Obama, Medicare, and Socialized Medicine
At his AARP event yesterday, President Obama derided those who in the 1960s called Medicare “socialized medicine.” Yet later in the event he conceded the point. See for yourself:
I got a letter the other day from a woman; she said, I don’t want government-run health care, I don’t want socialized medicine, and don’t touch my Medicare. And I wanted to say, well, I mean, that’s what Medicare is, is it’s a government-run health care plan that people are very happy with.
As he read this, he and the audience laughed condescendingly as if to say, “What a dolt. She hates socialized medicine but she loves medicare. Doesn’t she realize they are the same thing?”
As for people being happy with Medicare, Obama might have pointed out that retirees receive far more in medical benefits than they ever paid into the system. At the moment they can basically have all they want for free or for low cost. Now they even have drug coverage. But that will change if Obama gets his way, because he’s decided “we” spend too much on m medical care and he is determined to do something about that. Part of that “something” will be to scale back Medicare, which Obama himself says is, along with Medicaid, the biggest source of the budget deficit. Anyone who thinks that “reform” won’t start denying options to retirees is dreaming. It’s already happening. Wait until the government inserts itself in to end-of-life decisions. I guess the earlier critics of Medicare weren’t wrong, they just had their timetable off.
If government were really interested in seeing a rational medical system, it would stop forcing the taxpayers to pick up the tab for other people’s medical care. How could that do anything but send costs through the roof and then “justify” government control?
How did AARP end up supporting the plan, exactly?
You stated:
“If government were really interested in seeing a rational medical system, it would stop forcing the taxpayers to pick up the tab for other people’s medical care. How could that do anything but send costs through the roof and then “justify” government control?”
But, isn’t that what health insurance does now — pool risks so that insureds who are relatively healthy subsidize those who are relatively needy in terms of medical care? Indeed, if you think government services provide welfare to all citizens (even if limited to defense and traffic-control-like regulatons) asking the citizens to pay for those services forces taxpayers who need them less to subsidize those who need them more. So, stop with this forced subsidization nonsense and talk more rationally about the role of government in health matters.
Implicitly, you seem to want everyone to have a medical savings account and perhaps you would provide money to the poor to have such an account as well. What about medical disasters, such as long term care for cancer, or serious skeletal injuries? Would you have the government pick up the bill for those things (obviously, no medical account could cover that). What about medical problems that arise before the medical account is adequately filled up, or inadequately replenished after having been used to pay medical bills? Of course, taxes would have to be collected to pay for this.
Then there is long-term care for, e.g., children born with spina bifida to familes of only modest means, or for the elderly in their last year(s) of life. Or is that too much reality to take right now?
There’s more.
Best regards
dennis tuchler
LEAD, FOLLOW, OR GET OUT OF THE WAY. (Thomas Paine)
We have the 37th worst quality of healthcare in the developed world. Conservative estimates are that over 120,000 of you dies each year in America from treatable illness that people in other developed countries don’t die from. Rich, middle class, and poor a like. Insured and uninsured. Men, women, children, and babies. This is what being 37th in quality of healthcare means.
I know that many of you are angry and frustrated that REPUBLICANS! In congress are dragging their feet and trying to block TRUE healthcare reform. What republicans want is just a taxpayer bailout of the DISGRACEFUL GREED DRIVEN PRIVATE FOR PROFIT health insurance industry, and the DISGRACEFUL GREED DRIVEN PRIVATE FOR PROFIT healthcare industry. A trillion dollar taxpayer funded private health insurance bailout is all you really get without a robust government-run public option available on day one. Co-OP’s ARE NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR A GOVERNMENT-RUN PUBLIC OPTION. They are a fraud being pushed by the GREED DRIVEN PRIVATE FOR PROFIT health insurance industry that is KILLING YOU!
YOU CANT HAVE AN INSURANCE MANDATE WITHOUT A ROBUST PUBLIC OPTION. MANDATING PRIVATE FOR PROFIT HEALTH INSURANCE AS YOUR ONLY CHOICE WOULD BE A DISASTER AND UNETHICAL, CORRUPT, AND MORALLY REPUGNANT. AND PROBABLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL AS WELL.
These industries have been slaughtering you and your loved ones like cattle for decades for profit. Including members of congress and their families. These REPUBLICANS are FOOLS!
Republicans and their traitorous allies have been trying to make it look like it’s President Obama’s fault for the delays, and foot dragging. But I think you all know better than that. President Obama inherited one of the worst government catastrophes in American history from these REPUBLICANS! And President Obama has done a brilliant job of turning things around, and working his heart out for all of us.
