How to test the success/failure of obamacare

I've missed you, Jim. You are always so eloquent.

In addition to Jimmy's important points, I'd like to mention another little tidbit or two for you.

Like the pharmaceutical industry. Have you ever considered what may happen to the advances in treating people with chronic illness or pain without people willing to invest mightily in order to fund all the research and development that goes into creating a new wonder drug? If the money isn't in it, the investors will take their money elsewhere.

Also, all those reports about Canadians coming across the border to deliver their high risk infants or have that specialist or have that surgery are doing so because those doctors and facilities are in such short supply in Canada thanks to the nationalized health care system they have in place. The nation cannot afford to build these facilities and the specialists simply don't open up shop there. That will happen here. Nothing against my Canadian friends, (yes, I actually have a few) but to hell with them. Where will WE go when our systems becomes some bare bones entity that can deliver a baby but not care for her if she's sick?

I read today about a dying man who was refused water by uncaring nurses in the UK. The hospital trust was "very sorry" but that really seemed to be the end of the matter. Here in the US, health care providers must be concerned that they are going to get sued. Sovereign immunity takes that disincentive to neglect patients out of the equation.

ziggy wrote:

What I imagine will eventually happen is a system where everyone is on some substandard government insurance plan with upper middle class and wealthy Americans purchasing supplemental plans or paying for better care out of pocket.

And would that be a terribly bad system?

Hiya Zig,

The wealthier pay more than the less wealthy and this has been that way since 1913. What becomes necessary is the encouragement of such wealthy people paying taxes and people in seeking to attain wealth, be it through research, innovation, entrepeneurship, etc.

I have no problem with the marginal utility theory that asserts that a dollar means less to the wealthy than to me, and as such they ought to cough up more. But when that coughing up becomes little more than "soaking the rich" it turns our nation into a group of folks convinced that we are entitled to every good thing without the need to put through any kind of effort or risk.

It just doesn't work. Many in the inner cities have developed a victim mentality, curiously, over the past forty years when civil rights laws themselves have improved. Meanwhile, the condition of their own neighborhoods has deteriorated. Shall we now foster a similarly dangerous sense of entitlement among half of Americans or more?

and would that be a terribly bad system?

Yes, on many different levels and for many different reasons. We're talking about the government nationalizing the health insurance industry. Health insurance, like life insurance or car insurance, is based upon a series of assumptions (http://www.quatloos.com/basic_insurance.htm), That we disapprove or disparage the motives of for-profit insurance companies does not change a series of facts - a government that is big enough to give you cradle to grave health care is big enough to deny you health care at any stage of your life based on criteria that are beyond your control. The only way government can control the costs in health care is to ration care. This is eugenics. This is social engineering. You think this is compassionate? Wait until someone you love is denied care. I hope it doesn't happen. It will.

Eugenics and other "social engineering" is practiced by insurance companies every hour of every day. People I love have been denied care by being denied coverage for care- when they had the $$$$ to pay for it. So let's not get all smug and sanctiminous about some day someone might be "denied care". It happens every day already. But hopefully it will happen less often in the future than in the past.

Where will WE go when our systems becomes some bare bones entity that can deliver a baby but not care for her if she's sick?

For too many people, that is a question with no answer in America today anyway.

"Smug and sanctimonious"? Pffft. Who you talking to, Willis?

http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/250426

The Amish are exempt from Obamacare.

People I love have been denied care by being denied coverage for care- when they had the $$$$ to pay for it.

And of course you are going to tell us that they didn't wait until they actually needed that care before they tried to pay for it, right?

They weren't like some people who wait until after they wreck their car and then buy the insurance to cover the damages, were they?

,

ziggy wrote:

Where will WE go when our systems becomes some bare bones entity that can deliver a baby but not care for her if she's sick?

For too many people, that is a question with no answer in America today anyway.

Ziggy,

Can you give examples? Because I know several poor women who were pregnant and had state sponsored care throughout their pregnancies and their babies see doctors whenever they need them. It is THEM that I am most worried about now. Medicaid and Medicare survive on the backs of those who pay, when the latter group is gone, the former will suffer.

SamCogar wrote:

People I love have been denied care by being denied coverage for care- when they had the $$$$ to pay for it.

And of course you are going to tell us that they didn't wait until they actually needed that care before they tried to pay for it, right?

They weren't like some people who wait until after they wreck their car and then buy the insurance to cover the damages, were they?,

No. One was employed by me for several years. There came a time when I determined to purchase group health insurance for my employees. The group insurer turned down my group for coverage because of the "health history" of one in the group. What I asked what that history was, I was told the name of the individual, but was told that his "health history"- which we had provided with the application- was condifential. So as long as he was employed by me, I was not able to buy a group policy to cover my employees. Later he moved on, and I was then able to buy a group health insurance policy.

People I love have been denied care by being denied coverage for care- when they had the $$$$ to pay for it.

You loved him? ...Not that there's anything wrong with that...

ohio county wrote:

People I love have been denied care by being denied coverage for care- when they had the $$$$ to pay for it.

You loved him? ...Not that there's anything wrong with that...

I love almost everyone, OC. And if there is anything wrong with that, then, well, then I'll just go on being "wrong".

ziggy wrote:

Where will WE go when our systems becomes some bare bones entity that can deliver a baby but not care for her if she's sick?

For too many people, that is a question with no answer in America today anyway.

Why do you think that is? How do you suppose socialized medicine will fix this?

The reason why some specialists are in short supply has to do with another insurance, malpractice insurance. The premiums are outrageous. I haven't worked for Sandy in a decade, but that man NEVER had a malpractice claim brought against him and still his malpractice premiums were THOUSANDS of dollars each month, for general dentist. I don't want to imagine what they are today for an OB!

I haven't read the entire piece of legislation. Does anyone know if there's anything in it to help in the area of tort reform? I have not heard that there is.

Ziggy,

You never answered my question. Can you name a single pregnant woman who has not been able to get medical care, or a child who has been sick without being able to go to a doctor?