I said it then and I’ll say it again now: In the richest country on the planet it’s simply ridiculous that we can’t find a way to have a national health care system. But hey, according to Consi, it’s my own damn fault that I’m not talented enough or living in the right place to have a job with decent health care. Spending trillions of taxpayer money on a war started on lies that the vast majority of people don’t want to be in is A-OK, but holy fucking Christ on a stick you’re a communist if you think folks should be entitled to health care. Fortunately it looks like national health care is going to be a big issue in the next election. With any luck perhaps something will actually come out of it once Bush is gone.

I’ve been saying the same thing for awhile and my friends say the same thing to me jokingly, “You’re a communist!” I know they are joking by to me it’s just not that funny anymore.  Hopefully Michael Moore’s new movie will open some eyes.

“Sucks to be you. I got mine and that’s all that matters to me.”

Sounds very close to a phrase my dad used when mocking the completely uncompassionate: “I got mine, the hell with you.”

The Republican/"conservative" approach seems to be, “it is possible to screw up government health services, so we shouldn’t try.” The fact that some countries seem to manage it quite well, deserves no study, I guess.

I hear ya over here, Les.

We were without health insurance for years, even while paying for pregnancy and babies.  If I hadn’t had nurse training to take care of their sniffles, we would have been even worse off.
We were lucky to find a dentist just beginning his practice who was willing to take monthly payments.  For a long time, he was part of the budget, just like electric and phone.

Is there a way you can take some college courses to get a sheepskin paper?
As an older, returning student, I was able to get financial aid.  I’m told a degree and certification opens doors of employment, so I’m looking around more often.

That’s my current plan. At the very least I’m shooting for a couple of certs and, if possible, will be going back to school. I have quite a few credits with Oakland Community College yet so I may try returning there and getting at least an associates to start.

It seems to me that Conservatives and the more extreme Libertarians are all just fine with government intervention in things like building and maintaining commerce and transportation infrastructure, and the enforcement of laws (as long as they don’t infringe on their “freedom"), but propose anything that doesn’t on the surface appear to benefit their precious wallets, and watch out.  You can’t do that!

I don’t know the view in the US but here most people are protective of the NHS and are willing to pay slightly higher taxes for free healthcare. But it would appear to be slowly privitising for some reason, government generally seems to be willing to deliberately mismanage finances of public firms to push forward privitisation more, saying ‘public bad, private good’ - I think it’s because election terms of only a few years force the short-term view; they want a quick sell, spend much now and leave the mess for who replaces them, making your opposition looking worse for being in the mess they inherited

Bahamat, the problem here is political parties run scared of the right wing press, especially Murdoch.  They constantly go on about Public Bad, Private Good, because it suits their (the owners) ends to have a low tax economy- they are billionaires, so don’t need to worry.  They then tell their readers that a low tax economy will suit them, when in most cases only the rich are rewarded.

In proportion to income, cut in direct (i.e. income) taxes disproportionately benefit the rich, while the benefit to the poor is less than the loss of the government services that have to be cut to make this reduction.

Thatcher supported tax cuts by selling off state owned industries- even the profitable ones.  Now there are none of the big ticket items to sell the British have to face an uncomfortable question- raise taxes or cut public service.

TAFKA: It seems to me that Conservatives and the more extreme Libertarians are all just fine with government intervention in things like building and maintaining commerce and transportation infrastructure, and the enforcement of laws (as long as they don’t infringe on their “freedom"), but propose anything that doesn’t on the surface appear to benefit their precious wallets, and watch out.  You can’t do that!

The maybe the real solution is to find a way to make it benefit their wallets.

Is it possible that the high cost of health care could be reduced by moving it from private enterprise (where the end goal is profit) to public service (where the end goal is the public welfare)? Would malpractice still be the cost enabler that it is under such a system?

If the cost of government run health care could be reduced to a figure (per person) lower than what most wealthy or middle class folks are currently paying for their insurance, wouldn’t that remove the one real arguement from the equation?

Just a thought.

LH: They constantly go on about Public Bad, Private Good, because it suits their (the owners) ends to have a low tax economy- they are billionaires, so don’t need to worry.  They then tell their readers that a low tax economy will suit them, when in most cases only the rich are rewarded.

That does make sense, in terms of why The Sun takes the stance it does, and the pressure is both political and economic with the media. I wonder why people as rich as murdoch (or gates) bother working, they must just enjoy it because by this point it probably won’t affect their lifestyle. Anyway, I bet government prefers having a few super-rich rather than many medium because of the inheritance tax.

KPG: The maybe the real solution is to find a way to make it benefit their wallets

Agreed, the most direct and certain benefit

*Applause*

Well spoken, Les.  Conservatism has nothing to do with compassion and everything to do with holding on to whatever you’ve got, screw the rest of the world.

If the cost of government run health care could be reduced to a figure (per person) lower than what most wealthy or middle class folks are currently paying for their insurance, wouldn’t that remove the one real arguement from the equation?

