Health Care options

[DutchJazzer]

I hate health insurance.

the ammount of money is pent on that. cxomes nowhere near on what they had have to cover.

 

[babe]

I hate health insurance.

the ammount of money is pent on that. cxomes nowhere near on what they had have to cover.

C'mon. Insurance companies build really neat skyscrapers and pay fine wages, especially for management. I'm sure the poor, the sick, the maimed, and the disabled are proud of their contributions to the skyline. It ranks right up there in status with the wealthy patrons who give $50000 to the hospital and get a plaque with their names engraved placed on the hall of benefactors, who then get fifteen thousand dollars tax writeoff.

And you know, the way we do it now is one of the most regressive of all possible taxes. We use government power to mandate that hospitals give care to folks who can't pay, and then make other ill, sick, disabled, maimed or dying patients or their third-party payers pay for the uninsured. Drives up the cost of insurance so more folks can't afford it, drives up the cost of medical care, and just heaps it all on the common folks who are being driven to banckruptcy, which forces more foreclosures on homes, more deadbeat tenants, etc. driving the real estate values down and helping to put banks on the verge of failure so we can justify running the printing presses to bail the bankers out.

Now ask me again why I think government is the problem.

 

[One Brow]

babe,

How'd you vote?

 

[babe]

babe,

How'd you vote?

waiting for a revised list of options. . . . . probably like waiting for the system to be changed, too. My kids are insured in an attempt to safeguard my finances from risk, and are being told about the dangers of some state-mandated health plagues like the indiscriminate and always detrimental use of ritalin to secure compliance inside public schools. My kids get to dance, jiggle, squirm and change their activity as needed while being home-schooled. Jail is not good enough for 'professionals' who purvey "medicines" like ritalin.

So if we are going to use "government" money to pay for healthcare, like the government ever really did produce anything in the first place, how would that be different from just giving people having health problems a tax holiday until their estraodinary healthcare bills have been compensated for that way. Direct benefit to the hapless victims of the medical profession. . . . Would still raise medical costs because anytime you subsidize anything, the market demand will expand. . . . . in the case of the "medical market" it expands by increments due to people being less scared of the costs therefore less careful sometimes, and more willing to submit to the system quacks providing ineffective and even harmful medications from Big Pharma as well as village shamans and Aunt Bessie, and every other vain and foolish human attempt to throw a stick at Nature and mortality.

During FDR times we subsidized community hospitals by paying for the equipment doctors and hospitals needed at a fair amount of local sites. It was pretty effective and in retrospect not all that much of a burden on taxpayers, with some benefit to all citizens. Back in those days, churches like the Catholic Church and others, including the LDS Church, did their bit by sponsoring hospitals and giving free care to those who couldn't pay. Most of those hospitals have been taken over now, by corporates with shareholder value in their minds. Not charity.

So our government and it's regulatory establishment bureaucracy have driven charity out of society. Or re-directed it under some theory of management by policy, with the result of placing most of us in a position of dependence on the government-approved 'system' preferred by major lobbyist groups. A virtual hijack of our medical care by for-profit concerns.

National healthcare mandates coupled with the state family cop bureaucracies with the court-supported power to impose current medical "standard care" protocols on kids operate effectively to create a sort of state-sanctioned "medical regime" we have no choice but yield up ourselves and our kids to, even if we have beliefs that these things are not unqualified and unquestionable treatments. Any time you take a socialist path, you end up losing the personal control of your decisions in some vital area of your life. Socialism, whether we realize it as such or not, also breeds busy-bodies with ideals considered worthy of forceful imposition on those dolts who don't see the light the way you do. I prefer all the dangers and limitations of direct personal responsibility, over the dangers and limitations of "experts" who may not have their necks on block at the moment to provoke questions or doubts about their own thinking.

Under claims of doing what is right for all, government is essentially hijacked by one clique or another who have taken the supposed high ground in the battle to dictate to all the terms under which we must try to live. Those who presently lead those factions get to call themselves "experts" or "professionals" no matter how messed up they really are. Those who don't know better are, like alcoholics who won't admit their problems, "enabled" by government to bask in their illusions that all is right with the world, while like lemmings we all march into the hospitals that will kill us one way or another, sooner or later.




Nice job, government.

 

[DutchJazzer]

i just hope they take out the hypocritical oath.
unless they start to obey it.

