Earn, I hope you are kidding. Jobs are leaving the country thousands at a time because of our corrupt political system. Remember GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA and the WTO? These were all bought and paid for by corporations that want to send their jobs out of the country. Currently the only sector that is adding 1.7 million jobs per year is health care, and that’s because the health care industry is giving $100 million per year in campaign contributions. So we have corporations sending their jobs to countries that have universal health care that they do not have to help fund.

What is it about campaign contributions that is good, and reform that is bad?

Jack Lohman
www.ThrowTheRascalsOut.org

The people! What do we do with all of us that have jobs that will be gone if we reform? As so many jobs in society today are in support of this old fraudulant and wasteful way of bureauracy and the police state? - Earn Snyder
Author "$aving the bureaucracy - Killing the beast"
Modern Progressive Independent
www.appyp.com/fix_main.html

I can always count on you!...

When I come home from work at the end of a long day without having had time to palaver with my politically minded brethren, it is comforting to know that you're there, keeping the herd on the trail to clean clear water!

(That's sort of a Texas cowhand reference for you northerners and easterners and big city types...)

Mark Greene
Texas Democrat in the Middle

Replaced with what? Well, first, with public funding of our electoral system. About $4000 per taxpayer per year is going to the special interests who fund the elections. That's the amount of money the politicians allocate for tax breaks, subsidies, no-bid contracts, etc. For $15 per taxpayer per year we could have full public fiunding of campaigns. If our politicians are going to be beholden to anybody, it should be to the taxpayers that fun>d their elections.

Now secondly, and this is where progress begins, once we get the money out of the political system we can start fixing things like our health care system, broken borders, unbalanced budgets, high taxes, and the dozens of other policies that are killing America.

Jack Lohman
www.ThrowTheRascalsOut.org

We are at the same crossroads with many issues such as healthcare. The fraud and abuse that has consumed these institutions can be removed immediately with automation and a non-profit approach. Insitutions such as healthcare, defense, national security, insurance and the legal system cannot be privatised upon as these social functions are to sensitive and costly to be profitable. And it is a double violation if we are forced to pay with taxes and at the same time pay privately. But the resolution is difficult because so many Americans thrive off of incomes from this fraud and abuse. We have created a monster that many of our own depend on for a paycheck. Easily removed yes, but replaced with what?

Earn Snyder
Author "$aving the bureaucracy - Killing the beast"
Modern Progressive Independent
www.appyp.com/fix_main.html

Thanks Erik, sounds like a great place to start. The details of the "savings account" are the key. It must go beyand an 'employee' basis because there are other individual situations...like spouses and "trust" babies. A more general revenue source (tax) into a shared (or pooled) account could build in the resources for all and simplfy the system. Requiring no catagorical situations other than ill, injured, or well.

Bill"for what we are together"

I Googled "Singapore Health Care" with the full expectation that I would find theirs one of the best in the world, and that it would be a publicly funded "universal" system, similar to Canada, the UK, and what's generally been talked about in here.

I was right on the first point (a recent study ranks Singapore #1), but dead wrong on the second. It is a hybrid system, like our own - consisting of a combination of personal incentives, insurance, and government subsidies for the poor.

http://rru.worldbank.org/Discussions/Topics/Topic23.aspx

Singapore is unique among developed countries in achieving high quality health care and outcomes at low cost. Life expectancy and infant mortality rates are about the best in the world while spending is around 3% of GDP - the lowest cost among developed countries - compared with around 6% in the UK and 14% in the US.

The system differs significantly from national health insurance. Employees are required to contribute 6-8% of their salary to individual savings accounts. These accounts belong to the individual, accumulate over a lifetime, and can be used at the individual's discretion. To address the risk of catastrophic illness Singapore complements these accounts with catastrophic insurance. The government also provides targeted subsides for the poor, the elderly and the unemployed. Both the public and private sector provide health care in Singapore and patients can choose their provider at all levels of care.

