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People will always take advantage of programs like this but the idea is to believe that for the most part your money is going to a good cause.
No one said the health care system would collapse with universal health care. They said it wouldn't be as great as people think it's going to be.
And for that, all you have to do is look to places like England where everyone in the country is paying about 45% of their income to cover universal health care over there.
Funny how that doesn't get mentioned when people talk about how great universal health care is 'going to be'.
People will always take advantage of programs like this but the idea is to believe that for the most part your money is going to a good cause.
Is it any surprise that she is a Hugo Chavez in drag?
We have always known she is a socialist!
As for universal health care. How much more in taxes will we pay?
The key to fixing the current system is understanding any treatment carries at least some risk, and stop these foolish lawsuits that fly around so frequently. Is it right that some specialty doctors must pay $250,000 or more for insurance premiums every year? This is where our money is going. The lawyers! We need tort reform If that doesn't bring down the cost of medicine, then I will listen to universal health care.
Consider this. Go to universal health care, and the day on medial lawsuits will die to the point that even clear malpractice won't have payouts!
A bit of a stretch, I would argue . . .
Inform yourslef before spewing ignorant .
Hillary Inc.
by ARI BERMAN
The NationIf Clinton really wanted to curtail the influence of the powerful, she might start with the advisers to her own campaign, who represent some of the weightiest interests in corporate America. Her chief strategist, Mark Penn, not only polls for America's biggest companies but also runs one of the world's premier PR agencies. A bevy of current and former Hillary advisers, including her communications guru, Howard Wolfson, are linked to a prominent lobbying and PR firm--the Glover Park Group--that has cozied up to the pharmaceutical industry and Rupert Murdoch. Her fundraiser in chief, Terry McAuliffe, has the priciest Rolodex in Washington, luring high-rolling contributors to Clinton's campaign. Her husband, since leaving the presidency, has made millions giving speeches and counsel to investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. They house, in addition to other Wall Street firms, the Clintons' closest economic advisers, such as Bob Rubin and Roger Altman, whose DC brain trust, the Hamilton Project, is Clinton's economic team in waiting. Even the liberal in her camp, former deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes, has lobbied for the telecom and healthcare industries, including a for-profit nursing home association indicted in Texas for improperly funneling money to disgraced former House majority leader Tom DeLay. "She's got a deeper bench of big money and corporate supporters than her compe ors," says Eli Attie, a former speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore. Not only is Hillary more reliant on large donations and corporate money than her Democratic rivals, but advisers in her inner circle are closely affiliated with unionbusters, GOP operatives, conservative media and other Democratic Party antagonists.
It's not exactly an advertisement for the working-class hero, or a picture her campaign freely displays. Her lengthy support for the Iraq War is Clinton's biggest liability in Democratic primary circles. But her ties to corporate America say as much, if not more, about what she values and cast doubt on her ability and willingness to fight for the progressive policies she claims to champion. She is "running to help and restore the great middle class in our country," Wolfson says. So was Bill in 1992. He was for "putting people first." Then he entered the White House and pushed for NAFTA, signed welfare reform, consolidated the airwaves through the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (leading to Clear Channel's takeover) and cleared the mergers of mega-banks. Would the First Lady do any different? Ever since the defeat of healthcare reform, Hillary has been a committed incrementalist, describing herself as a creature of the "moderate, sensible center" whom business admires and rewards. During her six years in the Senate, she's rarely been out front on difficult economic issues. Given her proximity to money and power, it's not hard to figure out why she keeps controversial figures close to her--even if their work becomes a liability for her campaign.
