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Democrats are now firmly behind single-payer. Thanks, Trump and Republicans - Wash Post today

vesper said:
Timeframe wise if you combined the two examples I gave you, 10 years would be accurate. But Vets are still having to travel 72 miles from the Columbus area to the VA hospital in Dayton for treatment to my knowledge.
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A lot has improved in the last ten years. I know, because my wife is a 100 percent service connected disabled Navy veteran, and we've seen the improvements firsthand, at several of the VA facilities, where we have lived. The first VA we used WAS and STILL IS terrible, in Memphis, TN, but Dallas, Minneapolis and Long Beach, California have all been terrific, and they have saved my wife's life seven times.
[h=2]In 2016 82% (120 out of 146) of VA Medical Centers Reported on SAIL Showed Improvement Compared to Their Baseline One Year Earlier.
https://www.va.gov/qualityofcare/measure-up/End_of_Year_Hospital_Star_Rating.asp[/h]
Regarding the inability of the Columbus center to provide cancer treatments, it's an AMBULATORY CARE center, (a clinic) so therefore not a full service VA hospital, so it is not the VA's fault that they cannot provide full oncology/cancer treatment. Only CONGRESS can provide the funding to upgrade the Chalmers P. Wylie VA Ambulatory Care Center to a full service VA hospital, and the truth is, Congress has not been in the mood to provide increased funding since Newt Gingrich flipped it in 1994. In fact, the mood has been more toward making the VA worse, so that they have justification to get rid of it altogether.

Unless and until that attitude toward the VA changes, only Dayton and Cincinnatti will be able to provide full cancer treatment. It is unfortunate but it is not because the VA isn't capable or competent, it's because they lack the money to expand.

As regards the 1 star rated Memphis VA, I personally believe that it all traces to a toxic culture at that facility which dates back twenty or more years. Memphis never had a good VA, not from the very first day it opened its doors. Little Rock, AR is rated 3 stars and Hot Springs has a 5 star rating.
 
Fishking said:
We could definitely see advancements if we could all get on the same page. That said, it's not my ideal system but it's the only system I see addressing all the current problems. I don't think my ideal system could even be implemented anymore, even if I could have 100% control over all decisions.

Sometimes you don't get your ideal so you have to go with what is possible.
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That's the way I'm leaning.
There will be a lot of growing pains . Mostly, much lousier service and massive layoffs in the private sector, but I guess we'd get used. Happened in the UK.I just don't see any other way around it.
 
Besides, getting back to the thread, the government doesn't "take over" health care in single payer systems unless the system is socialized, too. Otherwise, doctors and hospitals continue to operate as before, they just get PAID BY a single payer, namely through taxes, instead of out of insurance or out of pocket.

It is the health INSURANCE business that gets converted, not the system. Since this is 2018, and the USA already has a health care infrastructure in operation, there is no need to BUILD an entirely new system on top of it, only a need to transform where facilities and doctors get their revenue.

Naturally, the first visible change in a single payer system is that the system begins to again focus on health care via disease PREVENTION, wellness, cures and rehabilitation, instead of incentivized services and symptom management for profit.

The only reason where a government would have to "take over" the actual health CARE business would be if the United States was a largely wilderness rural nation with a lack of facilities.
That's not the case in the USA in 2018, everything is already there right now.

Single payer is about how the health care business gets PAID, and by whom.
With a risk pool consisting of 325 million people, and a single negotiator, the net benefit for the end user is enormous. And that is backed up by study after study, which is why every other first world industrialized democracy made that move years ago.
 
Fishking said:
Even though I'm fairly right on most issues, I've come to the conclusion that single-payer is the way forward, with all the variables and considerations taken into account. I wasn't always, in fact, I was against it until maybe only about 2 years ago.
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I too am a conservative, and I've been behind single-payer since before Obamacare ever got started -- with one big caveat -- kick the insurance industry to the curb. Once the multi-billion-dollar insurance industry is out of the picture, we can afford quality healthcare without breaking the bank. As it stands right now, we're just lining the pockets of the insurers.

