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Why NOT to nationalize health care
Medical Care is a Successful and Growing Industry, not a Liability
By Wesley Clark, MD The people of the United States find themselves in the midst of a severe recession, with unemployment higher than it has been in many years, housing prices cratering, retirement plans collapsing, and their lifestyles constricting. The financial industry collapsed. We had to come to the rescue, pouring our own futures into saving the banks, brokerages, and insurance companies from their own greedy foolishness. The stagnant American automobile industry was imploding, and the people had to bail them out too, further mortgaging the future of their children. Our politicians responded to this catastrophe by spending our future for us, and then by voting a $787 billion dollar "stimulus" bill that has so far produced no discernible improvement, but has flung pork into every corner of the nation, while funding their community organizer and special-interest groups. The government -- the State -- now effectively owns several giant banks, investment bankers, AIG, and two out the three domestic auto companies that were failing dismally. There is still an industry that is growing and successful, that produces 17% of the Gross Domestic Product, and that employs over 10% of all American workers. The medical industry incorporates more than 820,000 businesses: hospitals, physician's offices, dentist's offices, home healthcare services, kidney dialysis centers, medical laboratories, X-Ray imaging centers, radiotherapy facilities, mental hospitals, physical therapy centers, nursing homes, outpatient surgical centers, dental laboratories, rehabilitation facilities and ambulance services with combined annual revenue of over $1 trillion. It immediately plows most its growing income right back into the economy for wages, and directs additional business to satellite industries such as pharmaceuticals, drugstores, and insurance companies. It even produces billions of dollars in revenues for the medical malpractice trial lawyers. Americans medical care costs more than government programs elsewhere, but it provides better care and better results, the best in the world. American patients, even the destitute, do not give birth in hallways, or wait months for essential diagnostic tests and treatments. Suddenly, it seems that brisk industrial growth, creation of new technologies, expansion of employment, healing of once-fatal illnesses, prolongation of life, and prevention of pain are not even success, but a just terrible fiscal burden that our overlords deeply resent. They want that money to spend elsewhere, for monuments to their narcissistic prowess. In the medical industry, decades of federal (and state) meddling have unbalanced the supply-demand basis of the free market, while the government has grossly distorted the efficiency of the market by cost-shifting its own obligations onto private-sector buyers. The premiums that you or your employer pay are partly a concealed tax, to support government programs that fix prices below cost, so that others will have to pay. Now we are suddenly being told that that there is another "crisis!" The government must quickly destroy our healthcare system, in order to save it. Quick, grab $500 billion out of Medicare before those who receive it even notice that their lives are part of the costs. We can spend it on new government agencies, thousands more government employees, and name it all for a famous liberal politician. Over 80% of us are happy with our medical care, comfortable with the physicians of our choice, yet we are told that the success of this enormous industry costs too much. How is it that growing the revenues and the success of the automobile industry is essential and wonderful, while the success of the healthcare industry is a social evil that must be rectified? To rectify the terrible burden of good healthcare, to control its rising costs, we are further told that we must increase those costsby an additional one trillion dollars! What is wrong with this picture? Without any new legislation, most of us are very satisfied with our own medical care. Everybody over 65 has excellent healthcare coverage, for which many beneficiaries pay much less than they cost. Every child under age 18 has guaranteed healthcare coverage too. And every citizen below the poverty level has access to good basic medical care through the Medicaid program. Most of those who do not have health insurance have chosen not to have it, even if unwisely, and are implicitly choosing to self-insure their own risks. Even illegal aliens have ready access to free emergency medical care and obstetric care, usually far better than they would enjoy in their own countries. Certainly there are aspects of the present medical care process that need to be improved, individual hardships that require creative changes, fraud and waste that must be eliminated. Shall we permit a successful, growing and productive industry to be destroyed, to be replaced with dozens of new bureaucratic agencies? Bureaucrats and committees will then choose the care to be made available to you, and there will be no appeal. Regulators will create a maze of new rules, thousands of pages of regulations, complicated forms, and red tape, for doctors and patients alike. Long lines, impersonal cattle-car service, rationing, waiting lists, and increased costs are the inevitable result (think DMV, Post Office, $500 toilet seats). We must not allow those who are striving to gain power and control over us -- those who believe they know what is best for free men better than we do ourselves -- to destroy a productive industry and replace it with another tax drain, a giant new pork-package. This is a time to defend and preserve the prosperity that remains in our economy, not a time for political meddling and more grasping for power. There is no problem so bad, that Congress cannot make it worse. Why would we deliberately kill the one area of our economy that is still PRODUCING, still making a profit, and still creating jobs? Can anyone give me a good economic reason to mess up the one sector of the economy that actually WORKS? Can anyone justify killing the 17% of our economy that is working in order to "help" the 3% of our population that is long-term uninsured through no fault of their own, when we have OTHER ways of helping them that WON'T kill the entire health care sector? Cany anyone justify messing with the sector of the economy that employs 10% of our population (and growing) in order to fix the 3% of the population that is uninsured? Given the 9.5% unemployment rate announced today, can anyone justify killing more jobs in the health care sector by nationalizing it? Is there any justification for nationalizing health care that makes mathematical or economic sense? Elliot |
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 Originally Posted by ETWolverine
Sure. We spend TWICE what any nation does on health care, and get HALF as much. I don't know how you do it, but you seem to ignore or forget certain stuff... Maybe you don't want to see it. We're not passing health care for the people who are happy with what they've got. Nothing will change for them. We're passing it for the people who AREN'T happy with what they've got - BECAUSE THEY DON'T GOT SQUAT!! There's 47 MILLION of 'em. I don't know how your forget about them. I suppose because it's inconvenient. But, I'm going to remind you. We could WIPE out the for profit insurance companies and have MORE than enough money to cover EVERYBODY and give them MORE medical service than they're getting today... That's makes a lot of good mathematical and economic sense. Besides, I heard the Democrats have section that would knock off ALL Republicans... That'll be GOOD. excon |
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Originally Posted by excon
I can see the argument that we spend twice as much... if you don't consider taxes in those other countries. But where do you get the "fact" that we get half as much. You made a statement. I want your proof.
