A post by Pat
To hear it from Obama and the Democrats, the high cost of health care is primarily caused by the greed of private health insurance companies. Big Pharma used to be on the enemies list too, but they struck a deal and have thus far escaped vilification. They are fools if they think they inoculated themselves with lifetime immunity.
Health care is expensive. There are many factors that go into it, not the least of which is that we have tremendous advances in medical technology and pharmacology. There are inefficiencies that can be fixed to help control costs, but the cost curve will keep going up if medical care is to improve and more people are accessing the benefits.
Decisions have to be made about coverage. The health care legislation Congress wants to force down our throats is not the answer and the American people have pretty much made up their minds they don’t want it.
Voter Attitudes Towards Health Care Plan Harden – 58% Opposed
Many have questioned whether those who favor or oppose the health care plan in Congress really know what’s in it. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey suggests that they have a decent understanding of the bill and that voter attitudes towards the legislation have hardened.
While several individual components of the plan are popular, reminding voters of what’s included in the plan has virtually no impact on support for the overall legislation. This suggests that there are not major surprises in the legislation that will cause people to change their opinion of it.
Thirty-nine percent (39%) of voters nationwide support the plan, and 58% are opposed. That’s consistent with our weekly tracking of the issue which has found support between 38% and 41% every week from just before Thanksgiving to the end of 2009.
The Progessive leadership in Congress doesn’t care. They are not driven by a commitment to cut costs or improve care. Nationalized health care is a postulate of the anti-capitalist Left and that’s where they’re taking us. They see themselves as finishing FDR’s grand vision. Sen. Dodd said the health care bill will free the American people from fear. The Democrats say the reason the legislation doesn’t poll well is based in fear.
Fear is the friend and foe of liberals. They’re trying their best to scare us about everything including the actual end of the world in order to force an agenda. It’s their single-minded pursuit of that ruinous agenda of ideological fantasies that scares us.
The Canadians have a government run health care system with private insurance a minimal component. Guess what. They are having problems keeping down costs and keeping up with care. So what is the next step after the government takes over health care and costs continue going up? Higher and higher taxes, “other funding” and the question, “Where is the line on ‘medically necessary’ care”?.
Health Care Must Be About Patients Not Politics
Canada’s claim to fame is that it provides universal coverage for medically necessary physician and hospital services. That’s a tremendous achievement. For the 1960s. Maybe even for 1984, when the Canada Health Act was passed.
Yet from a policy point of view Canada’s health care “system” has essentially remained suspended like a fly in amber for the last 25 years. Notwithstanding all of its grand values and strong ideals, it has failed to keep up with the times.
That’s not to say there hasn’t been innovation. Scientific progress marches on and innovation has brought improved care and expanded treatment options which have helped people’s lives. Inevitably, these scientific and medical advances have led to increasing demands for an ever-expanding range of services.
The promise of Canada’s bold social experiment to ensure universal health care coverage for Canadians remains largely unfulfilled, because we have consistently failed to engage in the debate of the definition of “medically necessary” care. We have also failed to engage in the debate about including coverage for more than just physician and hospital services. Finally, we have failed to recognize that first-dollar coverage in a system funded solely by taxation demands an increase in taxation revenues if the system is to continue to meet the needs of our citizens.
If we are unwilling or unable to increase taxes, we must debate alternative sources of funding. We must decide how broadly and how deeply to extend our publicly funded insurance.
We must agree on the definitions of “medical necessity” and we must agree on the appropriate levels of societal responsibility for medically necessary services.
We are extremely fond here in Canada of being holier-than-thou when it comes to comparing our health care reality to that of our American neighbours.
Yet Canadian patients face many of the same challenges.
Does anyone question the fact that right now, across this country, there are Canadians doing without needed prescription medication because we are nearing the end of the year and their supplementary drug insurance has run out?
Or that there are laid-off workers coming to their doctors asking which of their prescriptions they can “live without” since their employer-provided supplementary insurance is gone and they can no longer afford them all?
Or that some self-employed people, part-time workers, and others, have no access to pooled-risk group supplementary health insurance?
Does anyone question the fact that right now, across this country, there are Canadians struggling to care for an elderly parent themselves because they cannot afford supplementary home care?
Read the full text and note that Dr. Doig laments that a large system doesn’t act as effectively as a small system while advocating an even more nationalized approach and increased scope to Canadian health care.
The Canadians like their health care approach despite its problems. Good luck to them. Fifty-eight percent of Americans don’t want the government offered reforms knowing costs will not go down as promised. The cost of health care is going to hurt one way or another. Higher premiums for private health insurance or higher taxes, we inevitably have to pay the cost unless we allow the quality of care to deteriorate. Inefficiencies will be rampant in a government run system such that we can have deteriorating care and rising costs. Rationing will be part of any system but there will be little accountability and no other options in a government run system.
Sometimes we just have to swallow our medicine. Good health care is costly. This is a tough problem. The American people aren’t buying any snake oil cures.
