Most Americans, not knowing any better, think “universal health care” is a really good idea. Unfortunately, there is no such thing. To see exactly what American universal health care will look like, one needs look no farther than the smaller version of universal health care which already exists.
A recent New York Times/CBS News poll shows that 55 percent of Americans think the most important domestic issue is making health insurance available to all Americans, and 64 percent said the federal government should provide it, the Times reported Friday.
And it sounds great. Everybody would finally get all the health care they could possibly ever want, and it wouldn’t cost anything. At least, that’s what we’re told. Okay, maybe taxes would go up a little bit, they’ll admit when pressed. But it’ll be so much better once everyone gets free medical care and doctors no longer get paid exorbitant rates.
But before we jump headlong into universal health care, just because it sounds so good, we should have some idea what we’re getting into.
“Universal health care” is a national tragedy wherever it has been tried, resulting in needless death and suffering as fewer and fewer people actually get anything resembling health care from the national health bureaucracy. The reason for this is simple: no government can effectively run a social program.
Indeed, there’s no need to leave the country to see what universal health care would look like. You need go no farther than Building 18 of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., the nation’s so-called leading military hospital.
Two weeks ago, the Washington Post reported on conditions at Walter Reed:
Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses. — Washington Post
The reaction of the bureaucrats to this exposé? They rushed in a crew to paint over everything. I kid you not.
After the media tour of Building 18, the Army’s surgeon general [Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley] gave a news conference. “I do not consider Building 18 to be substandard,” he said of a facility Priest and Hull found full of “mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses” and other delights. “We needed to do a better job on some of those rooms, and those of you that got in today saw that we frankly have fixed all of those problems. They weren’t serious, and there weren’t a lot of them.”
Kiley might have had a stronger case if men wearing Tyvek hazmat suits and gas masks hadn’t walked through the lobby while the camera crews waited for the tour to start, or if he hadn’t acknowledged, moments later, that the entire building would have to be closed for a complete renovation. The general also seemed to miss a larger point identified by other officials: Walter Reed’s problem isn’t of mice and mold but a bureaucracy that has impeded the recovery of wounded soldiers. — Washington Post
Then the bureaucrats did indeed retaliate against soldiers who spoke to the press and smuggled reporters in and out of Walter Reed for months.
Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Medical Hold Unit say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media. . . . It is unusual for soldiers to have daily inspections after Basic Training. . . .
The Pentagon also clamped down on media coverage of any and all Defense Department medical facilities, to include suspending planned projects by CNN and the Discovery Channel, saying in an e-mail to spokespeople: “It will be in most cases not appropriate to engage the media while this review takes place,” referring to an investigation of the problems at Walter Reed. — Army Times
A government bureaucracy can never deal with these sorts of problems in a manner any of us would think reasonable. As mentioned before, social programs are simply something government cannot do. The reason, of course, is bureaucracy, a natural component of any government agency. National security columnist and attorney Phillip Carter explains that bureaucracies have a reverse BS filtration system where, when information is passed up the chain of command, “excrement is added to the final product, instead of being removed. . . . By the time information reaches a senior commander or civilian official, it no longer reflects reality.”
Everyone in the U.S. armed forces, including veterans, already has the sort of universal health care that the majority of uninformed Americans would like to foist on the rest of us. Studying this existing universal health care system will show exactly how this nice-sounding idea utterly fails in practice.
But the problem with universal health care is worse than dirty, rat-infested hospitals with the normal hospital staff replaced with uncaring bureaucrats straight out of the DMV. In Canada and Britain, which both have this type of socialized health care, actual health care services are strictly rationed. I’ve read more reports than I care to count of people whose doctors don’t care one bit for them, and just move them through “routine” visits, and of people who die while on months-long waiting lists for necessary life-saving procedures such as emergency heart surgery. In fact, this is the norm in every country with socialized health care.
Of course, these things happen sometimes in the U.S. too, but most people mistake the reason. The reason, of course, is that the health care system here is partially socialized already. This is why doctors no longer make house calls, only spend five minutes or less on your $100 office visit, and don’t seem to care. But at least you can still get your heart bypass surgery before you die — for now.
