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  • TUESDAY JUNE 30 2009 9:30 AM

Democrats Blowing It On Health Care

It’s really quite interesting to watch the Democrats throw it all away. This time, they seem to think blowing the chance at decent health care reform will aid them in future elections. Or perhaps they have taken so much money from the health care industry that they don’t give a shit. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Fixing health care is the biggest problem facing our country. If we don’t do something drastic, it will completely destroy our economy in the years to come. As it is, we’re in bad shape. Democrats, specifically Senate Democrats, have decided to help the poor insurance industry out as much as possible. Es no bueno.

Most of the debate is over the dreaded “public option.” Oh, dear no. We can’t have a public option. That’s socialized medicine! Americans must be able to choose! And by that I mean they can’t choose a public option! They have to be able to choose between private monopolies! This is fucking America! We demand to be fucked over by private companies as much as possible!

And make no mistake about it; those against the “public option” want to continue with monopolies.

But the notion that most American consumers enjoy anything like a competitive marketplace for health care is flatly false. And a study issued last month by a pro-reform group makes that strikingly clear.

The report, released by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), uses data compiled by the American Medical Association to show that 94 percent of the country's insurance markets are defined as "highly concentrated," according to Justice Department guidelines. Predictably, that's led to skyrocketing costs for patients, and monster profits for the big health insurers. Premiums have gone up over the past six years by more than 87 percent, on average, while profits at ten of the largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007.



So, that's what the "free market" kids are fighting for. Monopolies. Yay!

A public option would guarantee the possibility of lower cost, reliable coverage. It will bring cost control by reforming how we pay for medical care. It will create competition between private insurers that simply does not exist today. It will also force private insurers to perform better, something they are not doing today.

To those who say the public option would drive the private companies out of business; I thought everything government did sucked? Is government bad or highly efficient? Please stick to one talking point, no matter the subject. Secondly, the private insurance companies have had their chance and to say they fucked it up would be an understatement. They deserve no protection. I have no interest in keeping pedophiles in business, either. Their time has come and gone. They could have kept costs lower, kept people from dying, insured anyone with preconditions, but they decided to go for the biggest profits possible and now they are on the deserving end of what’s coming. They only compete to insure the well and reject the sick. Then they employ adjusters to get the company out of paying for health care services when the well become sick. Welcome to the world of failure. They made their bed, now they have to lie in it.

If any of you loud mouthed, utopian, not living in the real world Libertarians bring up regulation, feel free to explain the exact regulation that makes health care so expensive. If you can’t detail these so called regulations, shut your face and stick your broad stroke arguments up your ass. Your simplicity has grown tiresome. This current debate is for adults and what you want will never be, so stay out of it or act like an adult and accept that what you want ain’t going to happen.

As far as the public plan, Democrats are right now working on a way to water it down until it is completely ineffective. Senator Jay Rockefeller, who is a son of a bitch because of his FISA legislation, has come up with a good public health care plan. His plan would partner a public plan with Medicare for more bargaining power and access to provider networks. According the non-partisan Lewin Group and the Commonwealth Foundation, Rockefeller’s plan would drop premiums 20 to 30 percent. Can’t have that, now can we?

Rockefeller’s plan would force private insurance companies to be more honest. They would have to cut their bullshit administrative costs and fire quite a few of those adjusters whose job is to find ways to not pay for care. Right now, you have no choice. You can choose between one horrible private insurance company or another. There really isn’t much difference. The idea is to force them to become insurers instead of profiteers.

Other Democrats are working on plans that would do almost nothing. Senator Chuck Schumer has a “level playing field” public plan that won’t save much at all. It will just create a plan that will allow private companies to dump old, sick and high-risk patients onto the public plan. This is considered a compromise. It will be awesome because by doing it halfway, they will create exactly what the right wing claims will happen. It will be a terribly ineffective, expensive plan. It would not use low rates that Medicare sets or use taxpayer subsidies. It wouldn’t force its way into networks. It would just be like any other insurer, except for the fact that it would be a dumping ground for private insurers to unload their expensive patients. It’s one of those genius “Democrats compromise and create a pile of shit plans.”

