Congratulations to my fellow Democrats

[WildCat]

I'm guessing this is it. If so it sounds a lot like the public option (to me anyway) that the democratic party was trying to get back in November. The system Obama signed into law is tangentially similar in so much as it mandates the purchase of insurance.

No, all health insurance in The Netherlands is private. The Dutch government does not own or run the insurance companies. They do have a government program for the elderly with long-term illnesses and the mentally ill, as well as those who are dying. But for the most part it's private insurance.

Compare/contrast with the US, where Medicare alone is nearly double the size of the entire private health insurance industry.

 

[WildCat]

GHI. Queens, NY.

$561 a month.

age 43.

do you do ANY research...Wildcat?

www.ghi.com

I don't think that plan qualifies under the bill. It will have to include office visits and various periodic exams, and the GHI plan you listed does not include those things. No mental health coverage either, which will be required under the bill.

Now parky, would you like to include a plan that actually qualifies? And is $561 affordable? That's the cost of a car payment plus insurance plus gasoline!

Find one that qualifies yet parky? Remember, it has to cover preventive care (with no co-pay), mental health, dental, and vision.

Hell, can you even find such a plan for less than $1,000/month?

 

[Fishstick]

Yeah ... and in all that time what trillion dollar social engineering programs has the federal government actually gotten right? Social security? No. Medicare? No. War on Poverty? No. War on Drugs? No. Public education? No. You care to offer one?

You guys are #1 for killing brown people overseas. That's social engineering too, right?

 

[Grizzly Bear]

No, all health insurance in The Netherlands is private. The Dutch government does not own or run the insurance companies. They do have a government program for the elderly with long-term illnesses and the mentally ill, as well as those who are dying. But for the most part it's private insurance.

Compare/contrast with the US, where Medicare alone is nearly double the size of the entire private health insurance industry.

Ah... Thanks for clarifying

 

[WildCat]

You guys are #1 for killing brown people overseas. That's social engineering too, right?

I don't think we've killed many brown people overseas... we killed lots of whites, lots of Japanese... but we haven't been in any wars in sub-Saharan Africa or in India.

Even Belgium has killed more brown people than the US ever did.

 

[BeAChooser]

Originally Posted by BeAChooser
LOL! Like the European UHC countries have been doing for the last quarter to half century. And still are. And not more a decade ago the populace in many of those countries (like the UK) were still VERY unhappy with their system.

No we aren't.

Never mind that I specifically said I was referring to the way things were a decade ago … some 30-40 years after many of the European countries became UHC devotees. Even now, satisfaction/dissatisfaction in UHC countries isn't much different than here in the US.

For example:

http://www.ehealthserver.com/picis/...rent-funding-models-lead-to-different-results

31 October 2008

A new study from Picis, the leading provider of information systems for the emergency department, operation rooms and intensive care units of hospitals, reveals perceptions of whether different healthcare funding models lead to significantly different levels of patient satisfaction. The Picis poll sought the views of more than 4,000 people across the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Spain.

… snip …

The Picis survey asked respondents if they felt that the quality of care delivered has improved or declined in the last 10 years in their country. The majority of respondents in the United Kingdom (68%), the United States (63%) and France (54%) reported that quality of care delivered by hospitals had either declined or stagnated in the past 10 years. Conversely, 66% of Spanish respondents believed the quality of care in Spanish hospitals has improved in the past 10 years.

Similarly, Picis asked whether people felt staff morale within healthcare has changed over the last 10 years. The majority of U.K. (65%), U.S. (47%) and French (70%) respondents reported a decrease in staff morale, whereas 62% of Spanish respondents reported an improvement.

Meanwhile, people who used the health service in 2008 were asked whether their experience had been positive or negative. Nearly half of all respondents had a positive experience, regardless of country

Or take a look at this:

http://www.ecosante.fr/OCDEENG/65.html "Public’s satisfaction with health care system, selected European and non-European countries, 1988-2007"

Notice that the percent of people saying "fundamental changes are needed" hasn't really changed in many UHC countries over several decades, despite all their tinkering. Canada, for example, had 59% who felt that way back in 1994. 60% still feel that way today. In 1994 12% said the Canadian system should be "completely rebuilt". And 12% still feel that way today. And note that a decade ago, the percentage was about 20%. Or look at Germany. In 2007, despite more than 50 years of tinkering, 27% said their system needed to be "completely rebuilt" and 51% said it needed "fundamental changes". The UK is another country where more than half of the people have consistently said the system needs "fundamental changes" over the past two decades. And the number who say it needs to be completely rebuilt today isn't much lower than the number who said that 2 decades ago.