Polling Czar
After the 1994 election, Democrats had just lost both houses of Congress, and President Clinton was floundering in the polls. At the urging of his wife, he turned to Morris, a friend from their time in Arkansas. Morris brought in two pollsters from New York, Doug Schoen and his partner, Mark Penn, a portly, combative workaholic. Morris decided what to poll and Penn polled it. They immediately pushed Clinton to the right, enacting the now-infamous strategy of "triangulation," which co-opted Republican policies like welfare reform and tax cuts and emphasized small-bore issues that supposedly cut across the ideological divide. "They were the ones who said, 'Make the '96 election about nothing except V-chips and school uniforms,'" says a former adviser to Bill. When Morris got caught with a call girl, Penn became the most important adviser in Clinton's second term. "In a White House where polling is virtually a religion," the Washington Post reported in 1996, "Penn is the high priest."
Penn, who had previously worked in the business world for companies like Texaco and Eli Lilly, brought his corporate ideology to the White House. After moving to Washington he aggressively expanded his polling firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland (PSB). It was said that Penn was the only person who could get Bill Clinton and Bill Gates on the same line. Penn's largest client was Microsoft, and he saw no contradiction between working for both the plaintiff and the defense in what was at the time the country's largest an rust case. A variety of controversial clients enlisted PSB. The firm defended Procter & Gamble's Olestra from charges that the food additive caused anal leakage, blamed Texaco's bankruptcy on greedy jurors and market-tested genetically modified foods for Monsanto. PSB introduced to consulting the concept of "inoculation": shielding corporations from scandal through clever advertising and marketing.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/13325/
Healthcare Costs and U.S. Compe iveness
Lee Hudson Teslik, Assistant Editor
May 14, 2007
Factoring in costs borne by government, the private sector, and individuals, the United States spends over $1.9 trillion annually on healthcare expenses, more than any other industrialized country. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medical School estimate the United States spends 44 percent more per capita than Switzerland, the country with the second highest expenditures, and 134 percent more than the median for member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). These costs prompt fears that an increasing number of U.S. businesses will outsource jobs overseas or offshore business operations completely.
...
Elsewhere in the world, healthcare systems are much less reliant on private sector support—and much less expensive. For example, the U.S. system costs 83 percent more per capita than the Canadian system, where public funds collected through taxes pay for up to 70 percent of healthcare coverage. A number of East Asian systems also enjoy high quality of care for a much lower cost. An article in Cambridge University’s Journal of Social Policy looks at what it calls the “remarkable” performance of healthcare systems in Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore, where the authors argue the legacy of British colonialism has encouraged a strong state role in the healthcare system.
Taiwan’s system is commonly singled out as a model for cost-effectiveness. An article in Health Affairs examines Taiwan’s National Health Insurance (or NHI) system, implemented in 1995, which provides comprehensive universal health coverage to Taiwan’s roughly 23 million citizens. The authors conclude that savings from the NHI system largely offset the incremental cost of covering the previously uninsured. Taiwanese are assessed around twenty dollars a month for full health coverage. In contrast, Americans pay roughly five hundred dollars per month, according to data in a report by McKinsey.
...
Almost 1/2 of health care is already being paid for by governments at various levels: Medicare, Medicaid, insurance for government workers, public hospitals and clinics.
At the center of socialist hopes is a mass prosperity -- through a redistribution of private wealth -- that will free all people from the burden of laboring for others and place them in a position to pursue higher ends, in a conflict-free society.
Unfortunately, that dream poses a very practical problem: The Marxist prediction of a revolution that would bring about this good society rested on the assumption that the condition of the working classes would grow ever worse under capitalism and, thus, prove out the socialist model's superiority. Unfortunately for his model, by the early twentieth century it was clear that this assumption was completely wrong. Indeed, the reverse was occurring: As wealth grew through capitalist means, the standard of living of all was improving.
Then, if one becomes aware that the older moral argument for socialism is wrong — that capitalism is actually benefiting people and serving the common good better than is socialism — why would one hold on to the ideology rather than abandon it?
Clearly, it is difficult to abandon a lifelong ideology, especially if one considers the only available alternative to be tainted with evil — as, obviously, many of you in this forum believe capitalism to be. Thus, socialism is, for the current generation of socialists and for many that will follow, simply an entrenched dogma. It is possible for them to argue the finer points, but not to abandon it.