 

[One Brow]

waiting for a revised list of options. . . . . probably like waiting for the system to be changed, too.

So if we are going to use "government" money to pay for healthcare, like the government ever really did produce anything in the first place, how would that be different from just giving people having health problems a tax holiday until their healthcare bills have been compensated for that way. Direct benefit to the hapless victims of the medical profession. . . . Would still raise medical costs because anytime you subsidize anything, the market demand will expand. . . . . in the case of the "medical market" its expands by increments due to people being less scared of the costs therefore less careful sometimes, and more willing to submit to the system quacks providing ineffective and even harmful medications from Big Pharma as well as village shamans and Aunt Bessie, and every other vain and foolish human attempt to throw a stick at Nature and mortality.

During FDR times we subsidized community hospitals by paying for the equipment doctors and hospitals needed at a fair amount of local sites. It was pretty effective and in retrospect not all that much of a burden on taxpayers, with some benefit to all citizens. Back in those days, churches like the Catholic Church and others, including the LDS Church, did their bit by sponsoring hospitals and giving free care to those who couldn't pay. Most of those hospitals have been taken over now, by corporates with shareholder value in their minds. Not charity.

So our government and it's regulatory establishment bureaucracy have driven charity out of society.

Nice job, government.

If you have any options that are truly different, I'll add them. A "tax holiday" seems very much like using tax monies, except the hospital has no guaranteee that the cost will be covered by the re-directed taxes, so it still has to do some cost-shifting. However, I'm open to a discussion that it is a genuinely different idea.

Part of my reason for having the pool was to point out that there are no really good options here. For people opposing mandatory health insurance, I'm asking them to examine the alternatives. I'll be happy to revfise the poll if I get some.

Hospitals that didn't go corporate went broke or got pushed aside, as the costs of medcine climbed, for reasons that have little to do with government.

 

[babe]

If you have any options that are truly different, I'll add them. A "tax holiday" seems very much like using tax monies, except the hospital has no guaranteee that the cost will be covered by the re-directed taxes, so it still has to do some cost-shifting. However, I'm open to a discussion that it is a genuinely different idea.

Part of my reason for having the pool was to point out that there are no really good options here. For people opposing mandatory health insurance, I'm asking them to examine the alternatives. I'll be happy to revfise the poll if I get some.

Hospitals that didn't go corporate went broke or got pushed aside, as the costs of medcine climbed, for reasons that have little to do with government.

I worked on a reply to this a few days ago, but I guess I must've looked out at the weather and just decided I'd better get on the road sooner than later and just dumped it.

My "tax holiday" euphoric thought was possibly somewhat like our current medical deductions on the itemized forms, except I've always groused at having to run up some really big bills before it could possibly ever be a good choice to itemize. I have never itemized, even with some big home mortgage interest I could put in.

For folks who never pay any taxes, a "tax holiday" is meaningless. . . . 47% out of the game right there. And almost all of the uninsured kids your poll addresses. For folks who have good jobs with insurance coverage, like me, it would also be meaningless. So it's for the self-employed who do make enough money to pay taxes, and who also have to pay a significant part of the costs of the uninsured, the illegals the government forces the corporate hospital emergency rooms to treat for ordinary complaints. . . .or worse. Well, actually anyone who works for any company that pays for health insurance is seeing their salary negotiating position affected by the cost of their health insurance.

I'd just like truly catastrophic illnesses/injuries not be the reason for bankruptcy. . . . meaning since in that case the hospitals don't get paid, the 53% have to pay not only higher medical costs for themselves but higher interest rates on mortgages to bail out the bank's losses, and higher taxes for the welfare benefits etc etc etc. So give them a low-interest loan with ten years' taxes due taken as payoff on the loan. Give others who contribute a dollar-matching tax benefit. Maybe they'll have hope and keep trying. I've carried tenants who had overwhelming medical problems before for while, until I couldn't justify it because they were just doped out on pain meds and robbing the neighborhood pharmacy for clearly destructive levels of abuse. I've also seen LDS bishops carry tenants for years in questionable circumstances, until it became quite clearly a no-win and in fact self-destructive and fraudulent abuse thing. People die inside when they can't see the reason to get up and go back to work when they can. If you're going to create perpetual dependence, you'd be more humane to just line them up on a firing line and order "shoot".

