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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (130059)	2/4/2010 11:28:03 AM
From: Steve Lokness	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541957

We don't need to "insure" against an annual checkup, esp. if your talking about subsidized insurance. " Insure is a poor choice of words. But if you don't provide the really poor with regular doctor visits you pay big time when they get REAL sick because they didn't see a doc when they should have. I thought the idea behind health care reform was to get the overall cost down? This isn't going to help.

To: TimF who wrote (130059)	2/4/2010 1:07:41 PM
From: Katelew	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541957

Subsidized (in other words containing a handout) catastrophic insurance. Tim, I'm in and out of house today and pressed for time. But I'm curious to know if your mental image of some kind of national catastrophic insurance plan would be one administered by the governement (maybe as a branch of Medicare) or would be a private insurance plan. Second, no matter which entity provides and administer the plan, would it be available to everyone or just something folks could obtain after they came down with a "catastrophic" illness? If its available only after the illness, what would be the source of funds for paying the medical costs as they occur? If it's available to everyone...young, old, healthy, or sick....wouldn't this work to hollow out the private insurance industry over time as more and more people opted for only catastrophic coverage?

To: TimF who wrote (130059)	2/5/2010 1:07:03 AM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541957

>>If we're going to have an subsidized insurance scheme that everyone can join, I think it would be best if its catastrophic insurance. Not gold plated, cover everything, medical pre-payment plans, but insurance against the most serious of risks. Those are the risks that can crush people. We don't need to "insure" against an annual checkup, esp. if your talking about subsidized insurance.<< I can see the appeal of that idea. It seems as though it would be less expensive for everyone if the government only underwrites the most serious risks. And that might work well enough for a lot of people. But I believe it ends up being more expensive to choose not to cover things like checkups. If you catch things like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease early, they are usually a lot less expensive to treat. Orders of magnitude less expensive. And the patient gets better and goes back to work more quickly, too. I just posted some thought about the Canadian system. I know you often don't read posts that aren't addressed to you, so allow me to provide a link. Message 26299955 PS: I apologize for taking the "handout" comment personally.