The first thing that I wasnt to say is that the "less is more" crowd in the Obama administration have signed this country's death warrant by suppressing discussion of single payer. They are doing this because they are receiving pressure from the corporate world to maintain job lock, because it stifles competition and new businesses. And also because it intimidates workers out of getting care they have paid for.
In case Americans had not noticed, people who get any kind of serious illness, in America, almost always lose their jobs. That kind of insurer discrimination and intimidation, that kind of destruction of lives isn't going to change ever without a single payer system that divorces healthcare from jobs completely, it cannot change because it is inherent to the punitive and intentionally dysfunctional way the current system doesn't work. (I'll give some examples at the end of the diary)
A person who is diagnosed with a serious illness, basically has up to a year, to still have a job. And they will often spend that year FIGHTING for every penny that they get for treatment or even for a diagnosis because the system is designed to lead them around in circles until they just give up.
People in other countries go to the hospital and get care, modern care, Americans, when they are absolutely in their most vulnerable possible state have to fight with insurers to get obsolete, 80s level care, not modern care. Why 80s care? Because the insurance industry with the US government's blessing, because of the HUGE built in waste of having 50% wasted on insurers and billing them, are always trying to test the limits of what they can get away with AND PUSH IT LOWER. That is their business model. It absolutely cannot change until we get rid of that model and start fresh on the payment side. For EVERYBODY. It would not be hard because the net result would be a system that put people above profits and those savings could go to decent care. Without those savings, anything other than our race to the bottom is IMPOSSIBLE. And the government is already covering (and not efficiently, because they cannot negotiate, for example, drug prices down) for the sick people dumped by insurers. That means the government already spends half of every health care dollar spent in the US. All this waste means that Americans get far less care than people in the civilized countries, and they get it often far too late to do as much good as it should. Which costs much more.
Why do sick people lose their insurance WHEN they get sick?
Insurers jack up the price for any sick person's employer.
This leads to really terrible situations. Wonder why so many business owners are incensed with the Obama administration? Why so many businesses are screaming that we need single payer? Why they voted to send Obama that emssage in Massachusetts? They don't want to have to make up some bad thing about good employees and fire them just because Mike or Susan's six year old daughter or twelve year old son has leukemia, needs some 80s or at best 90s treatment (everything else is experimental!) and their premiums are getting hiked a million dollars because of it!
BUT, thats the Obama way, (he even endorsed it in his FAQ on health care!) so the next year, they lose their job and can't find another. After that, everything falls apart for that family very quickly. No healthcare, no doctors, no record of illness. Any thing that happens to uninsured people didn't happen. They don't exist. When they die, they don't bleed. Thank you, Washington.
So, again and again, we find the "devil in the details" the substance is either profoundly wrong, or isn't there.
Obama has been lying about savings to get his agenda passed. In order to create a public option bait to prevent discussion of single payer, he had to. He had to tell people they still could afford unsubsidized health care to make the lie credible. So, obviously, he can't let that happen, either. The truth is, it was intentionally designed to fail. Because it can't save money, it will actually cost more than private insurance because of the sicker risk pool and adverse selection (healthy people deciding to go bare) The only way to solve this problem is everybody in. Especially younger people. And the insurance companies and their cherry picking ways have to go.
Because they are going to demand the profitable employed healthy people remain with them. So, any public plan is going to be an insurer of last resort, insuring its failure. It goes without saying that such a plan is not going to deliver savings to anybody, anywhere, ever. We need everybody in, nobody out, paid for by taxes. That is what TWO OUT OF THREE AMERICANS WANT AND THINK THEY ARE GOING TO GET.
Anything else, or any four year delays (while 404,000 more innocent Americans die) is political suicide for Dems.
There is no way to save face. They must throw it out ans start fresh. Do what Taiwan dod and just say, we're going to do this, and do it. This is a historic opportunity for success as well as failure.
Fake "reform" can't work if its real goal is propping prices up against all odds.
Its like the mortgage crisis, a big Ponzi scheme. The people will dump incumbents in 2010, 2012 and 2014 if the too comfortably numb incumbency ignores this IMPERATIVE NEED in the midst of the "Great Recession".
Jobs and healthcare do not mix. Jobs and health care do not mix. Jobs are vanishing and since we seem unwilling to invest in the education we would need to, for many, perhaps most, they probably won't come back. We have no other choice. There is no wiggle room, Democrats.
Why the push for health IT? Experts say health IT will cost a lot, will result in lots of important information being lost because it doesn't fit into some box, and especially, wont save anybody money except the insurers (in showing them who not to cover)
The real reason for Obama's push for health it databases is providing an easily blamable way to be intentionally wrong about treatment decisions and blame it on machines. Its denying people's care. And of course, the #1 use will be to deny care to the ever growing ranks of the poor, as businesses and jobs flee the US, because of, surprise, the lask of a modern health policy. The brain drain has been going on for years, driven by young families who simply want to have their children grow up without the fear.
Health IT and the intentional misuse of same is also an essential element of a modern police state and the maintenance of the corporate lock on the economy.
Of course, also, if you are outside of the US, you can buy data on anybody, delivered to your cell phone. Cost, around $2, chargeable to your major credit card.
the long term effect is to force many people to pay for insurance they cannot use. (if they don't want to lose their jobs)
There is no solution for any of these problems except single payer, but then they lose their beloved job lock and salaries might rise a little bit.
So they refuse to even consider it- and people who try to bring it up- (because its the only way that working Americans could ever get real healthcare again) get arrested.
The insurers keep pushing down the "standard of care". Doctors are only required to do what others do, and that keeps becoming less and less. Basically, if you have an illness, you have to FIGHT for treatment. Its like day and night to Europe or even Latin America. Even poor people in other countries get better care than most Americans now. Because when something happens, tests get done and they figure out what is actually wrong. That means that the science is far more accurate there than here. Americans end up with serious illnesses because doctors assumed they had one thing when they actually had something completely different and often the drugs they give people excerpate people's illnesses when they are misdiagnosed, Then the whole situation gets worse because they often end up with some deep seated infection because they were given drugs that were completely the wrong choice. I have friends who now are completely screwed up for that reason. "Iatrogenic injuries".
The fear and intimidation here creates an urealistically rosy picture of Americans health.
They don't let people get a diagnosis. They own many of the testing firms now. The whole system is set up to deny care.
They need to do whatever it takes so that doctors hav more than six minutes per patient and have access to diagnostic tests they need, so they don't have to just guess to get the patient out of the door and prescribe drugs for symptoms only, never cures (the American drug industry never cures people unless it is cancer and they want literally millions of dollars for anyting that does that, sorry Senator Reid.. )
The road we are on leads to disaster.
The people who say we can't have single payer are pulling this country into its own real "death spiral" in which increasingly, even the rich get crappy medical care because its legally problematic to give some people better care unless you physically separate them from the others completely.
The result is that the US medical system is being dragged into a hole by the less is more crowd. The only solution, the ONLY solution, is single payer. Because we immediately save HALF. That is money we absolutely cannot afford to spend. The fact that despite this OBVIOUS reality, they still INSIST on pulling us into this hole with them should make everybody very thoughtful.
This will not end well. We have to change course, NOW. We need a modern, PEOPLE BEFORE PROFIT health care system.
We need to throw the money changers out of the temple.
This country's future depends on it.
Examples of Dysfunction: