Brown-Wyden Healthcare BillFollow

I actually agree with this. I know that if I'm not going to go to the doctor that it's my decision and I don't expect anyone else to cover my slack. I'm ok with it. But that's just me. We live in a world where people run to the doctor after every little sniffle.

The Americans who want to reform the healthcare system do so because they've looked outside of America, and they see that every other first world country, and even some of the developing countries, have the same or better healthcare outcomes, at half the price of GDP.

Don't tell me it's because of the litigous nature of your system, because that only accounts for a fraction (2%?) of your healthcare costs overall.

Don't tell me it's because America is doing all the medical research in the world, because there are regular news reports here of Australian research bought out by American transnationals which have made an offer the Australian Doctors/Scientists/Engineers just couldn't decline. It's a sore point that Australia as a nation needs to hang onto its intellectual property, but usually doesn't do so.

Don't tell me that if a foreign system was adopted the wealthy who have been smart, or worked hard for their wearlth, wouldn't be able to access premium healthcare to gain a few extra months, or a 5% chance at living, which wouldn't be offered under a public or public/private hybrid system. In Australia at least, there are world class specialists and machinery that you can spend as much private money as you like on them. Experimental medicine, too, which the government doesn't cover. Compounding pharmacies that will make you a molecule to order on public or private doctor's prescription, while the government doesn't cover that molecule.

In Australia you have the choice of having private health cover or not, AND of going public or private healthcare either way. There's screeds of choice, and the entire system costs us half price compared to yours, while our doctors make the same amount of money. Medicine is the most sought after university course here, and only the top students make the placement cutoffs.

Gbaji, America simply can't AFFORD more of the same any more. You don't HAVE good choice if you only have the option of paying twice as much for the same thing as other people get. My partner spent 6 months in LA helping finish a deadline for a sister company that had gotten in trouble. They liked him and tried headhunting him. I'd been flown over for a "spouse visit", and was pleasantly surprised. The areas I visited, stayed and ate at, the places I was driven to, all were much more beautiful in reality than they came across on TV. We talked about relocating, since they were offering him a much better package than he was on. One nail in the coffin was that I'd be so far away from my immediate family. The other nail was that we simply couldn't afford me to be sick in America with my illness, not even on the extravagant package that they were offering.

Edited, Nov 21st 2010 6:35am by Aripyanfar

Not so much. In law, no health care plan/coverage may be offered for sale that doesn't meet federal government mandates. Poison Pill. I would not have the opportunity to purchase to my needs, desires, etc. The health care plan as passed forces all Americans in to a very round hole, one size fits all, effectively destroying a well running system to deal with the issues of less than 10% of the population. Contrary to Ms. Pyanfar's belief, the majority of Americans who want this want it because they are entitlement whores.

As I pointed out earlier, when the method used to determine "better" is the same as that used to measure whether their systems have significant government intervention, that statement is meaningless.



That's the tip of the iceberg though. The actual amounts of the lawsuits are dwarfed by the costs added to the system by doctors and hospitals attempting to avoid those lawsuits. If I can avoid a lawsuit for X dollars by ordering extra tests and procedures and checks that'll cost my customers 5X dollars, I'm going to do it every single time.



You realize you just provided an example of US medical dollars funding research in Australia. Has it occurred to you that said research was likely done precisely because they knew that an American transnational would buy up the result?

The "sore point" you're talking about is that your own medical system does not contain within it sufficient funding to do the research itself. If it did, this wouldn't happen. Way to fail to see the big picture though!



Ok. But if every single nation in the world adopts the same sort of health care system you have, where will those "better treatments" be developed and provided? I know that this may be hard to conceptualize, but if all medical treatment is the same everywhere there wont be anywhere to get better care, no matter how much more money you have. If every car is a Hyundai, no amount of having more money will help you buy a better car. You can't see this because so far we've all lived in a world in which only some of the first world nations have adopted socialized industries, thus the slack has been picked up by those that haven't. And those living in those countries with socialized industries have benefited as a result. But if *everyone* adopts them, we all lose.


It's the red/green game. As long as someone votes green, the greedy people who vote red get what appears to be something for nothing. But eventually everyone just votes red and everyone loses. That's what you are fighting for btw, which seems pretty darn short sighted to me.



Not arguing that the system doesn't work for now. But ultimately, all "something for nothing" systems fail. That bill you haven't paid yet comes due in one form or another.



We can't afford to maintain the socialized system the political left has increasingly forced us into over the last several decades. We absolutely can afford a fully privatized system. It's the stuck-inbetween situation we're in right now that is expensive.

But all that aside, the "solution" presented in the form of this bill is horrible. It makes all of the bad things about our current system worse and doesn't improve on any of the good parts. Regardless of what the right answer is, this absolutely was the wrong thing to do.

I think that insisting on some other alternative "perfect solution" should not be a requirement to realizing that the latest health care bill was/is a disaster and should be rolled back to the greatest degree possible. I just don't accept the idea that we can't undo a mistake unless we can come up with not just something better, but something "perfect". Not enacting the mandates in this bill is "better" than enacting them. We shouldn't need to know anything else except that.

The arguments in favor of keeping the healthcare bill as passed are similar to a smoker insisting on not quitting because no one's cured lung cancer yet. Moronic!




If the package was "extravagant", then you should have been pretty fully covered. What could you not afford? I suspect that most of the coverage issues are largely overblown (for pretty obvious political reasons).

There are only two measurements that count. What is the health-related outcome? How much total GDP does the country spend on medical care? Whether that GDP is private, public, or a mix of both is irrelevant. YOUR system costs twice as much as all the other variable systems, without delivering a better outcome.

That's a fair point. But that's what consent forms are for. Secondarily, your system still sucks and still needs fixing.

They don't buy it if it isn't already going places. They buy up patents. Far too much research that looks promising fails to pan out after it's gone to proper long-term, large, random double-blind human trials. They buy the successes, not the in-development ventures. Way to be a condescending **** though!

Human Capital, have you heard of it? It's utterly indispensable, and it pays dividends directly to private companies, individual pockets, and to the government pockets. It pays for itself, in circles. How well those circles are managed determines if the circles get larger or smaller.

About 50 other nations are running hybrid or highly regulated systems that perform as well or better, at half the cost. Why do you think that the system wasn't left in it's original state? It's because it wasn't working. Fully private, unregulated medicine leaves a society in a *********** Victorian state, healthcare-wise.

I've lost track. Does this bill force people into taking out insurance, with the government paying the installments if individuals can't afford it? Because that means that costs for insurance companies will plunge, as more healthy people enrolled will dilute the number of sick people on their books. People who otherwise couldn't afford treatment will get it, and the government will recoup much if not all of the cost of covering the poor, since less workdays (and less taxes) will be lost to illness and infirmity. Does this bill allow for not-for-profit insurance companies? Because I have to tell you, the Credit Union not-for-profit "banks" here provide the same services without most of the fees. A wonderful option I have taken full advantage of.

I agree people should go for a compromise solution if the perfect solution isn't available. I just don't agree that this compromise is worse than the status quo.