I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but that’s the way it is, and the sooner you learn to accept reality, the sooner you’ll get over this universal health care thing and maybe help actually solve the health care problem instead of making it worse.
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47 Comments
If military healthcare is so wonderful, why have they started outsourcing care of dependants (spouses and children)? Because it costs less!
This was a fantastic view of the issue – I’m not letting the same ‘tards who already tell me that I’m going to get .75 for every dollar I put in Social Security when I retire in 40 years.
If the government goes single-payer, I’m moving somewhere – anywhere – where a shred of personal liberty still remains. Our government is far worse now than what our Founding Fathers fought against!
Wise up — we spend more and get less for it than other nations. It is indefensible that we spend enough to offer good quality health care to everyone in the nation but 30% go without. Look at the health statistics — infant mortality, life expectancy — we get ripped off. The reason is high administrative costs to speperate those with coverage from those without.
ratbrandt: Blame the government. So many people are uninsured because of laws which favor corporations.
Digg this article.
I think it is important to make clear the distinction between socialized medicine (where the doctors are government employees, like Cuba or the US military healthcare system) and social insurance, where the government is responsible for insurance issues, but the medical system itself can be privatized (Medicare, classically). Sure, perhaps you disagree with both, or perhaps you are worried that social insurance will pave the way to socialized medicine; however, they are sufficiently different issues to merit separate arguments. The conflation of the two often confuses debates on these topics (and it is sometimes used as a rhetorical tactic by those who are against government insurance). There are arguments for social insurance (universal, government-provided insurance– Medicare for all, as it were) that are not applicable to socialized medicine. The free market is the best system for most goods and services, and is probably the best path for provision of health care (I don’t mean insurance, but _health care_ itself– I think that one of the confusing points is that “universal health care” has come to mean “universal insurance”). But medical insurance has enough unique aspects that it may well be the glaring exception to the benefits of the otherwise successful free market system.
The following was written a couple days ago in response to a DenverPost article by Al Knight.
02-28-2007
Dear Mr. Knight,
Your column “Looking to California on health care†misses the big picture on rising health care costs. You are familiar with free market economics and you need look no further for the right answer.
Medicare is the 800 lb. gorilla in American health care. It establishes prices for all medical procedures, supplies and devices used in American health care. These prices are called “fee schedules” and they’re not only used by Medicare to reimburse health care providers and patients, they are the basis for all other public and private insurance benefits payments too.
Medicare, like all American government agencies – towns, counties, cities, states, public agencies, bureaus and the federal government itself, uses prior-year based budgeting. Budgets are zealously protected because budgets drive appropriations. (Appropriations drive taxes.) No bureaucrat wants to see their budget cut because that means fewer jobs for that agency.
Medicare protects its budget by maintaining fee schedule prices. Fee schedules rarely, if ever, go down. Four times a year they are recalculated and they either go up or stay the same.
Meanwhile, health care providers and medical device manufacturers are motivated to increase their profits. As they find cheaper ways to provide medical care and medical devices, they retain all of the increased profit margins because end user prices are independently supported by a Medicare bureaucracy that will not abide having its budget cut. Medicare has no motivation to adjust pricing to reflect new economies of medical care production, at least not one more important than its budget.
For example, most medical device production is now done in China and the third world for a fraction of what it used to cost in America, yet device fee schedules have only gone up.
Cost is only one component of pricing. The economic adage of “charging what the market will bear” still holds true, however, we now have a very clear model of what happens to a market when cost is divorced from pricing. The structure of the American health care market with its protected pricing contains strong incentives to increase supply and improve efficiency, but no cost feedback for controlling prices. The consumers of American health care do not share in the financial benefit from new health care efficiencies.
If health care prices were subject to the pressures of market costs, health care would be more affordable by more people.
Someone should put Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley on the spot and ask him if he would like to spend a week or so in one of those not so bad rooms and they should get his response on tape.
