And he is no doubt right. This was the best night for Cain as of yet in my opinion. I know that he is a dark horse with very little chance, but who knows right? I would not bet any good money on him, but I still hope.
Hard Right
13 years ago
I would love to see Cain be the nominee.
openid.aol.com/runnswim
13 years ago
What Cain said is absolute nonsense/B.S.
The reality is exactly the opposite as he depicts it to be. He says that he wouldn’t have been able to get his tests and treatments in time, because of delays by “bureaucrats” “micromanaging” his illness.
Well, guess what, Herm?
All that pre-authorization, pre-approval, gatekeeper stuff is what happens with today’s private insurance medicine. With Medicare, there is:
1. No requirement for gatekeepers. If you have a serious problem, you can go to a specialist right away, bypassing the gatekeepers.
2. No preauthorization required for tests or procedures.
With Medicare, you also have the widest choice of providers and hospitals, by far, of any other health care plan. Most places don’t have the resources to properly manage stage IV colon cancer, metastatic to the liver, in the way it was managed for Mr. Cain. He was a VIP and got the very best. Many insurance plans wouldn’t have approved aggressive surgery for disease which had already metastasized to the liver — at least without a lot of review and appeals — and surgical treatment of liver metastases is a highly specialized procedure. With Medicare, you can readily go to the very best cancer centers in the country and get state of the art treatment.
Now, unfortunately ObamaCare is not Medicare (alas, there was no “public option,” which is certainly what most of us favoring health care reform wanted to see). But there is absolutely nothing in ObamaCare which would change or degrade the ability of a stage IV colon cancer patient to receive treatment or delay diagnosis and treatment.
I’ve told the story before of my mother, a Stage IV lung cancer patient who lives in Kentucky, got her lung surgery from the best lung cancer surgeon in the country at NYU and then got proton beam radiation therapy from the best institution in the country for this (in California) and got her chemotherapy in Kentucky from the best oncologist in the area. This would have been utterly impossible, with most private health care plans, but it was simple, with Medicare.
But the bottom line is that Cain’s claim that he’d have been dead under ObamaCare is absolute poppycock.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
Hard Right
13 years ago
Larry, considering your rose colored view of socialized medicine, I’ll trust his opinion over yours.
openid.aol.com/runnswim
13 years ago
Hi Hard. I’m not in favor of socialized medicine, except in the case of the VA, military, and PHS Indian Health Service, which are the only forms of socialized medicine we have in America today. For socialized medicine, you’d have to go to England, for example. Medicare is entirely private sector medicine, from the insurance companies which get contracts to administer payouts to the vast network of private hospitals and private doctors, who actually give the care.
Anyway, getting back on task, what Cain said was pure bull—-
I’m not in favor of socialized medicine, except in the case of the VA, military, and PHS Indian Health Service, which are the only forms of socialized medicine we have in America today.
This is the second time I have seen you make this point about the VA and military health systems.
Those are NOT examples of socialism. Those are examples of employee benefits.
Richard Wheeler
13 years ago
Gary and H.R. Repubs will never nominate a Black or a woman for POTUS. It’s the good ol boy network on full display.
Perry,the likely nominee, is just a dumber version of “W”
Semper Fi
openid.aol.com/runnswim
13 years ago
Hi Aye, Socialized medicine is when the government owns the hospitals and employs the doctors. I was a PHS doctor for 2 years and a VA doctor for 8 years. I definitely worked for the government. I had Federal retirement, federal health care, worked under the PHS uniformed services and then civil service. My buildings were government owned. All the employees were federal employees. All the supplies and drugs were purchased and dispensed by the government.
There’s no substantive difference at all between the military health care system and the PHS-run Indian Health Service. In fact, PHS doctors supply the health care for the Coast Guard as well as to the Indian Health Service. So, would you call the Indian Health Service “Employee Benefits?”
American Heritage Dictionary: so·cial·ized medicine
Home > Library > Literature & Language > Dictionary
(sō’shə-līzd’)
n.
