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Hows about an import tax on things to bring money back into the country so we can afford health care?
The underlying problem is wealth transfer because we buy a lot (A LOT) of products produced by others. They get more wealth and we get less wealth.
Less wealth and we have to give up something. In business that equates to lower profits and lower benefits. And what is one of the major benefits? Health care.
So, we seem to need to balance our wealth transfer a bit better with appropriate tariffs.
Anatheist, it might not be a bad idea, but I’m not sure how it would help with health care. The problem isn’t the money. We’re already spending twice what everybody else does. The problem is the ridiculous fragmented private insurance system.
Leaving people at the mercy of big for-profit insurance companies isn’t my idea of freedom. And Medicare is holding down expenses better than private insurance is despite it not being able to pick and choose who to cover.
Well, we COULD regulate the living HECK out of the Insurance industry. That would be a good start.
And we could regulate the living heck out of Medical schools too! Maybe we could send a few hundred thousand students through based on a committment from them to work for the general good and not the corporate good. Hey why should the medical industry and the medical school industry get to collude to regulate the supply such that demand drives the prices through the roof.
And then we could regulate the heck out of doctors so that we’ll be able to know when there has been a screw up that requires someone to be fairly compensated for a mal practice.
While we’re at it maybe we can have a nationalized malpractice insurance to go along with those regulations?
And let’s at least have a national buying agency that contracts with the drug companies! All drugs are then purchased through that Government agency at a markup that helps pay for a the other health related government expenditures.
That ought to get us started pretty good…
Oh and take the media out of GE’s hands! I don’t know if ya’ll have seen these GE ads where they pass the wrench from factory to factory? That ad is run as a threatening reminder to Congress people everywhere that GE has their constiutents by the short curlies. Either play GE’s ball or your district is going to have a bald spot where GE used to be!
GE is a BIG Health Care Services product and service provider. Letting them report on the this issue without disclosing their conflict of interest is like “King Kong Payola on Steroids!”
Reasons you have some pretty good points but here’s some more to add to that list:
1) Make it illegal for insurance companies to provide primary healthcare, like most industrialized countries. This way they can’t rescind anyone’s plans. Instead they can provide other services such as classy recovery rooms or boob jobs.
2) No Tort Reform! If a doctor paralyzes you from the waist down why should they only have to give you $50,000 for pain and suffering? You screw up you pay, just like the rest of us!
3) ENFORCE THE SHERMAN ACTS! You know, the old laws that made it a crime for one company to own another (Nextel Sprint, AT&T bellsouth and cingular, JP Morgan Chase and Washington Mutual) so we don’t have “too big to fail”
I was afraid the last cartoon on football put this crowd to sleep. So I switched back to health care. Glad to see it’s perking the comments back up again. : )
Another idea. The government gives tax incentives to business to promote the types of business the government thinks is most important to the nation.
How about tax incentives to keep people insured? Kind of reversed though. The less money you make, the more benefit you get!
And how about some form of staying healthy tax benefit? Not to much or people will not go the doctor to keep the tax money!
This way we could get a healthier populous and still not have the government running it.
Obviously needs work, but his line seems to accomplish more than just getting people insured. And as people wouldn’t it be better to improve the health of the nation than just make it easier to get insurance and not improve?
Instead of enacting complex regulations designed to get the insurance companies to behave, just get rid of them. Extend Medicare to everybody living in the USA and improve it to cover 100% of all medically necessary services. Make up the funding difference with progressive taxes that for most of us will be less than we currently pay in insurance premiums, co-pays, etc. It ain’t rocket science. Nobody is opposed to (current) Medicare on the basis that it’s “big government.” Paying for people’s health care doesn’t constitute control over their lives.
Well, Briscoe, you asked a good question and it deserved an answer.
It’s really awesome to know you guys stop by here (so far I’ve seen Ted Rall, Donna Barstow, and you that I know of) it allows us to feel as if we can be a part of the national debate. Thanks.
