If people incur medical expenses they cannot pay because they failed to seek the proper channels available to them for financial relief, who’s fault is that? Mine? Capitalism’s?
Are you seriously suggesting that bankruptcy is the most efficient way to handle catastrophic medical expenses? Are these people going bankrupt because they can’t find your “free clinics?”
Yes, this sickening state of unnecessary suffering is your fault, because you worship a form of capitalism that views misery as an essential fuel for prosperity. You just take the growing total wealth of society and divide it by the population and crow about rising per-capita income. Meanwhile, the ranks of the uninsured increase, bankruptcy filings are soaring, and America’s public health statistics are declining.
Like the rest of the PowerLine authoritarians here, you get a real buzz out of punishing life’s “losers,” those unlucky enough get the wrong illness or lose a job at the wrong time. You might feel some remorse at the suffering of their families, but that just inflicts more well-deserved pain on the loser who is being punished by the miracle of the marketplace.
Every single argument you make against government provided health care could be used to justify shutting down medicare and medicaid, and probably social security too. Is that what you advocate?
Your personal attacks and wildly off-base accusations reveal the shifting sand and emotional nature upon which you base your entire argument.
This is just the magic of the marketplace at work, right? This is what makes us such a great society? All these bankrupt families must make you smile because they prove we have the best medical care system in the world. Americans live in fear of getting sick, because a catastrophic illness can destroy their financial security.
IDP has responded to this quite well, but I wish to add my perspective.
the fact is that bankruptcy is indeed a way out of enormous debt for people who confront catastrophic illness. Hospital bills are routinely written off because they were discharged in bankruptcy.
What is egregious is meliorist’s need to slime people who have the nerve to disagree with him. It is a variation on Oldjim’s style. It works like this: one either agrees with them or one is a proponent of the worst in humanity. It does nothing to advance an argument but it does demonstrate that those who use the technique are irrational.
I don’t live in fear of catastrophic illness because it will ruin me financially. My sainted ex wife has already done that. I don’t want to be catastrophically ill because I rather enjoy my life and I recognize that my life is enjoyable because I have good health. So I engage in healthy behavior. I am surrounded by people who make other choices. Obesity, cigarette smoking, no excersize, poor food choices and so forth. These people run a much greater risk of facing some sort of catastrophic illness.
Am I immune? certainly not, but the odds favor me over the fat cigarette smoker who just experienced a BKA because of diabetes.
Zealots like you would shut down Medicare, Medicaid and the VA hospital system. Somehow, the marketplace magic would take care of all of the indigent and unfortunate. We are the only affluent nation in the world in which this fairy-tale view of health care capitalism persists, and our declining public health statistics show the price we are paying for this delusion.
This is also egregious. IDP has said no such thing. I have worked in healthcare finance for thirty years. It is my contention that much of the struggle that hospitals face is the direct result of government meddling. Medicare and Medicaid are dysfunctional. They distort the market and routinely engage in wag the dog actions that drive up cost and reduce quality. States have insurance commissioners who’s role is the regulation of the industry. This approach has failed miserably everywhere. More government involvement will NOT improve healthcare.
As for caring for the indigent and unfortunate I, once again, point out that the vast majority of hospitals in America are organized as charitable institutions. It is not a accident that many fine hospitals are run by religious groups. These groups did not enter the healthcare field to deny care to the indigent and the unfortunate, quite the oppasite. but why let that simple fact interupt a spittle slinging rant?
As for healthcare capitalism, it works quite well. Neither the Mayo clinic nor the cleveland clinic are based on religious orders but they are very, very successful. they are both wide spread and widely recognized. For example, the cleveland clinic operates in both canada and Abu Dhabi. these organizations offer world class top notch care. They are non profit and provide a lot of uncompensated care. These are world class organizations that compete in many markets and in many market segments. And they compete by being leading edge and competitively priced. To say otherwise is to yet again demonstrate abyssal ignorance.
Meliorist is out of his league here. This is just another opportunity for him to vent his spleen with idiotic, pointless rants that simply show us how immature and thoughtless some people can be.
Don’t you know Skip, it harms the self esteem of children when they are ignored. You must hate all children
Yeah, you nailed it. I hate my daughter so much, for example, that I’m forcing her to suffer through a cleveland indians games saturday night. And its a clear example of creeping globalization because the indians are playing the toronto blue jays.
from a politically correct POV I’m wondering for whom I should cheer. Are native americans more oppressed that the avifauna of north America?
Don’t you know Skip, it harms the self esteem of children when they are ignored. You must hate all children
Yeah, you nailed it. I hate my daughter so much, for example, that I’m forcing her to suffer through a cleveland indians games saturday night. And its a clear example of creeping globalization because the indians are playing the toronto blue jays.
from a politically correct POV I’m wondering for whom I should cheer. Are native americans more oppressed that the avifauna of north America?
