BBO Discussion Forums: Affordable and Quality Health Care - BBO Discussion Forums

There's a 900 lb. gorilla that no one advocating universal healthcare has addressed as yet. How do you expand the availability of healthcare to make healthcare receivable in a timely fashion by all the millions of additional people to be covered under the system? Right now, our healthcare delivery systems have a finite capacity and adding millions more individuals vying for that care will cause cost increases and scarcity resulting in rationing. Inevitably, that rationing will result in increased fatalities resulting from inability to receive timely care. How do we prevent that?

rmnka447, on 2017-July-09, 13:50, said:

Why would they care? Either way, someone else is paying for it. And unless you get the most basic plan your employer offers, you often have to contribute to the premium.

Presumably the government would raise corporate taxes to pay for this. So whatever the corporations were paying to insurance companies, they would instead pay to the government, but it ends up being a wash.

rmnka447, on 2017-July-09, 14:13, said:

I worked in healthcare so I've seen some of this up close and personally. Prior to the ACA, hospital emergency rooms were the only places the working poor could go to seek care - this led to emergency rooms having to prioritize which patients to see first and led to long waits for the less emergent patients.

For the well-to-do, there is no reason they cannot continue as they have. There are doctors who have very private practices and they do not accept medicare or medicaid and limit the size of their practices.

You are right that supply and demand will take time to balance - and it will be a difficult adjustment. But something needs to be done to help hold down costs and get more people treated. Eliminating care in order to cut taxes for the wealthy has not been shown to be effective in generating jobs or economic growth, so why not admit that supply-side is not the sole answer but only a part of a greater economic system that is driven by demand, followed by supply-side savings that add to growth.

jogs, on 2017-July-09, 05:44, said:

Did you bother to click on the link I provided?

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As already pointed out, Trump extended the bill entered into law by Obama:

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Everything clear now?

I wonder if it is due to lack of a civics class in our education system or the product of poor history training that leads people to view the political landscape as us verses them where everything one side has ever done is "wrong".

Facts are that both Republicans and Democrats have done their share of good things and bad things. Looking for the reality of situations will help anyone escape from the trap of being a victim of one-sided propaganda.

Winstonm, on 2017-July-10, 08:57, said:

The link I just gave in the Trump thread touches on this subject somewhat. I found it an interesting read.

Zelandakh, on 2017-July-10, 09:09, said:

Thx

Winstonm, on 2017-July-10, 08:57, said:

I suspect it's a combination of lack of good civics education in schools, and the rise of social media and cable TV news networks. People who used to read major newspapers, which were not so heavily partisan (there were some biases, but nothing close to the extreme leanings of Fox News) now just watch and read networks and web sites that feed their beliefs. They only see alternatives in "us vs them" settings.

NPR has an annual tradition of reading the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July. When they did it this year they were inundated with responses that didn't recognize it, and thought they were advocating overthrowing the Trump administration (the DoI never mentions King George by name, and only briefly mentions Great Britain -- it's mostly written in generalities that could easily be misinterpreted in light of current politics).

barmar, on 2017-July-10, 10:42, said:

I think you have it. Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves To Death and hit on a similar theme - the changes in the way we receive information and how that changes our points of view. He points out that prior to telegraph, reading was the primary way we gathered information, and most of that was of the local variety. Now we have instantaneous information from just about anywhere in the world.

posters continue to fail to consider things such as innovation

crispr
robots

AI see Kurzweil

I fully understand these gains depend on at the very least innovation in nano tech.

mike777, on 2017-July-10, 21:00, said:

No, we don't.

barmar, on 2017-July-10, 10:42, said:

Yes, and other factors. I will pick something from health care to illustrate my thoughts, since this is the health care thread.

The CBO predicts that 22m will lose health insurance coverage. OK, what are the details? I have seen that for 15m, this will be because while they were required to have coverage under the aca, they will not be required to do so under the new (and of course ever changing) plan. But surely more details are needed here as well. Will they be opting out because the price will go up or will they be opting out at the same price because the only reason they are carrying ot ow is because they are required to? And, of course, are the numbers correct?


