SB 810 CA Universal Health Care Bill will be heard in State Senate Health Committee on April 27th (Oakland: insurance, employment)
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In theory, I am in favor of universal health care and I would like to see everyone recieve coverage.
Here is a fact sheet of State Senator Mark Leno's bill, SB810
http://dist03.casen.govoffice.com/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={CE4F5BC6-DD55-4BF0-BFAD-4E6F4163A426}&DE={F005649B-0195-4A86-832A-405D050468FF (broken link)}
Sounds great right?
Except, this guy makes a very compelling case for the opposition: State Senator Sam Aanestad(R-Grass Valley)
So if Universal Health Care is NOT the solution, then what are the fixes to the problems Senator Aanestad himself brings up:
1. Lack of Access
2. Lack of Affordability
Anyone have a solution?
7 Million Californians have no health care coverage at all. Its extremely expensive to say that they can simply go to the emergency room to receive care-and that's only when it gets so bad that they have no other recourse. What can they do about preventative care?
How many of those 7 million have no legal right to be here?
I don't know. This is a good question.
I wonder if there is data on the impact of Illegal aliens on the cost of health care in California? Its very pertinent if we're ever going to get to the bottom of this huge problem of health care not being accessible or affordable for millions of people.
In any event, this is yet another example of states having to deal with a problem that is under federal jurisdiction and the fed is dragging its feet. I think states should band together and demand that any money they spend to care for undocumented patients should be reimbursed to them by the federal government.
I agree that everyone should have some access to healthcare. However, universal healthcare is NOT the solution. Why? Because its the government that is in charge of managing it. The government is insanely inefficient at allocating resources, hence the reason communist/socialist countries generally have low standards of living relative to capitalist countries. They allocate resources based on ideology instead of what makes economic sense which translates into waste. Likewise, the government is inherently corrupt simply because you can pay off politicians to push your agenda. So if we did have universal healthcare it will most likely be heavily run by corporations. In that case it would result in worse healthcare because its the politician deciding how the system runs and healthcare providers would spend more money on lobbying rather than providing high quality service. In fact, even obama's healthcare bill was sold out to big pharma and special interests. PBS made an entire documentary devoted to what happened:
So clearly, as I have stated. GOVERNMENT run univeral healthcare will be a disaster simply because the government is corrupt and inefficient. It results in lower quality and less services. For any good example I direct you to the United States Postal Service or Amtrak etc.
So what is the solution you ask? Its simple. Its the free market and de-regulation.
Allow healthcare providers to compete against each other. The profit motive will force healthcare providers to lower prices. Same for insurance companies. Allow consumers to select which plan is right for them. Each consumer gets a plan for their budget and their needs. The only thing the government needs to do is make sure contracts are enforced. The free market is not a PERFECT system, however, historically it is the most efficient system that results in the most good for the most people. There will always be people who simply cannot afford healthcare (ie. homeless etc.). For these people, there is always charity. Americans are exceptional at charity and I believe that charity will be able to provide for those who can't provide for themselves.
Right now we have a highly regulated healthcare industry. This reduces competition and drives prices up. People incorrectly blame capitalism for high healthcare costs. It is a flat out lie. The real culprit is regulation. Regulation limits competition and adds costs to healthcare provider. Your doctor has to pay thousands to get malpractice insurance. The doctors have to jump through all sorts of hoops to get a medical license. They have to spend hundreds of thousands on education etc. However, government run healthcare is temping for lots because the idea of getting a free lunch seems like a great idea. In reality, most of the free lunch is eaten by the politicians and special interest. Meanwhile, the citizens get the crumbs.
here is milton friedman discussing the topic. I agree with his philosophy.
I don't know if the Leno bill changed anything, but the single payer bill just prior to this one (SB 840 Kuehl) mandated a tax of 8% paid by employers on wages between $7 and $200 thousand, with an additional 4% tax paid by the employees on these wages.
In addition it provided for an 11.5% tax on non-wage income, such as interest, capital gains and dividends. I don't recall seeing anything about pension or social security income, so I don't know how that would be taxed (but I'd guess it would be treated as non-wage income).
How many of those 7 million have no legal right to be here?
Since they are mandated by the law to be covered by ER's at no charge, we might as well cover them as well. If we extend preventative coverage to those 7 million, it might end up being cheaper overall than what we do now.
