Why hasn't an efficient health care system been implemented?
The Blue team want it and the Red team want it, Donald Trump said it should be simple to implement, and he is undoubtedly right, the VA system is single payer, so are Medicare and Medicaid, sort of. Lots of people are in these, why not extend it to cover everyone, if they want it.
Obviously if a lot of money will be saved then some middle men will lose a lot of money.
My question is do the medical insurance bureaucracies pay the election campaigns of Members of Congress and is that why the various attempts by the executives have been thwarted?
There has to be a reason, it would be nice to find it.
I don't think the Red team wants it. All they and Trump wanted to do was dismantle the ACA--and for Trump, everything else that Obama did.
They had-what 7 years-to come up with a viable healthcare plan, and they didn't do it, because they didn't care about healthcare. And they thought they'd never have to, either. They thought they were safe bashing it because they didn't think Trump would win and they would be called on to put their mouths where their money is. They were just trying to ruin Obamacare and didn't even try to replace it.
I don't believe most politicians, and in particular Republicans, care anything at all about America's citizens.
My congressman is a former doctor. An antichoice, anti-medicine, anti-birth control, anti-universal Heath care greedy scumbag of a former doctor. He came and listened to THOUSANDS beg him to not vote for trumpcare and reasons why, and he still did.
He uses his doctor status to manipulate the uninformed while taking cushy donations from pharmaceutical companies and investors. It's pathetic. I directly asked him if he still follows his hippacratic oath, he said yes, so I asked him why he then votes for policies that will ultimately kill millions. He blocked me.
Affordable Health Care
Health Insurance companies are required to make a profit to satisfy their share holders. They also have high administrative costs. On the other hand, a Government plan doesn't need to make a profit. Our experience with Medicare demonstrates that the government has a much lower administrative cost than private health plans. So why don't we have Medicare for all?
Only a Health Insurance Plan that covers all Americans can survive. As long as some poor people are not covered they will go to the Emergency Room when they are sick. The hospital will charge those with insurance more money to cover the cost of free care given to the poor. The insurance plan will then cover its extra costs by raising premiums. As you raise premiums more people will be unable to afford coverage and drop their insurance and go to the Emergency Room for care. This cycle will be a death spiral for health insurance.
At any mal-practice trial, doctors dread being asked by a slick trial lawyer..."Did you perform XYZ test or procedure?" The insinuation is that had XYZ test or procedure been performed there may have been a different health outcome. This usually fools lay jurors but most likely will not fool a panel of medical professional judges. Right now doctors order useless and irrelevant tests and procedures to protect themselves from frivolous law suits and in turn drive up medical costs unnecessarily.
The issues you list exist in Canada, too. Yet they have universal health care, and similar outcomes for half the cost. Malpractice costs is a conservative red herring pushed by insurance companies that can't be bothered doing due diligence on those they take insurance payments from. The longer patent protection in Canada was actually negotiated by the government for cheaper drug prices for government drug programs. Basically, conservatives don't want single payer because they don't want government involved in health care beyond what goes on in a woman's womb. Partially political philosophy, shown by tRump's plan to privatize the VA, and partially because they get such uge bribes from the private medical industry.
There is too much monetary incentive to get rid of the mess.
One shitty hand contaminates the whole bowl of pudding.
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Completely off topic, but I like your user icon. ?
Politics are out of hand, politicians could care less about their constituents, ask yourself if you really want a group of individuals in charge of healthcare when all they care about is the accumulation of power.
Start a new political party called 'Incumbents Out'.
Let's be clear, the current GOP leadership is a bunch of Ayn Rand/Koch brothers sycophants. They do not believe in Medicare, Medicaid or even Social Security. They believe all such programs should be privatized. The current budget is set up so that when the revenue requirements are not met these programs will be cut. You will notice that in your state, especially if it is red, hospitals in low population or poor counties are closing. This is the beginning. We need to expand Medicare to all ages, increase the payroll tax cap to $250k and cut defense to pay for it. The Democrats are for this, the GOP are not.
Yes, insurance companies donate to PACs, and PACs often hire politicians relatives, wife, son, daughter, father, ... as political consultants for another politician. That way, the PAC elects a politician of their choice, and the politician's family gets rich. The same process occurs for all big corporations, including the oil, coal, automobile, farm, pharmacy, etc. industries. Almost all Republicans and most Democrats are locked into their job by this process. Don't take my word. Do some research
The right has too many issues with too many medical treatments to ever be for an efficient system to ever be implimented.
