Here is the actual reality, actual reality, of the current 'health' care system in the U.S. as documented below by Jonathen Alder. Let's see how many REPIGLCIANS that show up here will say 'yes, this is the way it should remain, this is what I want' .......... fucking idiots that they are.

What’s Not to Like?
Reform? Why do we need health-care reform? Everything is just fine the way it is.

By Jonathan Alter | Newsweek Web Exclusive

Jul 31, 2009

Go ahead, shoot me. I like the status quo on health care in the United States. I've got health insurance and I don't give a damn about the 47 million suckers who don't. Obama and Congress must be stopped. No bill! I'm better off the way things are.

I'm with that woman who wrote the president complaining about "socialized medicine" and added: "Now keep your hands off my Medicare." That's the spirit!

Why should I be entitled to the same insurance that members of Congress get? Blue Dogs need a lot of medical attention to treat their blueness. I'm just a regular guy and definitely deserve less.

I had cancer a few years ago. I like the fact that if I lose my job, I won't be able to get any insurance because of my illness. It reminds me of my homeowners' insurance, which gets canceled after a break-in. I like the choice I'd face if, God forbid, the cancer recurs—sell my house to pay for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatment, or die. That's what you call a "post-existing condition."

I like the absence of catastrophic insurance today. It meant that my health-insurance plan (one of the better ones, by the way) only covered about 75 percent of the cost of my cutting-edge treatment. That's as it should be—face cancer and shell out huge amounts of money at the same time. Nice.

I like the "lifetime limits" that many policies have today. Missed the fine print on that one, did you? It means that after you exceed a certain amount of reimbursement, you don't get anything more from the insurance company. That's fair.

Speaking of fair, it seems fair to me that cost-cutting bureaucrats at the insurance companies—not doctors—decide what's reimbursable. After all, the insurance companies know best.

Yes, the insurance company status quo rocks. I learned recently about something called the "loading fees" of insurance companies. That's how much of every health-care dollar gets spent by insurance companies on things other than the medical care—paperwork, marketing, profits, etc. According to a University of Minnesota study, up to 47 percent of all the money going into the health-insurance system is consumed in "loading fees." Even good insurance companies spend close to 30 percent on nonmedical stuff. Sweet.

The good news is that the $8,000 a year per family that Americans pay for their employer-based health insurance is heading up! According to the Council of Economic Advisers, it will hit $25,000 per family by 2025. The sourpusses who want health-care reform say that's "unsustainable." Au contraire.

And how could the supporters of these reform bills believe in anything as stupid as a "public option"? Do they really believe that the health-insurance cartel deserves a little competition to keep them honest? Back in the day, they had a word for competition. A bad word. They called it capitalism. FedEx versus the U.S. Postal Service, CNN versus PBS—just because it's government-backed doesn't mean you can't compete against it. If they believed in capitalism, the insurance companies would join the fray and compete.

I'm glad they don't. I prefer the status quo, where the for-profit insurance companies suck at the teat of the federal government. Corporate welfare's what we've got, and it's a damn good system. Through a wonderful program called Medicare Advantage, the insurance companies receive hundreds of billions of dollars in fees to administer a program that the government is already running. Don't touch that baby. You'd be messing with the handiwork of some fine lobbyists.

You know what part of the status quo I like best? It's a longstanding system for paying doctors called "fee for service." That's where doctors get paid for each procedure they perform, as if my auto dealer got paid separately for the steering wheel, brakes, and horn instead of for the car. Fee-for-service is why the medical care at that doc-in-a-box at my mall is so superior to the Mayo Clinic or Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where the doctors are on salary. Who would want to mess with that?

OK, if you really press me, I'm for one change. It's the one that Republicans trot out to prove they're "reformers," too. We could save our whole system if we just capped malpractice awards. Two of our biggest states—California and Texas—did it a few years ago and nothing has changed there, but who cares? It sounds good.

So tell your congressmen and senators when they're home for the summer recess that it's too soon to address this issue. We've only been debating it for 97 years, since Theodore Roosevelt put national health insurance in the Bull Moose Party platform of 1912. We've only had 745 congressional hearings on the subject (I made that number up, but it's got to be close). That's not enough! Let's study this problem more before we do anything about it.

