Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness - and universal health care. Hm. That wasn’t quite the theme of the revolution, was it? It had to do with God-given rights.
Somehow the ship of state steered off course and life’s niceties morphed into rights. A goal listed on President Obama’s website: “Assure affordable, quality health coverage for all Americans.”
Assure. The founders had a quite different view of what government was to “assure.” It certainly wasn’t a hospital bed or cough medicine.
We have a terrific column running this weekend by Richard E. Ralston on the destructive presumptuousness of over-reaching government. Forty years ago the government accounted for 10 percent of health care. Today, about 50 percent. And the remaining 50 percent has been made hugely more expensive by government’s costly regulations and mandates.
The administration’s solution? Squeeze out the remaining 50 percent.
Then there’s this, courtesy of another column, this one by Larry Elder: “When Medicare was set up in 1965, the politicians projected its cost in 1990 to be $3 billion — which is equivalent to $12 billion when adjusted for inflation to 1990 dollars. The actual cost in 1990 was $98 billion — eight times as much.”
Rights, it seems, can be expensive. Especially the man-given ones.
Happy Independence Day. Or should we make that, Dependence Day?
The question of whether health-care “is a right” is pretty much obsolete. The question should be: “Is healthcare bankrupting the country?” And the answer to that question is a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y. Other civilized nations (western europe) operate under the universal healthcare program which covers all citizens. They pay about 9% of GDP towards healthcare. We have 45 million uninsured and we pay upwards of 17% of GDP towards healthcare and that number continues to grow. Soon $1 in every $5 will be spend on healthcare in America. That clearly reduces the money available to spend on other areas of needed growth to fuel our economy. And the medical care rendered in most of these other civilized nations is actually better than what is offered here if you want to know the truth of the matter. These facts are beginning to leak out and are being aired by those ‘in the know’, not just talking heads and hype artists. It simply isn’t right that the citizens of the wealthiest nation on earth are dealt this hand when it comes to national health care management. The greed is absolutely reprehensible. Anyone who has worked in the medical industry knows this. The fraud is rampant. Healthcare seems to be working in most of those other civilized nations. I don’t see any public protests with people carrying torches and pitchforks demanding change. And when they pay only 9% of GDP it’s not a major financial concern overall for them. And everyone there is covered, as it should be. People are going to get their healthcare one way or the other. Even illegal foreigners get it here at a huge cost to you and me. Some guy could have chest pain in Tijuana on Thursday afternoon, sneak across the border that night, walk into any ER Friday morning, get diagnosed with blocked arteries and be in the OR getting a free bypass surgery (at least free for him, not you) by Monday. That’s the way your system is designed. So if you remain on the same road it’s a road to disaster. The final nail, if you will. Folks need to wake up and stop falling for the hype.
ocobserver says:
July 4, 2009 at 8:51 am
The question of whether health-care “is a right” is pretty much obsolete. The question should be: “Is healthcare bankrupting the country?” And the answer to that question is a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y
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Healthcare OWNS the Congress, and that medicare bill that passed 3 or 4 years ago that costed trillions of tax dollars proves it.
Until campaign $$$ are brought into check, not just nationally but also at the local and state level, BigBusiness/public unions/special interests will continue to own this country and drive it into chaos and bankruptcy.
To benefit the few at the expense of the many/everyone else
I suppose we don’t have a God given right to invade Iraq (and not pay for it), nor to buy an F22 Raptor two decades after the cold war ended.
Health care is not a right. I hear about the poor kids who need health care and I am to feel guilty if I don’t want my tax dollars spent on them. If you are going to have kids, then you take care of them! Instead of a tax break for having kids, you should have to pay more. And talk about a carbon footprint! Kids are a hugh carbon footprint. We don’t need more humans on this planet and nobody seems to understand that. More people, more problems, fewer freedoms.