A government-regulated system for providing health care for all by means of subsidies derived from taxation.
Columbia Encyclopedia: socialized medicine
socialized medicine, publicly administered system of national health care.
::snip::
The United States is the only major Western country without some form of socialized medical care.
American Heritage Stedman’s Medical Dictionary: so·cial·ized medicine
(sō’shə-līzd’)
n.
A system for providing medical and hospital care for all at a nominal cost by means of government regulation of health services and subsidies derived from taxation.
Whatever benefits are provided to members of the Coast Guard by the IHS would indeed be considered to be an employee benefit if it’s being paid for/provided by the US gov’t as a benefit connected with their employment.
The IHS would not be considered socialized medicine because that is not a service that is available to all US citizens which is a requirement of the definition of socialized medicine.
openid.aol.com/runnswim
13 years ago
Hi Aye,
This has to be the most trivial argument I’ve ever had with you.
Going with the Flopping Aces theme, I see your definitions and raise you a Merriam Webster:
: medical and hospital services for the members of a class or population administered by an organized group (as a state agency) and paid for from funds obtained usually by assessments, philanthropy, or taxation
By this definition, military medicine and Medicare are BOTH “socialized medicine.”
So we both lose.
P.S. Your Columbia Dictionary definition states that the USA is “the only Western Country without some form of socialized medical care.” The dictionaries don’t even agree with each other. I don’t see a referee for this dispute. How about we just declare a stalemate and move on?
Skipping all the definitions, and already well known opinions of Larry W and the public option, I will say that I think Herman Cain was likely to be half right in his statement, Larry W. Cain’s cancer was in 2006, when he was only 61. He’s 66 now, and required to be on Medicare if he is officially retired. Tho it’s bizarre to mandate someone like Cain to be a draw on the system when he can well afford his own. But that’s the Hall vs Sebelius lawsuit… still going thru the courts. Not being able to opt out of Medicare unless you also forfeit your social security check.
But here’s the half right point, Larry. The Medicare of your mother and father is not the same Medicare under O’healthcare and the IMAB. So taking a Herman Cain 10 or 15 years into the future, with the same diagnosis, under the system as structured under the current law, he is most likely correct.
I believe your flaw is fact checking Cain’s statement by past performance, not future as enacted.
Then, of course, that still leaves the cost of increased people on the system, prices that continue to rise, and a magic medicare panel that gets to decide payments and ways to keep it within budget… all which will result in less people providing that service to Medicare patients because of the low payout.
And here ya thought that O’healthcare was going to make medical care more affordable. (supposedly the goal) Not quite… just makes medical care less accessible.
Mr. Irons
13 years ago
Hardly Larry, military hospital insitutes in the States are mainly organized and trained by private firms who help sustain supplies and training to troops. Along with the most grevious of injured soliders being transported to specialized private hospitals for treatment once evaced.
Case example: St. Joseph (now Via Christi) supplying medical staff support to McConnel Air Force base. A private firm giving private staff help and training to treat wounded.
openid.aol.com/runnswim
13 years ago
Hi Mr. Irons. Civilian contractors have always been called upon by government to provide specific services, in virtually all areas of government activity, including providing military support in war zones, but, in the case of military medicine, the hospitals are owned and run and paid for directly by the government. To my knowledge, the Chief of Staff at all military hospitals is a military doctor. I don’t know what percent of doctors may be civilians, but these civilian doctors are also government employees, save for the odd outside contractor/specialist who’d be called in to provide a specific service.
– Larry W/HB
openid.aol.com/runnswim
13 years ago
Hi Mata (#12): You are speculating on what might happen in the future. You are speculating that efforts to control costs are likely to result in more stringent regulation and review (so called “rationing”). But that is going on right now in all of private sector medicine, and I’d be equally correct to speculate that this private sector rationing will increase in the future.