Robbing from Peter to pay for Paul’s healthcare is immoral.
I am not solid on all the facts of the health care issue, but wouldn’t changing existing laws help? By existing laws I mean those insane laws about hospitals having to serve each and every person that walks through thier doors, regardless of ability to pay for services. Wouldn’t health care cost lower if the hospitals didn’t have to recover thier losses by charging the people that can pay (the ones with insurance) more to cover the difference?
When I go out to eat, I fully expect to pay by bill at the end of the meal. I do not tell the waiter to charge the guy at the next table. Isn’t that what we are currently doing with those insane laws, just with health care instead of food?
The more I’ve looked into health care and the surrounding issues, the more I’ve realized that it’s literally the most complex thing I’ve ever seen. It’s extremely difficult to simply get your head around the whole thing, let alone start trying to fix anything. So I’m quite skeptical of anyone who says they have a solution, especially when the solution is forced wealth redistribution, and doesn’t seem to be aware of exactly how complicated the whole thing already is.
Michael, no one is going to have a solution that will completely get rid of overuse or underuse of the system. Efforts to move away from one will always necessarily lead to some of the other. But pointing to this Walter Reed fiasco as an example for why governmental insurance coverage is bad makes me wonder whether you understand the basics. “Single payer” government-provided insurance is not the same as socialized medicine; it’s not the same as Walter Reed. Single payer government-provided insurance is most akin to how Medicare has traditionally worked (not part D, but the rest of it). Not that government-provided Medicare doesn’t have its flaws or inefficiencies, but it has traditionally been much more efficient than the private arena. What single payer government insurance would be most similar to is Medicare, but for everyone. Of course it’s not a silver bullet, and of course you’re going to have people that abuse the system. But from what I’ve seen, it’s probably the best of several evils.
Socialized medical care can not be an answer. What the real issue for a large portion of the population is that their insurance premiums are going up drastically each year. This is a result from several factors with one them being the requirement that the health care business (yes it is a business) is forced to treat everyone regardless of ability to pay.
People by and large do not understand this insane concept of treating people that can’t pay is a major factor inflating their personal costs of insurance. Then some socialist comes along and says “Hey, the gov should cover everyone!” At face value this solves these peoples trouble with health care costs because now the gov will take care of them and they don’t have to pay such high costs anymore. Little do they realize that nothing is for free. We all will end up paying even more with the gov “taking care” of things. Plain and simple. To believe gov can handle this issue would be delusional and an excellent argument for forced institutionalization for crazy people. Get them in a nut house and away from society before they hurt someone. Just don’t force me to pay for their care.
The cost of paying for the uninsured only represents a small part of the bloat in health care. As Brooks said: “If health care prices were subject to the pressures of market costs, health care would be more affordable by more people.”
In a world in which people are insured under “catastrophic” insurance plans (these do no cover trivial problems), everyone would be insured for a pittance. As a healthy young male, I was recently quoted $200/month for this type of insurance, which would cover medical expenses after the first $5500. The agent I spoke to told me this type of plan is new in NY and that the pricing hasn’t yet “relaxed”.
In a world where many people have this kind of insurance, it’s not hard to imagine monthly costs for someone like myself in the $50-$100 range, if not lower.
Where health care breaks down is complete disregard for true costs. Using the restaurant analogy, you wouldn’t sit down for the meal if you saw that astronomically inflated prices on the menu. Yet people do this everyday and pretend that a “co-pay” is an actual dollar figure that means anything. Wake up and start paying attention to what the procedures actually cost. It’s insane that people will drive half-way across town to scheme double-coupons on their groceries but have no freakin’ idea what their treatments cost beyond the “co-pay” nonsense.
As for Walter Reed, the same nitwits complaining about this are the same ones that would’ve refused to fund proper maintenance in the first place.
