Medicare for all

RLS

Virginia

August 18th, 2011

8:56 am


If the Hooverites in Washington get their way by cutting spending it will result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. The deficit is a long-term problem; the more immediate focus should be on JOBS.

Creating jobs results in more tax revenue whereas austerity leads to increased spending on unemployment compensation, food stamps, Medicaid and other programs. We can put America back to work by investing in our deteriorating infrastructure, high-speed rail, broadband, R&D, education, energy efficiency and a clean energy economy (we are currently spending $350 billion on foreign oil each year).

“If you want to get rid of the deficit and have a balanced budget, the NUMBER ONE way to do that is universal healthcare, that gets the business of healthcare off the backs of small business owners, so they’re not diverted from running their businesses, and brings down costs.” (David Cay Johnston, a columnist for Tax.com)

Medicare for all would bring our costs in line with other countries and SAVE hundreds of billions of dollars annually. One quick action that Congress should take is to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies. Will policymakers ever have the courage to stand up to the insurance industry and drug companies?

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BCasero

Baltimore

August 18th, 2011

8:56 am


#2, you do realize that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are government programs, don't you?

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Bill

Connecticut

August 18th, 2011

8:56 am


The United States needs to reform our healthcare system to be more market based, providing people with choice into deciding where they should get their healthcare.

I agree with Paul Ryan's proposal to provide Medicare vouchers as a solution to control healthcare costs and bring healthcare increases inline with inflation. AS A YOUNG TWENTY SOMETHING, I HATE PAYING INTO A SYSTEM THAT MAY NOT BE THERE WHEN I RETIRE. If seniors want better care they need to pay for it. The US economy can not longer support such programs such as medicare, it is becoming a burden to society. Every year, healthcare is consuming a greater share of GDP every year taking resources away from the ability for the US to make investments in the future.

In other countries such as China, there is almost no social safety net for the elderly. The responsibility of taking care of elders falls upon their families and not the state. Perhaps it is time American families considering taking in their elderly instead of dumping them into nursing homes.

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clapol

Washington DC

August 18th, 2011

9:00 am


If we as a country are so opposed to a 'socialist' health care system, we might go the way of Switzerland, which has universal coverage through private insurers. The difference, of course, is that the insurers are not-for-profit. If we can't get rid of the insurance companies, take away the for-profit status and maybe they will get rid of themselves.
A basic question, of course, is why so many people seem to view universal coverage as somehow subversive and un-American. What could be more American than the common good or the general welfare of Americans?

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universal health Care

Real healthcare reform would save the Federal Government and all State Governments hundreds of billions of dollars annually while providing better health care for citizens.

Why won't anyone even talk about a government option?

Real healthcare reform must add a free government universal healthcare option
which could be used for free by anyone in the Untied States simply by asking for
free government healthcare delivered from government hospitals.

It would compete with private systems for patients and it would use all of the government's low
cost, better patient outcome advantages now employed by the VA.

There would be no restriction for users just ask period no insurance required, no copays, for
patients and it will be paid for by a national sales tax, complete birth to
death healthcare for patients, including preventative, primary, inpatient,
outpatient, vision, dental, medications, every healthcare need, period.

No one in the United States would go without care.

By using government's low cost advantages the system's costs would only be a fraction of what is now spent for private healthcare.

Universal government care would benefit seniors, families, business's, and it would prevent the bankrupting of our States and our Federal Government, all of who's budgets are being killed by current healthcare costs.

All government funded care would be delivered only from government hospitals and no government funding would go to private insurers or providers.

Patients could go back and forth between the two systems or never enter either.

To assure the continuation of a robust private healthcare system, all money
spent for private health insurance and for private healthcare services would be
tax deductible for payers and all healthcare benefits given to recipients from
employers or anyone would be tax free and all government mandates for private
providers would be eliminated, including exempting them from providing indigent
care.

Medicare for all

If Medicare is so much better than private insurance, why didn’t the Affordable Care Act simply extend Medicare to cover everyone? The answer, of course, was interest-group politics: realistically, given the insurance industry’s power, Medicare for all wasn’t going to pass, so advocates of universal coverage, myself included, were willing to settle for half a loaf. But the fact that it seemed politically necessary to accept a second-best solution for younger Americans is no reason to start dismantling the superior system we already have for those 65 and over.

national health insurance system

Letter

The Politics of Doctors

Published: June 2, 2011



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To the Editor:

“As Physicians’ Jobs Change, So Do Their Politics” (“Doctors Inc.” series, front page, May 30) illustrates the fallacy of the doctor-entrepreneur as a model for the delivery of ethical health care in the 21st century.

Doctors have a duty to advocate for their patients, both individually in their offices and collectively in the debate about the provision of health care to society.

In both instances, when a doctor’s concerns about his “small business” conflict with what is best for a patient, the doctor should choose to serve the patient’s best interest.

The use of unindicated tests, invasive procedures and antibiotics are the potential result of a doctor-entrepreneur protecting the wrong interest.

MICHAEL E. SHAPIRO
Hackensack, N.J., May 31, 2011

The writer is the chief of organ transplantation at Hackensack University Medical Center.

To the Editor:

According to your article, “there are no national surveys that track doctors’ political leanings.” There is, however, one statistically valid survey of doctors’ opinion that backs up the idea of a leftward shift.

An article in Annals of Internal Medicine in 2008 showed that support for government establishment of a national health insurance system among doctors nationwide had jumped to 59 percent from 49 percent in 2002.