Actually, some European countries’ systems are based on funds that are not managed by non-profit organizations that are not tied to the state. Germany and France, which generally are considered to have very high quality healthcare, use variations of this model. Both also have for-profit private companies, but these tend to offer supplementary services and cater to niche markets. I have been to Germany for a while and used one of their public insurers (one of the TKs, technical health funds). It should be noted that both countries spend a relatively large percent of their GDP on healthcare - around 11%. Of course, the US currently spends 16% and does not even have universal coverage.
I just don’t know how the system would work in the US, though. Maybe each state could have its own system with several funds offering services, within some federal regulations? I think Obama would have faced a lot less criticism if his team had delegated some of the decisions to the states and set some limits for what they must include. Then again, it could backfire and lead to grossly different work and living conditions, or to some states simply not being able to offer anything good.
There are a couple of guys who also seem to have a language of their own that speak to the cartoonist (I forget their handles) whom I figured where colleagues in cognito.
Gang, good comments. For what it’s worth, I’d prefer an outright expansion of Medicare, and GK suggested. However, any number of things would be acceptable. For starters, make all insurance companies non-profit again. Then eliminate the “pre-existing condition” altogether. I mean, if you have a preexisting condition, are you simply supposed to die? And once you have insurance, as long as you are paying your bills, make it illegal to pull coverage, regardless of how sick you become.
Of course, that’s only a surface fix because it doesn’t address increasing insurance costs, the patchwork of regulations and coverage plans that make it impossible to understand what you have, the inability of many to afford insurance and so on. But, it’s a start.
CD (sim GK), count me as three for the single payer medicare for everyone proponent.
Point is that the situation as laid out by Tom (can I call you Tom?) was no Big Gov’t takeover and no Big Insurance free ride. So we are left with regulation of Insurers, doctors, medical schools and pharma.
Also, Obama missed his opportunity to do this. It should have been the central issue of the primaries, and of the election and then it should have been instituted day one. That opportunity is gone gone gone.
Ok I have a new idea, it just struck me, and then I have a bit of a rant about something else.
My insurance premiums total about $2,000 per month. My medical costs total about $1,200 per year (figuring doctor visit co-pays and prescriptions). Obviously I’m paying some 20+ thousand dollars per year towards other people’s health and the greens fees of the management of my insurer.
I’m a fricken idiot! I should self insure! But what if I need to spend more than I have saved up at any particular moment?
Solution. Tax free self insurance accounts run by the Government. It’s somewhat the same situation as if I were on Medicare but I have prepaid by overpaying my premiums.
Dig, say I send the premium that I’m sending to the insurance company to my Medicare account. Say that the calculation (based on my age, marital status and children) says that 5 years of premium payments should cover the cost of my and my wife’s health care from then on (actuarially speaking) Assuming the kids are on their own after 18 or college. I will have contributed about 125,000 to the fund which is invested for growth by the Gov’t (those of you who want the SSI to be invested in the Market should like this feature, and I gotta like the fact that corporate profits would soar on this sort of plan).
The money is gone after my wife and I die (assuming the children are beyond the covered ages) or rather even when I hit today’s medicare age in that I switch over to that plan. I know some people will howl that they should be able to get that money back, but until my insurer sends me a check for the premiums I didn’t use…. I think you see my point.
Paid up self insurance, with a big negotiator on my side (so I don’t have to go toe to toe with the hospital when they bill me $10,000 for a $3,000 procedure). It won’t solve the problem of the 30,000,000 uninsured but it sure looks a whole lot sweeter for me. I can then move from job to job to no job to whatever and not have to worry about being insured. I can pay the $1,200 buck it costs me today out of pocket, the 125 sits there and protects me against catastrophic health bills.
Wow! I really like this idea. But it needs a loud brother with a big stick to make sure the providers don’t rape me.
The question has come up several times as to why it was ok to say such nasty things about W but it’s not ok to say them about O.
