Posted on 07/20/2017 3:03:27 PM PDT by ForYourChildren
Probably because like everyone else posting comments on politically related boards, you get ingrained to think in an us versus them mentality. If somebody you don't like says something, you think it must be wrong. I'm not saying you're discounting my arguments entirely, but I think you're biased against considering them fairly because you've seen that there is a great uproar if anybody says on FreeRepublic that single payer might have it's good points. Have all of those people joining in on the uproar made up their own mind logically? Or are a lot of them just joining in because they know they'll fit in well without ever taking the time to examine the problems? Or maybe because they've learned the talking points well for "our side" and they can spout them off reflexively?
The world has changed since the days before cancer treatments and synthetic insulin and antibiotics and brain surgery. It isn't all that long ago that doctors mostly could just set broken bones and lance boils and that sort of thing. Over time, the medical industry has developed million dollar cures for all kinds of problems that people used to just die from. Can't blame the people in the medical industry for the high costs of healthcare nowadays. They can make good money with those cures they've developed. Free enterprise leads to all kinds of improvements and we're all better off because of it. But people become aware that those pricy cures are now available. Joe Sixpack doesn't think that only people on Medicaid or millionaires should have access to that cure if it is something that he might need once in his life. So all the people buying insurance expect the insurance to pay for that treatment for everybody that needs it. Since the treatments have become so incredibly expensive in a lot of cases, the insurance companies have a greater and greater incentive to find reasons to deny payment for the treatment. If it's big enough dollars involved, they'll scrutinize everything in your medical history to see if there is anything you failed to disclose when you applied for coverage and retroactively cancel your policy. Insurance companies make money by collecting premiums, not by paying exorbitant claims. The only control on that is a government insurance commissioner getting involved in that free market solution the insurance company came up with to overrule the insurance company.
Health insurance is not like house insurance or car insurance. Outside of a rare liability claim, the potential cost to the insurance company doesn't approach millions of dollars. For auto insurance, at most it's the value of the car. For homeowners, at most it's the value of house and the belongings for a total loss. For health insurance, there are a lot of people that receive thousands of dollars of care and medications, year after year after year. And the health insurance company is prohibited from canceling the policy just because you're a bad risk, like they can with auto or homeowners insurance. On that same track, since they can't cancel coverage after they find out you're a bad risk, it becomes vital that they not issue a policy in the first place to anyone they'll lose money on. Free market approach would be that they could insist on genetic testing to identify anyone who might need expensive care and refuse to issue them a policy. But since it is a private company potentially demanding the genetic tests instead of an intrusive government, I suppose everyone on FreeRepublic would say it's okay.
Since the medical industry has a profit motive for coming up with a whole bunch more million dollar cures, the odds of Joe Sixpack having the possibility of taking advantage of one of those cures sometime in his lifetime keeps going up. If he gets a cure, he has the potential of being in a position to get ANOTHER million dollar cure before he reaches the end of his life. Back in the olden days, he would have just died before ever reaching the point of needing the second cure. And if Joe Sixpack doesn't need one of those cures? He's bitching every year about how much his insurance costs, because the premiums have to cover the risk of the insurance company in covering their potential big outlays. He's complaining to his congressman that SOMETHING HAS TO DONE about the high healthcare costs.
Like I said in an earlier post, the cost of all the treatments are coming out of the economy already. With the Obamacare approach and with any free market approach, Joe Sixpack is mad as heck that he has to pay so darned much for insurance and deductibles and co-pays. If you cover the cost to the economy through taxes he'll probably still complain some about the amount of taxes he has to pay, but then again maybe not. I don't know anybody that gets as worked up about how high their taxes are like people are getting about healthcare costs. Probably because healthcare costs is an isolated expense they can identify and focus their attention on.
President Trump is "right as rain."
A version of single payer was tried in Tennessee beginning in 1994.
It grew so rapidly that it consumed close to 80% of the state's entire budget in less than 10 years.
From Wikipedia:
The total annual budget for TennCare increased from $2.64 billion in 1994 to more than $8.5 billion in fiscal year 2005, with essentially no change in the number of participants enrolled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TennCare
Also, they found it was wrought with financial fraud.
Needless to say that made some drastic adjustments and in a hurry.
Here you go again with Democrat talking points, this time on the Constitution!
Have you ever lived in another country under single payer? I have. It is a disaster.
Medicare is limited to people 65 and above.
There is a reason, and that is human psychology. When people have to pay directly for a service, they are very aware of the cost. Hence, they shop around and try to make deals to save money where they can.
A lot of the reason for the exorbitant costs of health care now is the separation between the care and the bill. "Insurance will cover it" makes a strong disincentive to shop around for the best deal. Likewise, "the government will pay for it" means people won't care at all about the cost, even though they are ultimately paying for it. Furthermore, the cost goes up the more bureaucrats there are to administer the plans.
Another factor is that when something is perceived as "free" the demand for it skyrockets. People self-triage when they pay for the healthcare themselves. But if they think it's free, then that self-control mechanism disappears. The number of doctor visits goes up, and the system cannot provide for the resulting level of demand. (Why do you think the abortion industry wants federal subsidies? Because they know that if women had to pay for their own abortions, they would be less likely to choose to get pregnant, and the profit in abortion would plummet.)
