Clinton unveils mandatory health care insurance plan

[wkmac]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul175.html

A 2004' op-ed piece but IMO interesting none the less.

http://www.aapsonline.org/freemarket/berry.htm

Actual April 2004' testimony of Dr. Berry before Congress

Dr. Berry and the Patmos clinic is still in operation in Greenville Tenn. and I believe was to be a part of a Stossel piece this past Friday on the 20/20 broadcast. Has anyone for the moment considered the fact that the gov't, medical establishment and the insurance companies have really been in bed together for the last several decades and could it be possible that this trinity of power is really at the core of what is broken about our medical situation in america today? For the moment, accepting that suggested premise as fact, then tell me how would you or even should you expect them to fix a system that they themselves created in the first place?

At best, we will have a fix sold to us and for a time it will appear to fix many things but as time goes by the bandaids and other quick patches that gov't uses to gloss over bad legislation will wear off but by then our focus will be on other things and the situation will lag for several more years. Finally, like so many other gov't programs, the lava will rise to the top and explode making the issue front and center again and like Pavlov's dog, we'll do the same exercise over and over again of demanding gov't action. In the meantime, the only real thing happening is we as average Joe's will have less and less, the gov't will have more power to control us and their lackey's in all of this, the medical and insurance establishment and it's lawyer/lobbyists will joyfully dance all the way to the bank.

Remember, at this moment you have Uncle Sam looking you dead in the eye but with a fatherly smile on his face to calm you and gain your trust but behind that smile are the immortal words made famous by the infamous Dirty Harry who said, "Go Ahead, Make My Day!"

 

[diesel96]

Re: Clinton unveils mandatory health care insurance plan
Hi Cheryl I did some research on John Stossel here is some information I found on him.

Beatupbrown: Good find!.....Not only is that a powerful message to Stossel but I would like to add the unimaginable proceeds that ABC recieves from the Pharmacuetical Industry. All you have to do is watch the network one night and count all the Pharmacuetical ads. Shame on Disney.

Socialized healthcare would be a disaster for this country...at this point. I want somebody to close the borders and get all of the illegals out way before we even try to attempt this.

This has nothing to do about healthcare. Why don't you read the Immigration thread and post your opinion there..

Now, since we're on the subject of healthcare, I had no idea that UPS was such a left wing organization.

Your obviously a rookie on this site...When it comes to Current Events on this site, it leans way more to the right. Instead of Brown Cafe it's more like Brown Conservative. But it's ok to agree to disagree. But when you bring your Jerry Falwell anti- gay, anti-left rants and try to shove that Christian far right religious views down everybody throats, isn't that a form of socialism. Good luck at Fed Ex Freight And remember,Seperation of church and state.

Oddly enough John Stossel also wrote a critique of the Commonwealth Fund Study that you link to called "Another Bogus Report Card for U.S. Medical Care."

Stossel quote "As I've noted previously, the problem of the 45 million uninsured is exaggerated. The statistics represent a snapshot, and many uninsured people are reinsured in less than a year. The same people are not uninsured year in and year out."

Stossel doesn't present any proof of this, but even if we give or take a million,that's still over 40 million people unisured....the rest of his article talks about "insured" receipients only.

Re: Clinton unveils mandatory health care insurance plan
Competition gives us choices and those choices give us power!!

I don't see the competition driving/slowing the prices down ...people shelling out $800/plus for healthcare as is.
When we have to pick up the tab for 44 million uninsured people is nothing to burp about.....Or maybe we should let them wither and die on the emergencey room floors.

Actually, she would mandate that everyone purchase heath care insurance. I don't want insurance! I priced it about five years ago when my wife retired and found that with our pre-existing conditions we would pay quite a bit.

The plan is only socialist or mandated to those who are uninsured, those of us covered don't need to purchase. For those of you not wanting to purchase, eventually you or a family member will need a costly pecedure, and if your not rich, who's eventually gonna pay for it? Us the Taxpayers or should we let you wither and die?