I like co-ops and credit unions. . . . great concept of participant ownership, collective market power, direct benefits to participants. I like that better than corporations defined by shareholder interests and cartel tactics. Let's do a health co-op. We'll hire all kinds of health practitioners, by group contract, including homeopathists, allopathists, chiropractors, even health-maintenance groups who do heavy preventative counseling. We'll use a baseline concept like the medical savings accounts to incentivize participants to cut down on the nickel & dime non-serious stuff, and pay a reasonable insurance rate for the catastropic type of thing. We'll ask those who can to further contribute to a charity aimed at saving the lives of kids whose parents are not insured, and ask our competent providers to match our contribution when they care for kids our charity is going to help.

I really like seeing some kid's pic nailed to all the lightpoles telling about the bank where you can contribute to help pay for the needed care. And hearing the good news about all the people who helped.


I like seeing extended families pitching in to help family members in times of catastrophic need. I like seeing doctors give a kid a cut rate---that happens more than you'd probably imagine, and the private charities that pitch in on numerous types of cases.

In the case of catastrophic medical needs, such as saving a kid's life, there is a huge payback that comes from saving the kid's life when he grows up and becomes productive. Keeping people directly involved in the whole operation is much healthier for us as a nation than just letting the government directly pay for it all. Giving people incentive to care about the kids,particularly kids they know, has untold paybacks. Maybe we shouldn't "match dollar for dollar" contributions vs. taxes owed, exactly, but we should recognize the value of it and encourage/incentivize it enough to get it to happen in the first place, rather than just pay for it from the "government".

 

[One Brow]

For folks who never pay any taxes, a "tax holiday" is meaningless. . . . 47% out of the game right there.

There are other sorts of taxes besides federal income taxes that a tax holiday could be paid out of, or diverted from. It's not like 47% of the country pays no taxes at all.

At any rate, much of that 47% will already be insured by Medicaid, CHIP, or a similar program.

... who also have to pay a significant part of the costs of the uninsured, the illegals the government forces the corporate hospital emergency rooms to treat for ordinary complaints. . . .or worse.

Again, many of these people are paid for by government programs already. I work for a FQHC and an associated community hospital, and we have programs for migrant workers, homeless, verterans, etc. in addition to taking Medicaid.

So give them a low-interest loan with ten years' taxes due taken as payoff on the loan.

Again, many of these people are paid for by government programs already. I work for a FQHC and an associated community hospital, and we have programs for migrant workers, homeless, verterans, etc. in addition to taking Medicaid.

The concept of the health co-op is interesting, but if you force the parent into one, that's not much different from having them buyy insurance, is it? If the co-op is large enough, it's basically a mutual health insurance company.

I'mnot opposwed to donations, but not every kid will receive them. What happens when the donations fail?

 

[babe]

I'd almost enroll you on my approved health-care provider for just having the guts it takes to work with any community hospital or "FQHC" whatever that is. If I remember correctly you have some high-needs kids you're probably putting a lot out to care for. That cinches you for my list.

But it's almost maddening to try to talk to you about people. I would never force people to participate in a "private co-op", let alone a public or government one. And I totally lost you on ideas about how to get people to stop being dependent on the government. It's like you've never seen any other game in town.

One of my first memores of the LDS church was my fourth birthday when my mother celebrated by taking me to LDS Primary. She gave me four pennies. That was long enough ago that four pennies was real money that could be directly equated with a vast amount of candy at the corner grocery one block from my house. In fact, another of my early memories was sneaking into that store and stealing a penny sort of "sweet tart straw" with maybe four tiny sweet tarts' worth of tangy flavored sugar inside. I ran out the door and across the street and stood there in broad daylight enjoying my stolen treat. The man came out and across the street and confronted me about what I had done, but I dissed him by a stout denial of the deed, and watched his amazed face just crumble in disgust, disbelief, and dismay. Little kids in Mormonland are thought to be innocent. Ha ha. But anyway, back to Primary. I was called up to the front, "the stand" and introduced as now being Four Years Old. I put my four pennies in a jar labeled "Primary Children's Pennies" and was asked to help hold a big picture of Primary Children's Hospital up in front of everybody. I felt like a Very Significant Benefactor. I was so honored that when I was told I could go to my class, I thought that meant I could go right to the classroom and didn't have to sit through the torture of opening exercises with the other kids. It was always my idea of glory to be able to just leave torture chambers when I pleased. So I just took off, headed for the furthermost classroom in the chapel like a gazelle. Boy was I pissed when the teacher came running after me and hauled me back to help sing "I Am a Child of God".

