Health care and the financial industry
If this election is going to be about anything beyond arugula and lipstick — and I’m not sure that it is — it ought to be about things like health care and the fall-out of the financial crisis. Last time we discussed the financial crisis, we noted that John McCain supports privatizing Social Security and that Kuhl has supported it in the past.
So let’s be clear on what privatization means. Privatization means replacing some or all of the Social Security tax with private, personal investment accounts. It’s pretty simple, though many journalists seem to have trouble understanding it.
With health care, the debate might also be thought of as a public versus private. A single payer system (which I favor) would replace insurance companies with a single government payer. Neither candidate is proposing that. Obama favors a mandated system in which we’d still have insurers but everyone would have some kind of insurance (unlike now). Massachusetts already has a system along these lines. McCain proposes mostly leaving our system as is, with a bit more federal money for high risk pools and new taxes on workers’ health care benefits.
It’s quite telling that a few weeks ago McCain said that he thought our financial system was working so well that we should model our health care system after it:
Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.
The financial crisis is believed by most nonwingnuts to have been caused by the lack of certain regulations. Imagine what deregulating the health care system can achieve.
Again, these are issues where we deserve to hear the opinions of everyone running for Congress locally.
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The reason that single payer or nationalized health care can never deliver good service at reasonable prices is that the cost accountability between the medical service provider and the patient is removed. I do not want the government telling me who I can see for medical care and if the care is on their approved list. The advent of HMO’s, with the federal government’s push, in the early 1970’s has been a big reason why medical costs have skyrocketed, that move shifted cost accountability to a bunch of pencil pushers.
Also, blaming the financial crisis on “deregulation” of banks is a huge fallacy. The banking and financial industries are among the most highly regulated in this country. That, combined with the fiat money policies of the FED, is why we have had the recent financial failures.
The reason that single payer or nationalized health care can never deliver good service at reasonable prices is that the cost accountability between the medical service provider and the patient is removed.
Please explain why every single payer system in the world is cheaper than ours by at least 30%.
I appreciate that you are arguing reasonably. However, I think it is better here to argue on the basis of evidence rather than hypothetical principles.
I would like you to explain to me why you think that single payer would drive costs up here while it depresses them in the rest of the world. Do you believe in “American exceptionalism” in this context (that is not meant sarcastically or dismissively).
On the loose money thing, I agree that Greenspan kept rates too low. But that was by no means the only, or even the main, problem. The main problem, according to every analysis I have read and long conversations with fairly high up investment bankers, is that lack of credit default swap regulation led to a system where the people giving out the loans had no incentive — none — to make sure the loanee could make the payments. Such a system is bound to have problems.
Don’t get me wrong — Greenspan goofed. He may be the single person most responsible for the problem. And you are right that the banking industry is very regulated. But it wasn’t regulated properly here. That’s all there it to it.
The advent of HMO’s, with the federal government’s push, in the early 1970’s has been a big reason why medical costs have skyrocketed, that move shifted cost accountability to a bunch of pencil pushers.
Not true. The spread of HMOs in the 90s slowed the rise in medical costs. I love Bill Clinton, but this is another area in which he got lucky.
the Canadian system works just fine and it has cheaper drugs too. The average person lives longer and better even if the rich don’t. The market is not he best way to allocate all goods
“I do not want the government telling me who I can see for medical care and if the care is on their approved list.”
Friend, this is someone’s propaganda.
I stayed with some friends in Canada this summer.They wondered where we get such notions. This simply is not true. They see who they want and then hand that doctor their card on the way out.
Furthermore, I don’t know who your insurance provider is but I get a hand book every year that lists which doctors are participating physicians, if they’re not on the list I have to pay out of pocket to see them. No such restriction in Canada.
And lastly, are you aware that health care insurance companies have to approve treatments? And that they are far more restrictive than anything Canadians face?
Ask yourself why do you think we’re ranked so low for overall health care?
I’m not a health care expert–actually it’s the one major national issue I claim ignorance on. But I do know that when my grandparents have to choose between medication or heat in the winter, that somewhere along the way, something went terribly wrong.
Well said.
Here’s something to think about, the leading cause for personal bankruptcy in the United States in an illness that has depleted a family’s money and resources.
The number of Canadians filing for bankrupcy for the same reason? 0.
The republicans call it socialism [in fact the Canadian system is not a socialist system] they call it taking care of their fellow citizens who then also take care of them when they are in need.
It is a plan that we would do well to emulate.
That sounds like how people in a community behave. They stand united for each other.
But that require someone to organize them…