crawdiddy
qu'est-ce que c'est?
I agree, ebolton. The cost of healthcare, and the unavailability of it to many, is one of the great failures of capitalism. We can't be competitive until we bring costs down. It should have been done in 1993. Hillary and Bill didn't use the best approach, and that's one small reason it failed. Mainly it failed because of New Gingrich, Bill Frist, and the medical lobby. The wealthy have NO stake in controlling medical costs, or in universal coverage. That's why the Republicans oppose it, and always will. Obama is right to pursue it. Besides, Obama is intelligent enough to concentrate on multiple objectives at the same time, unlike George W. Bush.
gb hill
Veteran
This is one area where I totally disagree with the Republicans. Health care is a racket especially the pharmaceutical companies raking in billions. If I use my company insurance my copay for generic pills I have to take is $10 but at WalMart I get the same for $4. I don't know how WalMart does it. My son works at a job that pays mediocre wages but he can't afford health insurance because it would take every dollar he makes. He has seizers & can't even get a drivers license. He tried to get on Medicaid but they said because he doesn't have any kids or isn't married he don't qualify. He needs a MRI but they want a few hundred bucks. Conservatives scare people into believing that health care in Canada & Europe is like being on a waiting list for an operation. I'd like to know if this is true. My wife had a friend in Sweden & he talked about how good it was. I agree this must change.
Roger Hicks
Veteran
Here we switch sides and I start singing the praises of capitalism. Drug development is unbelievably expensive, and generics are essentially riding on the backs of others' research once the patents expire.
Actually, I do believe that the state could fund drug research too, and probably more efficiently, but many people scream in agony and rage at the idea of the state funding pure or applied research.
Your point is fully taken about other ripoffs, though. Twenty years ago, in California's Gold Country, I had a kidney stone. They used a fifty-cent plastic disposable razor to shave my arm to put the morphine drip in. And charged me $5 for the razor...
Cheers,
R.
Olsen
Well-known
Tragic to hear about your son. This could never happen here in Europe. There isn't a fixed price that everyone pays for health care. You pay a percentage of what you earn. Even if you don't earn anything you are obliged to health care. Free health care is a right obliged to everyone, by law. Sure, many of the higher middle class pays a lot and complain that 'they are paying too much'. The health care industry is public in most of Europe (there is slightly different models in different countries).
Sure, there is waiting lists for certain operations and treatments. But here our politicians are directly responsible to see to that the health care industry operates efficiently. A major part of our public political debate is consentrated around 'nuts and bolts' of our health care operation. Such insight would be rejected us if these operations were conducted by private companies.
A colleague of mine was recently heart operated. you know, this large 'by-pass operation'. Here in Norway there were long waiting lists, so he was sent from here in Norway to a hospital in Uppsala Sweden where the Swedish state run health care has a 'heart operation production line' that runs 24 hours a day. They take patients from all over the world, particularly popular by 'sheiks from the Middle East'. He was even obliged to a free ambulance transport the 560 km from Upsala, Sweden back to Oslo. He had his wife picking him up and he never bothered to apply to have the cost covered. He could have.
A few years ago I had just bought a new car. An very expensive thing since half of the price is taxes, here in Norway. My American architect neighbor and I were admiring it, there it sat in front of my house.
He told me that it cost just as much as this heart operation he had just payed for his father back home in El Paso Texas. - His father could not efford health care.
When I say that health care is free, then that is not all correct. You always have to pay something. But it is only a fraction of the real cost. And if you have a salary lower than a certain level you are obliged to a discount. These 'fees' and the 'level of discounts' are political issues that are very much at the heart of the political discussions here in Scandinavia.
Sweden now has a conservative government. They try to implement higher fees and lower discounts to save money on the 'federal budget', which they in turn give away as 'reduced taxes' to the upper 5% earners of Swedish society. Newspapers predict that they will loose the next election....
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Olsen
Well-known
This is absolutely true. Those screaming in protest are the ones not raking in the profit on other people's agony.
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Nikon Bob
Guest
This might be an interesting point about car manufacturing in North America. One of the main reasons that there is a Canadian Auto Workers Union, CAW, instead of being UAW is that we have a national health care system which makes a difference to contracts. Despite the supposed advantage that not having to supply workers with health care, plants here are also closing and workers are being asked to give US style concessions.