Finally, there’s Ben Nelson’s “Trigger Plan.” You know it’s good because Nelson has taken millions and millions of dollars from insurance companies. The Trigger Plan would be like a big, invisible, scary fist looming over the insurance industry. If the private market didn’t offer cost control or enough options, the public plan would come into existence - but it would be at the state level. It’s a regional Trigger. Some states might have a public plan and others would not. It’s basically set up as a way for private companies to game the system. Ben Nelson doesn’t seem to realize the trigger should have been pulled 8 years ago. If he wants to set the threshold where costs are now, it’s a big lose. Go Blue Dogs!

Those are the public plan options. Now which one do you think Democrats in the Senate will choose? I’d bet big money on the “Level playing field” plan because it doesn’t actually threaten the private insurance market. It actually helps them in their quest to be the biggest douche bags on Earth.

Prepare for failure.

FearTheReaper is a writer, actor and stand up comedian. Check back each Tuesday and Friday for more from FearTheReaper You may also enjoy his blog, Stop All Monsters.

 

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Comments
SockPuppet

SockPuppet

I'm lost
July 2006

JUN 30, 2009 04:30 PM

ilogic said:
<snip> as far as socialized health care can anyone name a country which socialized health care that actually improved the quality of life for it citizens. Look at Canada they did it and all it did was establish a system where you'll die waiting on the sub par treatment that prob wouldn't save many lives even if they got it in time



Britain. When the NHS was introduced, poor people - for the first time ever - were able to take their kids to the doctor when they got sick, without having to fear a bill which mght be several times their monthly income.

s5

s5

STAFF

San Francisco, CA

JUN 30, 2009 05:16 PM

cowpunk123 said:
That's not what I said at all. I'm saying it is ridiculous for a leftist to call a libertarian a utopian when their candidate ran on the rock solid platform of "hope" and "change". Left wing ideology is an attempt to create a utopia.



It's not "utopia" when the rest of the Western world is already doing it.

Inexpensive, high quality, government provided health care already works. We're just not doing it.

Look at it another way. If our system is so great, why isn't anyone else scrambling to adopt it?

Sick

Sick

Minneapolis, MN
June 2003

JUN 30, 2009 05:18 PM

nicole_powers said:
I couldn't agree more with FTR (my premium recently went up by over 50% in ONE year).

If we don't sort health care out the poor are destined to die horribly, the middle class will leave this earth bankrupt, owing everything they once had to the doctors, hospitals and insurance companies who are supposed to be there to care for them, and the rich will die with fat portfolios bloated by their health insurance company stock.



I found out today they upped my premium by 24% overnight. My employer apparently found out about it yesterday. I have no idea how it happened.

When they told me about it and asked if I wanted to switch to something else, I just thought, "Ummm...what choice do I have, really?"

s5

s5

STAFF

San Francisco, CA

JUN 30, 2009 05:19 PM

badangela said:
I totally agree with Nicole_Powers. The rest of the world stopped having this debate a century ago. We the People decided that we as a people would use part of the taxes we pay so that those of us who become ill can be looked after. Here in New Zealand, doctor's visits are subsidised, medicine is subsidised and hospital care is free because we the people regard healthcare as a basic human right.



Whenever I've been to New Zealand and had conversations about health care in America, people there regard our system with the same horror and shock that we would regard sewage treatment in rural India. "How is everyone not already dead?" is a common theme. And, well, people here do die. Murder by spreadsheet at the hands of health insurance corporations.

SergeantPsycho

SergeantPsycho

USA
January 2007

JUN 30, 2009 06:19 PM

Lemme just add my personal preference for private health care comes from experience. I felt out of a tree once and broke my pelvis when I was a child and supposedly experience medical technicians failed not notice the fracture, and let me go from the hospital. About a day later they called back and said "Hey, you're pelvis is broken!" Less than stellar service from Big G.

