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No Healthcare for Smokers,Drinkers,Fat,Old..
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That is the problem we have now. People are being thrown out because of pre-existing medical conditions. And you are very correct, it is a problem intrensic to the use of insurance companies. Insurance companies, unless prevented by law, will try to lessen their risk and only take the cream of the crop. That is why they must be mandated by law to insure everyone at the same rate. So the healthcare insurance risk is spread equally throughout the population.
Iceaura, I am sorry. I am just not getting you. I think we are on different wave lenghts. As for your claim of healthcare rationing, please provide some support for that claim. Having been involved professionally with both systems (indigent and military) I don't see how healthcare is rationed in either system.
Participants in both systems are not given unnecessary medical treaments, nor should they be given unnecessary medical treatments. So I am totally baffled by your claims. Please show proof.
Insurance companies certianly do limit risk by discriminating and by trying to limit services provided. In a free market universal coverage model, they would be mandated to take all applicants at the same rate (only one rate for all participants) and could not refuse to pay for medical treatments.
I am not sure what vet care and human care have to do with each other. And this thread is about human medical care.
Please read the post about the American Medical Association. Milton Friedman is a Nobel Prize winning economist.
They would have to compete on internal efficiency and customer service. The more efficient they are and the more customer service oriented they are the better their profits.
They would not be making profits by denying service.
They would not be making profits by denying service.
joe at that point you might as well have a goverment funded inurance scheam like it is for mantiory third party. Wether you take the whole system into the goverment sector or not is another debate. Course if you take the insurance into goverment hands without the rest of the system then there are 2 possable outcomes 1) that the goverment pays a set amount and doctors charge above that and you end up with huge gap payments or 2) that goverment cost keep spirling up as they try to pay the full amount in an unregulated system. Its better to have the WHOLE medical system in goverment hands
wrong the more the deny claims the less money they pay out which means higher profits
You almost had me Asguard, but I think a hybrid system that combines the best of both would be the ideal system. The problem is it is like cleaning house. You always have to stay on top of it...else the system will get out of balance.
thats what we DID have here until the howard goverment started messing with the system
GP's are small buinesses who get paid by the goverments universal insurance (medicare, which is compleatly different to the hospital system). If they chose to bulk bill medicare they recive there money straight away which means no waiting for slow pts to pay. The condition of this however was that they couldnt charge the pts ANYTHING above the medicare fee (the pt would just swipe there card and sign the form). If they chose to charge more to anyone they would have to charge the full amount and then the pt would claim that back from a medicare office. This makes bulk billing GP's MUCH more atractive than non Bulk Billing GP's so the non Bulk billing ones would recive less pts which would mean they had to charge the pts more which ment even LESS pts and so on and so forth.
Unfortanitly the previous goverment never bothered to keep the fee in line with inflation and removed the requirement for the pt to claim back at a medicare office so the insentive is gone
GP's are small buinesses who get paid by the goverments universal insurance (medicare, which is compleatly different to the hospital system). If they chose to bulk bill medicare they recive there money straight away which means no waiting for slow pts to pay. The condition of this however was that they couldnt charge the pts ANYTHING above the medicare fee (the pt would just swipe there card and sign the form). If they chose to charge more to anyone they would have to charge the full amount and then the pt would claim that back from a medicare office. This makes bulk billing GP's MUCH more atractive than non Bulk Billing GP's so the non Bulk billing ones would recive less pts which would mean they had to charge the pts more which ment even LESS pts and so on and so forth.
Unfortanitly the previous goverment never bothered to keep the fee in line with inflation and removed the requirement for the pt to claim back at a medicare office so the insentive is gone
What government regulation are you referring to? The licensing of medical providers, or what? To become a doctor you must get the appropriate education and pass the licensing exam. Do you believe that these standards artificially restrict the number of providers? Or are you talking about something else?
I think I agree with this. We should require that everyone buy medical insurance just as we require auto insurance. And the insurance companies should not be allowed to deny anyone coverage or charge anyone a different rate.
Just as with auto insurance, you should be able to choose from a menu of different plans. The insurance company charges what it wants, but it charges everyone the same for the same plan.
