Is the Public Option the Answer to Healthcare Reform?

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Without a Public Option, this whole episode will just be an expensive lobbying campaign by the Health Care Industry to cement their monopolies and guarantee the their runaway costs will continue.
Without a Public Option, there will be no health care reform - just what the health care industry is paying for in their campaign of manufactured dissent, with their rent-a-mobs being shuttled by bus to disrupt from one town hall meeting to the next. DC lobbyists are bragging about how they are killing civil discussion - and calling it democracy in action.
Its all part of Pete Session's Republican Taliban strategy of intimidating and terrorizing by tantrum with no intention of ever debating issues.
Its all more Swift Boating the 70% of Americans who want health care reform.
Its all pretty disgusting and demonstrates the conservative sleaze at its worst.

PJ of TN 12:24AM August 06, 2009

So Linda you want to live in a dictatorsip? If we outlaw tabacco let's outlaw alcohol as well!

sheri of IN 3:22PM July 31, 2009

"It has twice the cost, & half the public health outcome of the systems in other industrial nations."
That sentence right there shows you have no idea what you are talking about. You sir are indeed an idiot. Please don't cite infant mortality rates as most liberals are prone to throw at you. If you knew anything at all about health care, you would know that number is not accurate due to vastly different definitions from country to country.
If you want to really assess the effectiveness of a nations health care system, you need to check the mortality rates for cardiovascular disease and cancer. You will find Americans enjoy higher survivability in almost every category of disease. I doubt you have the mental capacity for such detailed analysis so let's just put that aside.
Instead, give one good example of government efficiency. Which government entitlement has actually saved the country money and contained costs?
Still searching? The answer is none. Every government entitlement such as Medicare and Medicaid have actually cost taxpayers orders of magnitude more money than estimated or promised.
Insurance companies are not gatekeepers. Insurance is a contract for specified services. If you want more health care including expensive medicines and procedures, you pay more. If you want less coverage, you pay less.
The only effective gatekeeper will be the actual consumer.

Dan of TX 10:26AM July 30, 2009

As Dr. Dan of TX bad-mouths my ignorance & naiveté, he misses some significant points. First, a 20% co-pay for Medicare is a serious incentive for patients to control costs unless they have a private policy to cover the co-pay.
In his example of the demented, incontinent 90-year old, he begs the question of who should make the life-or-death decision. He recommends the family make it, but absent their decision is he willing to make it himself? Should a Federal bureaucrat make that decision? That is one of the fears fostered today by proponents of the status quo.
With a private policy, that decision today is most likely made by an insurance company bureaucrat, or a provider that refuses to continue service. Does Dr. Dan have the courage to stand up to a grieving family & tell them he won’t do what they ask? The government is a handy scapegoat for his angry inability to resolve this personal dilemma.
The Medicare trust fund today still has a positive balance, though the actual money, by law, was lent to the government, which used it for other expenditures in lieu of taxing us enough to pay its current operating expenses.
The declining trust fund is not an insurmountable problem. If an insurance program were established without the corporate welfare extant in private insurance, the overall cost would certainly be less if that wasted 11 cents on the dollar were actually used to pay doctor bills.
Private pay patients without insurance are the ones who really subsidize the medical establishment’s losses. The only people who have to pay full price are those too rich for Medicaid, too young for Medicare, too poor to buy private insurance to “negotiate,” discounts for them, & not lucky enough to have insurance provided by their employer. They are the folks going bankrupt from medical expenses, along with a lot of others who rewach the limits of their expensive private insurance.
Private insurers may well be “better gate keepers than the government” since their life-or-death decisions are dispassionately based on their bottom line. But 11 cents on the dollar is a lot to pay them for a service Dr. Dan lacks the courage to provide, for a decision many families are reluctant to take in the emotion of the moment.
I don’t have the solution to these problems, but I know the present system is economically unsustainable. It has twice the cost, & half the public health outcome of the systems in other industrial nations. Dr. Dan’s final solution only exacerbates the economic waste inherent in the private insurance market.

