Re: OT - Why do Foxnews.com surfers (ie republicans) hate children?


Aluckyguess wrote:
> No, if your a dem I am calling you lame.
>

I'll go along with that. Most Dems are lame. Just like most middle and
lower class neocon supporters are too thick-headed to realize
everything their party does is against their own best interests.

> "steve" <steverinoleo@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:1134517342.363345.317990@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > Aluckyguess wrote:
> >> "steve" <steverinoleo@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> >> news:1134507424.071770.311230@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >> >
> >> > Dewey wrote:
> >> >> Fox news.com poll
> >> >>
> >> >> Would you support funding national healthcare for all children?
> >> >>
> >> >> a. Yes (31%)
> >> >> 1,825
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> b. No (60%)
> >> >> 3,521
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> c. Not sure (9%)
> >> >> 562
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> 5,908 total votes
> >> >
> >> > Neocon 101:
> >> > If you're not rich enough to afford your own healthcare, then your
> >> > children don't deserve to be healthy.
> >>
> >> If you have no money you get healthcare for free. If you have money you
> >> go
> >> broke trying to pay.
> >>
> >> Dems are lame.
> >
> > [Are you calling me a fuckin' Dem? ]
> >
> > *****
> >
> > http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050829fa_fact
> >
> > THE MORAL-HAZARD MYTH
> > The bad idea behind our failed health-care system.
> > by MALCOLM GLADWELL
> > Issue of 2005-08-29
> > Posted 2005-08-22
> >
> >
> > Tooth decay begins, typically, when debris becomes trapped between the
> > teeth and along the ridges and in the grooves of the molars. The food
> > rots. It becomes colonized with bacteria. The bacteria feeds off sugars
> > in the mouth and forms an acid that begins to eat away at the enamel of
> > the teeth. Slowly, the bacteria works its way through to the dentin,
> > the inner structure, and from there the cavity begins to blossom
> > three-dimensionally, spreading inward and sideways. When the decay
> > reaches the pulp tissue, the blood vessels, and the nerves that serve
> > the tooth, the pain starts-an insistent throbbing. The tooth turns
> > brown. It begins to lose its hard structure, to the point where a
> > dentist can reach into a cavity with a hand instrument and scoop out
> > the decay. At the base of the tooth, the bacteria mineralizes into
> > tartar, which begins to irritate the gums. They become puffy and bright
> > red and start to recede, leaving more and more of the tooth's root
> > exposed. When the infection works its way down to the bone, the
> > structure holding the tooth in begins to collapse altogether.
> >
> > Several years ago, two Harvard researchers, Susan Starr Sered and
> > Rushika Fernandopulle, set out to interview people without health-care
> > coverage for a book they were writing, "Uninsured in America." They
> > talked to as many kinds of people as they could find, collecting
> > stories of untreated depression and struggling single mothers and
> > chronically injured laborers-and the most common complaint they heard
> > was about teeth. Gina, a hairdresser in Idaho, whose husband worked as
> > a freight manager at a chain store, had "a peculiar mannerism of
> > keeping her mouth closed even when speaking." It turned out that she
> > hadn't been able to afford dental care for three years, and one of
> > her front teeth was rotting. Daniel, a construction worker, pulled out
> > his bad teeth with pliers. Then, there was Loretta, who worked nights
> > at a university research center in Mississippi, and was missing most of
> > her teeth. "They'll break off after a while, and then you just grab
> > a hold of them, and they work their way out," she explained to Sered
> > and Fernandopulle. "It hurts so bad, because the tooth aches. Then
> > it's a relief just to get it out of there. The hole closes up itself
> > anyway. So it's so much better."
