you sound like an insurance salesman… or the like…

wow.

now, i promise, no more for you…

I hadn’t thought of using genocide to solve the health-care crisis, but it just might be crazy enough to work! Good plan, ace!”

Hey, nothing like some good old fashioned simple minded fearmongering! I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. The problem with liberals is they can’t see more than one step ahead.

Have you ever thought what the real reason for current insurance companies not caring about preventitive care is? Put yourself in the insurance company decision makers chair for a second. You know that the most expensive time for healthcare in a persons life if when they are old. You also know that the government currently foots the bill for this expensive healthcare. What would incentivize you to even want to use preventitive care? Nothing, you don’t see the benefit in it.

(Note: as your assertions were addressed by numerous others later in the discussion, your points are not ceded)

But let’s just say the points are ceded to you.

Guess what?

At that time, should it happen the way you assert, people will have a CHOICE to leave that plan and enter another plan that they CHOOSE.

Isn’t CHOICE a wonderful concept, Roark?

Spare me.

Give consumers a tax deduction for premiums, putting the choice of insurance providers in the hands of consumers, giving consumers an incentive to get the best bang for their buck.

This Roark guy is a genius. There already is a deduction for insurance premiums. They combine with out of pocket medical expenses and are all deductible once they exceed a certain level of your income.

Even if there is an initial increase in demand, the long term per capita health care costs will stabilize as the general population becomes more healthy and productive.

I have just read that Alabama and Mississippi, two of the most repiggie areas in the nation, are the two leading states with obese populations. Virtually all the top ten states with obese populations are in the repiggie South.

July 1st, 2009 at 11:55 am
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And one could argue that if the nation’s health care system was focused more on patients than profits, it’d attract a more talented pool of doctors and improve the quality of care. I’m sure plenty of potentially good doctors turn to other professions because they don’t want to take part in the bullshit for-profit system.

This survival of the fittest crap makes for great conversations in your early 20’s, but reality has an incredible way of biting libertarianism right on the ass.

The “market” is a self-perpetuating monopoly, dedicated to the most profit with the least pay-out. Continuing our presence course will soon bring our system to total collapse.

Get rid of the FDA
Eliminate(or phase out) medicare and medicaid.

You are forgetting:

Get rid of the Social Security
Introduce FAITH BASED HEALING!

If the Bush years were any indication, the expedited approval process benefiting the corporate benefactors was the closing thing to scrapping the agency itself.

July 1st, 2009 at 11:43 am
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Interesting plan. So you’re working on the demand-side, then. Once you’ve killed off all the old people and poor people in the country by letting them eat e coli-infected food and take untested medications and then denying them the ability to treat these infections and poisonings through Medicare and Medicaid, the rest of the country will benefit from the tax coupon you’re giving then on their health insurance premiums.

I hadn’t thought of using genocide to solve the health-care crisis, but it just might be crazy enough to work! Good plan, ace!

Roark Says:

This whole notion of having a public option and decreasing costs while is not even logical. There is a reason we have so many of these procedures that are supposedely not necessary. It’s because of the trial lawyers. Doctors are forced by necessity to submit every patient to every possible test whether needed or not. Why is this? Because if they don’t and the patient is actually sick then the then the doctor gets sued.

Doctors order the tests because in a for profit system they get paid more the more money they make for their bosses. It is almost impossible to get a lawyer to take a malpractice suit unless the doctor was grossly negligent and then the patient had to be suffering from something that is 100% curable if the doctor hadn’t messed up. Still the costs of legal fees is less than 1% of healthcare costs and is just a talking point used to fool idiots like you.

Roark Says:
Katy,

There is a solution, or better put a combination of solutions, to decreasing costs while increasing efficiency (which would increase coverage).

Among other things,

- Get rid of the FDA
- Slow down the trial lawyers (to assume that the only cost associated with malpractice suits is malpractice insurance is simplistic at best)
- Give consumers a tax deduction for premiums, putting the choice of insurance providers in the hands of consumers, giving consumers an incentive to get the best bang for their buck.
- Eliminate(or phase out) medicare and medicaid.

That’s a start.

Wow.

This one lives in a much different world than I do.

The FDA is the problem? Medicare is the problem?

Just wow.

- Get rid of the FDA

the pigs almost, and in effect, DID…

and we got LEAD IN TOYS, E-COLI IN FOOD, DEATHS FROM MEDS

ETC

ETC

ETC.

you’re done.

Roark, good on you for taking a more sane view of liberals. It’s refreshing.

The U.S. under a free-market system is experiencing a shortage of primary care physicians. The taxpayer covers subsidies for public medical schools and funding for research in even the private institution (Johns Hopkins, a private university, is the largest recipient). While the taxpayer plays a big role in putting a doctor through medical school (maybe not the tuition, but the research that leads to curricular enhancement), we can’t force that doctor to move to a specialty that reflects the public’s needs — not that I would propose in any way that the government do so.

So, yes, the existing doctors would take on heavier caseloads with increased access. But if it’s one thing a doctor must do already, it’s have the stamina to help as many people as they can; do the work of 5-6 people. But, again, as ralph pointed out, stress on the system would initially increase and then be alleviated with an overall healthier population.

July 1st, 2009 at 11:36 am
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Doctors are not a finite natural resource. They’re a renewable resource. We can make more of them, and we can import them if necessary.

Roark Says:
“Demand will not increase because of lowered costs.”

This type of thinking is laughable at best. You think that healthcare is the only thing that is averse to the law of supply and demand?

No, I didn’t say it was “the only thing”, did I? As someone once said recently, “Don’t pollute the conversation with what you think you are hearing.”

The next time you see a sick coworker, ask him/her why they don’t go to the doctor. Odds are good (and I know that we’ve probably all been there) that it’s because they don’t want to pay for the co-pay or they don’t have insurance and don’t want to pay for it out of pocket.

No shit. But as I said, demand would increase to a point, something you’re ignoring. That demand would quickly stabilize. It’s not an infinitely expandable market, as most consumer goods theoretically are.

The goal is to provide health care, much like the goal of universal education is to build an educated populace — something working democratic systems require.

Now, if you decrease that cost do you think that same person will go? I think you and I both know they would.

Again, you’re pretending that the initial increase in demand (where those who are now denied access would receive that treatment they need) would be a constant condition of the system.

It would not. Any successful health care reform would result in the very conditions you decry — lowered costs and greater access. Since you see these as danger signs, is it fair to say that you are against health care reform? If not, what would this reform look like, if it did not achieve both lowered costs and greater access?

There, we’ve come up with a example of how decreased costs increase demand, even in healtcare. Now multiply that by the number of people in America and the number of times each person sniffles and you have that many visits to the doctor.

When you decide to treat my argument as stated –including the provision that lowered costs would result in increased demand only to a point of equilibrium — then we can talk. Until then, you’re simply restating your misunderstanding over and over again.

The idea that every one, or even most people, would go to the the doctor every time “each person sniffles” tells me you aren’t interested in taking this discussion very seriously.