The author of this article states that the quality of medical care at Walter Reed Hospital is a result of the military’s mismanagement of the hospital and, consequently, an example of why “universal health care” doesn’t work, namely because “no government can effectively run a social program.” The author offers, in evidence, quotes from the series the Washington Post did on the story, describing the lackluster conditions in the hospital and the dull response given by high ranking military personnel in charge of the situation. However, an article published in the March 3rd edition fo the New York Times said that a House or Representatives Committee found that in attempt to improve efficiency at the hospital “hiring a contractor had resulted in a steep decline in the number of support personnel like maintenance workers to fewer than 60 last month, from 300 in early 2006.” With this in mind, it appears that universal healthcare is far from the issues. In fact, it appears that the conditions at Walter Reed hospital are a direct result of putting the administration and maintenance of healthcare of its patients in the incompetent hands of ‘efficiency-minded’ private sector managers.
GM and Ford are in crisis Primarily because of health costs.
They cannot compete globally anymore and are downsizing, outsorcing and laying off people because of our Private corrupted medical system.
Our citizens are slaves to employees’ medical benefits.
Universal Health Care Canadian or European-style is an urgent necessity which is good both for Business and people.
We need COMPETITION between Universal and Private Healthcare systems working in parallel, so that different categories of people can CHOOSE the system of their choice.
We don’t need the Mandatory Healthcare Insurance which is called Universal Health Care by the Rep and Dep politicians who are trying just to make cosmetic changes to our current corrupted and inneficient medical system.
We need to liberate our Business and people from the middle man – the Private Healthcare Insurance, the Special interests and Lobby.
Give us Canadian Healthcare system
1. Medicare payments DO go down – some physicians have seen a 5% cut each of the past 4 years. Reimbursement for surgery has been cut severely. Private insurance payments are usually keyed to Medicare, which compounds the problem.
Hospitals are doing well, as are drug companies. Remember the Congressman who wrote the Part D law – retired to a $2 million / year job with Pharma. Drug company and hospital lobbyists are probably the major part of the cost problem.
Reimbursement schemes favoring hospitals allowed them to buy private practices, hire a nurse practitioner, and call the practice a “rural clinic”, charging Medicare sometimes 5 or 10 TIMES what the former rate was – look it up, it is too true.
2. Catastrophic insurance is an excellent idea. You wouldn’t buy car insurance to cover oil changes, would you?
3. Infant mortality cannot be compared among countries. Here, an infant with heartbeat/breath is a live birth. In some countries it is not counted until past the first birthday.
4. I have Canadian relatives. You do not want that. One of them has a permanent disability for lack of prompt attention to a ’slipped disk’. Other delays absolutely shorten life.
5. While we’re at it, exactly what is being counted as health care expense? Over the counter stuff? Faith healers? I have never seen it enumerated.
6. Do not look to government for answers. We do not run the government, corporations do and they have bought most of the politicians. Insurance companies, drug companies, hospitals, can and will protect their profits. (The AMA either cannot or will not stop the cuts to physicians’ fees.)
PS What kind of young person will choose medicine today? Think of that when you choose your next physician.
I dunno, as a young and uninsured college student, the thought of someone paying for my medical bills makes me drool in anticipation considering the long list of health problems that I have (and boy is it a buttload!)
At the same time, I have to think about every other instance I have seen where a committee is running something that can be done by one person (as an analogy), and nothing ever gets done. The current St. Louis public school district is one example I can think of that is in my local news. Do I want something like that happening to health care?
I think we drool over the thought of someone paying for our uninsured selves because we think the quality of care will continue to increase, but I’m not too sure it will. And I can’t help but feel bad for certain individuals who work in the medical field who will get the shaft if ‘universal health care’ goes into place.
No, I’m not talking about the doctors.
I’m talking about the nurses. The nurses on the floors at hospitals get paid jack, and, oddly enough, don’t get offered any kind of usable health insurance (Talk about something you wouldn’t think would happen, right?). Doing this would just kick the nurses while they are down, and the major thought in the medical community is that the nurses don’t deserve anything because they don’t have PhD’s!
