Click here and print out and read this 11 page article ” The Cost Conundrum”, by Atul Gawande, published in June 2009 by The New Yorker magazine. This is an excellent evaluation of the cost of health care. It’s worth the time to read it and it’s the type of objective writing that the cons will never read. Too bad Republicans spend their time trying to kill reform instead of facing the problems and making efforts to resolve them. I was particularly impressed with the author’s research on the town of McAllen, Texas and the contrast in quality and cost of care at the Mayo Clinics. This is the kind of stuff the health care debate should be focused on.
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I read it. It is great eye-opener and confirms much of what I have believed about our own facilities here in Yakima. I owe a lot to the medical community. They saved my life, right here. But, I have a feeling. The construction seems to be endless, and now encloses a number of doctor’s offices. It seems to be happening here too. Read the piece. It is well done. Whoop
As he’s worked for Gary Hart, Al Gore and Bill Clinton, I’d hardly call his writing “objective”. But then, that’s the kind of reporting we’re used to in here.
Well, feel free to resort to your own brand of “journalists”:
Jeff Gannon (or was his name James Guckert?), or Armstrong Williams
So Neal, what difference does it make who Atul Gawande worked for?
Ron
Would you call an article, written by someone who worked for Reagan, Bush, and Cheney, an “objective” article? It DOES make a difference!
Jason, why don’t you take some time and read the article?
Ron
You asked “what difference does it make who Atul Gawande worked for?” If you can’t trust the messenger, how can you trust the message?
This article was nothing but an argument for a single payer system, rationing health care, and more government involvement in our doctors’ decisions on what they can do for us as patients. This article was not objective, it was one sided and all about how doctors in McAllen are greedy, how more doctors are becoming greedy, and how he likes the idea of government involvement, giving doctors salaries, and limiting the care that we all receive.
Ron, I read the article, I just see through his agenda driven article.
jason doesn’t believe that insurance companies practice rationing every single day, in the name of profits. Palin and Bachmann talked about “death panels” to fearful crowds of teabaggers, then had to backtrack when asked to show some proof that any of it was true. But it’s ok for the insurance companies and HMOs to stop treatments, or deny them outright, if they think you are going to cost too much to keep alive.
In Canada and the UK, they look at the whole “rationing” topic as ironic, since it has been going on in this country for decades, thanks to Nixon.
drew
read the article…it isn’t about insurance companies rationing health care, it was about doctors taking advantage of the insurance companies to pad their pocket books, and how to ration health care as a single payer system to decrease health care costs.
Death panels were in the original bill, democrats denied it then they said they “took them out of the bill” if “death panels” were never there, how can democrats take them out?
You brought up the topic of rationing here, in this blog. You also brought up the topic of death panels before. If you can show us that either “rationed care” or “death panels” was ever the intent of health care reform, I’m open to seeing what you have.
Fact is, I have been to both the UK and Canada, and no one is dying waiting for emergency or life-saving care like they are in the U.S. “Rationing”, by the Palin definition, isn’t happening in those countries on any level, and those people are keeping their health care, by choice. The horror stories that people like Palin and Bachmann sold to the teabaggers were just lies, plain and simple.
We keep hearing from the neo cons that health care reform is dead, but it keeps passing in the house despite what the party of ‘we don’t care” wants. Loyal Americans want change regardless of the ugly comments from the flying monkey right.
You obviously have NOT read this article…it is all about the need to eliminate “unnecessary” tests (rationing) to limit health care costs… setting up a panel of doctors or bureaucrats to make the decisions on what tests should or shouldn’t be performed. If a test isn’t ordered and someone dies because a tumor was not detected from a test that was not performed on a patient, that group of bureaucrats are liable (death panel)
drew you know that people ARE dying while waiting for life saving care in the U.K. and Canada, we have gone through this before, I have sent you links to articles about the problems, from Canadian and U.K. papers. Are you trying to tell me that the Canadian papers are full of lies?
Yes, you sent me isolated stories. It’s not going on en masse, like it is here in the U.S., thanks to your sick-care system. 122 people dying every day. Over 44,000 annually. In this country. Great system you’re promoting, this profits before people idea.
We would just like you to show us where the citizens of those countries want to scrap their health care and get ours. Not a couple of dissatisfied people here and there, but the masses, publicly speaking out for a health care program just like ours. You can’t find anyone who thinks that our system is better and that their nation should adopt it. A health care system that lets people die because they cannot afford medical treatment is only found here, in the same nation whose right-wing loves to proclaim that we’re a country based on Christian principles. Makes one wonder what Jesus would think about pre-existing conditions, and cancellation of policies of the patients whose ailments cost too much to treat. You already have your death panels in America, Jason. You’re protecting them. They’re called insurance companies.