Last year, I had to have a medical examination, and those it was some what expensive, the care I got was good, and got the attention I needed in a relatively short amount of time (between a month - two months between first noticing the problem, and having an examination by a specialist).

bean

bean

STAFF

Los Angeles, CA

JUN 30, 2009 06:35 PM

SergeantPsycho said:
Lemme just add my personal preference for private health care comes from experience. I felt out of a tree once and broke my pelvis when I was a child and supposedly experience medical technicians failed not notice the fracture, and let me go from the hospital. About a day later they called back and said "Hey, you're pelvis is broken!" Less than stellar service from Big G.

Last year, I had to have a medical examination, and those it was some what expensive, the care I got was good, and got the attention I needed in a relatively short amount of time (between a month - two months between first noticing the problem, and having an examination by a specialist).


My personal disdain for private insurance also comes from experience. My Mother had paid into private insurance as a school employee for most of her life when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1994. After almost a year of treatment, her doctors decided the only thing that could save her was a bone marrow transplant. At this time, bone marrow transplants weren't terribly common, but they had been going on for awhile and were an accepted practice in the medical community, but the insurance company refused to pay for it. My Mother had to sue the insurance company to force them to pay for the only thing that would save her life. During the lawsuit, it came out that a mammogram she had had done a couple years earlier showed the tumor, but it was misdiagnosed as benign without further inspection (and recorded as being on the wrong breast). She won her case, and has now been in remission for 13 years, thanks to a procedure she had to sue her insurance company to get, after paying their premiums for some 30-odd years.

Not only is my Mother's situation not uncommon, people in similar situations actually have it worse now. Nowadays, they simply would have found some excuse to drop her from coverage, and she would quite certainly have died.

Our current health care system with private insurance is built around excellent care for routine and minor procedures, and avoiding expensive life-saving procedures whenever possible. It is broken, and private insurance companies are killing people.

I've had good doctors and bad doctors, but all I want is to be reliably insured regardless of whether or not I have a job, and to know that if I get sick and need major medical care, that my insurance company isn't going to go out of their way to avoid paying for my care, up to and including dropping me for failing to dot an i or cross a t 15 years earlier.

DevilsReject

DevilsReject

Cleveland, OH
February 2007

JUN 30, 2009 06:37 PM

i have a pre-existing condition. I can't get private insurance to...well, basically save my life. I don't have enough cash on hand to pay for the procedure that is required, so once every few months i get a procedure performed that reduces the effects of the condition.

When the insurance company i was with found out about my condition, my rates sky-rocketed and i couldn't afford it anymore, they raised it to the point that it would be cheaper to pay out of pocket for the procedure.

I don't qualify for Medicaid or Medicare because i have too many of what they consider "assets" and i make too much money.

I am stuck. Plain and simple. Eventually i will have to get the condition taken care of permanently, but for now, all i can afford (not really) is to keep having a lesser procedure performed that doesn't correct the problem, it just reduces it's effects, it's a band-aid.

Good times.

I am not even sure if a "public option" would help me.

ZakSmith

ZakSmith

Los Angeles, CA
August 2003

JUN 30, 2009 06:40 PM

SergeantPsycho said:
Lemme just add my personal preference for private health care comes from experience. etc....



You do realize that:

1) Even if all medicine went public, the expensive good doctors you went to would still exist--they just wouldn't be as expensive.

2) That if you somehow had some financial emergency in between Medical Incident A and Medical Incident B then you would never have been to afford the expensive good doctor under the current system, but possibly would've under a public system.

and

3) The structure of your whole argument is kind of like saying: Everyone in America should eat pancakes instead of hamburgers because the first time I got a hamburger it was overcooked and the first time I got a pancake it was yummy and good.

gfvella

gfvella

Australia
November 2004

JUN 30, 2009 06:49 PM

SergeantPsycho said:
Lemme just add my personal preference for private health care comes from experience. I felt out of a tree once and broke my pelvis when I was a child and supposedly experience medical technicians failed not notice the fracture, and let me go from the hospital. About a day later they called back and said "Hey, you're pelvis is broken!" Less than stellar service from Big G.

Last year, I had to have a medical examination, and those it was some what expensive, the care I got was good, and got the attention I needed in a relatively short amount of time (between a month - two months between first noticing the problem, and having an examination by a specialist).



I'm not quite sure why you think the choice is between one or the other?