I’d love to go to the doctor and not have to pay $80 so he can write me a prescription for bronchitis medication. I’d love not to pay another $50 for the medication itself. I’d love to not pay $60 a month for birth control so I can function like a human. I’d love to be able to get the wrist I broke x-ray’d and fixed for free. But I wouldn’t love having the quality of the care that I receive go downhill.
I think I’ll wait until I can afford insurance.
Few things we need to look at.
Do you want the government to run your health insurance? I see people talking about taking out the middle man, private insurers, but by inserting the government in their place, we just put in a much bigger middleman. The government already is too big, and as a country we are bankrupt. All we would do is infest a health care system with corruption and inefficiency.
The problem with health care today is greed. Follow the money trail, and you’ll see it go straight to the pharmaceutical companies. Illegal immigration is also taking a toll, as taxpayers pick up that cost as well.
I would favor government regulation of prescription prices and enforce immigration laws to reduce that problem as well.
To run an advocacy web-site like yours is a great demonstration for practicing your rights under the first amendment. But to use this privilege for spreading false information is demagoguery. Your analysis of universal health-care by making it analogous to the Walter Reed Army hospital’s building 18 is a fine example of such a demagoguery. Why didn’t you bring the fine medical services given to the wounded soldiers at WRA that possibly could not be duplicated at any other private hospital as an example of universal healthcare. You may be liberaterian but you sound stupiditerian.
I read all the remarks about how Universal Health Care won’t work, well do you call what we have now, “working”. If 48 million people have no health care, then it is not. We need to stop letting people getting away with making people’s health a commodity, like oil. The Greed needs to be taken out of health care, simple as that. It’s not the private piggy bank of a few, who get stinking rich at the expense of someone’s life. The fact that so many free market people don’t care that so many can’t afford health care just shows what a sinister society we have come. The rich would rather build 20ft gold statues of themselves, then help to fix the problem or help their community.
Phil, what we have now isn’t working, precisely because it’s based on misguided and misinformed opinions such as yours.
First, you can’t take the “greed” out of health care, any more than you can take it out of every other human endeavor. And it’s not greed in the first place, but the simple desire to be paid appropriately for the work one does.
Second, health care IS a commodity. Trying to treat it as something other than a commodity is how we got this horribly broken system in the first place. Before socialist health care was introduced in the U.S., we had doctors who made house calls and virtually nobody had a problem getting health care, no matter how poor. There was no shortage of people and charities working to make sure they got care.
On that note, doctors now get $100 for a five minute office visit in which they hardly say a word to you. But do you think they keep that money? Of course not. Almost all of it is due to government regulation, and goes straight out of his pocket into fulfilling ridiculous regulatory requirements. This is a problem all across health care today.
Finally, as someone pointed out above, health care and health insurance aren’t the same thing. There aren’t 48 million people without health care, there are 48 million without health insurance. Many of them just don’t want it. Others can’t afford it. Two things are wrong here:
First, insurance in general was never designed to cover routine, normal, expected events. Coverage for office visits and the like is utterly ridiculous, and “insurance” which covers routine health care is going to be insanely expensive, no matter what.
Second, people have no incentive to save money on health care, because the prices aren’t generally available.
Go study this issue a little more before you go spouting off about things you don’t understand.
Michael, maybe you’re not old enough to know when the health care system really went bad, all you have to look at is Columbia HCA in the early 90’s. The top executives at the time were the highest paid of any industry by far, so the flood gates were let open for other selfish scumbags to raid the system. The problem is that a lot of money goes into health care but a few take the lions share for themselves, it’s like having a money tree. No, health care is not a commodity, to push like a flesh peddler. The problem is these people have no morals, they proclaim to have values, but they don’t live by them, many living dual lives full of unspeakable perversions. Just go to any Country Club in the country and listen to people talk, all they care about is themselves. Yes, the Hospitals are at fault too, the prices are obscene, but they are picking up the tab for all the illegals here, who work for the rich cheaply, but don’t want to give them health care. They don’t give a shit, as long as they get their product made cheaply and can talk about how great they are at the Club, it doesn’t take any special skill or training or exploit workers or out source. It all boils down to Greed, so don’t say it doesn’t. These executives in the Insurance are not going to give up the gravy train and the hooker parties, that they write off, as a business expense.
