Canaanabolaanan

Apologies if this has been started in an earlier thread. I haven't been around in some time. I wish to hear the opposing arguments for Health care reform. But more than just the empty rhetoric, I want to see and understand the explanation behind the claim.

IE - if universal health care is going to "lose doctors," explain why. Otherwise, I could just counter that it's going to "increase" doctors, and nothing advances.

Links to fact check sites, news sources, etc. encouraged.

Now then, will a public option end up costing too much, reducing care, and destroying private competition? Or will it end up being a competitive industry, like the USPS model, which will ultimately provide health care to the majority of the uninsured, reign in costs, and improve care?

The Cleveland Clinic is an interesting model, in which doctors are not paid per procedure they perform, but by a fixed salary:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/...veland.clinic/

To me, legitimate concerns against a public option include:

1) While the government will not force anyone to choose a public option, thus you can keep your current health care should you like it, businesses may prefer the public option. So your company may switch health care, even if you had enjoyed your current plan and doctor. So while the government doesn't force you to switch to the public option, your job may anyways.

2) Hypothetically, the majority of businesses could go the public route, driving the private health care companies out of business. If this is because the public option is a superior method, then this is just essentially a similar consequence to a free market practice - the better business model prevails. The problem now is that the health care industry is too lucrative and rapacious an industry, and that's specifically causing the problems we have. These extortionate contributors are going to have to sacrifice to match a more efficient model, or they necessarily should lose out.

However, should this become the case where the public option is the major health care system, its safety and process falls precariously into the hands of law makers who might make a change to it any point down the line, which could (inadvertently or otherwise) damage the process, which seems like it could have catastrophic effects.

That being said, I still generally favor the public option plan. If it's done well enough, I think it can do exactly as it sets out to do, in adding coverage to millions of uninsured, while helping to keep costs down.

People panic about waiting times like Canada, country X, ad nausea. But having more health care patients will create a larger demand for health care staff to take care of them. Perhaps for some treatments, there will be longer lines, but I imagine that to be a temporary problem, until newer generation employees fill the gaps. That is to say: more patients? More doctors. It will balance.

Please share your thoughts on why a public option (note - this is not equivalent to the existing universal health care models of other countries) is a good or bad idea. And please tone down the rhetoric, unless appropriately supported.

yrona

you might find this Misesian economic explanation of health care costs in the U.S. illuminating. The notion that a public option will keep costs down is laughable; you can't subsidize something without increasing its market clearing price.

Regards,

Yilmaz Rona

bry623

We should just shoot people that are terminal or reach a certain age. That would drastically reduce health care costs.

simpswr

Who decides the age??

Gene45

First I am a Canadian.

I can accept the need for some kind of process to make sure everyone gets covered. We have such a system, however, the Supreme Court in Canada has stated in a ruling that having insurance is not the same as having access to health care. This was in the Chaoulli decision in Quebec where a doctor and a patient were suing for the right of a patient to pay for his own treatment.

Not only is there a universal insurance system, but the governments control all the hospitals and funding to doctors offices. Waiting lists are common, for everything, surgery for a bad knee, or an MRI for a brain tumor.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court said that people are dying because of waiting. But still, legally, in nine provinces people are prohibited from paying for their own treatment, or any part of it. The government monopoly must be protected, even if it causes the deaths of people.

There are powerful lobby groups and political parties that have made this the "third rail" of politics. No one will touch it. I think the major force behind it is the public sector unions who would lose power if there was a competitive system.

So, a universal system need not restrict access to care like we do. Apparently in France there are no wait lists.

If you look to Canada as a model, it should be on how NOT to do it.

40sondacurb

Dick Cheney can be the shooting Czar.

simpswr

OOOO Noooo . . not "The Evil Cheney" !!!

Tumbleweed36

Darn 40, that won't work at all. Cheney doesn't kill you, just maims you and then you will really need a doctor and waiting in line while wounded would not be any fun.....especially if it is like the Canadian System where you might have to wait two weeks to be seen. Ouch, scrap that thought with Cheney!

40sondacurb

Obama lost me on this one.

I've seen how preventative care works, they spend thousands on these educational programs run by doctors and nurse educators, copy many many pamphlets of all kinds which basically say the same common sense stuff, and in the end spend millions to get through to a petty few; because people are stubborn to change.

Nobody wants to go near a hospital until the knee actually blows, or diabetic shock finally has them sprawled on the floor.

Gene45

So, are you to go and get preventative MRI's on a knee?
Even when you can't get treatment when you get lame?

How would that work?
Does it work anywhere?

I'm waiting for the MRI now.