But Republicans think you are just a bunch of stupid, idiot, cash cows with short memories. Just like they did under the Bush administration when they helped Bush and Cheney rape America and the rest of the World.
But you don’t have to put up with that. And this is what you can do. The Republicans below will be up for reelection on November 2, 2010. Just a little over 13 months from now. And many of you will be able to vote early. So pick some names and tell their voters that their representatives (by name) are obstructing TRUE healthcare reform. And are sellouts to the insurance and medical lobbyist.
Ask them to contact their representatives and tell them that they are going to work to throw them out of office on November 2, 2010, if not before by impeachment, or recall elections. Doing this will give you something more to do to make things better in America. And it will help you feel better too.
There are many resources on the internet that can help you find people to call and contact. For example, many social networking sites can be searched by state, city, or University. Be inventive and creative. I can think of many ways to do this. But be nice. These are your neighbors. And most will want to help.
I know there are a few democrats that have been trying to obstruct TRUE healthcare reform too. But the main problem is the Bush Republicans. Removing them is the best thing tactically to do. On the other hand. If you can easily replace a democrat obstructionist with a supportive democrat, DO IT!
You have been AMAZING!!! my people. Don’t loose heart. You knew it wasn’t going to be easy saving the World.
God Bless You
jacksmith — Working Class
I REST MY CASE (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/why-markets-cant-cure-healthcare/)
Republican Senators up for re-election in 2010.
* Richard Shelby of Alabama
* Lisa Murkowski of Alaska
* John McCain of Arizona
* Mel Martinez of Florida
* Johnny Isakson of Georgia
* Mike Crapo of Idaho
* Chuck Grassley of Iowa
* Sam Brownback of Kansas
* Jim Bunning of Kentucky
* David Vitter of Louisiana
* Kit Bond of Missouri
* Judd Gregg of New Hampshire
* Richard Burr of North Carolina
* George Voinovich of Ohio
* Tom Coburn of Oklahoma
* Jim DeMint of South Carolina
* John Thune of South Dakota
* Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas
* Bob Bennett of Utah
I paid $1500 a month last year for PPO insurance for 5 healthy people. I paid because of the risk of a catastrophic occurance.
I’m in favor of the public system because when catastrophic happens to the uninsured, or AIDS and cancer patients reach their insurance maximums and they are summarily dropped from their insurance company and end up on Medicaid and into taxpayer funded, county hospitals.
“Then there is long-term care for, e.g., children born with spina bifida to familes of only modest means, or for the elderly in their last year(s) of life. Or is that too much reality to take right now?”
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” – Karl Marx
No individual should be forced to subsidize the direct, private needs of others. Medical care is such a direct, private need while traffic lights and standing armies are not. The age group or medical condition involved with the individuals being subsidized is totally irrelevant, too. Why is that no one advocating socialized medical care ever uses reckless bungee jumpers or college-aged binge drinkers as examples of those who should benefit?
Forced wealth redistribution is what is necessarily entailed in any government-run (i.e., taxpayer-funded) health care program unless all dissenting individuals are given the choice to opt out of the program entirely, neither contributing funds nor receiving funds, with no penalities whatsoever. Such forced redistribution is no more ethical in the grand scheme of things than someone robbing you at gunpoint to pay for his, his kid’s, or his parent’s doctor bills.
Anyone who chooses to use a private insurer and possibly subsidize the health care of others in that manner is doing so voluntarily, and that makes all the difference. If private insurance options still leave some without funding for medical care, then private charity via non-governmental organizations or direct individual giving should make up the difference.
Adding more government interference to the current hybrid health care system in this country is like pouring sour milk in a bowl of cereal, finding the taste unpleasant, and deciding that what is needed is more sour milk. Things will only get worse, not better.
For those who are opposed to ‘socialized’ medicine -
The US spends almost 4% of GDP more on health than the next highest spender. If you accept that as fact (please note why if you don’t), wouldn’t you expect so large a difference to show up in morbidity/mortality rates, with the higher spending country producing better results? In fact, the US, despite spending more, often has results that are worse than countries who spend less.