Re: Clinton unveils mandatory health care insurance plan
If u want to see government run health care at its worst, look no further than the VA system. Its a huge, waseful system riddled with layers of beaucracy. Also, last I checked medicare is going broke. Nuff said.

Are you talking Walter Reed Hospital? I think Mr Bush had to be reminded of Gov't run healthcare at it's worst.
Medicare is getting broke...agreed, espescially with the baby boomers getting ready to retire....but have our present and previous Adminisrations done enough to keep America's promise to take care of our elderly? You thought the war took a chunk out of our GNP...Just wait. Do you think the free market is gonna take care of these people?

 

[beatupbrown]

Here is some more information on John Stassel; hey seems to have an agenda, he will ignore facts that say other wise or fire people on his staff that give him facts that do not support what he is trying to say.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1134

 

[brett636]

Cheryl- Thank you so much for posting John Stossel's report. I wanted to watch it when it aired but was unable to and forgot to record it.

Beatupbrown- I think you totally missed the boat on Stossel's report. He showed people from both sides of the issue. I dunno how much more centrist you can be when it comes to a report like that. He showed the downsides to both universal healthcare, and the U.S. for profit system. Whole foods appears to be getting it right in helping to foster competition in the healthcare industry and we need more companies to take that route.

You say you want some stats from me, and you are right. So far you have posted slanted stats from nobody phd's and micheal moore. How about we get some information straight from the horse's mouth. Places like, I dunno, Britian's department of health:

Britain's Department of Health reported in 2006 that at any given time, nearly 900,000 Britons are waiting for admission to National Health Service hospitals, and shortages force the cancellation of more than 50,000 operations each year.

Or how about a Canadian Supreme Court judge?

Canadian Supreme Court, Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin wrote that "access to a waiting list is not access to healthcare."

Even Canada is starting to jump on the private healthcare bandwagon

Contrary to most federal politicians views, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) has taken the stance in favor of more private sector healthcare services as a means to improve healthcare for Canadians[11]. In a move to further heighten their position, the CMA will be replacing their current president with Dr. Brian Day in August 2007. Dr Brian Day is the owner of the largest private healthcare hospital in Canada and a vocal supporter of increasing private healthcare in Canada.

One of the major complaints about the Canadian health care system is waiting times, whether for a specialist, major elective surgery, such as hip replacement, or specialized treatments, such as radiation for breast cancer. Studies by the Commonwealth Fund found that 24% of Canadians waited 4 hours or more in the emergency room, vs. 12% in the U.S.; 57% waited 4 weeks or more to see a specialist, vs. 23% in the U.S.

I received these stats from the following sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_and_American_health_care_systems_compared
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-tanner5apr05,0,2227144.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

Neither idea provides a healthcare utopia as both have their drawbacks. While the free market may not move as fast as some would like, eventually costs will get high enough that competition starts to move them back to where they should be. Anytime the government gets involved in anything, minus natinoal defense, they make it a bigger problem than it was to begin with. High taxes, government protected doctors, and long wait times for surgeries and family doctor visits is not the solution we need.

 

[cheryl]

Hi Cheryl I did some research on John Stossel here is some information I found on him.

I certainly would never challenge the pain and suffering that Julie Pierce describes in the open letter to John Stossel on Michael Moore's website. Her story is heartbreaking.

Unfortunately there are similar tragic stories on the internet written by people that feel that they have been damaged by the inadequacies of universal health care systems in other countries. From what I can see none of these systems work, including our current one.

Although we could also go back and forth posting heart wrenching testimonials or attacks on the credibilty of our sources I think it doesn't really help us to understand health care reform. It would be easy to dig up all kinds of opposing views about the ethics of John Stossel and Michael Moore but then all we'd really learn about are John Stossel and Michael Moore, not health care reform. In my opinion this kind of ad hominem attack doesn't really accomplish anything because it is simply an attack on the people who present different sides of an issue and has nothing to do with the issue itself.

How about if we stay on topic and just discuss health care reform?

