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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (262862)	4/29/2008 2:00:17 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

On the margin, there may be arguments about what is or is not allowed but they wouldn't be routine A lot of disputes about Medicare and Medicaid billing are anything but routine, and mistakes or differing interpretations are much more likely to lead to prosecution (rather than just nonpayment) than similar disputes in the private sector) If there is additional coverage, then it is would be well defined for things like cosmetic surgery. So you would not allow additional coverage for normal medical care? Or is it that you would make the government plan so generous that it gave "gold plated" coverage to everyone? It isn't specific such as patient X doesn't get coverage for cancer under his policy since it was a preexisting condition but patient Y does get coverage under the same policy because it is a new problem. If specific patient X does get coverage for a preexisting condition, and does so without paying a large premium for the risks of the severe preexisting condition, than he or she is really getting charity not insurance. Again, have you tried to sell to Walmart? Walmart has competitors. Also they don't have the power to regulate. Why are the high prices of medical services and pharmaceuticals protected in your eyes? Who said they where or should be? Allowing a competitive market that results in high prices, isn't the same as protecting the high prices. So you think that companies should be trusted to provide Fen-Phen and Vioxx to the market based on, what, their own private certification? Their own certification wouldn't be trusted. It would have to be some trusted outside lab or approval organization. The FDA could even play this role, but it doesn't have to be done by the government, and the government isn't necessarily especially good at it. But even if its done by the FDA, that doesn't mean that unapproved drugs have to be illegal. It just means that they would not be approved, and would be take at your own risk items. They would be unlikely to get any significant amount of sales without some form of approval from some organization with a decent reputation. Insurance probably would not cover them, and generally their market would be those with otherwise untreatable terminal illnesses. Can I sell you some poisoned toothpaste Laws against murder, attempted murder, reckless endangerment, product tampering etc. would still apply. As would the tort system. No, if the quality of American health care was rising sufficiently to keep pace with its exploding costs, there wouldn't be as much need to reform it. The quality is going up, perhaps at a faster rate than the costs, perhaps a bit less (the rates are not strictly speaking comparable, quality is less easily turned in to a number that you can watch and measure as it grows).