The reason is clear. The difference is that W CHOSE to be stupid, Obama did not CHOOSE to be black.
W is not a drooling cretin by nature, he is one by nurture (or lack thereof). In reality he is a guy with all the gifts necessary to have become a fine citizen that contributes greatly to society. At every turn he made the choice to take the easy way out. He has an undisciplined mentality.
Obama, on the other hand (don’t forget, I’m not this guy’s fan) worked hard to overcome poor circumstances (anybody remember Cher’s “Half Breed”? the world was different then from now) and at most turns, took the hard path.
That’s the difference, W chose to be an underachiever, and it is our duty as participants in an evolving society to scorn such mediocrity! And then that this layabout sent others out to do his dying for him and as a result of his poor oversight of the nation allowed forces to drive us off a cliff. He deserved scorn!
Obama chose to be an achiever, and whether we agree with his programs or not, we ought to respect the achievement. We should encourage more to be like him, (black, white, hispanic, asian, poor and rich). By dissing THIS President, you are dissing the fruits of hard labor.
We, as a people, interested in the betterment of our society should not do that.
Again, why the Obama machine doesn’t have these answers up and ready to go when the question is asked is beyond me!
«2) No Tort Reform! If a doctor paralyzes you from the waist down why should they only have to give you $50,000 for pain and suffering? You screw up you pay, just like the rest of us!» D_legendary1, what you don’t seem to realise is that those humongous awards in tort cases are one of the more important factors in giving the insurance industry such tremendous in US medicine today - second only, I should guess, to the factor of the lobbyist cheque book in Washington and the various state capitals. No doctor, for example, can afford to risk a malpractice suit without insurance coverage which pays for not only tort awards, but equally important, lawyers’ fees, etc, and this coverage, which must be taken from doctor’s fees, does not come cheaply. What the present US system does, in effect, is (surprise ! surprise !) to enrich insurance companies and lawyers at the cost of patients, doctors, and other medical personnnel. Naturally enough, the insurance companies would like to see judgements come down, so that they don’t need to shell out so much cash (they’re good at collecting, less good at paying), but at the same time they risk losing some of their immense power - what would happen if physicians weren’t so beholden to them ? What is needed is a no-fault system, as here in Europe, in which the reason for a medical error is pursued, without breaking the medical personnel who cared for the patient in question. As long as doctors, nurses, and others working in the field are human flesh, errors are going to be made ; the best way of dealing with them is to try to determine what failures in the system - excessive working hours, lack of checks when a prescription is being carried out, etc, which render actors prone to error and propose corrections. Think accident investigation commissions in aviation, which are charged to investigate accidents and near accidents, not so much to assess blame, but rather to try to prevent such accidents from happening again. Persons who have been injured through medical procedures should be indemnified via a national, single-payer insurance created for this specific purpose, whether or not anyone was at fault or to blame….
@ReasonsVentriloquist – I’m glad to be here and thanks for reading and commenting. I know a cartoon is a good one if it inspires a response – pro or con!
RV, sounds like you need to shop around for cheaper health insurance. The day I spend $2,000 a month for health insurance is the day that I am already buried six feet underground!!
John Sherffius by John Sherffius
Scott Stantis by Scott Stantis
Comments (23) Jump to Comments Form
anatheist2009 said, 2 months ago
Hows about an import tax on things to bring money back into the country so we can afford health care?
The underlying problem is wealth transfer because we buy a lot (A LOT) of products produced by others. They get more wealth and we get less wealth.
Less wealth and we have to give up something. In business that equates to lower profits and lower benefits. And what is one of the major benefits? Health care.
So, we seem to need to balance our wealth transfer a bit better with appropriate tariffs.
Gary Kleppe said, 2 months ago
Anatheist, it might not be a bad idea, but I’m not sure how it would help with health care. The problem isn’t the money. We’re already spending twice what everybody else does. The problem is the ridiculous fragmented private insurance system.
richgrise said, 2 months ago
How about Freedom?