I don't think we could import this system wholesale, but it is worth studying. Let me also be clear: our current system sucks - it benefits nobody but the insurance companies, HMO's, Drug Companies and the lackeys and lobbyists that support them.

Thoughts, anyone?

Jump-start Unity’08!
Vote to put 3 Cyber Members on the Steering Committee

I couldn't agree more. Insurance companies and HMOs aren't part of the solution but they're the bulk of the problem.

One important government role you didn't expound on is volume negotiating/purchasing from the pharmaceutical companies. I think its nothing less than a crime that Congress didn't include this important component in their so-called "Medicare reform" legislation. Shows once again the clout of big bizness campaign contributions.

Mark Greene
Texas Democrat in the Middle

The link process seems not to be working. You can copy and paste

http://www.throwtherascalsout.org/How_doctors_are_yielding.htm

Jack Lohman

Having been in the health care industry for 35 years prior to retiring 3 years ago, I've advocated for major changes in the current privatized system.

You can see the arguments at
Eleven facts about our health care crisis and I'd welcome your feedback.

Jack Lohman
Milwaukee, WI

I can't argue with WGD's facts on health care and cost factors. But let's get some "strawman" solutions going...here's one:

The cost corrupting influence in health care seems to me to be the same as the campaign corrupting contributors. The "middle men" in the transations between patient and medical facility (doctor or hospital). They claim to be insurance but in fact are not because they are not scaling risk management against statistical information to define return on investment. They are in fact simply imposing themselves into the cash flow margin that should be going in part to medical providers and in part to reducing cost to patients. And through medicare and civil service emploee coverage the federal governement has embedded them in the industry.

To eliminate them we need a national escrow-like account operated as a pay-as-you-go shared risk pool. As a governement franchised non-profit bank it condusts all transactions between patient and provider and is funded by a general tax (of what ever type we could agree on). In this there is no role for governement to dictate cost but governement would restrict services to primary/preventive care, illness, and injury including hospitalization, pharmacy, and apparatus related to those sevices.

Obviuosly, I think that "Universal" is the people covered and not the coverage.

We must show the middle-men thieves for what they are while the support is there to destroy them. Do your part and sell any and all of your investment in the stock of middle-men companies or mutual funds that support their stock. When their stock is worthless, they'll leave.

Bill"for what we are together"

Here are the facts according to the
National Coalition on Healthcare:

The percentage of people with employment-based health insurance has dropped from 70 percent in 1987 to 59.8 percent in 2024.

It is estimated that we have spent as a nation nearly 10 trillion dollars on health care since 2024, but this expenditure has not resulted in demonstrably better quality of care or better patient satisfaction compared to other nations.

Health care spending reached $1.9 trillion in 2024 - about 4.3 times the amount spent on national defense.

In 2024, employer health insurance premiums increased by 9.2 percent - nearly three times the rate of inflation.

The annual premium for an employer health plan covering a family of four averaged nearly $11,000.

The average employee contribution to company-provided health insurance has increased more than 143 percent since 2024.

Average out-of-pocket costs for co-payments, such as for prescriptions, deductibles and coinsurance for doctor visits, rose 115 percent since 2024.

National surveys consistently show that the primary reason people are uninsured is because health coverage is too expensive.

It is estimated that 600,000 patients have died in hospitals due to medical errors since 2024.

Unnecessary medical accidents, errors and poor quality are the nation's third leading cause of death, just behind cancer and heart disease.

The Institute of Medicine estimates that nearly 100,000 patients die in hospitals each year due to medical errors. This is three times the number of people who die on the highways.

About 18,000 unnecessary deaths occur each year due to lack of health insurance

It is estimated that 77 million Americans over the age of 19 have difficulty paying medical bills, have accrued medical debt, or both.

If we don't do something soon, we'll have priced ourselves out of the world labor market (we've nearly done that already!), coverage will be a luxury, and the middle class will be eroded more than it has been already.

Is 'Universal' Healthcare the answer? I don't know, but something has to be done.

