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(Links point to various articles and blog posts pertaining to health care.)
With mounting despair, I continue to read, and listen, and watch the health care debate, if you can call it that, unfold. I am employed in the health sector, always have been, and am an unvarnished, unabashed support of Canadian style single payer health coverage for every American, and have been that for years, too.
Thus, I am bound to be disappointed.
I feel vaguely nauseous (ha!) when I think very hard about this, because I know I am not going to get what I want from whatever reform passes, if any.
In my heart of hearts, I don't think anything will pass, because of two major factors-the powers that be, who are quite interested in things staying exactly as they are, thank you very much, and the general willingness to lie, brazenly and openly, evinced by the political opponents of the current President.
There, I said it.
The plan will pass in a greatly diminished form, if at all, due to the lack of public support for it (as opposed to meddling by the powers that be and lying).
ReplyDeleteI am heartened that public outrage at the more destructive aspects of Obama's plans (coupled with the actions of the "Blue Dog Democrats" who are putting the public interest ahead of party unity) have basically kicked the fangs off of the plan.
Still, some bad aspects of Obama's plan remain. Such as the part encouraging small businesses to cut wages in order to pay for health-care plans if they do not already have one. And the "mandate" part forcing people to buy health-care plans. Even if they cannot afford it. This part of the bill which bullies people who will be often in povery or working-poor is inexcusable.
I know very well that Obama's plan is not single payer, but I am dead set against single payer. With single payer, you get situations such as Netherlands government hospitals killing babies against the wishes of the parents in order to save the government money.
Also, I am distrustful of monopolies. The left-wing usually has better arguments against monopolies than the right-wing does. Except for this blind spot when the monopoly in question happens to be the government. However, the arguments against business monopolies apply at least as well to government-run monopolies (such as single-payer).... the arrogance, lack of accountability, gross inefficiency, lack of any incentive to serve the "customers".
Also, no one will ever shoot you for disobeying the Microsoft monopoly. In contrast, the US Government (which would be the master in single-payer) has a repuation for shooting people who disagree with it.
No thanks.
Then I can mention my friend in Canada who is totally screwed by the Canadian system, and manages to get by due to her proximity to the US border.
I don't agree that the plan will pass. The structure of Congress and the power of the moneyed interests that fund it will kill it.
ReplyDeleteAs usual, your one sentence summary of the Netherlands dramatically overstates the situation. Systemizing and evaluating the potential future life of an infant is something that science and logic demands. There is nothing sinister about that.
The fact is that the Netherlands does NOT have single payer health care, but instead managed competition between private firms just makes your point irrelevant.
Care rationing is here-it happens to you, to me, to your friend in Canada, to everyone who does not pay full price for health care. Is it not sensible to elect the people who ration the care instead of allowing a corporation to profit from doing so? Switching corporations who extort money from your misery does not change this-they all do it. The fact is that for profit insurance adds nothing to health care except the cost.
"Switching corporations who extort money from your misery does not change this-they all do it."
ReplyDeleteGetting rid of competing corporations and forcing us to rely on one single corporation (the government) that does this is far worse.
Electing government officials does not make this monopoly any more accountable. It takes great effort to make government agencies accountable and to give any attention at all to public service. We can start with the post office for that one.
We need to increase competition, not end it.
I did not overstate the Netherlands situation. About 20% of these infant executions are done against the wishes of the parents. This is very sinister and bloodthirsty, and "logic" does not demand it. The UK is even considering this.
Nazi Germany started out this way: killing the "defectives". This is one place the Nazi comparison is valid: the "single payer" countries in Europe culling the herd.
In regards to "The fact is that the Netherlands does NOT have single payer health care,":
"The Netherlands has a type of single payer health funding that employs a large central fund, largely hidden from public view and funded by taxation" [Wikipedia]
Well, the part of Wikipedia that actually has a citation says this:
ReplyDelete"The Netherlands has a dual-level system. All primary and curative care (i.e. the family doctor service and hospitals and clinics) is financed from private compulsory insurance. Long term care for the elderly, the dying, the long term mentally ill etc. is covered by social insurance funded from taxation. According to the WHO, the health care system in the Netherlands was 62% government funded and 38% privately funded as of 2004."
This is emphatically not Canadian style single payer.
"I did not overstate the Netherlands situation. About 20% of these infant executions are done against the wishes of the parents. This is very sinister and bloodthirsty, and "logic" does not demand it. The UK is even considering this."
ReplyDeleteThe Groningen protocol, which is the Netherlands policy (proposed by one hospital, not by the government) in question, expressly REQUIRES parental consent before euthanasia is considered.
I am not comfortable imposing my moral views on other people's family decisions.
Yet, they have had numerous infant executions against the wishes of the parents. I read someone somewhere pointing out that this was illegal. But I searched in vain to find instances of the doctors and "death panels" involved being charged with crimes over this.
ReplyDeleteCloser to home, there was the infamous case where the Oregon state medical service sent a cancer patient a letter encouraging her to kill herself. A lot cheaper than pain medication, I guess. I'm curious if the epistilatory Kevorkian involved still has their job in government, or of the poison pen keeps writing.
I, also, was unable to find evidence describing patients in the Netherlands having their children euthanized without their consent.
ReplyDeleteThe Oregon case, which I believe we have discussed before, involved a denial of treatment for chemotherapy-a decision that for profit health plans make all the time. I could bury you up to your neck in accounts of children being denied transplants, chemo, and other lifesaving interventions while the insurance company CEOs count their money.
The Oregon case is unfortunate, but it really has nothing to do with health care reform-because cases just like it happen all the time, in private and public plans, for good reasons or ill.
I again submit-there is no reason for health insurance companies to exist. They don't add value to anyone but themselves.