Healthcare Reform What Would You Do

[montana]

"5. There should be greater limitations on medical lawsuits. While the legal system is a very effective place to penalize shoddy medicine, compensation should be limited to stay within scale of the damage.
"
So there should be restrictions on lawsuits but not limit what a corporation can spend to buy politicians?

[frazzled-snoozer]

3. I'd like to see less regulation for insurance as far as what they will cover, but more regulation to create quotas of high risk patients.

You said above that you're against letting insurance companies decide who gets care based on pre-existing conditions. I agree 100% with you. However, deregulation of what insurance companies are required to cover will add to denials based on pre-existing conditions. Your first and third points appear to contradict one another. How do you reconcile those two stands? Am I understanding correctly?,

They couldn't deny coverage and they would have certain quotas in order to have access to the pools. To remain competitive they'd create more individualized plans that people could choose from which would allow people to really shop for the most effective and inexpensive coverage. A public option wouldn't enhance this system so would have no place.

That's what insurance all about. It's a risk pool. For example, in California you HAVE to buy earthquake insurance, regardless of whether you live on the Hayward fault (the most dangerous fault in America) or in Idyllwild, which isn't on any fault lines and is insulated against damage by mountains--nature's shock absorbers. The purpose is to allow payments for anybody who experiences damage caused by a natural disaster.

Actually, in California we do NOT have to buy earthquake insurance. Insurance companies that deal in residential property insurance must OFFER it, but you don't have to buy it. Some mortgage companies may require earthquake insurance in order to provide you with the mortgage.

5. There should be greater limitations on medical lawsuits. While the legal system is a very effective place to penalize shoddy medicine, compensation should be limited to stay within scale of the damage.

Help me understand, what's a human life worth? All phases of the medical industry kill. Sometimes it's doctor error/incompetence and sometimes it's insurance company denial of life-saving treatments. Why shouldn't I be able to sue who I see as the guilty party?

Why is it that when I say there should be a cap on lawsuits people think I mean you can't sue a guilty party? Of course you sue the guilty party! But there's a limit on how much cash you can grab. You can't put a dollar value on pain & suffering. Our efforts to do so have only managed to raise the medical costs. I think there should be some monetary compensation, but it shouldn't be open-ended as it is now. If you sue in vaccine court the government has set a limit on what you'll get (and it's actually less if your family member dies than if they're injured). How is that any less tragic than someone dying from anesthesia during surgery?

5. There should be greater limitations on medical lawsuits. While the legal system is a very effective place to penalize shoddy medicine, compensation should be limited to stay within scale of the damage.

So there should be restrictions on lawsuits but not limit what a corporation can spend to buy politicians?

No more than those set on individuals to buy politicians. (Does George Soros ring any bells?)

Unrestrained greed is just that Rooster, unrestrained. Without govt limits, corporations prey on us.

Muse,

Setting me up as one who advocates "no government limits on corporations" is a cheap-shot argument. I have never said that and have never even thought that.

In fact, I believe in punishment of individuals and corporations who violate the rights of other individuals. There are plenty of laws on the books to protect us from corporations who commit fraud and take other immoral and illegal actions.

Rooster, Right On! Making sure that one company isn't given the advantage over another should make sense to everyone. As long as our government continues this practice (both Republican and Democrat) we're getting the shaft. And laws to regulate business practices will always be necessary. They just shouldn't be so regulated that the government actually ends up giving other businesses an advantage. An example would be with the mortgage industry since the 70's.

[DreamStalker]

<snip> ...

And laws to regulate business practices will always be necessary. They just shouldn't be so regulated that the government actually ends up giving other businesses an advantage.

...<snip>

No worry Rooster, I'll get this one.

So frazzled, who will get to decide how much regulation?

Maybe this guy' grandmother?

