You don't. There are three ways to get a doctor to see you: 1. Pay her. (best) 2. Appeal to her sense of charity. (Not bad) 3. Force her. People who can afford to see a dr should pay the dr. People who can not afford it should appeal for charity. People who want to tell the dr who to see should take a hike.
destroyer- by the way some of those people are acting, not only do you not need to be pro-obama to attend--you don't even need to be pro-democracy... : pub :
Many times it's more efficient to tear down an old house and rebuild new than to try and remodel and rehab, if a homebuilders' analogy works here. The healthcare industry is a relic from the 50's when it became quazi-socilalistic on the backs of industry/employers at the behest of unions and 'work for life' mentality that eventually shackled the auto makers into BK . The core infrastructure problems that must be addressed: 1. Technology: The Healthcare Industry has always been notoriously slow adopters of technology. The cost to implement a new internet based patient billing and medical records platforms depends on a cooperation of providers, payors/insurers, big pharmas....good luck, they are all tight on the bottom line and no one wants to be the first one in the pool. Until their interests are aligned and capital investments are committed to a uniform platform with the government providing major tax incentives....it won't happen. 2. Insurance companies are inneffiecent and really provide very little benefit to care, in fact they have contributed to declining quality of care. For example: I had a neighbor that sold healthcare plans to an impressive roster of major hotels chains. This jerk does not give a damn about the dishwashers, maids, and maintenence workers who send him part of their paychecks every week. He would take his commissions and spend it on gifts, dinners , even vacations for the contacts that fed him the business. He would write down 80% of his revenue on enterntainment, much of it was really spent personally (I cant beleive the IRS buys his returns). What tangible benefit does he provide to the system? 3. Lawyers: Lawsuits not only results in huge insurance premiums for providers, it has created a culture of multiple test/opinions to CYA. 4. Big Pharmas are evil: I have persomally battled shering -plough who employed unbeleviably sinister tatics to try and bury a transdermal drug delivery company I raised financing for. This company is the potential end of pills and needles. A disruptive yet safer, cheaper delivery platform is seen as threat to their territory (Although with a ton of patents expiring in the next few years, a new delivery platform would extend the patents for 13 more years, one would think they should start to warm up to the idea) The messy transition to a new HC infrastructure is daunting. To facilitate this politically, financially, and without significant lapses in care is the real challenge. The modern materials are ready to build the better, more effiecent new house that our country desperately needs, but how can you tear it down to rebuild when the tenants have no where to go and the contractors have competing interests? .
I am more worried about big multi-national corporations than government. Ever watch "The Smartest Guys in the Room" about Enron? What about MCI Worldcom? Tyco? AIG? Or even Haliburton? Blackwater? Multi-national corporations acting without impunity and serving their own self interest is a very scary thought. Idiocracy anyone? Health and well being should be not be determined by corporations who sole purpose is "to maximize shareholders wealth." I was a business major, this was drilled down my throat every class. Social Responsibility? Nope. Only "maximize shareholders wealth." Does maximizing shareholder wealth = providing the best services for the patient? I don't think so. It = providing the services that will make the most profit and equal the biggest bonuses. How many cases have there been with leaked memos from insurance companies who denied claims because it was cheaper to battle in court and most didn't have the money to fight? It is a numbers game. Money over people. Greed is the reason that we are in the mess we are now.
By no means am I blaming purely illegals but I work in the confinment field and have seen big money to illegal inmates that are only going to be deported soon. Last time I checked the government is supposed to answer to the people not the people answer to the government.
LOL. Are you serious? You proved my point. You point at these crappy fraudulent companies as evil, but in our free market economy, guess what happened to these companies. They went under. The problem fixed itself. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen to government when they suck. They just print more money. LOL again. You watched Idiocracy and you came out of it as the movie pointing fingers at big corporations? HAHAHAHA, you completely missed the point of the movie. Do you like watching people get kicked in the nuts? HAHAHA. Your idea of "Social responsibility" is completely unsustainable and some crazy utopian society you somehow believe in. You can't keep rewarding irresponsible behavior. I'm out, this thread is getting boring. Thanks a lot Disco. LOL. Neither side will change the others' opinion. At least I got to see that there are still people out there with some logic and reason with real life experience to back up their opinions.
