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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (2071)	9/18/2007 6:49:40 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

re: Single government payer makes a government bureaucrat the decision maker on your life. This might benefit politicians and lobbyists but hardly the rest of us who have no political connections. The private insurance market at least offers the opportunity to shop around and find a company with customer service priorities aligned with the customer. I would rather have a bureaucrat than someone who is paid to turn down claims.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (2071)	9/27/2007 6:48:27 PM
From: Archie Meeties	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

"Single government payer makes a government bureaucrat the decision maker on your life". Somebody makes the decision now, be it a bureaucrat or an accountant. The bureaucrat may make the decision based on public policy, the accountant based on profit maximization. I don't think its clear that making a decision based on profit leads to better long term health. In fact, I just got off the phone with an MD who was explaining to me how he had to beg the insurance company for an extra day in the hospital for a sick kid. And believe me this is commonplace - hospitals employ a fleet of people whose full time job is to get insurance companies to pay to care for the sick... Your argument is a good one for tennis shoes, brands of soup, and golf clubs - that if you don't like the product you can choose elsewhere. Unfortunately, in practice, this isn't currently an option for the majority of insured US citizens in any case. Corporate insurers can change plans based on employee feedback, but they are also likely to be influenced by profit, less by a claim denial. Options for health care plans are extremely limited as it is except for a small % of US citizens. You're locked into a plan and unless you'd prefer to change jobs (an option, yes), you are not able to change plans. A public citizen has extremely limited ability to influence corporate claim policy. In the future decisions regarding distribution of health care dollars will be made less by for profit corporate executives and more by public officials. The risk will be that public officials will not have the ability or power to follow policy directed by science and will instead make decisions based on either; political expediency, ideology, or ahem, by government accountants. In the end, its basically a wash imo. A national health care system will likely not improve health for the majority of Americans. Why, because overall the source of our poor health is ourselves and lifestyles. For example, trauma...to improve outcomes in trauma you can't throw more money into the trauma system (which btw is bar none, the best in the world). Throwing less money into it wouldn't hurt it too much. But if you could do something about drunk driving, even a few % - then you'd have a massive improvement in trauma assoc. morbidity. Cheers, Archie.