The track record for Medicare is pretty darn good and Medicare is a good model for how government regulated medical care actually works. There is far less interference in the doctor-patient relationship in Medicare and generally more lenient allowance of payment for care directed by the physician. And, worst case scenario, it’s far easier appealing to the transparent Medicare review system, which includes, as final level of appeal, a complaint to one’s congressman. Dealing with private insurance companies is exasperating and appeal of denied procedures and claims is often met with opacity. “Our expert reviewer has determined that the disallowance of this claim was appropriate…” blah blah blah.
This reminds me a little of Mondale’s famous debate line in 1984: “Both of us are going to raise taxes, he won’t tell you; I just did.”
What I mean by this is that private sector health care has greater gatekeeping controls today than Medicare; both are likely to have to increase the level of gatekeeping. Where we end up, ultimately, we simply don’t know right now, but Medicare has always been exquisitely responsive to political oversight — in the form of complaints from either providers or patients. Reversals and corrections happen very quickly when Medicare gets it wrong. This isn’t the way it works behind the closed doors of health insurance companies, working on their own (as opposed to working under government contract, with all the applicable regulations).
Larry: You are speculating on what might happen in the future. You are speculating that efforts to control costs are likely to result in more stringent regulation and review (so called “rationing”). But that is going on right now in all of private sector medicine, and I’d be equally correct to speculate that this private sector rationing will increase in the future.
Larry, the Medicare advisory panel is not empowered to “ration” in the way you speak. What they are empowered to do is to adjust payout amounts down… which is no great leap in speculation with increasing demands on the Medicare system as more baby boomers go on daily. Once they do so, the private industry of health care makes the decision to opt out of Medicare, as you have done, for financial reasons. The “rationing” of care results from less health care providers participating in treatment of Medicare patients.
The “track record” of Medicare.. .of which you are proud, but anecdotally I could counter with personal opinions of others who disagree with you… is not sustainable. 2/3rds of our spending is on entitlements alone. Therefore what you consider a “good model” was merely the the days when the debt was more easily disguised, or simply ignored, than it is now. I’m quite sure that Bernie Madoff’s investments scheme also looked like a perfect model in it’s early days as well. Unfortunately, when schemes are funded by future beneficiaries, the tail catches up to the dog chasing it.
openid.aol.com/runnswim
13 years ago
Hi Mata, One way or another, most of us need health care and, one way or the other, all of us have to pay for it — including paying for the uninsured, who, quite often, end up with bigger problems than they should have, because of delay in seeking medical attention.
Medicare manages its provider network quite efficiently. It’s really no different than the way Blue Cross manages its provider network. Both try to drive the payments as low as possible. They SHOULD do this, for market efficiency. When their payment schedule becomes too low, then providers opt out. When enough providers opt out, their provider network is no longer sufficiently robust, and they have to increase their offer.
Getting back to cost, Medicare has proven to provide equivalent or superior quality care for lower cost. You say that you could counter my glowing experience with some not so glowing experience, on your part. Of course, but I deal with patients with private insurance who’d burn your ears off with their own opinions with their experiences with their private companies. That’s why you have to go to metrics such as outcomes, cost, and consumer satisfaction. By all these measures, Medicare outpaces all the major private health care plans.
You always speculate that this quality will decline in the future (in your references to “this won’t be your father’s Medicare”). But, as I’ve pointed out, this is happening and will continue to happen in the private sector as well. Private health insurance premiums are increasing at a dramatic rate. Employers are cutting back on the quality of their policies and charging their employees more. Medicare is in financial trouble because Medicare is not allowed to have double digit yearly tax increases, the way that private insurance has double digit yearly premium increases (and my self-employed and small business Blue Shield has gone up 40% or more in the past couple of years (I’ll have to get the exact figure from my wife, who writes these checks)). This is no more sustainable, without some sort of fix, than is Medicare sustainable, without some sort of fix.
