American Values and Health CareFollow

So true.

I mean, it's not like auto-manufacturers were producing **** cars that looked like armoured vehicles, and that polluted the planet like there was no tomorrow. Or like the tobacco industry is selling cancer sticks. Or like the banks fucked the world economy only to be given **** loads of cash to make up for it. Or like producers of fatty food created the biggest obesity crisis, ever.

What ever will those crazy liberals demonise next? Arms dealer? Companies that use child labour? Oh, those poor insurance guys. I feel so sorry for the ginormous profits they make from a ridiculously biased system.

Well, your adorable little misconceptions rightfully have no bearing on public policy.




Malpractice suits are only one small part of the mechanism that's driving up healthcare costs. It doesn't surprise me that conservatives like to focus on it so much, because it's the only one that doesn't impune the for-profit insurance model that they favor so much.

The insurance layer itself imposes an estimated 30% overhead that's one of the key factors behind the explosive growth of health costs. The medical infrastructure in place is so overwhelmingly complex and bloated that it sucks nearly 30 cents out of every dollar spend in health care.

Additionally there is the skyrocketing cost of medical education which creates a shortage of health-care providers in general and family practice roles, regulatory overhead, and a pharmaceutical regulation infrastructure which encourages up-front gouging by drug companies to recoup R&D costs.

In other words insurance bureaucrats decide what care they cover based on cost-effectiveness.



Lul, you know those were both government-sponsored enterprises from day one, right?

Absolutely. Medicare operates with less than 1/3 the overhead that private insurance does.

I'm saying that approaching healthcare with an insurance model is idiotic and devastating to the public health and welfare.

Because a healthcare system with costs increasing at twice the rate of inflation and accessibility decreasing by a third of a percent per year is so great?

They're still in bankruptcy. The reorganized company won't even IPO until next year. No one has a clue what the outcome of that whole mess will be. I will say that if the government hadn't stepped in to finance the new holding company, this bankruptcy would have been much messier, much costlier, and much more disruptive to the already fragile economy than it has been. So yeah, thumbs up to the government on that one.

They're solvent. Lord knows, they were so fucked by the end of 2008, that's a miracle in and of itself.

It's amusing that you keep pointing to economic crises to attack a single-payer system, but you ignore the single-payer system that's already in place in the United States. Medicare is more efficient than private insurance (2-3% of revenues spent on administration, compared the private insurance average of 20-30%) all while being considered one of the larger constraining factors against health cost increase, traditionally keeping pace or lagging behind private insurance in costs. And amongst health professionals (many of whom would like to see a single-payer system in place), Medicare is widely regarded as easier to deal with than private insurance; they pay claims more quickly and at a generally higher rate of reimbursement, and Medicare doesn't have the tendency to outright deny claims after the fact leaving either the patient or the provider in the lurch for an often substantial amount of money.

I think that's a much better indicator of the government's ability to manage a healthcare system than whether or not the bankrupt companies it bailed out are still posting ****** financials.

As opposed to a profit driven insurance company whose entire motive is to squeeze every possible penny from me as they decide which things they will and won't cover for me? Sure.

Companies aren't evil, ThiefX. The people who run them often can be, though, and that's very sad.

Mindel,



But govn officials are angels?

Joph,

Actually it can. Where insurance companies have to determine acceptable risks in order to make a profit to stay in business the govn will simply just print more money when it begins to fail thereby hurting the entire economy.

Xarus,



LMAO...govn and hands off shouldn't ever be in the same sentence. H*ll they shouldn't be on the same page.

Jophed,



Do you think Insurance companies should surcharge young drivers who have at fault accidents?

Jophed,

Ok...do you think insurance companies should surcharge someone who has a condition caused by poor living habits?

No

Then I can't answer.