And don't forget to look at this in the larger picture. The more socialist UHC countries are paying a price for UHC in terms of per capita GDP and GDP growth. And that translates into satisfaction with in other areas. In terms of quality of life, this study (http://pewglobal.org/commentary/display.php?AnalysisID=1025 ) found that 65% of Americans rate their lives as a 7 or higher on a 10 point scale. Only 53% of Western Europeans rate their life that high. And that's with Europeans supposedly getting *free* healthcare and so much more vacation than Americans.

 

[BeAChooser]

Attacking this bill for trying to actually accomplish that is just ridiculous.

I'm attacking the proponents of the bill for being dishonest about it in their effort to sell it to the American public. They knew full well that the cuts to Medicare that are being claimed are highly unlikely to occur. So that makes their claims that the bill will reduce the deficit nothing short of lies. Just as Obama lied when he made his false claims about what his programs had done to the 10 year debt projections last May ... again in order to sell his health care agenda. There is no way to spin this. This is a bill that that democrats tried to sell to the public with lies. And most of the public didn't believe them but the democrats went ahead and passed it anyway. My prediction? The democrat party will come to rue what they did on Black Sunday.

 

[BeAChooser]

Profits and status quo must come first!

And for you folks, socialism and government inefficiency comes first.

 

[BeAChooser]

I would love to see that argument presented to the Founding Fathers...

Actually, the Founding Fathers are rolling over in their graves at the claims by socialists/progressives/communists/democrats that health insurance is a right and that the government should be the one to control it.

 

[Fishstick]

I'm sure they're outraged that more americans now have access to healthcare.

 

[Meadmaker]

But neither party has 2 brain cells to rub together apparently... all we get from the Dems is stupid and all we get from the GOP is them sticking their heads in the sand and pretending there are no problems.

QFT.


I supported this bill, but there truly is plenty of stupid in it, and if you look at the rhetoric in support of it, there is lots and lots of stupid.

 

[BeAChooser]

And is what the Dutch have done something that could realistically be applied to the US healthcare system?

I don't think so, because the Dutch system is very different than the US system. Their way of solving problems is very different. They have something called poldermodel which has been around since the 16th century. They have far, far fewer lawyers per capita. Their government is structured differently. They are comfortable with their division of wealth. Their cultural roots are intact. They have a common language. They don't have an illegal immigrant problem. They even have an "official" language. They engage in euthanasia (and that helps them maintain the low cost of their system). It's like I've said before, you can't get to these European UHC results without making us like Europeans … and that's not going to happen.

 

[BeAChooser]

And what do you have against the systems in The Netherlands, Germany, France, and Switzerland?

I've had quite long discussions about them where I think I explained that.

all we get from the GOP is them sticking their heads in the sand and pretending there are no problems.

The GOP has acknowledged there are problems and have offered many solutions (which have been ignored by the mainstream media and liberals). But fundamentally, conservatives don't want to change the very character of this country in a futile effort to solve a problem that perhaps 5% of Americans are actually experiencing, and will probably still be experiencing when all is said and done. There will be costs in making ourselves like any one of those countries ... costs which I hope Americans are not prepared to pay. Because if they do, the very thing that has made this country special for 200 years will be lost.

 

[Fishstick]

They don't have an illegal immigrant problem. They engage in euthanasia (and that helps them maintain the low cost of their system). .

I think you will find a lot of Dutch people will not agree with you on the first.

The last one is just hilarious. Yes, euthanasia is keeping the costs for healthcare down, even though the amount of people choosing euthanasia has been going down and is in the 2000's range - making it effectively 0.00015% of the population.

 

[BeAChooser]

You guys are #1 for killing brown people overseas.

I'm just curious. What country are you writing from, Fishstick?

 

[Fishstick]

I'm just curious. What country are you writing from, Fishstick?

Wildcat already beat you to the punch on that one, sorry!

 

[BeAChooser]

I think you will find a lot of Dutch people will not agree with you on the first.

Compared to the US, Dutch immigration problems are not even worth mentioning.

