You dolt….Only 15% of Americans are uninsured (47 million divided by 300 million total population), so by your logic we don’t have a health coverage problem.

I just want to know where the public thinks they are gonna find doctors to work in this new system. There’s always talk of making it more European, but then you also need to pay for my medical education like they do in Europe. I have $300,000 of med school debt and cannot start paying it back until I actually start practicing at age 35….you bet I care about money.

Mass, how many hours per week do you work for free?

As much as I would like to think that we could withdraw militarily from Europe, our experience in the Balkans back in the ’90′s makes plain that Europe either cannot or will not police their own neighborhood.

Yeah, yeah, I know–this is a medical blog, not a military or political blog. This issue is inseparable, though, from our ability to pay for such niceties as single-payer coverage for all.

“The President wants to establish government-run health insurance companies to compete with private companies. This is a bad idea because experience from government-owned enterprises in other sectors conclusively shows that that they are run inefficiently, in good part because of political interference. Moreover, government enterprises do not compete fairly since they generally are subsidized, often generously and in hidden ways. Private health insurance companies in the US compete very strongly, although they are hampered by mandates and other regulations that frequently have nothing to do with effective and honest coverage of health needs.”

Full post here: http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2009/06/health_care-bec.html

Don’t be coming in here with Nobel prize winners. They’re all over the place, I can find one in a minute.

First off, there are horrendous wait times. GP’s (PCP’) get paid 20 bucks per visit if they take the universal option, so most try to see 10 to 15 patients per hour to try and make a decent hourly wage. One I know works 7am to 10p every day except sunday.

the other alternartive is to have ‘private’ insurance, which charges an arm and a leg, gets you seen faster, but also charges a huge amount in copays for anything. my mother in law had a hip replacement. she could barely walk. cost over 10000 private insurance, or she could have waited, almost bedbound for 2 years to have one on the public system

the other problem with this system is physician pay. I dont want to come off a a money hungry doc, but I invested years into my training, specialization. I incurred huge debt. if my pay gets slashed, what happens to those things. do I foreclose my house, just give up my car. take my daughter out of private school. and on top of that, we still have the possibility of being sued by some crackpot lottery malpractice attorney. I guarantee you this is something that would not happen in australia or england, but about which not one work has been mentioned in our current debate

One misconception here is that universal healthcare is free. It is not. Instead of paying premiums to a private insurance company, you pay your premiums to the government in the form of taxes. It is only a matter or terminology, but you still pay. And there are co-pays involved.

However, the difference between those systems and the American one is that in those countries, everyone has access to health care: the employed, the temporarily unemployed, the wealthy, the poor. No one is in that grey area of too much income to qualify for help but not enough to afford care.
I have yet to see anyone in those countries having to lose home and file for bankruptcy because of overwhelming medical bills, having to beg family and friends for financial help.

Personally, I’d rather have affordable routine care that I can plan for & pay out of pocket with a medical savings account. Then I only need have a catastrophic care policy for the major unexpected stuff like broken arms & pancreatic cancer. It may be an extremist statement, but I think the health care industry might actually be better off if both doctors and patients could avoid dealing with insurance companies…

http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/07/medicares_mythical_administrat.php

Here’s just a short take:

“Rather, private insurers have costs that Medicare doesn’t have within the agency. Private insurers bill. Medicare does too, but the IRS has its own budget–hell, its own courts–which don’t show up on Medicare’s balance sheet. Private insurers negotiate with suppliers. Medicare does too, but most of the negotiation takes place between lobbyists and Congressmen who again, do not show up on Medicare’s balance sheet. The Federal government has all sorts of these little items which relieve government agencies of reporting certain costs. But the costs remain.”

Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t problems with the Heritage Foundation’s report, which Krugman attacks, because they’re a lobbying organization and like the AMA or ATLA they’re going to put out stats that favor them, but you can’t just buy one side’s argument wholeheartedly.