The lack of universal health care in the Unites States is a blot on the morality of our great nation.
There are many reasons why adopting universal health care in the United States is the right thing to do. First, it would save money. Yes, you read that right - SAVE money. At first glance it would appear that providing better health care to more citizens would add substantial cost. There are more than 40 million Americans without health insurance. If no other changes were made in our health care system, providing basic health care to those 40 million Americans would increase the $1.9 trillion per year cost of the American health care system by an estimated $77 billion — about a 4% increase. But that 4% increase would only be present if we added yet another level of complexity to our bloated private payer system, and that would be foolish.…
Article comments
26 - Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Kaelieh, Are you seriously proposing to abolish health insurance altogether?
The point of insurance is to pool the risk of catastrophic events. Catastrophic illnesses require hundreds of thousands of dollars of treatment. In the absence of insurance (or a public program) a catastrophic illness would be a death sentence for anyone beyond perhaps the top 2% on Americans. Actually, it would soon become a death sentence for any American as the skill base for handling those kinds of conditions would evaporate. Is that really what you are proposing?
27 - Glenn Cessor
Clavos -
Why does Medicare spend too much? Maybe it's because the Bush administration took away its ability to NEGOTIATE PRICES with Big Pharma and medical suppliers!
Does Medicare screw up sometimes? Sure! Show me a human institution who doesn't! BUT their overhead is FAR less than that of ANY HMO, and - unlike yours - my family's experience with Medicare is GOOD!
And what happens when we trust our healthcare to the private sector? "We don't cover that surgery!" or "That's a pre-existing condition and we won't pay!" Does THAT kind of response belong in the world's greatest nation? Ask Obama about the battles his mother was fighting with the insurance companies while she was dying of cancer!
And - as I've pointed out SEVERAL times - the final proof lay in the FACT that the list of countries ordered by life expectancy, the TOP TWENTY-SEVEN all have some form of UHC (we're #30, just behind Jordan and Bosnia), and while - as Dave pointed out - according to the OECD our government presently pays about as much per capita as the other countries do, when the PRIVATE cost is added in, we pay nearly twice as much as ANY of the top twenty-seven countries!
Clavos, this is a fight you cannot win. ALL of the facts, ALL of the statistics show that UHC is better for the population AND better for the economy. All the conservatives have is rhetoric...and the funding of Big Pharma.
28 - Clavos
Why does Medicare spend too much?
Because it's run by government employees without accountability, who are nearly impossible to fire, and widely subject to corruption.
And that's just for starters.
BUT their overhead is FAR less than that of ANY HMO...
This is a favorite strawman of apologists for UHC, but it's irrelevant, because Medicare doesn't include, among other things, the $7 million it pays out daily in fraud in it's "overhead" calculations.
And what happens when we trust our healthcare to the private sector? "We don't cover that surgery!" or "That's a pre-existing condition and we won't pay!" Does THAT kind of response belong in the world's greatest nation?
No, it doesn't. However, that kind of response is frequently given to patients in virtually every country with UHC; most recently in the UK where women with advanced breast cancer were informed they will no longer receive treatment because it's too expensive. You can rest assured there will inevitably be rationing here, as well.
Medicare already rations; my wife has been refused payment by Medicare for treatment plans recommended by her doctors. Fortunately, I'm able to pay for a top drawer private insurance plan, which, while very expensive, is not an HMO, but a PPO, and refuses nothing, to take up the shortfalls Medicare refuses.
If the government is allowed to take over the health care industry, such plans will disappear (because of competition from "free" government plans), and people will be forced to accept the dictates of the government regarding their health care.
Medicare is already the largest entitlement program in the US. When UHC is extended to the degree being proposed, there will not be sufficient funding without an enormous increase in taxes, which will come on top of the enormous tax increases necessary to pay for Obama's blatant remaking of our society into the quintessential Nanny state.
Fortunately, for me, I have citizenship in another (much cheaper) country to which to retreat; much as you plan to do, Glenn.
As to my "winning" this fight: another irrelevancy; I don't choose my fights by their winnability. But in any case, when the American people (unlike the European sheeple) finally understand what they're getting into, there will be millions standing with me on this issue.
In the meantime, I'll keep sounding the alarm.
29 - Dr Dreadful
most recently in the UK where women with advanced breast cancer were informed they will no longer receive treatment because it's too expensive.
