54% Say “Do Nothing” Better than Obamacare
Tags: liberal lies, Obamacare, Polls.
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So much for the oft-repeated talking point that the American people are demanding we do something:
Thirty-five percent (35%) of American voters say passage of the bill currently working its way through Congress would be better than not passing any health care reform legislation this year. However, a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that most voters (54%) say no health care reform passed by Congress this year would be the better option.
As Rasmussen goes on to note, this doesn’t mean people don’t want reform, but that they don’t want the reform Obama and his Democrats are currently touting. From what I can gather, the majority seem to want:
1. Some sort of mechanism to provide coverage for the un-insured who are unable to pay for insurance (which is not the same as total number of people uninsured).
2. Better protections for expensive procedures/conditions.
3. More control of health care decisions in the hands of doctors and patients.
The trouble with this is that none of these desired aims requires a massive, government-run reorganization of our entire health care system…and thus such things don’t commend themselves to liberal Statists who understand that if they can get us all on the government health care dime, we’ll never get ourselves off of it, and thus we’ll be ripe for the complete Europeanization of the United States. Remember, for the left its all about control – they are sick and darned tired of our unwillingness to bend and so they want a means where they can apply pressure on us to conform to their ideas of what constitutes a good society.
Instinctively, I think the American people are realizing this – that Obama doesn’t give a hoot about whether or not anyone gets any actual care at all, but is determined to impose controls upon us. And thus the growing popular rebellion.
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20 Responses to “54% Say “Do Nothing” Better than Obamacare”
Caucus of Corruption
To the list I would add the ability for the now ‘uninsurable” to get coverage. BTW, this would not have to be national–some states now underwrite insurance for those who have been turned down.
But an aging population is daily adding to the number of people who can’t get insurance due to preexisting conditions or health history.
Amazona,
True, we do need to cover those who either lost coverage because of some horrifically expensive condition or who can’t obtain insurance because of such.
Let’s start with Tort Reform, work that out, pass comprehensive Tort Reform and then we can start the Health Insurance Reform.
Preexisting conditions, I’ve changed providers six times since being diagnosed diabetic. In each case when I leave a provider they must send to me a declaration that my diabetes was covered, and as a covered condition is eligible for coverage with the new provider. This may be a factor of HMO’s or may be California statute. But, in any reform coverage of previously covered conditions, or reasonable coverage is required. Everyone should be able to be treated as I’ve been.
Once again, I have tried to stay out of this health care debate…until now.
It is no secret to those of you who know me via posts here that I worked as an RN for over 30 years. I have seen the good, bad, and ugly in health care. Because I am biased, I want to ask those of you who post here the following questions:
If your grandmother or mother who is 90 and in a nursing home, ill, and infirmed without a Living Will…. would you want her to have surgeries to maintain her life without quality of life? How long will you continue to resurrect her? When does “do no harm” begin with mom or grandma? What can a doctor do besides inform you as a family that mom or grandma can not tolerate any more medical interventions when you as a family say “save her at all costs”?
The above scenario is the reason that 70-80% of all medical care costs come during the last 6-9 months of life. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen this repeated time after time.
If the Terri Schiavo drama did any good it was that everyone from age 18 needs to have a Living Will.
If your grandmother or mother was 90 in a nursing home sharp as a tack but had fallen due to mobility problems b/c she needs a hip replacement, would you tell her doctor to do the hip replacement so grandma could go home after rehab was over and live independently once again?
Not all 90 year olds are at death’s door, but those that are should be allowed to go thru that door without costly unnecessary medical interventions that prolong suffering. Just try telling caring loving families that. No family should have to face this alone. That is why we have doctors, nurses, psychologists and clergy as support systems for families. And we do it without govt intervention.
Hmm, that’s a roughy, uffy. Why don’t we let Grandma make the decision, rather than making it for her, or allowing the government to make it?
uffy, you are right — but the decision should be that of family and doctors. I personally know of a family which just ordered hip replacment surgery on their 94-year-old father, who is declared mentally incapable and is in a nursing home—that seems very wrong to me. My mother in law had hip replacement surgery at about 84-85, and although she had been active before her hip broke and was in good physical condition before and after the surgery, for some reason she would not discuss chose to use a wheelchair even after successful surgery and rehab.