Did I say "problem"? Who said there was a problem? Not me. I like the status quo.

Well, it all depends of the meaning of ... well, just about every word in the English language.

For example, let's take health care (the following is courtesy of a post at Daily Kos).

On the one hand, "Florida State Senator Carey Baker (R) and State Representative Scott Plakon (R) introduced a state Constitutional amendment that, if adopted, would prevent Floridians from enrolling in any federal health care plan." The reasoning, in their own words: "To preserve the freedom of all residents of the state to provide for their own health care."

Damn. That's a lot of freedom preserving! Especially for all those Palin-lovin' old folks in places like "The Villages." So...

On the other hand, "The Baker-Plakon measure would exempt any Federal health plans in effect before 2010...sparing Medicare."

Blue dog Democrats actually live somewhere in their districts.

How hard would it be to give free skin cancer screenings on their front lawn?

How hard would it be to get everyone without health insurance in those districts to show up for a free screening?

Holy crap, I completely forgot about the 19th century firefighter morass - from what I remember, it got very ugly, with buildings burning to the ground while rival companies actually brawled over who was going to be first. "Corruption" and "ineffective" hardly does it justice. This is a f***ing great analogy - every Dem and liberal voice should be pounding the "America is Burning" meme. First: a ten second synopsis of the resounding success of the free market on 19th century firefighting. Then: "America is burning - and "business as usual" Republicans want to let it burn." "America is burning - while Republicans fight AGAINST putting out the fire." "America is burning- it's time to put away childish things and put out the fire." Mr. Benen? You got any pull with Team Obama?

Socialized firefighting is not the answer, why, it's socialism! If we allow this, a government official will knock on your door to ask how you want your house burned down. People will start setting fire to their own homes to take advantage of the free firefighting service! Do you want a government bureaucrat to come around checking your smoke alarm? That's the same thing as slavery!!!

What is society for if not healthcare?

The whole mid-19th-century private-firefighting-companies situation is also dramatized in Gangs of New York, where two rival fire companies show up at a burning house, and immediately commence with the business at hand: ignoring the fire, and beating the crap out of each other.

Don't forget the police, FBI and DOJ!

We need to privatize all of those too.

Oh, I forgot, Monica Goodling, Gonzo, and Bush already privatized the DOJ.

Good shot, Steve! Your command of instructive "yet" entertaining snark comps a lot for your oft' annoying "puzzled" act ;-)

That really is something to say when people complain about "socialism" - say, we already have many *services* taken care of by public operations, why not make at least, *insuring* health care a public service, or option at least! Even Jonah Goldberg admitted the principle of the thing, and argued it was for him whether it would in fact work well enough for the cost.

"If libraries didn’t already exist, there’d be no way they could ever come into existence now. Can you imagine telling the publishing industry that the government was going to pay to set up buildings where they gave away their product for free?" -- Nick Reville

Slow down. Proof-read. Things will make more sense. I, myself, cannot imagine what the "political discourage" would be if we were making the transition from "for-private enterprises" who "put the fire" to a government-run system today.

Laugh if you will, Libs, but those private outfits didn't need any gol dang Affirmative Action to determine who would be Chief.

And, some of them used to paint their fire equipment real perty like.

A couple of years ago some Republicans actually floated the notion to build a private highway between NY and Washington.

Well this is essentially true of many aspects of late 19th century and early 2oth century america. We had capitalism that was essentially unfettered and the result was company towns, child labor, powerful slum lords and robber barons and eventually a completely collapsed economy.

This is something that too few libertarians understand. We have tried allowing the invisible hand of the free market to guide our society in the past. It was definitively a failure by just about any metric of a just society. Nonetheless, that is what so may conservatives desperately want to go back to. The sort of McKinley era policies that created highly concentrated wealth for a few and abject poverty and serfdom for most of the rest.

Ask another question. How do they get the water to fight the fires in most non-rural areas?
Does the homeowner have to dig down to the water line so that firefighters can get to the water, or hire a private contractor to dig while the house burns?
Or, does the firetruck bring its own water (they did in the 19th Century)? The answer to both is no. There is a publicly built water system for them to access to put the fire out.