What is conservative about a system that obviously wastes money? Is there no impact to US global competitiveness from our excess spending on health?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
Life Expectancy – 84 yrs
Province of mainland China (Macau)
Life Expectancy – 82 yrs
Andorra, Japan
Life Expectancy – 81 yrs
Singapore, San Marino, Province of mainland China (Hong Kong)
Life Expectancy – 80 yrs
Gibraltar, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Australia, Iceland, Canada
Life Expectancy – 79 yrs
Italy, Monaco, Lichtenstein, Spain, Norway, Israel, Greece, Austria, Malta, Netherlands, South Korea, Luxemborg
Life Expectancy – 78 yrs
New Zealand, Germany, Belguim, United Kingdom, European Union, Finland, Jordan, Puerto Rico, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Bermuda, Saint Helena, United States
with 145 countries below the US
World average is 65.8 years
THERE IS NO WEIGHTING for AUTOMOBILE DEATHS, MILITARY DEATHS, RACIAL DIFFERENCES
The United Nations says that each country was responsible for reporting it’s own statistics, and the collection methods may have been different from country to country.
LIBERALS WILL TELL YOU it is ASSUMED that the differences in life expectancy is due ENTIRELY to HEALTH CARE.
So when you are told that the US has bad health care, because 44 countries have a better life expectancy, remember:
Liars use statistics. Idiots believe them.
=====================================================
10 most populous Countries in the world:
Country, Population, UN Ranking in Life Expectancy
1 People’s Republic of China 1,332,100,000 (Ranks #103 life expectancy)
2 India 1,166,980,000 (Ranks #145 life expectancy)
3 United States 307,026,000 (Ranks #45 life expectancy)
4 Indonesia 230,781,846 (Ranks #135 life expectancy)
5 Brazil 191,608,000 (Ranks #114 life expectancy)
6 Pakistan 167,038,500 (Ranks #164 life expectancy)
7 Bangladesh 162,221,000 (Ranks #167 life expectancy)
8 Nigeria 154,729,000 (Ranks #204 life expectancy)
9 Russia 141,868,000 (Ranks #157 life expectancy)
“Medical care is such a direct, private need while traffic lights and standing armies are not”
Do you believe Medical care military personal is private issue? If Medical Care is always a direct private need why shouldn’t we just let soldier pay for their medical system.
I would rather pay be “forced to pay” for the medical treatment of productive factory workers than those who volunteer to commit war crimes and torture enemies of the Empire.
Are members of the military an aristocracy more important to the common defense than the civilian workers who made the gun, tanks, planes, bombs, and bullets?
Doesn’t the Common Defense include the common enemies of mankind such as disease, illness, and injury?
What is the purpose of civilization? Is it the return to the jungle and suffer what disease and illnesses as just or personal responsibility like some caveman fending for himself?
Is there no common good?
Nothing in my post suggests that US health care is bad – I said it was far more expensive, with morbidity/mortality showing no US gain for the additional spending, and in some cases not being as good as countries who spend more. If you spend as much more money as we do, shouldn’t you see commensurate results?
What’s conservative about overspending?
You know it’s funny but I don’t know that I’ve seen anyone really starting from square one and trying to analyze just what is at the root of the health-care crisis we have so that at least the root isn’t strengthened into the future.
To me at least that root is simply the ungodly cost of health-care today; or, to put it another way, the way way way above average annual increases we’ve seen in the cost of health care for some four decades or so. Or, to put it yet another way, if the cost of health-care had only increased by the average rate of inflation over those decades I suspect we’d have only 10% of the problem we do today.
So what’s at the root of this ungodly inflation? Again the best I can make out is that it was government in the first place in the form of Medicaid and Medicare being structured the way they were. That is, giving cards to the heaviest users of health-care—the old and the poor—and telling ‘em to go get whatever they want as often as they want almost free of charge. (The poor being heavy users not because all the poor are irresponsible in terms of their health, but because irresponsible people tend to be among the poor.)
What happened? The absolutely predictable: That huge segment of health-care consumers (60-70%?) did the reasonable; they used health-care services anytime and anywhere and in any way remotely beneficial. And their *kids* took advantage of it too: Since Medicaid now paid for routine, long-term-to-end-of-life nursing homes, why the hell take in Mom or Pop anymore? And what did health-care providers do? Again the natural. They figured out endless services to provide to dip into this Niagra of money, including building nursing homes like mad.
I’ve heard that before Medicare and Medicaid took their essential present form in the mid-to-late 1960′s under LBJ that up until then the average inflation rate for health-care costs was average. And 70-80% of all doctors then were general practitioners, and there were few if any huge for-profit health-care corporations with investors essentially betting that they would be able to bill enough to make better rates of return than the mere average inflation rate.
