"Doctors see patients: one at a time, providing personal care in the patient's interest only."

He's right and wrong. Health care is not the interest of the patient only. There are public health issues and other social issues which can apply. Some people who are sick can be quarantied, for instance. So the existence of a public interest is hardly news.

"Health care, by definition, can't be provided in the public interest because no doctor has ever seen "the public.""

I suppose you could say that "promote the general welfare" can't be done because nobody has ever seen the general welfare. But it's in the Constitution so he's clearly just lying.

"in the public interest" is not the essential consideration if it is not about promoting the general welfare. But of course what the CDC does is about health care in the public interest, it's called "public health". So if he wants to do away with public health entirely, let him say so outright!

Nobody in their right mind thinks health care reform is about treating statistical ensembles as if they were human beings. But dealing with large numbers or classes/groups is a necessity of government. I mean, HMO doctors only treat one person at a time (more or less) but I don't see him exclaiming over how HMO doctors cannot by definition treat "the members of the HMO". Doctors treat individual members, whether of HMOs or or the public.

Enuf?

Under similar schemes in Canada and Great Britain, people wait weeks to see their doctors, months to see specialists, and years to get routine procedures and treatments.

No they don't. Liar.

In other news, getting a primary care appointment in this US city means a three-month wait. There's always urgent care ($$$) and the E.R. ($$$$$), I suppose.

Oh, and nice big of shroud-tugging indecency re: Natasha Richardson, Minty. Pissed on any other graves lately?

.

Have someone ask that corporate shill . . .

Why the lack of health insurance contributed to the deaths of an estimated 22,000 adults in 2006?

~OGD~

That's how a government take-over of your health care will try to get costs under control: cheap, outdated treatments, long waiting lists, and low-tech hospitals.

No, the way that government can get costs under control is through streamlining administration. For example, right now, billing for services is complicated by the different fee schedules a provider must use to be reimbursed by private insurers, because each plan and level of coverage differs.

There's much more to administration than just billing, but because of these and other inconsistencies—compounded by the private insurers' overriding aim of denying as many claims as possible to keep profits high—administrative costs for health care in this country run between 25 and 30% of health care expenditures.

Therefore, from every dollar paid out in premiums, copayments, and insurance reimbursements, between 25 and 30 cents go for the privilege of having numerous for-profit insurers and HMOs that all do their paperwork differently. And these costs are on both sides of the equation—providers and insurers.

Conversely, Medicare—even with the degradation in the system caused by legislation, such as the 2003 "improved" Medicare act—consumes between 3 and 6% of its costs for administration. If all providers simply had to bill the single payer—Medicare—their administrative costs would be drastically lower.

So it's not that in cutting costs a government-funded system would lower the quality of care. It would simply and cleanly lower the costs for administering that care.

Government now covers 100 million Americans, and costs are exploding. Under the proposed takeover, 130 million more will be added to government health programs.

The reasons that costs are "exploding" have nothing to do with Medicare itself and everything to do with how the for-profit health care industry has eaten its way into Medicare to have more tax dollars come its way. Medicare Advantage sends tax dollars directly to private insurers and HMOs, rather than to the people providing services—doctors, labs, hospitals. Likewise, Medicare Part D benefits the drug plans that have sprung up to "cover" Medicare recipients who must have a way to mitigate the higher costs of medication that came with Part D, which allowed the pharmaceutical companies to charge more for drugs and denied Medicare the ability to negotiate prices.

Get rid of the 2003 act and the other erosions since LBJ and you're back to a clean, simple system of direct payments for services provided and reduced costs for drugs and medical equipment, because of the negotiating power that comes with covering the "group" under the Medicare umbrella.

Expand that umbrella to cover not just the people who opt into a "public plan" but everyone in the country, and you've got real negotiating power and direct billing and payment for services and drugs, with no private insurers and HMOs in the middle taking their cut.

And don't forget the costs the government is picking up for the emergency care that cannot be denied based on means (which is a good thing, don't get me wrong). The people who end up in the ER without insurance are the people who have not been able to go to a doctor early on because they couldn't afford it—before their situation became critical. If they had been able to see any doctor at any time without income and insurance as factors, the chances of their ending up in expensive ERs receiving costly care would be significantly reduced.

But none of this is what it's really about.

Sen. DeMint and the right wing want to have an America that has a chasm between the haves and have-nots. They want a two-tiered system for medical care, based only on how much money you have to buy the best insurance available. In some sort of perverted application of Predestination, they believe that if you can't afford medical care, you don't deserve it. And don't blame them for this: It's God's will, because He has deemed that you're not worthy.

There's no such thing as human rights to them, because everything is a commodity. Social compacts have no meaning, because God would give you what you need (millions of dollars) if you deserved it.

Ultimately, it's a very ugly view of life that I doubt logic and reason can undo. We can make all the arguments we want to refute DeMint's claims, but unless we can somehow undo the underlying belief that some people are simply better than others—and that they deserve to have more—they'll use government control and specious claims about "socialized" medicine to justify that belief.

Whenever they talk about how terrible it is in other countries, the simple answer is that we are rated in OUTCOMES behind Costa Rica and every other country they talk about. We are 40th!

Most of what they say is lies anyway -- I thought it was pretty funny when the same people who talk about not wanting the government to get between you and your doctor, are happily quoting insurance companies who claim to be able to cut costs by eliminated "unnecessary testing." Who orders tests? That would be doctors. How will tests that insurance companies decide are unnecessary be eliminated? By telling doctors they can't order them, or by telling patients they won't pay for them.

I love the rationed care argument. It is so hypocritical. I've been waiting almost 3 weeks to hear if and when I get to see a specialist my PCP believes I need. It has to be approved and then they need to get an appointment.

The last time I was referred was to an orthopedist. It took 2 weeks to get the referral approved and the soonest appointment I could get was a month down the road. And then I waited three hours in the waiting room to find out I had a broken bone in my leg. No wonder it hurt so badly!