Of course, keep private plans available for any who choose to buy them, although, I doubt many would.
 
Professional economists should be able to answer the question of how much Labor needs to make, at a minimum, to make single payer work.
 
Chomsky said:
The ACA was total B.S. The move should have been to single-payer, in the first place. If it was, we'd have a working national healthcare system with majority political support.

To force citizens to buy a private commercial product, was asinine & unconstitutional in my opinion.
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With much lower costs.

Look, if single payer is so horrible how is it that Canada has had it since 1968 and yet still competes head to head with the US economically, socially and scientifically? If its so bad how come 90% of Canadians love it? Are we insane?

No. Are their "deah squads?" Yes. In the US the hmo's get to say who gets what.

What Americans always ignore are the huge profits the insurance companies and banks are making off your crises. That's because the insurance companies and the banks control the message, and in fact the government when you get right down to it. I mean no one even went to jail for raping the Us economy and leaving thousands of people bankrupt and homeless.
 
Chomsky said:
The ACA was total B.S. The move should have been to single-payer, in the first place. If it was, we'd have a working national healthcare system with majority political support.

To force citizens to buy a private commercial product, was asinine & unconstitutional in my opinion.
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Yep, just like we have safe and secure public schools that cost less and get better results than those in most OCED nations. Oh, wait...

Simply because something is run or funded by the federal government does not make it better or less expensive - see SNAP. Just because government in nation A does something well does not mean that government in nation B, given a chance, will do so as well.
 
Chomsky said:
The ACA was total B.S. The move should have been to single-payer, in the first place. If it was, we'd have a working national healthcare system with majority political support.

To force citizens to buy a private commercial product, was asinine & unconstitutional in my opinion.
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and the majority GOP Congress has yet to come up with a better plan but they have damn sure ****ed many with even higher premiums & lower levels of benefit = MAGA ......
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
A lot has improved in the last ten years. I know, because my wife is a 100 percent service connected disabled Navy veteran, and we've seen the improvements firsthand, at several of the VA facilities, where we have lived. The first VA we used WAS and STILL IS terrible, in Memphis, TN, but Dallas, Minneapolis and Long Beach, California have all been terrific, and they have saved my wife's life seven times.
[h=2]In 2016 82% (120 out of 146) of VA Medical Centers Reported on SAIL Showed Improvement Compared to Their Baseline One Year Earlier.
https://www.va.gov/qualityofcare/measure-up/End_of_Year_Hospital_Star_Rating.asp[/h]
Regarding the inability of the Columbus center to provide cancer treatments, it's an AMBULATORY CARE center, (a clinic) so therefore not a full service VA hospital, so it is not the VA's fault that they cannot provide full oncology/cancer treatment. Only CONGRESS can provide the funding to upgrade the Chalmers P. Wylie VA Ambulatory Care Center to a full service VA hospital, and the truth is, Congress has not been in the mood to provide increased funding since Newt Gingrich flipped it in 1994. In fact, the mood has been more toward making the VA worse, so that they have justification to get rid of it altogether.

Unless and until that attitude toward the VA changes, only Dayton and Cincinnatti will be able to provide full cancer treatment. It is unfortunate but it is not because the VA isn't capable or competent, it's because they lack the money to expand.

As regards the 1 star rated Memphis VA, I personally believe that it all traces to a toxic culture at that facility which dates back twenty or more years. Memphis never had a good VA, not from the very first day it opened its doors. Little Rock, AR is rated 3 stars and Hot Springs has a 5 star rating.
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Personally I would like to see Vets given something like a healthcare account and allow them to use it toward treatment by the doctors of their choice close to home.

Medicare for seniors is unsustainable yet some folks want it for everyone. Social Security is unsustainable and that is why discussions about reforms to all these programs are ongoing.