The system you have now is completely broken. It is already socialized. You pay a premium for insurance and when you get sick the other people who are part of the risk pool pay for your treatment. And the unreimbursed costs that the providers (docs, hospitals, etc..) bear is passed onto you in the form of higher premiums. It’s a never-ending vicious cycle. Why don’t you promote not offering insurance at all? If you get sick pay out of pocket. That is the system that a true capitalist and free-market proponent would support. If you want to go free-market, go free-market all the way. Not half-way. The third party administrators and many of the providers are ripping you off with fraudulent claims too. You pay more and get less benefits or higher deductibles. The big insurance guys are picking your pockets. It’s broken, man. And if we don’t alter the way healthcare is managed it will bankrupt our country. What don’t you see about that? The rah-rah pay your own way baloney sounds good on paper but once you analyze it that’s far fetched from the way the system is now devised. What would your solution be?
I totally agree with your opinion on kids. If you can’t afford them don’t have them. But the poorest always have the largest reproductive multiplication factor. So what do we do? Outlaw having babies? You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip and charge the indigent for money they don’t have. Again, what would your solution be?
I am more than open to consider your solutions.
Reese says:
July 4, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Health care is not a right. I hear about the poor kids who need health care and I am to feel guilty if I don’t want my tax dollars spent on them. If you are going to have kids, then you take care of them! Instead of a tax break for having kids, you should have to pay more
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Healthcare is not a right-but the fact is in our society it is far cheaper to offer basic healthcare to all, in monetary terms as well as social terms.
I agree 100% with you about having children-instead of tax breaks you should pay more.
Basic health care for children is actually a cost saver. Immunizations, for instance, prevent outbreaks of expensive diseases. Preventing disease is a much cheaper option than treating it.
And, in that vein, I do believe that we are doing a terrible job at that. Childhood obesity is epidemic. We are filling our children with soda pop and garbage foods. It costs NOTHING to prevent many diseases, like diabetes, because all we have to do is get kids to eat better and exercise more. And do not tell me that good food is that much more expensive than junk. It flat out is NOT. Lentils, rice, vegetables, fruit…not that expensive and they fill kids up with less.
I do believe that a basic level of preventative care for kids should be available, but I also believe that parents should pay a reasonable premium for that. Like people said, if you have kids, you should pay to support them.
How does the medical system prevent a child from getting fat? Assigning a healthcare czar to watch him 16 hours a day? Education only does so much. Unless the parents have a stake in keeping the child at a healthy weight you won’t make a dent in the problem. My solution? MediCal coverage and Healthy Family coverage should be contingent upon the entire family maintaining an acceptable body mass indexed rating. Cut the benefits proportionally whenever one of the family members exceeds that indexed rating. The solution is so simple it’s stupid.
No…I don’t mean government. I mean parents. It’s the parent’s responsibility.
Some weight issues are not from overeating. For example, people who take cortisteroids for certain medical problems gain weight, no matter what they eat. But yes, we are seeing fat parents raising fat kids. I was at the grocery store yesterday, and I watched families of really fat, obese, couples with their tubby kids, wheeling up to the lines, with their carts full of processed junk food, soda, white bread, sugar laden cakes, hot dogs and chips. There wasn’t a vegetable or fruit in those carts. Then, they paid with EBT food stamp cards.
Maybe we need to stop allowing food stamps to be used for garbage junk food? For example, you can’t use a food stamp card on beer, so why should you be able to use it for soda pop? I see babies walking around with Dr. Pepper or Mountain Dew in their baby bottles! Those two sodas rot teeth and make kids sick, fat and why are we doing this? Mountain Dew rots teeth. It has caffeine! Why would anyone give that to a child? No wonder dental costs for MediCal and Healthy Families children are skyrocketing.
It’s madness!
I agree with both ssaworker and ocobserver, but the problem is that all those with a stake in the current system, such as insurance and drug companies, have all the influence and are utilizing their myriad of connections in the legislature to either block legislation or modify it beyond recognition. Many lobbyists are former staff members of sitting representatives or have equally effective connections.
