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About Me
- Svetlana
- NC, United States
- I am a Mom, a wife, an opinionated thinker, a news junkie. I work so that nobody would expect me to cook (which I do anyway, but that comes as a bonus, not an expectation). I have a Master's degree from UNC-Chapel Hill and a Master's degree from Moscow State University. I work as a realtor. My dream is to live on a tropical island or in a European capital. The absolutely best vacation I have ever taken was to Bora Bora. A paradise closer to home is Bald Head Island.
In a life there are no only black and white colors. We have an exposure to universal health care in our previous life. The communist idea: to give everybody what they need and to take from everybody what they can give-sounds wonderfull. But practice showed: it doesn't work.
ReplyDeleteThe cost of health care can be changed in this country without revolution in 1 month- take the business from lawyers! Stop practicing defence medicine! The cost will go down about 50 %. Evverybody will be happy but lawyers.
Obama is a lawyer, His biggest contributors were lawyers. He will never do anything against lawyers.
Boris,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree that malpractice threat is one biggest unnecessary expense which can easily be cut out of our health care system. There is another one - overprescribing which on the one hand is related to practicing defensive medicine, and on the other is pushed by the pharmaceutica industry. I will write more on it later. And finally, the insurance companies which pay multi-million dollar salaries to their executives.
Yet, I have three additional observations to make on the points on which I disagree with you.
First of all, universal care is not equivalent to communism. Germany has an excellent health care system, and you would be hard pressed to argue that they live under communism. What they have works and works well - don't kid yourself. Their outcomes are better than ours, and they spend a lot less money.
Secodnly, would you agree on me running a parallel between public health care and public education? Why do we feel we need to have one, but not the other? None of it is really a right. If the federal government is not the best at educating this country, do you propose to have a haphazard network of only private schools in this country? So why not have some basic care guaranteed to all, and then if you want, you can purchase more and better and faster?
And finally third: with government run health care, malpractice lawsuits will probably be severely diminished. Who are they going to sue? The doctors? Well, they would be working under the guidance from the government on what is indicated and what is not. The government? Good luck! I agree that malpractice lawyers are like a cancer growth on the body of our health care system, but what they don't get is that they will bring their own demise by killing the organism which they have been parasiting on for a long time.
I do think that we need to reform health care and it would be wonderful if everyone had some medical coverage. And I also agree that malpractice lawyers should be taken out of the picture in order to save money. However, I don't think malpractice lawyers will somehow go away under the current proposal. There will be enough gray areas in the new system, enough area for doctor's judgment, that lawyers will find a way to sue. I am afraid that the end result will be that some sort of government body and the lawyers will be looking over the shoulders of the doctors instead of the insurance companies and the lawyers. I am also scared that the legislation is pushed through too fast. The last time they did passed something fast was when with the bailouts, which have been a bad idea. I want to make sure that everyone voting on the new laws has plenty of time to read and comment. But I do hope for a reform of healthcare, not a substitution of the word "government" for "insurance company" in US health care.
ReplyDeleteI just did research on polls done on universal healthcare. 57% of Americans are willing to pay higher taxes if it meant healthcare for everyone. (cbsnews.com) 85% said healthcare system needs to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt.72% support a governemtn-administered health plan that would compete for customers with private insurers. This includes 1/2 of the Republicans polled, 3/4 of the Independents polled, and 9 out of 10 Democrats polled. (nytimes.com) And a Rasmussen poll found that 65% of voters believe that every American should have access to quality healthcare.
ReplyDeleteIt is clear what the majority wants. Don't be fooled- the angry loud rabble-rousers are being paid off by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Their lobbyists are shelling out over a Million $$ a DAY to fight universal healthcare.
Every other civilized country has universal healthcare, and it works, better and cheaper than our system. if they can all do it, why can't we?