I agree. However, there’s another argument in the equation: the health care industry currently makes ungodly gobs of money off the current system.  A national health care plan would no doubt reduce overall profits since there would be probably be better price regulations on things like drugs and hospital costs.  Unless the federal government were to subsidize the difference (I’m not even sure how that would be calculated) I can’t see the industry not doing everything in their power to prevent nationalized medicine from being passed. 

Given how responsive Congress is to their constituency, I’d think it would take a national referendum to get national health care passed into law.  Anybody know how we can get that sort of thing going?

One of the reasons is why there are reletively few purely private doctors in the UK, most, even the richest, consultants do NHS work.  The reason is they get free training with the NHS- their skills stay up to date in return for doing a few hours a week for the state. 

Hospital waiting lists are full of people who have been told they have to wait ‘x’ months to see Dr Y, but if they go private, they can see him next week.  One can only wonder if we moved to a purely private system what would happen to the private practice waiting lists.

A more direct answer to KPG’s question is that universal healthcare tends to be, well universal, and the state treat people that would be rejected under a insurance system- the mentally ill, the seriously ill, the terminally ill.  This pushes the price per head up.

What the private sector does here is cherry pick.

(the following numbers are to keep the maths simple, but the principle is sound)

A Health Care Trust (local hospital, GPs etc) treats 1,000 people, on a budget of £1,000,000.  The government moves 100 of those people to a private health care clinic who has bid £600 per patient for a certain proceedure, picking up the bill. It says 100 out of 1,000 - 10% of the patients the hospital no longer has to treat, so it reduces the budget by £100,000. The clinic gets £60,000, and the government crows it has saved the hard working people of Britain £40,000. No losers right?

BUT the Clinic only bids on easy and quick work- cataracts is a favourite. They can do this for £300 per patient, so they make their profit.

The thing is the Trust was actually only spending £250 per cataract- it does not have the overheads that a private company does (loans to public bodies are cheaper, they don’t have the same taxes- its all public money- they have ecomomies of scale, etc) The £750 ‘profit’ was being used to subsidised the Psych hospital which costs £1,500 per patient. It has now lost 10% of its income, but only 2.5% of its outgoings…

EVEN IF (as the “Right” argue due to public sector screw up) its costs were equal to what the private clinic charges, it has still suffered a net loss per remaining patient.  However because of the factors mentioned above, plus there is no need for a profit margin, the public sector often outperforms the private sector.

Yep.  Must be simple greed.  No other possible explanation.  None of those tens of millions of conservatives could possibly have a different philosphical take on the world which would explain their position on health care.

Just dismiss all contrarian views as being sourced in distasteful personal characteristics and no more messy discourse and debate!

And on a completely unrelated note, Les, you going to Thunder over Michigan?  Catching my flight out of Idaho tomorrow morning to attend.  Mitchels good.

In Oz we have a free health which entails your non choice of doctor (first available doctor) and no private rooms (being in shared wards) in hospital but at least the underprivileged among us have access to health care.

If an alien came to the planet and learnt our richest nation did NOT have universal health care I’m sure he would be as gob smacked as I was when I found out.

It reminds me of a TV show I saw recently about the Capital Punishment - an Australian working over there trying to save some suckers on Death Row explained it thus: those with-OUT the Capital get the Punishment.

USian ideas of Capitalism and Freedom are all at the expense of protection of the weakest among you.

I’m not surprised at Consi’s statement - he believes in the Meritocracy/Plutocracy form of government as opposed to anything that may smell of Socialism let alone Social Justice.
I’m alright, Jack; fuck you.

Who is Consi? Seriously, I don’t know who you’re talking about.

The quoted comment is probably the one of the dumbest on the subject I have ever read. Especially as fewer and fewer employers in this country are providing health care, let alone fully paid health care.

We have health care (we pay $815 per month for two people for basic coverage), but we still can’t afford to get sick as there are co-pays and deductibles on top of our monthly premium. My husband just had emergency open heart surgery six weeks ago and it’s going to take us a long, long time to climb out of the financial hole we’re in due to the co-pays and deductibles.

And there are other insurance plans that pay everything but 10%. If you end up in the hospital with a heart attack or need a bypass, you’ll find that the reasonable-sounding 10% amounts to nearly $20,000 for basic surgery with no complications.

Go see Sicko. Go ahead, see it, shoot it full of holes. Then tell me how many people in Canada or Great Britain die on the ER floor because they don’t have health insurance, or get dumped on the street for not being able to pay the medical bill, or avoid getting the care they need because they can’t afford it.

Did you know that hospitals bill at two different rates for the same procedures? There’s one rate if you’re insured, and another rate, three to four times higher, if you’re not insured.

I firmly believe that voting for any candidate at any level of government who is not pushing for national health care is moronic. Just take a gun and shoot yourself in the foot—that’s how dumb that is.

You know there is a health care crisis when the Republican governor of the richest (per capita) state in the country (Connecticut, where I live) is pushing for universal health care.

