Riddle me this Lib’s

[Sonny Limatina]

Well, yes, the cost trajectory for this stuff is way out of hand. That said, I think you have to look beyond the simple words "healthcare reform" that cover a variety of different "reforming" concepts, and see what's actually being proposed. "State police" and "police state" seem pretty similar on the surface, but they're not really the same thing.

The sort of reforms you WANT to have are things that give individuals more control and responsibility (and yes, more out of pocket costs in exchange for lower premiums), since they are the only ones that can decide how much health care they want to pay for. Eventually move health insurance away from employers...they don't do auto or homeowners insurance today. (Maybe start with vouchers to help manage the transition in cost from employer-paid to employee paid.) Create more competition among insurers by allowing consumers to buy policies from out of state issuers, and make policies transferable without pre-existing condition restrictions. Let consumers focus their insurance needs on major health issues like hospitalizations rather than doctor visits through high deductible policies.

Instead, we're being offered thousand page bills that claim to preserve everything (wrong) but fix all the deficiencies (wrong) at no extra cost (wrong).

Those are the sorts of things YOU want to see. They sound reasonable, and reasonable people may agree or disagree.

But were you under the impression that the even more radical changes you propose would be formalized in a shorter bill than the one floating around?

 

[ccwalt]

Can't answer the question? To hard for you?

How about 40 million plus without healthcare. That should be an adequate answer.

 

[ccwalt]

Down with big government!

Too late. Bush already screwed that pooch.

 

[firespin]

Yes prevention does work, AJ's foolish claims to the contrary notwithstanding.
Prevention != Needless tests though.

Needless is in the eye of the beholder. You could argue that those tests are helping to spot problems. And therein lies the rub.

Those are the sorts of things YOU want to see. They sound reasonable, and reasonable people may agree or disagree.

But were you under the impression that the even more radical changes you propose would be formalized in a shorter bill than the one floating around?

My point was that people make the case that something called "health care reform" should be enacted because there are issues with the current healthcare financing system. That's not the same as saying there's a consensus on how to do that, or even that a given set of reforms will correct those issues. The bills under consideration now are pretty horrible from a theoretical standpoint, in part because of the constraint that they appear to leave intact private insurance and medicare. In practice, they can't do that, and some of the bills make changes in stealth fashion, years after the current congress won't be around to account for them.

If government is less involved in healthcare insurance, the bills will be shorter, yes.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

I'll ask you now ... did you read the article before you posted?

Preventive services for the chronically ill may reduce health-care costs, but they are unlikely to generate the kind of fantastic savings that President Obama and other Democrats have said could help pay for an overhaul of the nation's health system, according to a study being published Tuesday.

Did you read it?

You said, do the math, the lack of preventative health care is costing us. I posted that preventative health care was basically not a justification for insuring, by force, people who did not want to be insured because it would be a push.

You need another basis for your advocacy. Preventative health care will not save us money and more than lack of it is driving up the cost of premiums.

GOVERNMENT is driving up the cost of premiums. One way is by allowing lawyers to tiptoe through the tulips...

 

[RobDownSouth]

Did you read it?

You said, do the math, the lack of preventative health care is costing us. I posted that preventative health care was basically not a justification for insuring, by force, people who did not want to be insured because it would be a push.

You need another basis for your advocacy. Preventative health care will not save us money and more than lack of it is driving up the cost of premiums.

GOVERNMENT is driving up the cost of premiums. One way is by allowing lawyers to tiptoe through the tulips...

No you didn't, Eunuch! You plainly stated that "recent studies showed preventative medicine didn't work", which of course was a lie.

Lying comes easy to you, doesn't it.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Not when it comes to premiums dumbass.




You can't read for shit.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Not when it comes to premiums dumbass.




You can't read for shit.

Full power to the weasel engines!

Fuck the premiums, don't change the subject you gutless sack of shit.

Show us the "recent studies" that preventative medicine "doesn't work".

Be a man! Make little Soon Yi proud of you for once!

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Keep up the stupid...




You read Afghanistan and think, IRAQ! AHA, I GOT HIM!!!





Want proof?

 

[RobDownSouth]

Keep up the stupid...

You read Afghanistan and think, IRAQ! AHA, I GOT HIM!!!

Want proof?

No, I want to see your 'proof' that "recent studies show preventive medicine doesn't work"

A very simple request.

Been waitin' three days now for you to supply proof.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

It was never the main contention dumbass...





You really can't read beyond what you think is attackable material, a symptom of your Bush Derangement Syndrome which doesn't seem to have gotten better under Obama because you may be a closet racist and well as a closet homophobe.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

What I was actually saying to Obama and Pookie... AKA What my links demonstrated.

... but only to people who can actually read with comprehension. I know Throb can't, somehow, in the past, I convinced myself Pookie could, but...

At a July press conference, President Obama claimed "the average American family is paying thousands of dollars in hidden costs" because uncompensated health care for the uninsured drives up the price of medical coverage. In an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, by contrast, he said uncompensated care costs the average family $900.

