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Patvann
14 years ago
I am second to no one in opposing this bill, but I have to take issue with the structure of one of the questions. In particular, the 3rd graph.
We conservatives have spent a lot of time and effort proving through actual census data, that the “47million uninsured” is an exaggeration of the actual number, which is closer to 15-20 million. (10-15 million before Obama took office.) We’ve been bashed with that number and we KNOW it’s false.
I understand using the supporters numbers against them, as it forces them to face their own contrived reality, but if we are to claim the higher ground, we should strive to be as objective as possible.
I also understand that the number of people the government will cover will change as the years go by, and as private insurance is squeezed out (as what’s happening in Mass). For example, if we start out at the 20 million mark, it is assumed to grow to 80 million within 10 years, per the CBO. This of course is harder to frame as a question, but it can be done, and should be done.
I have no problem with anything else in the survey, and the results are hardly surprising. I am ready and raring to battle any and all counter-views.
@Patvann: Obama later magically dropped the 47 million, which was another of his lies, and used the 30 million figure in his speech last week. This survey was already in the works before then so they can hardly be held to account for it.
Besides, whether the number is 30 or 47 million it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that you can’t cover that many new people without a massive negative impact on the current health care system. A problem made worse by the number of doctors that will likely give up practice.
As an illustration of that point, my father gave up practice as an OB-GYN after nearly 40 years because the malpractice insurance costs were so high. Nothing in the Dem plans will address that problem and the matter will only grow worse with more people flooding the system along with the lower reimbursement rates for services.
I can’t wait for Spinning Larry to show up and tell us all what we know to be true isn’t really so…..
FedUp
14 years ago
The Tea Parties are only starting. BO couldn’t be destroying our country any faster if he tried, and I’m not convinced that that isn’t his main objective.
Getting rid of a do-nothing-but-spend CONgress is a very small step. We need to start holding the prez accountable, but I think that that is going to be a damn exercie in futility. After all, who wants to be called a racist?
Makes my blood boil to se what he and his cadre of shadow people are doing to us!
OLDPUPPYMAX
14 years ago
Well, maybe. But then I remember a lot of people who were going to leave the country if Bush were elected. The old “talk is cheap” line comes to mind. However, were I an older doctor, already financially sound, I would certainly not risk all I had to some ambulance chaser for the opportunity of being under-reimbursed by the Hussein healthscam system. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a fair number of doctors quit, but 45%? And remember, we can’t assume that freedom of any sort would still apply. Hussein might make it a criminal offense for a doctor to quit…a hefty fine at the very least.
Aleric
14 years ago
Basically this will do to the number of Doctors in the US as happened in England. Most of the Doctors you go to on the “Public Option” are nto from England, they are Pakastani, Asian, African. So if it happened here would have a large influx of doctors from Mexico and South America.
Patvann
14 years ago
@Mike
I hear ya, I just want us to be careful. The opposition is going to go into hyperdrive, and at this important time in our history, we can not afford any mistakes, or give them any ammo what so ever.
Funny you should mention OB’s. I’ve know 3 that have either quit, of changed specialties. They are the most-sued in the industry. One of them got a gig “babysitting” a celebrity’s family as it’s personal physician!
@OLDPUPPYMAX
I remember the movie-stars threatening to leave the country, but that group of people have no scruples, and are more akin to spoiled children than cognitive adults. I put much more stock in what side-plans doctors (and their demographic) have made for contingency plans.
Mark Levin very objectively breaks the 47 million down, concluding that there are only 12 million legal Americans who can’t get insurance coverage. (Mike feel free to imbed the video if you prefer)
Gee, the 850 BILLION set aside for CORRUPT ACORN could well be used to work out the pre existing problems for this uninsurable 12 million. Oh wait, that would actually be logical.
The evidence is overwhelming that ‘Obamacare” is NOT about health care (or reducing private insurance costs), but simply about power and control over human life, which if you stop and think about it, is a bit hypocritical , oops, me bad, the word police aren’t allowing that “h” word anymore, hits too close to home, or something.
Yesterday I heard on Fox News that the person suspected of killing Anne Le (the Yale lab student), had email altercations with her over her “mistreatment” (in his opinion) of the lab rat(s). Imagine if the motive for killing a Yale grad student on her wedding day all comes down to “lab rat outrage.” I mention that for all reading who think I am a ‘nutter’ and too radical on this “life stuff.” Where does that kind of thinking come from other than the far left wing nuts who have corrupted our universities and now infest our White House? Of course, 50 million legal abortions over the last 40 years , most of them out of convenience, also must not be discounted for the overall culture change of cheapening human life.
It’s only going to get worse, especially if “Obamacare” passes, as any rational person can clearly understand that this “care” is anything but preserving the dignity of each and every human life. Heck, it wouldn’t surprise me if we end of discovering our pets will be provided more coverage than us. We already know they are “worth more to society” than dementia grandma.
As for the docs, there is simply no way
the numbers can add up to “sufficient care for all”, consequently, some of us are simply going to have to go, especially those ‘expensive’ old people.
Liam
14 years ago
I agree with the article, and what a great write up. If i were able to post my 2 cents, I would simply say that we should be careful on calling people out by name in posts like this. I think a lot of crazy leftists show up on flopping aces, state their opinion, get upset and leave. However, Larry seems to remain calm most of the time and seems to try and use figures that he knows (and agrees with obviously). As much as I don’t support health care reform, and am outraged by this administration, it is simply human nature to entrench ourselves in our beliefs. If we don’t, we will be walking hypocrites changed by the next person we talk to. In general I think we have lost the one thing that would allow for rational debate: moral fiber. As a Christian, I don’t even have a starting point at which, to talk, understand and agree with most of the contemporary culture’s point of view. For example, I believe in life so there is no ‘debate’ or ‘discussion’ about abortion. Health care reform is just another watered down abortion discussion to me. Not because of my spiritual beliefs, but because of my political ones. In this day and age, people are less willing to hear and more willing to talk. I think if we have a strong foundation, we shouldn’t be weary of the storm.
Well said Liam! And yes, I agree with calling anyone out by name, especially in the original article. It’s one thing in debate when the person is on line and willing and able to defend him/herself, but in the article, not your finest moment Mike. This article would and still could be just fine without making it “personal.”
In general I would agree with you. But as some of you know well, Larry is so full of Kool Aid on this subject that we’ve already endured blizzards of bloviation from him on this topic. Most recently here:
I am merely anticipating his arrival to repeat it all over and over again here as if that will make it true.
Sorry you three don’t like it. But I’m not in the business of trying to please everyone all the time. If I was I would run for office.
P.S. Mata has referred to Larry’s comments more than once in various posts. Just curious: have you also shared these concerns with her?
Lorraine
14 years ago
I agree with Mike (11)…as soon as I read the article i thought to myself “gee, I wonder what Larry will say to that”. I don’t think I (or Mike) even intended any disrespect…..just curiosity
Patvann
14 years ago
My point was only to keep the initial Main Posting under “Marcus of Queensbury” rules, and we’ll thrash each other down here in the comments.
In my mind (and of course this is your sandbox, not mine),
it matters not who the person is,
(even if am adamantly counter to the person’s views who is “targeted”).
I have not seen another Main-post having a specific reader’s name in it, other than a HatTip.
Even still, it does not matter to me which of the Great-8, (No facetiousness implied.)
is placing that initial post, or if it’s happened before by you or the Team…My view remains.
It will not change my “Viewing Satisfaction” of this site whether or not it’s happened, or if it happens again. I simply see it as a professionalism thing, with a little “high-moral-ground” added on the side.
I intend this to be my last word on the subject, and continue to look forward to new postings by all of the contributers, especially yours.
I like Larry. He’s a valuable commenter. It’s not often that I agree with a word he says, but I do appreciate the fact that he gives me the opportunity to shine by comparison.
P.S. @Patvann you might want to go back and look at some of the posts Mata has written.
Will it make everyone happy if we have a “I LOVE LARRY (even if I don’t agree with a word he says)” moment?
Eddie
14 years ago
I’m just curious about the minimum of 6% of physicians in the poll who do not believe the government can deliver what they promise, yet support it. Seems a rather strange juxtaposition to me.
Yeah, I know he’s a Dem partisan, but he also totally nailed every one of the 2008 fall elections. He makes many of the same points about the IDB/TIPP poll that I made, and adds additional insights. As I noted on the other thread
(comment # 110), many of the “poll” findings are simply beyond credulity, and the “poll” had findings which were the polar opposite of other, much more scientifically conducted, peer-reviewed, and reported studies.
We’ve had malpractice reform in CA for 30 years. $250K limit on pain and suffering. No punitive damages. That’s really all you can do, and it hasn’t made a dent in test ordering or health care costs. And lots of OB/GYNs are giving up OB; heck, my sister (an anesthesiologist) took an early retirement because she didn’t like the malpractice premiums. But, again, California and Texas both took tort reform as far as it can go, without “socializing” it, which is really the only other solution. Have the government pay a chunk of malpractice settlements. I just know that you guys would love that idea.
But seriously, I’d be very interested in hearing a specific proposal for reforming malpractice law which goes beyond CA and TX and which doesn’t “socialize” the malpractice system.
I’ll give you a partial solution: “public option” health insurance. There are two reasons for large malpractice awards in California and Texas. (1) Loss of earnings. You can’t do anything about that, except to compensate the victim for loss of earnings. (2) High cost of medical care to “fix” the problems caused by the botched medical care. This part of the malpractice award would be substantially reduced, for a victim with the “public option.”
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Old Trooper
14 years ago
Without Tort Reform it is all meaningless. Congress is full of Lawyers and they should know better. The same with the Senate. Baucus’s bill is pure crap. The House version is the same. No final bill yet but without Tort Reform it is meaningless and will not work any better than the present situation. No one in their right mind wants to pay more for less.
Besides having Medical skills Doctors are business men and women. When the cost of doing business is prohibitive they will walk away and can’t be blamed for that.
I’m still waiting for a credible explanation of how “tort reform” will help, given the negligible impact it has had in California and Texas.
Medicine is a pretty unique occupation. Everyone screws up, at one time or the other, on the job. Even the vaunted engineers screw up. Remember that Mars probe which crashed because one group of engineers were using metric units, while others were using English units? But screw ups in medicine have consequences which go beyond consumer dissatisfaction. Screw ups maim people and kill people. And the doctor has never been invented who doesn’t screw up from time to time. As the saying goes, burying their mistakes.
