brunettemomSI
"Medical care for all..all Americans that is."
The sprawling Federal government, bailouts & more!
A general rubric used for discussing major health policy creation or changes.
< read all 2 reviewsNeeded, but we must be careful
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Dec 20, 2010
- by einhverfr
- posted in Big Government
Rating:
Our health care system suffers from a number of severe problems. We currently essentially have a mixed system where some people qualify for a public option (Medicaid, Medicare, federal government insurance plan), but many people do not. The costs of insurance fluctuate quickly due to a variety of market reasons, and small businesses often cannot afford true group plans.
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This means:
- People with long term health problems like diabetes end up discriminated in the workplace because small businesses cannot afford to insure them.
- Many people have serious illnesses, like heart disease and diabetes diagnosed in the ER at stages where treatment is costly.
I believe that we do need health care reform. Several of the important elements were proposed by Mr Obama during the 2008 election, but few of those have made their way into law. The important elements of his proposals then which need to be implemented or expanded involve:
- Opening up the federal government insurance plan to anyone who wants to pay into it, possibly with subsidies for the poor.
- Focusing on technology to reduce the overhead of working with the private insurance sector. In my view this means not only an exchange system but billing/claims gateways too with standardized interfaces.
Additionally we really should pass export restrictions which would ban the export of drugs or patent licenses for drugs where the target country has a GDP of $40k or more and where the drugs would be required, under the laws of the target country, to be sold for less than the MSRP here in the US. This would end the foreign subsidy problem.
Unfortunately the current laws passed over the last year do very little of this, and instead institutionalize exactly what is wrong with our system to begin with. The result, predictably, has been a sharp increase in insurance premiums already. It's evidence that the federal government just isn't capable of tackling this problem competently.
Perhaps a better approach would be to get rid of the current approaches and simply provide federal funding for states to experiment.
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EcoMama
January 02, 2011
I agree with you on this: " Push midwives instead of obstetricians (Holland, for example, has 40% of births occurring in homes), push self-care and home remedies instead of care from clinics and hospitals, etc." But it simply will not happen because the bottom line in this is profit, the government is so tied up with the medical industry - they would not let anything happen to loose so much profit. Unless of course a great majority of the people demand it, but most Americans are busy pushing buttons on a remote control and could care less. It looks like more and more expensive medical intervention will be pushed on us in all aspects of health care instead of inexpensive, common sense solutions.
einhverfr
January 02, 2011
Of course regulatory capture is the enemy. I suspect that the goal of supplanting state regulation for federal regulation is that it makes regulatory capture that much easier.....
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review by brunettemomSI.
March 19, 2010
It's all I seem to be hearing in the news lately. Is this thing really going to pass after all? One thing that caught my ear, was New York state would get 12 million towards Medicaid if it does pass. It does sound encouraging, considering it's been a full-blown pissing contest between Conservatives and Liberals (and some in between, such as Independent Joe Lieberman from Connecticut). As of last night, I heard they need something like 216 … more
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Chris Travers (einhverfr)
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I live in a haunted house Beneath a tall and mighty tree With my wife Mia and my sons Wilhelm and Conrad Where I write software and carve runes It is a … more
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About this topic
Healthcare reform is a general rubric used for discussing major health policy creation or changes—for the most part, governmental policy that affects healthcare delivery in a given place. Healthcare reform typically attempts to:
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- Broaden the population that receives health care coverage through either public sector insurance programs or private sector insurance companies
- Expand the array of health care providers consumers may choose among
- Improve the access to health care specialists
- Improve the quality of health care
- Decrease the cost of health care
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