Stossel quote "As I've noted previously, the problem of the 45 million uninsured is exaggerated. The statistics represent a snapshot, and many uninsured people are reinsured in less than a year. The same people are not uninsured year in and year out."
Stossel doesn't present any proof of this, but even if we give or take a million,that's still over 40 million people unisured....the rest of his article talks about "insured" receipients only.

You're right...

 

[cheryl]

The NY Times has a more detailed comparison which includes more candidates:
http://politics.nytimes.com/election-guide/2008/issues/healthcare/index.html

 

[beatupbrown]

Brett you say Michael Moore, saying that that tells me you missed the whole point ,it was about John Steossel ,if the the facts do fit his slant he simply leaves them out.Please read the story about this women Julie Pierce.
http://www.calnurses.org/media-center/in-the-news/2007/september/page.jsp?itemID=32045746 take a few seconds to look at this link so you know what I am talking about.
.John Stossel is a right wing person who has agenda and has gone as far as to fire people on his staff who came up with facts that do not support his slant on a story. John Stossel is not a centrist nothing close.
I will agree Michael Moore can do the same thing. I stay open mined so I look at all sides .Go watch Sicko even if you hate him it will give you a idea of what he is saying.
Studies by the Commonwealth Fund found that 24% of Canadians waited 4 hours or more in the emergency room, vs. 12% in the U.S.; 57% waited 4 weeks or more to see a specialist, vs. 23% in the U.S.
Britain's Department of Health reported in 2006 that at any given time, nearly 900,000 Britons are waiting for admission to National Health Service hospitals, and shortages force the cancellation of more than 50,000 operations each year.
This is fine but we have 46 million Americans without insurance for them there is no line. I would wait in line better then no line at all.
Michael friend. Cannon is the Cato Institute's director of health policy studies. Previously, he served as a domestic policy analyst at the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee
Ok this is your last link ,this guy is a right wing he his a agenda no credibility.
John Steossel used him in his 20/20 show no big surprise there.I would bet he used more of his type in the show.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-tanner5apr05,0,2227144.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
Your other 2 links are subjects that I have Covered with you. Nothing new.
People with PHD mean that they are the cream of the crop top of the top .
Any with a PHD in medicine means that they are very rare breed very few people can get to this level.
So when I see PHD I take a second look at them .Now they are not God but I always give them a second look at what they are saying.

Do you think we a major problem with health care in the USA,I do.
I am of the thinking that we need to take what works in other western countries and what works her in the USA and come up with some hybrid of our own for health care.

 

[moreluck]

IS THERE A TRIAL LAWYER IN THE HOUSE?