> >
> > People without health insurance have bad teeth because, if you're
> > paying for everything out of your own pocket, going to the dentist for
> > a checkup seems like a luxury. It isn't, of course. The loss of teeth
> > makes eating fresh fruits and vegetables difficult, and a diet heavy in
> > soft, processed foods exacerbates more serious health problems, like
> > diabetes. The pain of tooth decay leads many people to use alcohol as a
> > salve. And those struggling to get ahead in the job market quickly find
> > that the unsightliness of bad teeth, and the self-consciousness that
> > results, can become a major barrier. If your teeth are bad, you're
> > not going to get a job as a receptionist, say, or a cashier. You're
> > going to be put in the back somewhere, far from the public eye. What
> > Loretta, Gina, and Daniel understand, the two authors tell us, is that
> > bad teeth have come to be seen as a marker of "poor parenting, low
> > educational achievement and slow or faulty intellectual development."
> > They are an outward marker of caste. "Almost every time we asked
> > interviewees what their first priority would be if the president
> > established universal health coverage tomorrow," Sered and
> > Fernandopulle write, "the immediate answer was 'my teeth.' "
> >
> > The U. S. health-care system, according to "Uninsured in America,"
> > has created a group of people who increasingly look different from
> > others and suffer in ways that others do not. The leading cause of
> > personal bankruptcy in the United States is unpaid medical bills. Half
> > of the uninsured owe money to hospitals, and a third are being pursued
> > by collection agencies. Children without health insurance are less
> > likely to receive medical attention for serious injuries, for recurrent
> > ear infections, or for asthma. Lung-cancer patients without insurance
> > are less likely to receive surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation
> > treatment. Heart-attack victims without health insurance are less
> > likely to receive angioplasty. People with pneumonia who don't have
> > health insurance are less likely to receive X rays or consultations.
> > The death rate in any given year for someone without health insurance
> > is twenty-five per cent higher than for someone with insur-ance.
> > Because the uninsured are sicker than the rest of us, they can't get
> > better jobs, and because they can't get better jobs they can't
> > afford health insurance, and because they can't afford health
> > insurance they get even sicker. John, the manager of a bar in Idaho,
> > tells Sered and Fernandopulle that as a result of various workplace
> > injuries over the years he takes eight ibuprofen, waits two hours, then
> > takes eight more-and tries to cadge as much prescription pain
> > medication as he can from friends. "There are times when I
> > should've gone to the doctor, but I couldn't afford to go because I
> > don't have insurance," he says. "Like when my back messed up, I
> > should've gone. If I had insurance, I would've went, because I know
> > I could get treatment, but when you can't afford it you don't go.
> > Because the harder the hole you get into in terms of bills, then
> > you'll never get out. So you just say, 'I can deal with the
> > pain.' "
> >
> >
> >
> > One of the great mysteries of political life in the United States is
> > why Americans are so devoted to their health-care system. Six times in
> > the past century-during the First World War, during the Depression,
> > during the Truman and Johnson Administrations, in the Senate in the
> > nineteen-seventies, and during the Clinton years-efforts have been
> > made to introduce some kind of universal health insurance, and each
> > time the efforts have been rejected. Instead, the United States has
> > opted for a makeshift system of increasing complexity and dysfunction.
> > Americans spend $5,267 per capita on health care every year, almost two
> > and half times the industrialized world's median of $2,193; the extra
> > spending comes to hundreds of billions of dollars a year. What does
> > that extra spending buy us? Americans have fewer doctors per capita
> > than most Western countries. We go to the doctor less than people in
> > other Western countries. We get admitted to the hospital less
> > frequently than people in other Western countries. We are less
> > satisfied with our health care than our counterparts in other
> > countries. American life expectancy is lower than the Western average.