Now people losing their health insurance is a big deal, no doubt about that. But (a) having something taken away, (b) having something become considerably more expensive, and © having the coverage remain available at the same cost but allowing people to opt out are three very different things. One could well imagine someone disapproving of taking something away, but approving of allowing a person the option to not participate. Then there are the practicalities. These 15m people are going to get sick, some very seriously, whether they have insurance or not. We will do what? I think at one point the Senate plan was that they would have to wait six months and then they could get insurance even with pre-existing conditions. So heart attacks were probably death, but a slow growing cancer could maybe be handled.

The world has always been complex, that is not really new, but there was a time when people were thought to be reasonably good citizens if they new the general outline of things. People like simplicity, I like simplicity, but care is needed. Our president has now discovered that health care is complicated. Who knew, he asked. Well, just about everyone. But there are some things we could think about without becoming experts on the economics of medicine. How do we divide up our responsibility to our fellow man as opposed to the view that people are responsible for themselves? No doubt I lean more in the direction of having government help for healthcare than some do, but it is not completely open-ended. Maybe someone who smokes two cartons of cigs a week could stop? It seems to me such things can be rationally discussed, but instead often people grab isolated pieces of data and start shouting.

Here is another way of describing the difference between now and then. The Korean War started when I was 11, and I followed it closely. I did not expect MacArthur to call me for advice.

kenberg, on 2017-July-12, 08:38, said:

The issue here is not who is in or who is out...it is about insurance and the state's right to compel coverage.

The whole idea of insurance is to spread risk among many. Imagine if liability insurance on automobiles were treated like health insurance under the Republican plan - do we really want any groups to opt out?

kenberg, on 2017-July-12, 08:38, said:

I haven't read the report, but I've been assuming that "lose health insurance" refers to people who have insurance under Obamacare only because the subsidies made it possible, but will not be able to afford it under Trumpcare. So it's not the difference in the number of insured people, but the number who can afford to be insured.

Winstonm, on 2017-July-12, 09:41, said:

There was a sub-conversation about why there is so much intolerance for differing viewpoints and I was using this as an illustration. I was not arguing for or against a specific provision, I was saying that we coould start by observing that taking coverage away from someone is different from allowing them to opt out.

Barry, above, says "I haven't read the report, but I've been assuming that "lose health insurance" refers to people who have insurance under Obamacare only because the subsidies made it possible, but will not be able to afford it under Trumpcare.". I also am not sure of the details, but I do know of people who make too much to receive subsidy help but find the paynents burdensome. I think often they cope with tis by choosing a plan with very high deductibles, and they would surely drop it all together if this was an option. These folks are not in great shape with their high deductibles., I have seen this work out badly.

Of course this is a problem. I agree completely that it is a problem. My point was that if we hope to address the problem constructively and cooperatively, we need to look more carefully at the numbers. What is being said? This 22m predicted figure breaks down how? Having insurance denied is one ting, opting out is another. It seems fair to ask which it is. My guess is that in some cases it is one, in some cases the other, I don't know how the numbers break down.

Anyway, my intention was to look a little at how communication becomes unglued. There was reference to teaching more history and civics I assume in grades K-12. Perhaps. That would be another discussion, but no doubt history and civics are interesting and useful. Or they can be.


But to repeat, I was using this to illustrate how discussions become swamped by partisanship.

kenberg, on 2017-July-12, 12:00, said:

The written word can be a difficult communications medium. I didn't mean to challenge your beliefs but simply to point out at fallacy in the thinking of those who do think that way.

barmar, on 2017-July-12, 11:09, said:

This post is a bit strange. Why do you care about telling us your assumptions about the CBO report? Especially since writing this post probably took 5 times as long as googling and finding out that your assumptions are wrong?

At some point we will need to look at the hard numbers regarding Medicaid.

How much of the budget do we want it to consume...7 or 9 or 10%?

mike777, on 2017-July-12, 16:33, said:

Medicaid and Medicare would both be absorbed by a single payer system.

cherdano, on 2017-July-06, 14:40, said:

In the traditional US medical system, doctors opine, they don't decide.