Free Healthcare and It’s Discontents....

Why is there so much confusion over the current healthcare debate?

The information (FACTS) are all out there, so there shouldn’t be any confusion at all, but there IS.

FACT: Healthcare costs have been skyrocketing in the USA for years. They've far exceeded the rate of inflation and have swamped most worker’s wage increases over the last decade or so. Those costs have gone up due PRIMARILY to Americans, across the board, having access to the latest (and most expensive) health care technologies.

FACT: America’s existing “public options” (Medicare and Medicaid) have failed. They will BOTH implode, but Medicaid especially, by 2016, with its projected $5 TRILLION deficit! Those two programs are suffering under monumentous mismanagement, incompetence, waste, abuse and outright fraud.

FACT: BOTH Democrats and Republicans ARE and HAVE BEEN actively seeking a way to CUT America’s costs and NOT “offer more or better healthcare to more people.”

FACT: There is no “public option” now being considered that would provide long-term care to seniors at government (taxpayer) expense. Moreover, there is no indication of any broad public support for such a program. In fact, most Americans acknowledge the growing national debt as our biggest problem. In response to that the Obama administration has sought to “pay for” its universal care by CUTTING about $500 BILLION from Medicare and Medicaid!

Of course, that number is not close to paying for the projected $1.6 TRILLION cost of this universal care.

Ted Kennedy, less than a month before he died, called for the rationing of healthcare to those on any public options, and that is exactly in line with what the Congressional Democrat’s Bill would deliver.

FACT: The reason most American working people would be WORSE off with an expanded public option is that their employers would have no reason to maintain their current health plans. It would be far cheaper to simply shunt those folks onto the public option. BOTH private sector and public sector (state, local and federal) workers would eventually be placed on the public option.

The government simply CAN’T pay for the current unlimited access to the best and most high-tech healthcare in the world. America’s survival rate for early detected prostate and breast cancers is nearly 100% compared to England’s 77%! There's no question that Americans get the best and most high-tech healthcare, but the unfortunate reality is that it can no longer be given away to all, regardless of whether they're insured or not.

With those fiscal realities in place, the government would have to severely restrict and heavily ration the healthcare offered under its public option. Those workers who now get the bulk of their healthcare paid for by their employers, would have to pay high insurance premiums merely to circumvent the restrictions and rationing the public option will come with, just to maintain the same level of access they currently enjoy. Those who now take home more money each payday by opting not to pay into their share of their company healthcare premiums would have that option or CHOICE denied them. They’d have the option of the free and rationed public option chosen for them...they'd only be able to deny paying for the private insurance needed to circumvent the rationing the public option will come with.

Those who can’t or won’t pay the gap-insurance premiums needed to circumvent the public option restrictions and rationing would face the possibility of being given pain pills instead of access to more expensive treatments for advanced care. That’s not only the existing reality in places like England, it’s also the existing reality in places like Oregon, where older people on Oregon’s statewide plan are often offered $50 pain kills instead of $4,000 anti-cancer drugs, as government must always balance individual benefit, which is minimal for the poor and elderly, versus the cost.

Most workers sense that they’ll be worse off under such a system, but that their companies and our state, local and federal governments will ALL be much better off!

Almost overnight, American businesses will become more profitable and competitive in the global market. That would mean, American workers would become significantly more productive within the global labor pool, which should mean more job creation. Likewise, our state, local and federal governments will be able to shed BILLIONS each year in healthcare premiums it now pays for its workers and insurance companies will reap a huge bonanza in hawking the needed gap-insurance, for those who want to avoid the rationing and restrictions of the public option. It's a veritable WIN-WIN-WIN, for everyone EXCEPT the working taxpayers of this country. They get to pay MORE, for LESS care.

With the great boom this will be to BOTH big business and the government, the only strange thing about universal healthcare is, why it’s taken so long for it to be implemented.

Who Said “Government Managed Health Cares Works Best???”

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Is it possible?

Can it be?

Is there a reason to believe that perhaps government managed health care or “socialized medicine” DOES work better, at least in some instances, than America’s current market-based one?

And if it indeed does, wouldn’t that prove that all of the arguments against the command economy are hollow – that socialism, or the State-run/“Command Economy” can work and actually be superior to the market-based one?

Well, if government-run health care COULD be shown to be more effective than America’s market-based system that would certainly seem to be a HUGE argument in favor of the Command Economy and against the market-based one.

So how would we best measure how one form of healthcare outperforms the other?

Well, how about bottom-line results? That would seem to be the easiest, most clear basis on which to compare the various healthcare delivery systems.

A “better system” should always offer better results for its consumers, in this case patients.

Let’s take survival rates for one of the persistent scourges of the modern age- cancer.

Well, it turns out that the overall five-year survival rate for all types of cancer for men in America is 66.3 percent, and 62.9 percent for women, the BEST outcome in the world.

Hmmm, well I’m still not convinced. What about survival rates for specific kinds of cancer?

Despite the fact, that due to better early screening than in the rest of the world, American men are more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than their counterparts in other countries, they are less likely to die from the disease. Fewer than 20 percent of American men with prostate cancer will die from it, against 57 percent of British men and nearly half of French and German men. Even in Canada, prostate cancer kills a quarter of men diagnosed with the disease.