It is true, Canada relies on socialized firefighting.
Canadians are also so contented with their single payer (not socialized) health care system, not even our Conservative party (think George Bush-like) would dream of even suggesting private competition. Publicly funded health care is seen as a constitutional right. It is true that there are a few Canadians who think money rather than seriousness of condition should determine who gets treated first. They run off to the US for treatment, then demand that the government should reimburse them. (the lady in the TV commercial is a classic example.)

What Republicans want is a single prayer health care system.

You know, my brother just had a hip replacement and he had to wait months (about 5) for it right here in the good old US of A. Go figure. Maybe it's because we're just across the river from Canada.

I am not saying I agree with it, but I will tell you exactly what the response is going to be: Fire Departments are locally run. It's not the USFD, it's the NYFD or LAFD.

So we need to keep in mind the near universal confusion of federal insurance with federal administration. We're going to have to point out (again) that the US isn't going to be running any hospitals. They will still be run by whichever local organization, church, or private industry can afford to do so. The feds will merely be insuring people, much as many municipal fire departments would be truckless without federal subsidies to be distributed locally.

One wonders what the "privatized" emergency response to 9/11 might have been.

A poll of the ten old regulars (myself included) who meet most mornings at a local coffee shop reveals:

100% have Social Security pensions.

100% have Medicare.

50% have Veterans Administration medical care.

30% have a Veterans Administration pension.

60% think Obama is a dangerous socialist.

Ameerica will not get rid of socialism before it gets rid og the government-run government!

Nuke Washington D.C.!

Since the time last weekend when around 3000 Virginians got free healthcare in a field I have been interested in the people behind this, I have been enthralled by the man who has given everything he has to bring healthcare to the US. He is a 72 year old Brit, he is truly the kind of person that movies are made about. Please could someone publish an article about him!

You're right! I live in Toronto and when the house across the street caught fire, it took about three weeks for the fire trucks to show up. Death to socialism.

That is so true, thaingulic.

But Vokoban is dead on,

I want to see this banner at the next tea-bagging party,

Get government-run government out of government!

Because it's socialism.

I happened to have done a graduate school study on my midwestern city's fire department. I was surprised to find out just how broad Fire's responsibilities for our city's "life safety" (as they call it in the biz) are. It was ten years ago, but from memory here are some of Fire's functions:

* Hazardous material spill containment (e.g., train carrying dangerous chemicals derails and contents escape, or truck carrying the same crashes / turns over).

* Bomb squad. I should point out that the bomb and "Hazmat" squads are regular firefighters who are crossed-trained; they're not just sitting around waiting for a bomb scare or a spill.

* Heavy rescue, such as cutting people out of smashed cars, digging people out of collapsed buildings (e.g., after tornados), getting them out of stuck elevators, etc.

* Arson investigation. Our state law requires fire departments to have very well-trained arson teams. Why? The insurance companies don't like arson very much and make sure such laws are in place.

* Regular inspections of public gathering places, such as bars and arenas, to make sure all emergency exits are accessible (not locked or blocked).

* Review of all new building plans, to make sure fire suppression and alarm systems are included; inspection of all new buildings upon completion, to make sure these systems are operable.

* Monitoring underground storage tanks, such as those in gas stations, to make sure they are not leaking (I admit, I never understood exactly why Fire was given this responsiblity).

* Fire plug inspections -- don't want to show up to a fire and find there's no water. By the way, the pumpers (also called "engines", as opposed to ladder trucks) do carry water, just enough to get started while someone hooks up the hoses to the plug.

* Emergency Medical Services, including EMTs and Paramedics (in some cities, this is a separate department).

I'm pretty sure there are more things I could list, if I went back and dug my old papers up. But these certainly all important functions and somebody should do them -- if not Fire, than who?

And once again, we see that the world is a much more complicated place than any Libertarian could imagine.

Link baby link...

joel hanes @ 1:07 PM...

Brilliant brilliant quote.
Would love to see the source.

Some steps in the wind...

I hear, in
the strength
that always
remains, the
delicate rhymes
of a deep
sensibility, and
even a pleasure
where the
sun-rise appears...

Francesco Sinibaldi

We need to collect stories like this one...