By Ann CoulterWed Sep 19, 6:27 PM ET


The only "crisis" in health care in this country is that doctors are paid too little. (Also they've come up with nothing to help that poor Dennis Kucinich.)
But the Democratic Party treats doctors like they're Klan members. They wail about how much doctors are paid and celebrate the trial lawyers who do absolutely nothing to make society better, but swoop in and steal from the most valuable members of society.
Maybe doctors could get the Democrats to like them if they started suing their patients.
It's only a matter of time before the best and brightest students forget about medical school and go to law school instead. How long can a society based on suing the productive last?
You can make 30 times as much money as doctors by becoming a trial lawyer suing doctors. You need no skills, no superior board scores, no decade of training and no sleepless residency. But you must have the morals of a drug dealer. (And the bank wire transfer number to the Democratic National Committee.)
The editors of The New York Times have been engaging in a spirited debate with their readers over whether doctors are wildly overpaid or just hugely overpaid. The results of this debate are available on TimeSelect, for just $49.95.
"Many health care economists," the Times editorialized, say the partisan wrangling over health care masks a bigger problem: "the relatively high salaries paid to American doctors."
Citing the Rand Corp., the Times noted that doctors in the U.S. "earn two to three times as much as they do in other industrialized countries." American doctors earn about $200,000 to $300,000 a year, while European doctors make $60,000 to $120,000. Why, that's barely enough for Muslim doctors in Britain to buy plastic explosives to blow up airplanes!
How much does Pinch Sulzberger make for driving The New York Times stock to an all-time low? Probably a lot more than your podiatrist.
In college, my roommate was in the chemistry lab Friday and Saturday nights while I was dancing on tables at the Chapter House. A few years later, she was working 20-hour days as a resident at Mount Sinai doing liver transplants while I was frequenting popular Upper East Side drinking establishments. She was going to Johns Hopkins for yet more medical training while I was skiing and following the Grateful Dead. Now she vacations in places like Rwanda and Darfur with Doctors Without Borders while I'm going to Paris.
Has anyone else noticed the nonexistence of a charitable organization known as "Lawyers Without Borders"?
She makes $380 for an emergency appendectomy, or one-ten-thousandth of what John Edwards made suing doctors like her, and one-fourth of what John Edwards' hairdresser makes for a single shag cut.
Edwards made $30 million bringing nonsense lawsuits based on junk science against doctors. To defend themselves from parasites like Edwards, doctors now pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical malpractice insurance every year.
But as the Times would note, doctors in Burkina Faso only get $25 and one goat per year.
As long as we're studying the health care systems of various socialist countries, are we allowed to notice that doctors in these other countries aren't constantly being sued by bottom-feeding trial lawyers stealing one-third of the income of people performing useful work like saving lives?
But the Democrats (and Fred Thompson) refuse to enact tort reform legislation to rein in these charlatans. After teachers and welfare recipients, the Democrats' most prized constituency is trial lawyers. The ultimate Democrat constituent would be a public schoolteacher on welfare who needed an abortion and was suing her doctor.
Doctors graduate at the top of their classes at college and then spend nearly a decade in grueling work at medical schools. Most doctors don't make a dime until they're in their early 30s, just in time to start paying off their six-figure student loans by saving people's lives. They have 10 times the IQ of trial lawyers and 1,000 times the character.

Yeah, let's go after those guys. On to nuns next!
But Times' readers responded to the editorial about doctors being overpaid with a slew of indignant letters -- not at the Times for making such an idiotic argument, but at doctors who earn an average of $200,000 per year. Letter writers praised the free medical care in places like Spain. ("Nightmare" in the Ann Coulter dictionary is defined as "having a medical emergency in Spain.")
One letter-writer proposed helping doctors by having the government take over another aspect of the economy -- the cost of medical education:
"If we are to restructure the system by which we pay doctors to match Europe, which seems prudent as well as inevitable, we must also finance education as Europeans do, by using state dollars to finance the full or majority cost of higher education, including professional school."
And then to reduce the cost of medical school, the government could finance "the full or majority cost" of construction costs of medical schools, and "the full or majority cost" of the trucks that bring the cement to the construction site and the "the full or majority cost" of coffee that the truck drivers drink while hauling the cement and ... it makes my head hurt.
I may have to see a doctor about this. I should probably get on the waiting list now in case Hillary gets elected.
That's how liberals think: To fix an industry bedeviled by government controls, we'll spread the coercion to yet more industries!
The only sane letter on the matter, I'm happy to report, came from the charming town of New Canaan, Conn., which means that I am not the only normal person who still reads the Times. Ray Groves wrote:
"Last week, I had the annual checkup for my 2000 Taurus. I paid $95 per hour for much needed body work. Next month, when I have my own annual physical, I expect and hope to pay a much higher rate to my primary care internist, who has spent a significant portion of his life training to achieve his position of responsibility." There is nothing more to say.

 

[retired]

Universal Health Care programs is not an intelligent option. We need to rethink the entire system, not adopt a government health care model which has already proven to be a failure.[/b]

Health Care: Government vs. Private
by Walter E. Williams
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2007/07/25/health_care_government_vs_private

Before we buy into single-payer health care systems like Canada's and the United Kingdom's, we might want to do a bit of research. The Vancouver, British Columbia-based Fraser Institute annually publishes "Waiting Your Turn." Its 2006 edition gives waiting times, by treatments, from a person's referral by a general practitioner to treatment by a specialist. The shortest waiting time was for oncology (4.9 weeks). The longest waiting time was for orthopedic surgery (40.3 weeks), followed by plastic surgery (35.4 weeks) and neurosurgery (31.7 weeks).

