Obama Faux Pamas

[squigglequill]

Article on the front page of...was it the Seattle Times or the Post Intelligencer?...detailing the little faux pas of the Obama(nation) Administration trying to backpedal on the unsavory semantics concerning the health care package: ie socializing health care and including euthanasia for the elderly. Oops! Word got out about Mr. Ezekiel Emanual and

Comments

[squigglequill]

I honestly don't know but you may be right. What I'm thinking is that with the new plan, the elderly and disabled may be FOOLED into giving up their insurance, thinking they'll be covered by the state plan, only to find they won't be and won't have the coverage, however pathetic, that they would have otherwise.

What I do know is that everyone bitches about the problem with insurance and yet none of the people stop to think that maybe the insurance thing was a shitty idea to begin with. I worked for an insurance company for five years (in their mail department, not selling it, which means I had some degree of insight into almost all of the various departments by way of talking to the people in them and hearing the complaints), so I know some about that industry. It's as crooked as a dog's hind leg and riddled with red tape to cover it's tracks.

Near as I can tell, the REAL solution should be one of these three:

1. Repeal ALL insurance mandates because once insurance in mandated, they can charge you up the wazzoo and there ain't nothin' you can do. We see this with auto insurance and especially with doctor's malpractice insurance. If they don't have that insurance, they can't legally practice. So they pay those heavy premiums and then push the cost off onto the patients. Same with hospitals. That's part of why our health care is so expensive (the other part has to do with the pharmaceudical oligopoly...BOTH parts are born from special interest government entitlements, not the market). Problem is that insurance lobbyists will fight to the death to keep those mandates, including lots of money issued to key officials, so government would probably NOT do as asked by the people.

2. Just fucking outlaw all insurance. I like this idea, although it's not entirely in tune with true free market politics. Problem is the same as with option 1.

3. Create some kind of special contract for doctors and hospitals, so they can operate without any of that crap, but WITH WARNING that the patients take a greater risk and the patients must waive their right to sue if something goes wrong. They could even rename them "doktors" or "healers" or something to differentiate from established professionals. My guess is that with option 3, those greater risk quasi-hospitals and quasi-doctors would probably do a better job.

[sculptruth]

I have to say I agree, the biggest problem is that we have insurance providers, period. If costs are the problem, then we need to examine tort reform and we need to examine what's driving the costs up - I fully believe insurance companies *are* the reason doctors are so expensive. I'm in favour of cutting out the middleman entirely. You're right though, we'd have to have some kind of system to keep doctors and costs in check.

Otherwise, this seemingly impossible, then I do want a fully socialised health program, and none of this halfway shit at all. That's our problem, is trying to accommodate both.

[squigglequill]

Keep in mind what I'm starting to call The Law of Sizing: the larger the conglomerate, the more complicated and less manageable it will be. Doubly true with government, since the element of police force and authority obstructs people's ability to control and change the situation.

A socialized health care would fare better on a state by state level than a Federal level, even better city by city. Less bureaucracy, less chance for much needed money to slip through cracks and benefit those who do NOT need it.

[squigglequill]

Oh, AND on a state by state or city by city level, you can actually create a faux market since, if the system in NY or Chicago is less effective than Seattle or Denver or San Diego, people can just move from one to the other and then the cities that are losing out will have incentive to reform. You won't get that if socialized medicine is implemented at the Federal level.