Blue Dog Congressman: American Health Care Already "Soviet-Style" With Insurance, Medicare And Medicaid

Gee I can hear it now "Eric Kleefeld line 1"

"Oh shit the congressman's made the Looney List"

Somebody just insured they are going to get primaried...

They love the idea that we should shop for our surgeries and treatments as a means to drive down costs and force us to take better care of ourselves. So what exactly am I supposed to do about the car accident that left my friend paralyzed and well over a million dollars worth of surgeries later he has to sell his house to pay down a small fraction of what he owes. How does that jibe with the "we should all just pay out of pocket" ideology of these idiots?

Once again, conservative message is "govt out of the way so the rich can get richer" and let's never fix any problems cause they fix themselves!

Oooooh, big bad government! .... so awful, so sinister.

Until you get 20 inches of rain.

Maybe this asshole has a "free market" solution to flooding?

So he's not suggesting a transition away from Medicare and Medicaid, but does believe this:

Central planning and control didn't work well for the Soviet Union. And it isn't working for American health care, either. That's a pretty dramatic indictment. But it's true. Beginning in World War II, American health care gradually migrated to an inefficient, Soviet-style system of central control and planning provided by health insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid

Um, if central planning didn't work for the Soviet Union, and current health care systems (including Medicare and Medicaid) have already migrated to an "inefficient, Soviet-style system of central control", then what, precisely, does he propose? It didn't work, that's where we are, but I'm not saying we should transition away from that?

Ok, then.

The handout, in the representative's own words, is the problem. And he probably should clarify what he passed out.

I agree that the patient is separated from the true cost of their coverage. But what this guy wants is flat out nuts.

Let's see what other services Americans use that could adjusted so Americans feel the true cost of the service:

Police: why not charge for all police services including crime intervention. You know it costs money to send cop cars out to stop those home intrusions.

Fire protection: Do know how much those trucks cost? By paying for fire protection through your taxes the average homeowner doesn't really know how much it would cost to stop their home from burning down. Solution: cut taxes by a small percentage for everyone, but shake down homeowners when they call the fire department. "Mam, if you want to save that bedroom it will cost you $10,000. But if you want, we'll let it burn and save the bathroom -- that will only cost you 5 grand."

Education: here in Illinois we pay for schools through our property taxes. Then we get hit up for books and fees -- probably only a few hundred or a thousand dollars a year. That doesn't give us a true feeling for education, does it? Instead, let's pay the teachers directly. You want to learn math? 2 grand. English? Another $2 grand. Spanish? Well, we can opt out, right?

"Our current system largely divorces patients and doctors from the cost of care, causing an explosion in overall costs for little or no overall benefit."

That statement is only half true.

Insured patients are often divorced from many of the true costs of health care (other than often nominal co-pays).

But doctors are NOT divorced from the costs, because doctors are part of the costs, and when doctors are part owners of the hospital or group practice, the costs of medical care can double. Medicare and Medicaid may control the price of a procedure but they don't try to interfere with medical decisions, and so doctors who want higher profits order more tests and more procedures and drive up costs with no increase in the quality of health care.

Now, conservatives look at this imbalance and think that the solution is to shift more of the costs to the patient, but that's nonsense. People (other than hypochondriacs) don't go to the doctor because they think it's free but because they think that need to see the doctor. Trying to ration health care by imposing costs on the patient is simply irrational.

The real solution is to divorce the doctor from the economics of health care. If a doctor is on a fixed salary (such as is the case in the Mayo Clinic, one the highest-quality and lowest-cost facilities in the US), then the doctor will focus on the patients who need help and not on those that are profitable.

What we really need is a system in which both the doctor and patient really are divorced from the costs and economics, because they the doctor will try to provide what the patient needs, no more and no less, and the patient will take only what the patient needs.

It seems perfectly appropriate to me to compare enormous organizations that are so intertwined with government as to be indistinguishable from government to Soviet Style Economics.

Americans like to think that the Soviet Union collapsed because Reagan and Rumsfeld stared them in the eye until they fell right down. In fact it was the large blindly groping ministries - all carving out pieces for themselves with no regard to distribution - that finally bankrupted and ended the beast.

Ask Condoleeza Rice... and please - if the congressman needs to drag in European style socialism (ie; Medicare/Medicaid) - I would guess he is just doing that for cover.