But, getting back to Cain’s statement, he didn’t say “I’d be dead if I got cancer 10 years down the road and was then in ObamaCare.” He said, “I’d be dead today if I’d had ObamaCare.” That’s patently false. There’s no basis whatsoever for that claim. He’s just making it up.
Again, I’m looking forward to getting my Medicare card. For reasons previously (and often) stated.
@Richard Wheeler: As much as I would like to disagree with you I think your right this time around. I don’t think that the GOP has been changed enough, but hopefully after another 4 years we may see something like that occur. But right now it’s either Rommey or Perry GOP favorites. Thanks!
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Medicare manages its provider network quite efficiently. It’s really no different than the way Blue Cross manages its provider network. Both try to drive the payments as low as possible. They SHOULD do this, for market efficiency. When their payment schedule becomes too low, then providers opt out. When enough providers opt out, their provider network is no longer sufficiently robust, and they have to increase their offer.
Getting back to cost, Medicare has proven to provide equivalent or superior quality care for lower cost.
Larry, I really want to deal with these two statements since it actually forms the foundation of debate… or perhaps a need more real clarification in your perspective… to much of what else you said. What you are describing is typical and healthy private sector competition for a product.. in this case, health insurance. The more plans that can offer a competitive premium price… or the lowest price… is the winner. As a byproduct, the consumer is the winner as well.
In the private world, all competitors can only go so low, or they are out of business. On the flip side, health providers can only go so low, or they are out of business. They [health insurance companies] have to charge at least what they are billed by providers, plus their overhead. Everyone involved has bills and taxes to pay.
Not the government. They have no such risk. It’s all a matter of accounting on the national debt. They can run a deficit because they pile it into the debt and borrow to pay the bills, then demand more taxes.
In this case, there is no doubt that Medicare, who pays out the lowest to a contingency of providers who agree to underpayment, is the cheapest. Success… dubious, at best.
The fly in that ointment is, it costs a provider the same amount of money to administer health care to a Medicare patient as it does to a patient with private insurance with identical ailments. Yes, I know not possible for any two individuals to be medical clones… but let’s play for the sake of arguments.
Because Medicare is government run and administrated, they have a fixed payment that doesn’t cover the provider’s base costs of health services. The provider runs in the red to be a Medicare provider. You know this very well.
So the provider, who combines both Medicare and private patients to stay afloat financially, cost shifts what he loses on the Medicare patient to the privately insurance patient. Needless to say, without having a sap in the privately insured to overcharge for the Medicare loss, the health providers can not exist on Medicare payments alone, and make their base monthly nut.
So we have to separate health insurance premiums cost from the cost of providing medical care. In this aspect, Medicare health care… not the premium… is no cheaper than private care because it costs the hospital the same amount to tend to both. You know that I have harped on this constantly… that O’healthcare does nothing to reduce the cost or a provider giving health services.
Because there is nothing done to reduce the costs of delivering healthcare, overhead of base costs by providers is rising exponentially. All while O’healthcare and Medicare try to hold the payouts stable by price fixing premiums.
This is the flaw in your perspective. Coming from an understandable point of compassionate emotion, you are equating Medicare’s “equivalent or superior quality care”… which isn’t true because the overhead is the same for Medicare or private patients… with a “lower cost”.
Again I repeat… it is not a lower cost for the health provider. They are just paid less for the same job by government.
Unlike a private insurer, who must make at least enough profit to cover overhead outside of hospital bill payouts, the government has the ability to never go “bankrupt” on paper because they will always hit the up taxpayers to make up the difference. It’s not their money they are risking. It’s ours.
Additionally, when they evaluate the administration of Medicare’s efficiency, they are careful NOT to include the other departments involved… such as the IRS/SS etc. So administrative costs of private administration to federal administration is not an apples to apples comparison. I’ve already provided those links to AMA studies in prior healthcare discussion links that comment on the hidden costs not addressed.
