Single Payer Health Care is not charity. Single Payer Health Care would be financially superior to our present system of paying for health care. Here is why:
The many countries with single payer health care systems rank higher in health care outcomes (results) at lower costs than we do in the USA, even though we are the most affluent country of all.
Medicare and Medicaid use our money more efficiently than do private for-profit insurance companies. Medicare and Medicaid pay a larger fraction of money directly for health care while for-profit health insurance companies pay a smaller fraction of money directly for health care.
To the best of my knowledge and imagination, no for-profit insurance company can rightfully credit their for-profit motive for better health care.
For-profit health insurance companies budget money to pay dividends to their shareholders. Therefore that money does not pay for our health care bills.
In partial definition, a tax is a compulsory add-on fee. In this way, for-profit insurance companies tax their customers to pay dividends to shareholders.
Costs for health insurance added financial burden to American companies who moved their business to foreign countries where there is no need to budget for health insurance.
Our present health care system sets up need for charity health care that seldom provides enough money or gives ideal care. Single Premium Health Care would “leave no child behind,” would leave no adult behind and would avoid need for charity health care.
Roger E. Condit, MD
Farmington
Solid agreement. Also, to the best of my knowledge and imagination, no for-profit hospital, doctor, or drug company can rightfully credit their for-profit motive for better health care. Let’s make them all work for the government also, like the VA does, then you can all receive the quality of care and promptness our vets get. Ask a few Vets what that’s like! Caution, you may need earplugs! Look at the Approval Ratings for Washington politicians, you really want them making the rules for and running your healthcare system? You know the Golden Rule, he who has the gold makes the rules? If the government pays, everybody in the healthcare system works for the government, and the government politicians and bureaucrats make the rules. Believe it.
Some doctors take an oath to help people other doctors take an oath to push the democratic agenda.
Ladies and gentlemen as Obamacare continues to fail under its own weight, which it was designed to do, you will see the push for single payer to fix it. Now the arguments against single payer are clear, but what message will be muddied is the benefits it would provide. We were clearly lied to by Obamacare supporters to get it passed, they even rewrote the rules to pass it. Now I ask not to listen to the words of me or any other person that will speak in opposition to single payer, I ask you to only read the words of some people that are arguing for it.
Let’s start with economist Eduardo Porter, “Rationing Health Care More Fairly” (8/21/2012).
Cliff notes: the title says it all.
Obama administration advisor Steve Rattner, “Beyond ObamaCare” (9/16/2012).
Cliff notes: he believes we need death panels.
New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) article “A Systemic Approach to Containing Health Care Spending”
Cliff notes they want to limit how much of your own money you can spend on healthcare
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel former White House health care advisor and the brother of Rahm Emanuel
“Principles for allocation of scarce medical interventions”
Cliff notes: ration based on how productive the individual is, leave the disabled in the streets and the young and rich get whatever it takes.
Right on!
Has this author not watched the government botch everything it touched for 30 years? They are the most backward and inefficient organisations around and no strong intelligent leaders anywhere. As someone who survived cancer I can tell Dana Farber is full of people from people around the world escaping health care systems like single payer and coming to the U.S. That is because our system offers superior care, period.
It doesn’t have to be single payer (though I think it could work and be better if it was) – I believe a huge step would be to regulate all commercial health insurance companies and designate them with non-profit status. Let them put their “profits” back into the healthcare system and not into shareholder pockets. I have coverage through UnitedHealthcare, they made record profits this last quarter and guess what, my premiums went up again…we cannot sustain this healthcare system much longer. Change will come…it is a matter of who do you want to benefit from the change, the insurance companies, or your health.
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
– Thomas Sowell
Nigmagrl, your premiums went up because (1) the general cost of medical care went up, and (2) ObamaCare mandated changes to your policy for a wide range of new coverages. If you add value to something, the cost of that something to the end user goes up. Feel free to pass this economics lesson on to your elected representatives, most of whom were absent from class when the subject was discussed.
Will all of those who want to “resign” from Medicare please raise their hands? What? No takers?
Medicare is a single-payer system that pays for (private) health care.
“MEDICARE” FOR EVERYONE!
Double the efforts to seek out the fraudsters who want sell you (for example) wheelchairs because “Medicare will pay” and the system will be vital and productive for many years to come.
For the record, there are no efficiencies in Government run systems- only more room for cost overruns with no accountability and contracts to industry and political insiders. There is no competition or need to innovate either.
How did No-Fault Auto Insurance work out for the Rate Payer’s in Massachusetts back in the late seventies? Rates skyrocketed when the government set them.
We might actually have a more healthy population if everyone was responsible for their own care (excepting of course, for those who cannot take care of themselves) and more of the costs.
Think about it without a third party payer always waiting in the wings folks would have to make better choices. on the other hand, if people know that everything will always be covered, they will over use the healthcare system.
Let Folks negotiate for services like paying cash, buying policies across State lines and Tort reform. Get the government out of people’s personal lives to the greatest extent possible..
But as long as those” free” Federal dollars keep rolling into Maine the community “pillars” will keep pushing for more and more. Most everybody I’ve met that supports Single Payer is already receiving services on their neighbor’s dime or getting paid through the existing system. There are too many entitled on the system and too many Elitists billing it and then griping at the rest of us for not wanting to support their expansive universal programs.
With a 2 to 1 Federal match in monies we already have more asses than diapers here. Thanks to Federal government subsidies we have a Non Profit “Mafia” that can never be paid enough. Our children and their children have already been sold into bondage to pay for everything. A baby born today in the U.S., already owes 54,000.00 of the Federal debt.
I respect the good Doctor, but I cannot support more socialism.
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JR Holt: Do you think Medicare is overused? Do you know anyone who relies on Medicare as his/her only healthcare resource? Would you scrap that program?
The for-profit healthcare system is reactive; it’s all about being sick.
Much of the newer legislation will base payments to providers on the health outcomes realized. This is a step forward. Prevention of illness,
the desired effect, will depend on regular health care services, NOT
restricting or denying such services due to inability to pay. This is all about “promoting the general welfare”, a fine notion stated by our Founding Fathers.
Much Socialism afoot here, methinks. Perhaps Socialism is not the ism that’s dismalest of all, but it’s close.
Yes, by all means, lets put the government in charge of more of our lives,..as, they do such a good job at everything else. I will pass, and pay my own way, thank you very much. For all you who think healthcare is so bad here, and so good in all those single payer, socialist run countries, I say. Dont let the door hit ya. Buh-bye.
Superior? I think not! Just Google NHS in Britain and read the pages of complaints, deaths and mayhem brought about by the inadequate system. I have family and personally know folks around the world and most of the single payer systems are either broke, or incredibly inefficient. One person in Spain whose mother is a Dr. is basically surviving based on her private practice as the National System is not paying her. If they withhold Dr.’s pay it will be cheaper but how long they stay in business.
One clue about health care is Life Expectancy. Per the World Health Organization the differences in Life expectancy are maybe 2 or 3 years among the developed countries. Some of those differences are based on life style, exercise, and food choices and if you factor in the rate at which our inner-city youth kill each other, I will bet that our life expectancy rates are among the top.
Currently Denmark, which many point to as the standard of Socially responsible government actually ranks right behind the US in life expectancy.
Government is a bureaucracy and by definition cannot be efficient.