> > Childhood-immunization rates in the United States are lower than
> > average. Infant-mortality rates are in the nineteenth percentile of
> > industrialized nations. Doctors here perform more high-end medical
> > procedures, such as coronary angioplasties, than in other countries,
> > but most of the wealthier Western countries have more CT scanners than
> > the United States does, and Switzerland, Japan, Austria, and Finland
> > all have more MRI machines per capita. Nor is our system more
> > efficient. The United States spends more than a thousand dollars per
> > capita per year-or close to four hundred billion dollars-on
> > health-care-related paperwork and administration, whereas Canada, for
> > example, spends only about three hundred dollars per capita. And, of
> > course, every other country in the industrialized world insures all its
> > citizens; despite those extra hundreds of billions of dollars we spend
> > each year, we leave forty-five million people without any insurance. A
> > country that displays an almost ruthless commitment to efficiency and
> > performance in every aspect of its economy-a country that switched to
> > Japanese cars the moment they were more reliable, and to Chinese
> > T-shirts the moment they were five cents cheaper-has loyally stuck
> > with a health-care system that leaves its citizenry pulling out their
> > teeth with pliers.
> >
> > America's health-care mess is, in part, simply an accident of
> > history. The fact that there have been six attempts at universal health
> > coverage in the last century suggests that there has long been support
> > for the idea. But politics has always got in the way. In both Europe
> > and the United States, for example, the push for health insurance was
> > led, in large part, by organized labor. But in Europe the unions worked
> > through the political system, fighting for coverage for all citizens.
> >>From the start, health insurance in Europe was public and universal,
> > and that created powerful political support for any attempt to expand
> > benefits. In the United States, by contrast, the unions worked through
> > the collective-bargaining system and, as a result, could win health
> > benefits only for their own members. Health insurance here has always
> > been private and selective, and every attempt to expand benefits has
> > resulted in a paralyzing political battle over who would be added to
> > insurance rolls and who ought to pay for those additions.
> >
> > Policy is driven by more than politics, however. It is equally driven
> > by ideas, and in the past few decades a particular idea has taken hold
> > among prominent American economists which has also been a powerful
> > impediment to the expansion of health insurance. The idea is known as
> > "moral hazard." Health economists in other Western nations do not
> > share this obsession. Nor do most Americans. But moral hazard has
> > profoundly shaped the way think tanks formulate policy and the way
> > experts argue and the way health insurers structure their plans and the
> > way legislation and regulations have been written. The health-care mess
> > isn't merely the unintentional result of political dysfunction, in
> > other words. It is also the deliberate consequence of the way in which
> > American policymakers have come to think about insurance.
> >
> > "Moral hazard" is the term economists use to describe the fact that
> > insurance can change the behavior of the person being insured. If your
> > office gives you and your co-workers all the free Pepsi you want-if
> > your employer, in effect, offers universal Pepsi insurance-you'll
> > drink more Pepsi than you would have otherwise. If you have a
> > no-deductible fire-insurance policy, you may be a little less diligent
> > in clearing the brush away from your house. The savings-and-loan crisis
> > of the nineteen-eighties was created, in large part, by the fact that
> > the federal government insured savings deposits of up to a hundred
> > thousand dollars, and so the newly deregulated S. & L.s made far
> > riskier investments than they would have otherwise. Insurance can have
> > the paradoxical effect of producing risky and wasteful behavior.
> > Economists spend a great deal of time thinking about such moral hazard
> > for good reason. Insurance is an attempt to make human life safer and
> > more secure. But, if those efforts can backfire and produce riskier
> > behavior, providing insurance becomes a much more complicated and
> > problematic endeavor.
> >
> > In 1968, the economist Mark Pauly argued that moral hazard played an
> > enormous role in medicine, and, as John Nyman writes in his book "The
> > Theory of the Demand for Health Insurance," Pauly's paper has
> > become the "single most influential article in the health economics
> > literature." Nyman, an economist at the University of Minnesota, says
> > that the fear of moral hazard lies behind the thicket of co-payments
> > and deductibles and utilization reviews which characterizes the
> > American health-insurance system. Fear of moral hazard, Nyman writes,
> > also explains "the general lack of enthusiasm by U.S. health
> > economists for the expansion of health insurance coverage (for example,
> > national health insurance or expanded Medicare benefits) in the U.S."
