Previously, whenever the topic of US health care has come up, I've raised a simple question; "Where does the money come from?" I maintain that we are spending money that we don't have, on idealistic programs that are unsustainable.

My more liberal peers have responded with comments like "Thank God Obama is back." and "everybody's insurance is going up, Obamacare has nothing to do with it."

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Citing financial concerns, the Obama administration has begun quietly winding down one of the earliest programs created by the president's health care overhaul, a plan that helps people with existing medical problems who can't get private insurance.

Would anyone care to comment on how great Obamacare is at this point?

http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2013...inds-down?lite

As stated in the article, PCIP was not intended to be a permanent program, but a stop-gap program until the full law comes into effect and insurance companies are not able to turn customers away:

Designed as a stopgap solution until the law's full consumer protections are in effect next year, PCIP has served more than 135,000 people, a lifeline for patients with serious medical problems such as cancer and heart failure. But Congress allocated a limited amount of money, and the administration's technical experts want to make sure it doesn't run out.

As long as we're quoting...

"Premiums are keyed to average rates charged in each state, which means they're not necessarily cheap, often amounting to several hundred dollars a month for middle-aged individuals."

"The enrollment suspension will take effect immediately in 23 states where the federal government administers the program, Goldman said. Residents of states that run their own programs may have longer. Wisconsin residents, for example, have until March 2 to apply."

"Enrollment around the country has been lower than expected, partly because some people could not afford the premiums. But individual cases have turned out to be costlier than originally projected."

Obamacare is a bad healthcare solution. Period.

I think America will finish with two tier health insurances: employers paying for luxury insurance, and the government paying for basic, save your life, public insurance.

This works well in Britain, if you are seriously ill you get excellent service, if you have minor complaints you join a long queue. (There are exceptions when the system fails, and these quickly make headlines in the gutter press)

The US is one of the richest countries in the world, it is a scandal there is no basic public medical cover.

$16T in debt (and growing) says I disagree with this statement...


Again, as the OP asked, who pays for this? If there comes a "right" to healthcare in the US, I would hate to be a doctor on that day forward...

One major US problem is the country is run by very rich people who wish to keep very low taxation. If the US was so poor, it would reduce the military capability. The US has no big enemies any longer, does it really need such a large military base?

The US must choose between having a strong military capability, with ensuing expensive manufacturing and higher taxation, or having a social caring state and higher taxation.

Maybe the US will have to reduce military capability, especially if Congress doesn't cut up the credit card. However, I would use the US's history of ending up in military conflicts highly unprepared as a dire warning against too many military cutbacks.

No big enemies, but it seems numerous small enemies scattered all over the globe, which requires manpower and logistics capabilities to address. Plus, economically, firing a bunch of soldiers now (not to mention all of the other infrastructural, supply, and support personnel that depend upon the military) is only going to worsen the employment dilemma in the US.

Or, or....wait a moment for it... We can lower taxes, encourage foreign investment (targeted towards job creation) IN the US, get rid of burdensome regulation that isn't helping anyone (such as ObamaCare), and allow people to shop for health insurance in the same manner as they do for automobile or homeowner insurance. Toss in a smidge of tort reform, and reign in the Universities that are bilking the American public for increasingly watered-down degrees, and...viola... you've got something that doesn't require the miscreants in Washington taking more power to themselves. But, hey, this requires hard work, sacrifice, and thinking on the part of the moocher class in America, so it'll never happen.

Actually I don't think it is lack money that is the problem, it is how that money is consumed that is the issue! Looking at the OECD per capita figures for 2010, the US tops the table on spending at about 8K, while Norway in second place comes in at about 5K. Despite the fact that the US spends considerably more than anyone else it is unable provide adequate healthcare for all its citizens.

A major factor in this is the insistence of the US in applying market economics to healthcare despite all the evidence that government intervention produces the better results. The reason for this is that unlike any other sector, demand is not generated by the consumer, but rather by the supplier and in any case where the supplier is able to manipulate demand, the consumer always looses

Let me clear up a huge flaw in your premise here... There IS adequate healthcare available for anyone in the US; the issue is how individuals pay for this healthcare. There is NO lack of ability to provide healthcare in the US.

What evidence? The only "evidence" I've seen is government reports that advocate for giving the government more control over healthcare, produced by the government agencies that would benefit from having this control. Outside of this, I've seen some hypothetical scenarios posited by pro-government pundits. So, where's the evidence?



Umm demand isn't generated by the consumer? I will grant that most people don't get sick or injure themselves on purpose, but, unless doctors and pharmaceuticals are intentionally breaking bones and making people sick (which I find laughable) they're not creating the demand.

Further, your post completely ignores WHY healthcare is so expensive in the US: liability and the cost of education. IF the US can reform the tort system and put the Universities in check (as I've said), the cost of healthcare will drop significantly.

If the US can go a bit further and take the health insurance decision out of employers' hands and put it into the private citizens' hands (where it belongs, not the government's hands) THEN we might actually get somewhere...

To address both of these points. The US Does already have basic public medical coverage. It's called the medicare/medicade program, and has been in place since 1965.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_(United_States)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicaid

I find it sad that there has been such a campaign of mis-information that the average person automatically assumes the US was throwing sick people out into the cold before President Obama came along to save us...

With 50 million people denied access to adequate healthcare it is a failed system no matter how you try to dress it up!

