“termite, I have a question for you and I am not trying to be inflammatory but instead I am genuinely interested. You have two son’s in or about to enter medical school, how much does the money they will make play a part in their decision to become Doctors? How much does the idea of helping people? Do you think they would still pursue that career if the money they could make was significantly lower?”

while the question was not inflammatory, it does lead me to believe you don’t really understand the income of our current doc’s. the days of doc’s making big bucks is a thing of the past. (ask any practicing physician)
any young student going into medicine to make large amounts is misinformed. and rayna, for the BS they have to put up with (ie. insurance companies) not to mention the cost of malpractice insurance, it certainly has to be for the love of medicine.
i promise you, do the research. you’ll see.

*if our youth wants to make money, they need to go into engineering. :)

Interesting. Does that mean that you do love and trust the government? Most people will tell you you’re crazy if you do. Here’s a few historical figures’ perspectives…

“But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government.” — Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837

“The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”– Thomas Jefferson

OK, that being said, I am not necessarily a fan of insurance companies either. They skim billions of dollars from healthcare every year to fuel their profits and insane salaries for their top tier management. I spend at LEAST an hour a day filling out paperwork (and no, I don’t get paid to do that paperwork, unlike a lawyer; but if I don’t my patients will be denied appropriate care). They play games with their payments to providers, hoping that we will not keep hounding them to pay and that they’ll get to keep what they owe us. However, the problems they cause are drops in the bucket compared to the problems with Medicare/the VA system. I can at least take the insurance companies and hold them over the fire at the state Dept of Insurance. There are no mechanisms to check the powers that be at Medicare or the VA other than direct Congressional intervention. Medicare decided a few years ago that every provider that bills them has to do it electronically in order to save them from having to process claims sent on paper in the mail. So, if you wanted them to pay you you bought a computer system ($25,0000 minimum), pay a monthly fee ranging from $50-350 per doctor, and gave them your bank account number (so that if they ever think you owe them money, they just take it straight out of your account). How much extra did Medicare pay doctors to compensate them for spending all that just to save Medicare time and money? Zero. Bottom line is that the only thing that will happen if the government runs health care is that you can count on living shorter and being much more miserable if you have to use the system.

Also, I am interested in your quote “…but I know that my Mother and Sister do not have insurance because they can not afford it and their employers do not provide it. Without it Doctors will not treat them, when they are sick they have been repeatedly turned away from Doctors and Hospitals because they don’t have insurance.” Hospitals cannot turn away acutely ill patients. No, they do not have to treat your hangnail. But, if you have a real medical emergency you cannot be turned away from a hospital. If either of them had a real medical emergency, they can report the hospital they were denied care at for a COBRA violation. They can also sue their pants off. You also said “I know that the prices that Dr.s are charging are crazy and the ability to turn people who are sick away is outrageous”. First off, anyone who went into clinical medicine for the money has long since left. It is far easier to make $80-250,0000/year as a pharmaceutical rep, investment/retirement account manager or politician. Hell, there are private school principals making more than some doctors. While the prices you see are indeed high, the majority (at least 40% and I have heard as high as 65%) of what we get paid goes out in overhead. Receptionists, nurses, taxes, malpractice insurance, medical equipment from the thing we look in your ear with to ultrasound machines….and the list goes on. For every dollar you pay your doctor, he MAY take home 25 cents after taxes. I also will see people without insurance, but Medicare limits what I can do for them in terms of charging less, so a number can still not afford to come see me.

I work in the US health care system every day. It is far from perfect. But I do not believe that it will get any better with a government takeover based on my experiences with government provided healthcare at the VA and with Medicare.

just as doctors in private practice have guidelines as to what they can and can not charge you, why can’t the same rules apply with the insurance companies across the board? and hospitals, and drug companies. the list goes on and on. make it affordable so everyone can be covered if they so choose.

the common man wants good medicine, rayna. most want to be treated fairly and to be able to afford it. i just can’t imagine the government knowing what’s best for me over my own personal doctor. and that’s socialism everyone.

gov? ins? or Dr? running my health care it would be Dr.’s hands down. How can we do that and make it affordable? I am not sure.

everyone,
that’s socialism isn’t it? and that would be bad I am guessing though if it let the Dr make the decision and made it affordable for the common man that might be what we are looking for…

good question. it’s fair and not inflammatory. my sons have both entered medical school for one reason: the love of Science.

trust me, my husband before he died told me (many times) he had hoped the boys would not choose medicine. the reason was because the insurance companies already had dictated how he practiced medicine and ran his practice and he was very frustrated. he feared because of the way medicine was headed, many of our bright young kids would not choose to go into medicine (private practice) thus we (Americans) would lose so much.

our boys have both decided after they graduate to go into medical research.

