HillaryCARE

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

It appears Hillary has written off Iowa, expecting a loss there to Obama.

Her people in New Hampshire are criticizing Obama's healthcare plan because it doesnt cover everyone. HillaryCARE will include every man, woman, and child.

Here's the problem: Health insurance is so expensive it isnt practical to have it unless you have serious medical problems. If you get an occasional cold or flu or broken toe, youre much better off hiding money under the mattress than paying the monthly coverage fee and deductibles. This is what healthy people do.

I hide $100 a paycheck to cover my medical costs. Or I can pay the insurance company $7200 before I'm eligible for 'free' care. At the end of the year, whatever remains beneath the mattress is my money. This year I spent $0 on healthcare. In 2006 I spent 0$ on healthcare. And $900 in 2005. That's $900 out of my pocket rather than $21,000 out of my pocket. 21K will buy a car.

Hillary has already said she plans to make health insurance mandatory for everyone. She even suggested that you wont be able to get a job unless youre covered.

What America needs is a low cost insurance plan that provides you with...say...4 MD visits, 2 ER visits, 80% inpatient coverage, and prescriptions over $20. Something like this costs about $50 a month, per person. One hundred bucks for a couple. Two hundred with 2 kids.

But what happens is special interests make the pols add mental health coverage and Mexican Relief to what you pay. Plus you pay for all the hypochondriacs who live at the ER.

http://www.wmur.com/politics/14826607/detail.html

 

[Carnevil9]

What we need is tort reform, not HitleryCARE. When we can stop the Billion Dollar Lawsuits, health care costs will plummet to where the average American can afford them, even without insurance....Carney, the invisible.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

CARNEY

Sorry about being invisible.

But! Lawsuits arent the culprit (although insurance companies cave at the suggestion of a suit). Costs for care is the culprit. That breaks down to physicians are incompetent to use the expensive diagnostic machines they buy, physicians dont stay current on medical advances, and too many physicians own the test labs they send patients to. So patients arent diagnosed correctly, they dont get new treatments, and their docs run up the score with the labs.

Insurance companies need to open their own labs and test centers, and staff them with competent people.

 

[R. Richard]

Insurance companies need to open their own labs and test centers, and staff them with competent people.

Sounds like a plan!

 

[Pure]

question

What America needs is a low cost insurance plan that provides you with...say...4 MD visits, 2 ER visits, 80% inpatient coverage, and prescriptions over $20. Something like this costs about $50 a month, per person. One hundred bucks for a couple. Two hundred with 2 kids.


sounds like a plan. now, do you think that a coalition of healthcare providers (e.g. Kaiser, etc.) is going to offer such a plan? wouldn't it sell well? IOW, despite its low cost, if millions buy it, there would be substatial profit.

or will each provider come up with a slight variant of this 'basic plan'? this would, in theory, give a consumer 'choice.' yet would the costs of having dozens of offerings undermine the viability of the scheme?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

PURE

What prevents it is medical service providers bribing the legislature to make it unlawful. The legislature in every instance compels the insurance company to pay the MDs for sundry 'treatments' and 'services' patients do not want or require.

We can have a whole thread about this.

 

[R. Richard]

sounds like a plan. now, do you think that a coalition of healthcare providers (e.g. Kaiser, etc.) is going to offer such a plan? wouldn't it sell well? IOW, despite its low cost, if millions buy it, there would be substatial profit.

or will each provider come up with a slight variant of this 'basic plan'? this would, in theory, give a consumer 'choice.' yet would the costs of having dozens of offerings undermine the viability of the scheme?

There is a problem with such low cost plans. First, the waiting rooms at Kaiser look like a casting call for "Rage of The Zombies." Second, at Kaiser, you get to see a doctor, but very rarely the same doctor twice in a row. Thus, you can't establish a relationship with 'your doctor.' From what I have been told, many ladies don't like a stranger looking inside them at each visit to a gynecologist [feedback here?]

By the way, when I was with Kaiser, they offered first rate medical care, with the above listed drawbacks.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

The problem with HilaryCare is that it's not really practical. Does it make sense for the government to pass a law requiring a minimum wage earner to spend half of his take-home pay to pay for health insurance? Hilary may ask Congress for such a law, but would the pass it?

Hilary had the first solid plan for universal health care. It has some problems, but it was still first. Would it work out if Congress got their hands on it and turned it into a funded social program? It would work as well if not better than Obama's plan.

But I don't think Health Care is really the issue anyway. The real issue is - Is Obama qualified to be President? Yes, he graduated college with honors. Yes, he was a state senator. Yes, he is a junior U.S. senator. Yes, he has big ideas and a "presence". But does that make him presidential?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Jenny

No, Obama isnt qualified to do squat. And Hillary is as qualified as Laura Bush....if lunching with ambassadors and watching native kids dance qualifies you for anything. Hillary is smarter than LUCY, but still not qualified to lead Ricky's band. That was always LUCY'S thing: to do what Ricky did. Ditto for Hillary.

Hillary will be better than LUCY!

 

[Pure]

i think it's going to be obama v. romney.

but to stick to the topic, what about romney's health plan? what about the Massachusetts plan?

 

[DesertPirate]

What we need is tort reform, not HitleryCARE. When we can stop the Billion Dollar Lawsuits, health care costs will plummet to where the average American can afford them, even without insurance....Carney, the invisible.