Who is going to pay for all this? The coming generations. You see I know as a senior all the money I paid into Medicare and Social Security over the years is just a drop in the bucket to what I will collect from it the rest of my life and any honest senior would admit the same. So who is going to pick up the tab? Our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren not yet born.

You see we have become a society that likes getting something for next to nothing. And how do we achieve that? Well we send those worms of politicians to Washington that promise such things to us and it gets done through new subsidies and entitlement programs. And the dirty secret for many is every time a new subsidy or entitlement is passed into law it causes the very business being subsidized or entitlement it causes the cost to rise for those things. Whether it is farm subsidies, healthcare, or education the results are the same. Higher prices for services and products and there are government carrots on the stick attached to each and every one of them.

In my opinion single-payer is the wrong direction. A good portion of our economy becomes married to the Federal government. Every time that happens we lose more of our liberty.
And right now in my opinion we need serious reforms that will get the Federal government the heck out of the way with common sense solutions to programs that are no longer sustainable.
 
Aristaeus said:
Any tax increasewould be much, much lower than the insurance payments and deductions that you currently pay, so you would be better off.
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Who knows. We'd have to see what the CBO would have to say about it.
 
HowardBThiname said:
I too am a conservative, and I've been behind single-payer since before Obamacare ever got started -- with one big caveat -- kick the insurance industry to the curb. Once the multi-billion-dollar insurance industry is out of the picture, we can afford quality healthcare without breaking the bank. As it stands right now, we're just lining the pockets of the insurers.

Of course, keep private plans available for any who choose to buy them, although, I doubt many would.
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Yeah...I think at that point we wouldn't have to kick them to the curb. It would just happen all on it's own and about the only people with extra insurance would be all the people with the platinum type plans.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
Yep, just like we have safe and secure public schools that cost less and get better results than those in most OCED nations. Oh, wait...

Simply because something is run or funded by the federal government does not make it better or less expensive - see SNAP. Just because government in nation A does something well does not mean that government in nation B, given a chance, will do so as well.
Click to expand...
You are right, in that neither government nor private administration guarantees success. It is up to the specific implementation, though we need to keep in mind free-market for-profit solutions eat up some of the available capital, and free-market for-profit solutions do not fulfill the full social responsibility unless heavily regulated. Not that government sanctioned programs are without fault either. But I have no problem with a Medicaid/Medicare roll-out, keeping & expanding the current private providers.

As to country A not having to follow country B, of course they should not follow blindly. But if B and many others are having successes, while A is failing, then A has to change, perhaps looking closer at B and B's associates. We need to get our money's worth. And we're not.
 
Fearandloathing said:
With much lower costs.

Look, if single payer is so horrible how is it that Canada has had it since 1968 and yet still competes head to head with the US economically, socially and scientifically? If its so bad how come 90% of Canadians love it? Are we insane?

No. Are their "deah squads?" Yes. In the US the hmo's get to say who gets what.

What Americans always ignore are the huge profits the insurance companies and banks are making off your crises. That's because the insurance companies and the banks control the message, and in fact the government when you get right down to it. I mean no one even went to jail for raping the Us economy and leaving thousands of people bankrupt and homeless.
Click to expand...
Not sure if I told you this, but several of my Canadian relatives stayed by my Mom's during the summer of the healthcare debates & townhalls.

They were utterly blown away by the way their healthcare system was characterized by the GOP, and also quite astounded when we explained the individual monetary realities of the American insurers' system. They were shocked by it all, and pretty disgusted.
 
howardbthiname said:
i too am a conservative, and i've been behind single-payer since before obamacare ever got started -- with one big caveat -- kick the insurance industry to the curb. Once the multi-billion-dollar insurance industry is out of the picture, we can afford quality healthcare without breaking the bank. as it stands right now, we're just lining the pockets of the insurers.