I read someone’s comment above who said of the 48 million uninsured, most don’t have it because they don’t want it. I’m just wondering if he’s talking about the couple I know in their 50’s with kids in college, both working themselves to death, only to find out their employer is dropping health care, or my friend in his late 20’s who had surgery within 6 months or another friend who takes more than 2 meds, all of which NO insurance company will sign up for coverage. If they do find someone to take them on, the Insurance Company can charge whatever the want. This guy above does NOT know what he is talking about. The only way for you to know is if you experience it yourself, we all hope you do!
I hate to destroy your point that Walter Reed is an example of universal health care, but I’m going to any way. Here is an excerpt from the washington post 3/10/07:
Privatized Walter Reed Workforce Gets Scrutiny
Army Facility Lost Dozens Of Maintenance Workers
By Steve Vogel and Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, March 10, 2007
“The scandal over treatment of outpatients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center has focused attention on the Army’s decision to privatize the facilities support workforce at the hospital, a move commanders say left the building maintenance staff undermanned.
Some Democratic lawmakers have questioned the decision to hire IAP Worldwide Services, a contractor with connections to the Bush administration and to KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary.
Last year, IAP won a $120 million contract to maintain and operate Walter Reed facilities. The decision reversed a 2004 finding by the Army that it would be more cost-effective to keep the work in-house. After IAP protested, Army auditors ruled that the cost estimates offered by in-house federal workers were too low. They had to submit a new bid, which added 23 employees and $16 million to their cost, according to the Army.”
Halliburton strikes again!
You haven’t undermined anything. The Post simply misreported and exposed some horrible bias.
Government contractors doing a horrible job is not an indictment of anything except government, since, for the performance of that contract, the contractor IS de facto part of the government.
It’s more of an indictment of government itself; that government even looks to the private sector to purchase such services indicates the government is doing something it shouldn’t be doing in the first place.
This is a complicated issue. Why don’t we eliminate insurance all together? It seems that so many people are taking a cut that very little is actually going to the person doing the work. Look at these giant insurance buildings. Who is paying for all of this? Put a fund in each State to be used to pay out on malpractice with a cap and make some sort of fund for people needing to spend big bucks on healthcare. Instead of paying for insurance, it will just go straight to the hospital, etc. Costs should go down as people will shop around for the best hospital at the best price when it is coming only out of their own pocket.
Most money is spent in the last 6 months of life. If someone is about to die and nothing is going to stop it, why have every test done known to man? Just make people comfortable and let them die in peace.
We had a family friend that was covered under her husband’s veteran’s insurance. She had an issue with her gall bladder and it needed to be removed. I believe she was told that she would need to wait at least three months. In the meantime, she was in such incredible pain, that she committed suicide rather than enduring the pain up until her scheduled surgery. Tell me you want to go through that.
Surely, some people do need better insurance, but that requires something altogether different from universal insurance or health care. Don’t give me crappy health care just b/c a key few need access. In Canada, ANY private insurance or effort to pay for care is ILLEGAL. They have too few doctors, MRIs and services offered for the people. Rural citizens receive even fewer services. I’m sorry, but NO thank you! That sounds like a recipe for disaster.
I hope Hilary Fidel Clinton is elected next Nov. She promised us all universal health care. Yay!