Where did you read that, Clav? And how recent was it? I did find one instance in 2005 where a local NHS trust refused to prescribe a patient Herceptin because it didn't like the risk/cost ratio, but the trust in that case was going against accepted policy.
The most recent development seems to have been a new set of guidelines from the National Institute For Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE*) with regard to treatment options for women with advanced breast cancer, which includes discontinuing the use of the drug trastuzumab in end-stage patients - but that's because the drug no longer does any good at that point.
There's no talk of refusing treatment altogether from what I can see.
* No, really.
30 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
No offense, guy, but I see a LOT of disinformation in your reply - Doc was kind enough to point out some of it. I don't have the time to point out all of it right now, but I will when I can.
31 - Clavos
Glenn,
No offense taken, guy.
By way of pre-emption, I will concede to Doc that perhaps I was somewhat hasty in relying on a tidbit gleaned from the MSM regarding the denial of treatment in the UK. I can no longer even find the tidbit, so Doc, I retract, for the time being, the allegation.
However, pretty much the rest of my comment (#28) is a product of my direct, personal experience with Medicare, and I stand by all of it.
Steve Forbes has written a very cogent and hard-hitting opinion piece on the issue of UHC. Here are a couple of quotes from his article:Let's clear up some of the myths. Both Medicare and Medi-caid are heavily subsidized by privately insured patients, to the tune of $90 billion a year. Federal reimbursement in these two programs is far below cost, which is why an increasing number of doctors are refusing to treat or are substantially cutting back on the number of Medicare and Medicaid patients they see.
Medicare and Medicaid are rife with fraud. Unlike private insurers, the government refuses to spend real resources on routing out the wrongdoing: overbilling, overtesting and charging for visits not made or tests not given. The quality of care will decline. Health care "outcomes" for Medicaid patients are substantially below those of similar private-insurance patients. Fees are so low that patients are often treated more like ill, undesirable cattle. (Emphasis added)And:Socialized systems are anathema to innovation. Breakthroughs in medications, diagnostic tools and medical devices require substantial capital investment and entail high risk. In the pharmaceutical industry, barely one in 250 promising compounds ever makes it to the marketplace. In the 1960s western Europe was a font of new medicines. But nationalized medicine put a stop to that. Today most of the breakthroughs come from the U.S. Even when another country invents something, it is in the U.S. that the product is fully developed. For example, the MRI breakthrough was achieved by a Brit, but MRIs are much more widely used in the U.S.
Medicare is no exception to this anti-innovation bias.Forbes offers some alternative ideas, as well:There are many positive, nongovernment things that could instead be done.
--Allow mandate-free insurance policies. True catastrophic health insurance--not the current dollar-for-dollar coverage--is very affordable.
--Permit people to buy health insurance across state lines. Removing such barriers would sharply increase competition.
--Make it easier for small businesses to buy insurance in a pool, whether through trade associations or other kinds of affiliations.
--Equalize the tax treatment of premiums. Companies get a tax deduction for health insurance premiums, as do the self-employed. Why not give that break to employees who choose to buy their own individual policies? They would get a deduction or a refundable tax credit (meaning if they don't have a tax liability they'd get an actual check from Uncle Sam). Many small businesses offer no insurance, or those that do may offer policies some workers find unsatisfactory. These folks should have the ability to easily get their own alternatives.
--Raise limits on contributions to HSAs and on permissible deductibles.
All of these ideas would substantially cut the number of un-insured. For those truly uninsurable, why not give them the medical equivalent of food stamps and subsidize their catastrophic health insurance premiums through private companies?Medical care comprises 17% of our economy. That's too much to much to be allowed to fall under the control of an inept, power-hungry bureaucracy.
Reform is needed. But, giving the feds control of the medical industry will not only bankrupt the nation, it will result in a decidedly inferior system, not an improved one.
32 - Clavos
Dang.
There were blockquotes in that comment. I apologize for any confusion their absence may cause.
We really need a preview function for comments!
33 - Ed Watson
The best reason for dumping socialized healthcare is Obama himself: The Obamacare will bring "greater inefficiencies" to our country's health care system.
"The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system," Obama said in remarks after a health care roundtable with physicians, nurses and health care providers. "And greater stability and security to America's families and businesses." Read more.