So a doctor injures you and it costs hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to fix you. And a doctor makes it so that you can’t work and that costs hundreds of thousands to millions in lost earnings.
So what type of “tort reform” do you have in mind, which will really make a difference, given the the California and Texas experience of severely curtailing pain and suffering awards and eliminating punitive awards didn’t make a difference?
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Did 538 say the same thing about the mail in survey YOU cited? Somehow I doubt it.
As for tort reform, I can only recall my father’s experience. Lack of it drove him from practice just as it is doing to thousands more. All at a time when we will need every doctor we can find.
Patvann
14 years ago
@ Larry
RE: Further Tort reform
2 words.
Loser pays.
It’s also only part of what needs to be done. Even the best savings estimates of tort reform (incl. loser-pays) on a country-wide level would reduce costs by 200 billion/10 year window. Big savings..bigger saving than Obamacare, but not big enough for long-term success.
LDW
14 years ago
When Medicare was introduced in Canada, starting with first province to go it alone (Saskatchewan) and enact medicare legislation, there was a lot of resistance from the doctors, who did not want to be on salary. Many threatened to quit, but a compromise was negociated with a fee for service system. Almost all doctors in Canada operate out of private practices and are reimbursed on a fee for service basis, with remuneration negociated between the provincial health boards and the medical professionals. Private doctors can also have private patients outside Medicare, (if they see sick tourists, for example) but it’s completely illegal to ‘extra bill’ and collect from both Medicare and the patient.
In the months prior to the beginning of Medicare, there was a lot of doomsaying and fearmongering by medical professionals about how all doctors would leave Canada rather than accept Medicare and there were demonstrations and lobbying and lots of raised voices at meetings and in the legislature.
But Medicare passed. The doctors stayed and signed on. And guess what? Even though the government wasn’t paying exorbitantly for doctor’s services, the doctors were now seeing more patients and not having to waste time negociating payment or dealing with bad debts or having to offer cut-rates to poor and elderly patients, and the doctors liked this. It left them free to be doctors and not bill collectors.
Some medical professionals, for who money and entrepreneurship was at least as important as practicing medicine, started clinics where several doctors would contribute to rent and receptionist/nurse salaries; or they got into lucrative fields like plastic surgery; or they moved on to be drug salespeople; or medical equipment sales people or inventors.
But most stayed, and continued practicing medicine. Ask yourself – if American doctors wanted to leave because they didn’t like the healthcare reforms, where would they go? Where is the pasture greener? Almost every OECD country has some sort of universal government controlled medical system. The idea that doctors would quit, en masse, and move elsewhere is not very likely.
The problem with Obamacare, or the Baucus bill, is that they are not real, true reforms, but merely ways to throw good money after bad. America needs real reform that regulates the insurance and drug industries and brings in tort reform. Americans might decide to let the insurance companies stay in the primary healthcare business, but they should then adopt a system akin to what Switzerland has, which strictly regulates insurance companies, who must offer the government mandated basic insurance on a non-profit basis, and charge the same premiums for everyone in the same age group (1-18; 18-25; 25+). No difference in premium is allowed for health, sex or region. The government has a fund to compensate any company with an actuarially significant percentage of expensive patients above the predicted norms. Switzerland offers its citizens first rate healthcare for $4,417 per capita, while the United States spends $7,290 per capita, because the corporate crooks are looting the system.
Under the present system, law firms can employ armies of low-paid para-legals and office workers to trawl for instances of possible malpractice. Then, for an expense to the law firm in the hundreds of dollars, they threaten legal action against the physician, who is almost always directed by the insurance company involved to settle out of court, because the costs involved in going to court, and the amount of time it would take out of the doctor’s schedule are just too horrendous. Even if the doctor wins, the doctor loses, because the plaintiff doesn’t have to reimburse the doctor or the doctor’s insurance company for any of their costs. So, doctors premiums rise and rise, whether they win or lose.
Occasionally, a law firm will strike jury gold, where they win in court and then use emotion to get the jury to award an insane amount for ‘pain and suffering’. Of course, the law firm involved takes a huge percentage of the amount awarded, and the amounts law firms can make in these ‘on spec’ cases can be completely out of any proportion to the amount of work and expense they put into the case. These outlandish jury awards are the real rocket fuel that pushes the increase in medical malpractice insurance rates.
Another area that needs more regulation is how an ‘expert witness’ can be deemed ‘expert’ and allowed to testify. All sorts of dubious health claims can be made in court with almost complete impunity, because once you get a some expert on the stand taking a position, even if the defense brings in an expert to contradict the first testimony, the jury is left to decide who’s telling the truth, and often simplistic, anecdotal explanations can be more attractive to a non-scientific jury than the complicated truth. So, some problems may not have any real relation to anything the doctor did, but the insurance policy could end of paying bigtime to settle, or sometimes an equal or larger penalty because appealing a jury verdict can be an expensive legal process. And up and up go the medical malpractice insurance costs.
@LDW: I was just talking to a friend of mine who lives in Calgary, Alberta. The Canadian health system is so bad he pays for a private physician. And if he can’t get the care he wants, he hops across the border into the U.S. I don’t know what he will do if Obama care passes and America’s health care system becomes as big a mess as Canada’s.
And do we really want to end up with a health care system in which only the rich get quality care?
BarbaraS
14 years ago
It is very disconcerting to hear some of the commenters defending Larry’s BS. It is especially disconcerting to hear the commenters on this site squabbling over the ethics of how to treat a troll. Larry may be a regular but he still spouts the same things all the other trolls say. He just sounds more reasonable doing it. I no longer read his posts but have in the past. And when I read them I saw how reasonable his arguments sounded until I realized they were so much BS. After I realized what BS he was spouting it was difficult to keep my cool; therefore, I quit reading him. Nine times out of ten in any argument he completely, deliberately misses the point inorder to keep his hypothisis alive..
BarbaraS
14 years ago
Occasionally, a law firm will strike jury gold, where they win in court and then use emotion to get the jury to award an insane amount for ‘pain and suffering’. Of course, the law firm involved takes a huge percentage of the amount awarded, and the amounts law firms can make in these ‘on spec’ cases can be completely out of any proportion to the amount of work and expense they put into the case. These outlandish jury awards are the real rocket fuel that pushes the increase in medical malpractice insurance rates
I worked for a litigation law firm for years. The going rate is 1/2 to 1/3 of the gross settlement to be split after legal expenses have been reimbursed to the law firm. In other words, the lawyers get the same thing their client gets and don’t even have any expenses out of pocket. It was nothing unusual to get multi million dollar settlements for this law firm. Of course, some clients can opt to pay his lawyer by the hour instead of the above agreement but few do it and never in the law firm I worked for.
And for OBGYN lawsuits<kist ;ppl at Kpjm dwards. Multi millionaire on bogus lawsuits. Another example would be the McDonald's coffee suit. I couldn't believe a jury would award 3 million dollars to someone so stupid as to put a cup of hot coffee between her legs and blame someone elese when it spilled.
Malpractice reform is a good thing, in and of itself, but it doesn’t reduce the ordering of “defensive” tests and has a trivial impact on the total costs of healthcare. In CA, malpractice reform lowered malpractice premiums for doctors, allowing them to make more money, but didn’t lower health insurance premiums for people and employers.
Malpractice reform is simply a convenient excuse and distraction away from the important issues in healthcare reform, which are personal bankruptcies in middle class people who have health insurance, rampant and increasing “rationing” in the private insurance system, unsustainable increase in health insurance premiums for American people and businesses, which contributes mightily to US industry being globally non-competitive, and the large numbers of uninsured, which, among other things, make emergency room care an ordeal which exacerbates the unpleasantness of the emergency.
ADDENDUM (7:30 AM PDT)
@Mike and Pat: I’m on board with both of you on tort reform, but, as noted above, it’s not a solution to the biggest problems we are facing. “Loser pays” is an interesting concept; there are pros and cons. I’d like to discuss this at some future point.
I’d like to ask both of you a question: Are there ANY aspects of the Baucus health plan that you could support? What are the aspects of the Baucus health plan that you couldn’t support, under any circumstances? Would it help if the Baucus plan were amended to include tort reform along the lines of California’s 30 year old law?
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
Liam
14 years ago
Well, this will be my last post on the subject as well. What is actually disconcerting is that I never made a ‘support Larry’ comment or set up donations in his name. And no, I haven’t seen mata post anyones name in an article. Either way, I would still disagree. Aint America great?
I have posted here for a while, and am an obvious conservative. However, its funny how this turns into a pack of wolves when a moderate view (on general discussion nonetheless!) is stated. And again… only my little ol’ 2 cents. I just really enjoy this site, most of the people on it, and the nature of the discussion. Once this becomes a place where everyone agrees with each other, I will probably head somewhere else in terms of posting discussion. I still like the write ups though. In fact, I have stopped reading a lot of the comments because they are usually a bunch of ‘I agree’ statements. Not saying there needs to be disagreement, but I like having my back scratched when it itches. Not 24/7. Thats just me. But then again, as Patvann said, this is your sandbox not mine.
In my opinion Barbara, you need to be careful of lining people up like me, in the blast of your shotgun. It seems you are using strong language and illogical conclusions to rage against the faceless people on the other end of your keyboard. Please tell me how I am ‘supporting larrys BS’? Or am I advocating good discussion? There is a difference. You yourself said you don’t read his posts anymore, but then go on to rail against him and state figures that he is 9/10 deliberately missing the point to support his own views. If you are having trouble ‘keeping your cool’ when reading online opinions from people that differ from you, I would say that is an actual problem. Much less people that you don’t even read their opinions and they still manage to upset you based on their political stance. Do you know anything about me? Or was your immediate reaction to judge me based on your own unchecked predisposition?
Simply stated, to me, when you start calling people out in articles a line is being crossed. Can you imagine if the NY times started calling out no-name online posters? There is a reason it isn’t done.. when you call attention to those people, their point of view all of a sudden becomes a legitimate reference. Good or bad, right or wrong. If I were new to FA, I would search out this character named larry to find out why there is some outrage.
Anyway, let the flaming begin…ha
Eddie
14 years ago
Maybe my view of the healthcare industry is a bit simplistic, but it seems to me that this sea change in costs came about in the 90s when there was a major shift from paying out of pocket for regular medical care, and using insurance for catastrophic care only.