But it’s really a simple formula. A health care provided needs to be paid their base costs at a minimum to survive. Just because Medicare underpays, and therefore the costs get shifted to private insurers to overpay to make up the difference, does not translate to Medicare being a “lower cost” at all. Instead, it just drives up the cost for the privately insured for the identical treatment.
So this brings me to the erroneous conclusion you make that Medicare is a “lower cost”. Considering that Medicare, as one of the entitlements, is lumped together with US debt, and considering it is not a profitable stand alone, self-sustaining entity of government, the “costs” of Medicare you do not include is the interest on the debt incurred by Medicare on our national debt.
I suggest that Medicare is not “lower cost” at all.
Liberal1 (objectivity)
13 years ago
I doubt that Cain’s wealth wouldn’t have been able to purchase him the best health care in the world–regardless of the political situation guiding the distribution such health plans.
And he is no doubt right. This was the best night for Cain as of yet in my opinion. I know that he is a dark horse with very little chance, but who knows right? I would not bet any good money on him, but I still hope.
I would love to see Cain be the nominee.
What Cain said is absolute nonsense/B.S.
The reality is exactly the opposite as he depicts it to be. He says that he wouldn’t have been able to get his tests and treatments in time, because of delays by “bureaucrats” “micromanaging” his illness.
Well, guess what, Herm?
All that pre-authorization, pre-approval, gatekeeper stuff is what happens with today’s private insurance medicine. With Medicare, there is:
1. No requirement for gatekeepers. If you have a serious problem, you can go to a specialist right away, bypassing the gatekeepers.
2. No preauthorization required for tests or procedures.
With Medicare, you also have the widest choice of providers and hospitals, by far, of any other health care plan. Most places don’t have the resources to properly manage stage IV colon cancer, metastatic to the liver, in the way it was managed for Mr. Cain. He was a VIP and got the very best. Many insurance plans wouldn’t have approved aggressive surgery for disease which had already metastasized to the liver — at least without a lot of review and appeals — and surgical treatment of liver metastases is a highly specialized procedure. With Medicare, you can readily go to the very best cancer centers in the country and get state of the art treatment.
Now, unfortunately ObamaCare is not Medicare (alas, there was no “public option,” which is certainly what most of us favoring health care reform wanted to see). But there is absolutely nothing in ObamaCare which would change or degrade the ability of a stage IV colon cancer patient to receive treatment or delay diagnosis and treatment.
I’ve told the story before of my mother, a Stage IV lung cancer patient who lives in Kentucky, got her lung surgery from the best lung cancer surgeon in the country at NYU and then got proton beam radiation therapy from the best institution in the country for this (in California) and got her chemotherapy in Kentucky from the best oncologist in the area. This would have been utterly impossible, with most private health care plans, but it was simple, with Medicare.
But the bottom line is that Cain’s claim that he’d have been dead under ObamaCare is absolute poppycock.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
Larry, considering your rose colored view of socialized medicine, I’ll trust his opinion over yours.
Hi Hard. I’m not in favor of socialized medicine, except in the case of the VA, military, and PHS Indian Health Service, which are the only forms of socialized medicine we have in America today. For socialized medicine, you’d have to go to England, for example. Medicare is entirely private sector medicine, from the insurance companies which get contracts to administer payouts to the vast network of private hospitals and private doctors, who actually give the care.
Anyway, getting back on task, what Cain said was pure bull—-
There is not one ounce of truth to it.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidwhelan/2011/09/22/fact-checking-herman-cain-who-says-he-would-be-dead-under-obamacare/
I turn 65 in about 6 months. Can’t wait to trade in my Blue Shield for Medicare.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
This is the second time I have seen you make this point about the VA and military health systems.
Those are NOT examples of socialism. Those are examples of employee benefits.
Gary and H.R. Repubs will never nominate a Black or a woman for POTUS. It’s the good ol boy network on full display.
