ToD, regarding Insurance Companies, I ask you, if that business model was applied to cars, would you be as defensive of it?
Honestly, probably not. The reason for this is that car companies don't invest nearly as much in R&D and bureaucratic monstrosities as insurance companies do. The EPA is just now getting its hands on the auto industry in true form with mandating emissions standards. Metal and the materials that make a car are not scarce(no, I'm not including oil), and just about anyone can make a car, whereas not everyone can make medicine.
Ok, let me try to rephrase this so as to not denigrate the auto workers. It doesn't take an engineering genius to design a car that will sell well, but it does take years of R&D from genius minds to create a new pill or treatment to combat a disease. Medicine is a rapidly evolving enterprise and the auto industry is not, costs are naturally higher for the, and I use this term lightly, medical industry.
And then look at it at the manufacturing level. You don't
need a college degree to build a car. Most mechanics and factory line workers probably have an Associate's Degree, if that. To be a pharmacist takes 6 years of college, with some programs mandating 8 years at least. The pay scale is thusly unbalanced.
True, it doesn't take as many pharmacists to fill a prescription as it does mechanics to fix a car, but given the degree of specialty involved in pharmaceuticals, the cost of having 5 or 6 fully licensed pharmacists working in one small pharmacy is probably equal to an entire factory line of auto workers, except for the case of Ford, GM and Chevy, because of union contracts, which is one reason they crashed so hard this time around.
It probably costs more to fill a pharmacy with medicine than it does a dealership with cars, too.
That's the drug industry though. The insurance part has to cover all of those costs, even no one gets sick. There's a lot of trapholes here.
Then there are hospitals, who have to employ physicians, specialists, pharmacists, interns and residents to take over as physicians, nurses, RN nurses, the drugs they provide, the equipment they need, staff workers to keep the place sanitary, storage for...fluids, and all of the niceties you see in a hospital, i.e., tv's in the rooms, a daycare in many cases, lecture halls, seminars for their staff, malpractice insurance, etc.
And insurance companies are called in to cover all of that too.
Not to mention that medicine's probably bought more often than a car is. Increased quantity demanded with a limited quantity supplied of specialized labor and materials causes an increase in prices. Even moreso with all of the investments into drugs and treatments that may or may not work.
I know insurance companies can be bastards, and it might seem unfair to have to pay a premium each month if you never get sick, but it is not all their fault that prices keep rising. Government mandates, the FDA, bastard lawyers and even natural market forces are driving costs up at a rate that is unnatural.
Now medical care is just as essential for the welfare of the populace as milk, if not more so, yes? If the government can influence the price of milk, why not influence the price of medical care?
First of all, a gallon of milk down here is about $4. That's not cheap in my book. It's good quality milk, I'll give you that, and I'll give the government kudos on that, but its still not nearly as affordable as what you're making it out to be. My family, which is fairly middle class, has had to buy it in half gallon increments after the prices shot up last year and never went down.
Secondly, the government does already influence the price of medical care. Government mandates about certain treatments that have to be covered(restless leg syndrome being the most frivolous I've heard) drive costs up for insurance companies; the FDA's rigid standards drive up the costs for drug companies; government mandated malpractice insurance for doctors drives up the costs of hospitals and individual doctors. Hell, the cost of malpractice insurance has soared because of lawyers and lawsuits. Costs all around in the medical industry have risen the way they have because of these.
Now, about the FDA, they can either bring quality or cost efficiency. Not both; its economically unsustainable. They can have their standards still, which raises costs, but if they try to force drug companies, insurance companies and hospitals to lower their costs then quality will suffer. If they try to do both, then the private health care industry will fail, and no one will have access to adequate health care.
Unless you tax people, but I'd like to see you try at this point.
If there was a better option for us to take, then yes, let us take it, but our current position is intolerable. We cannot just stay here.
Tort reform, damn it!
Side note: I highly recommend you start reading the BBC News' website. It is terribly interesting to get a non-American perspective on world events.
That might be interesting. I'll have to take a gander.
Well, the next time I see a doctor pull into a hospital parking lot with a $50,000 Lexus, I'd like to know where he (or she) got the paycheck that paid off that car. I mean, the way some doctors are paid, they probably don't even use monthly plans to pay off their nice cars.
That's a rather popular image of doctors, and it might very well be true in a lot of cases, but in general its probably an unfair characterization.
As for why doctors get enough money to afford a $50,000 Lexus, the main reasons are incentive and market forces. Would you go through 8 years of post-secondary school, rack up huge debts in the meantime and work in the conditions they do(they work up to 24-36 hour shifts, are on call for most of their free time, and only really get one true "day off" per week; plus the cutting open of people, the constant fluids that spray from various orifices they have to deal with) for the money you do now or will be making straight out of college? Probably not.
Then there is the specialization of their labor. Compare the number of doctors to, say, accountants, and you'll see why they get paid more. Or to use a more vivid example, Kobe Bryant gets paid umpteen million dollars a year for shooting hoops because of the special skills he has. The NBA uses people with superhuman abilities in basketball, rather than regular people. In short, you and I and most people can't do what Kobe does, nor can we practice medicine effectively, so they get paid more.
Also, in case you missed it, all those anecdotal examples of healthcare nightmares I gave were out of my personal life and acquaintanceships.
I know people who's health care's great. Superb even. Individual anecdotal arguments don't prove anything though, for two reasons: 1) They can't be verified, 2) Everyone's case is different. If a super-majority of people had good anecdotes regarding the health care system, as they seem to now, would you change your mind? Doubtful.
Same here, though. I want to make sure that we help the people with bad anecdotes without ass-screwing the people with good ones. That's unfair to them.
I've pointed to the easily verifiable fact that there never have been government “death panels” nor would there be under this legislation
I never said there were "death panels," but even then I can't "verify" that because I haven't read the portion of the bill that was cut out. Journalists like George S. can speculate on it, and reasonable people like you and me might have a pretty good idea, but only the author of that clause could say for sure what it entailed. Unless that was you or someone you know closely, you can't verify it.
Because the government bureaucracy administering public healthcare would be interested in moving patients through the system efficiently.
Replace the word "efficiently" with "quickly," and it'll be more accurate. If it means throwing pills at it other than some other, possibly better but lengthier and expensive treatment, guess which would win?
I agree with you here (obviously), but I wanted to point out that here, for some reason that I can't figure out, you start referring to Medicaid, which is not the same as Medicare.
Rookie mistake on my part.
Yes, I completely agree with you. However, I am loathe to spend time on it, because it's become a right-wing talking point that tort reform is the only healthcare reform we need, which is obscenely wrong. I consider it a distraction.
Possibly. However, it's a part, perhaps the primary part, because it'll reduce costs a great deal, and in turn reduce prices.
Has the current health bill mentioned dealing with tort reform, by the way? I haven't heard anything about it since the "death panel" controversy snuck up.
If you spread the wealth out more,
Mmmm....that's an argument for another day.
and people had more money that wasn't tied up in debt, then even if the quality of health care went down, they could afford to pay extra for the stuff they'd need.
That sounds more like personal responsibility though, although coupled with the first statement I guess it makes more sense.
