(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

Excellent analysis, Sinz. (*THUMBS UP*)

Re: Sinz54 // Aug 1, 2009 at 10:59 am –

“I explained to you once before why you are WRONG [Sftor1].”

(*GRIN*) Sinz… I’ve gotta hand it to you… coming in right behind me, you’ve got the “silver” won for judgmental condescension. Congratulations! I’m proud of you…!!!

(*WIPING A TEAR OF PRIDE FROM MY EYE*)

* Sftor1 – Seriously… Sinz is right. (*SHRUG*) He really is. (*SHRUG*)

BILL

I explained to you once before why you are WRONG.
E.R. care is much less care.

In Emergency Rooms, patients don’t get care for their chronic illnesses. They get urgent care that keeps them alive, no more than that. E.R. care is less care than the rest of us get paid from our insurers.

A patient who presents with angina may get drugs to temporarily relieve it. But they’re not going to get a quadruple bypass operation (like the one Bill Clinton got) in an E.R. A child with an asthma attack will get inhaler medication to stop it, so the kid can go home again. But they’re not going to give the child allergy tests to find out the cause of the asthma attack.

And as for myself, I can tell you from personal experience that I cannot get dialyzed three times a week in an E.R. In fact, hospitals often don’t have dialysis equipment of their own at all. If a patient with renal failure is admitted there for surgery, they will pay an outside contractor (such as DaVita) to come in and dialyze that patient.

In this country, we’ve been rationing care by ability to pay. Those who are forced to go to Emergency Rooms get less care–only urgent care for medical crises.

So the idea that insuring those who currently go to Emergency Rooms will save money is absurd. It’s moving them out of Emergency Rooms into the health care system the rest of us enjoy, with all of its fantastic benefits for managing chronic illness. You’re taking a patient who could never afford a quadruple bypass, and could never get one at an Emergency Room, and moving him into the regular system where he’s going to get that operation. And that costs a lot of money. More money.

Of course we’re winning the debate.

Because ObamaCare is all about about covering the uninsured (which is all liberals ever cared about), not about cost containment. So the more that 76% finds out about it, the less they like it.

Americans don’t have to have doctorates in economic theory to understand that you can’t reduce health care costs by spending a trillion dollars more on it, while keeping 80% of the current health care system just the way it is.

Liberals were sure that the lure of universal coverage would be so alluring that Americans wouldn’t care about the cost, anymore than they do. (When have liberals EVER cared about the soaring cost of ANY entitlement program?)

But polls show that the insured care more about rising costs for THEMSELVES than they do about covering the uninsured. That’s the antithesis of ObamaCare’s priorities, which is why ObamaCare has run into such opposition.

As for the public option, it’s impaled on the horns of a dilemma: Reduce reimbursement rates low enough (say to Medicare rates or lower), and it will drive out the private insurers, resulting in single-payer, which Americans don’t want. Keep reimbursement rates high enough (say to within 10% of private rates, which is what the CBO assumed), and it can’t compete effectively with private insurers, making it irrelevant.

The Dems are caught in a contradiction. On the one hand, they claim we need a public option to compete effectively with private insurers. But on the other hand, they keep reassuring us that the public option won’t lead to a massive defection of Americans from private insurers. Not only are they lying through their teeth about this (thanks to YouTube., they’re caught lying), but it’s an obvious contradiction. If the vast majority of Americans will stick with private insurance, than the public option isn’t providing effective competition. So what good is it? In what way does the U.S. Postal Service “help keep UPS and FedEx honest”?

It won’t be hard to explain that to the public.

One more thing. The low approval numbers for the GOP mean nothing. In a two-party system, if the public gets turned off to Obama, they have nowhere else to go than the GOP, and all of a sudden it will start to look pretty good–if the GOP can present a reasonably positive sounding program.

That was true in 1966, just two years after the 1964 Dem landslide; and it was true in 1994, just two years after the public kicked out Bush 41 in disgust. In both cases, the GOP made great gains NOT because the public fell in love with them, but because the public had fallen out of love with the Dem President.

My opinion is that we haven’t heard enough. Details should be provided. Let’s see the math. This is one of many things that needs completely but quickly audited.

It would be nice to learn that our leaders are doing this.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204886304574306693989102298.html

BILL

“Barker, we are pretending that covering the uninsured is an added cost.”

(*SIGH*)

Sftor1. There’s no “pretending” about it.

Again… separate the concepts: 1) INSURANCE; 2) Care.

Now… parse “care.” (Minimum up to maximum.)

Anyway, I’ve proposed my solutions. (*SHRUG*) No need to reiterate. We just go round and round and round and round and round…

(*SHRUG*)

BILL

Apart from that, my latest reading has nudged me towards the Sinz camp. It really does seem that the payer is not the prominent issue. The bigger problem seems to be the fee-for-service system, service over-utilization, and medicine as a profit center. To get the efficiencies of other countries I suppose it means medicine run as a cost center, and a strong public alternative.

(*SHRUG*)

………….There’s emergency rooms aint there?..GWB……Barking favors the Bush solution to our healthcare problems

Americans trust Obama over congressional GOPers on health care by a 55%-26% margin.
72% think Congress is moving either too slowly or at the right pace.
59% think Obama is moving either too slowly or at the right pace.
76% think health care costs pose a serious threat to the nation’s economy.
66% support a Medicare-style public option for all Americans.