Buffalo Boy's Blog

Hey Mike I haven't checked in for some time now, mainly because your posts have become nonsensical liberal ramblings that would make a communist proud :-)

However, congratulations on your 1.5s of fame there on MSNBC. That was pretty cool to see you were the first person they showed in their mic sequence.

Thanks Rob! As far as healthcare, that is not nonsensical and that is what im going to posting a lot of over the coming months. Im a big believer in single payer. It is cheaper and the longer I work in the field, the more I see that is just total BS about our system and the more I see that a single payer system would make sense.

The government adds red tape to everything. Single payor government provided healthcare would bankrupt the country. It would cost most of us more in taxes than we put towards our employer-subsidized premiums.

I'm all for keeping the government out of healthcare, BUT... I think all Americans should be able to write off ALL of their health insurance costs on their taxes. This will make it somewhat easier on people to purchase insurance. Also, I think plans that offer catastrophic coverage must be made available to low income families at an affordable price.

The solution isn't to have the government run it. The solution is for the government to give the people the incentives to be proactive about it. Otherwise we are just continuing to hurt the middle class. They're the ones that get hurt by higher taxes to support the poor. Not the rich, they can afford it.

One area that has to be looked at is the declining lifestyle of the American public, leading to health problems, and a hypochondriac filled, overmedicated society. Much of the money we pay for insurance is due to drug costs.

Crap I have more to say... if the government runs healthcare, who decides now how much the doctors get paid? The government. Where's the incentive to be a great doctor? Now you'd be getting your degree and you're getting paid the same amount no matter what. Where would be the incentive to even become a doctor? Socialism doesn't work Mike. Anyone with any real money in foreign countries come to America to see the best doctors in the world. Canadians don't flock to America to pay out of pocket because their healthcare system is so good. They come here because maybe they'll get treated before they die of their condition.

Is our healthcare system perfect? Far from it. But you can't take the capital out of capitalism. The root of the problem needs to be solved, and that is to become a healthier society, so costs go down for everyone.

Who decides how much the doctors get paid now? The Insurance companies decide that, they also decide how much the patient pays and in most cases, if the insurance company doesn't want to pay, they don't and it leaves the patient with a huge bill or without care.
Canadians don't flock here because theiy have universal, single payer healthcare paid for by their government and a flat tax called the GST. They have priced out how much it would cost and single payer, universal healthcare would feature a system where 98 cents of every dollar spent on healthcare actually went to patient care, that is a far cry from where we are right now. Something like 50% of every dollar right now goes to actual patient care, the other 50% goes toward overhead...billing departments that have to know all of the different privately owned insurance companies and all the rules with them, how many visits a person is allowed with each of the private companies and filling out forms for each one. There is also the marketing end of it too which a huge amount of marketing costs goes into the private insurance industry, how much do you think Independent health spends on marketing every year? Wouldnt you rather have a system where there was little to no overhead?
Patients would pay 2%, employers would pay a flat 7% payroll tax to pay for single payer, both are less than what we pay now in premiums, co-pays and benefits. In Britain they pay nothing for medical visits and hospital coverage, when the go to the drug store they pay about $10, thats it, some don't have to pay anything depending upon income.
You are right, the drug companies do cost a lot of money in the system because look at all the friggin advertising they do in this country. Take this drug for that, take this to grow your pubic hair longer, this to shorten your eyelashes and rub this on your hands to grow your finger nails, its all too much capitalism in a something that should be a right to all people.
The bigger cost though is those without healthinsurance. There are 50 million people who skip the routine doctors visits because they can't afford to pay for the visit and go straight to the emergency room with no insurance and it costs the hospitals and doctors billions because ER costs a boat load.
Nursing home care is also a huge cost. Look at any single payer system in any other country and they do a lot more home based care where doctors will come to you, nurses will come to you and they provide home health aides if you need it for as long as you need it to care for your loved ones during the day so you can work, now we send them to a nurisng home who proceeds to charge insurance companies AND Medicare/medicaid $300+ a day. Keep those people home with home health aide and even if you need an aid for 12 hoursX$10 an hour its still only $120 a day, much less than what nursing homes charge...throw in a nursing visit, PT visit or two and a doctor visit every so often maybe the cost goes up to $200 per day on average, even so, much cheaper than the $300 per day a nursing home charges and on top of that $300 is PT, OT, Speech and the services they get in the nursing home, drugs they are given in the nursing home....anything that adds to the charge.

