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Healthcare mandate passed
Topic Started: Jun 29 2012, 12:06 PM (2,732 Views)
Azdgari
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Founder + Goofball

CrazyTrace
Jul 19 2012, 04:16 PM
However, I will say that it is hard namely because we Americans have an extremely high standard of living.
Well said. :wub:
I get all the news I need on the weather report
Hey, I've got nothing to do today but smile
Here I am, the only living boy in New York
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CrazyTrace
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Night Fury
Night Fury
Jul 19 2012, 04:44 PM
I think there needs to be a bigger supply of smaller, more basic housing.
Yes.

I'm not saying we return to the days of cramming five families into one apartment or making lean-tos from crates and wooden pallets, but you really don't need all that much to live. I do like the basic utilities like electricity and water, but that with a roof over your head is all you need. It might take some humbling on the part of a lot of people to live in something less-than-grand, but it could really help with people's finances.
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Eyes Wide Open
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Gronckle
Hi Az,

When I taught classes in Statistics I would always start the class with a well known phrase;
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
This quote from Mark Twain points out how the meaning of data in a graph or a table can be misconstrued or twisted. That is why I tend to provide the reference data to allow people to come to the own conclusions.

Now with that said, you could have provided some more information about the source of the graph:
The Commonwealth Fund has its origins in the philanthropic efforts of the Harkness family. Stephen V. Harkness began his career in New York State's Finger Lake region at age 15 as an apprentice harnessmaker. Harkness eventually settled in Ohio and became a successful businessman. He invested early in the petroleum refining business and provided funds at a critical moment in the history of the fledgling Standard Oil Company. Anna Harkness, like her husband Stephen, had a strong civic spirit and believed in encouraging all forms of self-help. In the years following her husband's death in 1888, she moved her family to New York City where she gave liberally to religious and welfare organizations, and to the city's major cultural institutions. And yet she felt keenly the shortcomings of such unstructured personal giving. In 1918, Anna Harkness founded The Commonwealth Fund with the mandate that it should "do something for the welfare of mankind." Among the first women to establish a foundation, Anna initially endowed her new philanthropic enterprise with a gift of nearly $10 million. The Fund's first president was her son, Edward Stephen Harkness, who shared his mother's commitment to building a responsive and socially concerned philanthropy and who, over the years, gave generously to the Fund's endowment. As a first step, Edward hired a staff of talented and experienced people to help him. As president of The Commonwealth Fund for 22 years, he led that staff to rethink old ways, experiment with fresh ideas, and take chances, a path encouraged by each successive generation of the board of directors. Through additional gifts and bequests between 1918 and 1959, the Harkness family's total contribution to the Fund's endowment amounted to more than $53 million. Throughout its history and in keeping with its donors' intent, The Commonwealth Fund has sought to be a catalyst for change by identifying promising practices and contributing to solutions that could help the U.S. achieve a high performance health system. The Fund's role has been to establish a base of scientific evidence on what works, mobilize talented people to transform health care organizations, and collaborate with organizations that share its concerns. The Fund's work has always focused particularly on the challenges vulnerable populations face in receiving high quality, safe, compassionate, coordinated, and efficiently delivered care. The foundation's communications efforts have enabled it to share knowledge and experience and reach influential audiences able to push forward the necessary agenda for achieving a high performance health system. As an independent, nonpartisan organization, the foundation has aimed to identify areas of agreement and help develop common ground from which policymakers across the political spectrum can lead the nation towards a health care system that assures long, healthy, and productive lives.

All well and good. A foundation like this is beneficial in its efforts to improve the overall health care system. So I had an opportunity to go and investigate the website to see where you might have gotten that graph. I haven't found it yet, but I do want to say that yes it appears that I'm not correct in my assessment of the United States having the best health care system. With that said,
The mission of The Commonwealth Fund is to promote a high performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, particularly for society's most vulnerable, including low-income people, the uninsured, minority Americans, young children, and elderly adults.

The Fund carries out this mandate by supporting independent research on health care issues and making grants to improve health care practice and policy. An international program in health policy is designed to stimulate innovative policies and practices in the United States and other industrialized countries.


Based upon the mission statement, their goal, noble and something to aspire to, is to promote a high performing health care system. Great! Where do they say that we have to completely change our system.

The health care systems present in Great Britain, Canada, and Europe all involve paying a significant portion of their income to health care. How is it that the prices described in this graph are less if those paying into the service are paying more? Could it be that the prices that are quoted are at a fixed rate? Could it be that there is a quota to the number of procedures that doctors are allowed to perform? Is there a waiting list for a certain procedure because the system is rigged for rationing?

So in their effort to promote 'affordable universal health care' what does one do about someone like Barbara Wagner, diagnosed with a recurrence of lung cancer. Her doctors recommended a specific dug to help prolong and improve the quality of her life. Barbara is resident of the state of Oregon and a part of the state-run Oregon Health Plan. The state refused her request for the drug, since it does not cover drugs meant to prolong the life of individuals with advanced cancer. The Oregon plan was established in 1994 with the expressed intent to ration health care. Oregon also had legalized assisted suicide, and in an unsigned letter from the state, Barbara was informed that her health plan would pay to cover the costs of a doctor to help kill herself. However, she was not ready or willing to have herself killed but had no other recourse until the pharmaceutical company that invented the the drug learned of her plight and stepped in to provide Barbara with the medicine free of charge. (Liberty and Tyranny, p 109-110, Mark Levin)

So is this a representation of the type of system you want?
What does it say about the charity of big companies?

