Why Universal Healthcare Bothers Me...

[sweeneytodd.livejournal.com]

My brother and I were just having a discussion...

So, the government gives free healthcare to anyone and everyone. Doesn't it bother you that the governments money is going to end up going to some meth addict on the verge of death? I mean, seriously. Even with the state provided healthcare today, I just feel that you should at least have a drug test. If you're killing yourself with drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes why should the government hold your hand through it all?

Comments

[mynuet.livejournal.com]

The problem with using that argument as a method of arguing against free healthcare is that it sets up a situation in which the government decides who has value. The fact that the government would be making those sorts of decisions - witness the recommendations about mammograms, or the attempts to control salt and fats - is one of the biggest reasons to fight tooth and nail against this abomination.

[agentbristow86.livejournal.com]

I agree that it's dangerous to give the government the license to choose who gets care and who doesn't. I think the government on the whole should stay out of the healthcare and insurance businesses, save fraud and genuine criminal malpractice issues.

But I do need to say: I'm not sure I have a problem with private insurance companies having a say in how much coverage they provide based on patients' health-affecting choices. It's well within their rights to assess reasonable risk and not agree to provide tons of coverage to people who are choosing to make themselves unhealthy.

[mynuet.livejournal.com]

Private insurance companies, who have to adjust their business model depending on risk factors, absolutely should be able to use risk factors to determine the cost at which they can provide services. This is where introducing competition and removing mandates would make the market viable.

The difference is that if a private company is operating in bad faith, customers can seek redress from the government. If the government is operating in bad faith, where can you go?

[agentbristow86.livejournal.com]

I am really tired right now but YES. ALL OF THIS. I agree. :D

If the government is operating in bad faith, where can you go?

And that's why we need to get the government the heck outta the healthcare and insurance businesses.

And, within a free market, if one company isn't giving their clients a fair shake, then most likely another company will sprout up to steal those clients away by treating them right. :)

And in cases of truly criminal activity, that's where the clients can seek redress via the court system, as with any other business committing crimes.

[clearlypellucid.livejournal.com]

No, that's the problem with using that argument as a method of denying individuals coverage within a free healthcare system. It's not a problem at all if you use it to argue against ANY free healthcare.

[mynuet.livejournal.com]

It's really late and I'm tired, so I must have misspoken. (Mistyped?) The point I intended to make is as you stated it.

[darth-eldritch.livejournal.com]

It disturbs me that those who are so in favor of HC fail to recognize the violation of constitutionality of requiring the purchase of a health plan. A lot of working poor are going to be deeply hurt by this because they are the ones "make too much for foodstamps." And they are the ones who pay for everything.

[pat-t.livejournal.com]

If your father's job was literally killing him, then he should be eligable for disabiltiy. He will then be under Medicaire coverage.

[pat-t.livejournal.com]

*nods* And that is the problem with government healthcare. When the government holds the purse strings and the ability to decide who does and does not get benefits, people like your dad has to fight to get what he should have automatically. He's disabled, unable to work, has paid into the system all his life, but he has to fight the government for his due right for medicare.

That's the point. My husband, who broke his neck, began having seizures and literally could not drive, had to hire an attorney and fight for 5 years before he got his SS disability and medicare.

[pat-t.livejournal.com]

Exactly, and many Republicans had some excellent ideas for reform. The problem with Obama care is that it has nothing to do with healthcare. It's all about politics - givin the dems in power more power.

The main thing is tort reform. Dems don't want to do it because they are in the lawyer's pockets. They get huge donations from them. But you would be surprised how much costly medicine is done simply because of defensive medicine and fear of a lawsuit. Any female with pain at the level of her naval and above gets an EKG and cardiac workup. Even if she has a cough and it's evident it's a cold. Just because the liability is huge if she is that one out of 10 billion that is having a heart attack with her navel pain.

If someone comes in stating their appendix is about to burst, even though none of their symptoms or physical exam suggest that is true, we still have to do costly blood work, CT scan and the whole thing.

Another idea was allowing insurance companies to compete over state lines and to compete for business by having better and less expensive plans.

There were several ideas set forth and ignored.

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

Well said. Doctors have to pay huge premiums for malpractice insurance and all kinds of tests are ordered to avoid lawsuits. Once my dad got sent to MRI-Land because he was experiencing some hearing loss in one ear. This was due to age and having spent his younger days scuba diving but the doc ordered the MRI on an off, off, off, off chance there miiiiight be a tumor in the ear canal. Of course there was nothing but the insurance company had to pay for that MRI.

This was never about making health care more affordable. It is about using health care as a way to expand the power of the government over the individual and to keep a voting bloc within the Democratic party permanently.

[clearlypellucid.livejournal.com]

My plan (being a make-believe politician and all) is to eliminate Social Security and change it into a private health and retirement savings account for every American. Every dollar you paid in you could get out, but you could only remove it for health care and health products (like toothpaste and band-aids and contraception and so on) until you reached retirement age, at which point you could withdraw all of it.

[mosinging1986.livejournal.com]

So, the government gives free healthcare to anyone and everyone.

That's the fallacy right there. Government doesn't generate income, therefore they do not pay for anything. The people do, by virtue of taxation and regulation.

***

As others have pointed out, private insurance companies do have the right to regulate based on risk. They already do, and so will the government when it's in control of it.