[CiresWrossed]

I have an idea regarding health care that we should consider. I believe institute something like Health Scholarships -- I call them Vitalships. The idea is if someone is sick through no fault of their own -- i.e. they do not smoke and are not overweight and are not otherwise harming themselves (drugs etc). We should collectively support their getting better. Yes, deciding who gets a Vitalship and who does not will be tricky. But we do the same thing with education so we can it with health. Obviously children would automatically be qualified.

[DreamStalker]

I have an idea regarding health care that we should consider. I believe institute something like Health Scholarships -- I call them Vitalships. The idea is if someone is sick through no fault of their own -- i.e. they do not smoke and are not overweight and are not otherwise harming themselves (drugs etc). We should collectively support their getting better. Yes, deciding who gets a Vitalship and who does not will be tricky. But we do the same thing with education so we can it with health. Obviously children would automatically be qualified.

Yea, and maybe idiots could be excluded too ... I mean, if overweight people choose to be overwieght, then idiots must also be choosing to be idiots.

Maybe we could even get Palin's death panels to decide the tricky stuff too?

Look, it is when people are excluded that problems arise, include everyone and everyone is happy, well most everyone (except maybe a couple grandmothers).

[LinkC]

I agree! Let's include everyone in all aspects...

Everyone is entitled to all the healthcare they can pay for! No more, no less.

What a novel, all-inclusive concept!

[roster]

I have an idea regarding health care that we should consider. I believe institute something like Health Scholarships -- I call them Vitalships. The idea is if someone is sick through no fault of their own -- i.e. they do not smoke and are not overweight and are not otherwise harming themselves (drugs etc). We should collectively support their getting better. Yes, deciding who gets a Vitalship and who does not will be tricky. But we do the same thing with education so we can it with health. Obviously children would automatically be qualified.

Did you think through that one?

[frazzled-snoozer]

<snip> ...

And laws to regulate business practices will always be necessary. They just shouldn't be so regulated that the government actually ends up giving other businesses an advantage.

...<snip>

No worry Rooster, I'll get this one.

So frazzled, who will get to decide how much regulation?

Maybe this guy' grandmother?

As if we're going to leave rational regulation decisions to some nut-job yahoo whacko?!?!?!?!

I'll lay out an example of what I'm talking about....

In the 70's people thought it was a good idea to make it easier for low-income people to purchase homes. "Everyone should be able to purchase the American Dream." I think this was a knee jerk reaction to the discrimination that was occuring in the housing market with minorities. Now... the correct regulation was to make sure that no one was discriminated against based on ethnicity, race, creed, or religion. At that time many, many people were scheming ways around those regulations. All efforts should've been focused on enforcing the regulations that were already in place. Instead, pressure was made on the banks to not deny mortgages to those groups even if they didn't have financial qualification. Enter--Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac that created ways to finance all these questionable loans. At first the major lenders resisted the idea... citing the risks involved. The increased regulations (of loaning to financially unqualified people) created a whole market of businesses that had an unfair advantage. Eventually, the banks that were resisting realized that there was a ton of money to be made by just the sheer volume of business. They couldn't resist it-- you know-- greed and all. And now we fast-forward to today and the whole economy has come crashing down by the weight of these risks.

Good regulation is when you limit businesses according to constitutional principles. It's pretty simple stuff. Basically, we regulate against fraud, unconstitutional (discriminatory) practices, infringement on other's rights, etc. When we regulate based on manipulating the marketplace it skews the whole system.

[DreamStalker]

<snip> ...

And laws to regulate business practices will always be necessary. They just shouldn't be so regulated that the government actually ends up giving other businesses an advantage.

...<snip>

No worry Rooster, I'll get this one.

So frazzled, who will get to decide how much regulation?

Maybe this guy' grandmother?

As if we're going to leave rational regulation decisions to some nut-job yahoo whacko?!?!?!?!

I'll lay out an example of what I'm talking about....