Of course, keep private plans available for any who choose to buy them, although, i doubt many would.
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qft.



.
 
JacksinPA said:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...trump-and-republicans/?utm_term=.71c7bbd457b6

Today, the Center for American Progress released a single-payer health plan (or thereabouts), planting a significant marker in the evolution of the Democratic Party, and eventually perhaps the American health-care system.

And we have President Trump and the Republicans to thank for it.
=======================================================================
Way to go, Republicans! Single-payer health care may be just around the corner thanks to your efforts.
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Oh Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus. Have you ever heard about counting chickens?
 
JacksinPA said:
But the health insurance lobby drives the Republicans.
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Oh Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus. It was Democrats who were in charge when Obamacare was passed! Republicans had nothing to do with it.
 
vesper said:
Personally I would like to see Vets given something like a healthcare account and allow them to use it toward treatment by the doctors of their choice close to home.
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And what are the financial limitations to such an account? My wife, the disabled Navy veteran?
Her medical needs are for the rest of her life, and they are not the kind of highly profitable issues that outside doctors are incentivized to treat. So thanks, but no thanks.
We spent six years going around and round the merry go round, and she couldn't even get an official diagnosis. What you would "like to see" and what disabled veterans actually NEED are clearly two different things.
Your idea amounts to a voucher for two thousand bucks, a KICK IN THE TEETH and a "thank you for your service".

vesper said:
Medicare for seniors is unsustainable yet some folks want it for everyone. Social Security is unsustainable and that is why discussions about reforms to all these programs are ongoing.
Click to expand...
The only discussions taking place are those where the money gets handed to crooks on Wall Street. If you want to talk about fiscal responsibility, crooks on Wall Street is the last place to look. We already know from history what happens when you put all your eggs in that basket and we do not need to learn the same lessons over and over again, thank you.

Social Security is an insurance program, it's official name is "Old Age and Survivors Disability Insurance".
The way one keeps insurance programs solvent is by making actuarial adjustments. Accountants do this every day with other insurance programs. Make an adjustment to the income cap and Social Security will continue to be solvent well into the future.
Medicare costs less than a private program, so please tell me why you have a problem with saving money. Waste and abuse by Medicare contractors CAN be handled, if our elected officials will stop cutting the funds to police the program.

vesper said:
Who is going to pay for all this? The coming generations. You see I know as a senior all the money I paid into Medicare and Social Security over the years is just a drop in the bucket to what I will collect from it the rest of my life and any honest senior would admit the same. So who is going to pick up the tab? Our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren not yet born.
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You conservatives crack me up. You don't seem to have a problem taking away the money that poor grandchildren and great grandchildren will need, for health care, for school lunches, for reading programs, for food stamps.

vesper said:
You see we have become a society that likes getting something for next to nothing. And how do we achieve that?
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More whining about baloney, my wife PAID with her body when she SERVED our country.
Seniors PAY every paycheck into Medicare and Social Security. Stop calling them entitlements because that is a flat out lie. A bald faced lie.

vesper said:
Well we send those worms of politicians to Washington that promise such things to us and it gets done through new subsidies and entitlement programs. And the dirty secret for many is every time a new subsidy or entitlement is passed into law it causes the very business being subsidized or entitlement it causes the cost to rise for those things. Whether it is farm subsidies, healthcare, or education the results are the same. Higher prices for services and products and there are government carrots on the stick attached to each and every one of them.
Click to expand...

More whining about taxes being theft. Somalia is tax free and I hear it's a great place to live. Very libertarian.

SomaliabetterIn.jpg

vesper said:
In my opinion single-payer is the wrong direction. A good portion of our economy becomes married to the Federal government. Every time that happens we lose more of our liberty.
And right now in my opinion we need serious reforms that will get the Federal government the heck out of the way with common sense solutions to programs that are no longer sustainable.
Click to expand...

