[aquaadverse]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

the straw man arguments that you throw out show a lot about the problem with the many people's understanding of the current health care debate.

I forget you know everything. My bad. I'll tell my who Dad was a Controller for a midsized hospital and an auditor for Blue Cross prior to that, for a period that spanned the the '70's to the '90's. He'll write you so you can clear up his misconceptions.

the issue isn't any "yammering" about "The only industrial nation without universal health care", that isn't the only point in the debate.

I never said it was. You might want clue in Reid and Pelosi , it's continually being used by them. Ask people where HMOs came from. 99% percent will say insurance companies. And they are convinced if the government takes over it'll get better. You might want to tell Obama, it's his main talking point implying we spend more and get less and this is caused because there isn't enough participation by our government. "Taking back" and "rights" are pretty prevalent. He isn't going to actually answer people's concerns, it'll be blamed on special interest groups and wingnuts. The "only evil special interests are keeping you from [insert benefit]" is pretty common rhetoric on the issue.

You don't hear why it isn't going to work because of our sheer size and the way our economy is setup prevents it. New MDs have huge financial obligations. Our hospitals and clinics aren't publicly owned and primarily supported by government collected tax money. People are sent bills. I firmly believe the majority of US citizens are absolutely clueless of how the system works. Attempting to simply cover people is going to be a messy disaster. I understand it better than many, quite probably better than you.

the issue is we spend more on health care than any other industrialized country on the planet, spend more of our gdp on health care than any other industrialized country on the planet, have health care costs increasing 2x the rate of other goods, have health insurance costs that have increased over 2x the rate of inflation over the last couple of years and 3x the rate of inflation over the last decade, and also have the rising cost of health care entitlements consuming more and more of the federal and state budgets.

Thanks for clearing up health care costs too much. Now why does it cost so much and how do you fix it? The problem and the solution aren't separate in most peoples minds. Which is the point. He is trying to fix an afford it problem with an access to it solution. We don't have an access problem, but the solution should give us one. You won't solve the crisis by insuring more people and the half ass, weak stab at cost containment of the current proposals. All those smaller hospitals in rural farm country aren't closed because the beds weren't occupied, they either couldn't afford the equipment required for reasonable liability rates or physicians needed a bigger pool themselves to cover expenses. It caused access problems because affordable wasn't addressed. It still isn't.

You will have less Doctors addressing the segment that is most critical and the fastest growing. That happens because defensive medicine and lowering lawsuit profile is currently very high priority.

and that is with a system that is not the best in the world at delivering care, and not even in the top 20 by most measurements.

Again you confuse access and affordable. People aren't getting maimed and killed from our inept health care system at the point of treatment. It's that they can't afford to get that treatment. Hospitals aren't expanding the morgues.

Doctors are refusing Medicare patients. It pays less than it costs to do procedures and it takes 4 months to get paid. Building another massive government entity where you spend money you don't earn and your performance is tied to tenure and not production. Saying "This is what you get for [insert procedure]", without making any effort to deal with other contributing factors is stupid and will fail.

while family doctors do not make a much a many other medical specialties, they do make more than others. it isn't the pay scale for a gp that is reducing those ranks, it's the allure of other specialties that attracts doctors to those areas.

Alright, even ceding your false point, which I'll do for the discussion sake, how do you fix it?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30430792/

http://www.boston.com/news/health/ar..._doctors_gone/

Here's a quick search:
http://tinyurl.com/l8oghn

I count the UK, New Zealand, South Africa and more with the type of system being touted as a "cure" having mild to severe shortages of primary care professionals. These are places that started with Doctors being paid much less and responsible for far less administrative and legal burdens. I'm 100% serious that a large chunk of the voters have got it in their heads a USDA treatment card is going to make care better for them

if you or anyone else has a better way to reform the health care system than by congress, let's hear it. the system is not going to reform itself, there's no reason they would.

Ahhh the anything is better than nothing argument. Since I'm against the current proposal it means I want nothing changed. I don't think birth control should be taught in public schools so I'm against birth control.

I never said Congress shouldn't reform health care. I said Congress directly managing the system is going to be disastrous. The CBO and most of the analysis I've seem to agree that it will worsen the situation. I think Congress has caused much of it by mandating, with noble intent, HMOs and other management by large group theory and refusing to curb lawsuits, not stepping on drug companies etc....

I happen to believe taking the trillions they want to use to make a Medicare-on-steroids system to cover everyone would be better used to lower costs so everyone can afford coverage again. Our previous free market system worked. It was the best in the world. It crashed because Congress decided to mandate coverage terms in the mid '70's and they continued to dick with it right up to now. It created an environment that instead of lowering the cost for higher cost patients, saw the nonregulated items become $20 aspirins. It killed individual plans. They had to offer certain procedures to everyone in the group regardless of age, health and preexisting conditions.

Reform the tort and lawsuit system. When you have malpractice underwriters settling cases because the costs of litigation is more than the settlement, something needs to be done. Regular folks show a perplexing ability to give outlandish settlements under the "punish the rich bastards" ignoring the costs are merely passed on. "Money will never make up for [insert reason for suit] and the plaintiffs aren't looking to profit from [insert reason for suit], but unfortunately it is still the only way to send [name defendant] a clear message such unconscionable, unethical practices will not be tolerated." Yeah, that will show them.

One of my friends is a surgeon who specializes in micro-vascular issues. He pops a cork at the 4 lawsuits his malpractice company settled where he felt he had no liability. If he refused to settle he lost coverage. Funny how trial lawyers aren't a "special interest", eh? It almost like Congress and the White House are filled with people with law degrees and little private sector experience.

Make the FDA more efficient by submitting the most critical and widest beneficial to a fast track process. It is far too complex and costly. Then lower the time for the approval or rejection in a prudent fashion. Then shorten the period of protection before generics hit. Go back to limiting prescription medicine to trade publications.

The government can buy drugs in bulk at set prices. People "misunderstand" and lump drug prices and medical procedures in a single group. This is counterproductive to reforming the process. There is much more that could be done, it wouldn't require massive new lead ass GI overseers and would be easily adjusted because the system is already there. It's BS to claim no one has ideas, haven't put them out for examination and only want Obama to fail.

But the biggest issue and creeping resource sucker is bunches of people passing information back and forth and adherence to cutting off the end of the roast principle. I'm sure you've heard of the newly married husband asking his wife why she cut off the end of roast off before putting it in the oven. "It's the way my Mother did it." Still curious, he called his Mother-in-Law who told him it was because that was what her Mother did. Unsatisfied he called the nursing home only to be in formed the reason for the practice was, "My favorite pan that did best job was a little too short."
That doesn't happen as much in the private sector because it's their money, it doesn't have to crawl through committees full of people whose priority is getting reelected and stockholders don't need to wait 4 years to toss CEOs.

I refused to believe a government who left tobacco legal for decades after an avalanche of evidence showed it to cause long, lingering suffering and deaths is who I want actively managing the process. Activities that qualify as antitrust and racketeering are SOP under Lobbyist.