Well, you should know this without me telling you Skip. Any good meliorist knows that “scoring points” serves to make one group feel inferior to another, and the concept of “teams” “competing” with each other only serves to create “winners” and “losers”.
You and your daughter should put on funny costumes and picket the game. You CAN make a difference.
well I have been suitably chastized. I’d go with the costumes and picketing approach but I doubt I could dress in a more bizarre manner than the average Indians fan.
Perhaps I could protest the treatment of the “animals” whose flesh was tortured into becoming “franks”. yeah. And its time we faced the fact that vegetables have rights too. For example, the hops that went into the $7.50 can of budweiser had ever right to reach maturity, but nooooo, it was cut down in its prime and turned into a soporific for sloshing PL authoritarians to slurp while they watch “competition” between “teams” that results in “winners” and “losers”.
I have worked in healthcare finance for thirty years. It is my contention that much of the struggle that hospitals face is the direct result of government meddling. Medicare and Medicaid are dysfunctional. They distort the market and routinely engage in wag the dog actions that drive up cost and reduce quality. States have insurance commissioners who’s role is the regulation of the industry. This approach has failed miserably everywhere. More government involvement will NOT improve healthcare.
Why not make American health care a free-fire zone for capitalism? The periodic excesses will be corrected, and the unfortunate victims can be ignored. You can get rid of the FDA while you are at it, and remove all the drug laws as well. The model of unregulated medical care you imagine is a bizarre fantasy that exists nowhere in the world, with the possible exception of Somalia and a few other failed states. But why not come right out and advocate it? Tell us how the magic of the free market would work.
Okay, Mellie, lets get specific. So far, you have waged war with generalities that you don’t have to support. You think the whole thing is a failure and is controlled by some ethereal group that gets its rocks off screwing the poor, and that this decision ensures “superb” care for the rest of us. (Although I see you now making noises like you are going back on your assessment that the rest of healthcare is “superb”, but then again, consistency was never one of your strong points.)
In 1989 and 1990, the effects of CLIA-88 (The Clinical Laboratory Act of 1988) had its full fruition. Because of it, the cost of having a Pap smear went up from about $9-12 to about $25. What the Act did was require a series of “quality” steps that, in the New York study of those steps, performed state-wide by that state before implementation of CLIA-88, showed NO DIFFERENCES in any important quality parameter. Nonetheless, HCFA went ahead with the regulation, and women had to pay DOUBLE for their pap smears because of a bureaucratic decision, that the very people who PERFORM pap smears and were most qualified to discuss (cytopathologists) were SPECIFICALLY EXCLUDED from. Here, in a nutshell, is the kind of decision that your vaunted bureaucracy does, over and over and over again. Much of the increased cost of healthcare can be laid at the feet of Medicare and HCFA meddling - meddling that is never reviewed to see if it actually does what it purports to do - improve quality.
(Interestingly, in 1994, when HillaryCare was being proposed, Ms Clinton used the increase in the pap smear costs as evidence of how much the nation needed the government to intervene in health care!)
The FACT is that whenever the government gets involved in healthcare, it skews the system, twists and warps it unnaturally. It has been fact for a long time that Medicaid rates in many codes do not cover the incurred cost of the care. Who pays for those costs? Do you think that hospitals and physicians should have to cover them? Where would they get the money to buy the supplies? You guys simply have no answer for this. If ALL the care were paid by the same guys who fund Medicaid and Medicare, why would they pay more than current Medicare or Medicaid rates? (Which they are continually trying to crank down). Answer: they won’t. So hospitals and physicians will have to find some way to treat their patients within those constraints.
That way will be by rationing what they do, by seeing more patients in fewer minutes, by avoiding expensive procedures that they lose money on, by cheating. That is best-case scenario if government “only” takes over PAYING for it. It is even worse if government just decides to say, “screw it”, and nationalize the whole thing.
1) If someone has a significant chronic illness and 2) either didn’t have insurance or 3) dropped their insurance, and then 4) tried to get new insurance, then, yes, they would have to pay more. But they would still be able to get it, despite their poor choices.
What kind of stupid game are you playing? If you go to a refugee camp in Darfur, you can proudly say that everyone there has the opportunity to pay for food and transportation. You could even lend them a satellite phone so that they could use their AMEX card to call for a limo.
People of modest means who have been diagnosed with serious chronic illnesses cannot obtain AFFORDABLE INSURANCE. You know this, but you play a debating game of avoiding the fact. This is just childish evasiveness. After you are backed into a corner and forced to admit that adequate medical insurance is unaffordable for large nubmers of people in America you will drop this thread, only to start up again with your absurd claims when you think no one will challenge you.
