Millions can't find family doctor (Ah, The Joys of socialized medicine)

[p0ink]

We have no price caps on drugs

and that's a bad thing?! we shouldnt have price caps on anything.

the pharmacuetical companies invested their own time and money into research, and they should be allowed to charge as they please. prescription drugs are not a 'basic human right', they are a privelege.

 

[Lao Tzu]

this just proves how government fucks everything up when they get involved. the US health care system wasn't anywhere near as fucked until the feds started getting involved.

I wish this fucking search on EF worked because i had a good article a couple weeks ago about how private hosptials are alot more inefficient and corrupt than government run hospitals.

 

[theoak01]

I get into my doc within a few days of calling,but Im one of the lucky ones,the hospital however is another fucking story,Ive waited 8 hrs in the ER before with unexplained abdominal cramps that induced vomitting,and they never did find out what was wrong

 

[Lao Tzu]

and that's a bad thing?! we shouldnt have price caps on anything.

the pharmacuetical companies invested their own time and money into research, and they should be allowed to charge as they please. prescription drugs are not a 'basic human right', they are a privelege.

Whats wrong with negotiating? I thought you guys were pro-empowerment.

Many prescription drugs are not nearly as great as they are made out to be, they are just replicas of older medications.

PS alot of medical research is done by US government grants. Not just pharmaceutical companies.

 

[p0ink]

are you reading all these first hand accounts, people? do you want this shit coming here?

 

[juiceddreadlocks]

and that's a bad thing?! we shouldnt have price caps on anything.

the pharmacuetical companies invested their own time and money into research, and they should be allowed to charge as they please. prescription drugs are not a 'basic human right', they are a privelege.

although i agree, that seems like something along the lines of mission impossible II

 

[Lao Tzu]

are you reading all these first hand accounts, people? do you want this shit coming here?

1. nobody says we have to adopt Canada's system.

2. Do you think Canadians want our system? The wealthy blow money on stuff they don't need while the poor get no help whatsoever, AND it costs almost 2x as much to do it.

 

[p0ink]

I wish this fucking search on EF worked because i had a good article a couple weeks ago about how private hosptials are alot more inefficient and corrupt than government run hospitals.

Universal Health Care Won't Work -- Witness Medicare
by Sue A. Blevins

Sue A. Blevins is president of the Institute for Health Freedom and author of "Medicare's Midlife Crisis" (Cato Institute, 2001).

They're back. The single-payer advocates are out in full force, again, calling for universal health insurance for all Americans. This time they're backed by a bipartisan coalition including Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Some of the current proposals are as coercive as Hillary Clinton's infamous national health plan. The new push carries the same message, but more "moderate" messengers deliver it.

At first glance, many Americans might find the idea of single-payer health insurance appealing, given current economic conditions and high health insurance costs. However, before we accept such a drastic shift in national health policy, we should examine how single-payer health insurance could affect all individuals' health care costs, choices and privacy.

If history is any indication, any single-payer initiative will end up costing much more than advocates claim. That, in turn, will lead to higher taxes and/or rationing under which the government will determine which medical treatments will and will not be covered. How do we know this will happen? Because single-payer health care has already been empirically tested on seniors in the United States. Many people may not realize it, but the Medicare program is one of the largest single payers of health care in the U.S. and in the world. An examination of Medicare's 38-year-old track record provides evidence of what happens when the government controls the financing of health services for millions of U.S. citizens. Consider the following facts.

When Medicare was debated in 1965 (the year it was signed into law), business and taxpayer groups were concerned that program expenditures might grow out of control. However, single-payer advocates assured them that all seniors could easily be covered under Medicare with only a small increase in workers' payroll taxes. The federal government's lead actuary in 1965 projected that the hospital program (Medicare Part A) would grow to only $9 billion by 1990. The program ended up costing more than $66 billion that year.

Just three years after Medicare was passed, a 1968 Tax Foundation study found that public spending on medical care had nearly doubled in the first few years of Medicare. In subsequent decades, Medicare payroll taxes and general taxes have continued to rise to pay for skyrocketing health care costs.

Tom Miller, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, explains the main problems with Medicare (single-payer) financing. "As fiscal pressures mount, the federal government does not 'negotiate' with medical providers for lower prices for covered services," says Miller. "It dictates below-market reimbursements with its near-monopoly power as a purchaser of health care for seniors. The full costs of such price discounts eventually reduce access to quality care and hold health care markets hostage to political exploitation."