Seeing how we’ve never seen a newspaper ever walk into a hospital and demand medical care, we decided to go and talk to real people, who, unlike you, have actually experienced health care in the NHS, or in Canada’s provincial single-payer system (I’ve personally had both as well). As you know, it is next to impossible to find people who think that a system that lets people suffer and die (only in the U.S.) is in any way better than one that is constantly and consistently finding ways to make sure that everyone is healthy (Canada, the U.K., and every other industrialized nation in the world). If there actually were millions and millions of people in those countries dissatisfied with their health care services, they would be very easy to find. A few conservative newspapers (The Sun, and The Times) go so far as to be critical of specifics of their care, but not one comes out to say their program should be replaced with our “pay-if-you-can, or die if you can’t” way of doing things. Not one, jason, and you know this. Hannity had to resort to calling Daniel Hannan a Member of Parliament to give him some credibility with the viewers when Faux News paid Hannan to cross the pond and rail against the NHS. But Hannan is not, and never has been, a British MP. He also left out the fact that, although he’s extremely wealthy, he has never taken his family out of the U.K. for their extensive medical problems- he’s either chosen private care, or most of the time the National Health Service. If it’s so much better over here, why didn’t he bring them to New York or Boston or Los Angeles? He can certainly afford it; he’s considered one of the richest people in the U.K., with an estimated worth of several hundred million (U.S.).
drew
As you said I sent you “isolated” stories, but you have sent me NOTHING… I want you to show me where millions of Americans want to scrap our current health care system. A Gallop Poll released showed that about 80% were satisfied with the quality of care, with 61% satisfied with the cost.
Sorry, but the burden of proof is still on you, where you have insisted that the masses are literally dying to get out of Canada and the U.K., and they’re all coming here to bask in our inexpensive health care. There’s no one coming across the border from the north. No one from England or Wales is on their way over here, not in the numbers you and your party and your insurance lobby have tried to claim. In fact, about 3,000 obstetrics patients are going east to hospitals in France and England every month, where an uncomplicated delivery runs a little less than half the cost of newborn deliveries here. You said there were hordes of desperate people coming here- where are they?
drew
You are the one that wants to scrap our current system for one that resembles the Canadian health care system (which is in financial trouble) and you think the burden of proof is on me?
I have not insisted that “masses” are flocking to the U.S. for health care, or that we have “inexpensive” health care…you are lying again. What I HAVE said is that there ARE Canadians coming here for health care…even if there are only a few coming here, why would they abandon their “wonderful” health care for our “horrible, overpriced health care”?
Yes, the burden of proof remains on you. For a lot of things, really.
Yes, I do want to scrap the current “system”, which has taught you that access to affordable health care is a privilege, not a right, and the rest of the civilized world knows that to be immoral and completely without justification. It allows good people to die in the same country that brags about being the richest nation in the world, simply because they cannot get the same very basic level of care that the wealthy can. Without a doubt, your hero Rush Limbaugh had his publicist pay his hospital bills before he left the facility- something that over 95% of your fellow citizens are not able to do. The irony of that is that the very wealthy in this country, when put in the same emergent situation as Limbaugh, have no business telling the rest of the nation that there is nothing wrong with American health care. No other nation does that, because every other nation values the health of their people, enough to make it a budget priority. A powerful minority in this country, in which you belong, believe that many, many of your fellow citizens are just not worth the effort. Understand the import of that, if you are the patriot you claim to be: in a land that lives and breathes equality and democracy for every citizen (no mater what their individual socio-economic status), some people are just going to get sick, and maybe die, because the profits of the health industry are more important. That industry continues to take in the money, but denies care to more and more patients, simply because it would cut into that 35% profit line. Why do you continue to protect that same “system” that screws you and and every other insurance consumer in this country?
If there was a terrorist attack in this country that killed 45,000 of our citizens last year, you’d be pissin’ your republican knickers to go after the culprits and kill them all. But when an unregulated and monopolized health care industry charges astronomical rates to customers (an industry that was deregulated by your party), while denying treatment in life-threatening situations, this is OK with you. You feel they are doing a great and wonderful thing, which makes us ask the obvious question- is Rush sharing some of his Oxycontin with you?