> >
> > What Nyman is saying is that when your insurance company requires that
> > you make a twenty-dollar co-payment for a visit to the doctor, or when
> > your plan includes an annual five-hundred-dollar or thousand-dollar
> > deductible, it's not simply an attempt to get you to pick up a larger
> > share of your health costs. It is an attempt to make your use of the
> > health-care system more efficient. Making you responsible for a share
> > of the costs, the argument runs, will reduce moral hazard: you'll no
> > longer grab one of those free Pepsis when you aren't really thirsty.
> > That's also why Nyman says that the notion of moral hazard is behind
> > the "lack of enthusiasm" for expansion of health insurance. If you
> > think of insurance as producing wasteful consumption of medical
> > services, then the fact that there are forty-five million Americans
> > without health insurance is no longer an immediate cause for alarm.
> > After all, it's not as if the uninsured never go to the doctor. They
> > spend, on average, $934 a year on medical care. A moral-hazard theorist
> > would say that they go to the doctor when they really have to. Those of
> > us with private insurance, by contrast, consume $2,347 worth of health
> > care a year. If a lot of that extra $1,413 is waste, then maybe the
> > uninsured person is the truly efficient consumer of health care.
> >
> > The moral-hazard argument makes sense, however, only if we consume
> > health care in the same way that we consume other consumer goods, and
> > to economists like Nyman this assumption is plainly absurd. We go to
> > the doctor grudgingly, only because we're sick. "Moral hazard is
> > overblown," the Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt says. "You always
> > hear that the demand for health care is unlimited. This is just not
> > true. People who are very well insured, who are very rich, do you see
> > them check into the hospital because it's free? Do people really like
> > to go to the doctor? Do they check into the hospital instead of playing
> > golf?"
> >
> > For that matter, when you have to pay for your own health care, does
> > your consumption really become more efficient? In the late
> > nineteen-seventies, the rand Corporation did an extensive study on the
> > question, randomly assigning families to health plans with co-payment
> > levels at zero per cent, twenty-five per cent, fifty per cent, or
> > ninety-five per cent, up to six thousand dollars. As you might expect,
> > the more that people were asked to chip in for their health care the
> > less care they used. The problem was that they cut back equally on both
> > frivolous care and useful care. Poor people in the high-deductible
> > group with hypertension, for instance, didn't do nearly as good a job
> > of controlling their blood pressure as those in other groups, resulting
> > in a ten-per-cent increase in the likelihood of death. As a recent
> > Commonwealth Fund study concluded, cost sharing is "a blunt
> > instrument." Of course it is: how should the average consumer be
> > expected to know beforehand what care is frivolous and what care is
> > useful? I just went to the dermatologist to get moles checked for skin
> > cancer. If I had had to pay a hundred per cent, or even fifty per cent,
> > of the cost of the visit, I might not have gone. Would that have been a
> > wise decision? I have no idea. But if one of those moles really is
> > cancerous, that simple, inexpensive visit could save the health-care
> > system tens of thousands of dollars (not to mention saving me a great
> > deal of heartbreak). The focus on moral hazard suggests that the
> > changes we make in our behavior when we have insurance are nearly
> > always wasteful. Yet, when it comes to health care, many of the things
> > we do only because we have insurance-like getting our moles checked,
> > or getting our teeth cleaned regularly, or getting a mammogram or
> > engaging in other routine preventive care-are anything but wasteful
> > and inefficient. In fact, they are behaviors that could end up saving
> > the health-care system a good deal of money.
> >
> > Sered and Fernandopulle tell the story of Steve, a factory worker from
> > northern Idaho, with a "grotesquelooking left hand-what looks like
> > a bone sticks out the side." When he was younger, he broke his hand.