The situation now of course is precisely reversed: 70-80% of all physicians are specialists, who can charge more for their hours. And the vast majority I bet work for these for-profit corporations that have roomfuls of people sitting around day after day after day doing nothing but figuring out how to provide just a little more “service” (“restless leg syndrome!”) and bill a little more, and investors in same certain that their rate of return will better the inflation rate.
Just like if you gave 70-80% of all car buyers a card telling ‘em to buy any car they want, as often as they want. What kind of cars do you think you’d see after 30-40 years? The biggest, baddest, more gizmo-laden cars imaginable, with damn near nothing being optional and standard equipment including platinum door handles.
Of course part of the situation was also the non-taxation of employer-provided health-insurance and other things, but to me the big driver was most likely what I’ve noted above. And I think I’ve seen Joe Califano who was LBJ’s HHS Secretary at the time admit that they screwed up hugely in the form they made MA and MC into by essentially “ignoring our own economists.”
That said, other than suggesting that we don’t ignore the economists again (except maybe Paul Krugman), I don’t know the answer going forward. I would say though that I think people just do think that health-care is a right now, and given the costs of health-care there’s no way they are going to change their minds about same. So that’s a given I think. I also think it’s a given that a “sole provider being the government” plan has its problems, so I’m not sure if Obama’s mere “government choice” idea is the worst of things. Especially given the recent performances of our corporations and the way that health-insurers jerk people around I don’t see why we have to genuflect in the direction of their profits. If they screwed up they’d just be coming after all of us for a bailout anyway and probably get same, so screw ‘em.
Interesting little tidbit that kind of provoked this from me: On the Drudge report he links to an Erie County, NY situation where a guy with no insurance and no job and no car (and on Medicaid) has called 911 for an ambulance 603 times from January of 2006 through May of this year. “Sometimes twice a day,” he said. Medicaid has paid out at least $118,000 for these rides. He doesn’t take a cab, he says, because he gets better service at the hospital arriving via ambulance. (And, very possibly, because Medicaid doesn’t pay for cabs.)
He’s got sickle cell anemia and he goes to the hospital merely when he says his pain gets too him. And because Medicaid doesn’t really pay the full cost of each ambulance ride, the ambulance service has to pass that unpaid portion on to everyone else meaning that the true cost of these rides to the rest of us is up around $350,000. Solely for giving a guy a ride to a hospital.
The article ( at http://www.wgrz.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=69029&catid=37) says that $80 billion is wasted in Medicaid “fraud and abuse” every year, but doesn’t address my question which is doubt that what this man is doing is even called “abuse” in any such study.
As I said I don’t know the solution given that people think health-care is a right and are never going to back down on that. All I know is that the situation seems to me to be eerily similar to that with higher education if perhaps only a bit more advanced. That is, via student loans and grants and aids and etc. government started subsidizing higher education. And higher education costs started going through the roof far more than the general rate of inflation, leading to even more justifiable cries of need for even more government help for students. (Even if often coming, of course, from the the very institutions that are going to pocket that money.) And now that so many people have that higher education, getting same is indeed almost a necessity to make a good living, so now how in hell how do you deny someone a necessity?
An interesting possible addendum history might make to Adam Smith’s idea about the “hidden hand” of competition and where it might lead: Where capitalism fails it is indeed the self-proclaimed socialists who usher in the new system. But it might just be that those who have really destroyed it are the capitalists who have found ways around competition to bill the taxpayers instead of their true customers, and thereby eventually made the capitalist system untenable.
Cheers,
2007 Health Care spending as a % of GDP -16%
2007 Medicaid/Medicare spending as a % of GDP – 4%
In regards to price stability of pre-1960s health care, you might consider this: they couldn’t do much for you. In the 50s, heart attack care was aspirin and bed rest.
mrmetrowest:
Something’s screwy with these health-care figures. Prompted by your observations I did some Googling I ran across this site from the CBO with a Nov. 2007 report which seems about as authoritative as possible:
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/87xx/doc8758/11-13-lt-health.pdf
It says a variety of interesting things but most germane to what we are talking about it notes that in 2005 (apparently the latest year from which such statistics could be derived) private health-care spending constituted 54.5% of the total, and public spending on same constituted 45.5%. Medicaid accounted for 16.7% and Medicare 18.4%, and of course there are other governmental social programs that pay for health-care too.