My point being, these are highly specific and individual cases and choices, and far beyond the scope of GOVERNMENT.
I would also like to point out that though some changes will improve health care in America, unless specific problems are within the stated scope of the United States Constitution, for example related to interstate commerce, they should be dealt with on a local level by the states.
In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a really big country. In case you hadn’t noticed, the attempt to draft a law which covers all the bases in all the states in all the counties in all the regions of this really big country is a massive 1000-plus pages and creates such a ponderous bureaucracy that it cannot function well for everyone. It appears, from my reading of it, to do the same thing that unions and other collectives do, which is to drag down the good in order to raise up the bad, resulting in a large mediocrity at the center.
State governments are more agile, more flexible, more adaptive to local needs. This is precisely why the Constitution was written as it was—to put the bulk of political power right where it belongs and can be most effective—at local levels.
Cost to states? Let the feds cut tax rates in proportion to what they would be spending on a national program, and let the states add that percentage to their own tax schedule to pay for state-managed health initiatives, as seen appropriate by the citizens of those areas.
uffy,
Been there ~ done that ~hated it.
Not grandma, but my mother. She had a DNR, but that didn’t cover what happened to mom. As a nurse I’m sure I don’t need to be specific, suffice to say her quality of life wasn’t quality at all.
The nurses at the care facility had an interest in keeping her alive which I believed to be out of care and compassion, and the doctors wanted us to withhold all care until she died, because she was one more body for them to examine each week. She wasn’t communicative, but she looked us in the eyes and that further complicated the emotional-rational paradigm.
Thank God I didn’t have a government sponsored doctor or nurse that had financial incentives to “pull the plug”.
William,
In the first scenario she is unable to make any rational decision and in the 2nd most families are part of the decision making in nursing home patients. You would be surprised how many families feel more comfortable with mom or grandma in a nursing home.
Amazona;
When I mentioned cost, I guarantee you that cost is to the state. Most nursing home residents are being funded by the state. Here it is called Title 19. The state takes your SS check and leaves you 60 dollars for necessities. The state then pays the difference. At 5k per month per resident, Title 19 is a huge cost to the state. Then add on un-necessary medical interventions and you rack up a bill of 200k only to have scenario 1 die 4 months later.
I agree with you…….. Leave Patient Privacy out of the hands of fed. govt. As a nurse my first duty was to my patient. I was their advocate and their caregiver. Can you imagine if my first duty was to the govt?
I would love to see a free market system. In many cities you have hospitals that will buy out or force out any independent doctor. You either work as part of the hospitals or you don’t work at all. Let free enterprise work and put hospitals and clinics on an even playing field.
Medical care is a service…..you pay for it just like you do your cell phone bill. But if you don’t pay your cell phone bill they shut you off. If you show up at the ER bleeding and in need of care, we aren’t going to shut you off b/c you didn’t pay a medical bill. We are going to stitch you up or whatever treatment you need.
I would like to see insurance reform. 1) You can NOT drop a patient b/c he or she gets sick. 2) Get rid of that pre-existing condition exclusion. 3) Give patients a kick back on their premiums for being in prevention programs, getting a yearly check up, no smoking, no drinking, healthy lifestyle etc.
The Obama Health Care bill creates more problems than it would solve. We as citizens deserve better than a bureaucratic nightmare that leaves both the patient and the caregiver at greater risk.
uffy, I like your ideas. Add reform to allow nationwide marketing of insurance plans to create more competition and I think you have covered most of the problems we face today.
I used to belong to an HMO and a lot of their care was really deferred care. I really needed knee surgery–I was in pain and had a job which required me to be mobile—and the HMO said it would be six months or more before I could have the surgery. Fortunately, I am not a passive or easily intimidated person and I worked my way up the food chain of administration till I found a person who would tell me the rule that if surgery was deemed necessary immediately the patient could consult a private doctor and the HMO would pay for it.