The PowerLiners cheat and retreat like this over and over again. They march out one of their favorite canards like “we don’t torture” or “there is plenty of oil in ANWR” or “Saddam hid WMD in Iraq” or “Americans have the world’s best medical care.” After a long exchange of messages, their point is debunked and they fall silent for a few days; then it starts all over again. The fastest way to get a PowerLine authoritarian to drop a thread is to conspicuously disprove one of their standard canards. But this is like cutting off one head of the Hydra. Within a few days, the same debunked nonsense will be spouted on multiple new threads.
I’m afraid that the “stupid games” are not being played by anyone other than you here, Mellie”. I hate to be the one to point it out to you, but the United States of America is NOT Darfur. We dont’ have warlords blowing up places of employment. We don’t even have bandits shooting children on the streets as they are playing. And we aren’t being run by Islamists, no matter how much you might wish for that.
In our country, as I said, there is no excuse for any particular person to be without healthcare. If they are poor enough, they qualify for Medicaid. If they are old enough, they qualify for Medicare. And EVERYONE has the ability to improve themselves. I know you don’t like that - I mean the idea that people’s choices have consequences, but there it is.
If I CHOOSE not to stay in the free public school I attend, and if I CHOOSE not to go to the college where, if I am one of the poor that you love, my tuition would most probably be fully funded - particularly if I chose to do well in my high school, I can not actually get a job that pays well. I am not a “loser” - I am merely a sluggard. What you are for is supporting sluggards. Which will create more sluggards.
There exist example after example of people who had very poor backgrounds, who elevated themselves with no more qualification than their decision to do so. You guys DO NOT highlight those people - you usually try to tax them out of existence. If you libs had more integrity, you would be telling poor people, “look here - there is one of your own, with no more intelligence than you, and look what he has made himself into! You can do it, too!”
Instead, you guys love to highlight failure, and preach depression, support ignorance, and reward indolence. It is what your policies do. It is what you preach, you specifically, Mellie.
I am not in the least, “retreating”. When I say that EVERYONE in America can have all the insurance he wishes to have, I am not saying that everyone in America has insurance. Or can do so without paying the price. And the price comes BEFOREHAND, not after the fact. If your person of “modest” means finds healthcare insurance too costly, it is probably because he didn’t take advantage of the means to elevate himself beforehand.
In America, at any particular time, there will be a percentage of the people who are too lazy to take advantage of the possibilities, and there will be a percentage of the people who ARE taking advantage of the possibilities, but are not there yet (partially educated, partially trained, etc). The fact is, most hospitals and most physicians will do some charity care, and write off some costs. It is usual, and hospitals budget for it. In many of these cases, the hospital or physician will accept a person paying what they can for an extended period. (This also keeps them out of bankruptcy).
And, by the way, “America has the world’s best medical care” is something that you AGREED with, when you called it “superb”. Is there something above “superb” that I am not aware of? Or were you lying when you said that in your previous posts? It’s hard to tell, because you change positions so often.
If people incur medical expenses they cannot pay because they failed to seek the proper channels available to them for financial relief, who’s fault is that? Mine? Capitalism’s?
Are you seriously suggesting that bankruptcy is the most efficient way to handle catastrophic medical expenses? Are these people going bankrupt because they can’t find your “free clinics?”
Yes, this sickening state of unnecessary suffering is your fault, because you worship a form of capitalism that views misery as an essential fuel for prosperity. You just take the growing total wealth of society and divide it by the population and crow about rising per-capita income. Meanwhile, the ranks of the uninsured increase, bankruptcy filings are soaring, and America’s public health statistics are declining.
Like the rest of the PowerLine authoritarians here, you get a real buzz out of punishing life’s “losers,” those unlucky enough get the wrong illness or lose a job at the wrong time. You might feel some remorse at the suffering of their families, but that just inflicts more well-deserved pain on the loser who is being punished by the miracle of the marketplace.
Every single argument you make against government provided health care could be used to justify shutting down medicare and medicaid, and probably social security too. Is that what you advocate?
Are you seriously suggesting that we should have a society where laziness pays off? Where we eliminate the possibility of anyone’s bad choices result in bad consequences? Have you no understanding of why people choose route A rather than route B in life?
Medicare and Medicaid distort the market, and carry their costs. I am quite aware of the need to provide some kind of safety net, and have never advocated against it. Yet even these carry costs to the rest of the system which distort things, and you advocate EXPANDING the distortion. This is simply silly.
Do you have ANY first-hand understanding of how health care works?
Are you seriously suggesting that bankruptcy is the most efficient way to handle catastrophic medical expenses? Are these people going bankrupt because they can’t find your “free clinics?”
