3/29 I'm curious what you think of the health care reform bill. I voted
for Obama and I really hate it. It doesn't really address the
problem, which is health care _costs_. This bill seems like a
shell game.
\_ I agree it doesn't address the root cause, but it's a start. The
good news is that we have our third major entitlement (SS, Medicare,
ObamaCare) signed into law, and that's not going away anytime soon.
Of course, this is exactly what most Republicans feared.
\_ How is Obamacare any different from Medicare? We already had that
entitlement. The government isn't going to pick up the
tab for those currently uninsured or those who can barely
afford insurance. I find the bill completely unnecessary and
toothless.
\_ Any real solution would have been blocked by the "Blue Dog"
democrats, and there are two real solutions: 1) properly regulate
the insurance industry, which is pretty much impossible since
the insurance industry regulates Congress or 2) extend Medicare
to all, which would kill off most of the health insurance industry.
The hope is that we can slowly creep towards solotion #2.
\_ What about (further) regulating pharmaceutical companies and
tort reform? Big pharma and expensive malpractice insurance
are killing us.
\_ Tort reform would at best be a drop in the bucket.
\_ Are you kidding? Do you know what, say, a ob/gyn pays
in malpractice insurance? And he passes that cost on
to you and your HMO.
\_ http://preview.tinyurl.com/mnt7zo
"That puts litigation costs and malpractice
insurance at 1 to 1.5 percent of total medical costs.
That’s a rounding error. Liability isn’t even the
tail on the cost dog. It’s the hair on the end of
the tail."
\_ I don't believe this guy and even he admits that
defensive medicine costs could drive the cost
up to 5-10% of costs. 5% of a trillion dollars
(or whatever we spend) is a _lot_ of money to
piss away!
\_ I trust him way more than I believe you. In any
case, shaving off a few percentage points of
the total cost would be nice, but it is the
growth rate that is going to kill us and legal
costs as a percentage of overall medical costs
are not increasing.
\_ So, as a percentage of medical costs, what
is increasing the most and what is increasing
the fastest?
\_ "We are still going to have adjustments that have to be made to
further reduce costs." --POTUS
\_ So what exactly are the merits of this bill? I don't see a
point. All it does is shift more of the outrageous costs of
health care onto young working people who probably can't afford
big increases at this time.
\_ Actually this bill calls for pretty big cuts in the growth
of Medicare, so it is going to shift some of what is currently
being spent on oldsters on younger uninsured. No political
act can do anything about our changing demographics though.
\_ We can let people pay for their own (and their
parents' own) health care and demographics be damned.
Demographics are only an issue b/c of these politics.
\_ Yes, we could just let all the oldsters eat catfood
and die due to lack of basic medical care. But we
decided a long time ago that we didn't want to be
a society like that. Especially now that we have taken
a bunch of people's tax dollars and put it in the
Trust Fund, we have a committment to follow through
Trust Fund, we have a commitment to follow through
on providing Social Security funding, which we can
definitely do. We don't not have a comittment to
definitely do. We don't not have a commitment to
definitely do. We do not have a commitment to
provide open ended heroic medical care to people in
their last years of life though. We also cannot
afford it either. This is going to be a tough political
battle to fight though, since there are so many Baby
Boomers and they think they are entitled to it all.
\_ I can let my parents eat catfood and die due
to lack of basic care and you can choose to do
otherwise. I agree, though, that the Boomers
have certain expectations that we cannot meet.
My mom-in-law has had three mostly-unnecessary
surgeries (there were other treatments available
and she never sought any other medical opinions)
at taxpayer expense and it infuriates me given
that her generation is the one that had a lot
of opportunity. Her retirement income is, after
tax, not much less than my after tax income.
I realize not everyone that age is so fortunate
to have such a great retirement, but give me a
break. She wastes money on all kinds of shit,
including at the casino. I should not pay for
her surgeries while she gets excited about how
it only cost her a $30 co-pay.
it only cost her a $30 co-pay. BTW, a common
statement by Boomers is "I paid into the system
my whole life and I _deserve_ to take out of
it." Yeah, well, I paid in my whole life and I
will probably be able to take less out because
of greedy Boomers who are taking out more than
they put in. |
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