Prior to that shift, the only “managed” health care system I knew of was Kaiser Permanente, which was and still is a bit of a joke. (I worked for an employer who used Kaiser for several years, and the first thing I received from Kaiser was a large phonebook-sized volume of instructions on self-triage and self-care for illness and injury. Kaiser is also where I first ran into the nurse practitioner phenomenon, because in multiple trips for illness and injury over seven years I never saw a single MD.) These days almost all insurance seems to be a managed system.
Yet managed health care seems to be based on faulty logic to me. For such a system to be more efficient and cheaper it first needs to overcome the cost of an entire industry full of people that now exists between me and my physician. This savings comes from where exactly? I hear much about better lifestyles to keep me healthier… mostly from billboards and other media advertisements by various insurance companies, and partly from pamphlets included in coverage packets, which in total are fairly useless and seem another expense my insurance payments are covering.
So is it the school cafeteria phenomenon that’s supposed to save the money? You know, buy a single meal for $10 but you can get a week’s worth of 21 meals for $150. Of course that pricing system works because the meals don’t cost $10 to provide, and they are well aware that every holder of a week pass is not going to make every single meal. The fitness club industry is seemingly based entirely on this latter mechanism, whereby most clubs make their money on vast numbers of members who never actually use the facilities on a regular basis.
Yet, visits to a doctor don’t really work like that. You’re not going to make up a difference on people who pay, yet never go to the doctor are you? And doctors didn’t sit around with nothing to do prior to managed health care did they? It’s not like an increased volume of patients make an impact, is it?
From talking to acquaintances in private practice, it seems to me that the only area of savings arises from the fact that physicians don’t seem to get all the money they ought to get from the insurance companies. They’re far to eager to get that $10 or $20 co-pay fee, because often that’s all they get from your visit. Sure the listed price is ten times that much… and that makes a problem for people who don’t use the managed health care insurance… but I get the feeling the prices are so that the percentage you get from the insurance is enough.
So, now we’re arguing health care for everyone… and one side is talking manage health care for everyone with insurance companies still in the mix, but the government over all, and like car insurance in many states, making having some sort of insurance a legal requirement. (That was supposed to lower costs too… ask a Californian how that worked out.)
The other side is talking pools of insurance and tort reform. The frivolous lawsuit argument seems to be raised most often by the insurance industry, and many attest that where it’s been enacted the only thing that changes is the insurance companies’ spreadsheets. Logically, even if it did have an effect on costs to consumers, after being spread out around the coverage pool for malpractice, then passed on to customers through the managed health care policies, it would be so diffused as to be nearly imperceptible. Besides which, I have trouble getting on any arguments for legislation where both sides rely almost entirely on anecdotes as back-up.
Yet neither side seems to challenge the status quo on a need for “management” of health care, where it seems to me, the real problems lie. That’s where all the treatment denials come from. It’s where unneeded tests and treatments that happen to be covered, while others that might be more suitable are not, come from. Finally it seems to be where a whole lot of expense and paperwork that has nothing to do with my personal health come from.
I must be honest, I have no solution to this… I’m just noting that, once again, there’s a “crisis” and a huge angry debate, where neither side seems to actually address the real issues. (To be fair, however, one side seems Hell-bent on pushing the worst possible increases of the problem as the solution, while the other side is just diddling around the issue with actions that would do a lot less damage.) I think a real solution would be returning to a non-HMO system, but I don’t see how that’s going to happen… and is this really the best time to turn an entire industry of parasitic paper-pushers out into the streets?
LDW
14 years ago
To Mike’s America, who wrote: ‘I was just talking to a friend of mine who lives in Calgary, Alberta. The Canadian health system is so bad he pays for a private physician. And if he can’t get the care he wants, he hops across the border into the U.S. I don’t know what he will do if Obama care passes and America’s health care system becomes as big a mess as Canada’s.
And do we really want to end up with a health care system in which only the rich get quality care?’
Simply put, I don’t believe what you wrote. Alberta is one of the richest provinces in Canada, and doesn’t even charge Provincial Sales Tax. When the Oil Sands boom started a few years ago, there were some ‘hiccups’ in the healthcare system, just as there were for housing and the school system, because thousands of Canadians and foreigners flocked to Alberta to take advantage of all the new jobs being created. So, yes, there was a shortage of primary care physicians, including family doctors, but many new ones have been recruited and things never got to any sort of crisis point. In any case, if any Albertan would be in urgent need of treatment or surgery and there weren’t a place in an Alberta hospital, the patient would be flown, at government expense, to the nearest available facility, whether in Canada or the US.
The statistics of people who “hop across the border” for treatment in the US show that this is something that less than half of one percent of people on waiting lists for elective surgery do, and amounts to a relative small number of cases. Crossing to the US is rare for any sort of routine check-up or major surgery. Hospitals in the US are hungry for paying patients from anywhere, even as they leave thousands untreated who live within walking distance of their doors but are uninsured or underinsured. The Canadians who go to the US usually go for minor procedures so that they can have them done exactly at their convenience.
The statistics of Americans who are medical tourists to Mexico, however, shows that this is a growing business, and Mexicans are building more and more hospitals and clinics to accomodate them. These are people who find that airfare + costs in Mexico come to less than the co-payment amount they’d have to make in the US.
Patvann
14 years ago
@Larry
You asked the question: I’d like to ask both of you a question: Are there ANY aspects of the Baucus health plan that you could support? What are the aspects of the Baucus health plan that you couldn’t support, under any circumstances? Would it help if the Baucus plan were amended to include tort reform along the lines of California’s 30 year old law?
And I’ll base my answers on this highlight list (albeit condensed and incomplete)
•Establishment of private, nonprofit co-ops to compete with for profit insurers.
•New taxes and fees on drug company laboratories, medical device manufacturers.
•Illegal immigrants barred from buying coverage through newly formed “marketplace”.
•Banning federal funds for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or danger to mother’s life.
•Tax credits to lower income families. Offer subsides for families making less than 3 times federal poverty limit.
•Limiting out-of-pocket health care expenses, capped at 13% of household income for middle-class Americans who miss qualifying for subsidies.
•Requiring all Americans buy insurance by 2013 or face fines.
I agree with the banning of federal funds for abortion. I disagee with everything else, and think his cost-estimates are bunk.
@LDW: Sorry you don’t believe me LDW. I guess that shows how closed your mind is on the subject.
Despite Alberta’s provincial riches, it is still saddled with a socialist health care system that creates two tiers of care where only the wealthy get top notch treatment.
My friend also was telling me about his sister who died of breast cancer. She had to wait so long to see a specialist that the disease was too far progressed for treatment to be effective.
Would you like me to give you his phone number and you can get this info straight from him? Or would you not believe him either?
@Liam: Feel free to disagree with me anytime. I can’t be right ALL the time. Though I do disagree with your take on the issue of calling Larry out by name in this ONE instance.
I didn’t find anything Barbara S said to be offensive. She’s just stating her opinion on the subject which you and others raised and has as much right to do so as you have to raise your original objections.
Obviously, with commenters like Larry we do not have an echo chamber here where everyone agrees. That would be boring and the F.A. posse has worked very hard to avoid creating such an environment.
Now, let’s all get back to our regular programming. Perhaps you can spend more time focusing on what Larry is saying and not the fact that I highlighted his opposition in the first place.
@Mike (#31). I agree with you, in a general sense. I wouldn’t want to see a Canadian style health care system in the USA, but that’s not what’s being proposed — that’s not ever where this is migrating to. It would be much more productive to critique, if you wish, the continental European systems: France, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden — or Australia. I think it’s virtually inevitable that the USA will migrate toward something along the lines of these latter systems, with “Obamacare” being a first little baby step. But there is no chance for the US to go to the Canadian system.
Having said that, I listen regularly to “As it Happens,” which is a nightly Canadian radio show which is sort of like a radio version of “60 Minutes,” from a Canadian perspective. It’s not a talk radio show, but they do broadcast listener’s comments. I’ve been struck by how defensive and protective the Canadians are of their system. I’ve also read that the most revered Canadian Prime minister in history is Lester Pearson, who presided over the birth of the present Canadian health care system. And I also read the results of a poll which found that fewer than 10% of Canadians would favor a change to a US-style system.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Well at least you admit that Obamacare is a first step towards a socialist medical system. Exactly what many of us have been warning about.
LDW
14 years ago
To Mike’s America, with the Calgary friend who can’t get healthcare services in Canada, and his poor dead sister who died because she couldn’t get timely care for her breast cancer…..all because of the socialist health care system that creates two tiers of medicine…..
Mike, you are simply not writing the truth.
The wait time for breast cancer patients, in Alberta, from diagnosis to surgery is 1-2 working days for urgent cases, although there can be a wait from 4-7 weeks for radiation therapy.
You are talking about socialized medicine in Alberta, which is Canada’s most politically conservative province, and home to Canada’s Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. It’s one of the least socialist of the provinces, but its oil wealth does lead the government to spend money on services for the population, and Albertans do quite well in this regard, with top notch universities and hospitals, despite having a total population of about 3.5 million people in a province of over 250,000 square miles.
The people who have the hardest time getting prompt access to specialists are those in remote regions, but this is a problem for people living in sparsely populated regions anywhere in the world.
And, as I wrote before, Alberta has had some problems because of rapid population growth. From Statistics Canada:
“Alberta continued to be the province posting the country’s highest demographic growth. At 0.60%, the pace of Alberta’s population growth is more than triple the national rate.
In the fourth quarter of 2008, Alberta’s net international migration increased and reached 9,000, a level never before seen for a fourth quarter. The number of non-permanent residents grew by 6.3%, the fastest growth in the country. In addition, the province received 5,200 immigrants during the period, a level not seen in a fourth quarter since 1981”
You also have to remember that every legal resident in Alberta has comprehensive medical insurance. If everyone in the United States who needed medical care was getting it, the existing facilities might not be adequate there either. But since the United State spends $7,290 per capita on healthcare vs. the $3,895 Canada spends per capita ( http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/46/2/38980580.pdf ) if the United States could legislate the looters out of the system, they could really have the best system in the world.
Right now, the US ranks about #37 in overall measures of health of OECD countries.
No, Mike, my mind is not closed. It is open to real facts, not fearmongering and lies. I’m not saying that any country in the world has a perfect healthcare system, nor is it likely that humans will ever create such a thing in our lifetimes, because the system is run by imperfect humans who make mistakes or take greedy advantage or cheat and steal.