Monday's NYTimes, in a harmless story about Chicago's bid to get the Games in 2016, this paragraph appears:

This spring, a $1.15 billion deal to privatize the city’s parking meter system turned into a fiasco after City Hall’s inspector general called it a dubious financial deal and after motorists said they poured money into fancy new meters that, in turn, spat out error messages.

What we need is a blog/list that keeps track of these things.
Much as Steve Benen kept track of McCain's flip-flops.

David Hapgood reports in "The Screwing of the Average Man" Bantam (1975) that in Japan fire insurance is illegal. Every citizen or corporation is responsible for their own fire safety. If the government has to come and put out your fire, you'll get the bill. This makes every citizen a fire marshal very interested in removing any fire hazards from their home or business. Hapgood says it works well and they have very few fires.

What? Next you'll be telling me that privatizing war is a bad idea. But just look at the smashing success it had in Iraq.

Koryel, Google is your friend.

True, That - Quick Study
Apr 5, 2007 ... If libraries didn't already exist, there'd be no way they could ever come into existence now. Can you imagine telling the publishing ...
www.artsjournal.com/quickstudy/2007/04/true_that.html
Ezra Klein: Education
... If libraries didn't already exist, there'd be no way they could ever come into existence now. Can you imagine telling the publishing industry that the ...
ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/education/

Funny, Google seems to reference all kinds of Japanese fire insurance.

The problem with privatizing firefighting is that the market in "fire" is not something we want to see expand from year to year. But if private enterprise relies on putting out fires, these same businesses have zero interest in fire safety. They might even be expected to work against government regulation in this area. They might complain about all the money being wasted by local governments inspecting construction, or in developing fire codes.

I think the same is true with health insurance. The business relies on people getting sick so that the market continues to expand. That way profits still increase in real terms. They probably have an incentive to cover high-profit medical procedures and medications so that the health services industry can make a profit even with the discounts they negotiate in contracts.

Private fire companies: A little incentive to start fires in your own district...no?

I once read a scifi book about a planet with no insurance allowed on it as viewed by an insurance agent from planet Earth. There were interesting ways of making recompense if you were the party at fault for whatever. Don't recall what happened in no fault situations.

CLD:
It seems that paperback books from before the age of the internet are wrought with errors or deliberate misrepresentations. Just like the internet today...

I can't quickly find any evidence to support Mr. Hapgood's assertions about Japanese fire insurance
One wonders that this book is out of print even though the average man is more screwed than ever.

Google is our friend.

I've lived in Japan almost 17 years and this is the first I've heard about Japanese fire insurance being illegal. Someone is certainly being screwed with here.

I can say I've had to use the Japanese ambulance service which is run through our local fire dept. Twice I used it for my sons who had accidents and neither time did I receive a bill for the ride. Oh, and cost of treatment didn't bankrupt our family either.

I once read a scifi book about a planet with no insurance allowed on it as viewed by an insurance agent from planet Earth. There were interesting ways of making recompense if you were the party at fault for whatever. - Evergreen2U

I read the same short story, probably in the same anthology, many years ago. No-fault incidents weren't addressed, as I remember.

Basic plot summary. Planet has no concept of insurance; party at fault replaces what was lost or damaged. Salesman for insurance company is sent to the planet to introduce the concept and start selling. His wife leaves him for a native, but as she's leaving the building, he leans out the window and cuts the line of a load of bricks (or something) coincidentally being lifted to the roof at that moment. Construction worker thinks it is his fault, and offers his wife to replace the salesman's wife, as is the custom. Salesman declines, asks arbitrator for monetary settlement instead. Arbiter agrees. Concept of insurance is introduced, lucrative career for the only insurance salesman on the planet.

Not to mention, the perfect murder. (see my last post)

"for-private enterprises"

In this country we sometimes have to wait months to get typos corrected.

