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| Yes | 62% | 138 votes | Total: 223 votes | |
| No | 38% | 85 votes |
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Add to FavoritesHealthcare: Offer Americans a Choice
Where private health insurers only focus on the bottom line, Medicare is instead concerned about the health care of its members. And to supply better health care for less cost is a very worthy goal.
Private, for-profit, insurers spend more than 15 percent of collected premiums on administrative costs, where Medicare's are only about 2 percent. And a universal Medicare system would not need to spend money on advertising or marketing
For-profit insurers are fighting the idea of Medicare for all, not in calling it "unfair, but in attacking it as "socialism." Another tremendous advantage, economically, in providing a Medicare program available to all, would be its benefit to businesses, large and small, by removing the cost of health coverage from the shoulders of employers. Small business companies are having to abandon offering it to their employees. Many big businesses are in trouble, General Motors for instance, has a deficit of over $50 billion in its health care fund, and is considering cutting coverage to its white collar employees in an attempt to forstall bankruptcy.
Nicholas Kristof wrote that "American businesses are at a competitive disadvantage when they have to pay for health care and foreign companies don't
Today's conservatives are attempting to rewrite the history of the thirties, some saying that FDR's New Deal had nothing to do with bringing the country out of the depression, that it really was World War II.
They all were agreed that the President's spending money on all the New Deal attempts to get us out was the wrong approach, just as they are saying today.
Relief, they claimed, could only be brought about by giving tax cuts to the wealthy and allowing laissez faire to reign.
Actually, the depression began long before FDR became president, and his attempts to reverse it by pumping millions of dollars into programs like the WPA and CCC in order to get people working again began to take effect, but very slowly.
By 1937 there was significant progress, and the government then convinced the President to stop spending more money that it didn't have. As a result the country dropped back into recession and WWII war production finally brought the nation back up out of its financial problems.
President Obama's plan is to maintain for-profit healthcare's status quo, asking only that it be tweaked a little. He is now being repeatedly accused ofpromoting "European-style socialism," even though he appears to have succumbed to conservative dictates in regards to healthcare.
Charles Geisst, financial historian of Manhattan College wrote, "The right would use socialist' against Franklin Roosevelt all the time in the 1930s. To hear him referred to as Comrade Roosevelt during that period was not unusual."
On Thursday, March 5, President Obama called for a White House forum on health care in order, he said, to give voice to all "Every voice has to be heard. Every idea must be considered The status quo is the one option that is not on the table."
Bold words. But a look at some of those invited and allowed to speak duringthe smaller White House sessions were PhARMA, Pfizer, AHIP and others dedicated to stop any deviation from the status quo.
There appears to be much confusion between what the President is promoting as a public/private policy and a truly public Medicare for all. Senator Kennedy has signed on to Obama's plan, while Senators Kucinich and Conyers are promoting the latter.
One big difference between Obama's attempts and Roosevelt's is the 24/7 media coverage that didn't exist during the 1930s. There was probably just as many Republican attacks then as now but they did not receive blanket news coverage as today. President Roosevelt's fire-side chats encouraged the public to believe they could eventually survive the depression. There is little similar encouragement today.
ThePresident's plan would be similar to Massachusetts'.
Larry Pius, Director of HR 676.org wrote to me that the "new and expanded Medicare under HR 676 is NOT government run health care" Confusing. And to add to the confusion there is another program called Medicare Advantage, where private insurance companies have invaded Medicare.
My vision of an expanded Medicare would be totally government run as it presently is, and I see it competing with private, for-profit, health insurance, so that the American public would have a choice.
"They [the conservatives] attacked Roosevelt as a socialist," writes Harold Meyerson, "as they are now attacking Obama, when in fact Obama, like Roosevelt before him, is engaged not in creating socialism but in rebooting a crashed capitalist system."
We will never stop the rising health care costs until we get over our irrational fear of being disparagingly called socialists and inaugurate a truly Medicare-for-all.
Learn more about this author, Eliot Chandler.
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No
“Christmas is the time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell government what they want and their kids pay for it.” - Richard Lamm, CPA, Attorney, and former Democratic Governor of Colorado.
Anything's possible, but is it probable or even economically feasible? Given the Washington power structure, universal, government-controlle d health care is definitely probable. The real question is its practicality.