No puppy, we’re simply pointing out that bankruptcy laws exist for those who have amassed debt beyond their means. Patients who run up huge bills that are ultimately discharged via bankruptcy have, in effect, received free care. Is that too simple for you?
Yes, this sickening state of unnecessary suffering is your fault, because you worship a form of capitalism that views misery as an essential fuel for prosperity. You just take the growing total wealth of society and divide it by the population and crow about rising per-capita income. Meanwhile, the ranks of the uninsured increase, bankruptcy filings are soaring, and America’s public health statistics are declining.
You’ve provided absolutely no proof of that “misery” is “an essential fuel for prosperity”. None. Its just another stupid slogan you hurl.
Like the rest of the PowerLine authoritarians here, you get a real buzz out of punishing life’s “losers,” those unlucky enough get the wrong illness or lose a job at the wrong time. You might feel some remorse at the suffering of their families, but that just inflicts more well-deserved pain on the loser who is being punished by the miracle of the marketplace.
You do this quite frequently. As I pointed out earlier, these insults are safe for you when your sitting in your momma’s basement eating cheetos and drinking yohoo while flinging fighting words in an anonymous forum. You should watch your mouth in public though. As my dad used to say: don’t let your alligator mouth overload your tadpole A$$. This is rude, unfounded and egregiously insulting. Are you betting with your “friends” about when you’ll be banned again?
Every single argument you make against government provided health care could be used to justify shutting down medicare and medicaid, and probably social security too. Is that what you advocate?
I’m certainly advocating an end to both Medicare and Medicaid. We were taking care of ourselves quite well before LBJ stuck his nose in our business and we’ll take care of ourselves quite well without either of those two idiotic, expensive and ineffectual programs.
Are you seriously suggesting that we should have a society where laziness pays off? Where we eliminate the possibility of anyone’s bad choices result in bad consequences? Have you no understanding of why people choose route A rather than route B in life?
Here is Oscar explaining the standard authoritarian doctrine that state-provided health care makes people lazy. Yes, indeed, the Germans, Swedes, and Swiss are just overrun with lazy grifters soaking up free health care and undermining their economies. If only they could learn to drive the poor into premature death and disability and bankrupt huge numbers of middle class people, they could have as healthy a society as America. I’ll bet those Europeans would love to tear down their national health care systems and replace them with a casino system like America’s.
Only Americans are smart enough to know that people should be punished for not figuring out how to get cheap health care. Those foolish Europeans and Asians actually make it easy for the poor and their children to get care. If you don’t punish the weak and the incompetent, how can the strong and capable take pleasure in their achievements. In America, it is not enough to succeed; others must suffer to demonstrate the penalties for failure.
Dude, you seriously made me laugh out loud. You seem to believe that by your utterance, fantasy that plays in your mind becomes reality. The funny part is the fantasy. I knew there were nutjobs out there who could string a sentence together, but you’re good - in a pathetically humorous kind of way, that is.
All you have left is derision. Your “policy” preferences on health care (shutting down all Government-run health care programs) are so deeply unpopular that they would result in the instant defeat of any American political candidate. It must be very lonely for you to possess a truth not shared with most Americans.
The appeal of dank places like PowerLine is that fringe characters who would be laughed out of a Cub Scouts meeting get to trade canards and urban legends with like-minded oddballs. Here is where the legend of hidden WMD in Iraq and the wisdom of torturing prisoners are shared and nurtured. Here is where you can see grown men advocate dropping nuclear weapons on foreign countries to intimidate their peoples. Here is where violence and destructively simplistic thinking rule, in the blog called PowerLine.
But don’t let me stop your fun. Please provide a list of all the Government programs you would like to shut down. I could use a laugh too.
For example, when the candidates on the Left tout universal healthcare as an end, the voting public should recognize that the means to that end will be higher taxes with less medical choices for all patients, as well lower pay and less treatment options for doctors. It should be evident that universal healthcare will ultimately be disastrous instead of beneficial, crippling instead of healing any current problems in the healthcare industry. Will the candidates on the Left take time to assess the end in the same way and, considering the train-wreck that universal healthcare has caused in Canada and other countries, abandon their course and opt for sticking with private healthcare as we have today?
If we rely on history as an indication of how politicians on the Left have frequently operated since the mid-1930s, then the answer to this question is “no.” In fact, empirical evidence argues that the candidates on the Left already know that universal healthcare is a sham, but that will not stop them because they are not really seeking access to better healthcare for the citizenry, but rather a means to more control and government involvement in the everyday lives of citizens. If history is right, the closer we get to November 2008, the louder the politicians on the Left will proclaim their efforts “for the public good.” They will promise us a life without edges in so many words, yet deliver a life without liberty.