Carney, I'll give credit for that one. Look at North Carolina, Edwards legacy here has nothing to do with his one absentee term in the Senate (he thought he was elected Presidential candidate and missed 60% of the votes in his term), it was his time as an ambulance chaser. He won so many malpractice lawsuites for huge sums that insurance for DRs. tripled. His legacy? Now there are 12% fewer Drs in NC than there were 20 years ago.

 

[DesertPirate]

The problem with HilaryCare is that it's not really practical. Does it make sense for the government to pass a law requiring a minimum wage earner to spend half of his take-home pay to pay for health insurance? Hilary may ask Congress for such a law, but would the pass it?

Hilary had the first solid plan for universal health care. It has some problems, but it was still first. Would it work out if Congress got their hands on it and turned it into a funded social program? It would work as well if not better than Obama's plan.

But I don't think Health Care is really the issue anyway. The real issue is - Is Obama qualified to be President? Yes, he graduated college with honors. Yes, he was a state senator. Yes, he is a junior U.S. senator. Yes, he has big ideas and a "presence". But does that make him presidential?

What bothers me about all of the Dems is the push to raise taxes. They claim it's only on the rich, yeah, riiight. In the last 35 years, every time the Dems want to raise taxes on the rich, mine have gone up. Never have made more than $40K in a year. If any of us thought even half of our tax money was being spent wisely, we might quit complaining. Shame it's only about 10%. Party doesn't matter, none of those clowns has ever seen a nickle they couldn't waste!

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Some hard decisions will need to be made about the cost of health insurance and the expenses. As it is we try and save every premie and geezer with a million dollar problem. Every illegal gets a ticket to the show, too. Plus jails and prisons play CYA with every real or imagined ailment an inmate has. And juries are imbeciles.

Generally speaking, when peasants get taxed 20% of their income they rebell. Healthcare absorbs about 15% of the economy today.

 

[emap]

Peasants were taxed the food they created, money being taxed only came about for people in towns and cities that did not grow food.

Anyway the medical system was created to fature everyone getting treated, worrying about money comes later. Which in and of itself sounds wonderful, the practice of said system leaves alot to be desired. Doctors fees are high because many don't or won't pay, add in the rising cost of insurance for said doctors and hospitals and well dang, I am surprised there are even doctors to be found.

Which is actually why Hillary is going on and on about everyone getting medical insurance, you don't have insurance you can't get a doctor unless you go to the emergency room. If everybody had insurance the trips to said emergency room may drop down to people who have emergencies. Ever been to an emergency room? Lots of pretty darn healthy looking people sitting around waiting to be seen. Sick kids and the obvious emergency situations get ushered to a room fast, everyone else gets told to sit and wait.

I would assume makes working as the admissions nurse in an emergency room a nightmare. Apparently most don't know but states actually have a medical insurance for the poor. Arizona does anyway, most of the people who work for Wal Mart here have it. Pretty sure the other states do as well. So a universal health insurance isn't actually that far off, Hillary is just riding on the coattails of I care about people elect me.

To me, anybody who is running for president is not qualified, the people who are qualified, can't afford to run. Anybody can run in theory, but without at least 105 million dollars you get no commercials, with no commercials most don't know who the hell you are and won't vote for you, with no commercials you don't get a spot on the debates and well heck look you aren't running. Even if you pick a party, they won't run commercials for you unless you start getting votes, you won't get votes without commercials. We will skip the banners and posters and whatnot, for the most part it all depends on TV time.

 

[amicus]

JBJ...I am a bit late into your thread, my apologies, missed it somehow, but on the other hand, now that I discovered it, I almost wish I had not.

Up front, I do not think there is a solution.

I expect the situation to continue to worsen regardless of which candidate or even which party is in power in the foreseeable future.

Although my perspective is a limited one, it is not without value and perhaps in some ways, even unique.

For thirty years, I had the opportunity to interview a wide range of public and private officials, do my best to understand their perspective and then objectively report my findings. So, it was a job, what can I say, but, I rather enjoyed it and I like to think I learned a great deal about a great many things in the process.

My reportage, even though as 'objective' truthful and fact filled as I could make it, still raised ire among those who read or listened to my reports and it does not take one long to learn, anecdotally, that you cannot please all the peeps all the time, regardless of what you do or say.

I suspect that the US will get some form of socialized medicine in the very near future, an aging population will force action and the alternative to a collective effort is not even thinkable at this stage of the game.

It will only be after the failure of such an universal system of health care that other means will be considered and even then, like public education, I do not see a path to realization.

I don't know about you JBJ and others of our generation, but my children are not prepared to deal with what is coming. Because of the demands already imposed upon them, they were necessitated to acquire a more practical, utilitarian education, one that would support them, rather than a theoretical, universal attempt to acquire the kind of knowledge that would facilitate their abilities to deal with what is coming.

I am not optimistic about the survival of a free society in the next generation or so and, hell, I can't even explain that to my children.

On the political front, I still do not see the country electing either a woman or a black and especially the two running to be the leader of the most powerful nation in the world. Yet, it is time for the Dems to be in office again and I fear a second tier candidate, such as Edwards, or that flake from New Mexico may get the nomination by default.

On the other side, I think the only rational glimmer is Thompson, but at this point he is a long shot and either of the top two, Guiliani or Romney, are flawed in the eyes of the Republicans and will not defeat the Dems.

As with all things...time will tell...always a surprise around the corner...who knows?

Regards...

Amicus...

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

AMICUS

The historical records indicate that when the economic burden of government becomes too great a contender will appear, offer people relief from taxation, and the worm will turn.

I expect the USA will fragment into 4 nations. Red States, Blue States, Nueva Mexico (the Southwest and Southern California), and South Florida (Cuban).