However understandable this might be, it is not praiseworthy. To hold on to a doctrine that is demonstrably false is to abandon all pretense of objectivity. But, American liberals and socialists are proving to be a tenacious bunch when it comes to holding on to certain articles of faith in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
I mean, if someone could demonstrate to me that free markets and private property rights lead to impoverishment, dictatorship, and the violation of human rights on a mass scale, I would like to think that I would have the sense and ability to concede the point and move on. In any case, many socialists lack any such intellectual humility. They cling to their faith — their false religion — as if their lives are at stake.
Most intellectuals in the world are aware of what socialism did to Russia. And yet many still cling to the socialist ideal. The truth about Mao’s reign of terror is no longer a secret. And yet it remains intellectually fashionable to regret the advance of capitalism in China, even as the increasing freedom of the Chinese people to engage in commerce has enhanced their lives. Many Europeans are fully aware of how damaging democratic socialism has been in Germany, France, and Spain. And yet they continue to oppose the liberalization of these economies. Here in the United States, we’ve seen the failure of mass programs of redistribution and the fiscal crises to which they give rise. And yet many continue to defend and promote them.
There have long been cases where grotesque examples of the failure of socialism exist alongside glowing examples of capitalist success, and yet many people will use every excuse to avoid attributing the differences to their economic systems. Even a superficial comparison of North and South Korea, East and West Germany before the Berlin Wall fell, Hong Kong and mainland China before reforms, or Cuba and other countries of Latin America, demonstrates that free economies are superior at promoting the common good. And yet the truth has not sunk in.
What then can we say of those who today remain attached to socialism as a political goal? We can say that they do not know or have not understood the economic history of the last 300 years. Or perhaps we can say that they are more attached to socialism as an ideology than they are to the professed goals of its founders. I’m particularly struck by the neo-socialist concern for the well-being of plants, animals, lakes and rivers, rain forests and deserts—particularly when the concern for the environment appears far more intense than the concern for the human family.
The economic ins utions of any society must be supported by a cultural infrastructure that respects private property, regards the human person as possessing an inherent dignity, and confers its first loyalty to transcendent authority over civil authority...not the other way around. This is the basis of freedom, without which the common good is unreachable. Thus Pope John Paul II wrote of economic initiative:
We are all en led to call ourselves socialist, if by the term we mean that we are devoted to the early (and noble) socialist goal of the well-being of all members of society.
But, reason and experience make clear that the means to achieve this is not through central planning by the state, but through political and economic freedom. Thomas Aquinas had an axiom: bonum est diffusivum sui. “The good pours itself out.” The good of freedom has indeed poured itself out to the benefit of humanity.
So, what of all the poor that exist in a capitalist society? And, yes, they do exist. Well, I would argue, in a socialist society, they'd most likely be dead...
solution
make healthcare affordable for all ppl
decrease public liability payouts or set a max lvl for a payout
I see.
And, how do you propose to do that?
Artificially suppress doctor's wages? Price controls on medical care, products, and treatments? Undervalue the expertise required to transplant organs, develop cancer treatment regimens, or provide therapy to physically or mentally impaired? Stifle the capital investment required to bring new treatments and pharmaceuticals to market?
I'd like to hear your ideas on how you make health care affordable for all people.
Then, let's make yachting affordable for all people.
How about tax incentives to healthcare providers who provide services for those without insurance? You don't have to supress any wages and you give doctors a financial incentive to start accepting patients without insurance. how ahbout rewarding people for lowering their prices for those who meet a poverty type test? The GOP and Yoni types want to give those poor HMOs tax cuts so let's make a deal. The healthcare organizations/doctors who lower their prices for BASIC services get tax cuts. Those who choose not to lower prices get nothing. People now have the choice of who they want to see.
"how do you propose to do that?"
remove profits from health care.
federal health insurance for universal coverage paid from payroll taxes.
no corporate fat cats to pay $100Ms in salaries, retirement plans, golden parachutes.
no need for profits to prop up stock prices.
no need for private insurance companies to run 30% overhead qualifying/disqualifying clients and procesing claims. you get sick, you're covered, you're re-imbursed, no questions asked.