But at any rate, in my estimation, people don't need a government to manage anything. Not even a military. People will find some purely virtuous way of taking care of themselves if they have to. At least Mormons will. At least old-time Mormons who were a sort of volunteer society of free socialists who believed in God, and took care of themselves and one another. Brigham Young, speaking about how everybody was saying Mormons grew horns, had cloven feet and pointed tails and carried trident pitchforks and were all going to Hell, used to say "Well, if we do all go to Hell, we're going to run the devil out, irrigate the place, and grow our own food and cotton, and turn it into something even better than Heaven."

I don't like "Government" or any other cartel I can't opt out of when I see it's not being run right. Not even a Church cartel claiming absolute jurisdiction. I can do better than anybody's done yet, because fisrt of all I have the benefit of everybody else's mistakes to scrutinize, and I have access to even more understanding, technology and in fact everything that's been invented yet. Why can't people just do better, now better than yesterday, tomorrow better than today.

People talking like hopeless victims of life and circumstances just need a kick in the pants and a few really stinging insults. Well, maybe just the obvious fact that they need to. And the power to do what they need to do. I think the word for that is" Freedom", not "Government".

 

[One Brow]

I'd almost enroll you on my approved health-care provider for just having the guts it takes to work with any community hospital or "FQHC" whatever that is. If I remember correctly you have some high-needs kids you're probably putting a lot out to care for. That cinches you for my list.

But it's almost maddening to try to talk to you about people. I would never force people to participate in a "private co-op", let alone a public or government one. And I totally lost you on ideas about how to get people to stop being dependent on the government. It's like you've never seen any other game in town.

Thank you for the kind words, but my kids are largely self-sufficient. There are many that had it worse.

I'm just trying to ask about what should be done in this particular situation. You can talk about making people not depend upon government, but some people will make foolish choices and/or take calculated risks, and those choices/risks will occasionally backfire. When that happens, what's the option? In this case, as far as I can tell, either the hospital passes the cost of care onto people not volunterring for it, the child is refused treatment, or the government prevents it by stepping in (either before or after the situation arises). All of your options have proposed some combination of government action and passing on the cost of care.

I never thought this was supposed to be an easy choice. My vote was for requiring health insurance, but I could see any choice except the first being thought of as the correct choice. What I don't see as correct is making long position statements that disavow the choices ather than address them, especially when the distilled version amount to one of those choices anyhow.

 

[babe]

Thank you for the kind words, but my kids are largely self-sufficient. There are many that had it worse.

I'm just trying to ask about what should be done in this particular situation. You can talk about making people not depend upon government, but some people will make foolish choices and/or take calculated risks, and those choices/risks will occasionally backfire. When that happens, what's the option? In this case, as far as I can tell, either the hospital passes the cost of care onto people not volunterring for it, the child is refused treatment, or the government prevents it by stepping in (either before or after the situation arises). All of your options have proposed some combination of government action and passing on the cost of care.

I never thought this was supposed to be an easy choice. My vote was for requiring health insurance, but I could see any choice except the first being thought of as the correct choice. What I don't see as correct is making long position statements that disavow the choices ather than address them, especially when the distilled version amount to one of those choices anyhow.

Yet again, it is a question of how we define "government" inside our skulls. Your definition is "we", my definition is "they". We are dealing with illusions of dependence on somebody else, or somehow doing it ourselves. I don't include the cartel lobbyists at the negotiating table, you do. I don't include bought out phony representatives who lie compulsively to the ignorant smucks who just let them do whatever they want at that table either.

I don't mind having people I know in an attitude of trying to help one another out at that table. I don't mind some actually working program supported by the caring Americans being administered by public servants, perhaps, either. There are a lot things "we" could do better.

I want to dump the idea that "they" ought to take care of us, or "they" should solve our problem. I don't think our government is a "we" proposition anymore. It has been taken over by people with the concept of managing a herd the way they know best.

 

[One Brow]

Yet again, it is a question of how we define "government" inside our skulls. Your definition is "we", my definition is "they".

All government exists by the consent of the governed (although this consent can exist by intimidation or trickery).

I don't think our government is a "we" proposition anymore. It has been taken over by people with the concept of managing a herd the way they know best.

All government are composed of such people, and always have been.

I notice you still didn't make a choice on the original question.