Posted on 05/13/2009 10:14:47 AM PDT by curiosity
The time for universal health insurance coverage has come. Everybody seems to know that -- except for the Republicans, all too many of whom cling to traditional denunciations of universal coverage as socialism... The Republicans could instead offer a consumer-controlled universal coverage system, like that in Switzerland, in which the people, not the government, control how much they spend on health. There are no government health insurance programs. Instead, the Swiss choose from about 85 private heath insurers... This consumer-driven, universal coverage system provides excellent health care for the sick, tops the world in consumer satisfaction, and costs 40 percent less, as a percentage of GDP, than the system in the US...The Republican choice is clear. They can whine while the Democratic Congress enacts a government-controlled system, or they can embrace a Republican approach to Universal Coverage.
(Excerpt) Read more at business.theatlantic.com ...
Our “free market” health care system doesn’t work because it isn’t a free market system. It’s already half-socialist. What I fail to understand is how making it fully socialist will make it better.
...oh yeah... I almost forgot: IBTZ!
They can have my total blessing, right after they get Mediscare and Ponzi Security solvent. Until then NO MORE ENTITLEMENTS!
Curiosity BONED the cat......is a troll.
The entire world’s Universal HELLcare systems are anal remoras off America’s inovation—from drugs to new technology to new procedures. If we go to universal hellcare/rationed care/death-sentence...no new technology and inovation. Swiss care will become Zimbabwe care. Get it rumpswab?
I can't see how any private medical practice can stay in business with such a high rate of delinquency. So your job seems to be on the line there.
That’s a much better explanation of his system than McCain was ever able to produce.
US docs would be overjoyed to pay only $15k per year for liability insurance.
I think McCain's public explanation was intentionally vague. Had he explained it, he would have lost even more voters.
(kind of like being for "immigration reform" without mentioning amnesty)
Dah, Comrade!
As the Sonntags Zeitung tells it, a patient identified as Bernhard M. went to the common ward of the Aargau Cantonal Hospital for excruciating hip pain. The hospital reportedly gave him two options: he could wait three months for surgery. Or he could pay four thousand francs and not only be operated on more quickly, but by the hospital’s top surgeon.Bernhard M. shelled out the four thousand francs.That story in the Sunday papers has since unleashed a wave of criticism.
JACQUES DE HALLER: “If somebody can just come and line up bank notes and say ‘well I’m richer than you’ that’s really not acceptable.”
Jacques de Haller is the head of the Swiss Medical Association.
http://worldradio.ch/wrs/news/switzerland/two-tier-medical-care-haunting-switzerland.shtml?11355
Collections has become a huge part of medical practice. We have a sign as do all doctors about payment due at time of service, but as with most doctors you get the co-pay and then bill the insurance, W/O the not allowed and bill the patient. Most people have no idea the sort of overhead that is involved in a medical office, they think doctors are getting rich and don’t have any idea about rent, cost of supplies, malpractice insurance, workers comp insurance and dead beats... plus the nurses and PA’s the cost of hiring people to produce the required reports and people to do the billing and collections... in most cases the doctor is the last bill people think to pay when money is tight...
They certainly would! Try more than that a month for some specialties. As to deciding what a doctor should be allowed to make? WHO are we in a free market to determine how much someone who spent 16 years or more in school is allowed to make? Do “they” then decide how much the doctor can pay his nurse, his P.A., his billing people, his transcribers??? That is not the America I know... that IS Obama’s America.
Just wow! I read an article mentioning the email but hadn’t seen it with that last response about “backing down the ‘they are nationalizing the bank’ crowd.” Thanks for pinging me.
It’s about time people realized that there is no two-party system. There is them (government elites) and us (the people).
I long for the good all days... when Government was “of the people.” I wonder when we lost that.
I have lived and worked under the Swiss system and I have found it to be nearly ideal because of the following points:
The responsibility to be insured and to find the best insurance should rest with the individual or the family, NOT the employer.
The government can mandate that everyone is covered, and then the insurance companies can have a three-tier system. In Switzerland this system is based on a hospital stay, and the tiers are called “ward,” “semi-private,” and “private.” The benefits of each go along with the premium costs. Like everything else in life — you get what you pay for.
No company can turn you down because of pre-existing conditions. If you pay your premium, you are in. Some people are deathly ill. Some never need a doctor.
The Swiss are absolutely INGENIOUS with accident insurance. It is covered by the employer, for all accidents no matter how they happened. Yes, your employer will pay the costs whether you were injured on the job or the ski slope. This kills the entire cottage industry of insurance sleuthing, workman’s comp, etc. It also lowers the cost of Human Resources work in a company.
The lowest kind of insurance, “ward” coverage, can be made to be quite cheap. The highest, “private,” can be quite high. Most people would be able to afford “semi-private.” Government may wish to supplement for the poorest Americans some or all of the premium costs directly to the insured, so that no middleman need be involved.
Employers can pay higher salaries!
I hope and pray the Republicans do counter with a Swiss-like plan.
Switzerland is NOT a poor example. As an American living and working in Switzerland, I felt back then that their health care system (the part involving insurance, NOT hygiene or legal matters) is far superior to ours and CAN work within our framework indeed.
I’ve thought long and hard about it and we COULD do it here, we really could, and it fits our model of fairly free market as well as freedom to choose for individuals.
It could really work here. Someone needs to believe in it and explain it well to the public.
We do indeed need to get illegals OUT of our health care system. We need to refuse all unpaid care for anyone not in danger of dying in the next hour. For everyone else, we should provide them with transport back over the border.
I never paid 90% tax rate. My 13th salary paid my taxes each year. (Swiss receive 13 salaries for 11 months of work.)
Also, when we are talking about adopting the Swiss model, we are talking in the health INSURANCE part only. We are not talking about hospital subsidies, etc.
We are not talking REPRODUCING Switzerland. Just adapting the health insurance model into our country.
No! We are not talking about government controls. The only government mandate would be that everyone must be in the system. Everyone must have health care coverage. This is already law re automobile insurance.
The lowest cost of coverage would be quite low, and it would be between a poor person and his government to see if he could qualify for some kind of adjunct to his income to help him pay the very low premiums. I’d want it between the individual and the government. Let everyone, rich or poor, pay for a policy or be FINED if he ever needed care and could not pay cash. (Thus the very rich can always opt out IF they intend to pay directly out of pocket.)
My Swiss Omi-in-law (Grandma) had a small pension from her years working after her husband died. It was, as they say, a “fixed income.” :) She paid her “ward” premiums herself.
Yes, when she was in hospital she was indeed in a ward-like room with about seven other patients. But she got medical care.
I never liked Holtz-Eakin and he always made me feel queezy with him being McCain’s finance guy... I would like to see more of these documents dumped so we can see everything that went on last September/October.
Of the two options, I'd say the Swiss one is far superior.
Indeed.
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