Anyone ever hear of that? No one else in my HMO had. But I was able to shop for a good doctor and get my surgery done within a week or so.
That experience made me think that a hybrid of HMO and private insurance might be a good idea—an HMO arrangement for average day-to-day medical needs, and another level for immediate and/or critical needs.
Also, I don’t have insurance—am considered uninsurable because I had some squamous cell skin cancers removed about 12 years ago. Clean margins, no recurrence, regular checkups, but I am turned down every time I apply. I have been lucky—my medical costs so far have been far less than my insurance premiums used to be. But one thing I learned is that when I pay cash for a service, I get a discount of up to 40% off the original billing price. That is because it costs the provider an average of 40% more to deal with insuarance companies.
Think about it—cut 40% right off the top of medical care costs merely by streamlining and improving the ways insurance companies interact with care providers.
That is the key to real reform—-a change here, a tweak there, an adjustment to this, a revision of that—not wholesale revamping of an entire system.
Very good discussion thus far and more reason for:
A. Cafeteria options to health care insurance
B. Tort reform
Serious tort reform will allow doctors to lower their fees and it needs to start there. A loser pay system of mal practice suits is a good start.
By offering cafeteria options to health insurance, costs can be more predictable and controlled. I also like the hybrid of private insurance and HMO’s. For example, Amazona has specific coverage on her knees offered by a carrier that specializes in knee (and joint; ankle, elbow, etc)) coverage. The insurance provider has a specific network of doctors that specialize in those types of surgeries, and have a sliding scale fee plan based on the types of operations and rehab required for such ailments.
In uffy’s example, there could be specific insurance offered to the elderly that would cover their particular situation as diagnosed by a doctor. For example, some elderly suffer greatly from arthritis, other don’t at all, but they may have parkinsons. With a cafeteria approach, the elderly could cover themselves with more precise coverage based on their doctors recommendation. I also think that at this stage, in order to get that coverage, a living will would be required.
For a young healthy family, that likes to race motocross, a cafeteria approach would allow the family to insure themselves against broken bones, etc.
Cafeteria options would allow people to tailor their insurance towards their specific needs and help keep insurance costs down, and tort reform would allow doctors to save on malpractice insurance and bring fees down.
It’s a start.
Barry’s on the tube right now, in Grand Junction Colorado, and he has been talking for about a half hour now without taking a single question, just speechifying and propagandizing. He just assured the crowd that if they like their existing insurance plans, they can keep them. Hmmm. Wonder if he has read the House plan he has been pushing Congress to adopt. Oh, yeah, you can keep your plan, as long as it qualifies as a “grandfathered” plan and as long as absolutely nothing about it changes, but once a change occurs you are out of that plan and into the government plan. And if your employer stops paying your premium once he is no longer allowed to deduct that as a business expense, you are pushed into the government plan.
He just repeated that the AARP supports his plan.
I have a friend at the rally. Ah, meeting. It will be interesting to talk to her and find out her reaction, if she gets the impression the rally is packed with supporters. So far the applause is pretty tepid. I wonder if these people had a slightly different idea of the meaning of a “town hall meeting” because so far this has just been a harangue.
just restrict health insurance to non profit organizations
cut the 1/3 overhead these guys eat up and you would see a substantial drop in actual rates in insurance…the insurance industry is the most profitable industry in the world….you take peoples money and give them back a piece of paper…then spend alllll the money on sky scrapers and invest them in for profit enterprises…
the only problem is…they forgot that thier duty is to the public….a public service and not a get rich scheme…restrict stock dividends and payments to the same rate the federal bank gets for lending money to banks….cap salaries to 3x the poverty level….including executives…and eliminate any outside enterprise that is not concerned with health care in any insurance company that provides health insurance…and when all the skyscrapers fall…the only ones left will be honest, public servants doing what they are supposed to do…
provide health insurance…one job…period…
js02 says:
August 15th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
the only problem is…they forgot that thier duty is to the public….a public service and not a get rich scheme…
–
I missed that news announcement. The insurance companies only have a ‘duty’ to thier customers and their share holders.
The rest of your post only helps to illustrate the lefts real goal behind “health care reform”.