Our healthcare system is in need of an overhaul, we can all agree on that but creating socialized healthcare is not the solution. Public medicine will be another nail in the American coffin, right up there with the banking industry, medicare and social security. The answer is not in socialized medicine, it's in making our current system work. We need affordable, individual, health insurance that is there for us when we need it and doesn't require us to fight tooth and nail for every claim. So, how do we do that? Here are a few ideas: 1. Americans pay the majority of R&D costs for pharmaceuticals. US companies need to start making other nations pay more for their drugs thereby bringing our costs down. That is, if they pass the savings on to us which judging by the oil industry, they won't. 2. The US populous is way too litigious which causes an increase in our insurance rates and medical costs. We need to create legislation to protect doctors so that they can continue to make a decent living and we can continue to benefit from having the best doctors in the world. 3. We already have all the public healthcare we need. If you are sick, you will be treated at a public clinic. You will not be turned away and there is a good chance the tax payers will pick up the bill if you can't afford it. 4. We should be responsible for the lifestyle choices we make. If you smoke, drink, do drugs, etc, you should pay more for health insurance. I don't want to have my tax dollars being spent treating conditions you created yourself through your choices. 5. People should be able to choose the quality of healthcare they receive. If healthcare is socialized it will homogenize the quality of our medical services (lowest common denominator). Those who currently can't afford healthcare will gain access to previously unobtainable services while those who could freely choose their physician will be limited in their choice. That is against every thing our country stands for in terms of democracy and free-market capitalism. 6. We also all need to harden the f*^# up! We don't need to go to the doctor for every little thing. Get checked up once or twice a year and take good care of yourself. All those unnecessary doctors visits when you get a sniffle or a sore throat raise the price of everybody's insurance. 7. Doctors need to stop playing unnecessarily with their toys. Your new MRI machine is sweet but you don't need to use it on every patient that walks in the door with a hang-nail. All the unnecessary treatments/testing are driving up the costs of our healthcare. Bottom line is that we need to fix the system we have. A lot of the choices are ours to make and we can influence the market with our spending habits. As soon as the government oversees our healthcare system, those choices are no longer ours to make.
I'm not ready to give politicians a pass just because they say they're "fighting for the little guy." Corporations are made up of people, so are governments. Megalomania is megalomania. Wal-mart said they're in favor of Obamacare. Why do you think that is? Because they're nice now? No, because they can afford it more than their competition. Why did the big insurance companies testify in Congress that they'd get behind some of the proposed changes? Maybe they're just bootlickers, maybe they figure that the new regulations would make it harder for smaller companies to compete. Baptists & bootleggers...
Tidbits Obama Reverses Stand On Drug Industry Deal Who can you trust? Wall Street Journal - Although Canada has a population smaller than California, 830,000 Canadians are currently waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment, according to a report last month in Investor's Business Daily. In England, the waiting list is 1.8 million.
I think one of the more interesting questions posed in this thread is whether I would rather place the trust of my health care in the hands of the government or money-grubbing corporations. To me, the answer is easy - money-grubbing corporations. I, for one, do not elevate the righteousness of the motivations of the government over free enterprise. Both exhibit the most basic of human characteristics, self-interest. However, the free market has its own unique way of punishing those who are not able to provide a competitive product at a competitive price (ie. they go out of business). Enterprises run (or at least largely controlled) by the government are usually marked by inefficiency due to the lack of competition. Yes, free enterprise means that doctors and insurance companies make money off our well being; but I don't think that is a bad thing, per se. Does this mean that there is no room for government in the healthcare industry? In a perfect (ie. academic) world, I think the answer would be yes. However, I have learned that almost nothing is black and white and instead most issues are gray. As a society, we must decide what role the government must take to promote a prosperous and functioning society. As I have stated, I believe that the line should be drawn to favor less government and allow the free market to control, at least to some extent. I understand that others feel a moral obligation to the contrary or disagree on some other grounds and although I respect your opinion, I must nonetheless disagree.