But socialized medicine is one of the best human innovations of the last century. Many services such as fire protection, roads, police, schools, defence, government agencies & American Medicare all operate as socialist institutions. The greater good of having a well ordered society that looks after all its people is understood to promote peace and civility for everybody.
The most successful medical insurance program in the United States, as determined by customer satisfaction and the lowest administrative costs is Medicare. Go out and interview American seniors, and ask how many would like to trade in their socialist Medicare for private insurance. The fact that many Americans don’t even understand what the word ‘socialist’ means is clear from some of the Town Halls where seniors were carrying signs with slogans opposing socialism, even as they were screaming ‘Hands off my Medicare!’ into the microphones.
Well at least you admit that Obamacare is a first step towards a socialist medical system. Exactly what many of us have been warning about.
1/3 of the medical care in this country is already “socialized.” i.e. Medicare. Plus the government, in one way or the other, currently pays a full 50% of the total health care bill. So let’s keep this in perspective.
Most of the university education in this country is “socialized,” e.g. the University of South Carolina Gamecocks.
Most of the police and fire in America is socialized, e.g. the LA County Sheriff.
I think that — down the road, as in, way down the road, we will have something resembling a continental European system. Private doctors. Private hospitals. Basic public plan, with option to purchase, at affordable costs, supplementary private insurance. I see this as being the best of all possible worlds, health care wise, but it will take a generation to get there. By that time, Barack Obama and Rahm Emmanuel will be long gone; so no worries about death panels.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: I know I am probably get in trouble with Liam and the Larry Lovers (JUST KIDDING!!!!) for posting this Paen to Obama’s chief apologist but it might make a good title for your book:
Every example you cite, whether Medicare or university education provides proof that we need LESS socialism, NOT MORE!
@LDW: Calling me a liar when I am telling the truth about a personal experience of a friend is about as close minded as you can get. Not to mention STUPID!
Especially when the data on breast cancer survival comparing the U.S. and Canada proves my point to be true:
‘Private doctors. Private hospitals. Basic public plan, with option to purchase, at affordable costs, supplementary private insurance. I see this as being the best of all possible worlds, health care wise, but it will take a generation to get there’
Yes, perhaps America could best transition to something like the Swiss system, where insurance companies selling primary medical services have prices strictly regulated, and must operate this part of their business as non profit.
But Canada’s Medicare system is not the same as the National Health Service in Britain, for example. In Canada the vast majority of doctors and clinics are private, and get reimbursed by Medicare on a fee for service basis. Hospitals in Canada can be public provincial institutions, or public federal institutions, or can be private, and all can get business through Medicare. What they can’t do is ‘extra bill’. When you use your Medicare card at a hospital in Canada, the hospital gets paid by Medicare, and is forbidden, by law, to demand the patient pay extra fees. Any clinic or doctor found to be ‘extra billing’ can face penalties, including not being able to bill anything to Medicare. Most doctors in Canada like having all their patients through Medicare. They don’t have to spend time with insurance forms, or bill collecting, or asking patients if they have insurance, or arranging modes of payment. They are paid on a reliable fee-for-service basis.
Hard Right
14 years ago
“But socialized medicine is one of the best human innovations of the last century….”
If you want to tell stories that have no proof attached, anyone in the blog jury is free to decide whether to believe the story or not.
I looked at the web page you sited, and the NCPA is a conservative think tank. According to Wikipedia, “NCPA’s revenue in 2007 was $8.7 million.[7] The NCPA web site states that it “receives 70% of its funding from foundations, 20% from corporations, and 10% from individuals.”[citation needed]Its foundation sponsors include the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Earhart Foundation and the Armstrong Foundation.[citation needed]In 1992, the New York Times reported that NCPA was partially funded by the insurance industry .[1] According to Greenpeace, NCPA received $540,900 from ExxonMobil in the ten-year period ending 2007.[8]”
The NCPA gets money from insurance companies and produces pro-insurance reports.
The NCPA gets money from Big Oil an produces reports trying to deny climate change.
I think you should at least view what they write with a healthy skepticism.
If you look at cancer survival rates AFTER TREATMENT, the United States does very well: http://www.emaxhealth.com/51/23285.html One thing that greatly improves American breast cancer statistics is that women over 65 have socialized medicine, with Medicare, adn people over 65 have twice the incidence of primary cancers as do younger groups. So, just a large percentage of American women need treatment for breast cancer, they have socialized medicine.
According to a well-known worldwide study, (Cancer survival in five continents: a worldwide population-based study (CONCORD) ) – For breast cancer, Cuba had the highest survival rates — another country with free health care. The United States was second, and Canada was third, with 82 per cent of women surviving at least five years…the survival rate for the seventeen regions in the United States that were included in the study ranged from 78 per cent to 90 per cent…The disparity in survival rates crossed racial lines in the U.S., as well, with white patients having a five-year survival rate of 84.7 per cent and black patients having a survival rate of 70.9 per cent.
And Brad Wright summarized:
“A recent article in the journal of Clinical and Investigative Medicine finds that a move to
Canadian-style wait times might actually be an improvement for the United States. The study, by Kevin Gorey and colleagues, compared wait times for breast cancer treatment in the United States with those in Canada, and found that low socioeconomic status was a major factor in creating long wait times for patients in the U.S., whereas it played no role in determining wait times in Canada.
On the whole, there were not group differences in wait times between the U.S. and Canada. The authors note that high-income Americans had shorter waits than the average Canadian, but that low-income Americans had longer waits than the average Canadian. Most notably, while Canadians might face slightly longer waits than wealthy Americans, they were all able to receive the treatment that they needed. By contrast, in the United States, many of the least well-off were subject to what the authors term “the longest wait of all.” That is, they received no treatment at all.
What does this tell us? Primarily that the Canadian system is far more equitable than the highly inequitable system observed in the United States, characterized by the polarized groups of people at the extremes of an income distribution. This is evidence, first and foremost, that we already ration care in the United States, not on the basis of need, but on the basis of price. The study also demonstrates that on the whole, the increased waits that would be experienced by a few of the wealthiest Americans would be more than offset by the decreased waits experienced by those less well-off.” – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/d-brad-wright/why-poor-women-with-breas_b_278762.html
“Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force:
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
There is a lot of overwrought, hysterical, fear-mongering going on in the American ‘debate’ over healthcare, fuelled by right-wing think tanks and pundits who get corporate financial backing. For an antidote to this, go and read some of Bob Somersby at The Daily Howler. He writes that Americans could be living in North Korea, for all the good information they are allowed to read about how things work in the rest of the world.
You, Mike, think that in presenting a Canadian horror story you can indict the whole Canadian healthcare system. But America is a country with thousands and thousands of horror stories about healthcare. There are things in America that shock visitors, like jars on the counters of convenience stores begging for money to get needed medical treatment for a neighbourhood child, or medical health fairs held as charity events, where thousands of uninsured or underinsured people flock for exams and treatments they’d otherwise do without. With the exception of fabulously wealthy Americans, every person in America is only one major illness that costs enough to reach their ‘lifetime cap’ or one job loss away from losing their health insurance. If they have pre-existing conditions when they lose coverage, they risk not being able to get any coverage at all until they exhaust their entire financial resources and declare bankruptcy, or live long enough to get Medicare.
Almost all the wealthy western democracies, with the glaring exception of the United States, have socialized medicine, and have better medical outcomes than the United States has and they spend much less money to get this better result.
@LDW: Speaking of “overwrought, hysterical, fear-mongering going on in the American ‘debate’ over healthcare, ” Have you bothered to check in with Nancy Pelsoi lately? She topped her op-ed characterizing opposition to the Dem’s plan as “un-American” with her latest screed in which she fears right wingers will resort to violence. That’s odd since it’s union thugs who beat up a black conservative calling him the “N” word.
Give it a rest. You’re clearly the one who cannot be “believed.”
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: If you write a book with that title or a derivative I expect a royalty.
@Mike: I think I’d have fun writing a satirical book with that title. I think that liberals could do a better job of lampooning their own kind than do the likes of Mallard Fillmore, where the satire is too heavy handed and obvious to be truly funny. I think that some of Jon Stewart’s funniest pieces are the occasions when he does sketches on liberals like Pelosi and Reid. – Larry W/HB
Mike, I believe you doth protest too much. Your Calgary man is such a statistical anomaly that he’s not worth mentioning to support your argument. The overwhelming majority of doctors and patients in Alberta are part of the public healthcare system, and, although some private medical clinics have opened in the province they serve the rich want to have medical appointments and small surgical procedures at times precisely convenient to them. Meanwhile, the public health system is supported by the overwhelming majority of all Canadians, and over 95% have no interest in moving to an American style system, or even a partial American style system. Yes, there are insurance corporations, doctors and clinics that would love to have a bigger share of the market, and they are constantly funding ‘studies’ to promote private medicine and competition as the cure for all ills in the system, but so far, despite spending millions, they haven’t overthrown much.
I have no idea why you thought a sidestep to include Pelosi would help bolster your position, but she can’t even light a candle to some of the over-the-top rhetoric that’s been screamed at the American public lately, most of it coming from the fringes of the right wing. (I am no fan of Pelosi, although she may redeem herself somewhat in my eyes if she does force the inclusion of a robust Public Option.)
Obama doesn’t seem to have a socialist bone in his body, as far as the healthcare legislation is concerned. Oh yes, he talks about helping Americans and he feigns horror at the plight of the uninsured, but he met with representatives from the medical and drug insurance lobbies, and let them write the legislation for their own benefit. The mandates in the legislation, as it now stands, do not resemble any socialized medicine anywhere. Instead they create a pool of people for the corporations to plunder at will.
But ask yourself, Mike – how is it that other OECD countries spend, on average, half of what the United States spends on healthcare, and yet the US ranks in 37th place as far as the health of their citizens is concerned, measuring things like life expectancy and infant mortality? Don’t you think that maybe some other countries have better systems than yours? Perhaps capitalism and the health insurance business are not a perfect match for each other, and perhaps maximizing shareholder profits shouldn’t be the overreaching goal of the healthcare system.
I am second to no one in opposing this bill, but I have to take issue with the structure of one of the questions. In particular, the 3rd graph.
We conservatives have spent a lot of time and effort proving through actual census data, that the “47million uninsured” is an exaggeration of the actual number, which is closer to 15-20 million. (10-15 million before Obama took office.) We’ve been bashed with that number and we KNOW it’s false.
