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Cragar
climber
MSLA - MT
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Jul 11, 2017 - 10:15am PT
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Why not choose a better and lower cost public health care system?
For sure but we are owned by the insurance companies in this country. Romney/Obama care is an insurance model from the top down so of course it is the most expensive. The people of the US forget the differences between business(trinkets) and services(health, clean air/water/environment/etc.). When capitalist business is involved in services, we all lose as a whole, of course there are the winning few < 1%, but hey we are a free country durnit!!
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jul 11, 2017 - 10:30am PT
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When capitalist business is involved in services, we all lose as a whole, of course there are the winning few
That's an oversimplification.
Pre-Obumblecare, there was the losing-few < 5%, but the vast majority WERE happy with their plan and their doctor.
Now almost everybody is pissed off and unhappy. Capitalism was working. The needed reform was not to entirely change-up the whole thing or make it a public plan. The needed reform concerned regulating pricing/profits on the supply side, you know: NOT allowing a syringe to cost $100!
It is entirely within the legitimate purview of the feds to regulate. In the same way that air traffic controllers are not allowed to strike, because there is such a compelling public interest that they do not, healthcare suppliers should not be allowed to gouge the market. Such regulations would have done far, far more to reduce the real costs of healthcare in this nation than the "reforms" (not!) of Obumblecare.
Furthermore, when you guys point to other socialized-medicine nations and talk about their lower costs, those lower costs are not a result of the payer-model! Those models PRESUME the sorts of cost-regulation I'm talking about.
But you can have the cost-reforms/regulations WITHOUT the single-payer payer-model and get the reform without the invasive federal government.
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TLP
climber
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Jul 11, 2017 - 10:32am PT
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Mad, it sounds like you don't just want your health plan of four years ago, you want to go back to the Pleistocene. I'm sorry, that ship has sailed. Every nation or area that has functioned like one has had an IRS or its equivalent since the beginning of history.
It's funny that people rail away about the government's intrusion into privacy when collectively we give up much more of it to business which is accountable only to maximum profits, and hardly anybody fusses about that.
Re health care, now that I'm on US single payer (Medicare), it's way less expensive and much less bureaucracy than I experienced just prior to making that switch. Its costs per unit are remarkably low considering that it's covering a very high-medical-use segment of the population. The observed empirical facts are that single payer is just plain better. Apologies to anyone who doesn't like it philosophically.
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Cragar
climber
MSLA - MT
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Jul 11, 2017 - 10:38am PT
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That's an oversimplification
You got that right! I think you get the gist of it as it really isn't all that complicated to understand when you look at cost v. benefit of such services. Try a little thinking on something like roads or public lands...
Anyway, we are owned by insurance companies and until that ends, we're fuct.
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10b4me
Mountain climber
Retired
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Jul 11, 2017 - 10:44am PT
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mb1, everyone thinks that they are a know-it-all, don't you?
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jul 11, 2017 - 10:56am PT
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Every nation or area that has functioned like one has had an IRS or its equivalent since the beginning of history.
Not true here. The IRS is a fairly recent invention, and we could easily do without it.
Go to a flat-tax or federal sales tax, and you eliminate 99% of the need of a Gestapo-agency like the IRS. The reason it IS so Gestapo is that it was originally designed as an agency to fight organized crime.
Such agencies, like the NSA, get started with the best of intentions and a "demonstrated need," but then they get turned against US.
Regarding giving away our privacy to corporations, we have completely control over how much we do so and in what context. Take just your browsing history, for example. There is NO need to "Google" everything and be subject to all the Google has become and does! There are other excellent search engines out there that do not track you in any way, such as Duck Duck Go.
It's one thing to choose "convenience" over privacy. That can be a bad decision, but it IS a choice. It's another thing entirely to be FORCED to be invaded. Government has power of coercion that NO corporation has!
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TLP
climber
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Jul 11, 2017 - 10:57am PT
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Cragar is right, as long as nearly all health care flows via a private insurance company market, things cannot really improve. Auto collision insurance is for the hopefully very rare occurrence, but somehow health insurance morphed from something similar, to a system to provide all of the non-disaster health care too. Big mistake.
But you can have the cost-reforms/regulations ..... without the invasive federal government.
What??? That is a sentence that make absolutely no sense. The whole reason single payer is cost-efficient is that it, by its very nature, facilitates efficient negotiation/regulation of costs. It's the splintered private system that allows for the price gouging you're complaining about. All of those middlemen and the stockholders want their cut. Regardless of one's philosophy about whether it's a good idea, fixing medical prices by law or regulatory rule is just going to be subject to the same lobbyist morass that plagues everything else, and won't work. MediUniversalCare has the ability to make a cost-favorable deal, or just buy from Canada or Singapore if it wants to.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jul 11, 2017 - 11:16am PT
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The whole reason single payer is cost-efficient is that it, by its very nature, facilitates efficient negotiation/regulation of costs.
Your entire argument, including the bit about a morass of lobbyists, comes down to this: We cannot effectively implement reforms in a capitalist system, so we must socialize it.
There are many problems with that view.
First, that argument is like the Blob: It absorbs everything into itself. IF the argument is sound, then the federal government should do EVERYTHING, because IT and only IT can (on our behalf, of course) ensure the greatest efficiencies and best prices for every detail of our lives.