That's reason number umpteen zillion for the government to stay out of regulating healthcare.

[blondebaroness.livejournal.com]

I've always voiced a problem with this. It's a waste of money to try to rehabilitate someone who doesn't want to be rehabilitated.

Ditto to every argument against Obamacare and anything like it.

[tigress35.livejournal.com]

Actually, the people who causethe government the most money are not smokers and meth addicts, but the people that live very long and use healthcare the longest. So I'm really for the government covering no one, the meth addicts don't concern me so much. It's the healthy folks that gradually need the hip replacements and longterm maintenance medications than people who will die at 60 or younger. But other commenters are right, deciding who's "worth it" is dangerous ground.

[pat-t.livejournal.com]

The problem with this is that we now have the technology to keep those meth addicts alive much longer. It's not that we're giving them a few antibiotics and they are going to kill themselves young. We have cocaine addicts getting heart transplants. People who have smoked themselves onto permanent oxygen tanks getting lung transplants - and then doing it to the healthy lungs. And, yes, to qualify the smoker and drinker has to quit for a certain amount of time. But that does not stop them from doing it again.

In the meantime, they are in and out of the hospital with long stays for sepsis, respiratory failure, heart failure, liver failure, broken bones and expensive ortho surgeries because people who are high and drunk tend to want to drive.

Or how about the 35 year old that came in with a history of cocaine abuse? He was diagnosed with high blood pressure, but couldn't be bothered with taking his medicine. You would be surprised how some of these people are not very reliable with other health concerns as well. After walking around a year with high pressures, he has now killed his kidneys. Now the taxpayers will get to pay for him to have hemodialysis the rest of his lives.

Now, all that said, one of our biggest health issues is obesity. No, I don't have a scientific data sheet to show you, just 11 years of working 60 + hours a week in a busy metropolitan ER,(and talking to many other ER nurses around the country) but around 85-90 % of our patients are obese (and many of them morbidly so) patients. And they are constantly in the hospital with respiratory problems (hard to breath with 300 pounds sitting on your chest ), heart problems (20 year olds with the heart muscle of an elderly person after they have overworked their hearts with all the increased body girth), all the health problems you would expect from lack of exercise. Many of them cannot get around and we have 20-30 year olds on scooters and wheelchairs that taxpayers are paying for.

Non-compliance is one of the most costly health issues. I read an article two years ago that stated the average cost of caring for a compliant diabetic is around $5000 a year. The cost for a non-compliant diabetic is around $45000. Huge difference.

Now, all that said, I'm not thrilled with the idea of the government making decisions about who should get care and who shouldn't. However, if taxpayers are picking up the cost for everyone's healthcare, there has got to be some guidelines or we will be running out of money very quickly and then no one will receive healthcare.

[tigress35.livejournal.com]

I can't disagree that the things you list aren't problems. But I'm not prepared that the solution is to keep a government bracelet on a diabetic person and force them to remember their medication. It sounds cruel, but under government run healthcare, the best we can hope for is that a non compliant person will succumb to the disease, instead of the compliant who lives many many 5k years, thus costing more money overall in the longterm.

Clealry the ideal solution is to ket private business determine what behaviors they deem uninsurable but that's not going to happen, now, looks like

[pat-t.livejournal.com]

It sounds cruel, but under government run healthcare, the best we can hope for is that a non compliant person will succumb to the disease, instead of the compliant who lives many many 5k years, thus costing more money overall in the longterm.


It sounds like you're making the assumption (or hoping for) that non-compliant people die early, thus costing less overall. I apologize if that isn't the case. However, if it is, let me assure you that is a false assumption.

With healthcare as it is, those people can live very long lives. Very poor quality lives, but long. People with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) can live well into their 80's and 90's. They'll be in a wheelchair and hooked up to an oxygen tank, but they will be alive. In the hospital more than out, but we can keep them alive.

Take those diabetics. They come in in a diabetic coma, we turn them around, get them better and send them home to do it again. They live decades with us fighting to keep their limbs attached while they eat what they want and not take their medicine or checking their blood sugar the way they are supposed to. Eventually, they lose the battle and we have to start amputating limbs. They go blind. Their kidneys fail and they end up on dialysis. We can keep them alive for decades, in and out of the hospital, using up more than their share of health care resources and sucking the tax payers dry.

The same goes for drug abusers and alcoholics. Don't assume that they will die off early.

And any money spent for my healthcare when I'm older is money that is being ripped out of my paycheck every week. It's *my* money. I've been paying social security and medicare taxes my entire working life. It's not my fault the government has stolen spent it on other things or paid out my money for other people's benefits. People who have not paid in.

[pattyoplenty.livejournal.com]

This is a touchy subject for me personally. My husband & I are self employed and pay a fortune for health insurance which btw has major limitations and out of pocket expenses. And people who are self employed (like me) who would rather not spend their money on insurance as I struggle to do every month and would rather spend their money on non essential things like vacations and such (who btw are all gung ho for "free healthcare") fail to realise that they will be forced to buy healthcare because they make enough (only the destitute and really really poor will benefitfrom all of this). I have never in my life seen so much epic fail from a commander in chief and his administration until now. We will all seriously pay the price for all of this.

[pat-t.livejournal.com]

Not only will they be forced to pay for health insurance they don't want, but they will be paying for health care for others through higher taxes.

[pattyoplenty.livejournal.com]

True that be!