stonedinaustralia wrote on Jul 29
th, 2009 at 9:26pm:
well here's where I feel compelled to jump in
i have been watching this debate your nation is having regarding health care with some interest
i know i don't live in the US and the US is not Australia but, as I am sure other ROers from the Europe will attest,
you can have private and government health insurance co-exist such that you do not have,what is to me, the incomprehensible situation where access to fundamental/essential health care is not avaiable/affordable to all and a serious health problem has the potential corollary of becoming a serious financial one - if the rest of the western world can do it you do have to wonder why the US can't (or won't)
from what I have come to understand i can't help but think there is a lot of scare tactics and misinformation being bandied about - again i admit I am a long way from the action - and it is the insurance companies who can see a hit to their profit margins coming
clearly tho private health insurers have a bottom line interest and in regards to health care this is not always the best thing, if it ever is - i know this raises philosophical and idealogical issues about govt./indiviual rights and responsibilities but I am putting those to the side and am looking at this issue in terms of can it be done not should it be done - although the tenants of Hippocratic Oath and the idea that health services are a saleable commodity are, to me at least, somewhat at odds
the other thing that I understand about the US system that strikes me as unusual is that health coverage is often a component of employment benefits... speaking as a small business proprietor I can't see how this is anything but an impost (and therefore a retardant) on business, especially small business which then, of course, has ramifications when it comes to employment issues
finally, nanker i see your point re bureaucrats but as fuman points out private enterprise have their own as well and while private insurers may have (or have more incentive to have) more efficient bureaucracies I have had enough experience in insurance law to know that the hassle, time and cost that can be incurred in trying to get insurers to honour claims can be just as bad (if not worse) than navigating your way through the, not driven for profit, public system
and there will always be a place for private insurance, if people can afford it, in order to obtain private care, which, granted, is often - but not always - superior in quality to public (in my experience here at least) or for elective or non-essential expenses - here in Aus. for example you either insure for dental care or you pay for it tho some argue that basic dental care shoud also be covered
then of course there is also the issue of tort reform as well as a few other issues that have come to mind as i have written this but this will do for now...
please take this post at face value - my position and interest is solely to do with the health care issue - as far as the merits or otherwise of the Obama adminstration are concerned I remain an interested observer
SIA I appreciate your thoughts on this subject, but there are a few points that you may have either missed, or are unaware of. Firstly as recently as 2004 Obama claimed that he wanted a "single payer option". That is what we would have to call an oxymoron. Because a single payer plan would rule out all options except a government run plan. That would destroy all private insurance policies. As recently as this Monday Barney Frank (D-Ma.) said this---->
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3BS4C9el98&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Esinglepayerac...Now we all know what single payer is, right? It is a one plan fits all, and it would be handled entirely by some government hacks inside DC whose main objective is to "save" money. So while some like funman love to slam profit, they are clueless as to whjat the alternative is. When the government negates profit as an incentive then they will destroy not only the insurance business, but the helath care that the USA has enjoyed for years. Many are not aware of the fact that the UK has the worst health care coverage of any Western country! It's true, but many in the UK have lived with it for their entire lives, and they know of no other option. There's that word again, option. In the UK they have no options! That is what Obama and many liberal big government types want here. We don't want it! It leads to rationing, and long lines, and the government standing between you and your doctor.
Here's today's headline from the Herald UK today-->"One third of patients encounter problems with NHS"
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.2522438.0.One_third_of_patients...Why would we want to adopt a type of governemnt run plan that is an absolute disaster in every single country that it has been tried?
The USA leads the world in heart disease survival, cancer survival, and in most other crhonic disease survival. If big daddy governemnt decides who gets treated that all goes out the window.
Now let's take a look at how well the governemnt handles the health care packages that it already operates.
And now we're supposed to just assume that Obama, who has never run anything in his life, is going to get a nationalized health care plan, and then make it a cost saving plan that we can all believe in? Huh, no.
Riffy
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