As reported in the June 28 National Center for Policy Analysis' "Daily Policy Digest," Britain's Department of Health recently acknowledged that one in eight patients waits more than a year for surgery. France's failed health care system resulted in the deaths of 13,000 people, mostly of dehydration, during the heat spell of 2003. Hospitals stopped answering the phones, and ambulance attendants told people to fend for themselves.


Canada's Private Clinics Surge as Public System Falters
By Clifford Krauss - New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/28/i...gin&adxnnlx=1190225442-r+QusBZjjtu1Hvv1ZxZ2bg

Canada remains the only industrialized country that outlaws privately financed purchases of core medical services. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other politicians remain reluctant to openly propose sweeping changes even though costs for the national and provincial governments are exploding and some cancer patients are waiting months for diagnostic tests and treatment.

In response, the Quebec premier, Jean Charest, proposed this month to allow private hospitals to subcontract hip, knee and cataract surgery to private clinics when patients are unable to be treated quickly enough under the public system. The premiers of British Columbia and Alberta have suggested they will go much further to encourage private health services and insurance in legislation they plan to propose in the next few months.

 

[retired]

The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care
by David Gratzer
http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_canadian_healthcare.html

Canadians are looking to the United States for the care they need, Americans, ironically, are increasingly looking north for a viable health-care model. There’s no question that American health care, a mixture of private insurance and public programs, is a mess. Over the last five years, health-insurance premiums have more than doubled, leaving firms like General Motors on the brink of bankruptcy. Expensive health care has also hit workers in the pocketbook: it’s one of the reasons that median family income fell between 2000 and 2005 (despite a rise in overall labor costs). Health spending has surged past 16 percent of GDP. The number of uninsured Americans has risen, and even the insured seem dissatisfied. So it’s not surprising that some Americans think that solving the nation’s health-care woes may require adopting a Canadian-style single-payer system, in which the government finances and provides the care. Canadians, the seductive single-payer tune goes, not only spend less on health care; their health outcomes are better, too—life expectancy is longer, infant mortality lower.

Thus, Paul Krugman in the New York Times: “Does this mean that the American way is wrong, and that we should switch to a Canadian-style single-payer system? Well, yes.” Politicians like Hillary Clinton are on board; Michael Moore’s new documentary Sicko celebrates the virtues of Canada’s socialized health care; the National Coalition on Health Care, which includes big businesses like AT&T, recently endorsed a scheme to centralize major health decisions to a government committee; and big unions are questioning the tenets of employer-sponsored health insurance. Some are tempted. Not me.

I was once a believer in socialized medicine. I don’t want to overstate my case: growing up in Canada, I didn’t spend much time contemplating the nuances of health economics. I wanted to get into medical school—my mind brimmed with statistics on MCAT scores and admissions rates, not health spending. But as a Canadian, I had soaked up three things from my environment: a love of ice hockey; an ability to convert Celsius into Fahrenheit in my head; and the belief that government-run health care was truly compassionate. What I knew about American health care was unappealing: high expenses and lots of uninsured people. When HillaryCare shook Washington, I remember thinking that the Clintonistas were right.

My health-care prejudices crumbled not in the classroom but on the way to one. On a subzero Winnipeg morning in 1997, I cut across the hospital emergency room to shave a few minutes off my frigid commute. Swinging open the door, I stepped into a nightmare: the ER overflowed with elderly people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it turned out, had waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine. Right then, I began to reconsider everything that I thought I knew about Canadian health care. I soon discovered that the problems went well beyond overcrowded ERs. Patients had to wait for practically any diagnostic test or procedure, such as the man with persistent pain from a hernia operation whom we referred to a pain clinic—with a three-year wait list; or the woman needing a sleep study to diagnose what seemed like sleep apnea, who faced a two-year delay; or the woman with breast cancer who needed to wait four months for radiation therapy, when the standard of care was four weeks.

