BF2S Forums Healthcare support goes under 50%

PureFodder wrote:

FEOS wrote:

PureFodder wrote:

Medicare/medicaid is going to do that at the current rate. The problem with the rest of the system is that is will cripple the rest of the economy by making every employer fork out a vast amount of their profit margins on health insurance of their employees. This has obvious impacts in reduced spending in other sectors and will reduce the ability of US companies to compete with foreign goods and services who have much more managable healthcare costs through taxes.

That doesn't address the problem of costs. All it does is transfer the costs to the government instead of private industry. Which transfers the cost to taxpayers instead of consumers--which are not necessarily one and the same. Which in turn transfers the costs from business expenses to government deficit additions.

It cuts out, for example, huge amounts of waste by running a single centralised admin as opposed to immense billing departments in every hospital to sort out the myriad of paperwork created by having thousands of different policies and companies that have to be understood and acted upon correctly by the hospital doctors and patients. One of many expenses in a private system that don't occur to any sensible extent in a socialised system.

And your argument ignores the fact that many doctors don't accept Medicare/Medicaid (a supposedly "simple" system by your estimation) because of the labyrinthine billing process and codes associated with it.

FEOS wrote:

PureFodder wrote:

FEOS wrote:

That doesn't address the problem of costs. All it does is transfer the costs to the government instead of private industry. Which transfers the cost to taxpayers instead of consumers--which are not necessarily one and the same. Which in turn transfers the costs from business expenses to government deficit additions.

It cuts out, for example, huge amounts of waste by running a single centralised admin as opposed to immense billing departments in every hospital to sort out the myriad of paperwork created by having thousands of different policies and companies that have to be understood and acted upon correctly by the hospital doctors and patients. One of many expenses in a private system that don't occur to any sensible extent in a socialised system.

And your argument ignores the fact that many doctors don't accept Medicare/Medicaid (a supposedly "simple" system by your estimation) because of the labyrinthine billing process and codes associated with it.

It is simpler in terms of bureaucracy as compared to the various bureaucracies used in the private sector.  If everyone was on government care, then only one bureaucracy would be dealt with, as opposed to having the same number of people under multiple bureaucracies with each separate company.  As mentioned earlier, this variety of bureaucracies is estimated to be somewhere around 30% of the cost of healthcare in America.

And the primary reason why many doctors don't accept Medicare/Medicaid is because of our government's slowness to respond to billing.  While this is a problem with bureaucracy, it seems odd that the government run systems in other countries don't have as much of a problem with this as ours does.  That would imply that this is a problem with our government rather than the implementation of government care itself.

So, perhaps there is merit in assuming that our government is simply too incompetent to run a socialized system.  That would be pretty embarassing, since so many other countries can do it effectively, but it wouldn't be surprising.

Harmor wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

So, perhaps there is merit in assuming that our government is simply too incompetent to run a socialized system.  That would be pretty embarassing, since so many other countries can do it effectively, but it wouldn't be surprising.

Which country should we model our healthcare system after?

France...   or maybe Japan.  Either one could work.

Turquoise wrote:

FEOS wrote:

PureFodder wrote:

It cuts out, for example, huge amounts of waste by running a single centralised admin as opposed to immense billing departments in every hospital to sort out the myriad of paperwork created by having thousands of different policies and companies that have to be understood and acted upon correctly by the hospital doctors and patients. One of many expenses in a private system that don't occur to any sensible extent in a socialised system.

And your argument ignores the fact that many doctors don't accept Medicare/Medicaid (a supposedly "simple" system by your estimation) because of the labyrinthine billing process and codes associated with it.

It is simpler in terms of bureaucracy as compared to the various bureaucracies used in the private sector.  If everyone was on government care, then only one bureaucracy would be dealt with, as opposed to having the same number of people under multiple bureaucracies with each separate company.  As mentioned earlier, this variety of bureaucracies is estimated to be somewhere around 30% of the cost of healthcare in America.

And the primary reason why many doctors don't accept Medicare/Medicaid is because of our government's slowness to respond to billing.  While this is a problem with bureaucracy, it seems odd that the government run systems in other countries don't have as much of a problem with this as ours does.  That would imply that this is a problem with our government rather than the implementation of government care itself.

So, perhaps there is merit in assuming that our government is simply too incompetent to run a socialized system.  That would be pretty embarassing, since so many other countries can do it effectively, but it wouldn't be surprising.

If that were true, then the doctors in question would be leaving private insurers for government insurers...but they're doing the exact opposite. In comparison to private insurers, the government's paperwork requirements are far more complicated (see Cash for Clunkers).

States institute the paperwork requirements via their Insurance Commissions...therefore, there is consistency when it comes to private insurers within a state. And that is still consistently simpler than government-run programs...both state (Medicaid) and federal (Medicare). Factor in the much lower rates of payment and speed of payment of government to private insurance...and the providers lose out both ways when they deal with government-run programs.

PureFodder wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

It is simpler in terms of bureaucracy as compared to the various bureaucracies used in the private sector.  If everyone was on government care, then only one bureaucracy would be dealt with, as opposed to having the same number of people under multiple bureaucracies with each separate company.  As mentioned earlier, this variety of bureaucracies is estimated to be somewhere around 30% of the cost of healthcare in America.

And the primary reason why many doctors don't accept Medicare/Medicaid is because of our government's slowness to respond to billing.  While this is a problem with bureaucracy, it seems odd that the government run systems in other countries don't have as much of a problem with this as ours does.  That would imply that this is a problem with our government rather than the implementation of government care itself.

So, perhaps there is merit in assuming that our government is simply too incompetent to run a socialized system.  That would be pretty embarassing, since so many other countries can do it effectively, but it wouldn't be surprising.