Perry,the likely nominee, is just a dumber version of “W”
Semper Fi
Hi Aye, Socialized medicine is when the government owns the hospitals and employs the doctors. I was a PHS doctor for 2 years and a VA doctor for 8 years. I definitely worked for the government. I had Federal retirement, federal health care, worked under the PHS uniformed services and then civil service. My buildings were government owned. All the employees were federal employees. All the supplies and drugs were purchased and dispensed by the government.
There’s no substantive difference at all between the military health care system and the PHS-run Indian Health Service. In fact, PHS doctors supply the health care for the Coast Guard as well as to the Indian Health Service. So, would you call the Indian Health Service “Employee Benefits?”
– Larry W/HB
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Come on Larry…the commonly accepted definitions of “socialized medicine” are as follows:
Whatever benefits are provided to members of the Coast Guard by the IHS would indeed be considered to be an employee benefit if it’s being paid for/provided by the US gov’t as a benefit connected with their employment.
The IHS would not be considered socialized medicine because that is not a service that is available to all US citizens which is a requirement of the definition of socialized medicine.
Hi Aye,
This has to be the most trivial argument I’ve ever had with you.
Going with the Flopping Aces theme, I see your definitions and raise you a Merriam Webster:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialized%20medicine
By this definition, military medicine and Medicare are BOTH “socialized medicine.”
So we both lose.
P.S. Your Columbia Dictionary definition states that the USA is “the only Western Country without some form of socialized medical care.” The dictionaries don’t even agree with each other. I don’t see a referee for this dispute. How about we just declare a stalemate and move on?
– Larry
Skipping all the definitions, and already well known opinions of Larry W and the public option, I will say that I think Herman Cain was likely to be half right in his statement, Larry W. Cain’s cancer was in 2006, when he was only 61. He’s 66 now, and required to be on Medicare if he is officially retired. Tho it’s bizarre to mandate someone like Cain to be a draw on the system when he can well afford his own. But that’s the Hall vs Sebelius lawsuit… still going thru the courts. Not being able to opt out of Medicare unless you also forfeit your social security check.
But here’s the half right point, Larry. The Medicare of your mother and father is not the same Medicare under O’healthcare and the IMAB. So taking a Herman Cain 10 or 15 years into the future, with the same diagnosis, under the system as structured under the current law, he is most likely correct.
I believe your flaw is fact checking Cain’s statement by past performance, not future as enacted.
Then, of course, that still leaves the cost of increased people on the system, prices that continue to rise, and a magic medicare panel that gets to decide payments and ways to keep it within budget… all which will result in less people providing that service to Medicare patients because of the low payout.
And here ya thought that O’healthcare was going to make medical care more affordable. (supposedly the goal) Not quite… just makes medical care less accessible.
Hardly Larry, military hospital insitutes in the States are mainly organized and trained by private firms who help sustain supplies and training to troops. Along with the most grevious of injured soliders being transported to specialized private hospitals for treatment once evaced.
Case example: St. Joseph (now Via Christi) supplying medical staff support to McConnel Air Force base. A private firm giving private staff help and training to treat wounded.
Hi Mr. Irons. Civilian contractors have always been called upon by government to provide specific services, in virtually all areas of government activity, including providing military support in war zones, but, in the case of military medicine, the hospitals are owned and run and paid for directly by the government. To my knowledge, the Chief of Staff at all military hospitals is a military doctor. I don’t know what percent of doctors may be civilians, but these civilian doctors are also government employees, save for the odd outside contractor/specialist who’d be called in to provide a specific service.
– Larry W/HB
Hi Mata (#12): You are speculating on what might happen in the future. You are speculating that efforts to control costs are likely to result in more stringent regulation and review (so called “rationing”). But that is going on right now in all of private sector medicine, and I’d be equally correct to speculate that this private sector rationing will increase in the future.