My father lives in Canada with his wife and he is getting a good dose of government run heathcare. It is adding up to no heath care.
Heathcare is expensive because it can’t be automated to any great extent. It requires one-on-one attention of a trained and experienced professional. He has only so much time in his career. Consider taking an antique precision clock worth thousands in for repair. You have to find someone who has experience with that type of clock, who will take it apart, make a new component if necessary, and re-assemble the clock so it works. Not a job for the guy at the mall. The cost will be around $120 per hour, but of course it’s worth it. Drugs are similar, in that they represent literally billions worth of time and energy from expert researchers to create. Profit is the reward. When government takes over, politics decides the direction of research, who will conduct the research, and what direction it will take. New treatment innovations will cease. The medical profession will be flooded with foriegn doctors. The training requirements will be lessened. Medicine will go from being a good solid upper-middleclass profession to being a true middle income profession, hardly reflective of the investment of time and money that goes into it. As far as the government is concerned, we are all cattle, or perhaps sheep would be the better term.
Good one Pat! Of course dems are like Canadians in believing that only Government can solve the problem of this “Health Care Right”. In fact, the Canadian system (and the current senate bill) are just systems that ration coverage through government. Government decides what coverage the people can buy (with lobbyists, this becomes everything from restless leg syndrome, birth control and abortion and even viagra). They also decide how much can be spent on you based on your situation (i. e. the metaphorical death panels which are really just government rationing limits). The senate bill is just a big public option like Canada since it basically tells private companies what they can offer and charge, which will eventually topple the market and lead to single payer system.
None of this lowers healthcare costs. We cover 30 million more citizens and the costs go down? We tax medical devices, drugs etc by $500 billion and costs go down? We increase coverage people are required to have (HSA’s become limited under the senate bill, apparently the government knows that we want higher premiums and then lower costs IF we get sick ) and costs go down? We create over 80 new government agencies and politicize healthcare with lobbyists etc and costs go down? Only socialists can try to defend this insanity.
Democrats keep complaining that costs keep going up so we need to pass this bill or we will go bankrupt. We need to pass this bill or another 10,000 people without insurance will die every second (or whatever fake study they want to site). Republicans are obstructing this bill so that more are dying (when they have enough votes to pass this without the Republicans). We always have this fake argument during the Obama era. Dems are right and R’s are obstructionists. The lame media never reports the fact that if Dems actually put some actual good things in this bill – buying across states, encouraging more HSA products so there is a real market where patients can shop and tort reform (sorry, not the pitiful $25 million the Pres offered to study the issue); then Democrats could get Republicans to support the bill and put Republicans out of business. The media just wants to be excited about the next “landmark” thing like a bill, new president etc.
I guess my point here is that Democrats want to ruin the healthcare system that actually helps Canada. We subsidize their medicine, procedures and many come here for the operations and drugs their country will not let them have. They have doctor shortages and the Dems here will cause more shortages so that costs will continue to go up. Rx costs will rise and fewer medicines will be offered since profit margins will be lowered by our government. This senate bill is just like the frog in the water. The Canadians have been in the water for awhile now and its really heating up and they are jumping out. The same will happen to us with this new healthcare destruction if we dont take care of things in 2010.
“good health care is costly”
Yes, it costs something, but I question that it must be costly, or at least that it must be as much as it is now. There are things that can be done to lower the cost some, none of which are being done in the current proposals.
I think first off, we need to actually let the health care system function as something resembling a free market, which it does not currently. I think some regulation is in order to keep quality in place.
Secondly, we need to end the system of incentives that encourages people to treat the medical system as a cost-free “slot machine” that on “one of those pulls” will bank them hundreds of thousands of dollars. Tort reform has been tried in a few states and localities, and in every case it has lowered some medical costs by as much as 30%, and increased available medical services.
Thirdly, we need to treat health insurance like, uh, insurance, something that mitigates risks. One reason health insurance premiums have been rising is that health insurance companies are not allowed to act as just insurance companies. They are being turned into health financing organizations, where they not only handle risks, but also routine check ups and preventive care.
There should be a variety of health financing options available to handle what typical catastrophic health insurance won’t, for people who want that, but regulations around insurance should focus on punishing fraud, from both insurance companies and beneficiaries.
The problem with the current proposals is they’re not really about fixing the problem. They’re about shifting costs, shifting power, and increasing dependency for political gain. The efforts over decades to concentrate more power over health care in government have been the crassest form of playing with people’s lives, all the while saying “we’re here to help”. People misinterpret comments like this, thinking that I’m bashing government workers. I do bash some of them, but government workers are not the point. The point is aimed at the power grab being done by politicians.
And another factor contributing to high medical costs.
For Ailing Illegal Immigrants, No Relief Back Home
It’s a sob story about the poor illegal. I’m very sorry about her plight, but I’m also sorry for the indigent people in Atlanta who no longer have Grady Hospital to go to. Mexico will have to solve its own health care problems some other way.
Well, it’s not just in Canada anymore: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHoYSI84VdL0
Happy New Year!