Socialism.
Very interesting discussion.
I sort of agree, but would like to see what the numbers are for malpractice insurers. If the reason malpractice insurance rates are so high is because the payouts are so high, then yes, tort reform is absolutely essential. If however the problem lies with the insurers, then that of course is where it must be dealt with.
In any case, this is not something that is even being discussed, so I thank you for bringing it up.
That in and of itself would probably be enough to solve the problem.
How would that work? The poverty threshold is dependent on family size. This means that for an unmarried CEO with no children, the maximum salary would be $32,490 a year, which would be too low for retention no matter how noble their hearts.
Socialism is government ownership of the means of production. JS02 is not suggesting anything that approaches government ownership, and in any case, insurance companies don’t make, mine, or grow anything.
Here are the annual median malpractice insurance premiums:
FPs – $12,500
GPs – $7,500
Internists – $12,500
OB/GYNs – $55,000
Pediatricians – $12,500
All Primary Care – $17,500
Here are some interesting quotes from the article:
But in primary care specialties, the cost of insurance continued to be one of the highest practice expenses.
The largest percentage drop was in Texas, which reformed its tort law during that period……”The state laws drive the premiums.” In states that have seen tort reform — such as caps on jury awards — insurance rates tend to be lower.
Consequently, more carriers are bidding for physicians’ business, and the competition has driven rates down.
In Texas, for example, physicians typically carry coverage of only $200,000-$600,000; in contrast, the average coverage among doctors in Chicago is in the range of $1.3 million-$4 million. “That’s for good reason: They need it,” he says.
What most people do not understand is that when a doctor has malpractice insurance, the insurer makes all the decisions, and those decisions are based on the probable cost to the insurer.
So malpractice attorneys know that they can sue a doctor and there is a good chance the insurer will settle for a smaller amount, based on the evaluation that a lawsuit will cost $$$ with the CHANCE of a payout at the end, while a settlement may cost $$$ with no risk of further. The doctor has nothing to say about it, and this decision is not based on the merits of the case, only the evaluation of cost.
This is a system which is fraught with problems. Attorneys can, and do, file frivolous suits, expecting a settlement without the merits of the case being taken into consideration, and doctors face being saddled with records of payouts on malpractice cases which have no merit, causing their insurance premiums to go up and affecting their professional reputations.
Without tort reform, such as a loser-pays clause, this kind of thing will go on, and premiums will rise, and doctors will be forced out of practice not only because of the premiums but due to the impact of being seen as guilty of malpractice when there was none.
malpractice insurance isnt health insurance…surely there is a substantial impact on the person who goes into the hospital to get a simple procedure done and the hospital mistakenly removes that individuals leg…yes…huge rewards for huge errors…but tort reform the way the government envisions would leave that victim not only without a leg but also without a future…
but in real life…that reason and those like it are no cause to triple the cost of health insurance in this country…insurance companies need to be prepared for malpractice…and malpractice is not health insurance…face it…doctors take in mega bucks…they make mega mistakes….they pay mega compensation for the mistakes…
but thats no reason to tell 18% of the people in the nation that thier rates have exceded thier ability to pay health insurance…when these very same insurance companies that provide liability insurance to doctors also make over 1 trillion dollars per yeat in gross profit…by overcharging for health care insurance…
its pretty simple…they have been raping consumers for decades…they give thier CEO’s millions of dollars a year to figure out how to play shuffle the pea so they can suck even more money out of the pockets of regular, working people….
and yes…health care and health insurance are just as much a public service as the telephone company…the electric company….and the US Postal service…ALL OF WHICH SURVIVE restrictions to how much they can charge the public for thier SERVICE….(in other words wake up)
During the late 80s/early 90s, I received hundreds of nursing offers from Texas. Over 60% of the medical professionals in Texas were being sued by illegals. Quick and easy money and just a phone call away from an attorney to take them on as clients. Didn’t matter they were fraudulent suits. Doctors and nurses don’t have the time to fight them. Easier for their insurance to handle the suits.
the government exists to serve and protect us…and that is the extent of thier authority…all other rights and privliges belong to the states and the people…period