Finance all medical and drug research with federal tax dollars.
There are phtyo-chemicls/herbal treatments that look very promising but they can't bet past the FDA because the FDA is owned by Big Pharma that won't finance chemicals they can't patent. iow, if a phyto-chemical cures you but Big Pharma can't make money, the expensive trials of the phyto-chemical won't be performed because Big Pharma won't pay.
No need to restrict drug research only to those drugs that pay off big for for Big Pharma.
No need for Big Pharma to overcharge for drugs to finance their 15% corporate profits, their huge salary overheads, their slavery to quarterly stock prices, their $5B - 10B/year direct-to-consumer marketing, no need to have Big Pharma spending $Bs on hot bimbo sales res to sell their drugs to doctors.
A national medical database of all patients so patients cannot seek the same treatment and drugs from multiple doctors (was a problem in France until they gave out a national health card. abusing patients were going to multiple doctors for, eg, anti-depressants)
As in all other countries, the rich can always opt to pay for exorbitant private health care.
If the US is so ing wonderful and intelligent, it can study the decades of successes and problems of other countries national plans and come up with something at least as good as the best of the other industrial countries.
ie, we have to destroy for-profit health care corps and insurance, before they blood-suck the wealth ($10K -$15K/family-year, if you can find it) of citizens.
Will any of this happen? of course not, the legislitors are owned by/dictated to by Big Pharma and Big Insurance. And no legislator has the balls to work on the real problems facing the US, even when 70% of the people and many (non-health-care) corps want a national health plan.
...and caps on compensation for medical professions. That'll lead to quality care for all. No doubt.
How about fines for patients who abuse the medical care provided.
Socialism has always failed. It has never succeeded. And
socialized medicine will fail when you take the profit out. Even
in socialized medicine there is profit for some. Otherwise you
wouldn't have anyone expend the years needed to be a
doctor or nurse.
By the way boutons, do you donate your time to your
employer or business and work for nothing. Just checking.
Umm, if you find out that a herbal treatment is medicine for something, you can patent it. Period.
Now to the point at hand: First, if doctors would post their prices in their offices to begin with, like any other product, maybe there would be incentive to lower prices. They don't because 'insurance will cover it'. Except that it doesn't always. If physicians are forced to show their prices like any other business, you would have price conscious consumers looking for a good price and good quality.
I think tort reform and good, common-sense, futile care legislation would go a long way toward bringing down medical costs.
Then, privatize healthcare completely. Eliminate Medicare and Medicaid in favor of affordable insurance; made so, by reducing the risk of litigation and the incidence of futile care.
Here's an interesting graph I found:
The sickest 5% of people incur 50% of the medical costs. And the vast majority of that is spent in the last weeks of life, treating terminal, irreversible, catastrophic, and futile conditions.
Tort reform, lawsuit reform. Malpractice insurance is makes up about 40% of what we all pay at the doctors.
The cost for healthcare in the US is outrageous. It is strongly linked to the insurance costs. And there my friends lies the problem. The industry of sewing your neighbor/doctor/motorist/dentist/etc is out off control in the US.
The doctor who delivered my three kids in NYC told me how much he pays in insurance. It's in the hundreds of thousands of $ per year. ing out of control!
It is also no small matter that other countries step on the backs of our medical researchers, manufacturers, and pharmaceutical companies; reverse engineer drugs and equipment and then sell it back to consumers at a drastically reduced cost.
Except that that litigation, however excessive, is unnecessary. Example: My aunt died several years ago, because a doctor mistakenly removed her colon for a procedure. This wasn't a little mistake, that was a biggie... someone was culpable. She survived a few years after the colon was removed, but she was the breadwinner in her family, and could no longer work. They refused to pay and dragged on in court until after she died, when they settled (you pay less after the person dies than if the person lives). This caused tremendous hardship. To put limits on litigation could have easily led to non-payment at all had some idiot/corrupt guy deemed it not worthy.I think tort reform and good, common-sense, futile care legislation would go a long way toward bringing down medical costs.
