In many ways, foreign health-care models are not really "foreign" to America, because our crazy-quilt health-care system uses elements of all of them. For Native Americans or veterans, we're Britain: The government provides health care, funding it through general taxes, and patients get no bills. For people who get insurance through their jobs, we're Germany: Premiums are split between workers and employers, and private insurance plans pay private doctors and hospitals. For people over 65, we're Canada: Everyone pays premiums for an insurance plan run by the government, and the public plan pays private doctors and hospitals according to a set fee schedule. And for the tens of millions without insurance coverage, we're Burundi or Burma: In the world's poor nations, sick people pay out of pocket for medical care; those who can't pay stay sick or die.
If there are problems within the Obama Administration's healthcare plan, let's identify them and argue about them. But let's knock off the goddamn FUD. The Red Scare's been over for decades, OK?
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no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 02:38 pm (UTC)why do you hate American Guacamole????
Date: 2009-08-26 04:42 pm (UTC)We should send your type back to your GodHating America Bashing SpaceAlienBrainWaveSuckingBeastCreaturesFromPlanetZorkon Country where you belong!!!
We are not going to sit by while you Obamanites push granny under the flying saucer!
And just because You PINKOs think the red scare is over merely prooves what sorts of Puppety Toadies of the Revisionist Ideological Deviationalist Reactionaries you have always been!
But other than that, a nice write up.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 05:25 pm (UTC)I will begin.
p1. The Obama administration has not put forward any health insurance reform plan. (Yes, you're on my shit-list for using the "healthcare plan" construction.)
p2. The plan in the House has the so-called "public option" provision, but it's crippled almost beyond measure because A) it gives the big insurance companies three years to shoot it down before it comes into effect, and B) it doesn't tie reimbursement rates to Medicare and, therefore, doesn't really do what it could to reduce overall healthcare costs.
p3. The Kennedy-Dingal bill in the Senate will never get to the floor, thanks to the sheer bloody-minded malevolence of the Finance Committee Six [Baucus, Graessley, etc.], so does it really matter what it says? No.
p4. The Senate Finance Committee is expected to report a bill that has the lovely combination of A) individual coverage mandates, i.e. you must buy a compliant insurance plan or be held criminally liable, and B) no public option whatsoever, i.e. not even state-operated plans, just non-profit cooperatives, which have been shown again and again to be completely ineffective at controlling costs.
p5. There is the Kucinich amendment, which would allow the states individually to go single-payer, i.e. to box the private health insurance companies into the limited role of providing only supplemental insurance, which would be a mostly symbolic victory. It wouldn't make much of a dent in costs unless California and at least ten other states opted into single-payer. Nobody is willing to fight for it in the House, and it couldn't possibly pass the Senate, so it's dead.
At this point, the health insurance reform effort needs a miracle. Apparently, Matt Taibbi has an article in Rolling Stone that explains just what kind of miracle we would need, and why the capricious and sociopathic Gods of U.S. politics aren't ever going to give it to us. The article is not online anywhere yet, so far as I know.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 05:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-02 12:51 am (UTC)Obama has a fantasy of Fixing Everything In America, and it's bullshit. It takes decades to effect social change in this country, and only at great sacrifice of many individuals, not just political ramrodding.
Not that there isn't a lot of wingnuts throwing FUD around because they are scare of smart black men...
no subject
Date: 2009-09-02 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-02 02:08 am (UTC)For those who have no insurance because they can't afford it, especially those who have low income and don't pay much in taxes, public healthcare is a great deal. For someone like me who gets his health coverage through work and pays quite a lot of taxes, it's worth exactly jack shit.
I think Health Insurance Reform is a damn good idea. Health insurance companies shouldn't be able to turn down coverage for literally life-saving treatments. If that irks them, they shouldn't have ever gotten in the damned business.
OTOH, a health insurance company can't make a profit without charging something more than cost. And since America is based on capitalism at all layers, you can't ever control healthcare costs without doing something extraordinary, such as outlawing profitability of all medical-related expenditures. Again, radical social change, can't be done all at once.
Ultimately, what's needed is advances in medical science that equate to Moore's Law. So that eventually, what is considered expensive treatment by current standards (i.e. open heart surgery, organ transplant, cancer therapy) is routine, cheap, OTC crap. The best path for that is nanotech.
Whatever healthcare reform that comes out of this will be a deformed half-breed and cause more harm than good. Obama needs to drop the idea and focus on other areas that need attention, such as America's sliding-into-the-sewer education system.