I don't know how you do it, but you seem to ignore or forget certain stuff... Maybe you don't want to see it. We're not passing health care for the people who are happy with what they've got. Nothing will change for them. We're passing it for the people who AREN'T happy with what they've got - BECAUSE THEY DON'T GOT SQUAT!! There's 47 MILLION of 'em. I don't know how your forget about them. I suppose because it's inconvenient. But, I'm going to remind you.
12 million are people who are "uninsured" for a period of less than 4 months. 10 million are people who earn $75k a year or more and COULD afford their own health insurance, but just don't want to pay for it. That leaves 10-12 million uninsured. Not 47 million. Again, you don't know the facts, but talk like you do. That's OK. I'm here to fill in the blanks for you.
We could WIPE out the for profit insurance companies and have MORE than enough money to cover EVERYBODY and give them MORE medical service than they're getting today... That's makes a lot of good mathematical and economic sense.
If you add 47 million more people (15%) to the pool of insured, Increase health care costs to the levels that the government is paying (35% higher than the private market), And triple the administrative costs of health care (300% higher, per the Congressional Budget Office), Your health care expenses are going to go UP by more than you will get from adding the 3% profit of insurance companies. You can't increase the expenditures of the health care system by over 350% and expect that a 3% increase in cash flow is going to cover it. But you think we can.
Besides, I heard the Democrats have section that would knock off ALL Republicans... That'll be GOOD.
Excon Elliot |
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Lets face it, Congress refuses to address the real crux of the problem with our current health care system. Lawyers! Until Congress gets up enough guts to take on the Bar association and that bunch of ambulance chasers there is no chance in H that health care reform will be any more than another cash for clunkers failure! EC, please cite one, just ONE program that the federal government, or ANY government agency has ever been able to run cheaper or more efficient than a private for profit sector business? |
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Originally Posted by ETWolverine
Proof? I got proof. By the way, it's not your math that needs correcting... It's your ENGLISH. I don't think you understand what YOU wrote. Let me help you out. 12 million, even if they're uninsured for 4 months, are nonetheless - UNINSURED! 12 million people who could buy insurance, but don't, are nonetheless - UNINSURED! 12 million people who you agree are uninsured, are UNINSURED! That's 36 million uninsured people using YOUR numbers, after your English was corrected. I'll live with that number. Thanks for supplying them. excon |
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Originally Posted by excon
12 million people who could buy insurance, but don't, are nonetheless - UNINSURED!
12 million people who you agree are uninsured, are UNINSURED!
There. You've just solved the health care crisis without nationalizing the entire system.
That's 36 million uninsured people using YOUR numbers, after your English was corrected. I'll live with that number. Thanks for supplying them.
And that is 36 million for whom we do not have to pay out of our tax dollars. 12 million of them can pay for themselves now. They don't need the government (meaning us) to pay for them. 12 million will be paying for themselves within 4 months. They need a temporary fix, not a permanent change to the health care system. And we can cover the rest via a voucher system. Even if you include all 47 million in the voucher system, which by now even you acknowledge is BS (I notice that you've dropped the 12 million illegal aliens), there's STILL no reason to nationalize the entire health care system to do it. We could give them ALL vouchers to buy private health insurance and it would STILL be cheaper than nationalizing health care. The CBO has estimated the cost of nationalizing health care to be $2.3 trillion per year. (That's an underestimate, but let's use that figure just for $h!ts and giggles.) If we give every one of those 47 million people $1500 per month in the form of a voucher, the annual cost would be $846 billion, or roughly 37% of the cost of nationalizing health care. There is still no mathematical or economic justification for nationalizing health care, destroying 17% of our economy and ruining 10% of our jobs. Elliot |
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Originally Posted by excon
Most of the fire departments across the country are volunteer. And it has been shown that volunteer fire departments actually run cheaper and more efficiently than professional fire departments because they have to do just as much on a smaller budget without government financing. Same for volunteer EMS squads. Try again. Elliot |
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Seems to me you are arguing about a marketing problem, how health insurers can get access to the foregone premiums of those 47 Million and let's face it that is a huge market by any standard, so what have they done, they have convinced someone who shall remain nameless that there is a crisis of care, when in fact there is a crisis of caring, those people are not caring for themselves in the way the industry mandates.