I'm all for capitalism. But, again, what exactly are you talking about here? What regulation, other than licensing, do you think I am in favor of?
Mad i dont know how it is in the US but in Australia the medical collages are the only ones licenced to train new say surgans, NOT the universitys. So they can artificually keep there members prices up by not training any new ones. That is even if the goverment (in this case the employer) needs more workers and they PAY for the training anyway. Its a really stupid system
Yes, the industry has artificially and agressively restricted the supply of physicans:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-03-02-doctor-shortage_x.htm
Controlling the supply
"The marketplace doesn't determine how many doctors the nation has, as it does for engineers, pilots and other professions. The number of doctors is a political decision, heavily influenced by doctors themselves.
Congress controls the supply of physicians by how much federal funding it provides for medical residencies — the graduate training required of all doctors"
Medical Training is also unusually long compared to other countries as well. For example, medical training is 6 years in every other industrialized country versus the 8 year programs here in the United States.
Physican supply restriction of medical service is but one aspect of a market monopoly in the Healthcare industry. For another example, look at the pharma industry. That is why drugs are more expensive in the United States than anywhere else in the world.
Mandatory insurance from private companies only works with auto insurance because everyone is not charged the same and anyone can refuse full coverage insurance.madanth said:
And every mandatory car insurance plan I know of has a government backup, to handle the drivers that no insurance company will accept.
What you are talking about, in health care, would be equivalent to mandating that everyone insure a car, buy full coverage insurance for everything mechanical including routine maintenance, and patronize licensed dealer shops only. On top of that, you require the insurance companies to accept coverage of anyone and charge them all the same rate.
It's pretty clear that most people would not be able to afford that insurance. And then what ? Car insurance is a scam now. Can you imagine - - ?
That's not what I said at all. I said you should be able to buy whichever plan you want. I didn't say everyone had to buy a plan with certain coverage. Just that everyone had to buy insurance, the the "group" will be the entire US population. If you want plan A, you pay the fee for plan A. That fee is the same for everyone. If you want plan B, same deal.
So people don't have to buy anything in particular, and whatever they can afford under the fierce competition of the insurance companies fighting for the low income/high expense business will be called "health insurance" ?madanth said:
That's not at all what Madanthony is talking about, or I was commenting on.asguard said:
That's a tax - 1.5% of income? The median family income in the US would have to be over a half million a year, for that to buy private US insurance at US prices to cover more than half the citizenry. Which points out the depth of the hole the US system has dug us into.
Note to the "socialist medicine" fear-mongers: That's comparable to what we pay, in taxes, for Medicare and Medicaid and VA and the like right now. In Asguard's country it's apparently buying universal coverage (gotta be a catch in there).
I agree, hell, most doctors in the GP category really don't know much other than on the job practice anyway. Surgeons also mainly learn on the job.
What are you basing that on? Sure, they learn on the job, but that learning builds upon the massive base of knowledge acquired in school. About six months ago I saved a guy's life based on something I had never seen except in textbooks back in school. Being a doctor takes more than just "on the job training".
Mad its great that you have books you can look up to check symptoms ect. On the road we have to deal with stuff there and then. If you dont already know it or you cant decribe it to the doctor on the other end of the consult the pt dies. Senior paramedics are well and truly able to dignose and refer A&E cases to the right area. Nurse practioners are able to do likewise. Shirnks can deal with a mental health situation 100 times better than most GP's i have met and im yet to meet a GP that can dignose a muscular condition as well as physio (esspecially after they get there ability to order tests on there own rather than sending the pt back to the GP with a nice letter to get a CT or a MRI)
pjdude1219 said:
Ah. Well, I couldn't say for sure. To speculate, though, I think a lot of people are reacting to a certain degree of perceived ignorance about the topic post. You might have noticed that tendency around here. While you might tend toward some combative and controversial posts from time to time, it's not quite the same thing. Whereas your topics invited a more thoughtful discussion, I'd say a lot of people are reacting and counter-reacting to what they perceive as a warped and ignorant topic premise.