As long as the current systems continues to line the pockets of the insurance and drug company executives (not to mention a few in the public sector), there will be very little progress made inthis arena.
“The solution is so simple it’s stupid.”
I agree; it’s stupid.
When you talk of distributing Government health care based on (BMI) Body Mass Index you immediately exclude just over half the population. That would be challenged as discrimination instantly, once you get past part about paying for this new “Right.” Or are you going to hire the healthcare czar you just dismissed?
Your posts make some claims about the Government care provided in some Socialist countries but I’d bet you never lived there. My wife is a British Citizen and likes our system just fine, more on that later. Our “middle” son lives outside London and is in his seventh week of awaiting an x-ray for a concussion suffered at work.
Perhaps you missed the news a month back explaining how the National Health Services in the UK has decided they will no longer pay for cancer medications for the elderly? Once you get too old it’s best you just die rather than be a burden to society.
For my wife we have purchased health insurance from Blue Shield with a HSA or health savings account. We can deposit tax-free dollars in the savings account for use at any time, or never, on health expenses. This year we are allowed to add $3000 to the account. When she reaches the Medicare age that cash is hers to keep; still tax free. You cannot use tax-free savings to pay the premiums. The HSA plans all come with higher deductibles but you pay the insured rates which is about 50% off “retail” or hospital expenses. You get an annual physical and a few other benefits included at no cost.
If you opened a HAS at the age of 21 you could have a huge retirement fund waiting if you stay healthy. This is a much better plan than having the IRS or Medicare morons running a nationalized care entitlement racket.
marc960,
I didn’t say that using BMI wouldn’t get challenged in court. Sure it would. And the challenge would most likely get upheld. But I am simply speaking from the side of common sense and what would work. There is absolutely NO incentive for these parasites to lose weight. Most on state-aid live miserable existences and live only for today with no thought about tomorrow. The only way to get them to lose weight is to take something away from them if they don’t comply. Obesity causes many, many insidious diseases. If they don’t care about their own health, why should the taxpayer care about them?
Your assumption is wrong. I did live in western europe for several years but not England. 95% of the folks I spoke to in Germany, France, Austria, Netherlands were pleased with their healthcare system. All were covered at a total system cost of about 10% of GDP compared with about 18% of GDP here in America. I am not that familiar with the british model. Perhaps they should study the german, french, dutch or austrian models and mimick those. They seem to be working with a high satisfaction rate and better medical outcomes than what we have here (again, at about 10% of GDP).
One of the big problems we have here in america is keeping very elderly people alive artificially when God is telling them it’s time to go. It’s a huge moneymaker for the medical industrial complex. There comes a time when it’s just time to check out. Sorry. That’s just the way it is. And when my time comes I will gladly walk my talk. Live your life right and death should not be feared. It should be welcomed.
I believe some HSA plans require the untaxed excess funds to be used by the end of the calendar year or you lose it. So people race off to get new glasses, spa treatments, massages, face-lifts, etc….prior to January 1. There is no interest paid on the deposited fund, right? Just tax free? But you can roll it over from year to year? Not bad. But one serious illness in the family and poof, it’s gone. I would have to read your specific plan to learn the drawbacks. And I’m certain there are many. Right now people are struggling to keep their heads above the rising economic waters. If you have $3k to plunk down on the HSA chances are you have dynamite insurance that will take care of you for life. I’m thinking about the other large segment of society who has little or nothing. They are the ones currently bankrupting us and forcing your premiums higher.
i agree with you. the reason healthcare is so expensive here is because the market is not allowed to do its thing.
hospitals and doctors charge as hight as they want because there are insurance companies who are going to pay and the insurance companied also charge premiums as high as they want because the consumers have no choice but to pay. and the patients dont take care of their health because the insurance will pay.
now if market forces are allowed to play, there is no way hospitals and doctors are going to charge as high as they want because they would consider the capacity of the patients themselves and not the insurance.
and if patients dont want to pay premiums or dont want to be hospitalized, then they would take care of themselves.