Roy of WA 12:49AM July 30, 2009

21 july 2009
Memo: national health care plan
Requiring health insurance will put small businesses out of business.
Outlaw tobacco will save lives
Fine people who are more than 30 pounds overweight
Require that there be baked goods available for sale made with
Honey instead of sugar
Outlaw transfats where they do not naturally occur: ie pork can be
Sold because it naturally contains transfats, but hash browns cooked
In bacon grease may not be sold.
Limit salt in processed foods.
Regulate salt and fat in school lunches and soup kitchens
Extend school day so children must get ½ hour of exercise each school day.
Nationwide rule that sausage gravy may only be served in restaurants
On saturdays.
Restaurants must include fruit or vegetable in each “dinner”
Ie one cannot have fried chicken with French fries and onion rings,
One must have a salad or vegetable or fruit.
Corn is not a vegetable.
Stop making women feel that they must be a size 4.
Schools must have field trips that involve hiking or snowshoeing.
Outlaw air freshener as it makes asthmatics sick and therefore
Unable to exercise.
Give a 25 dollar tax credit for a bunch of things such as
Being no more than 30 pounds overweight.
Being able to walk a mile in 30 minutes or less
Being able to do a set of exercises such as touching ones toes and
Situps.
One’s cholesterol and blood pressure are within healthy ranges.
Commute via walking/biking/using a bus
Participating in something like the race to robie creek

linda marie hilton of ID 9:02PM July 29, 2009

"The Council For Affordable Health Insurance, an industry "educational" arm, studied this question and on January 10, 2006, they reported that Medicare pays 95 cents of your doctor bill for every tax dollar, while your insurance company premium dollar only pays 84 cents. The 11 cent difference is administrative costs, advertising, sales commissions, stockholder profits, & high executive salaries; costs the government doesn't have; costs that provide no health care to the insured; "
If you think this is the problem, you are ignorant and naive. Medicare is the problem. It is an entitlement that gives users no incentive whatsoever to control the utilization of services. People want everything done for their family member when someone else is paying for it.
As a doctor working in a hospital-based specialty, I see the most absurd procedures done to patients on a daily basis. As an example, how about a 90 year old person who is so demented they just lie in bed all day in their own stool, with restraints on because they are combative. I get consulted to put a dialysis catheter in so they can receive dialysis - the only thing keeping them alive at this point. I try and talk the family out of doing the procedure but of course, they want "everything done." Why? Because someone else is paying for it. That kind of care is nice in theory but this country cannot afford it.
When Medicare was formed in 1965, seven people paid for each Medicare recipient. Now three taxpayers pay for each person on Medicare. Soon it will be two taxpayers per patient. Escalating costs has led the government to reduce reimbursements to physicians which is why now in Texas, nearly 2/3 of physicians no longer accept Medicare or Medicaid. If you reimbursed hospitals at Medicare rates, most hospitals would go bankrupt.
This is the main reason private insurance costs are going up so much. In order for hospitals to stay open, they have to shift the costs onto the private pay patients.
The only solution is to scrap Medicare completely and offer a bare-bones government plan that does not cover "everything". The rest of coverage needs to be privatized. Insurance companies are much better gate keepers than the government. After all, insurance is a contract for specified services. You get what you pay for. If you want everything covered, you pay for it.

Dan of TX 6:57PM July 29, 2009

"When has the government ever run anything efficiently & at less cost than private enterprise?" So asks Joel of PA.
I'll tell you where, & the insurance industry itself said this, not me. It is Medicare vs. the private sector.
The Council For Affordable Health Insurance, an industry "educational" arm, studied this question and on January 10, 2006, they reported that Medicare pays 95 cents of your doctor bill for every tax dollar, while your insurance company premium dollar only pays 84 cents. The 11 cent difference is administrative costs, advertising, sales commissions, stockholder profits, & high executive salaries; costs the government doesn't have; costs that provide no health care to the insured; costs that amount to corporate welfare..
Health insurance is a pass-through. We give someone else money to pay our doctor bills, & they charge us for the service. Anything they charge that doesn't pay for our health care is economic waste for us. Our government charges a nickel on the dollar, our insurance company, 16 cents.
The insurance industry is so deathly afraid of this more efficient public option that they're spending millions of your premium dollars to defeat it; dollars you spent for your health care, but which aren't paying your doctor bills.
How many of the uninsured could we cover if this 11 cents on the dollar went to pay doctor bills, instead of corporate welfare?

Roy of WA 5:55PM July 29, 2009

A majority of American citizens are happy with their health insurance plans and don't want the
government to interfere with them.They are well
aware of Canada's government run health care and also Great Britain. Why in the world would we
want to have similar plans that don't provide any
where near the coverage and possibly less desirable plans in the future. If it's all about
less cost, how can that be when the plan is expected to cost billions for future citizens to pay? Get the govenment off our backs!!!

Richard Miller of TX 5:01PM July 29, 2009

Two thing to consider when thinking about the health care reform propsals;
1] not for us says congress and the Whitehouse
2] no tort reform say the lawyers i.e. congress
So how can this bill be good for anyone?

Fred Nover of NJ 3:01PM July 29, 2009

When has the government run anything efficiently and at less cost than private enterprise?
Our Senators and Congressmen don't care, because they have their own health plan that's far better than anything the "people" will have.

Joel of PA 1:16PM July 29, 2009