As we limp into the end of 2010, the lies about health reform do not abate. PolitiFact, a website run by the St. Petersburg Times, has attempted to evaluate the various claims about health reform over the past two years, assigning "True," "Half True," "False" and "Pants on Fire" to the many different claims, both positive and negative, about what health reform means for America.
PolitiFact's "lie of the year" was that the Affordable Care Act was a "government takeover of health care." This of course stimulated a bit of a firestorm of controversy, including an editorial in the Wall Street Journal this week attempting to refudiate (yes I said refudiate -- it's a word now, right?) that claim. The Journal agrees that health reform was not an attempt by government to take over the means of production of health care -- in fact, reform leaves the private sector insurers pretty much in charge as they were before. But the Journal warns us that insurers will now be "government contractors" and that could lead to socialism and that would mean trouble in River City. Actually, the Medicare program already uses private insurers as contractors, and you don't hear a lot of crying by seniors over the fact that private insurers administer the Meidcare benefits to them.
So is health reform a government takeover or not? You all know that I do not believe it is, but let's see what Huffington Post readers think. Was PolitiFact right to call it the "lie of the year" or has the role of government been so enlarged that we can now assume Washington is in charge of what our physicians prescribe?
This debate will not die any time soon. But here's one final thought for you in 2010 -- just this week, the Los Angeles Times noted that because of the horrible spectre of health reform, a fear of losing market share, and federal and state regulation in California, has caused major health insurers to back down on their promise to stop offering individual health insurance policies for children. They will now begin offering those policies in 2011, and while they will charge more for children with pre-existing conditions, they have to accept them, If this is a government takeover of private health insurance, tell that to the families of these kids who have been priced out of the market or not even been able to insure their children at all.
Education for all are free, and students gets around 1000 USD a month while they study, for living costs. Therefore they have no debt after studying.
We pay an 8% health tax, that covers all expenses. You can buy supplement insurance, but most people don't.
All is free exept dental care and drugs. Dental care is supported, and if your drug costs is more than about 180 USD a year, the state pays 75%.
Everybody has a right to sick leave with pay.
That costs about 55% pc of what you pay in the USA.
All the conservatives of the US see is: ZOMG SOCIALISM!!111 They believe this system will require them to work for free and will keep them from becoming millionaires. They do not care that there was never a chance of them becoming millionaires when they have a sub-par education and suffer from a plethora of preventable illnesses. The American Dream is the illusion that they cling to while they frantically vote for the people who actively work against their interests.
http://www.singlepayeraction.org/
Single Payer Action
Vermont is working on a single-payer plan...
http://www.singlepayeraction.org/blog/?p=2633
Pure Single Payer, Viable Single Payer, and William Hsiao ½ Single Payer Action
"Vermont’s Governor elect – Peter Shumlin – promised during his campaign this year to deliver single payer health insurance to state’s residents.
And also earlier this year, the government of Vermont called on Harvard School of Public Health Economics Professor William Hsiao to come up with three health care plans.
Plan one – a pure single payer plan.
Plan two – a public option plan.
And plan three – what Hsiao calls “a viable and practical single payer plan.”
We reached Professor Hsiao last night working late at his office.
Hsiao says he plans to deliver the three plans to Vermont sometime around January 15, 2011.
We wanted to know why Professor Hsiao would develop plan one – a pure single payer plan – and then plan three – what he calls “a viable and practical single payer plan.”
Aren’t they the same thing?..."
http://www.eucomed.org/upload/pdf/tl/2005/extranet/communications/resources/healthcast2020.pdf
HealthCast 2020: Creating a Sustainable Future
"...England builds a patient safety reporting system on same concept as aviation safety system in U.S.
The Philippines export nurses around the globe.
The U.S. turns to Indian and Australian companies for outsourcing radiology readings
Companies in South Africa contract with the NHS in England for a variety of surgical procedures
Australia enhances U.S.’s DRG system, which is subsequently adapted by Singapore, France and Germany.
Pharmaceutical makers move clinical trials from U.S. and Europe to India....
Some employers are sending employees outside the country for surgery; e.g.:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/11/news/companies/health_care_medical_travel/index.htm
One way to cut health care costs? Outsource surgeries - Aug. 11, 2010
"NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Tina Follett and her husband Patrick are in Panama on a two-week all-expenses paid trip. But Tina isn't on vacation. She's there to get surgery..."
Dental work is much cheaper in Mexico:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/07/smallbusiness/denticenter/index.htm
For cut-rate dental care, head to Mexico - Jul. 7, 2010
Consequently...the Public Option becomes more likely. (which is fine with me)...
