A wiff of truth about Single Payer and Medicare

[truehawk]

Quote from number22:

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A little competition from public health care is not a bad thing, the bad thing is someone will make health-care into scarcity, so they will make more profit from it.

I could not get it to load until I clicked the little link at the bottom left. But LOL wonderful.

 

[lrm21]

Quote from truehawk:

Yada Yada, Yada,

Okay, lets see, you are arguing that
Medicare pays 15% less, thus it is inflationary?

Please don't let me type words in your mouth, but I don't think paying LESS makes something an inflationary mess.

Goverment its writing checks at a 15% discount, but its a revenue stream that is unlimited from the government. Of course that is inflationary.

Just like government supplying loans to people who shouldn't have houses. You have added an enormous demand component to the system. Shifting the fucking curve and as a result prices can rise. OMFG get a clue.

If these people where added to a private insurance pool that had incentives to control costs and ability to shop, maybe prices would stabilize, but it still would be inflationary.

In the end however insurance is still another third party cutting checks. You can also blame the government for the current system you so despise.

Direct pay existed in this country until the WWII.

This was another unintended consequence of government central planning of guess what... PRICE CONTROLS. Thats right the government in its genius instituted wage controls during the war, but they didn't cap fringe benefits so guess what companies did raise fringe benefits including...HEALTH INSURANCE.

So rather than having a system where insurance is just that something you insure against in rare events, it become a highly inefficient third party funding mechanism for every toothache, cold, and bout of heartburn. Again, Inflationary. But lets replace that with the ultimate in efficiency the government because they have done such a brilliant job with every other system they have managed, like our own budget.

Maybe you should sit in on semster of highschool Econ, and learn about price curves and supply demand, the free market, and the failure of the Soviet Union.

And somehow the UK and European countries manage to smoke, drink and consume more saturated fats, and still have higher life expectancies. And don't tell me about fast food.. Nutritionists have nightmares about the level of salt and fat in English and German pub food. About the only difference is that the Europeans and those in the UK appear to WALK a lot more, and stress levels are lower.

Stress levels count when one is sick and they don't have the stress of fighting the insurance companies and facing possible bankruptcy when they are deathly ill.

Perhaps you should google "conditional probability of rescission". I have read that the chance of one's insurance being canceled if your claim is over 100K is about 50%.

GTFO just GTFO. If you want European socialism, by all means take it. Go see how stress free, the Brits are as their country implodes, pregant women delivering on the side of the road, because hospitals have no capacity, people pulling their own teeth because it takes months to see a dentist, spain in depression, greece, italy, france.


BTW stop regurgitating the WHO statistics. The same bullshit that places CUBA ahead of the USA in healthcare.

I am to believe a country that just announced a shortage of toilet paper, that people are getting in rafts to cross the ocean, has a better healthcare system than the U.S.

Unlike Cuba if life is so tough here, you are free to leave.

Tell me you want central planning so everyone gets the same shit. and I mean SHIT. But don't tell me central planning produces better outcomes by using propaganda stats from countries who promote central planning.

Oh and I am so sorry the insurance companies cause stress. Is there anything else that causes stress in your life? Be sure to write it all down and send the list to Santa Obama so he can cure all your worries.

 

[151]

I know this is glaringly obvious to most people. But just in case some of the proponents of public health care do not get it,

I would gladly settle for a more expensive, less efficient, corrupt private health care industry. I am not interested at all in a less expensive, more efficient, corrupted public health care system.

The point is I do not want to pay the government to take care of me. I'll die young if it allows me to take care of myself.

I think we are arguing the wrong points in this debate. People who are against federal health care are never going to win in a service or value based argument.

The designers of the reform can change the system whenever a new valid argument against is discovered. As a matter of fact the opponents are probably doing half the work of designing the reform for them.

The only way to win this is to prove that we are not interested in government run healthcare regardless of the benefits or negative aspects.

 

[heypa]

Truehawk lives in La La land!
The land of lousy logic! IMHO

 

[Thunderdog]

Quote from number22:

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A little competition from public health care is not a bad thing, the bad thing is someone will make health-care into scarcity, so they will make more profit from it.

Excellent.

 

[Rodney King]

Quote from truehawk:

Medicare Advantage, private insurance paid by Medicare costs Medicare 15% more than government run fee-for service Medicare. The government run program is more efficient than the private HMOs.