Because when/if she does get it through Congress, and it does go into effect and SUCK, maybe some naive people will wise up and see just how crappy it is, and a Democrat will never be elected ever again…
Hey, maybe trying Universal Health Care will suck, but we have to try something. The people above who want to keep things the way they are, obviously have good health care through their job and don’t have to worry about it. That was me 3 years ago, then I got seriously hurt on the job and have gone through 4 surgeries on my neck and back, going through the nightmare of Worker’s Comp.(that’s another story) but I lost my health care after Cobra, now no one will cover me. This could happen to anyone of you above. Then you will find out what this country is all about. GREED, you are just a slab of meat to the Health Care Providers. They won’t cover you and will tell you to go to the High Risk Pool, in my case they want $1,200 dollars, a month for a $5,000 ded. plan with no meds and only covers half of major costs, this doesn’t cover my family. I live on $300 a week and have huge debts. This is what you have to look forward too, if you get seriously hurt in this country. Yeah, I’m ready to try the Canadian, or French system, so will you! It’s that or bankruptcy, we are the only civilized country that forces it’s citizen’s into to financial ruin when you get sick or injured. It makes me wonder how civilized we really are, are we just that Greedy, or is it no one Cares anymore.
“We” have to try “something” that we already know will make health care much worse? You aren’t making any sense.
My point to Michael is that, 48 million people are now not covered, yes some are illegal aliens, and some don’t want to pay the money, but there are people who want health care. My point is that we have to try something, sure some people will not like it, mostly because they will lose money some how, but if it just makes people look more closely at their health coverage and weigh their options, then that is a good thing. People don’t want to change, but the argument, ” I have mine, so screw everyone else ” is not what America is about, at least that is not what I was told growing up in this country, maybe I’m wrong.
You were certainly told wrong if you were told that Americans are evil, heartless bastards who have to be forced to help each other at the point of a government gun and would let you die otherwise.
It’s quite likely that’s what you WERE told.
Nobody’s talking about “I got mine, screw you” except you and the leftists who want universal health care rationing.
You didn’t answer the question. Why should we try something we know is going to make health care more expensive, less accessible and overall worse for everyone? How is that going to help?
Michael, I hope you get hurt on the job, lose your health insurance, lose your house, your car, all that you own. I hope that you cannot provide for your family, if you have one, because you are seriously injured with terrible pain, that makes your arms and legs burn with numbness, cannot stand for more than an hour because the pain is too much, even with strong medication, then make such comments like the one above. People like you deserve to suffer, I pray every night that you and others like you suffer terrible chronic pain. Then I’d like to hear you sound off!
I had to write again because I’m so pissed off. To you Michael, I’m not a lefty as you just assume, no I’m just a very seriously injured person, who wants to be treated fairly. I’m not looking for a hand out, I’ll pay for health insurance, but if you are injured, you are at the mercy of some underwriter, who will charge you anything they want. I doubt you know, have you been turned down by 5 providers before, have you been charged 5 times the going rate of insurance for a plan they don’t even give to the general population. I have a serious neck and back injury, that puts major limits on what I can do, but I’m still healthy. Try convincing the underwriter of that, that is what I’m talking about.
I see that Blue Cross is setting aside 2 million dollars,(to start) with attack Ads against California’s plan to provide Health Care to the Uninsured.
This just shows that Insurance Companies will do anything to stop anyone from taking away their Cash Making Machine in CA. They always threaten to leave the State, they cry foul. Let’s do everything we can to show them the door, The Greed Stops here, as far as I’m concerned.
They want to compare the Health Insurance debate to the energy deregulation a few years ago, but what they don’t seem to realize, is they are the new Enron, manipulating the system.
In my homeland we get medical care for free. But we have to pay a high amount of money (every month) and our taxes are very high. Because health is very expensive. But erveryone has a health insurance, that is ruled by the law. Also unemployed persons have a health insurance. Kind regards!
Maybe your right. Maybe thats what Universal Health Care would be like in the U.S. since we can’t seem to get anything right, but I just watch M. Moores film “Sicko” and I have to say that I’m actually thinking about moving. The U.S. is 37th in health care according to the WHO and France is 1st. Citizens with National health care in the film actually laugh at the idea of having to pay for it, doctors still have million dollar homes, there are no lengthy forms to fill out, patients don’t have to wait any longer than we Americans do to see a doctor, and contary to what we’ve all been told about UHC, they also get to choose their own doctor and the govt. has no more involvement than picking up the tab.
The film also points out that of all the sellouts, Hilliary Clinton took the most money to drop the Universal Health Care idea which is why she’s fell silent about it ever since. Don’t look to her for health care reform in 08.