If that were true, then the doctors in question would be leaving private insurers for government insurers...but they're doing the exact opposite. In comparison to private insurers, the government's paperwork requirements are far more complicated (see Cash for Clunkers).

States institute the paperwork requirements via their Insurance Commissions...therefore, there is consistency when it comes to private insurers within a state. And that is still consistently simpler than government-run programs...both state (Medicaid) and federal (Medicare). Factor in the much lower rates of payment and speed of payment of government to private insurance...and the providers lose out both ways when they deal with government-run programs.

And yet the per capita costs of admin in the US system are around 60-70% of the per capita costs of the entire medical systems of most rich western countries. Obviously government run healthcare does run more efficient admin in every rich country where it's been tried, the only thing stopping it working in the US is some unique incompitency of Americans, which I don't believe exists.

Whether you believe it or not is utterly irrelevant. There is nothing our government does that is more efficient than the private sector. One could opine that our founders fashioned it that way to prevent the government from being too heavily involved in our lives.

Turquoise wrote:

FEOS wrote:

PureFodder wrote:

And yet the per capita costs of admin in the US system are around 60-70% of the per capita costs of the entire medical systems of most rich western countries. Obviously government run healthcare does run more efficient admin in every rich country where it's been tried, the only thing stopping it working in the US is some unique incompitency of Americans, which I don't believe exists.

Whether you believe it or not is utterly irrelevant. There is nothing our government does that is more efficient than the private sector. One could opine that our founders fashioned it that way to prevent the government from being too heavily involved in our lives.

You've still dodged the question though.  Why is it that so many other countries have more efficiently handled healthcare via government, yet somehow, we can't?

Our government is incompetent in those matters...and possibly by design. There are far too many restrictions on our bureaucracy to make it useful for anything that needs rapid response. Regardless of what PureFodder says, the litigious nature of our society and lack of backbone of our judiciary is what binds our hands as much as anything, slowing the response even further, incurring more costs, etc.

Turquoise wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

You've still dodged the question though.  Why is it that so many other countries have more efficiently handled healthcare via government, yet somehow, we can't?

Our government is incompetent in those matters...and possibly by design. There are far too many restrictions on our bureaucracy to make it useful for anything that needs rapid response. Regardless of what PureFodder says, the litigious nature of our society and lack of backbone of our judiciary is what binds our hands as much as anything, slowing the response even further, incurring more costs, etc.

If you're correct, that is truly sad.

Break out the hankies.

But seriously...think about the founders and what they were trying to accomplish with the framework they built. Minimizing federal government intervention in the average American's life.

FEOS wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Our government is incompetent in those matters...and possibly by design. There are far too many restrictions on our bureaucracy to make it useful for anything that needs rapid response. Regardless of what PureFodder says, the litigious nature of our society and lack of backbone of our judiciary is what binds our hands as much as anything, slowing the response even further, incurring more costs, etc.

If you're correct, that is truly sad.

Break out the hankies.

But seriously...think about the founders and what they were trying to accomplish with the framework they built. Minimizing federal government intervention in the average American's life.

They were idealists living in a very different world.  It's rather difficult to realistically apply much of their logic to the modern world.

Turquoise wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

If you're correct, that is truly sad.

Break out the hankies.

But seriously...think about the founders and what they were trying to accomplish with the framework they built. Minimizing federal government intervention in the average American's life.

They were idealists living in a very different world.  It's rather difficult to realistically apply much of their logic to the modern world.

No. It's not. Their framework is just as applicable today as it was then.

Turquoise wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

They were idealists living in a very different world.  It's rather difficult to realistically apply much of their logic to the modern world.

No. It's not. Their framework is just as applicable today as it was then.

Considering that multinational corporations didn't have near as much power over the world then as they do now, no...  it's not so applicable.  At least, not so much with regard to economic policy.

The Constitution isn't about economic policy. It is about law and governance.

FEOS wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

FEOS wrote:

No. It's not. Their framework is just as applicable today as it was then.

Considering that multinational corporations didn't have near as much power over the world then as they do now, no...  it's not so applicable.  At least, not so much with regard to economic policy.

The Constitution isn't about economic policy. It is about law and governance.

Then how can you suggest that the Founding Fathers would have been against government intervention in healthcare?  You implied that earlier, yet now you're saying what they wrote had nothing to do with economic policy.

By the way, I would agree that the Constitution isn't relevant to economic policy, but my suggestion was that, had the Founding Fathers lived in this age, they would have probably recognized the tyranny of corporations in addition to the tyranny of government.

http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/08 … al-Illness

Turquoise wrote:

Harmor wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

So, perhaps there is merit in assuming that our government is simply too incompetent to run a socialized system.  That would be pretty embarassing, since so many other countries can do it effectively, but it wouldn't be surprising.

Which country should we model our healthcare system after?

France...   or maybe Japan.  Either one could work.

O'rly http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/2009/08/ … drome.html

Seems France's healthcare sucks.  And we want this here?

Last edited by Harmor (2009-08-27 20:07:05)

Harmor wrote:

http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/08/26/2316210/VA-Mistakenly-Tells-Vets-They-Have-Fatal-Illness

Turquoise wrote:

Harmor wrote:

Which country should we model our healthcare system after?

France...   or maybe Japan.  Either one could work.

O'rly http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/2009/08/ … drome.html

Seems France's healthcare sucks.  And we want this here?

Investor's Business Daily is a joke.  We confirmed that earlier when they clearly didn't even know what socialized systems really are about.

You're going to have to do better than that.

For said confirmation: http://forums.bf2s.com/viewtopic.php?id=129140

Last edited by Turquoise (2009-08-27 20:12:42)