Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Forget Repeal and Replace. Time for National Healthcare

It will if it buys a politician a vote. And it will.

Hatari speak truth, and he has LBJ sniffed out to boot.


Let's hope America can hang together well enough to be able to wake up and recognize the 10 at 2 is REALLY a 2 at 10.

Yep..

I do.. That POS!!! I hope he has a long, lingering death and is screaming in agony the ENTIRE time... HAH.. Good luck with all THAT. I'll tell you ONE thing that's definitely comin' - "single-payer system' - paid to the US gov't... It's inevitable, and they we're REALLY screwed - because your coverage WILL depend on just WHO you voted for...

the fly in the ointment being....Government does nothing well

Men, just suppose we were congress, what do we agree on? Carry on.

I didn't read all the crying but this is exactly what I said last year. If Republicans can deliver this the Democrats are frozen out of power for a generation. Medicare for all is probably the least bad solution at this point. The really hard part is having the political will to kick the medical and insurance lobby out of the room and write a responsible bill with real cost controls. There will be crappy public healthcare for all and those with money will buy premium supplemental insurance that will deliver the best healthcare in the world. We have already socialized the big risk groups. Seniors and the mentally challenged poor are already on the dole because they're not profitable. This is the future because the business lobby wants out of the healthcare cost management. There was the comment from one of the GM CEO's that GM was a healthcare company that made cars.

I long held the opinion that the solution is a dual system. Instead of Medicaid allot the money to the states for the purpose of setting up a state hospital system and allow those that qualify get there medical care there.

The last three elections without Obama were about Obamacare. They destroyed the Democratic party at all levels.
By the time the Senate and the House ever get their act together and send anything to the White House; Ocare will be a lot worse.

As a practicing lawyer for the last 25 years I follow the trends pretty closely. Law school enrollment is down nearly 40% in most states. There just isn't enough work any longer to sustain prior levels of enrollment. Of the roughly 215 law schools in this country we would do well to close at least half of those. It cost a lot and isn't worth it to the great majority of new lawyers.

We need more people going into the health care field. That's a given.

If the government ends up running all of healthcare we will see fewer new doctors because they will make much less money under a government system and fewer people will go into the field. For example Medicaid pays about 55% of what the private market pays and Medicare is a little better at 75-80%. As a result it's hard for patients under these programs to find doctors who will provide services.

Just wait until we have a single payer system. Everyone would theoretically have benefits but it reality it would be hard to get the services you need. That's how it works in Britain, Canada and lots of other countries. This kind of system is OK if you have small common problems like a sinus infection but if you have a serious illness like cancer or heart disease you're not going to get the level of care people get in the US. Aggregate statistics show that people in the US who have serious diseases live significantly longer than they do in Canada. And that was true before Obamacare was implemented. One of the main reasons is that they have much less medical infrastructure (think MRI machines) and people have to wait a long time for critical diagnostic tests.

Single payer may sound good but it will result in lower quality health care and rationing by the bureaucracy.

This is a great discussion.

Isn't the elephant in the room simply that virtually all current trend lines head towards disaster in terms of costs and ability for citizens to bear those costs?

To me, that's kinda the real issue here. We can debate solutions, tweak around the margins (like the House's AHCA), and postulate scenarios where this or that is different... but my understanding is that this is not a "tweak the margins" level of problem, when projected forward in time. It's going to strangle our economy.

If that's not correct please say so. I get pretty pissed at the intractable nature of this issue (combined with my own very negative experiences where the medical/insurance industry has literally stolen my money, or tried to) so I usually bail out before digging deep into the data. But my distinct impression is that the REAL issue here is that all trend lines head to disaster as currently comprised.

I do think this is an issue that the Republican Party COULD grab onto and own, or at least, "a" Republican Party could; they've got some shards of fiscal credibility left despite their best efforts to the contrary. I seriously doubt that the RP as currently comprised could do it. Too many blocs that are diametrically opposed. This is perhaps the leading example of how the blinding partisanship we have all fallen into is [bleep] us in the butt. It's not hard to imagine a coalition of talented folks in government, both R & D, coming up with a reasonable solution or at least something to TRY. Maybe something like Hatari's dual-systems approach. But that coalition can never happen in today's D.C. Each side has become masterful at polarization for electoral gain. Our society is so polarized that people can't even seem to TALK anymore. I have a good friend all pissed off at me right now because I brought up this exact subject in an email a couple weeks ago and his head blew up. Very reasonable, intelligent guy who I have a long history with, but any suggestion of a viewpoint in opposition to his, in the political realm, is like a third rail. Didn't used to be like that, folks. Only WE can turn that around. But I don't see that happening either. People love to have their existing beliefs reinforced, and hate any signs of cognitive dissonance, because that might mean that they might (gasp) be wrong. So on the Right we have the yammering of talk radio and so on, where about 1/3 of America goes for their daily dose of polarization and to mock the evil other guy. On the Left we have about a third of us going to the Huffington Post's of the world to have THEIR worldview reinforced and make fun of the other guy. And there's about a third of us in the middle who are just appalled and all the dumbphuckery and the total lack of empathy or even attempted empathy towards others' intellectual positions. This quote sums it up. I am NOT hopeful that we can turn this around, either.

