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Blogcritics Comments on The Truth About National Health Care
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• Comment by Mike Kole on The Truth About National Health Care
  So how come the private hospitals don't look like Walter Reed? After all, the profit motive is their M.O. What it really illustrates is that private business working with the Federal Government is a bad marriage. The Federal Government proves itself repeatedly and reliably as a poor instector of the services it is paying for. The private hospitals on the other hand, are excellent watchdogs.
• Comment by Barbarabow on The Truth About National Health Care
  Excuse me, but the Walter Reed scandal is yet anonther example of Bush Administration war profiteering-privatization. IAP Worldwide Services, a company run by two former Halliburton executives, received a large contract to run Walter Reed. The Senate investigation indicates the privatization bid was rigged to show false cost savings. Walter Reed is actually another perfect example of the corrupting influence of the profit motive in hellth care.
• Comment by Maurice on The Truth About National Health Care
  Charles, well written and well presented. Your Ronald Reagan quote make me think of the current media blitz about the horrible conditions at Walter Reed. Walter Reed is a perfect example of government run hellth care.
• Comment by Barbarabow on The Truth About National Health Care
  Another savings that that hasn't been mentioned is the reduction in car insurance rates that would occur if auto insurance didn't have to cover health care.
• Comment by STM on The Truth About National Health Care
  Too right ... they'd be too busy trying to stay alive. The only real fraud committed here under Medicare has been comitted by providers claiming too much - a doctor bulk billing way over the odds, for instance. When you added it up, he'd have had to have been seeing a patient every two minutes to get back what he was claiming from the government. However, even those things are few and far between. America, truth is you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying this. Let go of the fear. This is really the sort of service that governments SHOULD be providing. They are there for us, remember, the taxpayer - not for themselves.
• Comment by Clavos on The Truth About National Health Care
  fraud, which is extensively inflicted on the insurance systems by both patients and providers. As someone with family medical bills of over $100K per year ($60K in meds alone), I can tell you that few patients can even understand the paperwork that comes with either Medicare or private insurance, let alone commit fraud. On the contrary, we find that the $10/hr provider insurance clerks make numerous mistakes, usually in favor of the provider. Patient fraud occurs with phony accidents, slip-and-falls, etc. Shooting the lawyers would take care of that, and also have the added benefit of getting rid of the majority of Congress and the state houses. The average cancer patient isn't likely to be committing fraud.
• Comment by Clavos on The Truth About National Health Care
  Malpractice is a small cost Gastros in Florida pay $100-150K/yr in premiums. Hardly a "small cost." Maybe we should take Will's advice...
• Comment by STM on The Truth About National Health Care
  But this is the best medicine of all. A little visit to Dr Pacific every day is guaranteed to keep the blues away. All free too under the universal Aussie taxpayer enjoyment system. Not bad for a convict colony. A criminal record is no longer required, but probably helps - especially if you're dealing with the current government because you know what they say about honour among thieves. But you can't come here without a visa, Yanks, so don't get any ideas ...
• Comment by Methuselah on The Truth About National Health Care
  Hypothetical? Analogy? wasted effort. Malpractice is a small cost (which could be greatly reduced by disciplining the 10% of doctors who incur 50% of the costs, if the AMA were willing) compared to fraud, which is extensively inflicted on the insurance systems by both patients and providers.
• Comment by STM on The Truth About National Health Care
  Clav: this looks very similar to the system we have here. The best part about the single-payer system is that it actually works. Nothing's perfect, but it's a good system and as a general rule, it means no one falls through the cracks. Combining it it with optional add-on private health cover and tax credits is what makes it popular among voters who are inclined to vote on the conservative side of politics. It means everyone's happy, which isn't easy to accomplish these days.
• Comment by Clavos on The Truth About National Health Care
  My brother-in-law is a gastroenterologist of some 40 years experience, practicing in Florida. He makes a LOT of money in his private practice, plus several endoscopy centers he and his partners operate in several towns in his area. He's an independent voter, with libertarian ideas, for the most part. He believes the only rational solution to our broken health care system is a single payer system. For those who are interested, he introduced me to this proposal, which was put together by a group called Physicians For A National Health Plan.
• Comment by STM on The Truth About National Health Care
  Charles wrote: "If given the choice, I am certain the majority of Americans would prefer to be in control of their own Health Care." Well, yes, you would say that wouldn't you. But here's the rub: Australia has universal free health care that is so popular even among conservative voters, it has become the third rail of Australian politics and any government attempting to dismantle it will be committing suicide. The reason: having a good national health care system is all about how you do it. If it's done in combination with adjunct private health insurance, and levied on a sliding scale that is manageable for everyone, it actually works and creates jobs. Therefore, Americans like Charles, who I assume has never experienced such a thing, is probably not qualified to make the kind of moral-value judgments he's making in regard to this. Fact is, high-quality health care should be a right, not a luxury for a few - and it's possible for it to happen under a national-health-style system without it burning huge holes in taxpayers' pockets OR creating a massive bureacracy. It also doesn't have to have the negative connotations sometimes associated with Canadian and British national health systems. I am not going to run through the whole argument again on these threads as we've been here before. Just remember: like your mum told you, how do you know you don't like it if you've never tried it. Charles, when you've had a decent system of this kind for a few years and you still don't like it, come back and argue. I suspect you probably wouldn't. But until then, and with all due respect, I'll just suspect that you're spouting a whole lot of ill-informed right-wing claptrap and have an axe to grind.
• Comment by Doug Hunter on The Truth About National Health Care
  That's certainly not to say I'm totally against some measure of universal coverage, just pointing out the silliness of the 2% study. I actually think the idea may have some merit and here's another useless analogy to demonstrate why. Imagine if car dealerships were run like hospitals. The commisioned salesperson/doctor work nearly identically in that they both get paid based on how much healthcare/car they sale you. The only difference is that now you pay the same monthly payment regardless of which vehicle you and the salemen agree on. The salesmen has no reason to talk you out of getting all the options and you want the best vehicle you can possibly get. The free market is broken, and predictably the required monthly car payment would skyrocket as everyone passed over economy cars for hummers and jags. Under a government run system everyone will be issued a pinto regardless of circumstance and if you need a Lexus you can fly to Japan and pay for it your damn self or get on the waiting list at # 387 (I hear we've got funding for 17 imports this year).