But we have endless examples of the fact that this is not the case. Even the roll-out of the healthcare.gov website reveals the fatal flaw in that perspective. Even government's hiring of PRIVATE companies is not as efficient and cost-effective as if it had not been involved in the process in the first place. My own company could have done healthcare.gov for less than 1/10 the cost, and the result would have been rolled out in 1/4 the time. Oh, and it would have worked immediately (and with valid SSL certs from the start rather than almost a year later).
Second, there are two fallacies with comparing something like single-payer in the USA and that approach in one of the European Socialist Democracies.
1) We are not a small, mostly homogeneous, population with a long history of monarchy and being sheep. What you can get to work in a commune of 50 people is NOT what you can get to work in a nation of 30-million. And what you can get to work in a nation of 30-million is NOT what you can get to work in a nation of 330-million. Things just don't "scale" well, so large-scale "socialism" MUST become totalitarian to "work" beyond a certain scale. Now, many of you seem quite content to accept "some" measure of totalitarianism, if it "works." I am not!
2) You are going to get invasive governmental involvement in any sort of "healthcare reform." YOU seem to want that invasion to be personal. I prefer to keep it corporate. It's going to be largely one or the other. Either government is going to do what its actual legitimate role is: Regulate COMMERCE, including "price-fixing" as needed to ensure no-gouging, which presumes that government actually answers to US rather than lobbyists (novel thought). Or, government is going to regulate US via such invasive measures as are already implemented in other nations. Again, you seem content with such invasions. I am not!
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Cragar
climber
MSLA - MT
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Jul 11, 2017 - 11:17am PT
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we could easily do without it
How would you suggest we do 'without it'?
Pay = pay at the time FOR the 'services' that are rendered or have insurance for this or get a bank loan?
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guyman
Social climber
Moorpark, CA.
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Jul 11, 2017 - 11:55am PT
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MB1 ..... Thanks for being SPOT ON.
you can't convince people, who have no clue, to wise up.
I swear they wish for the gov to pick out the shoe styles, and to make and give them jobs.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Jul 11, 2017 - 12:01pm PT
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No...
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jul 11, 2017 - 12:11pm PT
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How would you suggest we do 'without it'?
The "it" is now ambiguous. I was referring to entities like the IRS and NSA. I sense that you are now referring to something like insurance companies or single-payer.
I'm not suggesting that we do without "it" in that latter sense. I am suggesting that with genuine reforms, the pre-Obumblecare system could have worked very well. It was already working very well for the vast majority of Americans, and genuine reforms to get real costs down would have made a vast difference, including making genuine insurance affordable to all but the very, very poorest in this nation (the same people who already had public-payer options available to them).
Thanks, Guyman. These are "no win" arguments. I don't think of them so much as "need to win" as "share another perspective." Hopefully, over time, we achieve a sustainable consensus about how to deal with thorny problems, and perhaps (gasp) it might even make it into law.
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Cragar
climber
MSLA - MT
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Jul 11, 2017 - 12:32pm PT
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MB1, the it are services that money the IRS supports that US citizens benefit from on a daily basis; roads, public lands, etc. Regulations of activities on public lands and waterways also require $$ to fund analysis that is considered where moneyed politicos are absent. Humans benefit from this for their health and well being. Some humans have replaced the basic needs with $$ and then rely on science to get them through their unhealthy times that result from putting $$ over the health of land, water air and therefore their bodies...that is tangent for another thread but I hope you get what I am trying to say in terms of something like the IRS. Sure, it ain't perfect and why would anyone expect anything created by humans for humans to be perfect?
So, without the IRS, who pays for your roads? Who keeps them terrrrists from coming down your street with a 50 cal mounted on an old Landcruiser? Who will save your home from fire? etc.etc.
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dirtbag
climber
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Jul 11, 2017 - 12:42pm PT
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Can't argue with wingnuts, folks. They think trump is doing a terrific job swamp draining.
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Jul 11, 2017 - 12:43pm PT
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The meeting was about adoption....
BWA HA HA HA HA HAHAHAHAHAAA!!!
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Cragar
climber
MSLA - MT
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Jul 11, 2017 - 12:58pm PT
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I hear ya bagO'dirt and that is why I don't argue. I'd rather ask questions and let folks 'splain it to me from there perspective/opinion then go from there and look for commonalities and differences to discuss with them before I make my own statements and opinions. Doesn't always work but I try.
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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Jul 11, 2017 - 01:08pm PT
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jul 11, 2017 - 01:27pm PT
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MB1, the it are services that money the IRS supports that US citizens benefit from on a daily basis; roads, public lands, etc.
I answered this already. If we went to a flat-tax or, better yet, a federal sales tax, we would still be funding the federal government to much the standard of living to which it's become accustomed. But either of those approaches would render the IRS as it presently exists an unnecessary entity.
See, you guys presume that "the only way" is to keep massive federal entities in place, entities that by their very nature are oppressive and vastly costly! However, there are better alternatives that eliminate such entities. Build/maintain more roads with the savings.
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Cragar
climber
MSLA - MT
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Jul 11, 2017 - 01:47pm PT
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See, you guys presume that "the only way" is to keep massive federal entities in place, entities that by their very nature are oppressive and vastly costly! However, there are better alternatives that eliminate such entities. Build/maintain more roads with the savings.
I never said only way. I asked you to back up your a*#ertions and gave some real world examples of benefits to people regarding services.
Build/maintain roads with savings. That sounds good but if you had savings from these other alternatives then they'd be fat IMO. What services get taken care of by revenue and which ones by savings?
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