"Intellectually and emotionally weakened by years of steadily degraded public discourse, we are now two separate ideological countries, LeftLand and RightLand, speaking different languages, the lines between us down. Not only do our two subcountries reason differently; they draw upon non-intersecting data sets and access entirely different mythological systems."

Law School applications are dropping because of the prohibitive cost of education. Med Schools are seeing some other interesting trends. Jewish kids are not running to Med school or Law School like they once did. They don't see the return on the considerable investment. More are going into finance. Huge increase in the number of Indian, Pakistani, Iranian, and Chinese kids going to Med school. They have the grades and aren't worried about the market.

There are plenty of MD's. Schools are turning them out. There just isn't a wealth of them in small towns and rural areas. They can't make a go of it very easily. Why not? You can't run a small office on Medicare, Medicaid reimbursement. They only payout about 80% of the cost of providing the service. Have you not noticed that the MDs have grouped up? That is out of necessity for 2 reasons. First is to cut operating expenses by sharing a facility. Second is have some bargaining power to negotiate fees with insurance companies. They partner up with Well Star or whom ever to have some leverage to negotiate rates. Ones without that leverage get the lowest reimbursement rate. If they don't take it, the ins companies tell them to stuff it. They don't care if they lose 1 doctor, but they do care what a whole citywide network might do if they get shut out.

Making more MDs is not going to send them out to small towns and rural areas. Especially not the Indian, Paki, Chinese kids. Dr. Wang, born in China and raised in L.A. probably will have a little difficulty fitting in living in Baldwin County Alabama. He may not even speak the same language. I know I don't! He probably won't understand why they run deer with dogs and tramp through the swap with lights on there heads drinking beer and hunting raccoons. One look at that lifestyle, and Dr. Wang is likely to go to Birmingham, or better yet, Escondido, California.

Two thoughts, you make me think of the old 'Northern Exposure", TV, Doctor Fleishman, a fish out of water.

Find out what Bernie Sander wants, and do the opposite.

That's like a working definition of extreme partisanship: whatever the other guy wants- knee-jerk in the opposite direction.

I'd love to hear, then, how you propose we structure a true free-market health care system, and how we get from hither to yon.

Easy:
1. Remove all government "fixing"
2. allow for the purchase of insurance across state lines
3. allow a-la-carte insurance purchasing
4. tort reform.

AND: Call "pre existing conditions" what it really is: WELFARE and not insurance and simply put that approx 4% of the population into Medicaid.

this would be my point exactly, but not using the same words. i see it as an urban vs. rural divide. it's not quite that simple but is approximate.

the rest fits in to, urban raised young MD's might not feel all that comfortable opening new practices in rural areas, for a variety of interrelated reasons.

unfortunately there's lot's of folks that believe fervently that gov't regulation must be a part of the solution. lot's of folks are demanding it.

1) Allow the sale of indemnity (catastrophic) insurance.
2) Create free clinics open to ANYONE willing to wait 3 hours and pay MDs/DOs and Dentists willing to see a high volume of patients ~ $300k/ year TAX FREE with no or restricted tort liability.

Medical-industry tort reform is an interesting one.

Seems to violate free-market principles in the sense that it removes consequences for poor or incompetent service. Also sounds an awful lot like .gov intervention into the Market.

4%? How so? That can't be right.

The issue with pre-existing conditions is that we ALL have them. That hip injury I had in 1987? That's technically a PEC. My wife's job (state job) provides our insurance, but if we lost that and had to go out into the wilds of the insurance marketplace my understanding is that prior to the ACA any treatment on that hip could be denied as a PEC. If it came to something really expensive like replacement (it will come to that someday) then the insurance company becomes highly motivated to determine if a PEC existed in that hip. If they can find my records from '87/'88 I'd be screwed. Is my understanding.

For that exact reason I've been VERY careful my whole life on those forms with all the check-boxes. Ever had... back pain? Well who HASN'T?! But you won't find that box checked on any form I've ever filled out. Etc.

I think the term PEC holds a much deeper meaning in this context than just defining it as 4% of our population. Certainly to the insurers it does!

Well it is accurate.