Nor were the problems I identified unique to Canada—they characterized all government-run health-care systems. Consider the recent British controversy over a cancer patient who tried to get an appointment with a specialist, only to have it canceled—48 times. More than 1 million Britons must wait for some type of care, with 200,000 in line for longer than six months. A while back, I toured a public hospital in Washington, D.C., with Tim Evans, a senior fellow at the Centre for the New Europe. The hospital was dark and dingy, but Evans observed that it was cleaner than anything in his native England. In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave—when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity—15,000 elderly citizens died. Across Europe, state-of-the-art drugs aren’t available. And so on.

 

[Harry Manback]

KFC is running the Hillary special. Comes with 2 small breasts, fat thighs, and a left wing.

Romulus isn't kidding folks...

 

[beatupbrown]

Our Health-Care System Needs Intensive Care
September 19, 2007; Page A19

In regard to John Stossel's Sept. 13 editorial-page commentary "Sick Sob Stories": By focusing on the narrow subject of bone marrow transplantation, Mr. Stossel is missing the big picture of the major problems in health care in the U.S.
He fails to comment on the fact that there are 47 million people in the U.S. who do not have any health care. While promoting health care for profit, he neglects to mention that 31% of health-care costs in this country are for administrative salaries and advertising. Salaries of HMO executives (along with their lawyers and lobbyists) are obscene. The previous CEO of United Health Care made $1.6 billion (including back dated stock options) last year. This is not where health-care dollars should go. The current for-profit health-care system is not working.
The only solution is to eliminate the HMOs and go to a single-payer system that does not have to be administered by the government. The savings would increase reimbursements to health-care providers (and, it is hoped, stem the annual loss of primary care physicians) so that there would be greater access to care for more patients with fewer hassles.
J. David Gaines, M.D., FACP
Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine
Yale University School of Medicine
New Haven, Conn.
Shirley Loewe didn't have a chance. Because she had no health insurance, she died prematurely and, arguably, unnecessarily. Mr. Stossel has the right headline, "Sick Sob Stories," for his piece but the wrong conclusion. Government-run health care is not the enemy. Market-based health care is not the enemy. The high rate of uninsurance, the U.S. method of rationing, is the enemy. Shirley Loewe's is a sad story about a sick system.
Eduardo Sanchez, M.D., M.P.H.
Director, Institute for Health Policy
School of Public Health
University of Texas
Health Science Center at Houston
Houston
It's ironic in the extreme that this was published the same day as the story about a woman whose cancer treatment wasn't covered because she was diagnosed at the wrong clinic. Mr. Stossel rails against the "evils" of government-run health care, saying that it results in people "getting less of the care that is absolutely necessary." We obviously don't have a government-run system in the U.S., but that still didn't help Shirley Loewe get the care that was absolutely necessary for her.
Profit, Mr. Stossel says, is the source of scientific innovation and medical breakthroughs. Unfortunately, all those scientific innovations are worthless if they don't reach the patients who need them.
Rebecca A. Drayer, M.D., M.Sc.
Clinical Instructor of Medicine
University of Rochester
School of Medicine
Rochester, N.Y.

 

[cheryl]

There is one issue that keeps coming up that seems like such a no brainer I can't understand why the current system hasn't dealt with this before:

The billions of dollars wasted on billing and paperwork every year.

Johns Hopkins University president William Brody says journalists are not asking presidential candidates the right questions about health care reform.

“At The Johns Hopkins Hospital, we have to bill more than 700 different payers/insurers, such as HMOs, PPOs, Medicare and Medicaid,” he said. “Each one has its own set of rules regarding what services are covered, the level of reimbursement, and what kind of documentation and pre-approval is required. Nationally, this kind of inefficiency costs patients billions of dollars every year.”

I usually believe that the competition of private enterprise brings innovation and efficiency to an industry, what the heck happened here?

 

[Jones]

I usually believe that the competition of private enterprise brings innovation and efficiency to an industry, what the heck happened here?

Paging John Stossel....

 

[cheryl]

There is one health care reform issue that is already moving in the right direction: computerized databases.