(Sorry, this entry just pushed my rant button big time!)

Health Insurance devalues human life.

Yep.  Must be simple greed.  No other possible explanation.  None of those tens of millions of conservatives could possibly have a different philosphical take on the world which would explain their position on health care.

Just dismiss all contrarian views as being sourced in distasteful personal characteristics and no more messy discourse and debate!

Perhaps you would like to explain the contrarian view(s) instead of just dismissing the explanation I gave as well?  I’m sure there are other reasons, but is it not valid for me to believe that greed IS a major motivator?  If not, please explain why not, I was simply going off of observable reality, not polling the Conservative base, but I’d appreciate if you would enlighten me.  I’m not being sarcastic here.

When I lived in California, I couldn’t afford health care most of the time.  Here in Austria, my health and retirement payments are relatively expensive (since I’m self-employed) at around $275 a month.  But they cover just about everything, for the whole family (although my posslq is also automatically insured, as she’s a civil servant).  We do now have to pay the first €5 of prescriptions, but that’s about it.

Isn’t it blindingly obvious that it’s better to have workable universal healthcare than to have expensive secondrate plans, where most of the money goes to corporate profits and litigation?  Not that Austria, and Great Britain, and Australia, and Canada, don’t have problems with healthcare.  But with all its warts, it’s still better and cheaper here.  Conservative opposition to universal healthcare is, as Sean said, based only on greed.

All the other comments aside, I want to know where the guest of honor is on this.  Les goes through all the trouble of throwing a party, and we get a no show.  I am disappointed.

Who is Consi?

Consi is “Consigliere”, a frequent commenter on this weblog.  He is known for exacting argument unless he’s losing, in which case I don’t think it’s unfair to say his modus operandi is side-stepping questions.  The comment Les is responding to is from this thread about Paris Hilton, which drifted into a discussion of health care, wealth, etc.

Don’t worry, he’ll make an appearance.

Sean, I’m all up for debate, but it certainly looks like an issue of greed from where I’m standing. That’s based primarily on statements I’ve heard first hand from conservatives about why universal health care is a bad thing.

I only singled out Consi in this entry because it was his comment that set me off on this little rant, but the sentiments he expressed tend to be echoed more often than not by other conservatives I’ve spoken to. I’m sure there are plenty of conservatives out there with differing philosophies about why universal health care is a bad thing, but when it comes to the well being of people I’m less concerned with philosophy than I am with pragmatism. The number of uninsured Americans has been fluctuating for the past couple of years, but it increased back up by another 2 million last year according to this CDC news item and currently stands at around 43.6 million people. The largest increase was in adults 18 - 64. The one good bit of news is that the number of uninsured children dropped by about 3 million between 1997 and 2006.

Incidentally, I have a dentist appointment for 11AM tomorrow. I’m only going in for the exam and an x-ray, just to find out what the problem is, and that’s going to cost me $83. My dentist doesn’t do monthly payments anymore because with the State’s economy being what it is they have hundreds of people who have left them holding the bag. Instead they offer to sign people up for something called CareCredit after which they’ll pay the interest for the first year. Looking at their site it appears they’re a specialized form of credit card with similar rates:

Standard card agreement terms apply to non-promo purchases and existing accounts.  As of September 15, 2006 variable APR is 22.98% and variable delinquency APR of 28.99% applies if the minimum payment not made by payment due date, payment not honored or credit line exceeded. Minimum finance charge is $1.50. Subject to credit approval by GE Money Bank.

And here I’ve been avoiding credit cards so as not to get my ass into trouble. Great.

Something I read a month or two ago: As an uninsured, you can often negotiate deeply discounted rates with a doctor, because it’s still more than what they’d get from an insurance. I’ve seen ads for special-purpose credit and other discount cards in some local offices, too.

Good luck with your tooth.

Elwedriddsche wrote:

As an uninsured, you can often negotiate deeply discounted rates with a doctor, because it’s still more than what they’d get from an insurance.

And is this supposed to be okay? That the uninsured have to pay more for health care than the insured?

With the way having to pay for employees’ health insurance is costing big businesses, (GM being the most famous example), which places them at a competitive disadvantage with foreign rivals, I’m surprised more of our captains of industry haven’t come out for revamping the health care system.

Granted some things will definitely have to change (tort reform obviously, and other countries won’t be able to mooch off American customers paying R&D;costs for drugs), but things are failing as is without change.

(neurotwitch) And is this supposed to be okay? That the uninsured have to pay more for health care than the insured?

Allegedly doctors will negotiate deeply discounted rates, because these rates still exceed what the insurances would pay the doctors.

Whether you like it or not, absent a system of universal health care (and universal insurance), it follows that an uninsured pays more out of pocket than he or she would as an insured. It’s not a question of being okay or not, but a simple question of math.

Affordability, eligibility, cost, coverage, and insured out-of-pocket expenses of health insurance are questions that are amenable to “okay/not okay” answers.