Then, privatize healthcare completely. Eliminate Medicare and Medicaid in favor of affordable insurance; made so, by reducing the risk of litigation and the incidence of futile care.
Here's an interesting graph I found:
The sickest 5% of people incur 50% of the medical costs. And the vast majority of that is spent in the last weeks of life, treating terminal, irreversible, catastrophic, and futile conditions.
"and caps on compensation for medical professions. That'll lead to quality care for all. No doubt."
Exactly, just like $1M/year doctors guarantees their competence and absence of malpractice.
Well boutons you can always go to Cuba for your medical care.
Or up to Canada. Or Mexico, prices are much cheaper there
and drug prices are too. Just take the day off from the computer,
I assume you don't have a day job, and drive down to Del Rio,
easier to cross there, but don't forget your passport, remember
you aren't an illegal alien so you will have prove citizenship.
TX now has capped tort payments.
Anybody notice your doctor's bills, or your doctor's malpractice premiums, going down?
Maybe you should pratice what you preach.
Inform yourslef before spewing ignorant .
Read this little article by Cal Thomas.
Jewish World Review May 31, 2007 / 14 Sivan, 5767
It takes a socialist village
By Cal Thomas
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has unveiled her economic vision. Should she be given the power to implement it, we can say goodbye to the prosperity and opportunity we have enjoyed since the Reagan years.
In a speech at Manchester School of Technology in New Hampshire, Clinton said it's time to replace President Bush's "ownership society," which she called an "on your own" society, with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity.
Clinton said she prefers a "we're all in it together" society: "I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none."
Except for folks in her position of authority
Doesn't such a society already exist elsewhere? It's called socialism, where government has sought to make all things economically equal and the only equality is that all are equally poor. Wasn't defeating such a society precisely why we fought and won the Cold War? Why does Senator Clinton wish to embrace the principles of the losing side?
Clinton has merely updated the old and discredited (except among socialist dictators) Karl Marx saying: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
Clinton's remarks came before students at a school whose purpose is to train high school kids for careers in the construction, automotive, graphic arts and other industries. She told them, "We have sent a message to our young people that if you don't go to college . . . that you're thought less of in America. We have to stop this."
Her assertion is bunk, but it is the typical class warfare bunk that comes from rich white liberals who want to take money from one group of people and give to others who didn't earn it in hopes they will become loyal Democratic voters.
This is not the philosophy that made America what it is. This is not a land of equal outcome, but of equal opportunity commensurate with one's talents, interests and drive.
In his "The Wealth of Nations," Adam Smith wrote: "It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense. . . . (Kings and ministers) are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will."
I am not robbed by people who have more money than me. I am robbed by a government that wants to penalize my industry and give increasing portions of what I earn to people who do not emulate my principles, morals and ethics.
What have we come to? We once taught our young people the virtues of hard work, saving, personal responsibility and accountability for one's actions, chas y before and fidelity and commitment in marriage, honesty, integrity and virtue — not to mention the Ten Commandments (especially the one about not coveting that which belongs to your neighbor). We now teach them en lement, victimhood, class envy and rights to other people's money. When one robs a bank, it's a crime. When government takes our money, it's called a tax. Same result.
There is something else about Clinton's speech that offends. She suggested that students at a technical high school are inferior to those of higher social rank. This, too, is typical white liberal bunk. Has it occurred to her that many students prefer technical careers — and some make an excellent living at them — to the jobs held by the elites and that some of those jobs (like politician) fit them for nothing of value and turn them into professional snobs?
Senator Clinton should consider the wisdom of a former president, who said, "The collection of any taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. . . . The wise and correct course to follow in taxation is not to destroy those who have already secured success, but to create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to be successful." (Calvin Coolidge inaugural address, March 4, 1925)
Now there's a real economic vision!
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