There was, of course, variation by specialty, with higher support among primary care doctors and less in subspecialties.

STEVEN B. AUERBACH
New York, May 31, 2011

The writer is a pediatrician.

Why we need universail health care

Seattle, WA

June 7th, 2011

7:18 am


As usual, Brooks wraps his demagoguery in a haze of oversimplification.

Statements from Rep. Pelosi and others that Medicare benefits need not be reduced do not represent "doing nothing." Rather, they point the way towards restructuring Medicare so that it can provide health security to seniors in a much more cost effective manner. For example, as Paul Krugman and other have written, Canada and other countries achieve health security for seniors (and even young and middle aged people!) in a manner that is much more cost-effective than the U.S. Medicare program. They accomplish this by not being allergic to single-payer or other forms of centralized governmental planning.

Brooks pitches the so-called "decentralized market-based" approach, but that's how traditional employer-provided health insurance works, and from a cost control point of view it has been a total failure. Most large companies have teams of health care buyers, or insurance providers who act on their behalf in negotiating with health care providers. These are sophisticated consumers, and yet this approach has totally failed to reduce health care costs. Why on earth would anyone think that seniors buying individual coverage, with their bewildering confusion of policy provisions and hidden exclusions and all the other forms of fraud practiced by insurance companies, would reduce costs by any means other than just denying health care?

The Republican approach is to reduce health care spending through the simple means of making health care unaffordable for many seniors. Yes, that saves the government money, but families have to pick up the pieces by paying for care for their aging parents. We, the middle class, will get slammed by this when our aging parents need care.

Brooks slams "top-down control," but the fact is this: many other countries use top-down control for health care, and it works much better than our decentralized so-called "free-market" approach. It's been tried, it works, and it costs much less than what we do.

Mr. Brooks, when are you going to write about European health care systems? When are you going to offer some reasons why we should not move in the same direction as the rest of the civilized world?

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Heath reform legislation Editorial Malden Observer

Americans are divided over whether the national health reform bill President Barack Obama signed on Tuesday is a historic milestone or an abomination. What the two sides have in common is that most have only a sketchy idea of what the bill will do.

Part of this confusion comes with the legislative process; bills change as deals are made at every step of the way. More confusion comes from the hyperbole and misinformation that have made up much of the political discourse. The economics of health care isn’t a simple subject in the first place; when confusion is intentionally spread for political advantage, it’s no wonder people respond with fear.

But Wednesday’s bill-signing, to be followed by some relatively minor tweaks included in a reconciliation bill awaiting Senate action, makes it the law of the land. It’s time Americans learned what’s in it for them.

While some major provisions don’t kick in until 2014, including the individual mandate and the insurance exchanges through which uninsured Americans and small businesses can purchase coverage, some parts of health reform will take effect within six months, including:

· Young adults without insurance will be able to be covered on their parents’ family plan until they turn 27, at an additional fee.

· Insurance companies will no longer be allowed to deny coverage for children because of pre-existing conditions. Denying health care to a sick child or bankrupting his family to pay for it without insurance is surely the cruelest provision of the health care status quo.

· Adults denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions will be eligible to buy into a new high-risk insurance pool immediately. The full ban on insurance discrimination based on medical history will be fully implemented in 2014.

· Insurers will no longer be able to put a cap on lifetime payouts, which has been a factor in the recent rise of medical bankruptcies.

· Insurers will no longer be allowed to cancel insurance for people who become sick.

· Small businesses will immediately become eligible for tax credits to help provide insurance for employees.

· The “donut hole,” which limits prescription drug coverage for some Medicare recipients, will begin to be closed. Recipients who fall into the coverage gap will initially be given a $250 subsidy; in 2011, a 50 percent discount kicks in, with the donut hole fully closed in 2020.

· Insurance companies will be required to cover preventive care in all new policies. Beginning Jan. 1, 2011, all Medicare recipients will be entitled to one free physical exam per year.

As positive as they are, many people may not notice the parts of the bill that go into effect this year, or even longer than that. As this law goes into effect, people will continue sending their premium checks to the same insurance company. They will get their health care from the same physicians and at the same hospitals as always. They will learn that, contrary to what they may have heard, there will be no federal bureaucrat signing off on their physicians’ orders.

Those who suffer directly from the inequities in the current health system will see for themselves what health reform is. If they open their eyes and look past the political hype, others will see what it isn’t: This is not a “government takeover of one-sixth of the economy,” as was stated by U.S. Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, in a press release issued after the historic vote.

It is a moderate, fiscally responsible, market-based approach to making our health care system more efficient and more fair.

Now it’s time to put the politics aside and make health care reform work for all Americans.


Copyright 2010 Malden Observer. Some rights reserved

Single Payer the way to go for Health Insurance Reform

single payer would eliminate private insurance, saving nearly $400 billion annually on insurance and provider paperwork, enough to cover the uninsured and plug the gaps in coverage for those with insurance.

In 2007, 62 percent of U.S. bankruptcies occurred in the wake of medical illness, and 77 percent of those in medical bankruptcy had health insurance (usually private insurance) when they first got sick.

Close

Private health insurance is a defective consumer product, and Congress has no business forcing uninsured Americans to buy it.

In order to get the bill out of committee, Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised single-payer supporters, led by Representative Anthony Weiner of New York a floor vote in the fall. This is a tremendous victory for single-payer supporters like my group, the 16,000-member Physicians for a National Health Program. Members of Congress, many of whom say they personally support single payer, must now go on record on the eve of the 2010 electoral cycle. Constituents take note!


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