And the reason Canada’s death rate is so much less than that of Europeans can probably be found in this fact; seven out of 10 Canadian provinces report sending prostate-cancer patients to the United States for radiation treatment.

The results for other kinds of cancer aren’t much different. Only 30 percent of U.S. citizens diagnosed with colon cancer die from that disease, compared to fully 74 percent in Britain, 62 percent in New Zealand, 58 percent in France, 57 percent in Germany, 53 percent in Australia and 36 percent in Canada.

And less than 25 percent of U.S. women die from breast cancer. In Britain, it's 46 percent; France, 35 percent; Germany, 31 percent; Canada, 28 per- cent; Australia, 28 percent, and New Zealand, 46 percent.

The reason for this, at least according to Michael Tanner (Director of Health & Welfare Studies at the Cato Institute) is that “the one common characteristic of all national health-care systems is that they ration care.

“Sometimes they ration it explicitly, denying certain types of treatment altogether. More often, they ration more indirectly - imposing global budgets or other cost constraints that limit the availability of high-tech medical equipment or imposing long waits on patients seeking treatment.

“In the United States, there are no such government-set limits, meaning that the most advanced treatment options are far more available. This translates directly into saved lives.”

But Tanner sees the advantages of America’s market-based healthcare system going far beyond merely the absence of rationed care. As he notes, “With no price controls, (market-based) U.S. medicine provides the incentives that lead to innovative breakthroughs in new drugs and other medical technologies. U.S. companies have developed half of all the major new medicines introduced worldwide over the last 20 years.

“In fact, Americans played a key role in 80 percent of the most important medical advances of the last 30 years. Eighteen of the last 25 winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine either are U.S. citizens or work here.”

OK, so “socialized medicine” or government-run healthcare doesn’t work better...it’s still “free,” so you can’t beat the price!

Oh wait a minute! It’s NOT “free.” In fact Wisconsin’s proposed State-run healthcare system shows how incredibly expensive poorer healthcare really is!

SEE: http://www.nypost.com/seven/09102007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/cancer_societys_deadly_medicin.htm

Wisconsin’s Universal Healthcare Plan Shows Real Costs of National Healthcare...

The Democrats who run the Wisconsin Senate are looking to pass a plan designed to insure every resident of Wisconsin under the age of 65 in the state. And, in the process they’ve proven just how expensive all this "free" health care really is.

For starters, the plan would cost an estimated $15.2 billion, or $3 billion more than the state currently collects in ALL income, sales and corporate income taxes. It represents an average of $510 a month (over $6,000/year) in higher taxes for every Wisconsin worker. Under the WI Democrats’ plan, both employees and businesses would pay for the plan by sharing the cost of a new 14.5% employment tax on wages.

Wisconsin businesses would be forced to compete with lower burdened out-of-state businesses and foreign rivals while shouldering a 29.8% combined federal-state payroll tax, nearly double the 15.3% payroll tax paid by non-Wisconsin firms for Social Security and Medicare combined.

In all, the tax burden in the Badger State could rise to 20% of family income, which is slightly more than the average federal tax burden, a level that would make it nearly impossible for the vast majority of Wisconsin’s workers to maintain ownership over their homes.

As if that's not enough, the health plan includes a tax escalator clause allowing an additional 1.5 percentage point payroll tax to finance the predicted higher future outlays. This would bring the payroll tax to 16%. And one reason to expect costs to soar is that the state may become a mecca for the unemployed, uninsured and sick from all over North America. Since the legislation doesn't require that you have a job in Wisconsin to qualify, merely that you live in the state for at least 12 months, it’s far more likely than not that Wisconsin would attract more of the unemployed and uninsured (“health-care free-loaders”) while losing productive workers who could be expected to leave for less-taxing climes.

Proponents of the system, including WI Governor Jim Doyle (ribbon-cutting above), use the familiar argument, often used in favor of national health care - that this will save money (about $1.8 billion a year) through efficiency gains by eliminating the administrative costs of private insurance. And unions and some big businesses with rich union health plans are only too happy to dump these liabilities onto the government.

But those costs won't go away, they'll merely be shifted to all taxpayers and businesses. Small employers that can't afford to provide insurance would see their employment costs rise by thousands of dollars per worker, while those that now provide a basic health insurance plan would have to pay $400 to $500 a year more per employee.

Private companies that are currently making modest progress in sweating out health-care inflation by making patients more cost-conscious through increased co-payments, health savings accounts, and incentives for wellness are ignored by the Wisconsin model. In fact, the Wisconsin program moves in the opposite direction: It reduces out-of-pocket co-payments, bars money-saving HSA plans, and increases the number of mandated medical services covered under the plan.

So where will savings come from? Well, it figures that they'll come where they always do in any such government plan, in the form of rationing via price controls and, as costs rise, longer waiting periods and more and more drastic coverage restrictions.

At least Wisconsin Democrats are admitting how much it will cost Americans to pay for government-run health care. Without ANY doubt, it shows the enormity of what a national, government-run healthcare program would cost.


SEE: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010374