The last one is just hilarious. Yes, euthanasia is keeping the costs for healthcare down, even though the amount of people choosing euthanasia has been going down and is in the 2000's range

http://law.jrank.org/pages/1100/Euthanasia-Assisted-Suicide-Euthanasia-in-Netherlands.html

There have been several professional studies conducted into Dutch euthanasia practice. Most have reported that approximately 2,700 deaths are caused each year in the Netherlands by either euthanasia or assisted suicide—approximately 3 percent of all Dutch deaths. Proponents claim this relatively low figure rebuts opponent's fears that euthanasia will become a relatively routine event. Opponents counter that this figure is horrifying: if the same percentage of Americans died with the direct assistance of doctors, it would amount to approximately sixty-eight thousand annual deaths, more than tripling the U.S. suicide rate.

Opponents also claim that the number of people actually killed by Dutch doctors is significantly understated in these studies. They note that the term "euthanasia" is very narrowly defined by the Dutch government, with the effect if not the design of undercounting the actual number of euthanasia deaths. If a doctor kills a patient with barbiturates and a curare-like poison at the patient's request, the Dutch classify the death as "euthanasia." However, if the patient is killed by an intentional overdose of morphine administered with the primary intention of ending the patient's life, it is not considered euthanasia because morphine is a palliative agent. Yet, intentional morphine overdoses may exceed "euthanasia" deaths. In 1990, according to a Dutch government report, 8,100 patients died through the intentional morphine-overdose method of mercy killing. A latter study found that about 1,500 die annually through the intentional morphine-overdose method of killing. Whatever the actual annual figure, if intentional morphine-overdose deaths are counted as euthanasia, the statistical mercy killing rate in the Netherlands significantly exceeds the published statistics.

... snip ...

Pediatric euthanasia has also become a part of Dutch euthanasia practice. Opponents point with alarm to a 1997 study published in the British medical journal The Lancet indicating that about 8 percent of all infants who die in the Netherlands are euthanized—approximately 80 per year.

... snip ...

Opponents also claim that Dutch euthanasia is "beyond significant control" since approximately 59 percent of euthanasia and assisted suicide deaths are not reported to the coroner as required by the guidelines. Thus, they claim that the actual number of Dutch patients killed is probably far higher than the statistics seem to show.

http://www.carenotkilling.org.uk/?show=435

About every five years, statistics on Dutch euthanasia are released. The figures for 2005, published in May this year and highlighted today, show that the number of euthanasia cases in the Netherlands fell from 3,500 in 2001 to 2,325 in 2005. The drop, from 2.6% to 1.7% for euthanasia cases as a percentage of all deaths, may appear reassuring on the surface and this is indeed how it is being spun.

However, these figures, which were set out in a detailed report in the New England Journal of Medicine by a group of Dutch doctors, including some of the country's leading advocates of euthanasia, on deeper scrutiny reveal a very different picture. They show that a small decrease in voluntary euthanasia has been more than offset by a hefty increase in what is called "terminal sedation". Patients are given drugs which sedate them "continuously and deeply" until death, in 8.2% of all deaths! To put it more starkly, voluntary euthanasia (1.7%), non-voluntary euthanasia (0.4%) and terminal sedation accompanied by withdrawal of nutrition and hydration, now account for nearly one in ten Dutch deaths. Even if we were to disregard the increasing use of "terminal sedation" by Dutch doctors the argument that legalising euthanasia in the Netherlands has not led to an increase in people having their lives ended without giving consent is deeply flawed for the very simple reason that euthanasia has been legally sanctioned in the Netherlands for over 20 years.

Now what if one in ten deaths in the US were *encouraged* deaths? Given the very high cost of end of life care, wouldn't that substantially lower US health care costs? You still laughing?

 

[Peephole]

I don't think we've killed many brown people overseas... we killed lots of whites, lots of Japanese... but we haven't been in any wars in sub-Saharan Africa or in India.

Even Belgium has killed more brown people than the US ever did.

Black people, not brown ones.

 

[Peephole]

Would you support making the same cuts to the health care funding if there were any significant budget shortfalls?

I don't understand your question.

 

[Peephole]

Never mind that I specifically said I was referring to the way things were a decade ago … some 30-40 years after many of the European countries became UHC devotees.

Which radical changes were made in Belgium and other UHC countries?