Government profited from offering health care insurance for decades. Profits grew as more premiums were imposed through taxes. Our government was able to invest the profits gained from the health care preniums collected in expansive new programs. Programs that Americans likely would not have approved paying the cost for if we has known. On top of profits from premiums the government collected billions from cigarette manufacturers to recover health care costs that citizens had paid for. Those health care dollars weren’t required for heamth care so the government invested in even more wasteful non-related programs. An easy fix for expanding health care insurance for those currently without would be to allow them the same income tax credit that those with employer provided insurance enjoy. Such would achieve equal protection of the law without costing anyone a nickle. Instead government proposes to increase health care for most by adding an income tax for employer provided insurance. Government provided insurance in itself would only increase government revenues.
ocobserver,
Well I guess we’ll just have to disagree on the benefits of nationalized health care, and the costs. I’ll ask my brother-in-law in Belgium a few specific questions. I caution you when asking someone about their government programs. Just as few would admit they bought a lemon of a car and overpaid for it too boot, expecting an objective answer can be colored easily if a national pride, for better or worse, gets called into play.
I’d argue that the higher GDP rate of costs here is more accurately spent for three reasons;
1. Free care to millions of illegals
2. Insurance must by law cover too many things like maternity for 50 year olds
3. Tort reform is badly needed to protect some of the insurer’s costs
So if you wish to explore HSA’s it is easy on the Internet. Wells Fargo is a qualified provider and several banks and insurers are available. We did my wife’s policy online, and we pay for it. My insurance is a job benefit.
Our HSA does not “lose” the benefits annually or the savings, which are rolled over from previous years. There are investment options to chose from as well. Lifetime benefits max out at $6 million.
Your suggested weakness of “one serious illness in the family and poof” doesn’t make any more or less sense for a family who is insured. The policy takes effect after the deductable is paid. Nobody says you have to spend the accumulated savings. In less than two years we had the deductable saved for the emergency such as cancer or a car accident. For us this is a savings account that is tax-free. That means we pay no tax Federal taxes and our reported income to the state is lowered too. Even if you are in a 15% tax bracket you’d “make” $450.00 a year by not being taxed. Get it? If I were in the 36% tax bracket I’d save $1080.00 on that money. You cannot find any investment that can guarantee that rate of return.
Maybe when you’ll turn feeble and get old and will actually reject medical care as you say, “walk my talk”. Go ahead and step in front of a train or off a bridge. I don’t want to live in diapers any more than the next guy. But I expect grandchildren to spoil before I check out.
” I caution you when asking someone about their government programs.”
I lived on the economy over there with the nationals. I knew families who had a member hospitalized for one reason or another. Rarely did I hear a complaint. They liked their healthcare. And the germans and french weren’t bashful at all when it came to complaining. Trust me.
“Free care to millions of illegals”
Free healthcare for illegals is one reason why the GDP % is so high in the USA. But waste, fraud and large third party profit margins are the primary culprit. Think about it for a second. These industrialized nations cover all their citizens at half the % of GDP that we do. We have 45 million uninsured.
“Insurance must by law cover too many things like maternity for 50 year olds”
That is because the politicians are owned by the private medical lobbyists. That will go bye-bye under universal care and certainly under a single-payor system.
“Tort reform is badly needed to protect some of the insurer’s costs”
We already have medical tort reform. It happened under Bush. Max claim is about $250k in California. Many medical malpractice attorney had to change specialties. Call one up and ask him how difficult it is to win a GOOD medical malpractice case in the State these days. And ask him what the payoffs are.
“So if you wish to explore HSA’s it is easy on the Internet”
I will investigate these more and learn about them. However, as I stated, the problem involves indigent or lower middle class people or the unemployed who have no insurance or can’t afford making contributions to an HSA. They just drive your premiums up 10% a year since the providers pass their unpaid costs on you. Don’t you understand that? I don’t know how else I can explain it to you. It’s unsustainable mid-term.