In the 70's people thought it was a good idea to make it easier for low-income people to purchase homes. "Everyone should be able to purchase the American Dream." I think this was a knee jerk reaction to the discrimination that was occuring in the housing market with minorities. Now... the correct regulation was to make sure that no one was discriminated against based on ethnicity, race, creed, or religion. At that time many, many people were scheming ways around those regulations. All efforts should've been focused on enforcing the regulations that were already in place. Instead, pressure was made on the banks to not deny mortgages to those groups even if they didn't have financial qualification. Enter--Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac that created ways to finance all these questionable loans. At first the major lenders resisted the idea... citing the risks involved. The increased regulations (of loaning to financially unqualified people) created a whole market of businesses that had an unfair advantage. Eventually, the banks that were resisting realized that there was a ton of money to be made by just the sheer volume of business. They couldn't resist it-- you know-- greed and all. And now we fast-forward to today and the whole economy has come crashing down by the weight of these risks.

Good regulation is when you limit businesses according to constitutional principles. It's pretty simple stuff. Basically, we regulate against fraud, unconstitutional (discriminatory) practices, infringement on other's rights, etc. When we regulate based on manipulating the marketplace it skews the whole system.

Hey now careful there, that nut-job yahoo Bauer whacko could be related to our friend Rooster (or at least his grandmother).

First of all, the home mortgage industry was regulated before the 1970's. Can you point to a "free-market" that is not in any way shape or form regulated by government? I don't know of any ... why do you think that may be so? All markets are regualted becasue they have to be.

So who is more likely to resist the temptation of greed? individual humans like you and me ... or humans hiding behind corporations and free markets?

Of course we have our parrot bird friend, Rooster, who hangs around constantly squawking free-market free-market AHRrrrrk! But just becasue our Rooster friend incessantly squawks for it does not mean we have a free and unregulated market or that we should have one.

As you said, our constitution exists to protect individuals, humans like me or you, ... not those who hide behind corporations or so-called free markets. The problem we generally have is that of poor regulation not too much regulation. So as our friend Rooster always asks, who should decide what is good and what is bad regulation? Humans who we elect to governement or corporations who buy the humans who we elect to our governement?

I mean really, who do you trust more? A real human who has a conscience or a corporation with a sole existence for profit ... not that profit in and of itself is bad but when drivien without conscience can be bad, evil, whatever you want to call it. So I'm asking who do you want to have the power to decide market regulation (now that we both understand that unregulated markets do not exist and for good reason)?

[Slinky]

Snork. They don't even enforce the regulations whether good or bad - if you are the right person, corporation, etc.

[roster]

Can you point to a "free-market" that is not in any way shape or form regulated by government? I don't know of any ...

You need to get out from under that dank rock in your government job and see the world. You might learn some things and improve your crabby outlook on life ("Poor pitiful me, corporations screw me every minute of the day. Government please save me. Boo-hoo-hoo. I am helpless against the big bad corporations and need government to help me. Boo-hoo-hoo.").

Plenty of us are enjoying life and free markets. Get out from under that rock and enjoy life yourself. It's only going to last so long and I am not going to sit here feeling sorry for you any longer.

Here are some free markets to enjoy:

Sporting Goods

Every time I walk into Dick’s Sporting Goods, I marvel at what the free market has created. Plenty of high quality sporting goods at reasonable prices. Drive out to the store on Kramer Lane this evening and allow your self at least two hours to look around. Choice, choice, choice. Willing consumers happily purchasing from a corporation. Plenty of people love that store. They are opening 22 new stores this year.

Why is Dick’s so amazingly good? Because the sporting goods market is not regulated. They have plenty of competition and it is easy to enter the market – no government barriers.

Have a bias against Dick’s? That is fine – your choice. In fact you have plenty of choice. Yellowpages.com has 249 listings in the Austin area. Big stores, small stores, specialty stores. Plenty of choice and excellent value for the consumer thanks to a free market and competition unhindered by government regulation.