The Canadian single-payer plan is in financial trouble? Compared to what- nearly every other government agency, in nearly every other government in the world? This recession is GLOBAL, jason. Everybody is struggling. In spite of that, the countries you hate so much will continue to have their particular forms of universal health care, because the people are not going to give it up without a fight. I know this. I’ve talked to them. I’ve experienced the fine care in Canada and the U.K. You haven’t, but then, Fox does your thinking for you. Even Margaret Thatcher, who did nearly everything Reagan suggested to privatize services in the U.K., would not touch the National Health Service (she did cut their nursing and tech staff, and the conservatives are seeking to restore that to pre-Thatcher levels). Several conservatives that I spoke with referred to their NHS as a “national treasure”, saying that if any outsider came to take their NHS away, the entire country would rise up against them. It’s just as important to them as having the local fire brigade or police constabulary on the ready. One nice gentleman in Bristol (a conservative), told me that, if Thatcher had tried to privatize the NHS, she would have been recalled in a week. Imagine that- the people like the idea that they do not have to worry about how they are going to pay for the health care needs.
More than 45 million of our fellow citizens wake up every day without that comfort. Worse, 122 of your fellow Americans didn’t wake up at all, having died because they couldn’t afford the premiums, or the uncovered meds, or the treatments, or co-pays, or deductibles. This death toll, in the greatest country in the world. Your death panels are real-their names are Aetna, UHC, Schering-Plough, Blue Cross, GlaxoSmithKline, Cigna, Humana, Phizer.
Health care for every citizen should be a protected right, allowing people to focus on being productive members of society. We are the only industrialized nation on this sorry planet that puts the extreme profits of a small few over the health and safety of the vast majority, even as people are dying. The right has resorted to lies and distortion to protect those profiteers, and screw the poor and middle class.
My wife had to go to the hospital because of some kidney stones…we went to the emergency room and went right into a room with the nurse, before they knew if we had insurance for it or not. While they started treatment, they asked if she was allergic to anything, what kind of medicines does she take, etc. the last thing they asked us was where we worked and insurance info. by the time they had asked us this, it was well into the treatment and would be too late to kick us out of the hospital. When they started treating my wife, they did not know if we had insurance, if we were poor or wealthy, they did not know who we were. Hospitals DO NOT turn people away based on the ability to pay. You continue to spread this lie that only the rich are treated, but I do not ever hear of people going to the hospital and dying in the halls because they could not pay to have heart surgery or whatever life saving treatment that they need. ANYONE who goes to the emergency room for treatment will get the treatment they need…they do not care if you can pay for it or not, they just want to make you well.
You keep talking about other countries that don’t want to give up their socialized medicine…well of course not, just as we don’t want to give up our Social Security, even as we know it is a broken system….I for one would love to be able to opt out of Social Security, but we don’t get that choice, and soon we may not get the choice on our health care… the government will make it a law to purchase health care or we will get fined and possibly put in jail…now that sounds like a free country doesn’t it? Welfare is another thing that we will never get rid of either, even though we know it is a full of fraud, you see entitlement programs will never be given up because once you are given something, no matter how bad it may be, you don’t want to give it up and have to pay for it later, even if it is better than what they had before.
This is not about the health of the American public, the current bill would not start for 3 years, if this health care bill is about keeping people alive, why doesn’t it start immediately? Why would Obama let more people die for the next three years, and why does it still leave out 12 million people? Your party is by far more skilled in the art of deception, and will probably get what they want, but I guarantee that what they want is not what the majority of Americans want.
Anyone care to guess what jason is going to pay for his trip into the profits-before-patients American health care system? And does anyone care to guess what the same services would cost our neighbors to the north? England? France? Ireland? Germany? Japan?
Again drew avoids answering the questions, no surprise, but since he is so concerned about how much we will pay for our emergency room trip, I will let him know it is a lot less than what we would have to pay in taxes if we had “universal health care”.
Actually, no, it’s not. Not if we got your private enterprise, profit-before-patients, 35% profit/overhead private insurers out of the picture.
The current bill (which is not in place yet, and you and your fear-mongering cons know it) is a bastardized version of what we started with, because your party and some blue-dog democrats were more scared of the loss of their campaign funds from the health industry lobby than they were concerned about the health of all Americans. I won’t invade your privacy (or ask you to embarrass yourself), by asking you what the final bill will be, so I still pose the question to anyone else who can provide the numbers. But I know the truth, and you do too- every other nation in the industrialized world is paying less of their GDP on health care than we do, and their care far exceeds ours.