Obama's Health Care plan

[darxbane]

That type of thing should certainly not happen, E.  While I will accept that a certain point can be reached where the treatments are of no help, shutting someone off the moment they are diagnosed is ludicrous.  Of course, my arguments against the current healthcare reform package do not mean I am against healthcare reform.  I just wildly disagree with how it is being handled.  When my company started to have money issues, we looked at the largest causes and found ways to reduce costs.  There are specific issues that can be fixed that will allow our healthcare system to fall in line without the need for monstrous, expensive oversight.  Like I have said a million times, if the government can't handle the regulations they currently enforce, how can they handle greater oversight?  Medicare is a joke.  Medicaid is a joke.  Veterans care is pretty lousy as well.  The only government run health care that does work is the one Congress has (what a surprise that is).  The link below broke down our system quite well, compared it with other nations, and showed some glaring inneficiencies that I believe can be fixed without increased beurocracy.  It's a little heady and long, but please read it carefully and let me know what you think.

http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/US_healthcare/pdf/US_healthcare_Chapter1.pdf

[Peter Ahlstrom]

So, then the government should force us to pay into anything they say is "good" for us then?

We the people make the government. If enough people agree, then yes. And I have no problem with a standing army.

I think some of various people's answers have basically made my point for me as far as not caring about other people. If you're happy that way, hooray for you.

Skar, I never talked about anything being free. You're the one who brought up "free" as far as I can tell. I agree with you that nothing is free.

I never asked insurance companies to pay for my daughter's healthcare. I asked them to let her be covered. Assuming doctors aren't lying to us (and she doesn't have some horrible disease they haven't told us about that will create huge medical expenses, or that what they have told us about isn't much much worse than they've said), chances are we'd pay them more money than they'd ever pay out for us. (That's the way insurance works like you said, though what I said about how insurance works is still true. Sick people do pay part of their own costs but the rest is paid by healthy people. Insurance companies wouldn't have money to cover the costs of sick people if healthy people didn't give it to them.) And we have a high deductible plan so we'd pay for most of it anyway unless something catastrophic happened.

The profit motive did not cause mutual insurance companies to come into existence. A desire to help each other out and get help when you needed it did. Unfortunately the profit motive is what has caused most mutual insurance companies to go out of existence: selling out to for-profit companies in order to make a short-term gain because they were deluded into thinking coverage would be just as good. I think it's pretty darn obvious that reliance on the profit motive to provide good healthcare has shown that that model is a failure. Healthcare is too important to leave up to the profit motive.

I never said 30-year-olds and 80-year-olds should pay the same amount. The health insurance I have has age brackets and that makes sense to me. 80-year-olds also have different types of expenses as 30-year-olds. And I do agree that allowing cross-state access would be a good thing, though a point has been brought up that some states allow crappy insurance to be sold there and I think there should be some kind of minimum standard. States with car insurance requirements (is that all of them?) have minimum standards people live with.

But anyway, I see healthcare as a common good that benefits everyone. You don't. That's the gist of it.

When there is an ambulance with a siren speeding up behind you, why do you pull over? Do you do it only because it's the law? Or do you do it because you hope that one day when you're in an ambulance and need to get to the hospital fast there better darn not be a bunch of slowpoke cars blocking your ambulance's path? Pulling over for someone else's ambulance helps YOU because if it's a habit everyone has then they'll pull over for your ambulance in the future. It's a public good. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. But pulling over for an ambulance is also a public good that's mandated by the law and I have no problem with that mandate.

Doctors are required to help people without knowing whether they can pay for good reasons (and I already said how you pay for other people's healthcare now whether you like it or not, by your own costs going up). If you get hit by a car and can't talk or move or anything, you want an ambulance to come help you whether or not they've found your insurance card already, don't you? That's a protection you'd lose if government regulation went away. Each and every one of those regulations was put in place when people took a good look at the abuses that were happening without those regulations and said, "This is not the kind of country we are." (Some regulations don't work quite right but trashing them all is not the answer.) And that's what people are saying now. "This is not the kind of country we are." (Of course, people disagree what kind of country we aren't. I don't think we should be a welfare state but the system we have is crap and it's not because of too much government regulation.)

