Is universal health care the answer?

[joachim]

The problem we have is the high cost of health care. This is not because medical professionals make too much, its because they spend too much on training and insurance.

There are several programs already in place to reduce the liability due to common difficulties during medical proceedures (NICA in FL is a prime example). What if we had a similar program for all medical malpractice? Would it reduce insurance costs of medical facilities and personnel? Would it reduce the cost of health care?

On the other side, maybe we need to more directly support the education of promising students who want to enter medical school so they don't graduate with a quarter million in school loans? Would this reduce the cost of health care?

Please give a detailed answer. Thanks!

[reid]

I stole this response from somebody else because i couldn't put it better myself.

"...I am against any form of National Health. I do believe that we have to address insurance and medical cost concerns in this country, but creating large entitlements will not be less expensive than the current system. Further, no one can point to any country which has such a system that does not have higher tax burdens as a result.

One of the major arguments people like to use in this debate is the one you espouse here. This is that we are already paying for it. This is a true statement to be sure because it is passed along to the consumer in the form of higher costs. However, have you considered the fact that under the current system people without insurance go to the doctor when absolutely necessary. Under a National Health Plan many of these people would go to the doctor every time they get a slight case of the sniffles. This would not only dramatically increase your expected costs, but would also create even more backlog and longer wait times to see a physician than we already experience.

As for Hillary Clinton's plan. This is no plan at all. She wants to force everyone to carry insurance at an average rate of 115 dollars per month. Then she wants to set the deductible at 2500 per year. Now if you do the research you will find that the average person does not incur 2500 in medical expenses per year. So what does this mean to the consumer? It means that you will pay a signifigant portion of your yearly income in premiums which you will never see a dime of benefit from without experiencing catastrophic illness. Additionally, do you really expect that people who are unwilling to pay for insurance now are suddenly going to be willing to pay out their co-pays to meet the required deductible? Highly unlikely!

In the case of Obama's plan. Well all I can say is that if he thinks he can lower health care costs by 2500 for every American then he is going to have to prove exactly where this money and the savings will come from. To date he has provided only abritrary numbers without hard economic fact to back them.

Given these 2 choices, I think I will continue to support the status quo. The devil you know is usually better than the one you don't in the end."

The federal government decided long ago that it knew how to manage your health care better than you and replaced personal responsibility and accountability with a system that puts corporate interests first. Our free market health care system that was once the envy of the world became a federally-managed disaster.

Few people realize that Congress forced Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) on us. HMOs rose to prominence through federal legislation, incentives, and coercion.

Now, the Food and Drug Administration's bias toward large pharmaceutical companies enlarges their power, limits treatment options, and drives consumers to seek Canadian medicines. Regulations from D.C. make it virtually impossible for small business owners to cover their employees. Thanks to government interference in the health care market, many Americans, including the unemployed and those who work for small businesses, cannot afford health insurance. This causes the uninsured to seek basic medical care at already overcrowded emergency rooms, further driving up health care costs and causing premiums to rise for those with insurance.

The federal government will not suddenly become efficient managers if universal health care is instituted. Government health care only means long waiting periods, lack of choice, poor quality, and frustration. Many Canadians, fed up with socialized medicine, come to the U.S. in order to obtain care. Socialized medicine will not magically work here.

Health care should not be left up to HMOs, big drug companies, and government bureaucrats.

It is time to take back our health care. This is why I support:

Making all medical expenses tax deductible.
Eliminating federal regulations that discourage small businesses from providing coverage.
Giving doctors the freedom to collectively negotiate with insurance companies and drive down the cost of medical care.
Making every American eligible for a Health Savings Account (HSA), and removing the requirement that individuals must obtain a high-deductible insurance policy before opening an HSA.
Reform licensure requirements so that pharmacists and nurses can perform some basic functions to increase access to care and lower costs.

Eliminate Double Pricing Structures - Make it a crime for any hospital or doctor to charge more to an uninsured "out of pocket" patient for a procedue or test than the amount they are willing to accept for the same procedure from an insurance company.

Extend HSA Benefits - Remove the one year use it or lose it cap. Allow individuals to accumulate their HSAs on a yearly tax free rollover basis. This will allow people to establish true medical savings accounts to help offset their cost burden. Upon the death of an insured the survivor should be allowed to utilize unused funds for burial expenses.

Only by removing federal regulations, encouraging competition, presenting real choices, dealing with inflation, and returning to a sound monetary policy can we make our health care system the envy of the world once again.

[vohkinne]

It could be. We should give it a shot.

http://michaelmoore.com/sicko

[pete]

It could be. We should give it a shot.

http://michaelmoore.com/sicko

Universal health care is great for average sickeness but ask the Canadians that line up at US hospitals and Dr's Offices when something serious happens or they need to wait for an appointment in Canada.

j

[dennie18]

Please ,lets do start looking around the globe for the answer.Something Mr Moore forgot to tell you is that if you get Colon cancer in England you are 2-3 times more likely to die than the US.The wait time in England is such that by the time the tumor is removed it has metastasized.If all of these plans are so great,why do their citizens come here for treatment.Health care needs to be fixed,but do you honestly think our bureaucratic government could handle it?

[nicolas]

No universal healthcare is ridiculous.

Employers shouldnt be forced to pay for insurance, thats unamerican

To mandate that everyone must have insurance is a boon to the insurance industry that is out of control. Ingenix and united health for instance are under investigation for defrauding the public by underpaying their claims

We are in america, we are capitalist. If the government cannot provide healthcare it is incorrect to legislate someone else to buy it for you.

[lamarr3]

does 'universal' include the rest of the globe? I think it should because america is destroying it and the rest of the world should get something from the usa.

[fiynn]

A huge part of the problem is Americans cannot afford their medications. Small wonder, considering what Merck and the other pharmaceutical giants charge. They sell their medicines to the UK at half the price they charge Americans. When asked, they will say they are the leaders world wide in research and development, and that is expensive. There is a certain amount of truth to that, but they are not the Holy Grail. This has been a runaway industry far too long with few monitors in place.

Health care can be affordable. Too many players are involved who need to have their wings clipped, and we could begin with the phamaceuticals and the insurance companies.

[denys]

What Michael Moore (who I see has influenced many answers already here) doesn't want to admit is that we currently do in fact have the best healthcare in the world. It is the highest quality. But unfortunately, some don't have access to it. The answer to the problem is not to completely revamp the system, but to take a gradual approach.

The laws of capitalism proposed by Adam Smith in the late 18th century still hold true today, or at least the basic prinicples do. As competition rises, so too does quality, and the cost drops. Anyone who knows anything about economics knows that. Granted, there are corporations that take advantage of the system, and that is where the government steps in. But we don't need government run healthcare. So while Moore moves on to his next pet cause, we are left with people convinced that socialized medicine is the way to go, when in reality, the system only needs to be fixed, not turned upside down.

[madison86]

There has to be two types of care, the privately insured types, that cater to the rich and those drs. who insist on becoming millionaires as soon as possible; and the subsidized type for the drs who want to provide health care. Some of these rich characters do little or no good, except for the drug cos. and are little more than pill pushers fo the anxiety cases in rich neighborhoods.