Letters to the Editor
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The "gotcha"
I'll give Mrs. Clinton the benefit of the doubt by assuming she means well, but I haven't seen her address a fundamental incompatibility between government-mandated health insurance and a capitalist healthcare industry: The healthcare industry is guaranteed to grow as fast as needed to soak up all available funding.
I used to work in the medical billing business, so I have a bit of a clue what is going on.
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Personal Greed Is Leading to Socialized Medicine
Who's greed? Not doctors, not hospitals: the patients. The many, many, many patients since the 70's who file malpractice suits when things don't go their way. This forced doctors and hospitals to take out huge insurance policies to cover themselves, both in the office and the operating room, which in turn jacked up the costs of consultations and procedures. Which has made health care unaffordable. Which has forced everyone who wants coverage to do so through an HMO. Which only pays the doctors half of what they would have originally gotten. Which means that after the huge costs of med school and student loans, doctors have trouble making up those costs and making a profit. Which means the charges continue to go up.
Lazy, greedy Americans have all but bankrupted the medical industry and reduced doctors to a marginal middle class earning power. Which of course means that fewer people will risk the money and time to go to school and learn a difficult, demanding profession. Oh, and they can't afford to pay good secretaries in their offices, so the quality of the consultation and the patient's experience goes down even further.
There's almost no choice but some sort of socialized medical system, but all that most likely will mean is the quality will continue to sink and the prices will continue to rise.
It's one of the saddest chapters in the history of American medicine.
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Let me get this straight....
malpractice claims are the only reason I am paying 6 grand a year for ho-hum coverage?
I am so greedy!
But if helps get single payer, that is aces with me!
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And now a few facts about Malpractice
Malpractice payouts and lawsuits have declined steadily in the past decade, once inflation and population growth are taken into account. No explosive growth has taken place.
• Malpractice lawsuits have not caused a shortage of physicians. That isolated rural pockets lack access to health care has more to do with geography than with the courts, according to the GAO.
• Three House committee chairmen asked the GAO last year to document the costs of "defensive medicine" caused by fear of malpractice suits. The GAO could find no evidence that this occurs.
• The legal system has full protection for physicians who engage in peer review to improve care. Their deliberations are confidential and are immune from lawsuit in most jurisdictions.
• Juries do not award bundles of cash out of misguided sympathy. Most lawsuits are won because of rigorous proof of inexcusable departures from standards of medical practice. Trial judges and appeals courts must scrutinize jury verdicts to be sure that they are reasonable in outcome and amount.
• Doctors are the victims of the reckless pricing practices of their own insurance companies, which discounted premiums steeply during the 1990s. Big increases in premiums follow downturns in the financial markets.
More than 100,000 patients are hurt or killed each year by preventable mistakes in hospitals and clinics. The medical care system could do a lot about this by implementing basic safety controls that have long existed in other high-risk enterprises, such as commercial air travel (where victims' rights to legal redress are not restricted). Blaming the messenger only hurts patients and delays addressing the real issues.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6038-2004Nov22.html
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HillaryCare, redux
Now, instead of some amorphous package defined by the Republicans and the insurers, through their spokes-actors "Harry and Louise", we get HillaryCare 2.0, a massive welfare program for the insurance industry.
What horrors does version 3 hold for us?
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In answer to your question
Yes.
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What an empty article
The story that matters is that Clinton's plan is a warmed over version of right-wing GOP plans of recent years (tax rebates that individuals must hand over to private insurers for policies likely to suck).
Shapiro's article does not address the details of this plan AT ALL. His is empty horse-race journalism, making all kinds of assumptions about how healthcare plans will be received by voters without even a suggestion that the contents matter -- indeed asserting that they don't.
Well I don't have time for "journalism" that assumes we are all fucking morons who don't want or deserve the details.
The real story is that this "plan" from Clinton is a blow job to insurance companies and a finger to the public. But it looks like the only story that will get written is that "Clinton learned from her mistake of pushing 'big government' healthcare in the 90's [bullshit] and is coming back to the middle with her centrist plan [a plan that could have come from the Heritage Foundation]."
People - demand real facts and real analysis. Don't let people like Shapiro bury your heads in the sand with this fluff. Go back and look at the article to see if it gives you sufficient information to judge Clinton's plan -- or even talk about it with intelligence at a cocktail party. Oops.
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Okay, I get it
Shapiro is here to shill for Hillary. Everything Hillary does is golden, and anything bad she did must be misunderstood.
My question is this: Will the other candidates get their own dedicated shill to write on their behalf in Salon? Why or why not?
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Paying for a right?
The contradiction in Clinton's plan, along with most others this cycle, is that all Americans will be required to purchase health insurance. If health care is viewed here as a fundamental right, why pay for it? That's why so-called socialized medicine is what we should end up with. Yes, as in some other countries, individuals could pay for private care, but it would have to be funneled through free basic levels of care.
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Payback for the Insurance Companies
In California, we have mandatory insurance coverage if you operate a vehicle. This doesn't mean we have great coverage. This doesn't mean claims are handled fairly and quickly. It doesn't even mean affordable rates. It just means that you have to pay an insurance company money, and you'd better have proof if stopped by the police. Built in, legally mandated profit for the insurance companies is what this is.
Now Hilly Clinton is proposing the same thing for America. Mandated legal profit for the insurance and drug companies. It doesn't mean they have to allow you an operation. It doesn't mean that procedures will necessarily be affordable or timely. It doesn't mean THEY have to cover you at all if costs get too high. It just means that YOU have to have a little card that says your employer doesn't have to provide you with insurance any more, thus ensuring a greater profit for them.
Her first reform process gave us HMO's. This will be Beyond HMO. This will put more money in the Insurance industry pockets than ever before and I'm sure they'll show their support accordingly by cutting checks to the Clinton campaign.
What a great way to fill that war chest with insurance and big Healthcare gold! Who's really going to benefit from this Ms. Clinton??????
Dennis Kucinich is the only candidate talking about real relief for the middle class. This proposal is not reform and would be a very bitter pill for all of us. Let these bastards know we pay their salaries and won't stand for half-assed legislation any more!!!!!!