Every single privatized program EVER ENACTED has FAILED to save money, and in fact has cost MORE money. Go ahead name a SINGLE instance where privatization of a government program SAVED diddly squat. You can't, because it is a forty year line of baloney.

You'll privatize the VA over my dead body.
You are dismissed.
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
And what are the financial limitations to such an account? My wife, the disabled Navy veteran?
Her medical needs are for the rest of her life, and they are not the kind of highly profitable issues that outside doctors are incentivized to treat. So thanks, but no thanks.
We spent six years going around and round the merry go round, and she couldn't even get an official diagnosis. What you would "like to see" and what disabled veterans actually NEED are clearly two different things.
Your idea amounts to a voucher for two thousand bucks, a KICK IN THE TEETH and a "thank you for your service".


The only discussions taking place are those where the money gets handed to crooks on Wall Street. If you want to talk about fiscal responsibility, crooks on Wall Street is the last place to look. We already know from history what happens when you put all your eggs in that basket and we do not need to learn the same lessons over and over again, thank you.

Social Security is an insurance program, it's official name is "Old Age and Survivors Disability Insurance".
The way one keeps insurance programs solvent is by making actuarial adjustments. Accountants do this every day with other insurance programs. Make an adjustment to the income cap and Social Security will continue to be solvent well into the future.
Medicare costs less than a private program, so please tell me why you have a problem with saving money. Waste and abuse by Medicare contractors CAN be handled, if our elected officials will stop cutting the funds to police the program.



You conservatives crack me up. You don't seem to have a problem taking away the money that poor grandchildren and great grandchildren will need, for health care, for school lunches, for reading programs, for food stamps.



More whining about baloney, my wife PAID with her body when she SERVED our country.
Seniors PAY every paycheck into Medicare and Social Security. Stop calling them entitlements because that is a flat out lie. A bald faced lie.



More whining about taxes being theft. Somalia is tax free and I hear it's a great place to live. Very libertarian.

View attachment 67229228



Every single privatized program EVER ENACTED has FAILED to save money, and in fact has cost MORE money. Go ahead name a SINGLE instance where privatization of a government program SAVED diddly squat. You can't, because it is a forty year line of baloney.

You'll privatize the VA over my dead body.
You are dismissed.
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Well it is obvious you are not interested in an honest discussion with your latest post. Good Day.
 
vesper said:
Well it is obvious you are not interested in an honest discussion with your latest post. Good Day.
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Oh I'm very interested, as evidenced by all the responses I gave to you earlier.
I just think that what you said in your previous post was exceptionally mean spirited, selfish and uninformed. But most of all...mean spirited.

What you refuse to see is the fact that disabled veterans are among the most vulnerable in our society, and history shows what conservatives do to the most vulnerable.

Good day to you, too.
It's easy to be a conservative, until you suddenly find yourself helpless and powerless, and you need help.

Well, I'm here to defend two helpless people, my disabled wife and our disabled son.
 
Chomsky said:
The ACA was total B.S. The move should have been to single-payer, in the first place. If it was, we'd have a working national healthcare system with majority political support.
To force citizens to buy a private commercial product, was asinine & unconstitutional in my opinion.
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Total BS? C’mon chom, it helped 20 million people get insurance. It’s lowered the cost curve and improved the quality of care. To me, republicans fighting for the status quo was total BS. The non stop conservative lies about Obamacare were total BS. Sabotaging the risk corridors and every other action republicans took to increase the costs to people buying insurance was total BS. If republicans had put America ahead of their agenda Obamacare would be working great for everybody not just the people who get subsidies. I just don’t understand how you can say that.

Chomsky said:
Yeah, but you know the Dems rammed this down everyone's throat & past the opposition.
If that's the m.o. they used, I would have preferred a gradual step-wise Medicaid roll-out.
But like you said, the political realities may have precluded it. So instead, we got something no-one liked, and it's effectively gone (without the mandate).
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Now I understand how you can say that. You believe the conservative narrative of “rammed down our throats”. Please step back from that narrative and try to understand that Obamacare took 8 months to go through the legislative process.