Get the government the hell out of people’s personal lives.
Here’s an idea! How about fixing Medicare before we pile more deficit spending on top of it?
Gary Kleppe said, 2 months ago
Leaving people at the mercy of big for-profit insurance companies isn’t my idea of freedom. And Medicare is holding down expenses better than private insurance is despite it not being able to pick and choose who to cover.
ReasonsVentriloquist said, 2 months ago
Well, we COULD regulate the living HECK out of the Insurance industry. That would be a good start.
And we could regulate the living heck out of Medical schools too! Maybe we could send a few hundred thousand students through based on a committment from them to work for the general good and not the corporate good. Hey why should the medical industry and the medical school industry get to collude to regulate the supply such that demand drives the prices through the roof.
And then we could regulate the heck out of doctors so that we’ll be able to know when there has been a screw up that requires someone to be fairly compensated for a mal practice.
While we’re at it maybe we can have a nationalized malpractice insurance to go along with those regulations?
And let’s at least have a national buying agency that contracts with the drug companies! All drugs are then purchased through that Government agency at a markup that helps pay for a the other health related government expenditures.
That ought to get us started pretty good…
Oh and take the media out of GE’s hands! I don’t know if ya’ll have seen these GE ads where they pass the wrench from factory to factory? That ad is run as a threatening reminder to Congress people everywhere that GE has their constiutents by the short curlies. Either play GE’s ball or your district is going to have a bald spot where GE used to be!
GE is a BIG Health Care Services product and service provider. Letting them report on the this issue without disclosing their conflict of interest is like “King Kong Payola on Steroids!”
d_legendary1 said, 2 months ago
Reasons you have some pretty good points but here’s some more to add to that list:
1) Make it illegal for insurance companies to provide primary healthcare, like most industrialized countries. This way they can’t rescind anyone’s plans. Instead they can provide other services such as classy recovery rooms or boob jobs.
2) No Tort Reform! If a doctor paralyzes you from the waist down why should they only have to give you $50,000 for pain and suffering? You screw up you pay, just like the rest of us!
3) ENFORCE THE SHERMAN ACTS! You know, the old laws that made it a crime for one company to own another (Nextel Sprint, AT&T bellsouth and cingular, JP Morgan Chase and Washington Mutual) so we don’t have “too big to fail”
Briscoe
said,
2 months ago
I was afraid the last cartoon on football put this crowd to sleep. So I switched back to health care. Glad to see it’s perking the comments back up again. : )
anatheist2009 said, 2 months ago
Another idea. The government gives tax incentives to business to promote the types of business the government thinks is most important to the nation.
How about tax incentives to keep people insured? Kind of reversed though. The less money you make, the more benefit you get!
And how about some form of staying healthy tax benefit? Not to much or people will not go the doctor to keep the tax money!
This way we could get a healthier populous and still not have the government running it.
Obviously needs work, but his line seems to accomplish more than just getting people insured. And as people wouldn’t it be better to improve the health of the nation than just make it easier to get insurance and not improve?
Gary Kleppe said, 2 months ago
Instead of enacting complex regulations designed to get the insurance companies to behave, just get rid of them. Extend Medicare to everybody living in the USA and improve it to cover 100% of all medically necessary services. Make up the funding difference with progressive taxes that for most of us will be less than we currently pay in insurance premiums, co-pays, etc. It ain’t rocket science. Nobody is opposed to (current) Medicare on the basis that it’s “big government.” Paying for people’s health care doesn’t constitute control over their lives.
ReasonsVentriloquist said, 2 months ago
Well, Briscoe, you asked a good question and it deserved an answer.
It’s really awesome to know you guys stop by here (so far I’ve seen Ted Rall, Donna Barstow, and you that I know of) it allows us to feel as if we can be a part of the national debate. Thanks.
