You do understand this is a health insurance company, but what is being proposed is a health care bill? Those are two different things.
You do realize the Health care bill IS about Health Insurance and then a bit more!
They are closely related.
If you don't have health insurance you can't get health care, unless it is covered out of County, State, or Federal tax dollars which currently pay hospitals to treat people who can't pay.
A Bill which allows more people to get health insurance will allow more people to get health care in a more timely, more cost effective manner.
It really isn't any more difficult that that.
You yourself just called it "the health care bill". It is more than just "a bit more" than health insurance. It is a lot more than health insurance.
The point I am making, you don't really seem to understand the difference. This incident does not justify a health care "reform" bill. If you want to regulate some of the vile practices of the health insurance companies, I can get behind that. I can't get behind the massive changes that has been proposed. If the government gets involved, and does a terrible job (which seems to be par for the course for government), I can't exactly switch to someone else to handle my health care needs. At the moment, if my doctor or insurance agency does do a terrible job, I can change.
They are closely related.
No, they aren't. They are completely independent entities. You can switch your health care plan, and keep your doctor (and vice versa). However, if the government does pass this bill, they will become indistinguishable. Even worse, if it is terrible, you won't simply be able to "switch companies", because the government has no competition.
If you don't have health insurance you can't get health care...
Again, absolutely untrue. Otherwise, there would be no way all those foreigners would be able to come to America to get the health taken care of.
A Bill which allows more people to get health insurance will allow more people to get health care in a more timely, more cost effective manner.
It really isn't any more difficult that that.
Again, absolutely untrue. At the moment, we don't even have a reconciled bill to put before Congress, so any claims that the bill will be better are completely unfounded. What's more, a bill which allows more people to get health care without increasing the number of doctors is simply going to jam the system, making it less timely, and even add another area for corruption.
Your comment about the foreigners getting health care taken care of also applies to anyone who is uninsured.
Let's say a person is in a bad car accident. Happens all the time. Extreme trauma. Hospitals are required to render immediate care regardless of the person's ability to pay. This is just common sense, because a person could bleed to death before it could be determined whether the person could pay for treatment or not. They have to treat first. If it was you or someone in your family, that is what you would expect. Well everyone is part of some family, so everyone gets treated under those circumstances.
What happens now, in the un-reformed world of health care is that the trauma victim gets treatment at a hospital, then the hospital tries to get paid for the work they have done. If the patient has insurance, either private or government funded (Medicaid/Medicare) the hospital gets paid that way.
If the person is non insured, which is the case for tens of millions of Americans, and anyone else without insurance, then the hospital gets paid in one of several ways, each of which involve tax money. That is the present reality.
Is it so hard to see that if more people were covered, there would be fewer problems like this one?
Now you are changing your story from the health care bill being "more timely, more cost-effective" to "fewer problems". That is quite a difference, which may not have anything to do with timeliness or the cost. First, compensation of doctors/hospitals has nothing to do with health care. That has to do with health insurance. Second, not all of the ways the hospitals/doctors get reimbursed is through taxes. The prices are set with that in mind (stores do the exact same thing to combat shoplifting). What the actual balance between the various way they make sure to get compensated is I can't say (and I doubt anyone really can, even doctors or hospitals). Do we all pay for some of it? Definitely. Is any of this a justification for a massive health care bill? Not in the slightest. Sure, government may solve some problems. However, it isn't a guarantee, as you gloss over. The problem is the trade-offs. It could create as many, or more, than it solves. You, nor anyone else (including me), including those in Congress, nor even the President, has any idea what the unknown future bill will result in. With a 2000 page health care bill, it will create problems. It literally is a statistical guarantee. Wouldn't it make much more sense to make small changes addressing the specific problems, rather than making such a massive change and hope it all works out?
The present cost that taxpayers shoulder for situations like the one I laid out is astronomical, nearly incalculable because counties and States cover some costs, as well as the federal government. Tax money of one kind or another, if you notice.
This is one of the motivating factors for reform. It is already costing us a metric shitload of money to cover this kind of medical care.