September 27, 2009
Editorial
Medicare Scare-Mongering

It has been frustrating to watch Republican leaders posture as the vigilant protectors of Medicare against health care reforms designed to make the system better and more equitable. This is the same party that in the past tried to pare back Medicare and has repeatedly denounced the kind of single-payer system that is at the heart of Medicare and its popularity.

For all of the cynicism and hypocrisy, it seems to be working. The Republicans have scared many older Americans into believing that their medical treatment will suffer under pending reform bills.

The general public believes that, too. The latest New York Times/CBS News poll of 1,042 adults found that only 15 percent believe changes under consideration would make the Medicare program better, while 30 percent think they would make it worse.

That does not mean that Medicare will be untouched under the Democrats’ plans. The Obama administration and Congressional leaders are hoping to save hundreds of billions of dollars by slowing the growth of spending in the vast and inefficient Medicare system that serves 45 million older and disabled Americans. The savings would be used to help offset the costs of covering tens of millions of uninsured people.

•

But far from harming elderly Americans, the various reform bills now pending should actually make Medicare better for most beneficiaries — by enhancing their drug coverage, reducing the premiums they pay for drugs and medical care, eliminating co-payments for preventive services and helping keep Medicare solvent, among other benefits.

The main exception, a fully justified one, is that some of the 10 million people enrolled in private plans that participate in Medicare — the Medicare Advantage program — might suffer a dilution or elimination of the extra benefits they get that other beneficiaries do not.

To help them compete against the traditional Medicare fee-for-service program, Congress granted these plans large overpayments, essentially subsidies. Most are required to use part of the subsidy to reduce charges to their beneficiaries or to add extra benefits, such as vision and dental benefits, or even gym memberships.

This often makes them a better deal for beneficiaries. But it is unfair to force those enrolled in traditional Medicare to help foot the bill — currently $43 a year extra for each participant — to help subsidize the private plans. Federal taxpayers have contributed heavily as well.

These private plans didn’t start out costing the government more. For most of the 1980s and 1990s, the assumption was that private health maintenance organizations could do a better job of coordinating care and saving money than the government. The private plans were paid 95 percent of what the same services would cost in traditional Medicare with an assumption that even that money would allow them to deliver extra benefits.

Then after budget cuts imposed in 1997 drove many private plans to drop out of the program, Congress steadily raised their payments. Today Medicare pays the private plans, on average, 14 percent more than the same services would cost in traditional Medicare.

The bill being considered by the Senate Finance Committee is projected to cut the subsidies to Medicare Advantage companies by more than $100 billion over 10 years. Although Republican rhetoric has triggered fears that Medicare Advantage enrollees might lose their coverage entirely if private plans drop out of the system, the real effect of the bill would likely be modest on average.

The value of an enrollee’s added benefits would shrink by more than half from current levels but would not disappear; they would still be worth about $500 a year in 2019.

Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, told the committee that, under the bill as proposed by the committee chairman, he expected that almost all Medicare Advantage plans would continue to operate and almost all of their current enrollees would stay enrolled. Total enrollment in Medicare Advantage would creep up by 200,000 over the next decade — that is, about 2.7 million fewer new enrollees than expected under current trends, a real chance for savings.

What the Republicans aren’t saying — and what the Democrats clearly aren’t saying enough — is that in important ways, coverage for a vast majority of Medicare recipients, those in traditional Medicare, should actually improve under health care reform.

The House legislation, the only bills in near-final form, would reduce and ultimately eliminate a gap — the so-called doughnut hole — in Medicare drug coverage that currently forces more than three million beneficiaries to pay for drugs entirely out of their own pockets once they hit specified spending levels. That would also benefit many other beneficiaries who pay high premiums for coverage in the gap that they never end up using.

The House bills would also waive deductibles and co-insurance for preventive care that can head off serious illness, expand eligibility for programs that assist low-income beneficiaries and provide incentives for doctors and hospitals to coordinate care, improve quality, and lower costs. All that should benefit many if not most Medicare beneficiaries. And delivery system reforms should benefit the private plans as well.

Republican opponents have also been warning that planned cuts in payments to hospitals and other health care providers might make them less willing or able to serve Medicare patients. If true, that is a problem that Congress will have to address in the future.

•

We have long championed Medicare. And we believe elderly Americans, and all Americans, should closely examine the proposed health care reforms.

