Health Care Again

I'm watching Michael Moore go to war with Wolf "Teh Beard" Blitzer (best correspondent name ever) on CNN, and it's not pretty. But the twist here is, presentation. I'm listening to Moore and he's just clobbering Blitzer and I suspect that most people would think that Moore is being "unfair" or "unhinged" or "imbalanced" or any other word that you want to use in relation to style.

I'm listening to Moore on his points, and not his presentation, but I think a vast majority of people are put off by his style. I don't think style should have anything to do with it. Isn't that common sense?

Health Care rankings according to the World Health Organization.

Rank Country

1 France
2 Italy
3 San Marino
4 Andorra
5 Malta
6 Singapore
7 Spain
8 Oman
9 Austria
10 Japan
11 Norway
12 Portugal
13 Monaco
14 Greece
15 Iceland
16 Luxembourg
17 Netherlands
18 United Kingdom
19 Ireland
20 Switzerland
21 Belgium
22 Colombia
23 Sweden
24 Cyprus
25 Germany
26 Saudi Arabia
27 United Arab Emirates
28 Israel
29 Morocco
30 Canada
31 Finland
32 Australia
33 Chile
34 Denmark
35 Dominica
36 Costa Rica
37 United States of America
38 Slovenia
39 Cuba
40 Brunei

At least we beat out Slovenia, eh?

Moving to a single payer (government) system will save enormous amounts of money. Taxes will rise to pay for it, naturally, but the net savings will be enormous - thus spurring the economy and having a net positive dollar in your pocket, but which in itself increases tax revenues that the government needs to pay for things such as national defense.

Link;

Premiums have skyrocketed, rising 87 percent since 2000. In 2004, health coverage became the most expensive benefit paid by U.S. employers, according to a report by the Employment Policy Foundation.

Elsewhere in the world, healthcare systems are much less reliant on private sector support—and much less expensive. For example, the U.S. system costs 83 percent more per capita than the Canadian system, where public funds collected through taxes pay for up to 70 percent of healthcare coverage.

I keep hearing the "Oh my god, big government! They'll screw it up! The government is incompetent!". We already have a socialized program, the idea is to make it universal and make it better. I don't understand the defeatist attitude.

Imagine the boon to corporations and small business alike when they don't have to deal with paying these skyrocketing premiums for ever crappier health care. Fuck Kaiser. Fuck Aetna. Fuck the HMO's. They aren't serving the general public wellfare, they are hindering it. That is by DEFINITION!!!!

Why is that so hard to understand? They make MORE profit by lowering your quality of care! How can you even fucking debate that? It is in their interest to raise premiums and lower the standards of care.

Found a link for Dan. Keep in mind that was the first one I came across while googling and it wasn't the original study that I had read. It's just an accepted "fact". More than half the Health Care costs in the United States are paid for by tax payer money via the American Socialized Medical System.

For the United States, such subsidization raises the fraction of health spending financed directly or indirectly by government to more than 50 percent.

As I've said, we already have "socialized medicine" to a great degree. We just don't do it as well and as extensively as we should.

I'm curious - for the right wingers that are horrified by "socialized medicine" - do you then advocate doing away with Medi-Care and Medi-Caid? I'd be really curious to hear Doug's point of view, as his son's cancer treatment was paid for by the government under a state Medi-Caid program. (hope he's doing well by the way).

I don't understand what the debate is. Americans pay more money for shittier care then any other nation on the planet. Why not pay a lot less then we currently do, and then RAISE the quality of care at the same time - by cutting out the red tape? Why not insure nearly 50 million Americans who do not have any insurance? Why don't we STOP letting the lack of insurance destroy families by wiping out all of their savings and plunging them into debt?

This isn't a "liberal" versus "conservative" issue. Conservatives can lose their homes to forclosure just as easily as anybody else.

/update from a different post

Dan has left a new comment on your post "Details":

1. You throw around the 50% figure without any backing. There's no evidence.

Yes there is. I linked it. It's common knowledge.

2. You have no assurance that your plan will be enacted through congress like you think it will.

That's obvious. I'm putting forward what I believe to be the best concept. There are an enourmous amount of details that goes into establishing any new social program, such as was the case with the New Deal. It's complex, but just because it's challenging doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, and just because Congress may do something different, that has nothing to do with my proposal. I say "my" only in the sense of what I'm describing - but it's not my idea and it's not unique to me.

Do you honestly think that the US government won't create a huge beauracracy?

You mean like Social Security? Everyone gets their checks every month like clock-work. I've already proposed how it can be highly automated, while understanding that it will have to employ a lot of people to keep it running smoothly, just as with the Medi-Care program. However, the "beauracracy" will be far smaller then the current system, which is what this is all about. It's the economy of scale. Instead of many programs, there is one. Get it?

You wan't them running socialized medicine when it takes them 3 days to get water to the Superdome?

Unfair analogy. The hurricane was the exception to the rule and they were unprepared. A better analogy is Social Security, or any of the New Deal programs.

3.You still can't refute the cost issue.

Yes I can, and that's the central point.

Trillions of dollars. ~2 Trillion to be precise. Even if the US government comps that, which I don't beleive atm but am more than willing to accept given EVIDENCE, you're still looking at another trillion dollars. Where is this coming from?

It's coming from the private sector health insurance companies that are no longer receiving premium payments from individuals and employers.

I'm not sure what the "2 trillion" number you use is - but look at it in very simple terms. I've done this before by the way, and I'm picking numbers at random to demonstrate a point.

Suppose health care costs are 1 million a year in the US that are paid by non-government insurance. The insurance company takes in 5 million a year in premium payments, pays out 1 million, and takes a profit of 4 million. We yank that totally away from the insurance companies. That 1 million a year cost is paid by the governement instead. They take in 1 million in new taxes to pay for it (it's non-profit remember), and the extra 4 million stays in the pockets of Americans. That extra 4 million is taxed by the governement as any other "wealth" is, and say it skims off 1 million of it.

The net result is, Americans have an extra 3 million in their pocket, the government gets an extra 1 million in tax revenue it didn't have before, and the providers get paid exactly as they were before.

There are losers in this program; the for-profit insurance companies. Can somebody tell me that the huge boon to American society I described isn't worth putting the insurance companies out of business? Yes, it will hurt the employees - but they will just have to adapt as any other industry has had to adapt to changes.