The auto argument was discounted long ago.
The fact is their is no law today that requires Americans all buy a product form a private company. We have Mandatory insurance in Massachusetts...the minimu plan currently costs $10,000 a year...the government cannot require residendt earning $50,000 to buy it...their is a penalty provision for failure to do so...but is ignored as uneforecable.
First the requirement is a state requirement not a federal one.
Secondly the requirement is that you buy insurance to protect others from your bad driving not yourself. Liability insurance is the requirement which only ensures that the person you harm will be covered. It is surely not to spread the costs among those who are not involved in an accident.
Thirdly the auto insurance requirement does not apply to you unless you choose to drive.
The healthcare requirement forces you to protect yourself using only the method the federal government allows (you cannot self insure), and is a requirement on every living person in the US unless you have political friends who will exempt you.
This is an unprecendented and immoral method of enriching insurance companies and increasing political power over every single American.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/corpocracy
corpocracy - definition of corpocracy by the Free Online Dictionary...
"...A society dominated politically and economically by large corporations.."
There will be NO public option unless it benefits for-profit health care insurers.
The U.S. will remain the largest country where health care is a privilege, not a right.
The people who are against the Obama care must not realize that the tax payer pays for the treatment of the ones who do not have insurance. If they want to cut the cost of their own insurance payments then they should support everyone having health insurance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcjMoihbIZc
YouTube - Al Franken on medical bankruptcy
The Healthcare Reform Act has been described as everything from "Socialized Medicine" to "No Health Insurer Left Behind", which is more accurate.
We granted monopolies to private insurers back in 1944 when they were all non-profit public benefit agencies. Now that they're rapacious for profit entities we've forgotten to undo this mistake. Medicare runs at 95% efficiency (as does the non profit Kaiser-Permanente Group). We let the money changers into the temple, and they get to skim billions off the top while denying care to their insureds.
This isn't about Capitalism, which may be a nice way to sell shoes. If anything health care is a public trust worthy of tight regulation (like the public utilities); it's health care. Why, oh why have we designed a system where only a billionaire can be safe and secure from adversity? Where health status is predicted by net worth. Why does America love its bad ideas so much and seem incapable of walking away from them? Answer: it's the money, stupid.
Let's start with requiring all health care workers to be public employees with physician's entire benefit packages limited to $50,000/yr and less educated workers, like nurses, proportionately lower paid. This alone will lower costs, while utilizing the caring of these caring professions.
To make a medical degree more affordable, let's mandate that an undergraduate degree be unnecessary to enter medical school. Let's have government take over medical schools and admissions subject to the spoils system.
I'm sure that you will agree with these "sensible" reforms and others, because money means nothing to you and your ilk. Win- win.
Here's a suggestion. RETIRE.
The way the new Healthcare Law is set up, it would seem to me, though I am no expert, that this is the way to go.
Legislate Health Insurance Companies into highly regulated, private industries.
Then let them enact the measures needed for cost savings, and, hence, their profits.
Does the right wing whine about Socialist utility companies?
YES.
See “Regulation and Redistribution in Utilities” by Burns, Crawford, and Dilnot for an introduction to the subject.
Leftist corporatism long ago substituted wholly controlling "regulation" for direct "takeover" of industry for two basic reasons.
First, any literal takeover of any industry would place responsibility for results directly upon government itself and the political party who had advocated the takeover and neither are up to the task.
With this responsibility comes accountability, which no politician or political party EVER wants to be saddled with. They want to run other people’s lives and spend other people’s money entirely without accountability, hence leftist’s disingenuous attempt to suppress the term, “ObamaCare”.
Second, even more valuable to politicians than foisting their ideological agenda upon an unwilling public is retaining a pocket full of “enemies of the people” to blame endlessly for the failures of the regulatory takeover as well as the necessity for having taken the industry over in the first place.
Smarmy politicians keep another pocket filled with tiny, innocent victims to trot out, Ibsen like, as the victims of their chosen “enemies of the people”.
In the end, it doesn't matter whether the takeover is direct or a regulatory takeover, the result is the same - the incremental amassing of ever more power in the state and a continuation of the loss of individual American freedom to the state.
Such an erroneous conclusion that would only be reached by one with little or no intellectual depth.
In other words, no single aspect of the current system has been put under the control of the government and you're still trying to make a case for a takeover. Well, once a liar, always a liar, I suppose.
It would seem that duplicity is your forte, rather than mine.