"When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable" -Anton Chekhov
''Once you tell people there's a cure for something, the more likely they are to pressure doctors to prescribe it.'' -Robert Ehrlich, drug advertising executive.
"Opinions are like sphincters, everyone has one." - Chris Rangel
Obama Does Ohio: And gets up a good crowd. Here's his healthcare plan:
He said it doesn't make sense when a country spends $1.9 trillion a year on health care, but 46 million are not insured. Obama pledged to create a health-care system for the country's uninsured by the end of his first term in office.
In a country of 300 million people, that means we have 254 million people with insurance. We're thus spending $7,480 per insured person on healthcare. If we used that $1.9 trillion to insure everyone, we would spend $6,333 a year per person. I'm suspecting the bill will be more than that.
But, as John Edwards has pointed out, there's not much substance to Obama's healthcare plan, unlike his own. I'm sure that she herself has one, but I could not find it. (although I did find this - meow!)
On the other side of the aisle - there's this and this, but it's not much of a priority here.
The election is so very, very far away. Who knows what the over-riding issue will be by then? At the moment, judging by all of the candidate websites, the priority is raising money. posted by Sydney on
2/27/2007 09:10:00 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
John Edwards announced for President on Dec. 28 and released his health care plan 40 days later.
I'm curious as to why Obama (who just announced on Feb. 10) and HRC (who hasn't officially announced yet) aren't at least afforded the same timeline.
I'm curious as to who you think DOES have the right proposal? That miniscule thousand bucks difference to insure everyone is one unnecessary PET/SPECT scan, a colonoscopy for a 21 yo with no risk factors for abdominal pain. Etc etc etc. Wasteful overuse needs to be reigned in, even people in the profession admit it. Seems like a hell of a trade off to me- on less needless "defensive medicine" test to cover everyone.
From 1/25 There will be many others offered in the coming campaign, and I am working with experts to develop my own plan as we speak
http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/jan/25/obama_the_time_has_come_for_universal_health_care_in_america The primaries are a long time from now. He'll release a plan soon.
Are you sure HRC hasn't announced? I'm pretty sure she did: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/20/clinton.announcement/index.html
Most of the Republican's I've linked to haven't announced formally, though.
Nurse Ratchett, The plans are too vague at this point to allow me to form an opinion, but in general I lean toward more "patient ownership" - the only way we will ever cut cost is to include the patient in the burden of bearing it. We know this from past experience. When people have no co-pays for drugs they want the newest, most expensive ones. When they have a tiered co-pay system and have to pay even $20 more for the newest, most expensive drugs, they opt for the generic with a $10 co-pay. When everything's free, then everything's in demand.
Anonymous 4:38AM, Yes, I'm sure we will be getting earfuls in the coming months, er, years.
And to all, I'm not sure I would put healthcare on the top of my list. National security still ranks at the top of my concerns, and if I didn't think a candidate had a good grasp of the threat that international jihad poses then I wouldn't vote for him, no matter how stellar his healthcare plan was.
Aw, come on, Syd. If health care were a top priority instead of national security, we'd at least all be able to get health care for radiation sickness. If there were enough doctors and facilities to treat us, which there isn't.
Seriously though, the people will have a chance to vote on who they think is most able to reform health care. Clearly, the leader in this regard is Mitt Romney, because he's already done it, hasn't he?
When people have no co-pays for drugs they want the newest, most expensive ones. When they have a tiered co-pay system and have to pay even $20 more for the newest, most expensive drugs, they opt for the generic with a $10 co-pay. When everything's free, then everything's in demand.
I think many employer-sponsored plans are moving in this direction, anyway. Many companies stopped offering HMOs or started charging higher monthly premiums for them and are steering employees toward PPOs where there is a 20% or so co-insurance (more out-of-network) by charging less of nothing in monthly premiums.
As far as drugs are concerned, even when I had an HMO, they had a tiered system for preferred and non-preferred drugs.
OK, . . . if health care were a top priority shouldn't we be hearing serious proposals about improving health care - training, facilities, delivery, etc? But that's not what we're hearing. Instead we're hearing political types blabber about PAYING for health care. Aren't those two different things?
"vote on who they think is most able to reform health care. Clearly, the leader in this regard is Mitt Romney, because he's already done it, hasn't he?"
What Mitt Romney already done is to gin up an insurance plan and call it health care reform. Or, as they used to say in Boston, Stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni.