I understand using the supporters numbers against them, as it forces them to face their own contrived reality, but if we are to claim the higher ground, we should strive to be as objective as possible.
I also understand that the number of people the government will cover will change as the years go by, and as private insurance is squeezed out (as what’s happening in Mass). For example, if we start out at the 20 million mark, it is assumed to grow to 80 million within 10 years, per the CBO. This of course is harder to frame as a question, but it can be done, and should be done.
I have no problem with anything else in the survey, and the results are hardly surprising. I am ready and raring to battle any and all counter-views.
@Patvann: Obama later magically dropped the 47 million, which was another of his lies, and used the 30 million figure in his speech last week. This survey was already in the works before then so they can hardly be held to account for it.
Besides, whether the number is 30 or 47 million it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that you can’t cover that many new people without a massive negative impact on the current health care system. A problem made worse by the number of doctors that will likely give up practice.
As an illustration of that point, my father gave up practice as an OB-GYN after nearly 40 years because the malpractice insurance costs were so high. Nothing in the Dem plans will address that problem and the matter will only grow worse with more people flooding the system along with the lower reimbursement rates for services.
I can’t wait for Spinning Larry to show up and tell us all what we know to be true isn’t really so…..
The Tea Parties are only starting. BO couldn’t be destroying our country any faster if he tried, and I’m not convinced that that isn’t his main objective.
Getting rid of a do-nothing-but-spend CONgress is a very small step. We need to start holding the prez accountable, but I think that that is going to be a damn exercie in futility. After all, who wants to be called a racist?
Makes my blood boil to se what he and his cadre of shadow people are doing to us!
Well, maybe. But then I remember a lot of people who were going to leave the country if Bush were elected. The old “talk is cheap” line comes to mind. However, were I an older doctor, already financially sound, I would certainly not risk all I had to some ambulance chaser for the opportunity of being under-reimbursed by the Hussein healthscam system. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a fair number of doctors quit, but 45%? And remember, we can’t assume that freedom of any sort would still apply. Hussein might make it a criminal offense for a doctor to quit…a hefty fine at the very least.
Basically this will do to the number of Doctors in the US as happened in England. Most of the Doctors you go to on the “Public Option” are nto from England, they are Pakastani, Asian, African. So if it happened here would have a large influx of doctors from Mexico and South America.
@Mike
I hear ya, I just want us to be careful. The opposition is going to go into hyperdrive, and at this important time in our history, we can not afford any mistakes, or give them any ammo what so ever.
Funny you should mention OB’s. I’ve know 3 that have either quit, of changed specialties. They are the most-sued in the industry. One of them got a gig “babysitting” a celebrity’s family as it’s personal physician!
@OLDPUPPYMAX
I remember the movie-stars threatening to leave the country, but that group of people have no scruples, and are more akin to spoiled children than cognitive adults. I put much more stock in what side-plans doctors (and their demographic) have made for contingency plans.
Mark Levin very objectively breaks the 47 million down, concluding that there are only 12 million legal Americans who can’t get insurance coverage. (Mike feel free to imbed the video if you prefer)
Gee, the 850 BILLION set aside for CORRUPT ACORN could well be used to work out the pre existing problems for this uninsurable 12 million. Oh wait, that would actually be logical.
The evidence is overwhelming that ‘Obamacare” is NOT about health care (or reducing private insurance costs), but simply about power and control over human life, which if you stop and think about it, is a bit
hypocritical, oops, me bad, the word police aren’t allowing that “h” word anymore, hits too close to home, or something.Yesterday I heard on Fox News that the person suspected of killing Anne Le (the Yale lab student), had email altercations with her over her “mistreatment” (in his opinion) of the lab rat(s). Imagine if the motive for killing a Yale grad student on her wedding day all comes down to “lab rat outrage.” I mention that for all reading who think I am a ‘nutter’ and too radical on this “life stuff.” Where does that kind of thinking come from other than the far left wing nuts who have corrupted our universities and now infest our White House? Of course, 50 million legal abortions over the last 40 years , most of them out of convenience, also must not be discounted for the overall culture change of cheapening human life.
It’s only going to get worse, especially if “Obamacare” passes, as any rational person can clearly understand that this “care” is anything but preserving the dignity of each and every human life. Heck, it wouldn’t surprise me if we end of discovering our pets will be provided more coverage than us. We already know they are “worth more to society” than dementia grandma.
As for the docs, there is simply no way
the numbers can add up to “sufficient care for all”, consequently, some of us are simply going to have to go, especially those ‘expensive’ old people.
I agree with the article, and what a great write up. If i were able to post my 2 cents, I would simply say that we should be careful on calling people out by name in posts like this. I think a lot of crazy leftists show up on flopping aces, state their opinion, get upset and leave. However, Larry seems to remain calm most of the time and seems to try and use figures that he knows (and agrees with obviously). As much as I don’t support health care reform, and am outraged by this administration, it is simply human nature to entrench ourselves in our beliefs. If we don’t, we will be walking hypocrites changed by the next person we talk to. In general I think we have lost the one thing that would allow for rational debate: moral fiber. As a Christian, I don’t even have a starting point at which, to talk, understand and agree with most of the contemporary culture’s point of view. For example, I believe in life so there is no ‘debate’ or ‘discussion’ about abortion. Health care reform is just another watered down abortion discussion to me. Not because of my spiritual beliefs, but because of my political ones. In this day and age, people are less willing to hear and more willing to talk. I think if we have a strong foundation, we shouldn’t be weary of the storm.
Well said Liam! And yes, I agree with calling anyone out by name, especially in the original article. It’s one thing in debate when the person is on line and willing and able to defend him/herself, but in the article, not your finest moment Mike. This article would and still could be just fine without making it “personal.”
@Mike
I trust you saw my e-mail?
@Liam:
@PDill:
@Patvann:
In general I would agree with you. But as some of you know well, Larry is so full of Kool Aid on this subject that we’ve already endured blizzards of bloviation from him on this topic. Most recently here:
I am merely anticipating his arrival to repeat it all over and over again here as if that will make it true.
Sorry you three don’t like it. But I’m not in the business of trying to please everyone all the time. If I was I would run for office.
P.S. Mata has referred to Larry’s comments more than once in various posts. Just curious: have you also shared these concerns with her?
I agree with Mike (11)…as soon as I read the article i thought to myself “gee, I wonder what Larry will say to that”. I don’t think I (or Mike) even intended any disrespect…..just curiosity
My point was only to keep the initial Main Posting under “Marcus of Queensbury” rules, and we’ll thrash each other down here in the comments.
In my mind (and of course this is your sandbox, not mine),
it matters not who the person is,
(even if am adamantly counter to the person’s views who is “targeted”).
I have not seen another Main-post having a specific reader’s name in it, other than a HatTip.
Even still, it does not matter to me which of the Great-8, (No facetiousness implied.)
is placing that initial post, or if it’s happened before by you or the Team…My view remains.
It will not change my “Viewing Satisfaction” of this site whether or not it’s happened, or if it happens again. I simply see it as a professionalism thing, with a little “high-moral-ground” added on the side.
I intend this to be my last word on the subject, and continue to look forward to new postings by all of the contributers, especially yours.
@Lorraine: THANK YOU LORRAINE!
I like Larry. He’s a valuable commenter. It’s not often that I agree with a word he says, but I do appreciate the fact that he gives me the opportunity to shine by comparison.
P.S. @Patvann you might want to go back and look at some of the posts Mata has written.
Will it make everyone happy if we have a “I LOVE LARRY (even if I don’t agree with a word he says)” moment?
I’m just curious about the minimum of 6% of physicians in the poll who do not believe the government can deliver what they promise, yet support it. Seems a rather strange juxtaposition to me.
@Mike: I love you, man! (while wiping away tear)
also:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/09/ibdtipp-doctors-poll-is-not-trustworthy.html
Yeah, I know he’s a Dem partisan, but he also totally nailed every one of the 2008 fall elections. He makes many of the same points about the IDB/TIPP poll that I made, and adds additional insights. As I noted on the other thread
(comment # 110), many of the “poll” findings are simply beyond credulity, and the “poll” had findings which were the polar opposite of other, much more scientifically conducted, peer-reviewed, and reported studies.
We’ve had malpractice reform in CA for 30 years. $250K limit on pain and suffering. No punitive damages. That’s really all you can do, and it hasn’t made a dent in test ordering or health care costs. And lots of OB/GYNs are giving up OB; heck, my sister (an anesthesiologist) took an early retirement because she didn’t like the malpractice premiums. But, again, California and Texas both took tort reform as far as it can go, without “socializing” it, which is really the only other solution. Have the government pay a chunk of malpractice settlements. I just know that you guys would love that idea.
But seriously, I’d be very interested in hearing a specific proposal for reforming malpractice law which goes beyond CA and TX and which doesn’t “socialize” the malpractice system.
I’ll give you a partial solution: “public option” health insurance. There are two reasons for large malpractice awards in California and Texas. (1) Loss of earnings. You can’t do anything about that, except to compensate the victim for loss of earnings. (2) High cost of medical care to “fix” the problems caused by the botched medical care. This part of the malpractice award would be substantially reduced, for a victim with the “public option.”
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Without Tort Reform it is all meaningless. Congress is full of Lawyers and they should know better. The same with the Senate. Baucus’s bill is pure crap. The House version is the same. No final bill yet but without Tort Reform it is meaningless and will not work any better than the present situation. No one in their right mind wants to pay more for less.
Besides having Medical skills Doctors are business men and women. When the cost of doing business is prohibitive they will walk away and can’t be blamed for that.
I’m still waiting for a credible explanation of how “tort reform” will help, given the negligible impact it has had in California and Texas.
Medicine is a pretty unique occupation. Everyone screws up, at one time or the other, on the job. Even the vaunted engineers screw up. Remember that Mars probe which crashed because one group of engineers were using metric units, while others were using English units? But screw ups in medicine have consequences which go beyond consumer dissatisfaction. Screw ups maim people and kill people. And the doctor has never been invented who doesn’t screw up from time to time. As the saying goes, burying their mistakes.
So a doctor injures you and it costs hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to fix you. And a doctor makes it so that you can’t work and that costs hundreds of thousands to millions in lost earnings.
So what type of “tort reform” do you have in mind, which will really make a difference, given the the California and Texas experience of severely curtailing pain and suffering awards and eliminating punitive awards didn’t make a difference?
