[usakos]

Why McCain has the best health-care plan?

Fellow Americans, choose your revolution. One way or another, we're getting a new health-care system. The old one is obviously broken. The U.S. now has 47 million uninsured, and costs are out of control. The Department of Health and Human Services predicts that if things continue as they are, health spending will almost double by 2017 to $4.3 trillion, or one-fifth of GDP, vs. 16% today.

Why McCain has the best health-care plan - Mar. 11, 2008

[Jbyrne629]

I just know that Hillary cannot be elected for health care purposes. She is an adamant socialist. Which in turn makes her an entrepreneurs nightmare. Her plans are to basically tax business into submission. You think that business were outsourcing before, if she is elected we will be a 100% service based nation.

[Hooman]

Originally Posted by Jbyrne629

You think that business were outsourcing before, if she is elected we will be a 100% service based nation.

Sorry to break it to you, but it doesn't matter who is elected, that's inevitable.

Besides, other than the military industrial complex, we pretty much are already 100% service-based. We shifted into a mostly service-based economy back in 1952.

[tazman9r]

Here's your revolution.

Tort reform.

If the standards for being able to sue your doctor are reset, and insurances costs to the doctors are reduced, then the health "market" will begin to stabilize. I'm not saying that is the only answer, but it's a good start.

Oh, yeah, and maybe if we didn't expect to "live forever through chemistry and medication", that would help a bunch, too.

[Aconiac.com -Michael]

Perhaps Americans should learn from more successful countries when it comes to health care. I personally come from Denmark, where we have completely free help care + we have a mixed liberal/socialist government.. and to claim that has any ill effect on entrepreneurship is just completely misguided and wrong. Actually I would claim entrepreneurs have it waaay worse in the US, due to your patenting laws.. while in Europe we have way more SME's with great success - even though most countries have somewhat intelligent semi-socialist governments.
Corporations don't have that firm a grasp over here.... thankfully.

[BusinessAdviser]

Originally Posted by tazman9r

Here's your revolution.

Tort reform.

If the standards for being able to sue your doctor are reset, and insurances costs to the doctors are reduced, then the health "market" will begin to stabilize. I'm not saying that is the only answer, but it's a good start.

Oh, yeah, and maybe if we didn't expect to "live forever through chemistry and medication", that would help a bunch, too.

Naw, that's not it. Even if further tort reforms are enacted, the insurance companies will still continue to jack up med mal premiums for doctors and healthcare premiums for patients. Why? Because they can. Why WOULDN'T they continue to when it's them who get to see the windfall?

[BusinessAdviser]

Originally Posted by Aconiac.com -Michael

Perhaps Americans should learn from more successful countries when it comes to health care. I personally come from Denmark, where we have completely free help care + we have a mixed liberal/socialist government.. and to claim that has any ill effect on entrepreneurship is just completely misguided and wrong. Actually I would claim entrepreneurs have it waaay worse in the US, due to your patenting laws.. while in Europe we have way more SME's with great success - even though most countries have somewhat intelligent semi-socialist governments.
Corporations don't have that firm a grasp over here.... thankfully.

But for those who can afford it, the healthcare in the U.S. is far superior to that in Europe. It's a tradeoff between affordability and quality.

[Aconiac.com -Michael]

Originally Posted by jmenq2

But for those who can afford it, the healthcare in the U.S. is far superior to that in Europe. It's a tradeoff between affordability and quality.

Naah.. I'm not really what you would call poor and I've been to the US quite a few times.. also tried your health care (when you have a good traveling insurance .. you get the royal treatment).. the treatment I got in the US was no better than what I get in Denmark.. the only thing I will give you, is the fact that Danes are much more sceptical of new technology, so certain surgeries aren't practiced in Denmark and you have to travel to other countries to get them.. however they're extremely rare, so odds are you'll never need them. Oh yeah, and in the US, if you have money you can get a surgery straight away, ignoring the fact that someone more sick than you probably needed it more.. In Denmark we use a queue idea..

[DPayne]

So do you think healthcare should be considered a Right?

[BusinessAdviser]

Originally Posted by Aconiac.com -Michael

Naah.. I'm not really what you would call poor and I've been to the US quite a few times.. also tried your health care (when you have a good traveling insurance .. you get the royal treatment).. the treatment I got in the US was no better than what I get in Denmark.. the only thing I will give you, is the fact that Danes are much more sceptical of new technology, so certain surgeries aren't practiced in Denmark and you have to travel to other countries to get them.. however they're extremely rare, so odds are you'll never need them. Oh yeah, and in the US, if you have money you can get a surgery straight away, ignoring the fact that someone more sick than you probably needed it more.. In Denmark we use a queue idea..

You just hit the nail on the head. We have a market-driven healthcare system. While I think it is important to provide a minimal level of healthcare, I think it's also important to maintain somewhat of a market-driven system.

[DPayne]

I am glad we don't have a socialized healthcare system here in the US. How does having the government control healthcare improve the quality? I don't believe it will. Since when has the government ever controlled anything effectively. Look at the US Postal Service for example. There is a reason I ship everything UPS, FedEx, or DHL. Nearly everytime I've used the postal service vs. a private shipping company, the postal service performed poorly. Another thing, my father is a top engineer for a major power company. He was telling me about how the goverment tries to regulate their companies so much that it actually causes rate increases and poor performance. Remember the blackout in California a few years back? A major contribution to that was when the government stepped in, busted all of the "monopolies" up and said ok, the rate payers can decide who they want to buy power from. This caused all kinds of problems. On paper it looked good, but when it comes to utilities, regulated monopolies are far superior than free market style generation. The government wouldn't listen to the engineers explaining this and boom, major black out occured.

How about another example of poor government intervention: FEMA. My family was a victim of hurricane katrina. We had over 18 feet of water in our house and experienced massive amounts of damage. Fortunately for us, we understood our insurance policy when we signed it and had full coverage. A lot of people just signed their insurance policies and didn't read the fine print. In fact, some neighbors down the street (who also lived on the water like us) didn't even have enough flood insurance coverage to cover their property in the event of a total loss simply because they did not read the policy when they purchased it. That is another story though. Back to FEMA. If you could have seen the way fema was down on the coast cutting checks, handing out trailers, etc, you would laugh. It seemed to me that they just blindly gave it out. People who didn't need help recieved it, people who did need help didn't (thats not the case for all). There are still people living in FEMA trailers down on the coast. We recieved aroudn $3000 from fema right after the storm to buy food and supplies. Thats was greatly appreciated. When they called to ask if we needed more, my dad told them No and that they could give it to someone who did. Well 3 days later, we got another check for 3k and then another check for 3k. Dad sent the two checks back with a letter saying, We do not need this money. However, when we talked with some of our friends who were hurting financially due to the storm, they hadn't yet recieved ONE check. How in the world does that happen? We had everything 100% covered by insurance, were in a great financial position, and we got more money (which we sent back) than people who were starving. How in the world does this happen? Poor Government Regulation.

These are just a few examples of why I personally do NOT want our healthcare system in the hands of the Government. I have yet to see them effectively manage something and produce superior performance than that of the private competitors.