The track record for Medicare is pretty darn good and Medicare is a good model for how government regulated medical care actually works. There is far less interference in the doctor-patient relationship in Medicare and generally more lenient allowance of payment for care directed by the physician. And, worst case scenario, it’s far easier appealing to the transparent Medicare review system, which includes, as final level of appeal, a complaint to one’s congressman. Dealing with private insurance companies is exasperating and appeal of denied procedures and claims is often met with opacity. “Our expert reviewer has determined that the disallowance of this claim was appropriate…” blah blah blah.
This reminds me a little of Mondale’s famous debate line in 1984: “Both of us are going to raise taxes, he won’t tell you; I just did.”
What I mean by this is that private sector health care has greater gatekeeping controls today than Medicare; both are likely to have to increase the level of gatekeeping. Where we end up, ultimately, we simply don’t know right now, but Medicare has always been exquisitely responsive to political oversight — in the form of complaints from either providers or patients. Reversals and corrections happen very quickly when Medicare gets it wrong. This isn’t the way it works behind the closed doors of health insurance companies, working on their own (as opposed to working under government contract, with all the applicable regulations).
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
Larry, the Medicare advisory panel is not empowered to “ration” in the way you speak. What they are empowered to do is to adjust payout amounts down… which is no great leap in speculation with increasing demands on the Medicare system as more baby boomers go on daily. Once they do so, the private industry of health care makes the decision to opt out of Medicare, as you have done, for financial reasons. The “rationing” of care results from less health care providers participating in treatment of Medicare patients.
The “track record” of Medicare.. .of which you are proud, but anecdotally I could counter with personal opinions of others who disagree with you… is not sustainable. 2/3rds of our spending is on entitlements alone. Therefore what you consider a “good model” was merely the the days when the debt was more easily disguised, or simply ignored, than it is now. I’m quite sure that Bernie Madoff’s investments scheme also looked like a perfect model in it’s early days as well. Unfortunately, when schemes are funded by future beneficiaries, the tail catches up to the dog chasing it.
Hi Mata, One way or another, most of us need health care and, one way or the other, all of us have to pay for it — including paying for the uninsured, who, quite often, end up with bigger problems than they should have, because of delay in seeking medical attention.
Medicare manages its provider network quite efficiently. It’s really no different than the way Blue Cross manages its provider network. Both try to drive the payments as low as possible. They SHOULD do this, for market efficiency. When their payment schedule becomes too low, then providers opt out. When enough providers opt out, their provider network is no longer sufficiently robust, and they have to increase their offer.
Getting back to cost, Medicare has proven to provide equivalent or superior quality care for lower cost. You say that you could counter my glowing experience with some not so glowing experience, on your part. Of course, but I deal with patients with private insurance who’d burn your ears off with their own opinions with their experiences with their private companies. That’s why you have to go to metrics such as outcomes, cost, and consumer satisfaction. By all these measures, Medicare outpaces all the major private health care plans.
You always speculate that this quality will decline in the future (in your references to “this won’t be your father’s Medicare”). But, as I’ve pointed out, this is happening and will continue to happen in the private sector as well. Private health insurance premiums are increasing at a dramatic rate. Employers are cutting back on the quality of their policies and charging their employees more. Medicare is in financial trouble because Medicare is not allowed to have double digit yearly tax increases, the way that private insurance has double digit yearly premium increases (and my self-employed and small business Blue Shield has gone up 40% or more in the past couple of years (I’ll have to get the exact figure from my wife, who writes these checks)). This is no more sustainable, without some sort of fix, than is Medicare sustainable, without some sort of fix.
But, getting back to Cain’s statement, he didn’t say “I’d be dead if I got cancer 10 years down the road and was then in ObamaCare.” He said, “I’d be dead today if I’d had ObamaCare.” That’s patently false. There’s no basis whatsoever for that claim. He’s just making it up.
Again, I’m looking forward to getting my Medicare card. For reasons previously (and often) stated.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
@Richard Wheeler: As much as I would like to disagree with you I think your right this time around. I don’t think that the GOP has been changed enough, but hopefully after another 4 years we may see something like that occur. But right now it’s either Rommey or Perry GOP favorites. Thanks!