Its always helpful to use the basic family structure as an analogy when discussing large societal issues, since a nation's simply a collection of families. Let's say you have a couple teenagers in high school and college is just around the corner.
Your employment situation's shaky due to your employer's mismanagement and a less-than-robust economy. Your employer also doesn't offer health insurance to its employees. Your spouse has been taking care of the children and running the household for the last few years, finds it enjoyable and is undoubtedly good at it.
Additionally, your aging mother has fallen a few times in the last couple years, and your father's forgetting where he parked his car at Wal-Mart more frequently. There may be expenses involved there.
One day as you rifle through the mail, you come upon a brochure selling a health-care plan. The brochure espouses the obvious benefits of their plan and its savings. But there's one catch. To qualify for these benefits you must purchase 3 year's coverage up-front, at a cost of $12,000.
After doing a little calculating, you figure your out of pocket costs, with dental visits and eye exams, annual checkups, and a couple broken fingers thrown in, to be $3,000. Well, you say, $9,000 is a small price to pay for the peace of mind this plan would provide so it sounds like something you want to do.
You sit down and go over the budget with your spouse and after the house, cars, food, a night out every couple weeks, there's not much money left. Yeah, you've talked about quiting smoking and that 12-pack you haul home every 4 or 5 days does add up financially, but do you really want to stop. Ouch!
So, since your savings are depleted you head down to your local bank to get a loan. What? A loan for an insurance policy? Well sure, this is such a good deal, and the kids could work their way through college and maybe get scholarships and grants, even though little Timmy and Susy's grades haven't been the best this past year.
You sit down with Steve, your friend the loan officer down at the local bank, and go over your finances. After a detailed analysis of your fiscal position he informs you that you have some choices. Things are just a little tight but he'll be able to make the loan.
There's just one catch. This loan will make it impossible to get the loan in 12 months that you will need to finance Susy and Timmy's first year of college.
So, do you tell your two wonderful children that your going to roll the dice on someone getting very sick or injured and they'll have to forgo the university they've chosen and dreamed about attending in exchange for community college and a job at Popeye's Chicken, or do you thank the banker for his time, sell the motorcycle in the garage, stop drinking and smoking and pay for this health plan out of those savings. Its up to you.
The fact this topic is even up for debate tells us something about ourselves. Have we become so self-interested that we're willing to expand our deficit so greatly, mortgaging our children's future so astronomically, while simultaneously eating, drinking, and smoking ourselves into the nearest cemetery?
The uninsured cost insured families $1,000 a year because of the cost of providing health care to the uninsured. The currently proposed plan would cost the taxpayers $1.5 trillion over the first ten years. Assuming there are no budget overruns — wink-wink — that comes out to $150 billion per year, or about $500 per man, woman, and child.
But that’s $1.5 trillion the federal government doesn't have, so it will have to be borrowed. So the true price-tag of a health care plan will simply be passed off to future generations, interest and all. Many will point to the previous administration's choice to finance war, to which the old 'two-wrongs' adage certainly applies. Others will say 'tax the rich' but they're getting soaked so much already, many are selling assets and moving abroad.
The government’s record on estimating the cost of its health care programs gives us little comfort. According the Congressional Budget Office, when Medicare passed in 1965, Congress estimated it's cost at $12 billion by 1990. The actual number was $107 billion. In 2009 it'll cost $425 billion.
In 1987, the federal government estimated that Medicaid would cost less than $1 billion by 1992. In 1992 it cost over $17 Billion.
Universal health care sounds so good on paper, sells really good on TV, and just feels like something we should provide for our citizens, but just like at your house and mine, money talks and (coughing) walks.
So, if those big numbers have you reaching for the No-Doze, just fit the above analogy to your family's situation and go have that talk with your kids. They'll tell you what they think of universal health care.
Of course, there is one other option. Remember Steve, your friend from church that owns the best auto-body shop in 3 counties. His business is booming. Yeah, he's got four kids who might want go to college someday, but he certainly has $9,000 he'd give you.
I mean you guys grew up together, you even drove him home a couple times when he'd had too much to drink. Why wouldn't he want to provide your family's health-care? Give him a call.
Learn more about this author, Rick Shepard.
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