Veterinary Services

Same deal. Yellowpages.com has nearly 700 listings for Austin covering everything from veterinarians to veterinary hospitals to veterinary labaoratories to veterinary specialists. In my own community we have three veterinarians within four miles. I hear no complaints from pet owners about the services or prices. Two neighbors currently have dogs that are receiving chemo treatment for cancer ( I would have my dog euthanized in that case but they are free to make their own decisions.) All of the local veterinarians have shiny offices with all the latest equipment to offer full service health treatment.

All of that is done without government regulation of the market. Medicare and Medicaid don’t pay for anything. Sure the docs are licensed by the state. But the market is not regulated.

I could go on and talk about the plastic surgery industry, Amazon, Ebay and many more. These are all operating in unregulated markets and are providing excellent products and services that are freely sought after and willingly paid for by happy consumers.

I did notice that you are putting some qualifiers ("not in any way shape or form") in your brash statement, that sounds like you know you are wrong.

Can you point to a "free-market" that is not in any way shape or form regulated by government? I don't know of any ...

So I expect you will argue that the industries I cited are not operating in free markets because their owners, employees, stockholders and customers are obligated to obey the local jaywalking laws. Eh?

But forget it. Get out and enjoy life. Take up a sport - go to Dick’s. Buy a big dog and get out in the sun with him. Have some plastic surgery - get that chip removed from your shoulder.

Life is too short.

[DreamStalker]

Can you point to a "free-market" that is not in any way shape or form regulated by government? I don't know of any ...

You need to get out from under that dank rock in your government job and see the world. You might learn some things and improve your crabby outlook on life ("Poor pitiful me, corporations screw me every minute of the day. Government please save me. Boo-hoo-hoo. I am helpless against the big bad corporations and need government to help me. Boo-hoo-hoo.").

Plenty of us are enjoying life and free markets. Get out from under that rock and enjoy life yourself. It's only going to last so long and I am not going to sit here feeling sorry for you any longer.

Here are some free markets to enjoy:

Sporting Goods

Every time I walk into Dick’s Sporting Goods, I marvel at what the free market has created. Plenty of high quality sporting goods at reasonable prices. Drive out to the store on Kramer Lane this evening and allow your self at least two hours to look around. Choice, choice, choice. Willing consumers happily purchasing from a corporation. Plenty of people love that store. They are opening 22 new stores this year.

Why is Dick’s so amazingly good? Because the sporting goods market is not regulated. They have plenty of competition and it is easy to enter the market – no government barriers.

Have a bias against Dick’s? That is fine – your choice. In fact you have plenty of choice. Yellowpages.com has 249 listings in the Austin area. Big stores, small stores, specialty stores. Plenty of choice and excellent value for the consumer thanks to a free market and competition unhindered by government regulation.

Veterinary Services

Same deal. Yellowpages.com has nearly 700 listings for Austin covering everything from veterinarians to veterinary hospitals to veterinary labaoratories to veterinary specialists. In my own community we have three veterinarians within four miles. I hear no complaints from pet owners about the services or prices. Two neighbors currently have dogs that are receiving chemo treatment for cancer ( I would have my dog euthanized in that case but they are free to make their own decisions.) All of the local veterinarians have shiny offices with all the latest equipment to offer full service health treatment.

All of that is done without government regulation of the market. Medicare and Medicaid don’t pay for anything. Sure the docs are licensed by the state. But the market is not regulated.

I could go on and talk about the plastic surgery industry, Amazon, Ebay and many more. These are all operating in unregulated markets and are providing excellent products and services that are freely sought after and willingly paid for by happy consumers.

I did notice that you are putting some qualifiers ("not in any way shape or form") in your brash statement, that sounds like you know you are wrong.

Can you point to a "free-market" that is not in any way shape or form regulated by government? I don't know of any ...

So I expect you will argue that the industries I cited are not operating in free markets because their owners, employees, stockholders and customers are obligated to obey the local jaywalking laws. Eh?

But forget it. Get out and enjoy life. Take up a sport - go to Dick’s. Buy a big dog and get out in the sun with him. Have some plastic surgery - get that chip removed from your shoulder.

