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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: aladin who wrote (194653)	1/29/2007 12:06:01 PM
From: skinowski	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794015

HMO's like Harvard Health Plan or Kaiser provide care and employ the Doctors I think this is called the "staff model". I don't have any particular disagreements with what you are saying. It is possible that large - and well run - outfits like Kaiser will make it more likely that the public will at least - and, at last - get what they are paying for. I can see many problems which may evolve in the future. A health care system in which Dr's are employees will have many features in common with socialized medicine. They may have not enough motivation to invest in R&D. A lot of young talent might be turned off from entering the field. Otoh, this may prevent complete socialization. Also, powerful corporations will not allow the distributionist malpractice racket to continue the way it does. They may be able, at some point, to address the hard end-of-life issues. They would be quasi-governmental because of their size, and would cooperate with the government, but they would also be powerful enough to stand up to politicians - when needed. ........... About today's HMO's... There is a wide misconception that H. Clinton's health care reform was derailed. It was not. It succeeded. The moment she and Magaziner leaked their "plan", the insurance companies moved billions into buying up existing small HMO's, and into developing new ones. The result is what we have today. The idea was to follow the German "Krankenkasse" concept. What the arrogant politicians forgot is that the German system developed in a natural, grass root process. People in communities pooled their resources and negotiated prices and mutual coverage. Hillary thought she could duplicate their success by handing the whole thing down from the government. She did - but the result stinks.