So at any rate while denting the validity of the opinions I ventured in my earlier post I don’t think it destroyed same. And indeed it showed that the percent of governmental spending on health-care as a percent of the total has increased over the last several decades and the percent of private spending has decreased, supporting my hunches.
But given the figures that show the public financing of health-care is only a bit less than the private (45% to 54%), how can one derive the GDP figures you report and which seem accurate?
The best I can figure is that it derives from the definition put on the term “total health-care spending” in the GDP figures. And in fact in Googling around I saw a chart that showed your GDP figures, but, amazingly the subtotal of spending attributable to private and public sources didn’t near equal the total, with no explanation of how this could be.
After Googling some more I wonder if it isn’t because a big chunk of some of the “total spending” sometimes talked about in some of these figures is not really “spending on health care” the way we think of it, but instead stuff like … spending on building hospitals, or for health-care corporations to buy hospital supplies, or for health-insurance companies to pay their employees and etc., and maybe for *buying* health insurance too, I dunno.
I don’t know for sure. I will say however that your point about the kind of health care you could get in the ’50′s compared to today is a valid one, and indeed that CBO report I cited essentially says that there is somewhat of a consensus that what has been the main driver of health care costs has indeed been “the emergence, adoption, and wide-
spread diffusion of new medical technologies and ser-
vices.”
On the other hand thinking about it that isn’t at all hostile to the point I raised in my opinion piece that those new medical technologies and services arose at least in part because with the advent of Medicaid and Medicare there was a lot more money to be made innovating same.
I should have said though that obviously there are tremendous benefits to all this increased medical quality; maybe even outweighing the costs we’ve paid and will continue to pay.
In any event thank you for prodding me into looking into this further. And maybe you know how they mean “total health care spending” in some of these reports? When public and private don’t add up to 100% in some, I’m confused.
Cheers,
Hello TomB
I think the anomaly you spotted is due to our both looking at the CBO figures. The CBO doesn’t care about non-federal programs, and in fact state and local government spends the equivalent of 2-3% of GDP. Add this, and the spending figures you cite make sense. Living in MA as I do, with our expensive experiment in universal coverage, I should have thought of this.
One point about advances in medical technology – while new technology has certainly increased costs by increasing treatment options, it also promises to reduce costs. Ulcers rarely require surgery now – they’re treated with inexpensive drugs like Pepcid. Laparoscopic surgery means shorter hospital stays. I wonder if we boomers having lipitor type drugs available might need less bypass surgery then our parents did. I’m somewhat skeptical of doomsday Medicare scenarios because no one can predict what effect technology might have on costs 20-30 years out.
My last thought – my uncle had a heart attack back sometime in the early ’70s. He was flown by air ambulance to TX, where his bypass was performed by Denton Cooley. Today, he’s a fairly active 89 year old – without that bypass, he probably would have been dead for decades. So, we should all remember that some of our ‘problems’ are problems previous generations might have wished they had.
Hello right back mrmetrowest.
I think you nailed why the GDP figures didn’t seem to square with the others. Very astute of you.
One thing that I can’t quite figure though relates to the issue of medical technology which you of course raised originally and then did so again—very much in line with the CBO saying that there’s a consensus that its rise has very much contributed to health care costs. And that’s how come—unlike what seems the case with every other technology—the price of same doesn’t quickly come way way down?
Is it just that we’re still on the uphill learning curve of this stuff, somewhat like when hand calculators first came out and at first they kept adding new features and the prices kept going up and up before they finally crashed? I’m old enough to remember fellow Univ. students oohing and aahing over the latest HP graphing calculator and knowing the cost of same, and then of course within just a couple of years seeing the cost of same being at only 25% of what they were at their peak.
But you never seem to see any such similar crashing with med tech stuff. I wonder why.
Bypass by Denton Cooley huh? Kinda like having learned piano from Chopin. Very cool.
Cheers,
I agree with Dennis Tochler. For Republicans and others who claim that a single-payer, government health care plan will put the government in between the doctor and patient, I say the insurance company is between the doctor and patient. I would like to see the Republicans offer a concrete, specific plan. Pres. Obama’s plan may not be perfect, but at least he is trying. We cannot continue the health care system we have now. It is too expensive, leaves too many people out, and will bankrupt small businesses.