The Australian system is a solid mix between both. Everyone pays a medicare levy that pays for the public health insurance system. On top of that you can also get private health insurance. Thus if you want more than the basic level of care provided to you for free by the government you can opt to. Because Insurance companies know they can't gouge people the private rates of insurance are reasonable.

There is also a difference between a government provided health care system (like the British NHS) and government provided health insurance like our Medicare.

In Britain - I believe, as it may have changed since I was there in the early 90s - every doctor works for the NHS. I have to say it was hell and i will avoid having anything to do with it ever again. I'm not sure having British bureaucrats decide on my level of care is any different to having American businessmen doing it.

In Australia you go to private doctors for most things whose costs are paid for or subsidised by Medicare. You can also chose to be a public or private patient in the state run public hospitals.The one big reform that would improve the healthcare situation in Australia is for medicare benefits (which are paid at set levels for specific operations) to be available whether you have your operation in a government or private hospital. This would force the states to improve the fairly dire state of the public hospitals.

However; this whinging round the edges as we have close to the best of both worlds.

gfvella

gfvella

Australia
November 2004

JUN 30, 2009 06:56 PM

s5 said:Whenever I've been to New Zealand and had conversations about health care in America, people there regard our system with the same horror and shock that we would regard sewage treatment in rural India. "How is everyone not already dead?" is a common theme. And, well, people here do die. Murder by spreadsheet at the hands of health insurance corporations.



In New Zealand they even provide free health care for your sheep. It's a socialist-bestialitist paradise tongue

s5

s5

STAFF

San Francisco, CA

JUN 30, 2009 06:57 PM

SergeantPsycho said:
Lemme just add my personal preference for private health care comes from experience.



Awesome. Then keep your private health insurance! That's why it's called a public option. If you don't like the idea of it, don't sign up for it!

s5

s5

STAFF

San Francisco, CA

JUN 30, 2009 06:59 PM

gfvella said:
In New Zealand they even provide free health care for your sheep. It's a socialist-bestialitist paradise tongue



In New Zealand, they just include the sheep under domestic partner benefits.

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

I'm going to be in deep trouble for that one!

gfvella

gfvella

Australia
November 2004

JUN 30, 2009 07:01 PM

s5 said:

gfvella said:
In New Zealand they even provide free health care for your sheep. It's a socialist-bestialitist paradise tongue



In New Zealand, they just include the sheep under domestic partner benefits.

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

I'm going to be in deep trouble for that one!



Let me guess Kiwi partner. Just say you were led astray by an Australian biggrin

SergeantPsycho

SergeantPsycho

USA
January 2007

JUN 30, 2009 07:16 PM

ZakSmith said:

SergeantPsycho said:
Lemme just add my personal preference for private health care comes from experience. etc....



You do realize that:

1) Even if all medicine went public, the expensive good doctors you went to would still exist--they just wouldn't be as expensive.



Oh, how so? If your not going to pay the doctors the same, what's top stop all the Qualified doctors from going into the private practice? If you are going to pay them the same, then you'll need taxpayer money for that (or else hire less doctors, lengthing wait times), and then we'll effectively be paying the same anyways.


ZakSmith said:
2) That if you somehow had some financial emergency in between Medical Incident A and Medical Incident B then you would never have been to afford the expensive good doctor under the current system, but possibly would've under a public system.



In that instance, I'd probably try and negotiate some kind of payment plan for services rendered. (Perhaps a "Medical Loan" industry is a business niche that might be filled).

and

ZakSmith said:
3) The structure of your whole argument is kind of like saying: Everyone in America should eat pancakes instead of hamburgers because the first time I got a hamburger it was overcooked and the first time I got a pancake it was yummy and good.



I'm merely explaining how my personal experience shapes my point of view.

DevilsReject

DevilsReject

Cleveland, OH
February 2007

JUN 30, 2009 07:20 PM

SergeantPsycho said:
In that instance, I'd probably try and negotiate some kind of payment plan for services rendered. (Perhaps a "Medical Loan" industry is a business niche that might be filled).



I'll go ahead and save you the trouble of "trying to negotiate".

Hospitals don't, very few doctors do, my dentist on the other hand does take payments.

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