I think that some state should try single-payer universal healthcare and demonstrate that it works. It will be much easier to argue for the cause afterwards. But I don't think that it can happen in California. There's a good chance that it'll happen in Vermont in a few years, from what I read.
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Allow healthcare providers to compete against each other. The profit motive will force healthcare providers to lower prices. Same for insurance companies. Allow consumers to select which plan is right for them.
It's already the case. Healthcare providers compete against each other. Insurance companies compete against each other. It does not work. There are two fundamental problems. One is that neither healthcare providers nor insurance companies really know which treatments work and which don't. If you want to provide the best coverage for the lowest price, you need to know that. That means a lot of serious research. It's simply not happening here. Decisions whether to cover or to exclude any given treatment are made pretty much at random, not with the patient's interest in mind.
There's no such thing as "selecting a plan which is right for you". There may be plans that will extend your life by 10 years for $X/month, and there may be plans that will extend your life by 20 years for the same money, simply because the second group of plans will cover the right treatments and the first group will cover things at random. But you'd have no way of knowing that, because that's not how patients shop for insurance. At the present stage, patients are concerned about deductibles, copayments and risks of being dropped retroactively if you are diagnosed having some serious condition. Effectiveness of treatment does not enter - AT ALL. Until it starts being a factor, all the talk of relying on free market to sort things out is just hot air.
The second problem is that insurance companies can't force their prices on the doctor cartel. US healthcare is the most expensive in the world, in part because US doctors are the most overpaid in the world. In the UK, government can set the pediatric physician wage at $90,000/year and the surgeon wage at $120,000/year, they can take it or find some other job outside the healthcare industry. (Unsurprisingly, they tend to take that money, and there's no evidence that they work less efficiently or that there are fewer takers.) Here the doctor cartel limits the number of physicians produced every year, and the ones who make it through the system demand $200,000 to $500,000 per year for their services. These wages are not seen anywhere else in the world.
Last edited by esmith143; 04-11-2011 at 11:41 PM..
Well, reading a bit more on the topic, I now know I'm completely against it:
Patients could choose any health care provider. There would be no deductibles, co-pays, or exclusions for preexisting conditions. Coverage would be comprehensive, including medical, dental, prescriptions, mental health, rehabilitation, diagnostics, and more. Everyone would be covered for life, regardless of employment status, age, or health.
I agree that everyone should have some access to healthcare. However, universal healthcare is NOT the solution. Why? Because its the government that is in charge of managing it. The government is insanely inefficient at allocating resources, hence the reason communist/socialist countries generally have low standards of living relative to capitalist countries. They allocate resources based on ideology instead of what makes economic sense which translates into waste.
Fair enough, though the US is neither a communist nor a socialist country, so that is all irrelevant.
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Originally Posted by killer2021
Likewise, the government is inherently corrupt simply because you can pay off politicians to push your agenda.
That's how it already was before anyone even pitched universal health care. You can tell us that there is no corruption in the private healthcare industry if you like.
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Originally Posted by killer2021
So if we did have universal healthcare it will most likely be heavily run by corporations.
Private healthcare already is "heavily" run by corporations- what do you think Kaiser Permanente is? Cigna? Aetna?
Oh, wait! I forgot. I am the sole proprietor of all those companies and all those people work for me.
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Originally Posted by killer2021
In that case it would result in worse healthcare because its the politician deciding how the system runs and healthcare providers would spend more money on lobbying rather than providing high quality service. In fact, even obama's healthcare bill was sold out to big pharma and special interests. PBS made an entire documentary devoted to what happened:
In private industry healthcare, stockholders chose the chief officers and the chief officers chose how the system runs, that way of running being the most profitable which is distinct from what gives the patient the best coverage.
So clearly, as I have stated. GOVERNMENT run univeral healthcare will be a disaster simply because the government is corrupt and inefficient. It results in lower quality and less services. For any good example I direct you to the United States Postal Service or Amtrak etc.
If you want to see corrupt and inefficient, look to privatized health care wherein the chief officers of the corporations are "paid off" by their shareholders to increase the value of shares, at any compromise to patient care and that is exactly what happens. Privatized health care is already inefficient- the US has among the highest cost of health care but not the best results.
Of course, that is all due to gov regulation...
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Originally Posted by killer2021
So what is the solution you ask? Its simple. Its the free market and de-regulation.
Just look at what Greenspan's deregulation did to the financial services industry. His dogma was that regulation is always evil, and he clung to it.