Everyone can make a poll, apparently. Harris polls: People in other countries, including Canada, like their healthcare more than the US's and more than people in the US like their own. Only EIGHT PERCENT of Canadians think the US's system is better.
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/pubs/Harris_Poll_2009_08_12.pdf
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=927

[sortitus]

[IFYPFY]We the people elect many of the officials that make the government. If enough of those people agree, then we should get forced to pay into what they say. Most people have no problem with the president they elect having control over the most advanced military force in the world, as long as the guns aren't turned on them personally. [/IFYPFY]

I think some of various people's answers have basically made my point for me as far as not caring about other people. If you're happy that way, hooray for you.

Some of us are heartless SOBs because we don't want to turn over extra freedoms to the government. I believe that health care is a good thing, and that everyone should have it. I also believe that the government has proven itself incapable of taking care of most (if not all) New Deal programs, so why would a health care program be any different? I'd love to be proven wrong, but I'd rather not take the risk. So yes, I guess you could say that I'm with the greedy bloodsuckers.

[darxbane]

Insurance minimum standards are definitely a must.  Customized plans should also be allowed.  For example, you can choose more or less auto insurance based on risk, the same should be for health insurance.  I remember my work plan from Aetna had all this coverage for holistic medicines, 52 free chiropractor visits per year, and other things I really didn't want or need, but was still paying for.  The worst thing you can do to a private industry is remove it's competition, and allow regulations to become excuses to raise costs.  It is easier to modify existing than to completely overhaul the system.  To be honest, I think Obama is committing political suicide right now.  I have a feeling he will turn it around, but idealism just doesn't fly with Americans, nor does admitting you are not familiar with major portions of your own plan.  If you are that adamant about something, you better make damn sure you are able to defend it completely.   Even if his plan was the greatest thing ever (and there are parts of it that are good), the way it was pitched to the public was pretty poor. 

[Skar]

I think it's pretty darn obvious that reliance on the profit motive to provide good healthcare has shown that that model is a failure.

And I think the opposite. Since the government has been more and more deeply involved in healthcare for decades, we don't know WHAT actual capitalist healthcare might look like unless we go back to before the government was so involved. (That same period you refer to so nostalgically in your post, incidentally)  The truth is that the ills of the healthcare industry have been increasing in lockstep with government involvement therein.  That turns into a chicken or the egg argument, you think it's the chicken, I think it's the egg.

But anyway, I see healthcare as a common good that benefits everyone. You don't. That's the gist of it.

Not actually true if you read post #24.  I DO see healthcare as a common good and I think it would be great if everyone could be covered for all the reasons the Obamites are giving about why universal healthcare would be good.  My objection is simply that the federal government SUCKS at running big programs.  It is an incredibly wasteful organization with zero perceived responsibility to its customers or shareholders.  If it becomes as heavily and universally involved in healthcare as the obamacare plan proposes, I think the quality of everybody's healthcare will spiral into the toilet and we'll pay more for it as the 'premiums' are filtered through that massive bureaucracy I mentioned earlier. 

It comes down to the idea that intentions are actually separate from outcomes.  The fact that a group fervently believes that they are doing good does not mean they actually are.  I share the belief that healthcare for everyone would be great; lower costs in the long run, healthier people make more money and more progress, etc...  I don't share the belief that putting the government in charge will result in anything resembling that outcome.

Veiled implications that I don't care for my fellow man and that I am generally a 'meany' aside, I would be happy to voluntarily put money towards an efficient system of healthcare aimed at covering those that can not provide for themselves.  I simply don't believe the government is capable of doing that.

Earlier you pooh-poohed the idea that people would be willing to voluntarily contribute to the common good.

Yes, that would work, because everyone is full of compassion and will be standing in line to pay the government more than the government says they should.

Yet you're anxious to place your health in the hands of a career bureaucrat.  You expect him to be any kinder?  I don't understand that at all.

And finally:

My car insurance company returns excess profits to policyholders at the end of the year, has done so for decades, and it was ranked #1 in the US in 2006 for overall customer satisfaction. It WORKS.

And was it necessary for the government to mandate that behavior as you claim it would be for health insurance?  If it wasn't you've proven my point about the free market as opposed to government control.  The auto insurance industry is far less regulated than the health insurance industry.  So...what conclusions can we draw from that?

I'd be interested in your response.