4uk4ata said, 2 months ago
Actually, some European countries’ systems are based on funds that are not managed by non-profit organizations that are not tied to the state. Germany and France, which generally are considered to have very high quality healthcare, use variations of this model. Both also have for-profit private companies, but these tend to offer supplementary services and cater to niche markets. I have been to Germany for a while and used one of their public insurers (one of the TKs, technical health funds). It should be noted that both countries spend a relatively large percent of their GDP on healthcare - around 11%. Of course, the US currently spends 16% and does not even have universal coverage.
I just don’t know how the system would work in the US, though. Maybe each state could have its own system with several funds offering services, within some federal regulations? I think Obama would have faced a lot less criticism if his team had delegated some of the decisions to the states and set some limits for what they must include. Then again, it could backfire and lead to grossly different work and living conditions, or to some states simply not being able to offer anything good.
believecommonsense
said,
2 months ago
Reasons, John Deering comments on his site under the name of “bueller.”
ReasonsVentriloquist said, 2 months ago
Huh, no kidding? Who’s John Deering? (kidding)
There are a couple of guys who also seem to have a language of their own that speak to the cartoonist (I forget their handles) whom I figured where colleagues in cognito.
cdward said, 2 months ago
Gang, good comments. For what it’s worth, I’d prefer an outright expansion of Medicare, and GK suggested. However, any number of things would be acceptable. For starters, make all insurance companies non-profit again. Then eliminate the “pre-existing condition” altogether. I mean, if you have a preexisting condition, are you simply supposed to die? And once you have insurance, as long as you are paying your bills, make it illegal to pull coverage, regardless of how sick you become.
Of course, that’s only a surface fix because it doesn’t address increasing insurance costs, the patchwork of regulations and coverage plans that make it impossible to understand what you have, the inability of many to afford insurance and so on. But, it’s a start.
ReasonsVentriloquist said, 2 months ago
CD (sim GK), count me as three for the single payer medicare for everyone proponent.
Point is that the situation as laid out by Tom (can I call you Tom?) was no Big Gov’t takeover and no Big Insurance free ride. So we are left with regulation of Insurers, doctors, medical schools and pharma.
Also, Obama missed his opportunity to do this. It should have been the central issue of the primaries, and of the election and then it should have been instituted day one. That opportunity is gone gone gone.
ReasonsVentriloquist said, 2 months ago
Ok I have a new idea, it just struck me, and then I have a bit of a rant about something else.
My insurance premiums total about $2,000 per month. My medical costs total about $1,200 per year (figuring doctor visit co-pays and prescriptions). Obviously I’m paying some 20+ thousand dollars per year towards other people’s health and the greens fees of the management of my insurer.
I’m a fricken idiot! I should self insure! But what if I need to spend more than I have saved up at any particular moment?
Solution. Tax free self insurance accounts run by the Government. It’s somewhat the same situation as if I were on Medicare but I have prepaid by overpaying my premiums.
Dig, say I send the premium that I’m sending to the insurance company to my Medicare account. Say that the calculation (based on my age, marital status and children) says that 5 years of premium payments should cover the cost of my and my wife’s health care from then on (actuarially speaking) Assuming the kids are on their own after 18 or college. I will have contributed about 125,000 to the fund which is invested for growth by the Gov’t (those of you who want the SSI to be invested in the Market should like this feature, and I gotta like the fact that corporate profits would soar on this sort of plan).
The money is gone after my wife and I die (assuming the children are beyond the covered ages) or rather even when I hit today’s medicare age in that I switch over to that plan. I know some people will howl that they should be able to get that money back, but until my insurer sends me a check for the premiums I didn’t use…. I think you see my point.
Paid up self insurance, with a big negotiator on my side (so I don’t have to go toe to toe with the hospital when they bill me $10,000 for a $3,000 procedure). It won’t solve the problem of the 30,000,000 uninsured but it sure looks a whole lot sweeter for me. I can then move from job to job to no job to whatever and not have to worry about being insured. I can pay the $1,200 buck it costs me today out of pocket, the 125 sits there and protects me against catastrophic health bills.