No system is perfect. But we have been lied to. Did you know that there is not a nursing shortage? The truth is that there is a shortage of people willing to pay what nurses are worth. There is also not a physician shortage. There is a disproportional mismatch. Actually we have too many physicians in some metropolitan areas and a shortage in rural areas. Universal health care is a bonefied answer to our collective health care woes. Let me give you an example. Here an Alheimer’s patient is likely to be tied up and drugged in a bed to mess themselves and become more agitated. In other universal health care countries this same scenario is treated with a live person at the beside to care for the bodily needs of an Alzheimer’s or confused patient. Instead of knocking the patient out and strapping them to the bed, an assistive person can talk to the patient and help them go to the bathroom, and help them eat. Usually this type of approach helps immensely and the patient gets the sleep they need and gets better more quickly. Do you want a nice person to care for you when you get old and don’t know what you are doing, or do you want to be strapped to a bed and have to sit in your own filth?
huh? I thought America ALREADY spends twice as much per capita on health care as many countries with Universal Health Care? Why then would a Universal Health Care system need tax increases? Couldn’t Universal Health Care actually decrease health spending then? Plus, the US spends more on the military than on health care? Isn’t there something wrong with that? If only some of that military money was spent on health care instead couldn’t the US EASILY have a great health care system that includes Universal Health Care.
David, HOW COME OTHER COUNTRIES CAN TREAT EVERYONE AT A LOWER PER CAPITA COST WITHOUT ANYONE HAVING THE PAY OUT OF THEIR OWN POCKETS!!??
I agree
Wal-mart, Starbucks, Burger king, all offer healthcare. Give me a break people cant get it. They choose not to get it. the 48 million is made up of people that won’t have healthcare unless somebody mandates they get it, or takes them up to the wealfare office and holds their hand for them while they sign up for Medicade. Think if Social Security went private, there would be about 50 million people in 20 or 30 years, that would say “i didn’t have the money for retirment” just like they say about healthcare, but its all the same its a choice.
I work at a department store and make around 22,000 a year. I am by no means making a great deal of money, but I am still able to afford good health insurance with my employers contributions. Some of my co-workers claim not to be able to afford health insurance. HOWEVER, I watch them everyday buy new clothes, go out to eat, and run up high credit card bills. Health insurance IS available. One just have to be willing to make the choice to pay for it. I think it is very unfair that I will likely be forced into UHC because people simply do not want to give up going out to eat twice a week to pay for coverage.
In Republican fantasy world I guess the government can’t do anything right (well except for the miltary, which Republicans worship and is run by the government). Just because things are not perfect in other countries where Universal Care is offered does not mean we can not do a better job. All you Republicans think we are superior to other countries, so why can’t we run our health care better than them also?
The bottom line is that we have over 40 million people without Healh Care and OVER 11 MILLION CHILDREN without Health Care in the richest country in the world. If you think nothing should be done about that, well then I seriously question what kind of a person you are. We can come up with 80 billion per year for a war in Iraq and we have the money to give $500,000/year tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% in Society, but we can’t find the money to give health care?
Also, I love the idea floated by Republicans that the government can do nothing right, yet private companies are always run very efficiently. I wonder sometimes if you people have even worked one day for an American Corporation. There is no waste and inefficiency in the American Business world? Hahahaha, ok…right.
Hey all you relgious Republicans, I have a news flash for you: Jesus wants kids to have Health Care, he thinks its more important than tax cuts for millionaires.
universal healthcare sucks, ya heard!
KP27, you are obviously naive. You want a change and go to a Muslim for it. You are showing your intelligence. Why don’t you wait in line at the doctors office behind someone who doesn’t have to work for anything they get and you die waiting. So go ahead and support your health care plan you sick atheist. If the plan is passed I hope you are the first one who has to find out the hard way how this health ”care” plan will work. Why it is called a health ”care” plan I do not know, considering it will do more harm than anything else to our nation.
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