I don't know what part of this equation you don't understand, but without reimbursement, there is no care. Right now, taxpayers are paying for a lot of care on a per incident basis. It would be a lot more efficient to get people covered than it is to pay al a carte when they need an visit to their local ER.
It's stupid that you are wasting thousands of words debating with someone who disagrees with you on a philosophical level rather than a practical one. No amount of debate is going to change his mind that the answer to health care reform is to completely open the market to competition and to get government out of it completely.
The present cost that taxpayers shoulder for situations like the one I laid out is astronomical, nearly incalculable because counties and States cover some costs, as well as the federal government.
Are you aware that statement is self-contradicting? If it is incalculable, which I agree with, then there is no way to make the claim it is astronomical.
Tax money of one kind or another, if you notice.
Do I need to fetch the video of Obama getting schooled on the definition of what a tax is? Tax is money the government collects from its subjects. It is not a shared cost. You are confusing the two.
This is one of the motivating factors for reform. It is already costing us a metric shitload of money to cover this kind of medical care.
Again, compensating doctors for medical care is not medical care. I don't claim to be a architect or construction worker because I paid for a house. It is commerce, covered by insurance. The two are entirely different things.
I don't know what part of this equation you don't understand, but without reimbursement, there is no care.
You yourself stated there is care without reimbursement. Now you claim there isn't. Which is it?
Right now, taxpayers are paying for a lot of care on a per incident basis.
You yourself said it was incalculable. Now you claim we pay more per incident. Which is it?
It would be a lot more efficient to get people covered than it is to pay al a carte when they need an visit to their local ER.
That is a claim you can't support. You don't know what the government is going to charge for health care, because the bill doesn't exist yet! And again, how do you compare something to an incalculable cost? You can't! That is why any changes need to be small, highly specific, and done in such a way that is it easy to undo when the bad ones blow up in someone's face.
Why in the hell are you so insistent it must be some major change done right this second?! You would never buy a house sight unseen halfway across the country, and yet your are willing to have vast unknown changes made to something that could quite frankly end in someone's death. Why? How is that in any way sensible?
Your arguments are silly word play and don't really mean anything.
Doctors and hospitals can't give care if they don't get paid. When the uninsured need emergency care, taxpayer money pays for it. We currently pay a lot for care of this kind, right now. An awful lot of tax money spend inefficiently.
The urgency comes from the fact that costs are already high and escalating out of control at a time when the government is heavily in debt, mostly due to unnecessary spending either by the Bush Administration or by Obama to try to correct problems created during the Bush Administration.
As you point out, there is no legislation ready to go at this point, so it is speculation to guess what might be in it, but it should have some provisions that would deal with this specific issue.
If the millions without coverage were to get coverage through some future reform legislation, it wouldn't matter much whether that coverage came from private insurance companies, or from the federal government, or some combination of the two, the goal is to get more people covered. What matters is that an insurance plan is almost always more cost effective than ala carte payment for services rendered. That is why insurance exists in the first place.
You are taking something that is obvious and trying to make it seem sinister. Those 40 million people without insurance coverage are a giant liability to American taxpayers. Again, what don't you understand about that?
Whether
Look, the only thing insurance companies fear more than a government takeover of healthcare payment is real competition in the marketplace. They have it cushy now, which is why they are funding and supporting groups who are crying about socialism and tea bags and so on. Anything to keep the status quo the way it is.
Doctors and hospitals can't give care if they don't get paid.
And yet somehow they have managed to survive for all this time.
When the uninsured need emergency care, taxpayer money pays for it.
A part of it. Again, I ask you, how big is that part? How does the bills proposed, which must be resolved at some point, cut down on that without increasing the cost an equivalent or more amount somewhere else?
We currently pay a lot for care of this kind, right now. An awful lot of tax money spend inefficiently.
Yet the proposed bills could be even more inefficient. We just don't know, and again blindly making massive changes without a clear way to undo them is bad!
The urgency comes from the fact that costs are already high and escalating out of control at a time when the government is heavily in debt, mostly due to unnecessary spending either by the Bush Administration or by Obama to try to correct problems created during the Bush Administration.