How so? I'm saying the country isn't operating under the Constitution as written. We're operating under Supreme Court decisions.
The Constitution doesn't allow for the federal government getting involved in the population's medical expenses, but the Roberts court decided Obamacare is constitutional. The fact that we're living under Obamacare as we're sitting here now is pretty strong evidence that if it's the Constitution on one hand, and the Court on the other, what the Court decides is what we'll actually live under. There is no point is pretending I live in some fantasyland where the opposite is the case, no matter how appealing that fantasyland might seem. You can go ahead and wave your copy of the Constitution at the Court if you want, but it won't accomplish anything, and we're never going back to operating under the concept of a limited federal government, and especially a limited supreme court, that we lived under in the 1800s. I wish it were otherwise, but like they say, if wishes were horses...
The book I mentioned earlier, Crisis and Leviathan, lays it out pretty well how we got here.
Nope. Lived all my life in the US, where loads of people also think what we have is a disaster, whether you're talking pre- or post-Obamacare.
Good points.
I'm not sure I agree with all your points but I do appreciate you taking the time to offer a good argument, I'm sure you knew would be super popular here. After two years of snark and jibe (mainly on my part) a nice change. Something to think about
One of the things that baffles me is how better technology doesn't seem to make the cost of medicine or delivery go down like it seems in every other industry. Maybe it is and the high price cures you mention are just coming online over these next several decades.
DNA, Healthcare and Insurance, those don't seem to mix well. I'm hoping the DNA exam will allow problems to be dealt with earlier rather than later. If I'm an insurance company and I know you are going to get something awful and expensive well - out of the pool leper.
We need a list of basic common sense reforms - like for one thing prices I can see for what I'm getting. My dentist seems to be able to handle a price list but he only in my mouth.
Oh and robot doctors are on the way so we have that to look forward to as well. I think Watson is being deployed with these Health Kiosques.
On a side note the Xbox Kinect One can sense your blood pressure(I think might be heart rate - I think the watson kiosque can do the pressure).
Thanks again and maybe lets start working towards slate of common sense reforms not this comprehensive solutions that don't seem to be realistic in a country this size population and geographically. Maybe Dr. don't have to pay taxes so they can keep prices down I don't know but I'm sure there are many creative ideas on how to make things better that are not so heavy handed and exclusionary
Restore the free market, which we have not had for decades, and the health care will be the best in the world
I think debate and discussion are better than everybody just parroting talking points back and forth with people they agree with.
I don't think there ARE any solutions that the majority of the people will like. If there was a simple fix, we'd already have it. It doesn't help that even if somebody comes up with one, everybody on the opposite side of the political spectrum has an incentive to demonize the proposal.
The only thing everybody will agree on is that their healthcare costs are too expensive. Does anybody ever think about or ask "Well, just how much do you think would be a fair amount for you to pay for your own healthcare?". No. People just say it's too expensive. That's all they think about it and that's all they WANT to think about it. They believe that they can get 21st century healthcare at 1950's cost, and if they're like a lot of people on the right they're convinced that "selling across state lines" will magically make their annual healthcare costs less than what they pay for their smartphones.
When people got fatal health problems in the olden days, they died. Nowadays, we keep them alive and people call it a success. We're keeping people alive into their 90's and 100's now and all of the healthcare they need has to get paid for from some source.
Competition drives down prices, but technology generally doesn't. The cost of letting somebody die because there is no solution, is going to be lower than the cost of applying the new solution that didn't previously exist. Everybody is happy about the cure, and the healthcare industry is happy about making money by supplying the cure. Everybody is happy that is, until the check comes and people start complaining about the cost of healthcare.
Wow.
Thanks for the info on single payer in TN.
In thinking about it awhile, I think you've hit on the real solution to driving down healthcare costs.
If we'd outlaw ALL third party payments for healthcare, whether that third party is the government or an insurance company or some charitable organization, we'd see a change in people's attitudes toward healthcare.
That's not something we'll see happening though. There are too many politicians reliant on the political contributions they get from one level or another of the healthcare/insurance/pharmaceuticals industry.
We have disaster because of the concentration of power over health in the hands of bureaucrats, insurance and special interests. You propose to do more of the same under single payer. Why is it that you cannot see this as a conservative?
Moreover, by promoting the notion of judicial supremacy, you are undermining our fight to reverse the trend.
If single payer is OK, then what part of Bernie’s platform is *not* OK??
Some things are simply irreversible. At this point it is no more possible to reverse what has been developed than to unfry an egg.
We have disaster because of the concentration of power over health in the hands of bureaucrats, insurance and special interests. You propose to do more of the same under single payer.
Pretty much the same as my comment above. Sometimes you just need to make the best of a bad situation. I won't argue that single payer wouldn't have some downside effects. I just think the advantages would outweigh the disadvantages.
If single payer is OK, then what part of Bernie’s platform is *not* OK??
I know next to nothing about his platform. A quick glance at a wiki article on his positions makes me think I'd be on his side regarding cannabis legalization and surveillance of American citizens, but not much else.
There are simple fixes out there, the problem is it's not politically profitable to implement them.
This is the reason I have pleaded for most of my adult life for a President who has a solid background in successful business.
Why, when medicare and social security are going bankrupt, would anyone want a single-payer system? Not following the logic.
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