According to a 2008 report from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, both of those estimates are way off. The foundation's analysis indicates that the true annual cost per family is more like $200, with uncompensated care accounting for "less than one percent of private health insurance costs."

These numbers are important because the president's main justification for requiring every American to buy health insurance, a central element of his reform plan, is that uninsured people unfairly impose costs on their fellow citizens. That rationale not only has a weak empirical basis; it conceals the real motivation for the individual insurance mandate while dodging moral and constitutional questions about it.

...

The problem with this argument is not just that the cost of such uncompensated care seems to be much lower than the president claims. It's also his assumption that everyone who goes without insurance is a freeloader.

What about the young and healthy (or middle-aged and wealthy) person who decides insurance is not worth his money but pays all his medical expenses out of his own pocket? His choice does not impose costs on anyone, but under Obama's plan he would still be punished for it.

The real reason Obama insists upon making the young and healthy buy insurance they don't want is not the relatively minor free rider problem but the potentially ruinous adverse selection problem: The most expensive patients are the ones who are most likely to sign up for coverage. To keep the official 10-year price tag of his plan below that magical $1 trillion threshold, he needs to balance sick people who rack up big bills with healthy people who pay for insurance but don't use it. Instead of acknowledging this reality, Obama portrays the healthy uninsured as irresponsible leeches.

...

Obama might be on firmer ground if he portrayed the levy imposed on people who decline to buy insurance as an exercise of the congressional tax power. But he does not want to admit he is forsaking his campaign promise to refrain from raising taxes on households earning less than $250,000 a year. That's why, in his interview with Stephanopoulos, he insisted that the "excise tax" imposed on the uninsured by the Senate health care bill he supports is not really a tax.

How so? After Obama signed a bill raising the federal cigarette tax, his press secretary explained that the tax pledge was still intact because "people make a decision to smoke." Likewise, Obama might argue, people make a decision not to buy health insurance. The lesson is clear: If you don't want to pay higher taxes, don't make any decisions.*

http://reason.com/news/show/136261.html



* AKA the new Afghanni strategy...
__________________
"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business."
Eric Hoffer

 

[unregistered]

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g79/jbravo688/HeroHog.jpg

Hero Hog, our own RubDownSow, to the rescue! Tell me how preventative medicine mitigates the frequency of Prostate Cancer.

Didn't that actually lead to earlier deaths by misdiagnosis?

 

[unregistered]

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

It was the whole basis for Pookie's argument and the subject I TRIED to have a conversation over, but once a Lib has picked an emotional appeal, there's no budging them and if you try to continue the conversation, they just get mean and feel perfectly justified since you failure to respond to emotion proves how mean you are...



The other ironic tone is how the same people that decry anyone who says there is black and white to an issue is lacking the ability to discern nuances quickly pounce upon a nuance with a black and white attitude, in short, if you can't prove that it will cost us money, then you have proved it saves money; no middle ground, no push, no wash...,
__________________
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it."
Frederic Bastiat

 

[RobDownSouth]

It was never the main contention dumbass...

You really can't read beyond what you think is attackable material, a symptom of your Bush Derangement Syndrome which doesn't seem to have gotten better under Obama because you may be a closet racist and well as a closet homophobe.

I see a punk making claims he can't substantiate, and trying to change the subject when cornered.

Saw this and thought of you, AJ:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v336/jarod_cain/Forums/hesmydad.jpg

 

[unregistered]

 

[Sonny Limatina]

Needless is in the eye of the beholder. You could argue that those tests are helping to spot problems. And therein lies the rub.



My point was that people make the case that something called "health care reform" should be enacted because there are issues with the current healthcare financing system. That's not the same as saying there's a consensus on how to do that, or even that a given set of reforms will correct those issues. The bills under consideration now are pretty horrible from a theoretical standpoint, in part because of the constraint that they appear to leave intact private insurance and medicare. In practice, they can't do that, and some of the bills make changes in stealth fashion, years after the current congress won't be around to account for them.

If government is less involved in healthcare insurance, the bills will be shorter, yes.

Nothing that comes out of Congress is going to be great. These guys are not there because they're saints, no matter what their campaign ads say.

But let's be honest. This issue has been on the table since who--Roosevelt? If it were going to handled in the private sector, it would have been.

So the solution, whatever form it takes, will have to come from the government.

I'd be a lot more forgiving of the righties in this case if they were arguing for something instead of against something. The opposition, no matter the words used in public to describe it, is not truly to fixing health in some particular manner. It's to fixing it under this president.

Once we're all honest about that, the discussion can get interesting again.

 

[RobDownSouth]

SQUIRREL!
Hero Hog, our own RubDownSow, to the rescue! Tell me how preventative medicine mitigates the frequency of Prostate Cancer.

http://unrealitymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/fat-flash.jpg
Vetteman runs to the defense of his beloved AJ almost as quickly as he ran away from the Viet Cong years ago...

