A letter in the Wichita Eagle written by Bread Beachy of Wichita makes the case for "so-called socialized medicine" to be brought to the United States. Part of Beachy's argument relies on a ranking produced by the World Health Organization. That ranking has a number of problems.
Posts tagged as “Health care”
David Gratzer, a physician born and raised in Canada, gives us in the United States a preview of what government health care is all about: the waiting. He ends up asking "Why are [Americans] rushing into a system of government-dominated health care when the very countries that have experienced it for so long are backing away?"
This Saturday, Wichita-area citizens will have an opportunity to let their fellow citizens and the Obama administration know of the dangers of government control of health care. The event will be on Saturday, June 6, 2009, from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm.
Today a dedicated group of citizens worked for two hours to get out the message that government control of our health care is not in our best interest.
Another protest will be held on June 6.
One of the banners (and an adorable puppy) promoted the website Free Market Cure.
Sedgwick County is considering becoming a developer of an industrial park. The county is limiting itself to deals described as a "home run," meaning a company that plans to hire more than 1,000 workers.
The problem is that there are few of these deals each year. Maybe just five to eight. But Sedgwick County's policy makes those odds even worse.
By Gregory L. Schneider
President Barack Obama has had his way with business in his first hundred days in office. He is the only president in American history to fire a CEO of a private business, Rick Wagoner of General Motors. He called bondholders of Chrysler Corporation speculators after they refused a government-financed deal that would have paid them one-third or less of what they are owed; they would rather go through regular bankruptcy proceedings. Recently, out of fear of a nationalized health care system, private insurance trade associations and health care providers have pledged to the president that they will reduce $2 trillion in health care costs over the next decade. It might be the audacity of hope for President Obama, but it’s hopelessness for the private sector.
Next Sunday, Wichita-area citizens will have an opportunity to let their fellow citizens and the Obama administration know of the dangers of government control of health care.
A letter to the editor in today's Wichita Eagle under the title "Greed rules" states, in part: "There is no reason that the United States remains the only civilized nation in the world not to have a single-payer health system except that greed rules our country."
I wonder: Is it greed to want someone else to pay for your health care?
Economist Walter E. Williams explains the causes of the housing crisis. Then, why would we let these same people who caused the housing crisis take charge of health care? Short and worthwhile viewing.
Bailout costs rise, local election turnout, health care, light bulbs, newspapers, Kansas coal prospects.
Us v. Them: The People and the Political Class (Jack McHugh, Mackinac Center for Public Policy). “The fundamental problem facing our nation is that true…
In Canada, some patients have to travel to the United States for life-saving medical treatment. Patients are also denied to right to pay for their…
A letter writer in the July 12, 2008 Wichita Eagle has issues with his health insurance coverage, and wants us to discard our present system…
A recent editorial in The Wichita Eagle (Dr. Bill Roy: Universal care is most economic, efficient) contains several mistaken impressions. One may be disproved by recent developments in Wichita.
This is an excellent article that exposes how little some people like Michael Moore think about the systems they consider corrupt and unworkable. It appears that Mr. Moore is so consumed with an anti-market bias that he hasn't really considered the true causes of the problem with healthcare in America. He isn't the first person to have problems with an anti-market bias, nor do I suspect he'll be the last.
Michael Moore Confirms that Government Health Care is Sicko
by Diana M. Ernst, Pacific Reserach Institute
Michael Moore showed up in Sacramento last week to promote his film Sicko. Senator Sheila Kuehl hailed Moore as a prophet of truth to the American people but the filmmaker is so mired in his own health hysterics that he regularly contradicts himself .
He rails against “for-profit” health care, but 85 percent of U.S. hospitals are non-profit, and almost half of privately insured Americans have polices from non-profit health insurers.
Moore referred to the Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor hospital in Los Angeles, where a patient died of a perforated bowel after lying on the emergency room floor for 45 minutes. Since 2004, the hospital has received more than a dozen state and federal safety citations. Hospital errors included leaving sick patients unattended which resulted in death for three of them, giving patients the wrong medications, and using Taser stun guns to restrain psychiatric patients.