GB
I am very sorry to hear about your son and his health problems. Both private and public health care systems have their advantages and disadvantages and you will hear horror stories from both. We have a public one and I would not want it any other way. My friend had a heart problem two years ago and was diagnosed at the local hospital has having to have major open heart surgery for which he was flown to a hospital in our province that did this type of surgery. The flying time was about 1hr and 20 min to get there. The surgery was done by a world class specialist and he was back home in about a week. The cost for this was virtually nothing. I have three children and the cost of my ex wife giving birth in hospital was also nothing. I do pay higher taxes but I think it is worth it and if I need any health care while unemployed I would get it too without cost. All I am saying is, it is not the devil some would have you believe nor is it perfect either.
Bob
GB
I am very sorry to hear about your son and his health problems. Both private and public health care systems have their advantages and disadvantages and you will hear horror stories from both. We have a public one and I would not want it any other way. My friend had a heart problem two years ago and was diagnosed at the local hospital has having to have major open heart surgery for which he was flown to a hospital in our province that did this type of surgery. The flying time was about 1hr and 20 min to get there. The surgery was done by a world class specialist and he was back home in about a week. The cost for this was virtually nothing. I have three children and the cost of my ex wife giving birth in hospital was also nothing. I do pay higher taxes but I think it is worth it and if I need any health care while unemployed I would get it too without cost. All I am saying is, it is not the devil some would have you believe nor is it perfect either.
Bob
Olsen
Well-known
This sounds similar to the health care systems of most European countries I know of. That said, our public health care system is under constant pressure of 'privatisation'. That could spell the end of it.
'Horror stories' are regular in the press here too. Mostly pushed by those who want a privatisation. Which certainly is not going to improve it. Since our health care industry is public all issues are public. The press can rumble around in all the lockers. If we get a private industry all this will be secret. Will secrecy improve the quality?
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Nikon Bob
Guest
I imagine most national health care systems are similar and all are facing the push to privatize them by persons/groups/industries seeking the possibility of huge profits. From what I have seen of private systems they are no more efficient at delivering health care than what we now have and in some cases even worse. The old pay for play which is fine if you are never going to be sick or out of work or in some other way excluded. Not likely for the average mortal. I can't recall service that was ever privatized that did not go down hill while profits soared. There are certain things that people of a country must keep control of and health care is definitely one of them but then you are talking to the converted. After talking to a Minnesota resident about taxes and health care, I was surprised to find that his personal taxes were similar to my burden but in addition was floored by what he had to pay extra for private family health insurance. I always though that what you make on the beer you loose on the peanuts applied. That is your taxes would be lower but when you factor in the cost of private health care the end result would be more or less equal. Appears that in this case it is just not so.
Bob
ebolton
Number 7614
It has always seemed to me to be pretty elementary math. Ultimately, revenues have to be generated by the system to cover expenses. The revenue is what gets paid by citizens to the insurance companies or in taxes, depending on the system.
Public, you have the actual costs of the services, plus administration costs.
Private, you have the actual costs of the services, plus administration costs, plus corporate profit.
Unless the corporation is some kind of non-profit or negative-profit entity like the post office, I see no possibility the private system can ever be less expensive to citizens.
Public, you have the actual costs of the services, plus administration costs.
Private, you have the actual costs of the services, plus administration costs, plus corporate profit.
Unless the corporation is some kind of non-profit or negative-profit entity like the post office, I see no possibility the private system can ever be less expensive to citizens.
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Roger Hicks
Veteran
Unless the public system is REALLY inefficient, overstaffed and complacent.
But none of us has ever seen that in any government office, have we?
Seriously, the problem lies with those who can see no other way to reduce public inefficiency, overmanning and complacency except by replacing them with private inefficiency, overmanning, complacency and greed.
Tashi delek,
Roger
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Nikon Bob
Guest
crawdiddy
qu'est-ce que c'est?
Every healthcare system rations health care. Just depends on whether you want to ration it according to who can pay, or who needs it the most.
Olsen
Well-known
Not very prominent in the press, of some reason, Scotland has gone back to a 'all administered health care system, throwing overboard all 'private' solutions and 'market pricing'. They claim to save a billion £ annually in the process. Here in Norway we are in the middle of a similar reorganisation, rolling back privatisations implemented by earlier governments. While 'more privatisation' is the banner of the new conservative government of Sweden.
So, this is a 'ideological' issue. The matter is; who's gonna profit'.
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Nikon Bob
Guest
That is an easy choice, for me, according to who needs it if that implies a national health care system where everyone is covered to the same degree regardless of wallet size.
Bob
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Nikon Bob
Guest
It also puzzles me that considering a lot of foreign car makers producing in North America have a non union workforce and yet they too are in trouble. How does that jive with the unions causing the big three's troubles?
Bob
Bob
Olsen
Well-known
This is absolutely true. It is only with a cooperative media that you can 'sell' privatisation successfully to the people. Important for a efficient public service is a well functioning democracy and a free and independent press.