For those who say we should not “subsidize” other people’s health insurance, we already do. We’re put into a “risk pool” by the insurance company. Then, we pay premiums every month, either through an employer or individually. The private insurance industry only wants young, healthy people. As soon as someone gets sick and needs help, the insurance company will try very hard to deny claims. The insurance industry is a huge bureaucracy, whose purpose is to earn a profit for the executives and the stockholders; employ staff to automatically deny claims; and avoid any type of regulation.
I don’t understand why we need insurance companies. We need a system that will directly pay doctors, hospitals, health clinics, etc. There should be an agency where staff process the claims submitted by healthcare people, and send the payments. There should also be people investigating fraud. But, we don’t need insurance companies with highly paid executives, a massive bureaucracy, and staff whose job is to deny claims.
Patients should have direct access to their healthcare providers. I was diagnosed with Grave’s Disease last year, and consequently, had to undergo tests and see specialists. Before I went to a lab for blood work, or before I went to a specialist, I called the insurance company to ensure that the procedure or doctor was covered under my plan. It took a lot of effort to understand everything my policy would pay for. To pay for universal healthcare, everyone should pay a percentage of his/her income; whether he/she makes $10,000 a year or $100,000 a year. We cannot continue the present healthcare system. It will cost more and more each year, and more importantly, more people will not be insured and will not have access to healthcare providers.
I don’t understand why we need insurance companies. We need a system that will directly pay doctors, hospitals, health clinics, etc. There should be an agency where staff process the claims submitted by healthcare people, and send the payments. There should also be people investigating fraud. But, we don’t need insurance companies with highly paid executives, a massive bureaucracy, and staff whose job is to deny claims.
Patients should have direct access to their healthcare providers. Some people claim universal health coverage will put the government in between the doctor and patient, where in reality, it is the insurance company that is between the doctor and patient. I was diagnosed with Grave’s Disease last year, and consequently, had to undergo tests and see specialists. Before I went to a lab for blood work, or before I went to a specialist, I called the insurance company to ensure that the procedure or doctor was covered under my plan. It took a lot of effort to understand everything my policy would pay for. To pay for universal healthcare, everyone should pay a percentage of his/her income; whether he/she makes $10,000 a year or $100,000 a year. We cannot continue the present healthcare system. It will cost more and more each year, and more importantly, more people will not be insured and will not have access to healthcare providers.
As a Canadian, I will communicate two truths to you, my American friends:
1) There IS indeed a hassle regarding wait-times up here.
BUT
2) All this talk of “rationing” and “euthanasia counseling” under a public plan is absolute, premium-grade, 100% BS, used by Big Insurance in your country as yet another scare tactic!
For those who think Medicare can continue to exist in its current form:
http://truecostblog.com/2009/07/30/medicare-bankrupt-in-6-8-years-without-rationing/
Medicare will be insolvent soon, and will have to enforce rationing. Rationing isn’t scary, it just means that the government won’t pay for everything under the sun anymore. Why do people expect that of the government?
The government won’t be able to tax its way out of this problem either, as government debt will exceed GDP by then. So Medicare benefits WILL be cut – it’s just a question now of how.
This appears to be a surprisingly rationale discourse. As yet another Canadian observer to this debate down south, I would add that the vast majority (~96%) of Canadians love their universal single payer health care system and are truly amazed at the allegiance so many of our US cousins show to large corporate monopolies which literally exist solely to profit out of your unhappiness and suffering.
In Canada we have a blend of single payer and private health care. Basically if you get sick and need to see a doctor or go to the hospital it is always free and the service is excellent. If you lose your job – you still get health care. If you have a pre-existing condition illness – you still get health care. If you want an operation or procedure that you don’t really need, well you either have to wait awhile or pay for it through the private system. Typically your employer provides extra private insurance as part of your benefits package that can help out with these type of “premium services”. The system works very well and that’s why Canada spends less money per capital yet still outperforms the US on virtually every health care metric.
The idea that a public option in the US will mean old people will not get health care is completely absurd. In fact, the current insurance system in the US actually does this already! A public option will do exactly the opposite. In Canada, my grandmother has had a couple heart attacks over the past 10 years. Each time, she was taken to the hospital and had surgery immediately to save her life. It would have practically bankrupt her in the US. In Canada, it cost her nothing.
For your sake America. Please – don’t believe the hype!
I say “do away with any socialized medicine” period. If you can afford your own medicare, pay for it. If you can’t afford care, it’s simple–you die.
If you can afford medical insurance, and elect not to have it, fine, but any care must be paid for in advance. So if you are in an accident or get sick, you guessed it, you die.
That is my suggestion for the elimination of “socialized medicine.”