Perhaps we need an administration and a Congress that will 'jawbone' the entire industry (from providers to drug companies and insurance outfits) to putting a lid on costs, rather than gleefully accepting their campaign contributions to design the system the way they want it.

I think there are basic issues with Universal Health Care in the USA. True enough the sense of ownership handed to the insurance industry is a hugh road block and I think a head-on challege will be a loser for sometime yet...but not always!

The federal role , even compared to other country's program, requires a serious evaluation of the best way to function here. A given to me is that anyone...anyone...on our premises should get medical intervention for illness or injury by just entering the nearest facility open to the public. The federal role is to formulate the funding method and implement it. I think we have not seen a justification for expanding the Medicare approach because it just sends a monthly payment (~$700/person) to an insurance company. On a universal basis that would be rather stupid. So, what to do??

First, do we want a finance plan, a service plan, or something in between. What ever is decided, it's rolling out on the first day "Universal Health Care" is accepted.

Second, what is universal? The people covered, the coverage, or both. The wrong choice could bankrupt any economy.

Why would you choose one arrangement or another?

Bill"for what we are together"

My company's family dental plan costs me, for a family of 3, $494/year, this year. And I shelled out >$300 in copay to get a crown done on this great plan. And just like the medical, the premium goes up every year, and so does the copay. For the last 3 years, my pay raises have not covered the increases in the medical and dental premiums.

I suppose I should check to see if it would cost me less to buy my own dental plan than to pay for the one my company (a large multinational company, by the way) "provides" me with.

Respectfully Submitted,

Sketch

to JimD regarding HealthCare and not going without it.
eksglobal on July 25, 2024 - 1:56pm

A family dental insurance plan costs about $238/year.

The poor that I see can afford cell phones, ipods, tatto's, booze, cigaretts, $5000 cool car modification kits, $100 sneakers, 4 pit dogs, bling, etc..

Anyways, any family living below the poverty line gets Medicaid as well as AFDC. Dental teaching colleges give free care.

sorry misspelling of Because.

I have to disagree and if he would just go to an inner city hospital and see kids who have swollen jaws from infected dental decay. And watch as they leave UNTREATED for a condition because the only conditions that are treatable are LIFE THREATENING so if you are poor you do go without. PERIOD.
As for your comment I have a friend who thinks like you that you can get HealthCare for free which is not true bucause of how hospitals bill you see if a person who cannot pay gets healthcare watch your premiums on insurance rise to treat theat person as the expense is incurred someone always has to pay.

Sketch, I like your comments. You have said alot in a few words. Your description of the our current health care and the continued changes that benefit the insurance companies was very well worded. In a society that struggles to save any money for a rainey day, how can we expect our citzens to have enough saved for a medical emergency?

If we as citzens started saving $2,000 a year in a medical savings plan, how would that hurt the economy? Would having more money in savings reduce our deficit or increase it? Would not buying others items because we are saving create more jobs or reduce jobs? Would saving $2,000 a year be enough to truly reduce our overall bill from medical providers when needed? What if you use that $2,000 every year to take care of a medical emergency?

This is really a joke. If we had a national healthcare system today we would see a boom in the economy. People would have more freedom to start businesses or work in other jobs instead of being forced to stay with companies that provide healthcare benefits. Freedom of choice in job selection would mean higher wages and a more stable working enviroment for our people. It would also lead to a reduction in illegal immagration that currently plagues our country.

Big business as well as insurance companies have benefited by the control healthcare has placed on us. For years I have known people who could not leave there job because they could not afford to loose their healthcare benefits. Many suffered from poor pay and had to work another job to make ends meet. The second job was usually a minimum wage or low pay job without benefits.

Now there is a problem facing big business as they realize that their bottom dollar is being effected by our healthcare system. Many are moving jobs to other nations because of reduced labor and healthcare costs. Eventually the insurance companies will reach a critical period where they can not cover most americans without high deductibles and high co-pay. Most americans will be forced to drop their coverage for a short period of time or in most cases for a lengthy period of time as they struggle to cope with those increased deductibles.