That is just outright bullshit. You yourself have spent the last eight years bitching about how the two wars are the highest economic investment the government has, and number two on the list is the recent bailouts. The amount the government has spent on health care is pennies in comparison. If you truly wanted to stop the debt, what needs to happen is just simply have the government stop spending money and raise taxes. It certainly doesn't justify an unknown bill that is estimated to cost an equivalent of the two previous bailouts.
As you point out, there is no legislation ready to go at this point, so it is speculation to guess what might be in it, but it should have some provisions that would deal with this specific issue.
There are a lot of things that "should" be. I'm going to remain skeptical until I see for certain.
If the millions without coverage were to get coverage through some future reform legislation, it wouldn't matter much whether that coverage came from private insurance companies, or from the federal government, or some combination of the two, the goal is to get more people covered.
No, your goal is to get more people covered, while having everyone pay for it. What I want is to make sure that everyone who truly needs health care gets the health care they need, in the most efficient way possible. I know that does not automatically mean "health care bill".
What matters is that an insurance plan is almost always more cost effective than ala carte payment for services rendered. That is why insurance exists in the first place.
No, that is not why insurance exists. Insurance came about to cover extremely expensive procedures that you couldn't reasonably expect, not pay for the doctor every time someone has a runny nose. Over time, due to government regulations trying to make things better (that's the really damning thing about all this, all these laws had great intentions, but only a few of them had great results), it has been warped into pre-paid health care. The problem is there is no guarantee pre-paid health care is the best way to go.
You are taking something that is obvious and trying to make it seem sinister. Those 40 million people without insurance coverage are a giant liability to American taxpayers. Again, what don't you understand about that?
No, it is not obvious, because you have nothing to back up those claims. You are making things up to justify your points. You try to cast my arguments as "silly" or call them word games because you don't have any way to really refute them. You never actually bother to back up your statements with facts that can be verified beyond just your word.
Look, this discussion is increasingly pointless. The reason doctors and hospitals have survived until now is that massive amounts of tax money are being spent to pay for health care for those without insurance.
Once more, for the last time, what part of this don't you understand?
Government regulations don't make health care expensive, advances in medical science drives the increase in cost.
There are treatments that can extend the lifespan of people with serious diseases, but they are expensive, some running a hundred thousand dollars per patient or more.
The treatments are good, better than ever in human history, but they come at a cost. Insurance dilutes the costs over an entire population. That is why we have insurance.
A lot of money is already being spend, that comes from our taxes, or from the money our government borrows. What drives the need for reform is a need to spend those dollars more efficiently.
Look, this discussion is increasingly pointless. The reason doctors and hospitals have survived until now is that massive amounts of tax money are being spent to pay for health care for those without insurance.
Once more, for the last time, what part of this don't you understand?
I understand that it isn't true! You don't have any evidence to back up your claims.
Government regulations don't make health care expensive, advances in medical science drives the increase in cost.
I never said government regulations make health care expensive. I said they turned health insurance into pre-paid health plans. Quit making strawman arguments.
There are treatments that can extend the lifespan of people with serious diseases, but they are expensive, some running a hundred thousand dollars per patient or more.
The treatments are good, better than ever in human history, but they come at a cost. Insurance dilutes the costs over an entire population. That is why we have insurance.
Now you just changed your claims to match me. I just said insurance is used to cover unexpected costs, such as serious diseases. You previously claimed it was because an insurance plan is almost always more cost effective than ala carte payment for services rendered. That is why insurance exists in the first place.
A lot of money is already being spend, that comes from our taxes, or from the money our government borrows. What drives the need for reform is a need to spend those dollars more efficiently.
Which brings us full circle, where does a health care bill fit in to fixing an economic problem? Especially by spending more money? The easiest way to stop the debt is to stop spending and raise taxes.
Good thing this wasnt about climate change... Pretty clear, the dif in the right and the left.
I wonder how the Swiss do Universal Health Care on lower taxes than we have! In fact we might be the ONLY Industrialized nation that doesn't have some form of Universal health care!
Gramps
Funny how conservatives rant about how 'socialists' are bleeding them dry of every cent they earn, while ignoring some organizations that are actually doing so.