LeoTheDog

'Blue-Dogging' Health Care

No, imagine a government run program like the Marine Corp. Or, on a more realistic level, a government run healthcare system like TRICARE (an existing government run healthcare program deemed good enough for our soldiers and the "finest available" according to Bill Kristol).

Oh, and under the guise of "fraud and abuse" they spend money seeking ways to not pay legitimate claims too....


On Jul 29 03:01 PM levin70 wrote:

> To the OP
>
> There is a reason that private companies spend on G&A. They
> spend significant sums on fraud detection and prevention. They happen
> to do a much, much better job at it than medicare does. Not only
> that, but you introduce a medicare type system that mandates reimbursement
> at lower rates than what the system charges those in private policies,
> and those private policies go away. What's the problem with that
> - well then, 20% of the hospitals and 20% of the doctors go away
> with them. They don't want to make less than what they are making
> now and having to work twice as hard to get reimbursed 300 days later
> than private paying suppliers.
>
> Imagine a gov't run program to devlier healthcare that turns into
> the DMV.
>
> Yeah, because thats exactly what I want.

UnitedHealth’s Insurance To Get Insurance Is Ridiculous

Spot on, Herbert. UNH will offer you the illusion of coverage today, but when the time comes for them to make good you can guarantee that they will leave you hanging. Any "free market" solution to healthcare will be little more than an illusion, with massive inefficiencies baked in.

All the criticism of "socialized" medicine ignores the reality that in most of the industrialized world healthcare benefits are delivered at a fraction of the cost that Americans pay, with results that we can only dream of.

Obscured by all the blather about waiting periods or inability to choose doctors is the fact that nearly all "socialized" medical systems provide outcomes that are far superior to ours; if you care about infant mortality, life expectancy and cost, that is....

Free-Market Healthcare Falling Victim to Recession

SCC, it is going to be a LONG eight years for you. Your angry rhetoric, based on emotion not facts, will end up exhausting you. If it is "socialist" to have all members of a society contribute to the overall public good, then you must really be uncomfortable driving on all those publicly funded streets, or calling those publicly funded cops when you are in trouble. Labels and slogans are the refuge of the ignorant, which I guess makes you a Republican.

If you are so passionate about ridding this country of all traces of "socialism", then why don't you run for office on a platform of abolishing Social Security, Medicare, public education, the military, the police, firefighters and all forms of regulation? I won't hold my breath waiting for you to win....

In the end, you cannot defend a system that produces 50 million uninsured people (costing the rest of us A LOT MORE than if they were covered), and countless millions more who are underinsured and probably don't know it. If you really think that the best we can do in America is to have a system that results in millions upon millions of people facing bankruptcy if they get sick, then you are a lot less patriotic than you think.

To reject a model that actually works (and yes, a national health system ACTUALLY works unless you think better health outcomes for half the cost is bad...) in favor of one that does not seems more pathological than ideological.

Free-Market Healthcare Falling Victim to Recession

Another response to Socialism cannot compete....

You are wrong, and you clearly do not know what you are talking about. Do you support the practice of rescission? Do you support exclusions for preexisting conditions? Do you even understand how this system works?

Take it from someone in the industry, a for profit health insurance system REQUIRES that we have losers; but in this "game" the losers die. Insurance companies perform one single purpose--they pay the bills. That's it. They don't provide care, and they are nothing but the middleman between patient and caregiver. If the middleman is a profit-based entity, then they must take in more than they pay out--and by ever increasingly large margins each year to satisfy shareholders. That means higher premiums and fewer covered services, year after year after year.

If you step out of your cave for just one minute and look at the FACTS you would see that we already have a "socialist" healthcare model (two, in fact). Ever thought of how we provide healthcare to veterans and seniors? In both cases, the big bad government that you love to hate is able to administer the programs at FAR lower cost than private insurance plans. And before you claim that the quality or quantity of services under the VA or Medicare systems is worse than what you find in the private marketplace, why don't you ask current beneficiaries if they'd like to scrap their healthcare benefits and jump into the private market?

The simple fact is that like national defense, law enforcement, firefighting or education, the most efficient way to provide healthcare services to ALL Americans is to have the government do it. But you are too stupid or too selfish to understand or care about that; so you resort to your "socialism" argument and ignore the fact that virtually every socialist country in the world has better healthcare outcomes than your beloved free market country.

You are an idiot.