“Go ahead and step in front of a train or off a bridge”
That’s a little meladramatic. I was referring to pulling the plug on the artificial life saving equipment for elderly folks with multiple organ failure instead of keeping them alive to feed the medical industrial complex beast. And please don’t lecture us on the american ideals on the sanctity of life. We killed over 200,000 innocent iraqi’s and over 4,000 of our own boys over oil and an axe to grind on behalf of our former president. The sanctity of life argument is completely off the table in this discussion.
Marc960 says:
I’d argue that the higher GDP rate of costs here is more accurately spent for three reasons;
1. Free care to millions of illegals
2. Insurance must by law cover too many things like maternity for 50 year olds
3. Tort reform is badly needed to protect some of the insurer’s costs
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Baloney.
Illegals may add to the problem, but that is because they use emergency rooms.
Insurance is the problem, not the 50 year olds. Look at Cuba.
Tort reform is not needed at all. Many states have “tort reform” where they limit the amount for pain and suffereing (usually a very low cap, in MI it is $250K). So when some loser doctor high on coke amputates your wrong leg, your pain, suffering and loss due to the docs incompetence is just $250K for your entire life.
Tort reform is just a scam to boost insurance company profits and provide cover for bad doctors.
America is the ONLY country in the world where we have insurance companies running healthcare-and they are doing an awful job.
I don’t know if a Cuba style healtcare system is the answer-but it is worth a try because the only place to go for us is up.
My mother in law from Canada was visiting last year. She fell and knocked her head pretty hard. The next day she had to visit the ER due to some dizziness she was experiencing. She was shocked that she was seen so quickly. More shocking still was that she received an MRI and got the results within a few hours. Those things do not happen in Canada with their social system. You don’t go to the ER unless it is critical (broken bones, profuse bleeding, etc.). You are sent home. Any specialized testing needs to be approved and scheduled weeks or months in advance. Results are provided weeks later.
I can’t say our system is cost efficient or even near perfect. I can say that government meddling won’t make it better. And if it’s anything like our neighbor to the north, it will be an even bigger mess.
And Canada’s overall medical outcomes surpass ours here in America.
So for all their slipshod and lousy medical care they provide to their (as you claim) why do they provide better overall care to their citizens?
We’ll wait for a reply.
I don’t know what Canada’s ‘medical outcomes surpass ours here in America’ means. And I can’t say that ‘ they provide better overall care to their citizens.’ I haven’t read any studies that measure overall care in one country vs. the US. Having said that, my wife lived with socialized medicine for 25 years before coming to the US. All of my in-laws and many good friends are in Canada so I feel like I can give the perspective of the people using that type of insurance. (Remarkably, they ask me all the time about American politics even though it dominates their news.)
I haven’t spoken to a Canadian yet that likes their medical system. Most of the gripes revolve around the time it takes to be seen. For example, women have to make their gynecological appointments more than a year in advance. C sections appear to be the prevalent form of giving birth because they can be scheduled. A baby that just ’shows up’ will clog up the works for everyone else. The other complaint I’ve heard is how hard it is to see a specialist. One relative had to be referred to an oncologist but had to wait four months.
Again, I’m talking about anecdotes. But, there is something to be said when my wife prefers our HMO to government run universal care.
Here IronBalls, read this article from Reuters. This should help change your opinion on Canada’s healthcare system. Enjoy!
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U.S. health care expensive, inefficient
America ranks last among six countries on key measures, group finds
Reuters
Updated: 7:48 a.m. PT May 15, 2007
WASHINGTON - Americans get the poorest health care and yet pay the most compared to five other rich countries, according to a report released on Tuesday.
Germany, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada all provide better care for less money, the Commonwealth Fund report found.
“The U.S. health care system ranks last compared with five other nations on measures of quality, access, efficiency, equity, and outcomes,” the non-profit group, which studies health care issues, said in a statement.
Canada rates second worst out of the six overall. Germany scored highest, followed by Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
“The United States is not getting value for the money that is spent on health care,” Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis said in a telephone interview.