This hospital is not private, however. It is owned by the County of Los Angeles. So much for reliable government care. And the private insurers Moore rails against are currently selling health policies laden with government mandates and regulations.
The Council for Affordable Health Insurance (CAHI) has reported that mandated benefits have increased to the more than 1,800 today. In some states, mandated benefits have raised the cost of individual health insurance by 45 percent. Government solutions that create more government amount to nothing but expensive salt in the wound. Such is Governor Schwarzenegger’s plan to tax hospitals and physicians for mandated health coverage, and such is Senator Kuehl’s government monopoly plan, promoted as a "single payer" system.
We need to help insurers to be more competitive, not scrap them for big-government bureaucracy. Mr. Moore’s foolish preference of abolishing private insurance in favor of government-run, single-payer health care will not create universal care, only a government monopoly. In other words, Moore thinks the government should provide “free” health care that isn’t required to meet any standards.
Mr. Moore also thinks Canada is a good role model, but two years ago the Canadian Supreme Court found that government monopoly health care violates basic human rights. The winning plaintiff in this case, Mr. Zeliotis, needed hip surgery. When he tried to pay privately for his operation rather than wait in the public line (which takes two to four years) the Canadian government stopped him. Mr. Zeliotis argued against government interference with his freedom to choose private medical care. The denial of such a choice prolonged his pain and threatened his safety.
Mr. Moore also likes the single-payer system in Cuba, a one-party communist state. Some 11 million Cubans attend run-down facilities, receive dated prescription drugs, and are even required to bring their own sheets, food and soap to the hospital. Communist Party bosses get better treatment but when it came time for the great dictator Fidel Castro to go under the knife, he flew in a specialist from Spain. To adopt the health-care system of a totalitarian dictatorship like Cuba would be kind of, well, sicko. But government-run health care also presents problems right here at home.
Medicaid was instituted in the 1960s under President Johnson for the poor, but it has grown far beyond its capacity, putting its financial capabilities under great strain. In order to keep costs down, Medicaid underpays physicians, who have increasingly stopped accepting Medicaid beneficiaries as a result. Government restrictions on physicians also make it challenging to get prescription drugs for Medicaid patients.
Mr. Moore's remedies fail as heath-care reform and do not even amount to effective propaganda. He needs less rhetoric and more direct experience. He should get on a Canadian waiting list for treatment, try the “second” system that serves most Cubans, or follow a Medicaid patient’s struggle to get health care from the government.
Meanwhile, union nurses and hospital employees were among 1,000 people who must have taken sick time to cheer Michael Moore Tuesday. Perhaps Speaker Nuñez and Senator Kuehl will investigate how patient care suffered while their caregivers took to the streets.
A Harvard study (Illness And Injury As Contributors To Bankruptcy) concluded that of families that declared bankruptcy, about half cited medical bills as the reason. Of those, 76% had medical insurance at the time they became sick. Some of the problem is that when people become seriously ill, they can't work. After they lose their job they have no income, and they can't pay the premium to continue their existing coverage.
Having most people obtain medical insurance, and therefore their healthcare, from their employers is a peculiar tradition that leads to several less-than-optimal situations.
I would venture to guess that most employees don't know the cost of their insurance. They probably pay a portion of the cost through a deduction on their payroll checks and they know what that amount is, but that is a long way from knowing the total cost. Knowing -- and having to pay for -- the entire cost of something is a good motivator for controlling its cost.
It makes no more sense for employers to provide health insurance than it does for employers to provide auto or homeowners insurance.
With employer-provided coverage, when people change jobs, they likely lose their coverage.
At most companies, employees are not rated according to their likely healthcare expenditures. There may be a cost for a single employee, another cost for an employee and spouse, and another cost for employee with spouse and children. Never have I seen a case where the cost to the employee was based on how many children there were in the family, even though each additional child adds a predictable risk and associated cost. Other types of insurance, such as auto and homeowners, are priced very carefully based on the characteristics of the driver, auto, and property being insured. This illustrates that present health insurance plans are not so much insurance against catastrophic loss as much as they are pre-paid healthcare plans that cover every little cost. But even then, they aren't priced very carefully according to their likely cost.