I think I'll give you a cheap and more productive solution to this crisis and many others, ban or otherwise corral the political lobbists, and the pharaceutical salesmen who waste medico's time informing them of the benefits of the latest drug and the ambulance chasing lawyers by capping the damages in malpractice suits. You might suddenly find medical insurance is affordable and if not you can always nationalise the insurers the way you nationalised the bankers and the auto industry and AIG |
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What I would like to know is just why are there so many health industry jobs being advertised here in Ohio where there aren't many jobs. Physical therapist, medical biller, etc, etc. are now the only ads on the net job wise that are constantly being run. Somehow the local hospital in a city of 25,000 found more money somewhere to go on a building spree doubling the size of the hospital. The small county airport near where I live was "closed" about a year ago and had the flying school relocate to the county below us. You can fly into this small airfield but you can't buy fuel anymore. Well, guess what? About a month ago there was a "grand opening" at this little airport of a new helicopter life flite service that estimated they would be running at least 100 "missions" a month out of their new home at the airport. Being almost on top of this little airfield I've only heard a handful of "missions" in a month's time. If everyone up here in Ohio is on unemployment just who the blazes do they think is going to pay for all this brand new, unnecessary "medical care"? I'm still trying to figure out that 64 million dollar question. Maybe someone here can enlighten me. |
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Originally Posted by twinkiedooter
Are you upset that the medical industry is increasing jobs? Or are you upset that no other industry is able to do the same? The increase in jobs in the medical industry is because of increased demand as baby boomers age and become less healthy and need more care. It is neither "unnecessary" nor "brand new". As for why other industries are unable to create new jobs, that has to do with the lack of "stimulus" in the Obama "Stimulus Bill", and the inflation caused therein. We are suffering a recession, and the President did the exact opposite of what he should have done to stimulate the economy... he took money out of the hands of the people and instead used it to spend on government programs that are incapable of stimulating an economy. The reason that health care is not acting like the rest of the economy is because the increase in demand for health care by baby boomers is acting as an economic stimulus that is currently non-existent in the rest of the economy. The "why" of all of this is easy to explain. The question is what we're going to do about it. And killing the one part of the economy that is actually still productive in this recession is NOT what we oughta be doing about it. Elliot |
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Can the Federal Government run this program fairly?
CAn it be affordable for everyone? Will every Senator and Congressman join it? Federal Government has never saved a single penny on any program they started. When they run out of funds they just raise taxes again, which is a never ending cycle. How much is enough for them 52 % 62 % 72% it not just income tax, The inheritance tax.. Accounts Receivable Tax Building Permit Tax CDL license Tax Cigarette Tax Corporate Income Tax Dog License Tax Excise Taxes Federal Income Tax Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA) Fishing License Tax Food License Tax Fuel Permit Tax Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon) Gross Receipts Tax Hunting License Tax Inheritance Tax Inventory Tax IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax) Liquor Tax Luxury Taxes Marriage License Tax Medicare Tax Personal Property Tax Property Tax Real Estate Tax Service Charge T ax Social Security Tax Road Usage Tax Sales Tax Recreational Vehicle Tax School Tax State Income Tax State Unemployment Tax (SUTA) Telephone Federal Excise Tax Telephone Federal Universal Ser vice FeeTax Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge=2 0Tax Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax Telephone State and Local Tax Telephone Usage Charge Tax Utility Taxes Vehicle License Registration Tax Vehicle Sales Tax Watercraft Registration Tax Well Permit Tax Workers Compensation Tax STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY? Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago Ronald Regan on Social Medicine Ronald_Reagan_On_the_Evils_of_Socialized_Medicine. wmv http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxV_gqsrlCg |
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Taxes, taxes and more Taxes
Originally Posted by mr.yet
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Consumption tax
Originally Posted by earl237
People said it can't work but when we implemented it within a couple of years the government was lowering personal and corporate tax rates because they had left them in place, now a high income person is someone on over $150,000 a year where it was $60,000 before, and the growth in tax collected was unexpected, they collected heaps more than they predicted and the budget went into surplus and they repaid the internal national debt, at the same time the unemployment rate lowered and inflation was under control, completely unexpected. What I have done is extended the idea even further, it is possible to eliminate income tax, it really isn't such a giant step |
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Actually, the Obama administration is in favor of a consumption tax.
Problem is that they want it IN ADDITION to all the other taxes. I'd be in favor of a consumption tax too, if we did away with other taxes. I'm not sure that 10% would be enough to cover our needs... I'm thinking closer to 13%. This is, in essence, what the Fair Tax supporters are trying to push. I say go with it. |
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