Have you created a monster?
Or even worse are you the monster?
I think I have inadvertently done this very thing! Have you? I must say this, the world we live in today is spoiled and self-centered with nothing more in mind but get-it and have-it now! No patience, no self control and definitely no awareness of what we are teaching our children and those that we are mentoring, unaware. It sort of reminds me of king on the mountain as kids. We are going to pay the price for our behaviour, and it is prevalent in the news today with the obvious teetering and impending possible collapse of the entire system. Who do we have to blame? Ourselves! Why? Because if I could have found a way to get a half a million dollar bonus, I would have, how about you? And there in lies the very problem, greed. Have we raised a generation of "Who wants to be millionaire" Yes! How did we do it? Keeping up with Jone's, four car garage and still building on. Ask yourself and be honest. Have I taught my children to be frugal and wait and plan for the future, or have we taught the future is now, just ask for it? Well, now there is heck to pay, and relearning a lifestyle isn't easy nor is it invited. I would even bet you are saying, who me? I am the most down to earth person I know, you say. Look, it has to start with us, not our neighbor, not our kids, not our preacher, it has to begin with the only one we can legally and morally work on, us! Be an example, not of every new fashion, or a new car every-time we take shine to. Be responsible and be humble and realistic in your lifestyle. It is inevitable, we will conform to the future and it want be the same America very, very soon. Look at our society as a whole, overweight, overindulged, and spoiled. Don't believe it? Look up the statistics on weight gain in America in the last 20 years. We are lazy and ravenous with our splurges of a smorgasbord of dining out choices alone. I am not just blaming you, I include myself, our government, local and national. We call it prosperity, to minimize the guilt. But the truth is, any of our founding fathers would be appalled at our behaviour. If you can't live without the newest, hottest car that comes out, or that new dress you think you deserve every month, then I would say you are in for a very serious adjustment in the near future. Have I been a monster? Yes! Can I choose to be different? Yes! Can I re-live the past? No! but I can set an example to those around me, especially those that I trained personally.

Many libertarians etc. think Americans are getting weak, being bamboozled headlong into socialism etc. Well, most voters actually ask a rational question: Is X working for me? If X is working well enough (whether private farming or public waterworks) then they have no motivating to change its status. But if it isn't working (private health insurance, or whatever government program they don't like), then they press to change to something else. They don't want change for the sake of change.

tyrannogenius

In 1948, after World War II, a municipality fire service system was established.

Today, fire services are organized on a city/town/village basis. There are 894 fire headquarters and 3,598 volunteer fire corps. These have a total of 155,000 active career firefighters and 21,000 vehicles with 4,800 fire houses; 920,000 volunteer firefighters share an additional 51,000 trucks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefighting_worldwide#Japan

google is my friend

JS: the site is www.ramusa.org and Stan Brock is the founder. He used to be the host of Wild Kingdom. He started the program in remote areas of the Amazon, thus the name Remote Area Medical.

Our medical system is why he had to bring it to the U.S.

Steve, be with us or be against us. It's a tough choice but a moderate position is a joke.

Lets be completely honest here: Most Libertarians are conservatives who don't want to admit they hate Taxes because they are greedy scumbags... Yet never talk about individual rights not related to their pocket book.

The rest are just anarchists who haven't taken their arguments to their logical conclusions.

Or the all approved VOL Fire Dept. pushed for years in my conservative (once) rural county...My neighborhood's score card for the past 15 yrs: Three for three...burnt down to the foundations (the firehouse facility is less then a mile away from the neighborhood)

St John- Thanks,I am now trying to see if I can sign up to help in any way, now I have schedule!

Funny. I've made the firefighter argument myself. And, by the way, from diagnosis to surgery for my new hip was about 18 months. In America. In a university town with a great hospital. And with one of the best (and most expensive) health care plans in the area.

Canadian waiting lines my ass...

Attempting to use logic, rational thought, considering pluses, minuses, in other words actually being intelligent about issues and ideas is not going to work with the right wing, ever! Never!

Having spent a week at a vacation rental in the country with a septic system that malfunctioned, backing up sewage twice into the lower floor bathroom and kitchen, I am very appreciative of a public municipal sewage system.

I know there are plenty of libertarian (and green) tips on how to maintain your septic system, but in the private, one-family system, idiot-proofing the system is more difficult.

Libertarians would no doubt advocate that nobody should have municipal sewage systems and we sould all use septic systems or cesspools as in the days when Baltimore "smelled like a million polecats," in the immortal words of H. L. Mencken.

Charles Darwin was a very important man in the history of science.