Hawaii learns what happens when you start giving out universal health care

And if our poor people lived in Russia, the distinction would make a difference in their quality of life. But since they live here, they probably don't appreciate the distinction.

Used to be, health insurance just covered hospital costs. Then Aetna and the other big for-profit life and casualty companies joined Blue Cross/Blue Shield in the market and expanded coverage to lab tests, office visits, all the stuff we take for granted these days.

Doctors thought, Huh, cool. I'll order bunches of lab tests and give my colleagues extra business.

Pharma companies thought, Double-plus good! We'll repackage our old drugs under new patents and charge BIG BUCKS, and the insurers will cover it.

The insurers thought, Oh, fuck. Never saw this coming. Let's raise premiums. And when that doesn't work, we'll just make secret lists of drugs and procedures we won't cover any more.

And so everybody makes money on the back of the consumer.

Cain't get no love. No idea why.

Well, that ties in with my other ideas for medical reform, namely eliminating direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising.

What your post highlights most of all, though, is that it isn't just one particular area that needs reform, but the whole bloody system.

There was a ban decades ago, when I was a kid. I'll rarely support a restraint on free speech, but your idea (and lawyer advertisements) are two infringements on commercial speech I would back.


Kinda elitist of us, actually. Because I think it implies that consumers are too stupid to decide for themselves.

Bolded for emphasis. This is exactly what's needed. But short of rounding up every pharma and insurance company lobbyist and shipping 'em to Gitmo, reform has to start somewhere. And nobody's saying the Obama proposal is perfect, but it's better than McCain's.

And here we go again.

Linda getting involved in another health care thread, despite not knowing what the fuck she's talking about.

Do we HAVE to go through this again? Because I really don't want too, considering you just 'leave' the fucking thread after you've been proven 'wrong'.....20 times over.

Not wanting public health care is voting for the 'rich.'

Right.

And here we go again.

Linda getting involved in another health care thread, despite not knowing what the fuck she's talking about.

Do we HAVE to go through this again? Because I really don't want too, considering you just 'leave' the fucking thread after you've been proven 'wrong'.....20 times over.

Not wanting public health care is voting for the 'rich.'

Right. [/QUOTE]

Can I borrow your decoder ring? I can't seem to find the invisible words where she mentions healthcare in that post.

Can I borrow your decoder ring? I can't seem to find the invisible words where she mentions healthcare in that post.[/quote]

[/QUOTE]

And only this morning I predicted the eventuality of Fingerpuppetforge...

And only this morning I predicted the eventuality of Fingerpuppetforge...[/quote]

So is it a question this time or an answer?

Like it fucking matters.

Come to think of it...I don't know why I'm using Techman's(God bless him) smilie to reply. I need to find a new one.

You have no idea what's going on.

Many of us here sincerely agree with you. A blank mind and clear conscious is pretty much the only possible explanation for the nonsense you type here.

Or was that just a freudian slip?

There we go.

I don't get it either.

I was born poor too, and I fucking worked for everything I have right now, and there is no way in hell I would want what I worked for, to be taken away and given to some other 'poor' guy, who instead of finding a fucking job, wants to freeload off of my hardwork.

Gotta love that socialist mindfuck.

Even if you were right (and you're not, as Tuttle explained), it would make sense: our economic mobility is far higher than yours, in both directions. It's a hell of a lot easier to get into the top few percent on this side of the pond.

Now, that's not to say that the bailout is one of those expanding-the-pie things that Tuttle was talking about. No, that's a straight robbery.

But then again your country has even more of a history of robbing the poor through inflation than ours. No wonder you all feel guilty.

If I ask you to explain it to me, do you promise to prevaricate and tap dance until I give up hoping for an honest answer?

That's mostly because McCain's proposal is to make things worse. Obama's plan is to toss around some money and not make things worse. But McCain's plan of moving people from employment based group plans to individually purchased non-community-ratings plans might be the stupidest idea in the history of stupid.

Implied unfounded assumption: Insurance is the best way to pay for medical care.

Abort, Explain, Fail?

Hmm. Explain?

Ahh... The "Tragedy of the Commons", writ large.

Employers essentially buy health insurance in bulk, so they get deep discounts. Individuals paying for their own insurance, even under a group umbrella (for example, I could get coverage through the Authors Guild), pay a lot more.

So even if you pay for your own insurance through your employer, you're still getting a much better deal than if you had to buy it as an individual.

McCain's plan will essentially tell employers "you don't have to be bothered anymore," so that everyone is forced to buy individual coverage. The theory is that with more people in the market, prices will become *more* competitive not less. I'm no actuary, but I can't see it.

Maybe I can get a better answer out of you than Pardot:

Please explain why insurance is the most efficient system for paying for medical care.

Citing history when the insurance industry basically sprang up out of a wartime wage-but-not-health-benefit freeze isn't an answer.

UA, garamet simply can't answer questions of any kind. It has nothing to do with you, the question you asked, or how you asked it. The simple fact is you asked and that is all that is required for Margaret to be incapable of answering it. You can ask oodles of others questions to her and you will get the exact same type of non-answer from her.

Everyone makes money on the backs of the consumers? Oh my god!!! That is horrible. Capitalism in action. As a writer with books that have been published, don't you make a living on the backs of the consumer as well Margaret?

I don't know that it necessarily is. And certainly in its present form, it's a nightmare.

It seems to have worked well when it only covered inpatient costs, and when the focus was patient care, not shareholders.

But it's hard to say what would have happened if health insurance had not been instituted in the postwar era. Maybe you'd have had more expanded versions of Medicare/Medicaid, because the alternative would have been a Dickensian world in which old people and poor people and high-risk mothers and infants just died.

Tough question. I don't know the answer.

As long as the consumer gets what they paid in for. The problem is, many aren't.