Life is too short.

My outlook on life is great! See …

You just dream of enjoying free markets, Ahhrrrrck!

So sporting goods stores are not regulated? I guess none carry firearms or ammunition right? And EPA/FDA doesn’t regulate the textiles/chemicals or any number of items in sporting goods products either? And as corporations they are not regulated by tax laws, hmmm? What about local regulations like zoning, fire safety, business licenses, health codes, sign restrictions and such? And then there are the international trade regulations, sporting goods stores don’t have to worry about buying merchandise from China right?

And veterinary services in your community are not licensed either? I guess they treat animal health with vitamins and herbs instead of pharmaceutical drugs too (wait, vitamins and herbs are regulated too, oh well)? And no regulations on euthanization of pets? Wow! Sure hope they know what they are doing. No regulations of plastic surgery … c’mon, what kind’a place do you live in anyway? No internet commerce regulations … I wonder what the FCC does then? Good thing they are going to regulate credit cards we use on those transactions. I could go on and on too.

None are operating in free markets because there are regulations. Whether the regulations are good or bad, small or large matters not. About the closest you will get to a free market is the illicit drug market, but even that is regualated as well, illegal contraband. You name it, tires, toys, and even toilet paper is all regulated somewhere in the market and even trading the stuff on Wall Street is regulated.

The point I made was that ALL business is regulated for a reason … to protect the consumer. Define free-market willy nilly if you wish but the fact remains that regulation of business markets in some form or another exists whether you wish it to be so or not.


BTW - I actually have two dogs (and 4 cats and we're all very happy too) and being at a lower latitude than you, I bet I also get more sun than you. And at the rate my health is improving, I expect to lengthen my life, not shorten it. Hope yours is long too. Austin? Why would I want to go to Austin for a vet. We have vets out in the country that are just as regulated as any in Austin or anywhere else.

[roster]

While I am working on my taxes and finances and doing some light work for clients this afternoon, the little TV on my desk is playing a C-SPAN rerun from Thursday that I caught a little bit of. My friend Bill Clinton is on with an international panel of business people talking about help for Haiti in rebuilding after the immediate crisis work.

Well surprise, Bill and the business leaders are saying that the international private sector is the most important part of rebuilding. They are calling on business leaders to make investments (build evil, greedy corporations) in Haiti. They are explaining how the Haiti government and the U.S. government will work to ensure a free market there which is a good environment for corporations.

They are explaining how the international business should make investments because they can make good profits. They even stated "don't make investments because of humanitarian reasons, make them because they are going to be profitable". They know that strong corporations do more good for a citizenry than all the bleeding hearts put together.


Bill Clinton and those guys know what works to build good societies that provide a higher economic level of living. They know that protecting the property rights of corporations and allowing them to be profitable is the surest, quickest way to freedom and better lives for the Haitians. They know that strong, profitable businesses do more good for the citizens of any country than all the government social programs put together.


Good for you Bill Clinton. Our country was in much better hands during the latter parts of your Presidency that it will ever be in the hands of that leftist ideologue Obama in whom I am so disappointed.

[Muse-Inc]

...Good for you Bill Clinton. Our country was in much better hands during the latter parts of your Presidency that it will ever be in the hands of that leftist ideologue Obama in whom I am so disappointed.

Gee, Rooster, you don't have any strong opinions about this do you?

[mars]

Hey Guys

Just in case you run out of aspects of healthcare reform to argue about, the BBC News had this to say -

BBC NEWS
Why do people vote against their own interests?

The Republicans' shock victory in the election for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts meant the Democrats lost their supermajority in the Senate. This makes it even harder for the Obama administration to get healthcare reform passed in the US.

Political scientist Dr David Runciman looks at why is there often such deep opposition to reforms that appear to be of obvious benefit to voters.

Last year, in a series of "town-hall meetings" across the country, Americans got the chance to debate President Obama's proposed healthcare reforms.