There is so much waste in the privatized, capitalized for profit system we have its pathetic, to think that a single payer system would not save money is short sighted. Why don't our politicians go to France, go to Britain, go to Canada, go to CUBA for fucks sake, see how they manage it and bring home those ideas and make our own single payer system. No one says we have to copy someone but when you have never had it, sometimes you have to bite the pride bullet and learn from someone who has it, does it well and is much cheaper. Our current system costs 50% more per capita than any other country. Explain that one?

Damn, I still have more to say, socialism doesnt work? No one is talking about socialism, we are talking about the health of our nation. Healthcare should be a right, like education is a right. You have a right in this country to a free and public education...that system works, sure education has its problems lately but look at what our last president did to it (No Child Left Behind is a disaster, primarily because it was never funded). Healthcare should be a right from the day you are born. Our police and fire protection....both socialized, those work well, again they have their issues, like the fact that they are unionized. they shouldn't be.
What makes a nation a strong nation? It should be healthy and educated. The role of the government to to work for the people, to insure that its people are healthy.
A system where no one worries about costs is a system that is no longer reactive, but proactive. a proactive system allows people to stay healthy longer than a reactive system because things will be caught eariler and treatment is much less expensive when things are caught early.
We would also get rid of the "pre-existing condition" clause that most companies have that is just total bullshit. We wont cover you because you had that before you enrolled with this insurance, single payer eliminates that worry for people.

Mike, many insurance plans in this country are run by not for profit organizations.

I actually like a lot of the ideas above, like home-based care, keeping people out of emergency rooms, etc. But I'm arguing against the method to get us there. People have to become healthier, society has to stop being hypochondriacs, drug companies have to stop advertising and convincing people they need new drugs that are worse for them than they can imagine.

Government healthcare isn't going to get us there. It will just mean the taxpayers absorb the higher and higher cost of medical care in the country. A fundamental change is needed in the health and well being of the people, and the insurance industry would take care of itself (with some new regulations that have to be made).

When you say patients would pay 2%.. what are you referencing? I've had two knee surgeries totaling 18000 for which I paid nothing but the original copay to see the ortho surgeon, $65 total. 2% would have cost me $360 + 2% of the office visit costs. Or are you talking 2% of your salary is taxed to fund this single-payor program. In which case why should John the Lawyer making 500K a year have to pay 10K a year for his insurance when Joe Dropout pays 400? That's called wealth re-distribution and that's bullshit.

Rob, as far as the taxes that is how it is now. If I am in a tax bracket that currently pays say 10% and that bracket goes from 30K per year to 60K per year, the guy who makes 60K pays more based on that 10% than the guy making 30K at the bottom of the bracket, how is that any different? its a percentage of income, its a flat percentage. Besides do you really expect somoene who makes 30K per year to match the money paid out by someone making 500K regardless? That is bullshit.
"fundamental change is needed in the health and well being of the people, and the insurance industry would take care of itself " Yeah like they have done so far. They are raping us. Healthsurance executives are giving themselves 30-50% raises, raising premiums 20-30% on people. The health insurance industry is just as crooked as Wallstreet.
The only way is to leave them out and have a government administered single payer, it eliminated the middle man and all the overhead cost that are currently associated with our medical system.
Did you know we currently pay for Iraq and Afghanistan to have universal healthcare? We do.

I dont expect the guy making 20K a year to pay what the guy making 500K a year pays, but I don't think it's fair to all of the sudden add another tax to the lawyer guy and make him pay more for insurance than he currently does. That's just another tax and another subsidy.

And you can't take half of a quote and attack that sentence. I did mention that new regulations are needed on the insurance industry. Premium increases need to be capped for starters. And yes, the entire system gets cheaper for everyone if we have a healthier society. There will be fewer claims to pay and the cost to provide drugs would decrease. With proper regulation and open books on top of that, it would be mandated that the customer expense goes down as well.

As far as government administered single payor eliminating overhead, you're out of your mind. The government specializes in creating overhead where it's not needed. And I don't give two and a half cents what the government is paying to give Iraq and Afghan. universal healthcare, they shouldn't be doing that on our dime either.

Look, I want everyone to have healthcare, at a minimum a provision for preventative care and catastrophic coverage. The government is not the answer. We'll end up paying more in the long run that's how government operates.