Before Medicare was passed, seniors were promised that the program would not interfere with their choice of insurance. However, existing rules force most seniors to rely on Medicare Part A to pay their hospital bills -- even if they can afford to pay for private insurance. Additionally, today's seniors and doctors must abide by more than 100,000 pages of Medicare rules and regulations dictating what types of services are covered or not under the program.

Currently, many Americans choose to pay privately for health services to maintain their medical privacy. However, a single-payer health plan would eliminate that option and all citizens would be forced to give up their ability to maintain a confidential doctor-patient relationship. Just look at what has happened with Medicare.

Under Medicare rules established in 1999, patients receiving home health care are required to divulge personal medical, sexual, and emotional information. Government contractors -- mainly home health nurses -- are directed to record such things as whether a senior has expressed "depressed feelings" or has used "excessive profanity." If seniors refuse to share medical and lifestyle information, their health care workers are required to act as proxies. This means total strangers will be permitted to speak for seniors.

Medicare officials stress that the government protects patients' privacy. However, the General Accounting Office reported to Congress several years ago that at five of 12 Medicare contractors' sites, auditors were able to penetrate security and obtain sensitive Medicare information. At a time when citizens are concerned about high health care costs, fewer choices and loss of medical privacy, a single-payer health plan could exacerbate these concerns. Given our empirical evidence from the single-payer Medicare program, a single-payer health insurance program for Americans of all ages would most definitely lead to increased costs, reduced choices and less medical privacy for everyone. These are warning signs that no American -- including the moderates pushing universal health care -- can afford to ignore.

 

[Robert Jan]

I love the inflated thread title too.

Millions cant find family doctor

1.2 million is "millions".

 

[Lao Tzu]

Here we go, i found it. Damn search function.

http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showthread.php?t=323734&highlight=hospitals

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=5365605&section=news

For-Profit Hospitals Cost More -Canadian Study
Mon 7 June, 2004 23:58

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. hospitals owned by investors with the aim of making money are less cost-efficient than nonprofits, Canadian researchers said on Monday.

And experts who wrote a commentary on the study said converting all investor-owned hospitals to nonprofit status could have saved $6 billion in 2001.

The report, published in Monday's issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, adds fuel to the debate over whether health care should follow a business model.

Dr. P.J. Devereaux and colleagues at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, reviewed medical studies on hospital care in the United States, covering 350,000 patients and hundreds of hospitals.

All the hospitals, even the nonprofits, were managed by for-profit enterprises.

Devereaux, a cardiologist, said he had to study U.S. hospitals because "the U.S. is really the only country which has any large degree of investor-owned, for-profit health facilities," he said in a telephone interview.

But he said he wanted to contribute to a debate over Canadian health care.

"In Canada, there has been an intense debate for a number of years now over whether we should move beyond our current not-for-profit health care facility," he said.

"We all want to know what is the most effective way to deliver health care," he added. "It should be driven by evidence, not people's ideology."

Devereaux and colleagues earlier showed that for-profit hospitals had higher death rates.

"The reality is that for-profits face significant economic challenges. The first is they have to generate revenues that will satisfy shareholders," Devereaux said.

"Second, they have high executive bonuses. Thirdly, they are very top-heavy and have high administrative costs. Also, they have to pay taxes. That is a lot of extra money that they have to come up with," Devereaux added.

"Instead of finding new efficiencies, folks were cutting corners in quality health care, and also people were having to pay more for care."

In a commentary published in the journal, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein of Harvard Medical School commented that 13 percent of all U.S. hospitals are for-profit, and said converting them to nonprofit status could have saved $6 billion of the $37 billion spent on care at investor-owned hospitals in 2001.

Woolhandler and Himmelstein, both prominent in a group called Physicians for a National Health Program, have long argued for comprehensive, nonprofitmaking health insurance for all Americans.

"Investor-owned hospitals charge outrageous prices for inferior care," Woolhandler said in a statement.

"The for-profits skimp on nurses, but spend lavishly on their executives and paper-pushers."

Himmelstein pointed to fraud cases involving for-profit health care companies including Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., which was hit by a Medicare scandal in 1997; Tenet Healthcare Corp., which is being investigated for allegedly overbilling Medicare; and HealthSouth, where 15 former executives have pleaded guilty to criminal fraud charges.

"In health care, crime pays handsomely," Himmelstein commented.