What happened was an explosion of rage and barely suppressed violence.

Polling evidence suggests that the numbers who think the reforms go too far are nearly matched by those who think they do not go far enough.

But it is striking that the people who most dislike the whole idea of healthcare reform - the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state - are often the ones it seems designed to help.

In Texas, where barely two-thirds of the population have full health insurance and over a fifth of all children have no cover at all, opposition to the legislation is currently running at 87%.

Anger

Instead, to many of those who lose out under the existing system, reform still seems like the ultimate betrayal.

Why are so many American voters enraged by attempts to change a horribly inefficient system that leaves them with premiums they often cannot afford?

Why are they manning the barricades to defend insurance companies that routinely deny claims and cancel policies?

It might be tempting to put the whole thing down to what the historian Richard Hofstadter back in the 1960s called "the paranoid style" of American politics, in which God, guns and race get mixed into a toxic stew of resentment at anything coming out of Washington.

But that would be a mistake.

If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them.

They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best.

There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots.

As the saying goes, in politics, when you are explaining, you are losing. And that makes anything as complex or as messy as healthcare reform a very hard sell.

Stories not facts

In his book The Political Brain, psychologist Drew Westen, an exasperated Democrat, tried to show why the Right often wins the argument even when the Left is confident that it has the facts on its side.

He uses the following exchange from the first presidential debate between Al Gore and George Bush in 2000 to illustrate the perils of trying to explain to voters what will make them better off:

Gore: "Under the governor's plan, if you kept the same fee for service that you have now under Medicare, your premiums would go up by between 18% and 47%, and that is the study of the Congressional plan that he's modelled his proposal on by the Medicare actuaries."

Bush: "Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers.
# BBC Radio 4, Wednesday 27 January at 2045 GMT
# Or listen via the

"I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math. It's trying to scare people in the voting booth."

Mr Gore was talking sense and Mr Bush nonsense - but Mr Bush won the debate. With statistics, the voters just hear a patronising policy wonk, and switch off.

For Mr Westen, stories always trump statistics, which means the politician with the best stories is going to win: "One of the fallacies that politicians often have on the Left is that things are obvious, when they are not obvious.

"Obama's administration made a tremendous mistake by not immediately branding the economic collapse that we had just had as the Republicans' Depression, caused by the Bush administration's ideology of unregulated greed. The result is that now people blame him."

Reverse revolution

Thomas Frank, the author of the best-selling book What's The Matter with Kansas, is an even more exasperated Democrat and he goes further than Mr Westen.

He believes that the voters' preference for emotional engagement over reasonable argument has allowed the Republican Party to blind them to their own real interests.

The Republicans have learnt how to stoke up resentment against the patronising liberal elite, all those do-gooders who assume they know what poor people ought to be thinking.

Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America's poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.

Thomas Frank says that whatever disadvantaged Americans think they are voting for, they get something quite different:

"You vote to strike a blow against elitism and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our life times, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining.

"It's like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy."

As Mr Frank sees it, authenticity has replaced economics as the driving force of modern politics. The authentic politicians are the ones who sound like they are speaking from the gut, not the cerebral cortex. Of course, they might be faking it, but it is no joke to say that in contemporary politics, if you can fake sincerity, you have got it made.

And the ultimate sin in modern politics is appearing to take the voters for granted.

This is a culture war but it is not simply being driven by differences over abortion, or religion, or patriotism. And it is not simply Red states vs. Blue states any more. It is a war on the entire political culture, on the arrogance of politicians, on their slipperiness and lack of principle, on their endless deal making and compromises.

And when the politicians say to the people protesting: 'But we're doing this for you', that just makes it worse. In fact, that seems to be what makes them angriest of all.

This edition of
was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday 24 January and repeated on Wednesday 27 January at 2045 GMT.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/a ... 474611.stm

Published: 2010/01/30 00:57:43 GMT

© BBC MMX