Okay, you wanna play "gotcha"?
Preventive medicine has nothing to do with the "frequency" of prostate cancer. A simple Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) blood test can identify elevated PSA levels which is a sign of prostate cancer, particularly in men over 50.

Now, I believe I know where you are going with this: Preventive medicine does not yet "prevent" deaths from prostate cancer. It does, however, identify early-stage prostate cancer. There are a number of different views as to whether or not early stage prostate cancer should be treated or simply monitored. My position is that *I* want to know if I have a cancer. There is also the "ignorance is bliss" school of thought, and since "ignorance is bliss" seems to have been a recurring theme in your life, it would not surprise me one bit to see you support that position.

Since prostate cancer by definition affects only males, what's your position on female-specific preventive medicine. Should women forego mammograms because it's best for them not to know if they have a cancer in their breasts?

 

[Peregrinator]

Here's NYT article on the myth of preventative medicine:

Essay
Campaign Myth: Prevention as Cure-All


By H. GILBERT WELCH, M.D
Published: October 6, 2008

In a presidential campaign that promises straight talk and no gimmicks, why do both candidates champion one of medical care’s most pervasive myths?

The myth is that like magic, preventive medicine will simultaneously reduce costs and improve health.

Senator John McCain argues that “the best care is preventative care,” and his health care reform plan claims that “by emphasizing prevention” and other measures “we can reduce health care costs.” Senator Barack Obama’s plan says, “Simply put, in the absence of a radical shift towards prevention and public health, we will not be successful in containing medical costs or improving the health of the American people.”

It may sound like common sense. But it is still a myth.

Rest of story here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/h...=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

Good link, Vette. I actually know Dr. Welch. Not well, but we've met numerous times. He's an interesting guy. An ivy league professor of medicine...so...exactly what you'd expect. Encyclopedic knowledge and maybe just a tad full of himself.

That said, I think this quote from the article makes the most important point:

But the medical model for prevention has become less about health promotion and more about early diagnosis. Both candidates appear to have bought into it: Mr. Obama encourages annual checkups and screening, Mr. McCain early testing and screening.

It's not true "preventative medicine" that's the problem, it's that both candidates redefined the phrase to mean "lots of testing and early diagnosis."

If we could get people to eat healthy and exercise regularly and not smoke and wear seatbelts and work to reduce the stress in their lives and wash their hands more often, we'd be practicing true "preventative medicine."

Also, I agree with Rob, that if I have any form of cancer, I want to know about it right away, and know every option available. So go ahead, GP, and stick your finger up my ass once a year.

 

[Sonny Limatina]

Good link, Vette. I actually know Dr. Welch. Not well, but we've met numerous times. He's an interesting guy. An ivy league professor of medicine...so...exactly what you'd expect. Encyclopedic knowledge and maybe just a tad full of himself.

That said, I think this quote from the article makes the most important point:



It's not true "preventative medicine" that's the problem, it's that both candidates redefined the phrase to mean "lots of testing and early diagnosis."

If we could get people to eat healthy and exercise regularly and not smoke and wear seatbelts and work to reduce the stress in their lives and wash their hands more often, we'd be practicing true "preventative medicine."

Also, I agree with Rob, that if I have any form of cancer, I want to know about it right away, and know every option available. So go ahead, GP, and stick your finger up my ass once a year.

About the finger in the ass...

Obviously this is not the most pleasant aspect of the annual physical. One year I made my usual dumb-male comment about how it was not exactly my favorite part of the exam.

"It's not like we like it so much," my doc said.

I'd never thought of that.

I've never complained again.

 

[Peregrinator]

About the finger in the ass...

Obviously this is not the most pleasant aspect of the annual physical. One year I made my usual dumb-male comment about how it was not exactly my favorite part of the exam.

"It's not like we like it so much," my doc said.

I'd never thought of that.

I've never complained again.

Yeah, there is that as well.

 

[IrezumiKiss]

If we could get people to eat healthy and exercise regularly and not smoke and wear seatbelts and work to reduce the stress in their lives and wash their hands more often, we'd be practicing true "preventative medicine."

But what about Big Tobacco and the health insurance companies and all the doctors and the section of the American economy that depends on our continuous bad health issues in order to stay in business and create more American jobs in that sector and keep the class divisions intact so that the have-nots will always be working for the benefit of the haves that they chase and aspire to become?

Why do you hate America so much, Perg?

 

[Byron In Exile]

It's not true "preventative medicine" that's the problem, it's that both candidates redefined the phrase to mean "lots of testing and early diagnosis."

If we could get people to eat healthy and exercise regularly and not smoke and wear seatbelts and work to reduce the stress in their lives and wash their hands more often, we'd be practicing true "preventative medicine."

That may well be. But the question, then, is that if they don't, should their government compel them to do so?

What if someone chooses to be a firefighter? They will probably be inhaling a lot of smoke over the years. Perhaps government should limit such careers to a 5-year maximum.

This outlook divides Americans into two classes: scientists, and rats.