EWO
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Azdgari
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Founder + Goofball

Good research!

Honestly? Very little, since I can drum up thousands of cases of insurance companies kicking people like Barbara into the street as soon as she developed cancer, or refusing coverage to sick children on grounds of preexisting conditions. After all, those are business practices of insurance companies to control costs. So, had she been on a private insurance plan, would it have been terribly different?


In fact, I believe that the only thing that's trying to stand up to those business practices is... Obamacare's regulations.
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CrazyTrace
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Night Fury
I like the principle of giving policies to insurance companies, but with the way our healthcare in the U.S. currently stands, insurances still are businesses. I believe Obama's policies are better for the bigger insurance companies, but these companies do have to say "no" sometimes in order to stay in business and provide for themselves and the other people in their care. I do worry that the smaller companies are going to go broke under the system, and I believe that's a legitimate worry.

I believe there needs to be some enforced ethics in insurance companies. If Barbara buys a policy from Insurance Company that claims to cover cancer, Insurance Company had better follow through with that. If not, Insurance Company ought to have some sort of punishment. If Insurance Company doesn't believe it has the power to cover such things, it should tell Barbara up front so she can plan better. I think there is a greyer line with pre-existing conditions--I in most cases would find it unethical to deny coverage, but Insurance Company does need to function. All in all, it would defend on how risky the pre-existing conditions are and how much it would be to cover them. If Insurance Company was being fair and honest, the coverage for the person with pre-existing conditions might be more than a person without, but not unfairly so.

I am against the notion of forcing all insurance companies to cover all peoplle and all conditions for peanuts. Regulations are in many ways good, but we still have to let insurance companies function as what they are: businesses.

If we don't want businesses, we had best be changing our entire form of government.
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CrazyTrace
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Night Fury
No offenze, Azd, but your last post does make you sound rather anti-business, as Eyes Wide Open's post wasn't really referring to big insurance businesses. No judging, but I am curious to see your perspective on businesses in general.

(And everyone's else, if they're up for sharing. Oh, but this topic is getting on a tangent! :lol:a )
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Azdgari
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Founder + Goofball

I love business! I just don't think healthcare should be a business. As I've said quite a few times, businesses are meant to make money. Healthcare should not be meant to make money. Which is why I think it should be a government program. C:

In a business, if it's unprofitable to give your product to someone, you don't, and it's not a big deal, because it's just a product. In healthcare, the product is someone's life. It's a formula for disaster, the way I see it.

Having said my two cents, I think I'll take a back seat and see where things go. :3
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CrazyTrace
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Night Fury
Thanks for sharing! I did get curious. I'm half and half. I do think a trade is a trade is a trade, but yeah, life is a funny thing to be playing games with.
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CrazyTrace
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Night Fury
Though in the perspective of health being a pure government program, it would be wise to not use insurance companies and switch to tax-based or something similar, because I don't think it would be right to demand insurance companies to not be private businesses. Insurance companies only work where healthcare is somewhat privatized. You may want healthcare to be non-privatized, but if you did that, you can't have insurance companies. It's no good to demand a company pay for everyone and magically pull the money out of nowhere.

These days, insurance companies have become in many cases the all in all, when they were originally set up as just another helpful option to help one pay medical costs. If our society still functioned mainly in the "insurance is just one handy option" instead of being what you are generally considered to rely on, it might not be such a problem. Yes, they are businesses, but they were never meant to take on the role in the healthcare industry they have, according to my perspective.
Edited by CrazyTrace, Jul 20 2012, 06:10 PM.
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Eyes Wide Open
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Gronckle
Hi Az,

I don't want to get into a contest of 'how many'.
The point I wanted to show is what happens when power is given to a single entity.

The state of Oregon still has their policy in place as does the state of Massachusetts.
Do I want to live in either state? No.
Why? If I were to be a part of their system then I would have to partake in having to wait for a particular operation or as in the case of Barbara, I wind up being told that the cancer drug that would keep me alive is not available for me because I am too sick.

Does it happen in the health insurance industry? Yes.
Why? Because they look at the inherent risk that a particular person may be.
Is it illegal? No, because they are probably following rules and regulations laid out by whatever state they reside in.
Is it wrong or unethical? Yes. I admit that. But that is business.

This is why if a person decides to not get insurance because he thinks he is healthy one day has an accident then there is a problem. He decided (DECIDED) that the insurance was too expensive. What should an insurance company do in this case? Say,all is forgiven and we'll let you continue on?

I have a pre-existing medical condition. I have insurance through my company plan, so it is possible to get medical insurance. Would I be able to get health insurance at another company if I changed jobs? I don't know, but I would do what I could to ensure that I got a policy in some fashion. As a member of IEEE, I might be able to get a policy.

The point I make here is that if I can find solutions to a problem then others can to.
If I make less money, I might qualify for government sponsored programs.

So like health insurance, there is another insurance industry which is the bane of people, automobile insurance. How do you feel about having the government take over automobile insurance, Az? I mean there are people out there who are going around who have accidents who don't have insurance. Now if you have too many accidents, then you lose your insurance. A conscientious person would go and find insurance from what are known as 'high-risk' carriers. These are carriers that require payment of policies possibly on a weekly basis.

Now I bring this up because I know you'll say that some people who aren't making enough money. What I counter with is that there are solutions.

EWO
Edited by Eyes Wide Open, Jul 20 2012, 11:23 PM.
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