Well, if I write a letter to my representative in government he listens, if I write a letter to Aetna they show no record of it (and I pay them hundreds of dollars a month). So, I am going to have to say the government doesn’t look that bad.
I am not a Dr. and I don’t know a Dr. very closely so I will say I am a little ignorant there but I know that my Mother and Sister do not have insurance because they can not afford it and their employers do not provide it. Without it Doctors will not treat them, when they are sick they have been repeatedly turned away from Doctors and Hospitals because they don’t have insurance. This is wrong, as humans in this age we do have a RIGHT to health care, at least we do according to the United Nations as well as a RIGHT to education (http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FactSheet33en.pdf) I do not know all the ins and outs, I do not know everything that needs to be done to fix it but I do know what we have isn’t working. I know that insurance companies as they are is not working, I know that the prices that Dr.s are charging are crazy and the ability to turn people who are sick away is outrageous. The way it has been structured for so long is not working so if the government stepping in can help with that or even fix it, I say bring it on.
Every other industrialized nation in the world guarantees health care as a right of citizenship. You mean to tell me we could do it better than all those other countries? All those other men and women in other countries have access to health care any time they need it, I have a friend who is a Canadian citizen, she had a baby a few years ago and not only did she have wonderful care by Dr.s and nurses in the hospital she also had free access to a midwife and a doula (I couldn’t have a doula because my ins. wouldn’t pay for it) then after she returned home from the hospital there was a nurse/midwife/nanny who came to her house a few days per week for a few weeks to help take care of the baby, help her learn to breastfeed and help her do things like laundry all of which was free, then after her son was a few months old there were learning playgroups run my a registered midwife and nanny set up for the babies born around the same time as her son. All of these things were free as part of Canada’s health and education systems. I paid and am still paying for the few days I spent in the hospital having my son and as soon as I walked out the hospital door no one called to see how I was (not from the system anyway) the government didn’t send someone to my door to help me out in those hard first days at home and no one is offering me free educational playgroups to learn/grow and bond with my son. I could have really used that, so I am sorry but from where I sit they have a much better system.
Hospitals close when money is tight now (just ask anyone in Southwest Florida) it makes no difference if the government runs them or a private company owns them when money is tight things close including Dr.’s offices and Hospitals.
I do not think there was any insurance involved when my husband was in Japan. And even if there was it was still better than here because here there would still be a co-pay up front and probably a bill to follow after the insurance company decided they wouldn’t pay a portion of it. In Japan there was no bill at all pre or post visit.

termite, I have a question for you and I am not trying to be inflammatory but instead I am genuinely interested. You have two son’s in or about to enter medical school, how much does the money they will make play a part in their decision to become Doctors? How much does the idea of helping people? Do you think they would still pursue that career if the money they could make was significantly lower?

secondly, you brought up a very good point. many Americans choose not to have health care. i certainly feel it should be affordable for those who can not afford it.

i’m pretty familiar with the health care system. my deceased husband was a cardiovascular surgeon. my oldest son is attending Tulane School of Medicine and my second son will start Medical School at Tulane next fall.

i just don’t feel the government should be running our health care system. it’s scary.

I fully understand the desire to have quality health care at an affordable price. But what you need to look at is how you define “quality”. I have spent a time talking with physicians from other countries and visited a few of them. The WHO surveys are a bit deceiving. They seem to imply that the care delivered in other countries is better than the care deliverd in the US. On a population level, those countries are indeed outperforming us. However, on an individual level, treated patients in the US do far better than matched controls in those countries. How can there be a difference? The answer is that many people in the US choose not to be treated. They don’t “have time” to go to preventative care appointments, they “can’t afford” a $25-40 copay for an annual visit, they deny that the symptoms they are having are real or they distrust health care providers because of prior bad experiences. This is why preventative care is not a viable option in the US; it is not the doctors who make that decision, it is the patients. Since the patients will not invest the time and minimal cash in the prevention side, eventually the time comes where they have to pay hundreds of times the time and cash on the interventional side when they have their heart attack, stroke or cancer. Preventative care also includes the idea that when your doctor tells you to stop smoking or stop eating fast food, you actually listen to him and STOP. Good luck with that one! Bottom line is that wealthy Europeans and Canadians and South Americans and Japanese who have serious health problems all come to the US for treatement as opposed to staying in their home countries that so outrank us on the WHO surveys. What does that say about whose system is better for the individual?

Another thought I would leave out there is that “quality” is highly relative, and often very linked to the price tag. If you want to pay 1950′s prices for healthcare, you’re going to get 1950′s level healthcare. That’s fine for a 30 year old. But, if you turn 65 and suddenly the only thing between you and the Grim Reaper is a four vessel bypass, all of a sudden it’s amazing how cheap the 70 grand it costs sounds. I personally cringe at the idea of the government being able to say “well, the economy is bad this year, we aren’t going to pay for heart bypasses after June of this year” (and BTW this happens in Canada, they close whole hospitals when budgets run out).

Lastly, I know I will catch flack for saying this as a doctor, but there is no such thing as a ‘right’ to health care. Rights are abstract liberties that all humans are entitled to. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Voting. Freedom of expression. All these are rights. Healthcare is a service. Services have providers. Rights do not. There are no happiness providers (unfortunately, I’d love to have one..). But I am a healthcare provider. Now, does this mean that governments shouldn’t provide services to their populations? I am not saying that at all. But we need to stop this crap in the US about making services such as education, health care and housing ‘rights’. This all started with the civil rights movement, which was indeed about basic human rights and served a noble purpose. But now, the idea is that you start talking about certain services as ‘rights’ so that it seems to almost be unconstitutional to deny people these services when it is not. Enough on this rant, I am sure it will draw fire.

Lastly, I am curious about your experience in the Japanese health care system, which is very tightly regulated by the government to the point it is on the verge of bankruptcy. All hospitals and clinics in Japan are privately owned and operated, but the government fixes rates they can charge. Did you have insurance coverage at that time? If so, likely the reason you had no balance billing was that the insurance most likely paid more than the Japanese government would allow the clinic to charge a native, meaning your insurance subsidized some health care for Japan. If not, then I am very curious as there are many tales of Japanese facilities going so far as to hire collection agencies in order to get some payment from people.