subjective.

What sort of basic political philosophy? I only ask because I've studied political philosophy extensively, and the only real way to make the statement that you just did is to presume that what you learned first, or accept most freely, is the fundamental tenet of an entire body of thought. That's not the case outside the hard sciences which, despite its best attempts to the contrary, political science is not.

Additionally, political philosophy is not necessarily about gaining what is just or good. That's what Platonic political philosophy is about, sure, but we've gotten a lot more sophisticated in the ensuing 2500 years.

halonachos wrote:
When you fall into the world of political science then we see more objective evidence being presented and that's when we see compromises being made and the solution we get is not the best one possible.

The inverse is also true. If what you want is the best possible system, and "best" is defined by a given subjective consideration, then any system that functions in accordance only with one such consideration is going to be something other than the best when considered against all others. This implies that the real question is realizing the best possible solution given all parties involved, even when those parties are mistake as regards what they really want to achieve. Essentially, its the age old question of "What do you really want, X or Y?"

Do you want cheaper health care, or do you want health care based on free market principles? And no, "They're one and the same." is not a valid response, as the question is about personal valuation.

More to the point, there are certain goods that can be considered "objective" in the sense that they only subjective outside the human experience. Health care is an objective good, and you will not find anyone that argues otherwise. Just deserts are not objective goods, because the ideas of who is deserving, and what is just, are not objectively verifiable. As such, the best possible system is the one extends the most care to the most people because objective considerations always outweigh subjective ones in matters where social contracts (read: citizenship), or systemic merit (the worth of a thing across all possible members of a given system) are concerned.

halonachos wrote:
If we want to get the BEST healthcare we will need to argue that it is "just" and sway people based on that concept.

Why? Why not simply argue from what is best? Why change the question into one that is, by your own admission, at least as contentious?

halonachos wrote:
We do have two parties with two different concepts of what is just though. Democrats want hugs for everyone and the republicans want to push old people own the stairs.

Cute rhetoric, no, political philosophy, yes.

No, that's not political philosophy. Its cute rhetoric. The moral arguments put forth by the Republican and Democratic parties are so juvenile and contradictory that calling them philosophy is an injustice; especially seeing their ultimate point is not the creation of a coherent idea of just politics, but swaying voters according to existential biases.

halonachos wrote:
It seems that I did acknowledge the fact that people with conditions do pay more than people who are healthy.

That's not what I asked you. I asked you whether or not the additional amount they pay is commensurate with the additional expenditure incurred in the course of treating them; ie. do they pay for all their additional expenses, or do other people make up the difference in overall cost?

halonachos wrote:
Or it could be taken that under universal healthcare they would not receive healthcare(because they lack citizenship) and that later on we would have to deal with it, most likely because people would argue that they have the right to universal healthcare as well.

That's not a particularly good reason to avoid instituting universal health care, as you're basically contending that a fix for one problem shouldn't be used because it neither fixes, nor worsens, an entirely separate problem.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

halonachos wrote:
As to the undercoding:
http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2004/11/22/bil21122.htm
-Undercoding is common to physicians to avoid the hassle of dealing with "the system".

http://www.chiroeco.com/news/chiropractic-news.php?id=2382§ion=63
-Undercoding is a malevolent practice that lowers the value of procedures and does not allow the insurance companies to appreciate the actual value of treatment.

http://www.mgma.com/article.aspx?id=39246

mgma wrote:The audits revealed that, as a group, under-insured patients received the highest percentage of under-coded services. Despite the information – including how undercoding affected their production-based compensation – some providers said they were reluctant to charge under-insured and uninsured patients the full amount knowing that patients would have to cover the fees out-of-pocket.

When they stopped undercoding they had an increase of profit in the amount of $145,000 in office-visit revenue.