Get ready for HillaryCare, folks:
In her remarks, Clinton outlined a range of challenges she said Democrats would tackle in the coming months, such as trimming the federal deficit, reducing dependence on foreign oil, and improving the image of the United States abroad.
She also said Democrats would focus on improving the quality and affordability of health care _ a touchy matter for the former first lady, who in 1993 led her husband’s calamitous attempt to overhaul the nation’s health care system. The failure of that effort helped Republicans win control of both the Senate and House the following year.
“Health care is coming back,” Clinton warned, adding, “It may be a bad dream for some.”
Flashback to libertarian Jane Galt the day after the election:
A lot of libertarians, including me, got what we wanted this morning: a Democratic Congress.
I’ve got a baaaaaaad feeling that we’re going to be suffering buyer’s remorse by spring . . .
Update: Already starting . . . .
A day late and a dollar short, Ms. Galt. Ayn Rand must be spinning in her grave right now.
Once I put the seat up before rather than after.
And there was the time I peed on the lid that was down.
There wasn’t much point in staying mad at myself for my own stupidity, so I decided to look at the seat each time, but I think you need a Y chromosome to so that.
epador,
Insurance spreads risk and given the medical bills from an accident or acute decease, few people who can afford it go without it. You are literally betting your financial future to be without health insurance.
Managed care lowers the cost of heath care by allowing insurance companies to negotiate lower costs from heath care providers. The problem is that some insurance companies don’t pass the savings on to premium payers. The way to fix that is to allow premium payers to form into groups to negotiate lower premiums. Right now there are laws on the books that prevent small businesses and other organizations from forming groups that span multiple states. Such laws keep lawyers employed, but do nothing about providing heath insurance.
Changing the venue of court case is important. Under the current system the party filling the suit gets to shop around for the jurisdiction most favorable to them. Until recently this was Mississippi where defendants were winning multi-million dollar awards with little evidence of harm. Federal courts are much harder to scam.
Most chronic illness is treated with drugs and with many illnesses there’s no other option. Due to patent laws, generic drugs are not available for 15 to 20 years after a new drug comes on the market. Most people don’t want a cheap drug that doesn’t work very well; they want the best drug available. There are many things that can be done to lower the cost of drugs without interfering with the drive to innovate.
The current system doesn’t work for millions of Americans. These are not lazy folks, but working people. The lazy folks go on welfare and get all their healthcare for free. Change is coming and conservatives need to get into the marketplace of ideas and direct that change. Lets give our support to what works, and in exchange, cut the lawyers out of the gravy train.
So the ex-Kaiser patients were just spreading their risk elsewhere?
How about all the Providers who weren’t paid by TennCare, or the insureds who were let down?
Why not let physicians negotiate (modify current anti-Trust laws preventing it)? Where’s the evidence managed care really is the best way to reduce costs? And just what proportion of that “money saved” goes to management (of managed care organizations)? You paint some broad strokes there without good evidence.
Malpractice suits are not the way to correct our system, any more than civil suits stop murder and rape.
This is not about lazy folks, poor folks, rich folks, etc. Its about the balance between availability and affordability of health care, and its quality. Our current system of insurance grew when our economy could support it. Our economy has changed. The cost of medical care has grown, in some part due to the nature of the payment system. Attempts to react to the cost problem as it affects our economy have been inadequate to solve the problem. Shifting the cost while maintaining the system won’t fix a thing.
The system problem in cost now is that the consumer has either minimal impact or notion on cost with good access, or complete exposure to cost without the resources to cover the cost. Shifting to Universal Health Insurance simply will accelerate the decline of availability and reduction in quality you see in Canada and UK.
Most of the money spent on drugs in the US is for lipid reducing agents and proton pump inhibitors, closely followed by antibiotics, antihypertensives, and diabetic agents. And from my experience, and the experience of drug companies (currently marketing to patients more than doctors), folks will ask for what they think is best for them, not what their doctor thinks. And they’ll doctor shop until they get it. But if they have to pay for the drug out of their own pocket for something they don’t see as life-threatening, they’ll buy the one that works 10% less that costs 50% less almost every time.
Most of the folks I see on Medicaid aren’t lazy. Some aren’t smart. Some are physically or mentally disabled. Some are professional wards of the state, but they actually work pretty hard at maintaining their status. I could call them many things, but not lazy. And none of them get access to the same formulary, or all the doctors practicing in my town, that folks with BCBS have access to.
Orphan drugs are a different issue. Lets not mix and match.
I do agree its time to think outside the box. Not recycle the previously failed attempts to deal with the problem.
epador,
Ok I haven’t produced any evidence, but no one else on the this thread has done much of that either. The problem with healthcare is that free market forces don’t work well when someone’s health or life is on the line. Think what it would be like to privatize fire departments such that when you call up with a fire emergency you have to negotiate the price. The problem is that you don’t have time to shop around when your house is already on fire, so the free market fails.
Except for the very rich, people simply can’t afford to pay for the care they need once they are sick or injured. Yet if your life is at risk what will you sacrifice to save it, your savings, your 401K, your home? These are really hard decisions when there’s a family involved. To spread that risk, people buy health insurance before they have a claim. Most folks get their insurance through their employer, and the larger the employer the more negotiating power they have with insurance companies. Insurance companies shop for health care providers who will give them the best price. It” the best system in the world and it only needs minor fixing. For example, some states require insurance companies to pay into a state fund that’s there in case some company fails and can’t meet their obligations. That’s the answer to your concerns about Kaiser and TennCare. The government guarantees your health insurance just like it guarantees the money in your savings account. The program just needs to be expanded.
It sounds like you are saying that our health care system would collapse if everyone had insurance. Where’s the evidence for that?
New drugs are expensive for a number of reasons, but the primary cause is that patents prevent competition. You seem to think that these new drugs are unnecessary luxuries which serve no need that can’t be met by life style changes and older drugs. If that’s your position then you doom millions to suffer needlessly now and into the future. Why not fix the system instead? Go back to outlawing advertisement of drugs. Make sure doctors know what’s new, but stop creating artificial demand. Also, I’m tired of seeing the same ads over and over.
I predict that with a few cost savings changes that health insurance could be expanded to include everyone with no increase in total cost of what’s now spent. I’ve offered a few ideas, but there are many more. I think that’s the roll of conservatives. Just saying nothing else works is going to result in socialized medicine in the U.S. similar to what’s in Canada.
My issue is Zyprexa which is only FDA approved for schizophrenia (.5-1% of pop) and some bipolar (2% pop) and then an even smaller percentage of theses two groups.
So how does Zyprexa get to be the 7th largest drug sale in the world?
Eli Lilly is in deep trouble for using their drug reps to ‘encourage’ doctors to write zyprexa for non-FDA approved ‘off label’ uses.
The drug causes increased diabetes risk,and medicare picks up all the expensive fallout.There are now 7 states (and counting) going after Lilly for fraud and restitution.
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Daniel Haszard