The middle class in this country are being assaulted by higher healthcare costs, lower wages, increased taxes, and greater debt. Where the middle class goes so does the country.

For those who preach to keep big government out of healtcare montra, let me say this, WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT and we the citzens can choose to pay our dollars to insurance companies or to our government to distribute our heathcare. Each has its problems but only one can be fair to all as our constitution requires it.

I would rather have reduced healthcare choices than none at all. But one things is for certain, we are going to wake up one day and find ourselves regretting not making the necessary choices now to improve our system.

I continue to believe that the greatest threat to our economy and continued growth as a nation rests on this issue.

When reforming healthcare was considered in the first term of the Clinton adminstration, the only system that was estimated to cost less than the present one was universal health care similar to Canada's. That is because it eliminates the overhead of the medical insurance companies.

A friend of mine had to have surgery. He discovered he could get "cash discounts" from most of the caregivers (the anesthesiologist was a little reticent) of up to 35% by paying cash -- worth it to the doctors treating him to avoid the overhead involved with collecting from the insurance companies.

I am not a particularly unhealthy person but I estimate I spend 50 hours a year talking with the various incarnations of insurance company gatekeepers, HR depts about my coverage, doctor's offices about insurance payments and nonpayments, sending faxes, resending faxes, receipts, lost receipts, coded and recoded and decoded and bundled and unbundled procedures and which doctors accept my 'plan' (what a misnomer that is). Every year where I work, the plan changes, in a very predictable way: the premium goes up, the deductible goes up, the copays go up, the percentage covered goes down, the number of doctors accepting the latest plan goes down, the number of plan choices goes down, and all the people and companies I have to deal with change, so I can have a nice fresh start. Universal coverage, socialized medicine if you like, is looking better and better if they promise me I don't have to deal with any more insurance representatives.

Now there is an ominous rumor about the company changing to a medical saving account or something like that. They give you a super high deductible, copays, and all the rest of that dreck but put your money into a taxfree account and it can grow, if you are healthy, from year to year. Now this might be a good deal for the healthy 20-somethings and 30-somethings, but this is a clear assault on the older worker and those with chronic health problems. This is sort of the opposite of insurance, where the burden is shared equally. Pres. Bush is pushing this idea. I have to say, I think this idea lacks compassion. The argument goes that people will be more discriminating their medical purchases if they have to pay for it all. Yeah, and if they have chronic health problems, they will also be chronically broke.

Hey, if that's the road we want to go down, how much premium discount can I get if I file a "do not resuscitate" order? That should provide huge savings. I read somewhere that most of the healthcare dollars are expended on dying people in their last few month's of life, one of the two main reasons (the other being nursing homes) why many of us do not have to rally over that "death tax" issue because there was nothing left to tax.

If healthcare is universal, it tends to be rationed. There are waiting lists. The less life-threatening the condition, the longer one must wait. Years may pass before that hernia gets fixed. Canadians come down to the U.S. for medical procedures. They may buy their medicine at home, but they may get their surgery here. Big deal, lots of Americans are traveling to third world countries to get medical and dental work done that they cannot afford here.

The uninsured, the underinsured, and hmo'd all experience subtle forms of rationing that involve what they can afford in co-pays, deductibles, and what they can get approved (in the case of hmo's or care at county hospitals).

I remember hearing ten or more years ago that the state of Hawaii requires that all employers must provide health insurance to their employees. I wonder if that is still true, and if the problems with insurance and healthcare are less there.

Respectfully Submitted,

Sketch

Response to:Healthcare Reform
Midniterise on July 19, 2024 - 6:57pm

Midniterise, Please explain to us what is wrong with the US health care system. What would you change?

I see that my message got some interest.

Are there any solutions to the coming storm or is there a feeling that nothing will happen as it concerns our healthcare system?

Just because the Clintons failed to make a change in our system does that mean we just give up?

What if George Washington had decided to not attack the Hessians after crossing the Delware river at Trenton and thus turn the colonists opinion of the war?

