Obamacare's effect on the middle class

[IndyColtsFan]

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1
Man let me feel ya in what elderly are talking about . Doctors and Hospitals and how to make these bastards sorry suckers . The elderly are going to go after the medical community when push comes to shove . As I have told ya many times its going to get really really ugly . I wouldn't mind seeing doctors getting busted up at all the drug pushing thieves. They hurt My Son not help . They kinda helped hurt me . But more are saying they have done more harm than GOOD . 250,000 deaths a year threw errors . These clown way over paid . Take the high pay from the butchers

Have you gone to med school? Have you gone through residency? Have you had to operate your own practice, complete with paying your own malpractice insurance? Do you realize the financial hardship many of these guys go through to become a doctor? Many of these guys come out of residency with six figures of debt, just to save the lives of ungrateful people such as yourself.

 

[Athena]

Originally posted by: Zstream
The reason why companies can achieve this goal right now is due to the current PRIVATE health insurance competitiveness. Why not just increase the competition by going nation wide? If people want major reform I believe they should be doing step by step process. Not a sweeping overhaul that we might regret five years down the road.

What exactly is the "goal" here. What goal do you think is being achieved by the current model? Please detail the social benefit of competition between private insurance companies to date? How would a race to the bottom -- more inadequate policies at lower cost -- benefit the society?

People seem to be confused about the actual goal: it is not about business, it's about the physical and financial well-being of the nation. Competition among private insurance companies has nothing at all to do with guaranteeing that every US citizen has access to appropriate medical treatment when it is needed without bankrupting the family or the government.

No industrialized country depends on "competition" between private insurance companies to ensure the well-being of its citizens...NOT ONE. There are only two countries (the Netherlands and Switzerland) that use mandated individual private insurance to deliver medical security to their citizenry and neither one considers "competition" as a policy driver. Every country that uses private insurance as an integral part of its overall health policy does so with regulation at a level that would never be countenanced here.

To be clear, I'm not opposed to the participation of private insurance companies in a rational health policy. I am opposed to constructing a national health policy on the fallacious premise that the objectives of the private insurance industry are the same as what our health policy should be or that the interests of the industry should form the basis of said policy.

 

[Athena]

Originally posted by: blanghorst
Have you gone to med school? Have you gone through residency? Have you had to operate your own practice, complete with paying your own malpractice insurance? Do you realize the financial hardship many of these guys go through to become a doctor? Many of these guys come out of residency with six figures of debt, just to save the lives of ungrateful people such as yourself.

PMFJI...I don't understand the point of these questions/comment. Should we read the post as supporting the status quo?

The theoretical savings of tort reform are dwarfed by what could be saved by eliminating the billing clerks in doctor offices and hospitals. Most small practices (i.e. 4-5 doctors) employ at least one FTE just for handling insurance issues...in addition to physician time required. Why do we read so much about tort reform and virtually nothing about just getting rid of the insurance companies? And why should we accept the idea that becoming a doctor should involve extreme deprivaton that will entitle him to great wealth later on.

Other countries have managed to resolve these issues in other ways. There are no caps on malpractice awards in most countries with Universal Health Care and yet doctors do not complain about malpractice wards. Most doctors in those countries have virtually no billing issues and doctors don't graduate with mountains of debt. What exactly are the advantages to the way we are doing things here?

 

[nixium]

Originally posted by: Athena

Originally posted by: Zstream
The reason why companies can achieve this goal right now is due to the current PRIVATE health insurance competitiveness. Why not just increase the competition by going nation wide? If people want major reform I believe they should be doing step by step process. Not a sweeping overhaul that we might regret five years down the road.

What exactly is the "goal" here. What goal do you think is being achieved by the current model? Please detail the social benefit of competition between private insurance companies to date? How would a race to the bottom -- more inadequate policies at lower cost -- benefit the society?

People seem to be confused about the actual goal: it is not about business, it's about the physical and financial well-being of the nation. Competition among private insurance companies has nothing at all to do with guaranteeing that every US citizen has access to appropriate medical treatment when it is needed without bankrupting the family or the government.

No industrialized country depends on "competition" between private insurance companies to ensure the well-being of its citizens...NOT ONE. There are only two countries (the Netherlands and Switzerland) that use mandated individual private insurance to deliver medical security to their citizenry and neither one considers "competition" as a policy driver. Every country that uses private insurance as an integral part of its overall health policy does so with regulation at a level that would never be countenanced here.

To be clear, I'm not opposed to the participation of private insurance companies in a rational health policy. I am opposed to constructing a national health policy on the fallacious premise that the objectives of the private insurance industry are the same as what our health policy should be or that the interests of the industry should form the basis of said policy.

This.

Why isn't anyone discussing this on the political arena? There's a fundamental difference of motives between for-profit insurance and the patient it covers. The company has an obligation to its shareholders to make a profit, and that obviously means they have to control costs, while the patient has the exact opposite motivation: to spend as much as it takes to get better.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Originally posted by: Athena

Originally posted by: blanghorst
Have you gone to med school? Have you gone through residency? Have you had to operate your own practice, complete with paying your own malpractice insurance? Do you realize the financial hardship many of these guys go through to become a doctor? Many of these guys come out of residency with six figures of debt, just to save the lives of ungrateful people such as yourself.

PMFJI...I don't understand the point of these questions/comment. Should we read the post as supporting the status quo?

Not at all; you should read my post as addressing the ill-informed comments made by Nemesis1. Among those jewels (excuse the spelling/grammar errors, as these are copied from his original post):

1. Doctors are "drug pushing thieves"
2. "Take the high pay from the butchers"
3. "These clown way over paid"

These guys act like becoming a doctor is a vacation and all of them are raking in millions. Check out this graph:

US Salary Survey for M.D.

Those salaries are not monstrously high as some of the people here would have you believe.

 

[Ozoned]

Several states have tried government run health care, and they all have a something in common. They are all failing/failed because of budget over runs that were not anticipated at conception.

 

[EXman]

Originally posted by: Ozoned
Several states have tried government run health care, and they all have a something in common. They are all failing/failed because of budget over runs that were not anticipated at conception.

shhh They hate facts!