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Did 538 say the same thing about the mail in survey YOU cited? Somehow I doubt it.
As for tort reform, I can only recall my father’s experience. Lack of it drove him from practice just as it is doing to thousands more. All at a time when we will need every doctor we can find.
@ Larry
RE: Further Tort reform
2 words.
Loser pays.
It’s also only part of what needs to be done. Even the best savings estimates of tort reform (incl. loser-pays) on a country-wide level would reduce costs by 200 billion/10 year window. Big savings..bigger saving than Obamacare, but not big enough for long-term success.
When Medicare was introduced in Canada, starting with first province to go it alone (Saskatchewan) and enact medicare legislation, there was a lot of resistance from the doctors, who did not want to be on salary. Many threatened to quit, but a compromise was negociated with a fee for service system. Almost all doctors in Canada operate out of private practices and are reimbursed on a fee for service basis, with remuneration negociated between the provincial health boards and the medical professionals. Private doctors can also have private patients outside Medicare, (if they see sick tourists, for example) but it’s completely illegal to ‘extra bill’ and collect from both Medicare and the patient.
In the months prior to the beginning of Medicare, there was a lot of doomsaying and fearmongering by medical professionals about how all doctors would leave Canada rather than accept Medicare and there were demonstrations and lobbying and lots of raised voices at meetings and in the legislature.
But Medicare passed. The doctors stayed and signed on. And guess what? Even though the government wasn’t paying exorbitantly for doctor’s services, the doctors were now seeing more patients and not having to waste time negociating payment or dealing with bad debts or having to offer cut-rates to poor and elderly patients, and the doctors liked this. It left them free to be doctors and not bill collectors.
Some medical professionals, for who money and entrepreneurship was at least as important as practicing medicine, started clinics where several doctors would contribute to rent and receptionist/nurse salaries; or they got into lucrative fields like plastic surgery; or they moved on to be drug salespeople; or medical equipment sales people or inventors.
But most stayed, and continued practicing medicine. Ask yourself – if American doctors wanted to leave because they didn’t like the healthcare reforms, where would they go? Where is the pasture greener? Almost every OECD country has some sort of universal government controlled medical system. The idea that doctors would quit, en masse, and move elsewhere is not very likely.
The problem with Obamacare, or the Baucus bill, is that they are not real, true reforms, but merely ways to throw good money after bad. America needs real reform that regulates the insurance and drug industries and brings in tort reform. Americans might decide to let the insurance companies stay in the primary healthcare business, but they should then adopt a system akin to what Switzerland has, which strictly regulates insurance companies, who must offer the government mandated basic insurance on a non-profit basis, and charge the same premiums for everyone in the same age group (1-18; 18-25; 25+). No difference in premium is allowed for health, sex or region. The government has a fund to compensate any company with an actuarially significant percentage of expensive patients above the predicted norms. Switzerland offers its citizens first rate healthcare for $4,417 per capita, while the United States spends $7,290 per capita, because the corporate crooks are looting the system.
For statistics about healthcare in OECD countries:
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/46/2/38980580.pdf
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Under the present system, law firms can employ armies of low-paid para-legals and office workers to trawl for instances of possible malpractice. Then, for an expense to the law firm in the hundreds of dollars, they threaten legal action against the physician, who is almost always directed by the insurance company involved to settle out of court, because the costs involved in going to court, and the amount of time it would take out of the doctor’s schedule are just too horrendous. Even if the doctor wins, the doctor loses, because the plaintiff doesn’t have to reimburse the doctor or the doctor’s insurance company for any of their costs. So, doctors premiums rise and rise, whether they win or lose.
Occasionally, a law firm will strike jury gold, where they win in court and then use emotion to get the jury to award an insane amount for ‘pain and suffering’. Of course, the law firm involved takes a huge percentage of the amount awarded, and the amounts law firms can make in these ‘on spec’ cases can be completely out of any proportion to the amount of work and expense they put into the case. These outlandish jury awards are the real rocket fuel that pushes the increase in medical malpractice insurance rates.
Another area that needs more regulation is how an ‘expert witness’ can be deemed ‘expert’ and allowed to testify. All sorts of dubious health claims can be made in court with almost complete impunity, because once you get a some expert on the stand taking a position, even if the defense brings in an expert to contradict the first testimony, the jury is left to decide who’s telling the truth, and often simplistic, anecdotal explanations can be more attractive to a non-scientific jury than the complicated truth. So, some problems may not have any real relation to anything the doctor did, but the insurance policy could end of paying bigtime to settle, or sometimes an equal or larger penalty because appealing a jury verdict can be an expensive legal process. And up and up go the medical malpractice insurance costs.
@LDW: I was just talking to a friend of mine who lives in Calgary, Alberta. The Canadian health system is so bad he pays for a private physician. And if he can’t get the care he wants, he hops across the border into the U.S. I don’t know what he will do if Obama care passes and America’s health care system becomes as big a mess as Canada’s.
And do we really want to end up with a health care system in which only the rich get quality care?
It is very disconcerting to hear some of the commenters defending Larry’s BS. It is especially disconcerting to hear the commenters on this site squabbling over the ethics of how to treat a troll. Larry may be a regular but he still spouts the same things all the other trolls say. He just sounds more reasonable doing it. I no longer read his posts but have in the past. And when I read them I saw how reasonable his arguments sounded until I realized they were so much BS. After I realized what BS he was spouting it was difficult to keep my cool; therefore, I quit reading him. Nine times out of ten in any argument he completely, deliberately misses the point inorder to keep his hypothisis alive..
Occasionally, a law firm will strike jury gold, where they win in court and then use emotion to get the jury to award an insane amount for ‘pain and suffering’. Of course, the law firm involved takes a huge percentage of the amount awarded, and the amounts law firms can make in these ‘on spec’ cases can be completely out of any proportion to the amount of work and expense they put into the case. These outlandish jury awards are the real rocket fuel that pushes the increase in medical malpractice insurance rates
I worked for a litigation law firm for years. The going rate is 1/2 to 1/3 of the gross settlement to be split after legal expenses have been reimbursed to the law firm. In other words, the lawyers get the same thing their client gets and don’t even have any expenses out of pocket. It was nothing unusual to get multi million dollar settlements for this law firm. Of course, some clients can opt to pay his lawyer by the hour instead of the above agreement but few do it and never in the law firm I worked for.
And for OBGYN lawsuits<kist ;ppl at Kpjm dwards. Multi millionaire on bogus lawsuits. Another example would be the McDonald's coffee suit. I couldn't believe a jury would award 3 million dollars to someone so stupid as to put a cup of hot coffee between her legs and blame someone elese when it spilled.
Malpractice reform is a good thing, in and of itself, but it doesn’t reduce the ordering of “defensive” tests and has a trivial impact on the total costs of healthcare. In CA, malpractice reform lowered malpractice premiums for doctors, allowing them to make more money, but didn’t lower health insurance premiums for people and employers.
Malpractice reform is simply a convenient excuse and distraction away from the important issues in healthcare reform, which are personal bankruptcies in middle class people who have health insurance, rampant and increasing “rationing” in the private insurance system, unsustainable increase in health insurance premiums for American people and businesses, which contributes mightily to US industry being globally non-competitive, and the large numbers of uninsured, which, among other things, make emergency room care an ordeal which exacerbates the unpleasantness of the emergency.
ADDENDUM (7:30 AM PDT)
@Mike and Pat: I’m on board with both of you on tort reform, but, as noted above, it’s not a solution to the biggest problems we are facing. “Loser pays” is an interesting concept; there are pros and cons. I’d like to discuss this at some future point.
I’d like to ask both of you a question: Are there ANY aspects of the Baucus health plan that you could support? What are the aspects of the Baucus health plan that you couldn’t support, under any circumstances? Would it help if the Baucus plan were amended to include tort reform along the lines of California’s 30 year old law?
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
Well, this will be my last post on the subject as well. What is actually disconcerting is that I never made a ‘support Larry’ comment or set up donations in his name. And no, I haven’t seen mata post anyones name in an article. Either way, I would still disagree. Aint America great?
I have posted here for a while, and am an obvious conservative. However, its funny how this turns into a pack of wolves when a moderate view (on general discussion nonetheless!) is stated. And again… only my little ol’ 2 cents. I just really enjoy this site, most of the people on it, and the nature of the discussion. Once this becomes a place where everyone agrees with each other, I will probably head somewhere else in terms of posting discussion. I still like the write ups though. In fact, I have stopped reading a lot of the comments because they are usually a bunch of ‘I agree’ statements. Not saying there needs to be disagreement, but I like having my back scratched when it itches. Not 24/7. Thats just me. But then again, as Patvann said, this is your sandbox not mine.
In my opinion Barbara, you need to be careful of lining people up like me, in the blast of your shotgun. It seems you are using strong language and illogical conclusions to rage against the faceless people on the other end of your keyboard. Please tell me how I am ‘supporting larrys BS’? Or am I advocating good discussion? There is a difference. You yourself said you don’t read his posts anymore, but then go on to rail against him and state figures that he is 9/10 deliberately missing the point to support his own views. If you are having trouble ‘keeping your cool’ when reading online opinions from people that differ from you, I would say that is an actual problem. Much less people that you don’t even read their opinions and they still manage to upset you based on their political stance. Do you know anything about me? Or was your immediate reaction to judge me based on your own unchecked predisposition?
Simply stated, to me, when you start calling people out in articles a line is being crossed. Can you imagine if the NY times started calling out no-name online posters? There is a reason it isn’t done.. when you call attention to those people, their point of view all of a sudden becomes a legitimate reference. Good or bad, right or wrong. If I were new to FA, I would search out this character named larry to find out why there is some outrage.
Anyway, let the flaming begin…ha
Maybe my view of the healthcare industry is a bit simplistic, but it seems to me that this sea change in costs came about in the 90s when there was a major shift from paying out of pocket for regular medical care, and using insurance for catastrophic care only.
Prior to that shift, the only “managed” health care system I knew of was Kaiser Permanente, which was and still is a bit of a joke. (I worked for an employer who used Kaiser for several years, and the first thing I received from Kaiser was a large phonebook-sized volume of instructions on self-triage and self-care for illness and injury. Kaiser is also where I first ran into the nurse practitioner phenomenon, because in multiple trips for illness and injury over seven years I never saw a single MD.) These days almost all insurance seems to be a managed system.
