Michael Moore is at it again. He will release a new documentary on our health care system and one can only suppose the underlying agenda: "Get us a nationalized healthcare system!"
If you were alive in the 1980s and 1990s you remember the same mantra being chanted. The solution was to create HMOs or Health Management Orginizations. It was a halfway step to national healthcare. What did this do for healthcare? Did we see a steep decrease in healthcare costs because of them? No, we saw an increase in the bureaucracy. Most HMOs have quietly gone away in the last ten years and the bureaucracy has shifted to the insurance companies. They decide what proceedures are covered and when. Try talking to a doctor about this sometime and see if they like how the current system works. HMOs and national healthcare have the extremely undesirable effect of making the high cost of a medical education unappealing. What do you get for it after all? Prestige?
I have no doubt that Mr. Moore will be screaming for a national healthcare system. What will that mean for the average person? More bureaucracy for less healthcare. Any doctor with any sense will switch to a "private clinic" practice. In other words: pay as you go health care. The kicker there is that in order to have a national healthcare system you'll be having some money removed from your paycheck like the government already does for social security and medicare. Then, if you want to go to a private clinic, you'll pay more money out of your own pocket because the government isn't going to pay you to go to a private clinic.
Robin Hood will be at it again. The rich are paying for the poor to have another entitlement. Except it won't be the rich who bear the real burden, it will be the middle class, because they'll be just well enough off that if they want real health care it will be within their reach and yet because of the national system they'll pay double for it.
I say we regulate the insurers and not the medical system. Limit how much profit they can take off the top. Then, in order to increase revenues, they won't want to limit procedures they'll encourage them (more volume means more revenue after all.) More volume would mean more real competition and our medical system becomes a free market system once again.
I know. Its a pipe dream.
3 comments:
Well Moore is a buffoon. We have socialized medicine in Canada. I cannot compare my experiences with our system to your own. However I can relay some observations from Canada. My Mom just had knee replacement surgery. The procedure was done after a 4 mos. wait, after the initial diagnosis however her treatment has been 1st rate. A week in hospital could have been followed by a stint in a rehab facility. We elected to bring her home. A physiotherapist visited once a week for 4 weeks, if required a longer term may be arranged. Our costs? None. Mom is a senior on a pension, otherwise - employer payroll taxes cover medical insurance premiums in Ontario (PS. This is why Ontario has surpassed Michigan as the largest Auto parts mfg region in North America. Our healthcare system acts as a subsidy which entices investment, the payroll tax is much lower than US premiums and manufacturers are not faced with pension funding issues related to healthcare).
Now listen to this - the Surgeon - a 1st rate practitioner was paid about $650.00 (Canadian) for the 2 hour surgery.
One of the major problems in this country is our litigiousness. So insurance goes up, blah blah blah. I can't imagine American doctors opting to work in subsidized helath care facilities. Many have said they would rather do something else.
And I wonder how much Canadians are taxed, to offset the free healthcare. I know the taxes in Scandinavia are outrageuous, but they get a lot of freebies.
we do have a problem and not sure what the solution is.
I have a gut feeling that the truth is somehwere in the middle on this issue. Is there waste in the Canadian system? Yup. Is there efficiency? Yes in some respects. It is a tough issue for a layman to comprehend, the costs are not transparent.
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