Is universal health care the answer?

[calin]

I work for a law firm whose main source of revenue comes from representing doctors and hospitals and insurance companies involved in malpractice suits. Without question, YES it would greatly reduce the cost of health care if there was some reform in this area.

And I agree with you that mandatory health insurance is not the best way, but rather reducing the costs of health care, which is what Senator Obama proposes.

[denys]

Universal health care is one of the answers. Trimming the fat of the current system is the other one.

[salvadore94]

the healt care is Way to expensive and the first thing you here is were is your insurance card it need over hauling and by the way natuto it is not free in England i am from there so much is taking out of your pay check each week

[claudius]

it ambulance chasers like john edwards who make health care so damn expense.Everybody suing for BS reasons, trying to make a quick buck, that's why its cost are so crazy.Universal health care would the worst thing to happen to us .Clinton and obama will still use their private doctors so it wont effect them at all,just the real Americans ,people like us

[beacher]

I do not see Canadians complaining.

[doran]

Yes, it would take the bloodsucking insurance companies and HMO's out of business, thus ensuring quality , universal, non profit driven health care.Liability reform is Bushit's scam to protect MD's, HMO and insurance companies in civil lawsuits for medical malpractice. Capping awards hurts victims of medical malpractice. Attacks on lawyers for plaintiffs is part of the scam. Although I agree that lawyer's fees should be capped lower than currently

[hjortur]

Yes, it would take the bloodsucking insurance companies and HMO's out of business, thus ensuring quality , universal, non profit driven health care.Liability reform is Bushit's scam to protect MD's, HMO and insurance companies in civil lawsuits for medical malpractice. Capping awards hurts victims of medical malpractice. Attacks on lawyers for plaintiffs is part of the scam. Although I agree that lawyer's fees should be capped lower than currently

Those are good ideas, but we still need some kind of universal solution that will insure everyone. The basic problem with free-market insurance is that private insurers have no reason to compete to cover the chronically ill. If you have a chronic condition, the company knows they're going to take a loss if they cover you. The only way to get you covered is if they have to take you as part of a group; if you're an individual, shopping for insurance on your own, you're screwed. That's why so many people rely on group policies through their employer.

For insurance to work properly, it needs a large payor base. Costs to the individual are lower the larger the payor base is, because the risk is being spread more evenly. The largest payor base is the universal one. Hence, universal healthcare.

[elkanah1]

Yes, it would take the bloodsucking insurance companies and HMO's out of business, thus ensuring quality , universal, non profit driven health care.Liability reform is Bushit's scam to protect MD's, HMO and insurance companies in civil lawsuits for medical malpractice. Capping awards hurts victims of medical malpractice. Attacks on lawyers for plaintiffs is part of the scam. Although I agree that lawyer's fees should be capped lower than currently

Those are good ideas, but we still need some kind of universal solution that will insure everyone. The basic problem with free-market insurance is that private insurers have no reason to compete to cover the chronically ill. If you have a chronic condition, the company knows they're going to take a loss if they cover you. The only way to get you covered is if they have to take you as part of a group; if you're an individual, shopping for insurance on your own, you're screwed. That's why so many people rely on group policies through their employer.

For insurance to work properly, it needs a large payor base. Costs to the individual are lower the larger the payor base is, because the risk is being spread more evenly. The largest payor base is the universal one. Hence, universal healthcare.

No UHC is not the answer because the problem lies with government and the handful of large insurers who CONTROL the marketplace.

Linda Peeno, MD testified that SHE had often denied treatment JUST to save the insurance company money http://www.thenationalcoalition.org/DrPeenotestimony.html

Furthermore:
"the vast majority of health insurance policies are through for-profit stock companies. They are in the process of “shedding lives” as some term it when “undesirable” customers are lost through various means, including raising premiums and co-pays and decreasing benefits (Britt, “Health insurers getting bigger cut of medical dollars,” 15 October 2004, investors.com). That same Investors Business Daily article from 2004 noted the example of Anthem, another insurance company. They said the top five executives (not just the CEO) received an average of an 817 percent increase in compensation between 2000 and 2003. The CEO, for example, had his compensation go from $2.5 million to $25 million during that time period. About $21 million of that was in stock payouts, the article noted.

A 2006 article, “U.S. Health Insurance: More Market Domination, More CEO Compensation”
(hcrenewal.blogspot.com) notes that in 56 percent of 294 metropolitan areas one insurer “controls more than half the business in health maintenance organization and preferred provider networks underwriting." In addition to having the most enrollees, they also are the biggest purchasers of health care and set the price and coverage terms. “’The results is double-digit premium increases from 2001 and 2004—peaking with a 13.9 percent jump in 2003—soaring well above inflation and wages increases.’" Where is all that money going? The article quotes a Wall Street Journal article looking at the compensation of the CEO of UnitedHealth Group. His salary and bonus is $8 million annually. He has benefits such as the use of a private jet. He has stock-option fortunes worth $1.6 billion."
--Save America, Save the World by Cassandra Nathan pp. 127-128

"Insurance Companies Robbing Patients
Robbing patients to pay CEOs leads to unprecedented medical insurance corporation greed.
Thursday, January 3, 2008 8:52 AM
By: Michael Arnold Glueck & Robert J. Cihak, The Medicine Men"
http://www.newsmax.com/medicine_men/medical_insurance/2008/01/03/61543.html