In my opinion the revised system should serve physicians, nurses, other care givers, patients and their families and not just third party payers. It should empower patients by giving us access to our own medical and insurance records as well as a database of medical information so that we can educate ourselves about the treatments available and make well informed choices.

The first key new health care reform ingredient is the common provider number. All health care providers in America will soon have, by law, a single identification number that clearly identifies each individual provider for all payers and for all care. That new single ID requirement is a huge step forward for health care data use.

 

[cheryl]

Emory University professor of health Ken Thorpe's strategy focuses on preventive care and management of chronic diseases. I like his idea and the way it focuses on both education and the people that need the most help. This seems like such a simple way to cut costs that I'm surprised that insurance carriers aren't more proactive about preventive care and patient education.

Although Thorpe was a consultant to Bill and Hilary Clinton during the health care fiasco in 93-94 his new strategy appeals to both parties because Republicans "don't want to go to price controls or government regulation, so they understand prevention is the only way to get from here to there," a way to lower costs and improve coverage.

The following is taken from an op-ed piece written by David Brody in the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/01/AR2007060102176.html

It's essentially a flanking attack -- shifting the focus from the longtime arguments over financing mechanisms and coverage concerns to an assault on the real cost driver in the system: chronic diseases.

Government records show that 75 percent of health-care costs and seven out of every 10 deaths are attributable to chronic diseases such as asthma, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Obesity, which has doubled in 30 years, is by itself responsible for 30 percent of the increase in health-care costs during that period. In far too many cases, perhaps a majority, treatment of these diseases is intermittent and inconsistent. What is worse, little has been done to prevent them or arrest them in their early stages.

"Once you put those numbers on it, the policy implications are pretty clear," Thorpe said in an interview. "You start with prevention and better management of obesity and high blood pressure -- not the contentious issues that have dominated the debate."

 

[diesel96]

"Once you put those numbers on it, the policy implications are pretty clear," Thorpe said in an interview. "You start with prevention and better management of obesity and high blood pressure -- not the contentious issues that have dominated the debate."

Think of the Gov't as a personal trainer. Because if nobody pushes your buttons and advocates health standards across the board, Americans overall won't prevent and manage themselves from getting ill, which in turn creates massive healthcare costs burdened to the taxpayers.
Free market for example with no restrictions...will sell you the most unhealthest foods possible and glorify it with Comm. ads, meanwhile buying heathly food costs twice as much...go figure!

 

[retired]

Think of the Gov't as a personal trainer. Because if nobody pushes your buttons and advocates health standards across the board, Americans overall won't prevent and manage themselves from getting ill, which in turn creates massive healthcare costs burdened to the taxpayers.
Free market for example with no restrictions...will sell you the most unhealthest foods possible and glorify it with Comm. ads, meanwhile buying heathly food costs twice as much...go figure!

The govt is inefficient, and bloated, they would make a terrible personal trainer. Remember the reports of govt spending $100,000 for regular porcelian toilets?

 

[Overpaid Union Thug]

Here is an alternative to socialized health care...how about INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY?!?! A local radio talk show was on this topic yesterday and a guy that works in the insurance industry called in and said he had too many cases where potential customers said they "couldn't afford" a $150/month plan. When asked why not their responses varied but were equally pathetic. One guy had 5 vehicle payments. Another was paying for his two kids to have karate lessons. Another guy was living in a $300k house and was also payin for a BMW and his house was loaded with all the latest state of the art gadgets. And on the other end of the spectrum....a bunch of would be customers that came from a lower tax bracket had some equally disturbing responses. One was working a 25-30 hour/week job even though he had a wife and kid. Another couldn't afford the insurance because his unemployment checks weren't enough. Another guy didn't want to have to get a second job so he could afford the payments.

So, I don't think that I'm comming from way out in left field by saying that these guys mentioned above have their priorities a little mixed up. What's more imporant? Having a bunch of cars and gadgets or providing for one's health care needs? Or is being lazy a good excuse to not work more so that you can afford health insurance? There is no health care crisis in America. There is a priority crisis.

 

[Overpaid Union Thug]

Canada's system was mentioned earlier....