40oz
...
Because the union thing is an ideological issue rather than economic, the facts of the matter are irrelevant.
Obviously the workers are driving the company into the ground. If we could get rid of the workers, the company would florish What I think is humorous is that GM is a huge, huge company, and has been the largest automaker in the world for a long time. They've been union so long they have multiple generations drawing benefits. How is that possible if unions are the ruin of the company? I would guess a lot of business owners wish they had the chain dragging them down like it dragged down GM to the tune of largest automaker for decade after decade.
The fact is, unions help busnesses like GM. They provide an organized, motivated workforce. The job is desirable with high paying, good benefits, and likely to be around for a while. The employer gets to pick the best appllicants from a large pool, people willing to be team players.
There is a downside, of course, because nothing is perfect. If the business cannot sustain enough profits to maintain the system, it gives up its expensive but top-line workforce. There is no guarnatee in a free market that a business will succeed, no matter how careful you are.
GM's problems were never the cars or trucks, no matter what "experts" might say. If their vehicles were truly inferior, Toyota would not brag about beating them in sales at long last. If you insist that GM's sales numbers aren't an indicator of quality, then you can't claim Toyota sales numbers are.
It's funny how short people's memories are. In the 90's during Clinton's presidency, the issue was the high cost of healthcare. For people not covered by an employer plan, it was unlikely to be affordable. While this was really more of a problem with the healthcare insurance industry, the fact remains that the rising costs of top quality healthcare hit GM hard.
They had been operating with union labor for so long that rising "legacy costs" (pentioned retirees) became an onerous burden. Looking ahead, the management and unions worked out their next contract with an eye towards reducing this long-term liability.
As an aside, thanks to the union organization Ford, GM, and Chrysler did not have to compete on labor costs. Whatever contract was hammered out between the union with one company pretty much became the boilerplate for the next. GM wasn't competing with companies with much lower employee costs, so they could focus on building better cars and growing markets.
Obviously this changed a bit when the US began encouraging foreign automakers to build factories here. But ultimately, labor contract between the UAW and Detriot set the wage bar. If BMW didn't pay something close, employees could always call up the UAW and ask for some organization tips. To protect themselves somewhat from union activity, most new foreign-owned auto factories are in states with pretty lax union protections. But the fact is that the wage earned by a worker in a factory that makes cars is pretty heavily influenced by contracts between the UAW and the Big Three.
What people continually forget is the primary financial issues of GM are tied directly to healthcare costs, not sales numbers or quality or unions. And those problems have been addressed repeatedly by both the unions and GM management working together. Neither side would like to admit it, but they need each other.
In a climate where prominent Republicans stand up and say some line worker is getting paid too much without showing any shame, you can't expect the average person to understand what is really going on. Our national leadership either doesn't understand or has an agenda to push, so we get union backlash when it makes no sense.
Does anyone think Newt Gingrich has any right to tell someone they get paid too much and are ruining the country? How much does Newt get for a speaking engagement again? Something like $50K per, last I read. Kind of puts the lie to his words, if you ask me. But it seems few people are willing or able to look at the whole issue.
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Nikon Bob
Guest
40oz
I was just attempting to be a little sarcastic with my comment. I don't blame unions for the big threes trouble. I can see that legacy costs you mention are hurting them. Canadian auto workers under the CAW have also given concessions, as of yesterday, and they are covered under a national health care system. Fact is people live longer today, retire earlier and there are less people working to support pension plans in general. It has always been the case where people making huge amounts of money tell everyone else they are over paid and should work for less while they themselves would not. You are also right, IMHO, that there is more to how we got into this economic mess and fixating on only one issue is not good enough. There is more then enough blame to go around.
Bob
I was just attempting to be a little sarcastic with my comment. I don't blame unions for the big threes trouble. I can see that legacy costs you mention are hurting them. Canadian auto workers under the CAW have also given concessions, as of yesterday, and they are covered under a national health care system. Fact is people live longer today, retire earlier and there are less people working to support pension plans in general. It has always been the case where people making huge amounts of money tell everyone else they are over paid and should work for less while they themselves would not. You are also right, IMHO, that there is more to how we got into this economic mess and fixating on only one issue is not good enough. There is more then enough blame to go around.
Bob
40oz
...
I thought you raised a good point. I was replying to your post, but not because I thought you didn't understand
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Nikon Bob
Guest
40oz
Sorry,my bad. It seems we are on the same page on this. I find it hard on the net to communicate not being face to face.
Bob
Sorry,my bad. It seems we are on the same page on this. I find it hard on the net to communicate not being face to face.
Bob