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Originally Posted by killer2021
Allow healthcare providers to compete against each other. The profit motive will force healthcare providers to lower prices.
This is the same fodder we are always fed and is totally counter-intuitive. Profit motive will result in lower prices????
Only the very impressionable and ideologically-predisposed will accept that.
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Originally Posted by killer2021
Same for insurance companies. Allow consumers to select which plan is right for them. Each consumer gets a plan for their budget and their needs.
The elephant in the room being that many consumers who have the ability to pay for health care won't be able to buy it from any insurance company due to their preexisting conditions. I'm sure you have some lackadaisical dismissal of that issue, though.
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Originally Posted by killer2021
The only thing the government needs to do is make sure contracts are enforced. The free market is not a PERFECT system, however, historically it is the most efficient system that results in the most good for the most people.
Preach on.
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Originally Posted by killer2021
There will always be people who simply cannot afford healthcare (ie. homeless etc.). For these people, there is always charity. Americans are exceptional at charity and I believe that charity will be able to provide for those who can't provide for themselves.
Can't quite take this seriously until I'm falling-down drunk.
Quote:
Originally Posted by killer2021
Right now we have a highly regulated healthcare industry. This reduces competition and drives prices up. People incorrectly blame capitalism for high healthcare costs. It is a flat out lie. The real culprit is regulation. Regulation limits competition and adds costs to healthcare provider.
More preaching of the regulation-is-the-devil dogma.
Quote:
Originally Posted by killer2021
Your doctor has to pay thousands to get malpractice insurance. The doctors have to jump through all sorts of hoops to get a medical license. They have to spend hundreds of thousands on education etc. However, government run healthcare is temping for lots because the idea of getting a free lunch seems like a great idea. In reality, most of the free lunch is eaten by the politicians and special interest. Meanwhile, the citizens get the crumbs.
You go from talking about the credentials a dr. must earn to talking about what, exactly? Is one topic meant to follow from the other?
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Originally Posted by killer2021
here is milton friedman discussing the topic. I agree with his philosophy.
Oh, wait. Now that I watched what Friedman had to say, I now have the correct world view and I know who to "correctly" blame as well as who is flat-out lying.
OK, now me:
Government-administered health care is a necessary evil because the insurance companies are profit-driven and stockholder-serving, not patient-needs-driven, which necessitates that some entity, that being the government, compel them to sell insurance to those with money in hand who want to buy it even though those consumers have preexisting conditions.
This likely will drive up the cost of health care for those who already have it, to which I say too bad given that these same people would rather see their fellow man die an early and preventable death than suffer any small increase in their own health care costs. Put differently, it's difficult for me to sympathize with the crudely, callously, apathetically self-interested "I gots mine" people.
There is consolation to be had admid all this, though; the health care corporations will raise the cost of health care, resulting in chief officers still making tens if not hundreds of millions per year, and the shareholders shares will maintain or increase their value. Phew. Knowing that, I'll be able to sleep at night.
There will always be people who simply cannot afford healthcare (ie. homeless etc.). For these people, there is always charity. Americans are exceptional at charity and I believe that charity will be able to provide for those who can't provide for themselves.
For preventative care and minor health issues or physicals I can see that.
There are some free clinics run by non profits I know of and they do a world of good however after a little research into two of them, Berkeley Free Clinic and Order of Malta Clinic(Catholic) in Oakland, its become clear to me that they are overrun and way over 100% capacity.
Just this past weekend there was a "Remote Area Medical" clinic at the Oakland coliseum. Thousands of people from all over Northern California sat outside the stadium overnight hoping to see a medical professional for something as mundane as an eye exam or dental extraction. News story(Vid from KGO): http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?sec...bay&id=8066191
The founder of this clinic first took his free clinics to the AMAZON TO GIVE HEALTH SERVICES TO INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN THE RAIN FOREST but now finds that the need for his traveling free clinic has greater need in the US. And I find that to be a shame of maganamous proportions. History
Also, what if someone who works but can't afford health care needs something serious like chemotherapy for cancer or heart surgery or neurosurgery?
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Right now we have a highly regulated healthcare industry. This reduces competition and drives prices up. People incorrectly blame capitalism for high healthcare costs. It is a flat out lie. The real culprit is regulation. Regulation limits competition and adds costs to healthcare provider.
Are there examples of total deregulation of any industry improving affordability and access?
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