Timeline: Affordable Care Act's long road to political reality

And remember, the same people telling you “rammed down our throats” are the same people who told you President Obama was born in Kenya, his BC a forgery and death panels. Nothing was going to meet the approval of republicans. The fact that President Obama abandoned his single payer plan and compromised on the republican plan of mandates proves it.
 
democrats wanted single payer, it was republicans that didn't want it and dems needed some republicans. Unlike the republican bs tax bill, the democrats worked with republicans and added things htey wanted
 
JacksinPA said:
Way to go, Republicans! Single-payer health care may be just around the corner thanks to your efforts.
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Single payer is the most efficient means of eliminating an individual's right to life.

There are two types of rights, natural and legal. Legal rights are bestowed upon us by our governing body. They are amendable, repealable and other wise maluable. They change with the mood of the era. Natural rights are rights that are inherent. They are held by the individual and not dependant on any law. They can be understood universally through human reasoning. They are not amendable, repealable or maluable. They are inalienable.

The right to life is undoubtably in the natural rights category. It is held by the individual and universally understood. Our government does recognize the right to life through laws and statutes. However, those laws and statutes only address when and how to attend to individuals that violate another individual's right to life. The laws never grant an individual the right to live. To do so would violate the natural right to life by transforming it into a legal right.

The right to life encompasses a wide variety of activities. For the purposes of this thread, we will only discuss those that pertain to health care. Health care (and yes, it is two words) is an extension of an individual's right to life. Seeking medical attention for every symptom (minor or significant) can and will extend an individual's life and therefor is part of the right to life. However, if that care is controlled by the government through financing, the right to life would now become a legal right. It would be controlled by the government and in no way could be considered a natural right. That would include the ability to amend, repeal or other wise manipulate the rights of the citizens.

I have long contested, and will continue to contest, that a legal right is not a right at all. Because a legal right is granted by a governing body and is easily changed it is better defined as a privilege. Privileges are not rights. Privileges require individual's to ask permission. For certain, a government run health care system would be a privilege that would require and individual to get permission to receive treatment.

This permission will seem innocuous at first. Patients/citizens will simply go to a doctor with a plastic card and receive care. The government will tell them that the card is to track where the money goes and how effectively the money is being spent. In the end, the tracking will determine there is money being wasted (there will be no regard for the patient/citizen's thoughts) and that cuts should be made. Procedures that were once allowed, will not be allowed. This process will take some time and it won't be until there are significant cuts that the citizen's will start to understand that they have lost their right to life.

We are already seeing this process in industrialized nations that have made health care a publicly held privilege. We saw the case of Charlie Gard in which a young child was denied treatment simply because the hospital didn't want to absorbed the cost. When the funds were raised for a private doctor to attempt to save the child (and it was an attempt with minimal chance of success) the child was still not given the opportunity to live. Yes, the procedure was unlikely to work. But, if the child had a right to life, the government would have had no say in what was done. Instead, the government was the final authority, the only authority.

But it doesn't start and end with cases of rare disease. The UK announced in October of 2017 that it would no longer treat the obese or smokers for routine or non-urgent surgery. The reason for the policy? "The consultation proposals were developed by local (general practitioners) and public health doctors, with the best interests of the whole patient population of our area in mind." The right to life does not exist in the UK.

This is not restricted to one small country either. In Canada, there are restrictions on how many doctors can be a specialist and only a few university hospitals are allowed to perform open heart surgery. The result is a back log of patients that wait for a significant period of time for care. In that time, those that are weaker, older or have compications incur a greater risk of death.

I need more time to find more examples and I just don't have it.

In conclusion, the natural right to life cannot coexist with a legal right to health care. Any system that forces people onto a government run program does so at the expense of their right to life.
 
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