Yet managed health care seems to be based on faulty logic to me. For such a system to be more efficient and cheaper it first needs to overcome the cost of an entire industry full of people that now exists between me and my physician. This savings comes from where exactly? I hear much about better lifestyles to keep me healthier… mostly from billboards and other media advertisements by various insurance companies, and partly from pamphlets included in coverage packets, which in total are fairly useless and seem another expense my insurance payments are covering.
So is it the school cafeteria phenomenon that’s supposed to save the money? You know, buy a single meal for $10 but you can get a week’s worth of 21 meals for $150. Of course that pricing system works because the meals don’t cost $10 to provide, and they are well aware that every holder of a week pass is not going to make every single meal. The fitness club industry is seemingly based entirely on this latter mechanism, whereby most clubs make their money on vast numbers of members who never actually use the facilities on a regular basis.
Yet, visits to a doctor don’t really work like that. You’re not going to make up a difference on people who pay, yet never go to the doctor are you? And doctors didn’t sit around with nothing to do prior to managed health care did they? It’s not like an increased volume of patients make an impact, is it?
From talking to acquaintances in private practice, it seems to me that the only area of savings arises from the fact that physicians don’t seem to get all the money they ought to get from the insurance companies. They’re far to eager to get that $10 or $20 co-pay fee, because often that’s all they get from your visit. Sure the listed price is ten times that much… and that makes a problem for people who don’t use the managed health care insurance… but I get the feeling the prices are so that the percentage you get from the insurance is enough.
So, now we’re arguing health care for everyone… and one side is talking manage health care for everyone with insurance companies still in the mix, but the government over all, and like car insurance in many states, making having some sort of insurance a legal requirement. (That was supposed to lower costs too… ask a Californian how that worked out.)
The other side is talking pools of insurance and tort reform. The frivolous lawsuit argument seems to be raised most often by the insurance industry, and many attest that where it’s been enacted the only thing that changes is the insurance companies’ spreadsheets. Logically, even if it did have an effect on costs to consumers, after being spread out around the coverage pool for malpractice, then passed on to customers through the managed health care policies, it would be so diffused as to be nearly imperceptible. Besides which, I have trouble getting on any arguments for legislation where both sides rely almost entirely on anecdotes as back-up.
Yet neither side seems to challenge the status quo on a need for “management” of health care, where it seems to me, the real problems lie. That’s where all the treatment denials come from. It’s where unneeded tests and treatments that happen to be covered, while others that might be more suitable are not, come from. Finally it seems to be where a whole lot of expense and paperwork that has nothing to do with my personal health come from.
I must be honest, I have no solution to this… I’m just noting that, once again, there’s a “crisis” and a huge angry debate, where neither side seems to actually address the real issues. (To be fair, however, one side seems Hell-bent on pushing the worst possible increases of the problem as the solution, while the other side is just diddling around the issue with actions that would do a lot less damage.) I think a real solution would be returning to a non-HMO system, but I don’t see how that’s going to happen… and is this really the best time to turn an entire industry of parasitic paper-pushers out into the streets?
To Mike’s America, who wrote: ‘I was just talking to a friend of mine who lives in Calgary, Alberta. The Canadian health system is so bad he pays for a private physician. And if he can’t get the care he wants, he hops across the border into the U.S. I don’t know what he will do if Obama care passes and America’s health care system becomes as big a mess as Canada’s.
And do we really want to end up with a health care system in which only the rich get quality care?’
Simply put, I don’t believe what you wrote. Alberta is one of the richest provinces in Canada, and doesn’t even charge Provincial Sales Tax. When the Oil Sands boom started a few years ago, there were some ‘hiccups’ in the healthcare system, just as there were for housing and the school system, because thousands of Canadians and foreigners flocked to Alberta to take advantage of all the new jobs being created. So, yes, there was a shortage of primary care physicians, including family doctors, but many new ones have been recruited and things never got to any sort of crisis point. In any case, if any Albertan would be in urgent need of treatment or surgery and there weren’t a place in an Alberta hospital, the patient would be flown, at government expense, to the nearest available facility, whether in Canada or the US.
The statistics of people who “hop across the border” for treatment in the US show that this is something that less than half of one percent of people on waiting lists for elective surgery do, and amounts to a relative small number of cases. Crossing to the US is rare for any sort of routine check-up or major surgery. Hospitals in the US are hungry for paying patients from anywhere, even as they leave thousands untreated who live within walking distance of their doors but are uninsured or underinsured. The Canadians who go to the US usually go for minor procedures so that they can have them done exactly at their convenience.
The statistics of Americans who are medical tourists to Mexico, however, shows that this is a growing business, and Mexicans are building more and more hospitals and clinics to accomodate them. These are people who find that airfare + costs in Mexico come to less than the co-payment amount they’d have to make in the US.
@Larry
You asked the question:
I’d like to ask both of you a question: Are there ANY aspects of the Baucus health plan that you could support? What are the aspects of the Baucus health plan that you couldn’t support, under any circumstances? Would it help if the Baucus plan were amended to include tort reform along the lines of California’s 30 year old law?
And I’ll base my answers on this highlight list (albeit condensed and incomplete)
•Establishment of private, nonprofit co-ops to compete with for profit insurers.
•New taxes and fees on drug company laboratories, medical device manufacturers.
•Illegal immigrants barred from buying coverage through newly formed “marketplace”.
•Banning federal funds for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or danger to mother’s life.
•Tax credits to lower income families. Offer subsides for families making less than 3 times federal poverty limit.
•Limiting out-of-pocket health care expenses, capped at 13% of household income for middle-class Americans who miss qualifying for subsidies.
•Requiring all Americans buy insurance by 2013 or face fines.
I agree with the banning of federal funds for abortion. I disagee with everything else, and think his cost-estimates are bunk.
@LDW: Sorry you don’t believe me LDW. I guess that shows how closed your mind is on the subject.
Despite Alberta’s provincial riches, it is still saddled with a socialist health care system that creates two tiers of care where only the wealthy get top notch treatment.
My friend also was telling me about his sister who died of breast cancer. She had to wait so long to see a specialist that the disease was too far progressed for treatment to be effective.
Would you like me to give you his phone number and you can get this info straight from him? Or would you not believe him either?
@Liam: Feel free to disagree with me anytime. I can’t be right ALL the time. Though I do disagree with your take on the issue of calling Larry out by name in this ONE instance.
I didn’t find anything Barbara S said to be offensive. She’s just stating her opinion on the subject which you and others raised and has as much right to do so as you have to raise your original objections.
Obviously, with commenters like Larry we do not have an echo chamber here where everyone agrees. That would be boring and the F.A. posse has worked very hard to avoid creating such an environment.
Now, let’s all get back to our regular programming. Perhaps you can spend more time focusing on what Larry is saying and not the fact that I highlighted his opposition in the first place.
@Mike (#31). I agree with you, in a general sense. I wouldn’t want to see a Canadian style health care system in the USA, but that’s not what’s being proposed — that’s not ever where this is migrating to. It would be much more productive to critique, if you wish, the continental European systems: France, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden — or Australia. I think it’s virtually inevitable that the USA will migrate toward something along the lines of these latter systems, with “Obamacare” being a first little baby step. But there is no chance for the US to go to the Canadian system.
Having said that, I listen regularly to “As it Happens,” which is a nightly Canadian radio show which is sort of like a radio version of “60 Minutes,” from a Canadian perspective. It’s not a talk radio show, but they do broadcast listener’s comments. I’ve been struck by how defensive and protective the Canadians are of their system. I’ve also read that the most revered Canadian Prime minister in history is Lester Pearson, who presided over the birth of the present Canadian health care system. And I also read the results of a poll which found that fewer than 10% of Canadians would favor a change to a US-style system.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@BarbaraS:
Barbara I look forward to your posts and agree with your comment above. Don’t know if you have read this…heh.
http://www.wlsam.com/goout.asp?u=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574387021307651050.html#
Off to the farm see you all next week, I hate when this happens, miss a lot of stuff.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Well at least you admit that Obamacare is a first step towards a socialist medical system. Exactly what many of us have been warning about.
To Mike’s America, with the Calgary friend who can’t get healthcare services in Canada, and his poor dead sister who died because she couldn’t get timely care for her breast cancer…..all because of the socialist health care system that creates two tiers of medicine…..
Mike, you are simply not writing the truth.
The wait time for breast cancer patients, in Alberta, from diagnosis to surgery is 1-2 working days for urgent cases, although there can be a wait from 4-7 weeks for radiation therapy.
Here is the ‘Canadian Breast Cancer Network’ report card:
http://www.cbcn.ca/documents/pdf/ENG_CBCN_fin_book.pdf
You are talking about socialized medicine in Alberta, which is Canada’s most politically conservative province, and home to Canada’s Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. It’s one of the least socialist of the provinces, but its oil wealth does lead the government to spend money on services for the population, and Albertans do quite well in this regard, with top notch universities and hospitals, despite having a total population of about 3.5 million people in a province of over 250,000 square miles.
The people who have the hardest time getting prompt access to specialists are those in remote regions, but this is a problem for people living in sparsely populated regions anywhere in the world.
And, as I wrote before, Alberta has had some problems because of rapid population growth. From Statistics Canada:
“Alberta continued to be the province posting the country’s highest demographic growth. At 0.60%, the pace of Alberta’s population growth is more than triple the national rate.
In the fourth quarter of 2008, Alberta’s net international migration increased and reached 9,000, a level never before seen for a fourth quarter. The number of non-permanent residents grew by 6.3%, the fastest growth in the country. In addition, the province received 5,200 immigrants during the period, a level not seen in a fourth quarter since 1981”
You also have to remember that every legal resident in Alberta has comprehensive medical insurance. If everyone in the United States who needed medical care was getting it, the existing facilities might not be adequate there either. But since the United State spends $7,290 per capita on healthcare vs. the $3,895 Canada spends per capita ( http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/46/2/38980580.pdf ) if the United States could legislate the looters out of the system, they could really have the best system in the world.
Right now, the US ranks about #37 in overall measures of health of OECD countries.
@Mike’s America:
No, Mike, my mind is not closed. It is open to real facts, not fearmongering and lies. I’m not saying that any country in the world has a perfect healthcare system, nor is it likely that humans will ever create such a thing in our lifetimes, because the system is run by imperfect humans who make mistakes or take greedy advantage or cheat and steal.
But socialized medicine is one of the best human innovations of the last century. Many services such as fire protection, roads, police, schools, defence, government agencies & American Medicare all operate as socialist institutions. The greater good of having a well ordered society that looks after all its people is understood to promote peace and civility for everybody.