We are a can do people. We can solve this problem but we must have the will to do so. If we don't do anything then we will wake up to a nightmare and find ourselves bogged down in economic hardship and a lower standard of living.

I hope we can learn from our mistakes and move toward solving this problem.

Just saw that SSA “Pay benefits to more than 52 million people every month”. That would be 1 out of every 6 people in this country get s an SSI or SSD check every month.

Q: If helping the auto industry survive resulted in plant closings and lost jobs, what would the outcome have been had we not helped the suto industry?

A: Plant closings and lost jobs. No difference, in other words.

Either way it's not a rationale for Univesal Healthcare. I just wanted to point out the fallacious use of emotional appeal to support a political position. I'm fed up with that sort of chicanery and came here in part to find a more honest approach to politics.

More of the same is not what I expected.

One correction to your post Midniterise, there is no surplus within the Social Security budget or for that matter the Federal Budget. The current estimate for fiscal year 2024 for the Social Security budget is 557 billon dollars or-one half TRILLON dollars!!!
http://www.ssa.gov/budget/2005bud.html

The Social Security system was set up for my grandfather’s (born in 1896) generation by his contemporary, FDR. Social Security was never intended for every person living over the age of 65.

Healthcare Reform Top Priority
Midniterise on July 18, 2024 - 7:46pm

Midnierise, We did that.

The best and the brightest in the world were assembled in 1995 to do health care. Under Hillary, It was a disaster. A Rube Goldberg contraption that no one understood.

If you had not noticed, the space program peaked many years ago. The moon landing was in 1969, mars landing was 30 years ago, the shuttle 25 years ago, the hubble telescope was 20 years ago. NASA is a disfunctional organization, it cant even keep a shuttle going today.

No one, No one, in america is denied health care. We have the best, most advanced, most distributive medical system in the world. The average annual cost is less than maintaining an automobile. If a 25 yo can afford a new supercharged 425 HP Ram charger fully decked out, and ignore his/her his health care responsibilities .. its his fault.

It's not a problem.

There are many who think that we should avoid a national healthcare system. They will point to places where a national system doesn't work and say this is what we can expect.

I take a different approach to this idea. We comprise of the best and the brightest in the world. We have moved the world technologically to greater heights than it has ever had in its history. We fly to the moon and send spacecraft to the outer edges of our solar system.

So why are we afraid to tackle this problem?

If we do nothing then we can expect a collapse of our healthcare system and the economy in the next 10-15 years. We are now importing more workers than ever in history from our southern borders. They usually recieve poor if any health benefits. We have an aging population that will be pulling on our health system more and more. Our government is using the surpluses dollars in the Soc. Security system to fund current issues. If we don't solve this problem we will wake up some day with a health care system equal to third world countries.

If we can find true leadership in our local, state and federal government we can meet this challenge and bring about new growth in our economy while providing decent healthcare. When employers can’t hire workers because of the cost of healthcare then we are hurting our economy. When employees have to pay more and more each year for insurance premiums, then they begin to see a reduction in true wage earnings. Especially when deductions continue to move up for each individual.

When the insurance companies begin to fail due to lower numbers of people able to pay for insurance they will turn to the government for support. But why not help them? We have helped the auto industry when for years they have produced inefficent, gas guzzling road road hogs that have been mechanical junk heaps. The reward for helping the auto industry survive has been to watch them move plants to other countries and lay off workers.

If we ignore this issue we are going to pay much more and suffer greatly for indecision. The american people are beginning to see this and I hope come the next election will send a message to our political parties.

I've busted my butt over the last two years building a small business. I'm turning away business now and can't get to the next level because I can't afford to higher employees. They want medical benefits and I just can't afford it. So I am folding my business and going back to my old IT career. I could immediately add jobs to the economy, but can't because of the expectation that business will pay for medical coverage.

I would like to see the burden of health care removed from business.

I would like to see our government take a business-agnostic view of health care. For example, cigarettes are poison and they should be outlawed as such. That alone would reduce costs of health care in America.