I came down here at my employer's request. Hard to turn down a chance to live somewhere else, especially a place like socal. Differences in healthcare, politics, etc had nothing to do with it, whether good or bad. First of all, anyone who doesn't have access to other group coverage would have access to this public group I was suggesting - access means they have the right to enroll in the plan, should they choose. They still have to pay for it, I'm not saying this should be free by any means. As things stand now, if your employer does not offer group coverage you're pretty much stuck with individual coverage. If you have a pre-existing condition you're out of luck, denied. That means you don't have access to coverage. Even without a pre-existing condition you can get hosed if you're old or meet any of the many criteria insurance companies screen for. Do you think the concept of group coverage provided by an employer is idiotic? Because its really no different than what I suggested. In fact, the large public group I suggest would work much better for insurance companies than most of their existing company plans. Do you understand how insurance works? Any group plan will have some people with no claims, some with moderate claims, some with large claims, and the rare monster claim. Premiums are set based on actuarial statistics so that on average they will cover the cost of routine claims plus some cushion to compensate for the risk of a huge claim. In a small (2-50 people) or even a large group a monster claim can by far exceed premiums collected and the insurance company takes a hit. Its a chance the insurance company takes and trust me when I say that its actuaries are relentlessly tracking claims stats to see if rates need to be adjusted to ensure profit even when big claims occur. Such a monster claim would cause it to adjust rates in the affected group and probably for all other groups as well. A large public group by comparison could have hundreds of thousands or even millions of members. That same monster claim would be a drop in the bucket by comparison and would have a much smaller effect on premiums. With a large public plan the insurance company would take on less risk because it would have a larger population and better data to set rates upon. Couldn't agree more that people should take care of themselves. People who lead unhealthy lifestyles should pay more for insurance. People with bad driving records pay more, don't they? While we're talking about taking responsibility, why target only smokers when its been proven that nicotine is addictive? Smokers should pay more but how come tobacco companies don't have to pay a fair share of healthcare costs their products create? Or liquor companies? Or fast food chains? We could tax the hell out of undesirables such as cigarettes, alcohol and fast food to discourage unhealthy behaviour. It wouldn't take much to bridge that state budget deficit let alone fund a lot of other things. But to say people who are overweight, smoke or whatever shouldn't have access to healthcare isn't fair. There is a lot more that can happen to them than problems resulting from being overweight or a smoker. Car accident? MTB crash? Skin cancer? Attack by zombies?
The original idea of a free market is great in theory. When the idea was first proposed there were not large multi-national corporations who have bullied others out of the market, often times aided by corporate welfare (not free market), did not exist. Some have become so large that they do not have to compete fairly in a "free market". They can wait the little guy until he folds. Or used monopolistic tactics, like refusing somebody to carry their product if they also carry a competitors. Large multi-national corporations are able to operate outside the scope of the free market. The resemble nothing of the companies that existed when the concept of free markets were first being theorized. The unbalance the system.
I don't disagree entirely. This is why I did not say that the there is no place for government. Our government has installed certain safeguards against monopolistic activities by passing anti-trust laws and oversight of various corporate actions by agencies such as the FTC and SEC.
