There’s an interesting discussion on the Peoria.com forums about what’s happening at Health Alliance and how Methodist Medical Center physicians are no longer participating.
Tell me again how we shouldn’t have universal health care because it would deprive people of choice …
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Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates The Blog Peoria Project, which promotes community-based citizen journalism in his hometown, Peoria IL. Call me at (309) 863-5748 and leave a message.
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You’re right Billy, there are so few doctors that are a part of the OSF medical group around here. This person will probably get stuck with some crackpot practicing medicine out of the back of his Volkswagen van. This completely convinces me of the benefit of universal healthcare…not.
You think the government is going to give you more choices?
I don’t have insurance and therefore I can choose whatever doc I want–it doesn’t matter what plans he participates in. And when I go, he makes more money from me than he does from an insurance company of the govt.
But that’s what’s going to go away–the free exchange of labor for currency.
The Kennedy-Dood bill has a reimbursement rate for docs/providers of Medicare + 10% for the new “public option”. That’ll keep a lot of people in the medical field, that’s for sure, since Medicare pays *so well* right now that it’s shifting costs that add up to a 10-12% increase for everyone else.
The government already spends 47 cents of every dollar spent in health care. If the system is messed up, the largest payer has to take the blame, and it won’t fix it by giving us more of what’s breaking it.
I’m not going to defend the insurance companies, but if they worked for patients instead of employers the system would shift to be more patient centered. Want it fixed? Get rid of the tax exclusion for employer provide insurance and watch the market fix it.
I’ll tell you this. If Senators and Congresspersons get free Government health care and it is good enough for them, then I’ll be happy to take the same free Government health care they have been using for years.
This big scare that the Government is going to ruin your health or take away your choices is nothing but GOP scare tactics used on a daily basis on Fixed News much like Bush kept us safe but they fail to mention that 9/11 happened on Bush’s watch.
Canada has had government health care for eons and they aren’t dropping dead up there are they? Get off this kick that if it’s run by the Government, then it will be screwed up. Our Military is Government ran and you same people think they are doing a wonderful job.
What I AM saying is that the number of people in this country who go to ANY doctor they want at ANY time is a very small percentage of the population. We already ration health care. TRhe question is which method of rationing health care we are goign to have. A strong argument can be made that PPOs, HMO. etc., place limits on what doctors and benefits the insured can use and at the same time, these health plans discount rates for major employers and pass the costs on to the uninsured public. Much of the costs that are passed onto taxpapers (who end up footing the bill for many of the uninsured) are inflated.
Good arguments exist both for and against. But folks who think “nationalized” health care is a disaster isn’t paying attention to the rest of the industrialized world. Again, not perfect, but what we have is far from perfect, too.
Health care does NOT work in quite the same way as other goods and services. Competition tends to drive prices up, not the other way around. And lack of a Big Mac in your neighborhood won’t kill you.
Everything the government does (including the military) becomes politicized. Everything.
I’m no Bush fan, em, and I’m not a GOP lackey, but I know enough about the health care system in Canada and other countries, and am painfully aware of the flaws in our current system.
Medicaid in IL is way behind in paying docs. In CA they’ve been issuing IOUs for months. If you want quality, affordable health care, we need to pursue it the same way we see quality, affordable computers.
Let the market create more choices and drive costs down.
Obama keeps saying that the free market has failed us on health care, but the market is anything but free. I’ve got a 45 minute rant on the state of health care and I’ve been all over radio nationally talking about it as well as working for patient centered reform in DC recently.
If you’re willing to trust that the government can provide health care without being unduly influenced by politics then you haven’t been paying attention to what goes on there in other industries.
Why is it everyone thinks that government run healthcare doesn’t exist, ever heard of Medicaid or Medicare? Why don’t you ask around and see how those programs are doing. Ask the medical providers if they would rather prefer to work with private health insurance or the government. The government can’t afford to pay for the health insurance programs it has now, so what the heck lets add another 200-250 million people to the program. That sounds like an excellent idea.
And Em, you’re such a broken record. It wouldn’t matter if we were talking about what killed the dinosaurs you’d still find a way to blame it on Bush somehow. Oh and if you want healthcare run like the military, knock yourself out with that one. Anyone who has been in the armed forces knows what that would be like.
11bravo: Just use Bush as an example. Of course Bush had nothing to do with the demise of the dinosaurs. Bush thinks we all just pop in on Earth.
I have been in the military and the enlisted get good health care, until they are discharged. I just want the quality health care the government provides our dear Senators and Congresspersons.
And no matter what I posted, you’ d defend Dubya till the end. Talk about sounding like a broken record.
Em:
Would you consider voting for someone who said he’d turn down the benefits as a congressman?
If Obama’s answer to the pointed question about extreme health matters for his own family is any telling answer–Congress is not likely to vote something in that will hamstring *them*. They’ll still be able to have their own private doctors or whatever while everyone else looks around for a doctor who takes the “public plan” that we’re now stuck with.
But hey, maybe we should just enslave the doctors and make them work for free since health care is now a “right.”
All of you who hate govt run health care must pledge now to turn down Medicare when you are eligible for it!
The millions of Medicare recipients can choose any doctor who takes Medicare, and they all do. Medicare beneficiaries also buy relatively inexpensive supplemental insurance policies to pay the 20 percent that Medicare doesn’t pay. The evil govt. regulates those policies so people are not ripped off.
