Government Sponsored Medical Care

[Psychonaut]

Should the government be responsible for the medical care of the denizens of its municipality?

[RoyBatty]

I think it's a good idea, look at Cuba for an example of how the state provides basic healthcare for the population. Medical costs in the US are insane, I can't understand (well then again, I can) how it got to that point.

Of course there should also be private healthcare for those who want it or for specialised treatments which will be difficult to provide by a general service.

[Eldritch]

Full coverage for citizens, illegals emergencies only.

[Manifest Destiny]

My answer to Psychonaut's question is a big, fat HELL NO. Here is why: http://www.theapricity.com/forum/sho...4663#post34663

Everything the government does is slower and more expensive than the same job done by the private sector (or, in the case of the road in Hawaii, a bunch of volunteers). For this reason I believe the government should do as little as possible. Aside from emergency room procedures for citizens only, I think the government should not get into the health care business.

[Æmeric]

Private healthcare is heavily regulated in the US by government regulations & tort law. Much of the cost of healthcare is due to administrative costs & legal fees. I know of some doctors who will take cash at a 50% discount just to save on the administrative costs of collecting fees from HMOs.

As it is the poor already receive subsidized healthcare - most hospitals cannot turn away people in critical need & the cost is passed onto insured patients/customers. This is why so many hospitals in California have gone bankrupt, from the cost of taking care of uninsured illegal aliens.

I think the best thing would be for co-operative health insurance. The healthcare industry would have to be responsive to the needs of the insured not the government bureacrats or various healthcare workers unions. People could have choices of which co-op to join instead of allowing one agency a monoploy. It could be funded by tax credits, but it shouldn't be absolutely free. If something is free people will abuse it. It's not asking a lot for a family to pay $200 a month for health insurance coverage worth $600 a month.

As for how much the government pays for depends how what the social benefits are. Capital gravitates to those places that provide good social benefits at a reasonable price. If benfits are too generous driving up taxes - or poor, like in Detroit - capital will flow somewhere else.

It use to be that many hospitals in the US were owned by local non-profit corporations. Now many are owned by local or national chains. The result is higher healthcare costs, though the promise was implied lower costs through efficiency via larger for-profit corprotations.

[Birka]

I work in the health care industry. 90% of American doctors do all they can to avoid taking patients with Medicaid, the government health plan for welfare recipients. The 10% who do take MA patients (Medical Assistance), would have no other practice if they did not. Most of these doctors are foreign born Asian Indian, with a few Chinese and Phillipino.

My answer is to avoid letting the government in any part of our lives. We are losing.

[Ulf]

Bring back witch doctors.

[Rudy]

Major health care for citizens only. Emergency care for immigrants. There should be low cost options, perhaps nurse stations or foreign doctors, to help with choice.

[Maelstrom]

Were this thread posted under anything but the regional section, then my answer would be quite different.

I do not believe that the US government should sponsor health-care whatsoever. The United States was not build on such values and people flocked there because it was the land of opportunity. In my book, opportunity directly corresponds to choice and individual liberty.

In all other cases, say, New Zealand for example, I am all for subsidised health-care.

[SwordoftheVistula]

Absolutely not-such a system is both inefficient and unfair. The tax subsidies for employer-provided health care cause enough problems as it is, because the money changes hands so many times between the consumer and health care provider that there is no incentive to minimize costs.

A good article came out today dealing with this issue by economist Robert Samuelson:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...l_economy.html

President Obama has made no secret of his vision for America's 21st century economy. We will lead the world in "green" technologies to stop global warming. Advancing medical breakthroughs will improve our well-being, control health spending and enable us to expand insurance coverage. These investments in energy and health care, as well as education, will revive the economy and create millions of well-paying new jobs for middle-class Americans.

It's a dazzling rhetorical vista that excites the young and fits the country's present mood, which blames "capitalist greed" for the economic crisis. Obama promises communal goals and a more widely shared prosperity. The trouble is that it may not work as well in practice as it does in Obama's speeches. Still, congressional Democrats press ahead to curb global warming and achieve near-universal health insurance. We should not be stampeded into far-reaching changes that have little to do with today's crisis.

What Obama proposes is a "post-material economy." He would de-emphasize the production of ever-more private goods and services, harnessing the economy to achieve broad social goals. In the process, he sets aside the standard logic of economic progress.

Since the dawn of the Industrial Age, this has been simple: produce more with less. ("Productivity," in economic jargon.) Mass markets developed for clothes, cars, computers and much more because declining costs expanded production. Living standards rose. By contrast, the logic of the "post-material economy" is just the opposite: spend more and get less.

Consider global warming. The centerpiece of Obama's agenda is a "cap-and-trade" program. This would be, in effect, a tax on fossil fuels (oil, coal, natural gas). The idea is to raise their prices so that households and businesses use less or switch to costlier "alternative" energy sources such as solar. In general, we would spend more on energy and get less of it.

The story for health care is similar, though the cause is different. We spend more and more for it (now 21 percent of personal consumption, says Brookings economist Gary Burtless) and get, it seems, less and less gain in improved health. This is largely the result of costly new technologies and the unintended consequence of open-ended insurance reimbursement that encourages unneeded tests, procedures and visits to doctors. Expanding health insurance might aggravate the problem. Many of today's uninsured get health care free or don't need much because they're young (40 percent are between 18 and 34).

Together, health care and energy constitute about a quarter of the U.S. economy. If their costs increase, they will crowd out other spending. The president's policies might, as he says, create high-paying "green" or medical jobs. But if so, they will destroy old jobs elsewhere. Think about it. If you spend more for gasoline or electricity -- or for health insurance premiums -- then you spend less on other things, from meals out to home repair. Jobs in those sectors suffer.

The prospect is that energy and health costs may rise without creating much gain in material benefits. That's not economic "progress." To rebate households' higher energy costs (as some suggest) with tax cuts does not solve the problem of squeezed incomes. Given today's huge and unsustainable budget deficits, some other tax would have to be raised or some other program cut.

And collective benefits?

What defines the "post-material economy" is a growing willingness to sacrifice money income for psychic income -- "feeling good." Some people may gladly pay higher energy prices if they think they're "saving the planet" from global warming. Some may accept higher taxes if they think they're improving the health or education of the poor. Unfortunately, these psychic benefits may be based on fantasies. What if U.S. cuts in greenhouse gases are offset by Chinese increases? What if more health insurance produces only modest gains in people's health?

Obama and his allies have glossed over these questions. They've left the impression that somehow magical technological breakthroughs will produce clean energy that is also cheap. Perhaps that will happen; it hasn't yet. They've talked so often about the need to control wasteful health spending that they've implied they've actually found a way of doing so. Perhaps they will, but they haven't yet.

We cannot build a productive economy on the foundations of health care and "green" energy. These programs would create burdens for many, benefits for some. Indeed, their weaknesses may feed on each other, as higher health spending requires more taxes that are satisfied by stiffer terms for "cap-and-trade." We clearly need changes in these areas: ways to check wasteful health spending and promote efficient energy use. I have long advocated a gasoline tax on national security grounds. But Obama's vision for economic renewal is mostly a self-serving mirage.