The group has consistently found that the United States, the only one of the six nations that does not provide universal health care, scores more poorly than the others on many measures of health care.
Congress, President George W. Bush, many employers and insurers have all agreed in recent months to overhaul the U.S. health care system — an uncoordinated conglomeration of employer-funded care, private health insurance and government programs.
The current system leaves about 45 million people with no insurance at all, according to U.S. government estimates from 2005, and many studies have shown most of these people do not receive preventive services that not only keep them healthier, but reduce long-term costs.
Davis said the fund’s researchers looked at hard data for the report.
“It is pretty indisputable that we spend twice what other countries spend on average,” she said.
Per-capita health spending in the United States in 2004 was $6,102, twice that of Germany, which spent $3,005. Canada spent $3,165, New Zealand $2,083 and Australia $2,876, while Britain spent $2,546 per person.
Key measures
“We focus primarily on measures that are sensitive to medical care making a difference — infant mortality and healthy lives at age 60,” Davis said. “Those are pretty key measures, like how long you live and whether you are going to die before age 75.”
Measures of other aspects of care such as cataract surgery or hip replacements are harder to come by, she said.
They also looked at convenience and again found the United States lacking — with a few exceptions.
“We include measures such as waiting more than four months for elective, non-emergency surgery. The United States doesn’t do as well as Germany but it does a lot better than the other countries on waiting time for surgery,” Davis said.
“We looked at the time it takes to get in to see your own doctor … (or) once you go to the emergency room do you sit there for more than two hours, and truthfully, we don’t do well on those measures,” Davis said.
According to the report, 61 percent of U.S. patients said it was somewhat or very difficult to get care on nights or weekends, compared with 25 percent to 59 percent in other countries.
“The area where the U.S. health care system performs best is preventive care, an area that has been monitored closely for over a decade by managed care plans,” the report reads.
The United States had the fewest patients — 84 percent — reporting that they have a regular doctor.
And U.S. doctors are the least wired, with the lowest percentage using electronic medical records or receiving electronic updates on recommended treatments.
“You don’t go to the ER unless it is critical (broken bones, profuse bleeding, etc.). You are sent home. Any specialized testing needs to be approved and scheduled weeks or months in advance. Results are provided weeks later.”
Sounds exactly like my HMO!
I wonder if Canada gives free medical care to illegal americans?
Now there’s an option for the 45 million americans without medical insurance.
If you can’t beat our neighbors to the south, join ‘em!
I am Canadian and I can tell you the health system here scares the cr*p out of me. In the 5 years I have been in the US I have spent more money on healthcare than I spent in my entire life in Canada. That’s with 3 children.
What is never acknowledged in the US is that Canada actually has 11 healthcare systems. Each Province manages its own system. It is funded by the federal government but, each Province allocates the funding as it sees fit. That means the services available in Toronto are different than Winnipeg. Toronto will have more MRI machines, while Edmonton may have more air lift vehicles because of the territory it has to service.
Regardless, I have experienced both systems and I can tell you with all honesty, there is a reason Canada has a Conservative government and still has national healthcare. There was a reason Margret Thatcher increased health coverage in the UK when she was in power.
What surprises me most about this debate is that most people worry that we will get the same system Canada has. Why? Why can’t ours be better? We have more people, less geography and more resources. Why on earth would our system be the same as Canada’s?
If we have the best publicly funded military in the world, why couldn’t we have the best publicly funded medical system? Our military doesn’t look like Canada’s.
OBO-Im with you on this issue-our healthcare system is broken.
I can tell you this, Mexico won’t give you free healthcare-even if you had a life threatening situation.
I think America should Annex Mexico.
If we took that country over our problems would improve dramatically.
JV, not only would our situation improve, Mexico’s situation would improve too by leaps and bounds. But Mexico is a taker, not a giver. And they think that they are morally superior to us too. Every drug dealer from south of the border caught at the international crossing generally has a bible in his car.