Nobody is denied lifesaving healthcare in the US. To intentionally deny someone lifesaving healthcare in the US is a felony, period. And the other 280 million who have access (according to your number), they don't count as success? That's an 85% success rate, and we teach our children in school that 85% is great, right?

To address your 50 million people denied access to adequate healthcare remark, again this is a problem of ability to pay and personal choices. The vast majority of your 50 million choose not to purchase what insurance is available to them (again, I believe the employer-based healthcare model to be flawed), sometimes because they believe they cannot afford it, and sometimes because they simply believe themselves healthy. These individuals then compound the potential consequences of this choice by not saving adequate funds to prepare themselves for the cost of a severe illness or injury. Of these, many claim they cannot afford to do so; some truly can't. Most, however, when examined more closely are found to have expensive cellphones & plans, large-screen televisions, multiple cars, etc etc. Nobody is discounting the desire to have nice things, however each of these items represent a choice not to prepare for a basic responsibility (one's own health). Further, many of these people are consistently engaging in behaviors that will significantly increase their future healthcare costs (smoking, excessive drinking, obesity/poor diet being the most common).

Given all this, I don't have quite so much sympathy for these 50 million that can't PAY for healthcare because they've spent their money somewhere else. Moreso, I have sympathy for the doctors, PAs, nurses, and all the other healthcare professionals who have studied for years at their own expense in order to be able to provide excellent healthcare and save lives, run huge liability risks everyday, and have a fair expectation to be compensated for their efforts. I also have more sympathy for those individuals, like myself, who make informed choices regarding our healthcare and lifestyle, purchasing appropriate insurance (and saving for deductibles and copays or anything the insurance might not cover) and taking care of ourselves through diet, exercise, and preventative medicine. It should not be the role of the latter two parties to subsidize (and therefore enable) the poor decisions of the first party.

So, yes let's help those few truly needy people, but the rest need to bear the consequences of their choices.

Paying over 35% more than the next country in the table for a system that fails to cover the entire population, while most first world countries seem to have achieved this is sunjustifiable, plain and simple!

And even if you choose to forget about all the people who are without adequate healthcare, you are still paying far to much!

From a 30 second long google search-

National Affairs online Fall 2012

"The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was intended to solve both problems, but now seems unlikely to solve either. In July, the Congressional Budget Office — in its latest projection of the law's effects — concluded that a decade from now, well after the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented, there will still be 30 million uninsured (of whom 8 million will be undocumented). The growth of health-care costs, meanwhile, will have seen no significant slowing."

Note that the term "undocumented" is a polite way of saying "snuck across the border and are in the country illegally.


Investors.com-

"Last year, the CBO said the average exchange subsidy for those getting federal help when ObamaCare goes into effect next year would be $4,780. Its latest estimate raised that to $5,510 — a 15% increase. All these numbers are up even more from the CBO's original forecast made in 2010, which had the first-year subsidy average at $3,970.
The CBO also expects 7 million workers will lose their employer coverage due to ObamaCare, almost twice as many as it had previously said would be dumped. It expects tax penalties on individuals and companies who don't buy insurance to be $36 billion higher from 2014 to 2019 than it originally forecast."


Read More At IBD: http://news.investors.com/020513-643...#ixzz2LFQPfCck
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The CBO is currently estimating the 10 year cost for this program to exceed one Trillion dollars

Once again, I will ask my original question. Can anyone on this forum honestly stand up and say that this program was well thought out and will be successful in it's implementation?

I agree with a lot of what you say here. Although i do think along with tort reform and dealing with the costs of education, insurance needs massive reform. I think standards of care ought to be dictated by health care providers, not insurers. And, i think that risk pools need to be extended, like they are here.

Health care really needs to be disentangled from one's job.

However, I'm not in favor of pointing fingers and raising prices or dropping people for family history, medical history.

Why do you keep changing the subject? There's little disagreement that healthcare in the US is expensive, and likely too expensive. The reasons for this, however, have very little to do with government control.

And,since you weren't paying attention the first time, the reason why there are so many uninsured individuals is primarily that these individuals CHOOSE not to insure themselves. You can only protect people from themselves so much...

The size of debt is not a measure of a country's wealth. There are poor heavily indebted countries and rich ones. By all standards (except for size of debt) the US is immensely rich. I have a big debt (aka a mortgate), yet I am certainly wealthier than many of my friends who are debt free.

A friend of mine in the US had a heart problem. His life expectancy was a few years. An operation was available that would extend that considerably. Unfortunately, we were not able to raise the funds for the op. He died.

He died because he didn't have the money to pay for a life-saving operation.

I have republican friends who insist that Obamacare will mean that the government will decide who will live or die. They're far happier with the current situation where it is private insurance companies who make that decision.

I'm with Sbrinz on this one. US healthcare is a disgrace.

**sigh**

Who exactly do you think is covered by these government plans?

The problem (again, I and others have pointed this out before) is NOT that the "very poor" lack access to health care, it is that the lower middle class does.

People who have to work two jobs to make ends meet, who work for employers who neither provide health care coverage nor pay enough so that their employees can seek alternative means (citing COBRA is a bs answer btw, it is far too expensive for most people to afford) of gaining health care coverage.


(On the other hand, after spending Christmas holidays with my sister and her bf, holy hell do I want to slap some non-job-having people around... or, well, at least those two anyhow.)