Health insurance is major big business, so there is huge pressure to NOT go to universal health care because all the fat cats would lose a big chunk of business. We desperately need universal health care. The shift will be hard, but it is necessary.
From 2000 through 2004, I used to work for a national insurance brokerage (not a specific company, but a brokerage). They handled all kinds of insurance: personal, commercial, farm, bonds, auto, health, life, etc. I still remember the president of the Northern California region (where I worked) calling a meeting and telling everyone that he was going to concentrate on selling health insurance because it was such a moneymaker.
It's a no brainer - single payer. But the insurance companies will never have it.
@sarahjustme Remember (and it is hard because the propaganda system works very hard to suppress this thought) that the people who do the job are not the ones who control the capital.
The people who are the actual players are the ones who profit from the system. These are the moneyed interests. As you move up the ladder from the working class - the indoctrination into the system gets significantly stronger. So the workers may realize that single payer would work seamlessly but the CEO's certainly won't have it.
@sarahjustme Yes
The answer is a public option. The key word is option. Like public school, you could opt out of the service, but not the taxes. We could fund it by replacing medicare and with 'sin taxes' on tobacco, booze, weed and other rec drugs. The private sector would be free to compete, just like private schools. Death to the parallel healthcare bureauocracies!
I work in an acute care setting and agree with all the comments, not only do we need one system for all, but we have to change the mindset from sickness to wellness. This must start from the cradle and the person must be encouraged to be responsible to the grave. I don't mean penilization in anyway just strong, understandable, available education. Once people start demanding healthier food & lifestyle it will happen. Supply and demand. i.e. Tyson food, the giant in meat production is buying up all the new vegetarian and vegan start up businesses they see the way ahead and although I despise Tyson it gives me hope when I see where they are investing ? At work when sometimes I feel hopeless I remember growing up when we all would sit in a windowless room smoking & drinking even my Doctor smoked and always had a lit cigarette on the ashtray in his office! Who would think that smoking & drinking would ever be addressed for public safety. Diet and sitting are the new smoking and drinking. They have to be next on the list ? I don't want to live longer just healthier and of no burden. Lastly make sure you all have a living will.....
I would never wish a system like the VA on anyone, I've been dealing with them since 1987. I'm not impressed.
I've heard great things about the VA system in Albuquerque New Mexico, though not about most others.
Veterans here demanded improvements and they got them. But it is authoritarian and those who really don't want still get to use Medicare like the civies.
@McIntyre VA here put off my lumbar surgery til I had to have a bi-level fusion instead of single level. The pain clinic doc at Marion IL said there was nothing wrong I was having muscle spasms. A civilian neurologist looked at my MRI 7 months later and found 2 collapsed vertebrae, ruptured discs and a pinched nerve which will cause life long nerve damage. I doubt all that happened in 7 months.
The blue team and red team say they want it. What they really want is the donations, many of which are from insurance companies. So it's no surprise there is no clean resolution coming from them.
Even with US car assemblers working for free the medical costs are too high to be competitive so the car companies will continue to employ workers in other countries where the medical costs are reasonable. And ditto other large production facilities.
As I understand it Corporate America wants to spend a lot less on medical care, and Presidents of both sides have wanted to fix the sick system but the health insurance companies have kept their cut in the system by bribing Congress.
The cut is huge, the top two health insurance companies in the Fortune 500 companies, though small in revenues are huge in profit. Combined their profits are 2/3 of the profit made by the huge employer Walmart, the largest company in the World.
Amazing Greed.
Start with a gross over-simplification.
If 50% of Presidents were corrupt and ditto Congress then before long a non corrupt President would change the system to one that makes sense. Donald Trump announced that a system that worked would be very simple to implement, Barach Obama did a great job by bringing in Obama care but it left the insurance companies in place because that was a necessary compromise. Mitt Romney I understand had already done it in Massachusetts.
But if 50% of Congress is corrupt then because of the numbers there will never be a time when Congress won't be corrupt, and that is why the Health Insurance companies concentrate on Congress.
The actual corrupt figures will be skewed a lot, Presidents come under scrutiny so the number that are corrupt at that level is lower. Even G W Bush was not corrupt, the main problem was his Cabinet. But the figures in Congress are way above 50%.