Ah how convenient to simply change your tune.....you compared their health care and ours is like third world country. They are not trying to implement a universal health care, they always had one....if you call it that. They are actually trying to privatize everything.....again get your fact straight and stop watching faux news. What you experience is definitely a problem with our health care and no one said it's perfect. But it is our own responsibility to get second opinion and see another doctor. We have that choice here and people in other countries don't. If someone sells me a lemon car do I blame the system? It is my fault for not checking carfax. Not all doctors are equal! That's why I pay extra to make sure I can see the doctor who is good! I worked for health care company before, the general doctors are paid very little and just out of school. Trust me you don't want to see those but by having Kaiser YOU WILL NOT HAVE A CHOICE. But the better options do cost more......it is your choice: cheap health care or good health care just like cheap car or good car. IT IS NOT THE SYSTEM'S FAULT! Yes English is my second language. And yes when I was little the school told me Americans are evil imperialists and will kill all the children......dude if you want a view from someone outside of US you won't find a better person around OC.:lol: BTW they see the US as sooooo evil that's why they all dying to immigrate here.#-o Sorry, wish I could but they are for old white people with nothing to do......I don't fit in.#-o:lol:
whatever, duke. i'm glad you got it all figured out. but please don't call it logic. simplistic analogies simply won't hold water in an issue as complex as this. and, trust me, the system is f-ed up--to the tune of a $trillion in waste per year. and for what? crappy coverage for half of the country. people come here because we're the richest country, not because we have the best health care. and one thing i don't get--especially in a christian-judeo based country--is why we all wouldn't want every citizen to have decent health care for themselves and their families. we have more uninsured people--50 million--including millions of kids, than we ever have. lots of people cry about the entitlement mentality, but the opposite of that is the greed/selfish mentality: "i got mine, screw you." i never painted myself as an expert on health care reform. but it doesn't take much to figure out that the current system is bad for our country's economic and social future. i'm just surprised how many people are gullible enough to fall for scare tactics and/or are selfish (elitist?) to the point of denying all citizens the basic health care that every other industrialized country enjoys. i guess we'll have to wait a few years to see how it all shakes out...
I watched a few minutes of Sean Hannity on Fox news yesterday while Larry King was on commercial. The graphics for the show had like a bloody Rx and something else kind of morbid, I can't remember. No wonder these uneducated incoherent people that are getting crazy at town hall meetings. It is fear propaganda. Death panels, bloody Rx graphics, and who knows what else since I never watch the channel. It reminds of all the terror alerts leading up to the 2004 election. Let's just avoid facts and logic and have fear propaganda, but it seems to work with a large portion of the uneducated in the South and middle america. "Keep the gov't out of my medicaire!" lol Did anybody see the segment Jon Stewart did, I think last week, where he showed how Fox News put out these talking points, then the next day people used the talking points at the town hall, and that night the guy from Fox reported the people who simply regurgitated his talking points as news. lol The Daily Show got them pretty good on that one.
Let's avoid facts and logic and watch the Comedy Channel. Let's not actually read HR3200 and judge for outselves.
People need to make a living and I don't have a problem with people needing to see a doctor having to pay for it especially if it is not basic and unnecessary care. I agree with what you say when it comes to individuals and individual doctors. I guess my problem is with the billion dollar insurance, phamaceutical etc companies that really only exist to make money and it just happens to be in the "health care industry." Shouldn't it be that they exist to provide the best health care possible and making a profit MAY happen? Do you really want someone making a decision regarding you or your families health based on what it costs or more importantly how much it will make rather than what is the best you can afford? I don't think EVERYONE should be given health care, but I think good, hardworking people who have tried to do things the right way thier whole life should recieve treatment as people not figures in a ledger without a going through all the bureaucracy. I think people have forgotten that this is by definition, PERSONAL health care that has become way to impersonal. I know, I know, I am an idealist. But who amoung us doesn't dream of a better place where we live five minutes from a lift to the top of our favorite mountain where our favorite bike waits for us and our favorite women wait in the jacuzzi at the bottom with our favorite beer and a steak? That may never happen but a better health care system can. ps- what everyone is mentioning as wasted money in this industry has ended up in someones pocket.