Larry, I really want to deal with these two statements since it actually forms the foundation of debate… or perhaps a need more real clarification in your perspective… to much of what else you said. What you are describing is typical and healthy private sector competition for a product.. in this case, health insurance. The more plans that can offer a competitive premium price… or the lowest price… is the winner. As a byproduct, the consumer is the winner as well.
In the private world, all competitors can only go so low, or they are out of business. On the flip side, health providers can only go so low, or they are out of business. They [health insurance companies] have to charge at least what they are billed by providers, plus their overhead. Everyone involved has bills and taxes to pay.
Not the government. They have no such risk. It’s all a matter of accounting on the national debt. They can run a deficit because they pile it into the debt and borrow to pay the bills, then demand more taxes.
In this case, there is no doubt that Medicare, who pays out the lowest to a contingency of providers who agree to underpayment, is the cheapest. Success… dubious, at best.
The fly in that ointment is, it costs a provider the same amount of money to administer health care to a Medicare patient as it does to a patient with private insurance with identical ailments. Yes, I know not possible for any two individuals to be medical clones… but let’s play for the sake of arguments.
Because Medicare is government run and administrated, they have a fixed payment that doesn’t cover the provider’s base costs of health services. The provider runs in the red to be a Medicare provider. You know this very well.
So the provider, who combines both Medicare and private patients to stay afloat financially, cost shifts what he loses on the Medicare patient to the privately insurance patient. Needless to say, without having a sap in the privately insured to overcharge for the Medicare loss, the health providers can not exist on Medicare payments alone, and make their base monthly nut.
So we have to separate health insurance premiums cost from the cost of providing medical care. In this aspect, Medicare health care… not the premium… is no cheaper than private care because it costs the hospital the same amount to tend to both. You know that I have harped on this constantly… that O’healthcare does nothing to reduce the cost or a provider giving health services.
Because there is nothing done to reduce the costs of delivering healthcare, overhead of base costs by providers is rising exponentially. All while O’healthcare and Medicare try to hold the payouts stable by price fixing premiums.
This is the flaw in your perspective. Coming from an understandable point of compassionate emotion, you are equating Medicare’s “equivalent or superior quality care”… which isn’t true because the overhead is the same for Medicare or private patients… with a “lower cost”.
Again I repeat… it is not a lower cost for the health provider. They are just paid less for the same job by government.
Unlike a private insurer, who must make at least enough profit to cover overhead outside of hospital bill payouts, the government has the ability to never go “bankrupt” on paper because they will always hit the up taxpayers to make up the difference. It’s not their money they are risking. It’s ours.
Additionally, when they evaluate the administration of Medicare’s efficiency, they are careful NOT to include the other departments involved… such as the IRS/SS etc. So administrative costs of private administration to federal administration is not an apples to apples comparison. I’ve already provided those links to AMA studies in prior healthcare discussion links that comment on the hidden costs not addressed.
But it’s really a simple formula. A health care provided needs to be paid their base costs at a minimum to survive. Just because Medicare underpays, and therefore the costs get shifted to private insurers to overpay to make up the difference, does not translate to Medicare being a “lower cost” at all. Instead, it just drives up the cost for the privately insured for the identical treatment.
So this brings me to the erroneous conclusion you make that Medicare is a “lower cost”. Considering that Medicare, as one of the entitlements, is lumped together with US debt, and considering it is not a profitable stand alone, self-sustaining entity of government, the “costs” of Medicare you do not include is the interest on the debt incurred by Medicare on our national debt.
I suggest that Medicare is not “lower cost” at all.
I doubt that Cain’s wealth wouldn’t have been able to purchase him the best health care in the world–regardless of the political situation guiding the distribution such health plans.
@Richard Wheeler:
Ummm rich w, I have often stated my support for Cain and West so I suggest you take your racist projection and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.