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The Great Universal Health Care Debate w/Poll (note: it just passed both houses)
- Thread starter QuagmireMcGuire
- Start date
Interesting query, but I do not see that as a problem for anyone but the residents of Bumblefuck, KY. They will find a solution, or they will persist with the problem.
This is where I think we need to focus 1st to get costs down. Med school is so expensive that the only way most kids can see over their school debt is to become a specialist. As a result, the kindly family doctor is a dying breed. Why? He can't make any money diagnosing sore throats and chicken pox. Tumors and bypasses are where the $$ is. . .and the hours are better. So now to get anything treated you need 6 consults and a variety of tests because everybody is focused on his/her specific bodily system. It's tough to find a doctor considering the whole person, at least to the extent that used to be common 20 years ago, which is costly and wasteful. The other gotcha is that in the rush to get all these guys on the street and appease patients, the art and science of treatment has been replaced with a prescription pad and a pen. Drugs for everything.
Your earlier post was spot on as well WRT med schools. Another fun fact: 30 years ago, if you couldn't get accepted to Tufts med, you could go to a foreign school to get the same degree for a fraction of the cost, pick up a residency stateside, take your boards, and nobody cared where you went to school. Now, no hospital in the country will take residents from schools outside the US. If you don't think that put a hurt on #'s of new MD's. . .
After that, take a look at other "healthcare professionals". Nurses hold college degrees (most of them BSN's these days; the 2 year degrees are all but laughed at anymore) and professional licenses. They must maintain training currency requirements to continue to practice. They are, it would seem, professionals. So, why are they commonly paid an hourly wage with frequent overtime opportunities when most other professionals are salaried? It's a relic from a time when there was a nursing shortage, and nurses don't want to give it up because they know how good they have it.
Third big element to the puzzle is Medicare reform. Ask any hospital administrator what his biggest headache is and he'll say "Medicare reimbursements". They never pay up and when they do, it's like they said "You billed me $10,000, but I don't feel like paying that so $4000 sounds better to me." That lost revenue has to be made up somewhere, so real insurance gets fleeced.
And now I remember why I ran screaming from my time working in healthcare. . .
I grew up just outside of Bumblefuck, and even I saw Northern Exposure as a kid. If those dumbass Alaskans could figure it out, the people in Kentucky should be able to crack the code.
Not so much, family docs usually make a pretty decent living but a med school graduate can make a lot more money in specialties. The US government has several programs that pay off med school debt if you go to an underserved area, like bumblefuck Kentucky or Indian reservations, a lot of med school grads just choose not to use them. One could also join the military, but many docs don't want the commitment no matter the incentives. Even docs who don't do those programs usually don't have problems paying off debt, even family docs make around $200,000 a year on average, it is not the $500-600,000 that some specialists average, but it is definitely enough to pay off the debt and make a decent living.
Coming from the other side of the question:
The military budget is completely out of control. We don't know where all of the money is going let alone why. Not only are we spending money we don't need to now, we are also committing even more money (in O&M, salary and benefits, etc) down the line. Anything that pushes us to reform our military budget is a good thing. I would be perfectly happy to see Congress force the Pentagon to eat a 10% cut just so we might finally stop doing "business as usual".
The military budget is completely out of control. We don't know where all of the money is going let alone why. Not only are we spending money we don't need to now, we are also committing even more money (in O&M, salary and benefits, etc) down the line. Anything that pushes us to reform our military budget is a good thing. I would be perfectly happy to see Congress force the Pentagon to eat a 10% cut just so we might finally stop doing "business as usual".
The programs are not just for family practitioners, it includes many specialties that are needed.
I think most of us would agree that the acquisitions process is a monster that needs dealt with, but you'd be hard pressed to get me to agree that more entitlement programs w/ the exception of CHIP are a better use of funds or a reasonable way to force the military/industrial complex to change.
You want free healthcare? Join the military.
Clux4
Banned
Yeap! sounds like a solution
There's lots of things people are unable to do... I can't hit a 100 mph fastball. Just because I wasn't blessed with the talents to be a big league hitter doesn't mean A-Rod should have to pay for me to go to a trainer.
well put...
This argument sounds, dangerously, like one that may have occured circa 1935. At the time, most families couldn't afford to buy bread, let alone healthcare. FDR decided to force Social Security upon the people, going so far as to appoint specific justices to the Supreme Court (at first, Social Security was deemed unconstitutional by certain lawmakers). Since enactment, Social Security has become the largest Federal expenditure in the budget.
Problem: Social Security revenues were $805 billion last year (2008), expenses were $615 billion. People might ask "where did the other $195 billion go?"
Answer: It sits in a Trust Fund managed by the OASDI board of trustees, but not as a liquid asset. It's broken up into T-bonds and government securities. Bascially, it's a bunch of IOU's from the government to the Trust Fund. Anyone who has seen Dumb and Dumber knows how an IOU works.
Problem: Congress has spent the surplus Social Security revenue on whatever it has wanted for the past 70 years, why would they want to reform a program like that?
Answer: They don't, but with public outcry over the current state of Social Security, they kinda have to.
Problem: Congress's cash cow (social security) is going bankrupt and needs reform...
Answer: Reform Healthcare and create new cash cow.
Sorry to the people who can't afford health care, but the last time the government tried to pick up slack for the little guy, society got screwed. A free market is exactly that, free. Sometimes the little guy doesn't succeed, but didn't Darwin have a theory on that?
Healthcare is another way for the government to control the economy, which is bad. It doesn't take a college degree to figure that out. Creating nationalized healthcare will be our generation's equivilent of Social Security, eventually the economy will grow to depend on it. Doesn't that sound like every liberals dream? Citizens relying on the government for financial security.
sources: www.socialsecurity.gov
Look at the annual report from the OASDI Board of Trustees...