I would like to see this:

1. We, the US government, provides major-medical for legal workers and their immediate family. Yes, there will be taxes to cover this because civilization is expensive.

2. Employers pay for any special circumstance issues. For example, as a woodshop owner I would provide extra vision, finger & hand coverage.

3. Employees pay for any other add-ons that they want, such as life insurance, dental, chiropractic. These are the things that employers could continue to offer as incentives to attract talent.

I realize I'm only covering a subset of our population, those people who work, but I believe this would have a huge positive impact on small business, where most new jobs are created.

And if we could implement my ideas by Monday I could keep my business alive.

The government's role in promoting the "general welfare" with respect to health has always been understood to mean the prevention of epidemics and responding to emergencies, based on the fact that government is best equipped to provide the resources for those needs.

If we expand the governmnet's natural role beyond that and expect the taxpayers to foot the bill for every aspect of health care, then we'd better be prepared to reinterpret that other phrase in the Preamble about insuring domestic Tranquility. The government will have to become the Nanny State that monitors everyone's health and decides what we as individuals eat, drink, and smoke and how much exerise we get.

As to the assertion that "We must provide for all," that can be extended to anything, for instance government paying for everyone's food and shelter. There's no essential difference between that and universal health care.

First time I've read this thread - how exciting! I am a bit concerned over Mary Alice's point #4 in her indictment of our health care "system." While I agree that there are many medical errors, most avoidable, I can't imagine that we lose 1/3 of our population each year to medical mishaps. Perhaps this was a global figure, or more likely a misplaced digit?

Nonetheless, and fundamentally, I think that there are two basic underlying questions which must be addressed before the solution can be approached, and both have already been touched on.
1) Is the insurance industry part of the problem or part of the solution? I suggest the former. There are sales and marketing costs involved, administrative inefficiencies, attention to profit over health outcome, etc. Medicaid, Medicare, and most critcally the VA all deliver good quality health care with much higher efficiency than the private system. There is a message in there somewhere.

2)Can/should the private system be allowed or encouraged to co-exist with a universal public system. I argue yes, for many of the reasons made by Anonymous in his/her July 4 post. Just as private schools relieve the public system of a significant burden, so a co-existing private health care system would similarly benefit a comprehensive public system. Provided that, like schools, public health care is available to all regardless of wealth or income, and that all pay fairly into it regardless of which system they turn to in their times of need, there is no reason the two cannot co-exist and do quite well in many countries. It is there that esoteric treatments would most likely be researched and developed, there that fiscally and morally irresponsible procedures would take place, there that the wealthy impatient nose-in-the-air patients would lay out their children's inheritance to avoid wasting precious time in a room full of we riff-raff. And there that unneceesary and elective procedures and treatments would be performed.

I also agree that the burden of providing health care should be taken off of businesses, while recognizing that big businesses do indeed use it as an enticement to lure and secure top talent. Absent this single costly incentive, many if not most of these would be going into business for themselves or working for smaller firms that are more innnovative, more efficient, and more likely to give a damn about their employees. As an executive recruiter who deals with this issue on a daily basis, trust me when I tell you that I get to witness firsthand the disastrous economic effects of our tottering health-care system.

All of that said, an even deeper underlying flaw in our system is much more profound than basic economics, and one which must be addressed by theologians, ethicists and others far removed from the political realm. It lies in America's and Americans' attitude toward death and dying. We spend an unconscienable amount of money in the last six months of life, far more than any nation, attempting to stave of the inevitable. Virtually all the rest of the world laughs at us for our inability to embrace this most basic part of living. Our stubborness will not prevail in this instance, and our children and theirs will pay a dear price for our foolish and fiscally irresponsibe intransigence.

"In most countries with universal health care they have the public system which is available for free for any one who wants to use it"

No, it is not free. Its expensive. If we want to stagnate like old europe and have 12-22% unemployment and pay rent at $3500 a month for a 2 bedroom, and pay $7.55 for a gallon of gas, i guess you could call it free.