If we lived in a sane nation, with a sane government, Medicare would be expanded immediately so that anyone can join. Those who hate govt could continue to pay through the nose until bankrupted.
For Medicare, the government sets the pay the docs and hospitals receive based on their real costs, not the inflated prices that allow them to sponsor fireworks, pay for sky boxes at ball parks, buy up historic properties to demolish for parking lots they don’t need, overpay their executives, etc. (Are you listening Methodist Med Center and OSF?)
But the docs and hospitals want to keep their inflated costs as long as possible and lobby their GOP friends to stop universal, government health care. And dummies like some of you above fall for it.
So pledge now: “I will never, ever, take Medicare.”
The “this happened on my watch” event listing:
Abe Lincoln – bombardment of Ft Sumter
Woodrow Wilson – Sinking of Lousitania
FDR- Pearl Harbor sneak attack
Harry Truman – North Korea attacks S Korea
JKF -Bay of Pigs invaison debacle
LBJ -Gulf of Tonkin incident
Nixon- Invaision of Cambodia
Gerald Ford – Loss of Mayaguez
Jimmy Carter – Iran Hostages taken and botched rescue effort
Bill Clinton – WTC #1, USS Cole, Kobar Towers, Mogadishu slaughter of US Army forces ( Blackhawk Down)
There are plenty more.
Who on this board fits the profile of being critical of an administration and what appears to be the responsible party?
Could it be – ???????????
Dummies? Why don’t you pull your super-sleuth journalist nose and sniff out how far behind on paying those bills Medicare and Medicaid is Elaine. And since we have a state working without a budget and a federal government hemorrhaging cash like nobody’s business let’s just add to it. I don’t know how you can sit with a straight face and complain about what you believe to be frivolous spending in the private sector only to take this side of the government, because they NEVER waste any money do they Elaine? Does Elaine live on Bizarro World?
Lots of good discussion here, but I’d like to see less name calling on BOTH sides of this debate …. ‘kay?
I think that Elaine is right and I think she hit a nerve and then, when the “Right” is cornered with logic, out come the name calling.
Em:
Haven’t done any name calling.
And Elaine: I not only took that pledge but encouraged my parents to let me take care of them in their retirement instead of SS & Medicare.
Right now SS & Medicare represent a 45 TRILLION dollar future unfunded liability. The workforce is about to contract, birth rate is down, and everyone expects a government run ponzi to keep working for infinity?
Medicare was never a good idea, and barring some kind of reform will collapse. And for those on the right, the largest Medicare increase in recent history happened during a Republican congress with a Republican president (Part D).
Oh, and Elaine? I can list hundreds of doctors nationwide who either don’t take Medicare patients or don’t take new Medicare patients. And that list gets longer every year. Why? Because the cost of dealing with the gov’t gets harder and harder, and the rules keep changing, and if you mess up the billing one time you could go to jail …..
I will certainly agree that some doctors and hospitals inflate their payment structure beyond what is necessary to make a reasonable profit, but there are reasons they do that. The system is so convoluted and the patient (the best assessor of cost/value ratio) is insulated from the prices and so there is little incentive to lower them.
There is certainly enough blame in the health care system to go around — and it does go around to everyone — but giving the entire industry to the biggest problem causer won’t solve the basic problems, and will add to it that now 100% of the costs are now politicized, which will not be good for individual patients, especially our seniors.
I didnt know the Mogadishu operation was a slaughter of US forces…can someone w/ a little military knowledge fill us in? I know that it was an attempted extraction of a warlord that didnt go as planned……but a slaughter?
Yeah I thought about addressing that as well Neal, but I didn’t see how PC’s post was really relevant to the healthcare discussion anyway.
To be more clear, my goal was to elicit a response from our resident Commander in Chief basher regardless of topic and how the past references to other C in C’s had not drawn the ire of their criticisim.
I tried to post links to Blackhawk Down info but was told they were spam.
What gives Billy?
Anyway the 18 dead and 75 wounded might be called a dustup or it could be a military disaster on the casualty front,( not the military operation front) The degree of lethality is ultimately up to the individual reader. It was my view only.
Link
http://inquirer.philly.com/packages/somalia/sitemap.asp
Link:
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/10/27/ret.thomas.somalia.cnna/
Link
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3073834573272072999
I agree with you 11bravo….I guess Medicare is fine for older people and if it is around I’ll probably use it since I am entitled to it but I by no means want universal healthcare. I like to say, look at the the DMV’s where you get your driver’s license are run…do you want your healthcare like that? I also have friends who are army wifes who complain about the healthcare (not doable to move back to Peoria from North Carolina while her husband is deployed over 1 year). I also have friends who married people in other countries and they are not a fan of the healthcare (waiting months for an MRI or told that they can’t have a mammogram b/c the chances of the lump on their breast being anything is rare.
P.S…I have also been without healthcare, right after I graduated healthcare…and if you ask, the billing people are willing to work with you (for instance, if you pay for a dr’s visit up front at Methodist in cash, you can get a 25% discount)
I often hear U.S. Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, say that if you love waiting in line at the post office or DMV, you’ll lover “Obamacare.” I’d much rather deal with either of those institutions than with an insurance company.