The most successful medical insurance program in the United States, as determined by customer satisfaction and the lowest administrative costs is Medicare. Go out and interview American seniors, and ask how many would like to trade in their socialist Medicare for private insurance. The fact that many Americans don’t even understand what the word ‘socialist’ means is clear from some of the Town Halls where seniors were carrying signs with slogans opposing socialism, even as they were screaming ‘Hands off my Medicare!’ into the microphones.
@Mike:
1/3 of the medical care in this country is already “socialized.” i.e. Medicare. Plus the government, in one way or the other, currently pays a full 50% of the total health care bill. So let’s keep this in perspective.
Most of the university education in this country is “socialized,” e.g. the University of South Carolina Gamecocks.
Most of the police and fire in America is socialized, e.g. the LA County Sheriff.
I think that — down the road, as in, way down the road, we will have something resembling a continental European system. Private doctors. Private hospitals. Basic public plan, with option to purchase, at affordable costs, supplementary private insurance. I see this as being the best of all possible worlds, health care wise, but it will take a generation to get there. By that time, Barack Obama and Rahm Emmanuel will be long gone; so no worries about death panels.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: I know I am probably get in trouble with Liam and the Larry Lovers (JUST KIDDING!!!!) for posting this Paen to Obama’s chief apologist but it might make a good title for your book:
Every example you cite, whether Medicare or university education provides proof that we need LESS socialism, NOT MORE!
@LDW: Calling me a liar when I am telling the truth about a personal experience of a friend is about as close minded as you can get. Not to mention STUPID!
Especially when the data on breast cancer survival comparing the U.S. and Canada proves my point to be true:
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba649#_ednref2
You should have stopped when you were ahead. But please go ahead and dig that hole of yours deeper if you feel you must.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
‘Private doctors. Private hospitals. Basic public plan, with option to purchase, at affordable costs, supplementary private insurance. I see this as being the best of all possible worlds, health care wise, but it will take a generation to get there’
Yes, perhaps America could best transition to something like the Swiss system, where insurance companies selling primary medical services have prices strictly regulated, and must operate this part of their business as non profit.
But Canada’s Medicare system is not the same as the National Health Service in Britain, for example. In Canada the vast majority of doctors and clinics are private, and get reimbursed by Medicare on a fee for service basis. Hospitals in Canada can be public provincial institutions, or public federal institutions, or can be private, and all can get business through Medicare. What they can’t do is ‘extra bill’. When you use your Medicare card at a hospital in Canada, the hospital gets paid by Medicare, and is forbidden, by law, to demand the patient pay extra fees. Any clinic or doctor found to be ‘extra billing’ can face penalties, including not being able to bill anything to Medicare. Most doctors in Canada like having all their patients through Medicare. They don’t have to spend time with insurance forms, or bill collecting, or asking patients if they have insurance, or arranging modes of payment. They are paid on a reliable fee-for-service basis.
“But socialized medicine is one of the best human innovations of the last century….”
Karl, is that you?
@Mike’s America:
If you want to tell stories that have no proof attached, anyone in the blog jury is free to decide whether to believe the story or not.
I looked at the web page you sited, and the NCPA is a conservative think tank. According to Wikipedia, “NCPA’s revenue in 2007 was $8.7 million.[7] The NCPA web site states that it “receives 70% of its funding from foundations, 20% from corporations, and 10% from individuals.”[citation needed]Its foundation sponsors include the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Earhart Foundation and the Armstrong Foundation.[citation needed]In 1992, the New York Times reported that NCPA was partially funded by the insurance industry .[1] According to Greenpeace, NCPA received $540,900 from ExxonMobil in the ten-year period ending 2007.[8]”
The NCPA gets money from insurance companies and produces pro-insurance reports.
The NCPA gets money from Big Oil an produces reports trying to deny climate change.
I think you should at least view what they write with a healthy skepticism.
If you look at cancer survival rates AFTER TREATMENT, the United States does very well: http://www.emaxhealth.com/51/23285.html One thing that greatly improves American breast cancer statistics is that women over 65 have socialized medicine, with Medicare, adn people over 65 have twice the incidence of primary cancers as do younger groups. So, just a large percentage of American women need treatment for breast cancer, they have socialized medicine.
According to a well-known worldwide study, (Cancer survival in five continents: a worldwide population-based study (CONCORD) ) – For breast cancer, Cuba had the highest survival rates — another country with free health care. The United States was second, and Canada was third, with 82 per cent of women surviving at least five years…the survival rate for the seventeen regions in the United States that were included in the study ranged from 78 per cent to 90 per cent…The disparity in survival rates crossed racial lines in the U.S., as well, with white patients having a five-year survival rate of 84.7 per cent and black patients having a survival rate of 70.9 per cent.
And Brad Wright summarized:
“A recent article in the journal of Clinical and Investigative Medicine finds that a move to
Canadian-style wait times might actually be an improvement for the United States. The study, by Kevin Gorey and colleagues, compared wait times for breast cancer treatment in the United States with those in Canada, and found that low socioeconomic status was a major factor in creating long wait times for patients in the U.S., whereas it played no role in determining wait times in Canada.
On the whole, there were not group differences in wait times between the U.S. and Canada. The authors note that high-income Americans had shorter waits than the average Canadian, but that low-income Americans had longer waits than the average Canadian. Most notably, while Canadians might face slightly longer waits than wealthy Americans, they were all able to receive the treatment that they needed. By contrast, in the United States, many of the least well-off were subject to what the authors term “the longest wait of all.” That is, they received no treatment at all.
What does this tell us? Primarily that the Canadian system is far more equitable than the highly inequitable system observed in the United States, characterized by the polarized groups of people at the extremes of an income distribution. This is evidence, first and foremost, that we already ration care in the United States, not on the basis of need, but on the basis of price. The study also demonstrates that on the whole, the increased waits that would be experienced by a few of the wealthiest Americans would be more than offset by the decreased waits experienced by those less well-off.” – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/d-brad-wright/why-poor-women-with-breas_b_278762.html
@Hard Right:
No, he was my grandfather.
@LDW: Now who is telling stories (or should I say LIES, which is what you accused me of telling).
Facts are facts LDW no matter who cites them.
You have unmasked yourself.
Not that I was the least bit fooled.
@Mike: lol (literally)
@Mike’s America:
As Mark Twain said,
“Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force:
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
There is a lot of overwrought, hysterical, fear-mongering going on in the American ‘debate’ over healthcare, fuelled by right-wing think tanks and pundits who get corporate financial backing. For an antidote to this, go and read some of Bob Somersby at The Daily Howler. He writes that Americans could be living in North Korea, for all the good information they are allowed to read about how things work in the rest of the world.
You, Mike, think that in presenting a Canadian horror story you can indict the whole Canadian healthcare system. But America is a country with thousands and thousands of horror stories about healthcare. There are things in America that shock visitors, like jars on the counters of convenience stores begging for money to get needed medical treatment for a neighbourhood child, or medical health fairs held as charity events, where thousands of uninsured or underinsured people flock for exams and treatments they’d otherwise do without. With the exception of fabulously wealthy Americans, every person in America is only one major illness that costs enough to reach their ‘lifetime cap’ or one job loss away from losing their health insurance. If they have pre-existing conditions when they lose coverage, they risk not being able to get any coverage at all until they exhaust their entire financial resources and declare bankruptcy, or live long enough to get Medicare.
Almost all the wealthy western democracies, with the glaring exception of the United States, have socialized medicine, and have better medical outcomes than the United States has and they spend much less money to get this better result.
@LDW: Speaking of “overwrought, hysterical, fear-mongering going on in the American ‘debate’ over healthcare, ” Have you bothered to check in with Nancy Pelsoi lately? She topped her op-ed characterizing opposition to the Dem’s plan as “un-American” with her latest screed in which she fears right wingers will resort to violence. That’s odd since it’s union thugs who beat up a black conservative calling him the “N” word.
Give it a rest. You’re clearly the one who cannot be “believed.”
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: If you write a book with that title or a derivative I expect a royalty.
@Mike: I think I’d have fun writing a satirical book with that title. I think that liberals could do a better job of lampooning their own kind than do the likes of Mallard Fillmore, where the satire is too heavy handed and obvious to be truly funny. I think that some of Jon Stewart’s funniest pieces are the occasions when he does sketches on liberals like Pelosi and Reid. – Larry W/HB
@Mike’s America:
Mike, I believe you doth protest too much. Your Calgary man is such a statistical anomaly that he’s not worth mentioning to support your argument. The overwhelming majority of doctors and patients in Alberta are part of the public healthcare system, and, although some private medical clinics have opened in the province they serve the rich want to have medical appointments and small surgical procedures at times precisely convenient to them. Meanwhile, the public health system is supported by the overwhelming majority of all Canadians, and over 95% have no interest in moving to an American style system, or even a partial American style system. Yes, there are insurance corporations, doctors and clinics that would love to have a bigger share of the market, and they are constantly funding ‘studies’ to promote private medicine and competition as the cure for all ills in the system, but so far, despite spending millions, they haven’t overthrown much.
I have no idea why you thought a sidestep to include Pelosi would help bolster your position, but she can’t even light a candle to some of the over-the-top rhetoric that’s been screamed at the American public lately, most of it coming from the fringes of the right wing. (I am no fan of Pelosi, although she may redeem herself somewhat in my eyes if she does force the inclusion of a robust Public Option.)
Obama doesn’t seem to have a socialist bone in his body, as far as the healthcare legislation is concerned. Oh yes, he talks about helping Americans and he feigns horror at the plight of the uninsured, but he met with representatives from the medical and drug insurance lobbies, and let them write the legislation for their own benefit. The mandates in the legislation, as it now stands, do not resemble any socialized medicine anywhere. Instead they create a pool of people for the corporations to plunder at will.
But ask yourself, Mike – how is it that other OECD countries spend, on average, half of what the United States spends on healthcare, and yet the US ranks in 37th place as far as the health of their citizens is concerned, measuring things like life expectancy and infant mortality? Don’t you think that maybe some other countries have better systems than yours? Perhaps capitalism and the health insurance business are not a perfect match for each other, and perhaps maximizing shareholder profits shouldn’t be the overreaching goal of the healthcare system.
Attn: Larry W, this video is for you.
If anyone can imbed this; thanks in advance.
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