Wow! I really like this idea. But it needs a loud brother with a big stick to make sure the providers don’t rape me.
The rant will come on the next post.
ReasonsVentriloquist said, 2 months ago
It’s not going to be too bad.
The question has come up several times as to why it was ok to say such nasty things about W but it’s not ok to say them about O.
The reason is clear. The difference is that W CHOSE to be stupid, Obama did not CHOOSE to be black.
W is not a drooling cretin by nature, he is one by nurture (or lack thereof). In reality he is a guy with all the gifts necessary to have become a fine citizen that contributes greatly to society. At every turn he made the choice to take the easy way out. He has an undisciplined mentality.
Obama, on the other hand (don’t forget, I’m not this guy’s fan) worked hard to overcome poor circumstances (anybody remember Cher’s “Half Breed”? the world was different then from now) and at most turns, took the hard path.
That’s the difference, W chose to be an underachiever, and it is our duty as participants in an evolving society to scorn such mediocrity! And then that this layabout sent others out to do his dying for him and as a result of his poor oversight of the nation allowed forces to drive us off a cliff. He deserved scorn!
Obama chose to be an achiever, and whether we agree with his programs or not, we ought to respect the achievement. We should encourage more to be like him, (black, white, hispanic, asian, poor and rich). By dissing THIS President, you are dissing the fruits of hard labor.
We, as a people, interested in the betterment of our society should not do that.
Again, why the Obama machine doesn’t have these answers up and ready to go when the question is asked is beyond me!
Magnaut
said,
2 months ago
VOX POPULI VOX DEI
anatheist2009 said, about 1 month ago
um … The voice of the people is the voice of God? I miss the association to the above discussion.
M Henri Day said, about 1 month ago
«2) No Tort Reform! If a doctor paralyzes you from the waist down why should they only have to give you $50,000 for pain and suffering? You screw up you pay, just like the rest of us!» D_legendary1, what you don’t seem to realise is that those humongous awards in tort cases are one of the more important factors in giving the insurance industry such tremendous in US medicine today - second only, I should guess, to the factor of the lobbyist cheque book in Washington and the various state capitals. No doctor, for example, can afford to risk a malpractice suit without insurance coverage which pays for not only tort awards, but equally important, lawyers’ fees, etc, and this coverage, which must be taken from doctor’s fees, does not come cheaply. What the present US system does, in effect, is (surprise ! surprise !) to enrich insurance companies and lawyers at the cost of patients, doctors, and other medical personnnel. Naturally enough, the insurance companies would like to see judgements come down, so that they don’t need to shell out so much cash (they’re good at collecting, less good at paying), but at the same time they risk losing some of their immense power - what would happen if physicians weren’t so beholden to them ? What is needed is a no-fault system, as here in Europe, in which the reason for a medical error is pursued, without breaking the medical personnel who cared for the patient in question. As long as doctors, nurses, and others working in the field are human flesh, errors are going to be made ; the best way of dealing with them is to try to determine what failures in the system - excessive working hours, lack of checks when a prescription is being carried out, etc, which render actors prone to error and propose corrections. Think accident investigation commissions in aviation, which are charged to investigate accidents and near accidents, not so much to assess blame, but rather to try to prevent such accidents from happening again. Persons who have been injured through medical procedures should be indemnified via a national, single-payer insurance created for this specific purpose, whether or not anyone was at fault or to blame….
Henri
Briscoe
said,
about 1 month ago
@ReasonsVentriloquist – I’m glad to be here and thanks for reading and commenting. I know a cartoon is a good one if it inspires a response – pro or con!
mustbeunique2 said, about 1 month ago
Just give each of us a million dollars already and stop the violence.
Michigander said, about 1 month ago
RV, sounds like you need to shop around for cheaper health insurance. The day I spend $2,000 a month for health insurance is the day that I am already buried six feet underground!!