But the Republicans have done far too good a job at obscuring and twisting the facts and spreading unwarranted fear. It is time to call them to account. President Obama and the Democrats in Congress have to make the case forcefully that health care reform will overwhelmingly benefit Americans — including the millions of older Americans who participate in Medicare.

OP is from the <i>New York Times<i> -- which tells you all you need to know -- though it's unreferenced by the poster (BTW - What's up with cut/pasting chunks of text rather than giving URLs? Don't these frigtards know any better?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/opinion/27sun1.html/

 

[Arnie]

Quote from Thunderdog:

Excellent.

How come the only people pushing for a public health care option are the ones who will never be on it?

Btw, I've re-thunk my position and have to say that I am now for health care reform. My only concern is how we will pay for it. So in that spirit, I have written a letter to my Congressional and Senate represetatives urging passage a of 1/4% tax on all stock transactions. Most people won't even notice. Besides, I am just a paper trader like the rest of the yahoos on ET.

PS. Perhaps a tax on TeeVee, sport stars, movie stars, and celebrities in general, too?

 

[Thunderdog]

Quote from Arnie:

...So in that spirit, I have written a letter to my Congressional and Senate represetatives urging passage a of 1/4% tax on all stock transactions...

Could be interesting, provided that index futures remain unaffected. Keep me posted.

 

[piezoe]

Quote from lrm21:


If central planning for Cost control is such a wonderful mechanism why not centrally plan our food supply...

WOW! You have a great idea there! What do medicine and food have in common? Answer: we need them to stay alive.

In fact, food is even better than medicine as far as making a few bucks, well more than a few actually. All we need is the FDA to regulate access to food the same way they regulate access to medicine so that only those licensed to write prescriptions for food can do so under federal law.

Food, as we all know, is incredibly dangerous, too much of it, or the wrong kind, leads to all sorts of horrible and fatal diseases. atherosclerosis, diabetes, stroke -- the list is endless and includes sudden death from choking, or nearly as sudden from all kinds of food borne pathogens. Yes, we all know the dangers of food, and to protect the public we must strictly control access through the writing of Food Prescriptions that can be filled at any licensed grocery store. Only those with a prescription will be able to obtain food. It's a safety issue!

You and I will become government Certified and Authorized Restrictors of Tarts, Eggnog, and Lard (CARTEL) for the purpose of informing and protecting the public. Our motto will be "First, Do no Harm" and we will ask Louis Lasagna, Dean of the Tufts medical school, to write our Oath, because he knows how to write good Oaths and has a delicious sounding name.

To protect the public we will regretfully have to limit the number of people that can be trained to write food prescriptions. We'll also contribute heavily to political campaigns of those politicians who understand the dangers of food and what could happen if unlicensed Toms, Dicks and Harrys were allowed to prescribe food.

In fact, we'll get the government to require that everyone who is granted a license to write food prescriptions be a graduate of a food school and take a test. We'll even volunteer to write the test.

Some, ignorant of the dangers of food, will say that CARTEL makes their food too expensive and that access to food is a basic human right. We will be far to busy writing prescriptions to have time for these petty arguments. These same naysayers will no doubt attempt to foolishly endanger the public by trying to restrict the amount we can charge for food prescriptions. And then of course we will have no choice but to raise our collective voices, because we will know in our hearts how wrong they are, and how dangerous their misguided message is. When we say "Sorry Bud, you don't eat without a prescription," we will know it is for the public good. Trust us. Safety first.

 

[Mvic]

Keep in mind that most docs who currently take medicare can only afford to do so because private insurance reimburses at a higher rate. If 100% of reimbursement was from medicare most practices would not survive. As it is many practices restrict the % of their patients who are on medicare and are simply not taking on new medicare patients. I don't think that this has been adequately covered in the health care debate so far but the fact is that privately insured patients are subsidizing the care of medicaid patients.

I have long been an advocate for a single payor universal healthcare program but I realize that the government has show that it can not be trusted to reimburse at a fair rate and as any collective bargaining by physicians is outlawed there will be no check on the government nickle and diming the healthcare system in to decrepitude.

Any healthcare reform that does not include increases in reimbursement for primary care (without which you may have more people insured but it will do nothing to solve the problem of access and quality, the best practice medical home model of primary care can not be provided with 100% medicare reimbursement) and tort reform is not credible in my opinion.