In fact, their continuous violations result in bankruptcy for the insured:
When 75% of the people who declare bankruptcy over medical bills ARE INSURED, then insurance is CLEARLY not the answer.
"Aldrich’s situation is "asinine" but increasingly common, said Dr. Deborah Thorne of Ohio University. Thorne, co-author of a widely quoted 2005 study that found medical bills contributed to nearly half of the 1.5 million personal bankruptcies filed in the U.S. each year, said that ratio has likely worsened since the data was gathered.
...
Like Aldrich, Thorne said, three-quarters of the individuals in the study who declared bankruptcy because of health problems were insured. "
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20201807/

Romney's attempt with Taxachusetts, which is Hillarycare on a state level, didn't work. This year, it's going to cost the 6.5 million unfortunates $400 MILLION MORE:
"Massachusetts announced that spending on its health care plan would increase by $400 million in 2008, a cost expected to be borne largely by taxpayers. " http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20080129/ZNYT02/801290745
Last modified: January 29. 2008 5:03AM

That same article discusses how CA could not manage to pull UHC off.
Also it works NOWHERE. A Canadian doc who studies world health care and now lives in the US wrote that up:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_canadian_healthcare.html

Also it's not lawsuits that are the problem.
"Victor Schwartz, ATRA's General Counsel, told Business Insurance (July 19, 1999) that "Many tort reform advocates do not contend that restricting litigation will lower insurance rates, and I've never said that in 30 years.”
(azinjurycenter.com/CM/Custom/TOCTheTr… "

"Because Texas just passed tort reform in 2003, this is an interesting case study. A very informative article ran in the Dallas Morning News on 17 June 2007 by Eric Torbenson and Jason Roberson. It shows some pluses and minuses to the change of capping non-economic damages (such as pain and suffering and loss of companionship) at $250,000 against a physician and $750,000 total. First, there has been no cost savings passed on to the consumer with the caps according to Bernard Black, a law and finance professor at the University of Texas. The cost of malpractice claims, including their defense, was probably about 2 cents. As to actual awards, before the caps the average was $1.21 million; after the caps it was $880,000. What it has done, however, is cut the number of malpractice lawsuits in half. ... For the working poor or elderly, who are not going to get any significant, if any “economic losses” money, their potential judgment would have been the pain and suffering element, so their cases simply aren’t “worth” hearing. ... On the other hand, Texas had been losing doctors and after the cap came in, the number of physicians in Texas increased 50 percent, noted the Dallas article. ... The Texas Department of Insurance began following malpractice profits in 1992. In 2004, the first profits for malpractice policies were noted at $156 million; in 2005 the profits were $83 million. Before that, losses ranged from $59 to $189 million. None of those figures involve profits (or losses) from investment of the float. Also nearly one-third of the doctors in Texas are insured through the state’s Texas Medical Liability Trust which uses a different system to report such information.

Some doubt there was ever a real malpractice claim crisis of frivolous lawsuits. Bob Hunter, the Texas insurance commissioner for former Governor Richardson, looked at 30 years of malpractice suits and stated that for 22 years, when amounts were adjusted for inflation, malpractice awards had been flat. Hunter stated one reason for the rise in malpractice premium costs were insurers were trying to make up for losses from the post-9/11 stock market (remember they invest that “float” money for profits). Another reason, Hunter stated, was that malpractice premiums had been lowered for several years and they needed to be readjusted for one of the typical cycles in insurance. Nonetheless, the GAO, Government Accounting Office, lays the blame for higher malpractice premiums at the door of malpractice lawsuits. Before the caps came in, Texas was down to four malpractice insurers; they now have 33.
As to malpractice premiums, there have been reductions, though those savings are not being passed on to consumers. ... Contrast the Texas experience with another article (azinjurycenter.com) which notes: “According to the Health Care Financing Administration, doctor's salaries went up 41.7 percent from 1988 to 1998 while medical malpractice costs only went up 5.7 percent during this same period of time. Health care costs went up 74.7 percent.” The article points out that states that do cap such claims, such as California, had only an 8 percent difference in malpractice insurance premiums and that nationally such rates went up 0.2 percent, but 0.4 percent in California between 1991 and 2000. Then it was stated that a dozen years after passage of the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act that malpractice premiums increased 190 percent and that in California their healthcare costs grew by 343 percent. "
--Save America, Save the World by Cassandra Nathan

From her studies of the problems, she's been able to offer a variety of solutions including this plan that is for those who want QUALITY, ACCESSIBLE, AFFORDABLE health care for all.
That means preventative care (physical with follow up). Real medication (no Medicare "donut holes" the really ill are ripped off again.) No bogus ridiculously low "caps" on needed medical procedures. No abuse of the ER. No paying for the silly with the sniffles to go to the doc for free. No more bankruptcies over medical bills. I want THIS plan that ends abuse of the taxpayer, takes the burden off employers, provides price transparency, and ends the rip-off of the US taxpayer at the hands of greedy insurance CEOs (which has been repeatedly documented).
http://www.booklocker.com/books/3068.html
Read the PDF, not the blurb, for the bulk of the plan. Book is searchable on Amazon.com
Cassandra Nathan's Save America, Save the World

Nathan also discusses how to increase the number of doctors and nurses and other issues that need addressing.

[chen12]

yes. look all over the world. France, UK, even CUBA hve universal health care. it is free, and is as good as or better than here. if you want more info, watch the movie "Sicko" (Micheal Moore)