> > "The doctor wanted to operate on it," he recalls. "And because I
> > didn't have insurance, well, I was like 'I ain't gonna have it
> > operated on.' The doctor said, 'Well, I can wrap it for you with an
> > Ace bandage.' I said, 'Ahh, let's do that, then.' " Steve
> > uses less health care than he would if he had insurance, but that's
> > not because he has defeated the scourge of moral hazard. It's because
> > instead of getting a broken bone fixed he put a bandage on it.
> >
> >
> >
> > At the center of the Bush Administration's plan to address the
> > health-insurance mess are Health Savings Accounts, and Health Savings
> > Accounts are exactly what you would come up with if you were concerned,
> > above all else, with minimizing moral hazard. The logic behind them was
> > laid out in the 2004 Economic Report of the President. Americans, the
> > report argues, have too much health insurance: typical plans cover
> > things that they shouldn't, creating the problem of overconsumption.
> > Several paragraphs are then devoted to explaining the theory of moral
> > hazard. The report turns to the subject of the uninsured, concluding
> > that they fall into several groups. Some are foreigners who may be
> > covered by their countries of origin. Some are people who could be
> > covered by Medicaid but aren't or aren't admitting that they are.
> > Finally, a large number "remain uninsured as a matter of choice."
> > The report continues, "Researchers believe that as many as
> > one-quarter of those without health insurance had coverage available
> > through an employer but declined the coverage. . . . Still others may
> > remain uninsured because they are young and healthy and do not see the
> > need for insurance." In other words, those with health insurance are
> > overinsured and their behavior is distorted by moral hazard. Those
> > without health insurance use their own money to make decisions about
> > insurance based on an assessment of their needs. The insured are
> > wasteful. The uninsured are prudent. So what's the solution? Make the
> > insured a little bit more like the uninsured.
> >
> > Under the Health Savings Accounts system, consumers are asked to pay
> > for routine health care with their own money-several thousand dollars
> > of which can be put into a tax-free account. To handle their
> > catastrophic expenses, they then purchase a basic health-insurance
> > package with, say, a thousand-dollar annual deductible. As President
> > Bush explained recently, "Health Savings Accounts all aim at
> > empowering people to make decisions for themselves, owning their own
> > health-care plan, and at the same time bringing some demand control
> > into the cost of health care."
> >
> > The country described in the President's report is a very different
> > place from the country described in "Uninsured in America." Sered
> > and Fernandopulle look at the billions we spend on medical care and
> > wonder why Americans have so little insurance. The President's report
> > considers the same situation and worries that we have too much. Sered
> > and Fernandopulle see the lack of insurance as a problem of poverty; a
> > third of the uninsured, after all, have incomes below the federal
> > poverty line. In the section on the uninsured in the President's
> > report, the word "poverty" is never used. In the Administration's
> > view, people are offered insurance but "decline the coverage" as
> > "a matter of choice." The uninsured in Sered and Fernandopulle's
> > book decline coverage, but only because they can't afford it. Gina,
> > for instance, works for a beauty salon that offers her a bare-bones
> > health-insurance plan with a thousand-dollar deductible for two hundred
> > dollars a month. What's her total income? Nine hundred dollars a
> > month. She could "choose" to accept health insurance, but only if
> > she chose to stop buying food or paying the rent.
> >
> > The biggest difference between the two accounts, though, has to do with
> > how each views the function of insurance. Gina, Steve, and Loretta are
> > ill, and need insurance to cover the costs of getting better. In their
> > eyes, insurance is meant to help equalize financial risk between the
> > healthy and the sick. In the insurance business, this model of coverage
> > is known as "social insurance," and historically it was the way
> > health coverage was conceived. If you were sixty and had heart disease
> > and diabetes, you didn't pay substantially more for coverage than a
> > perfectly healthy twenty-five-year-old. Under social insurance, the
> > twenty-five-year-old agrees to pay thousands of dollars in premiums
> > even though he didn't go to the doctor at all in the previous year,
> > because he wants to make sure that someone else will subsidize his
> > health care if he ever comes down with heart disease or diabetes.
> > Canada and Germany and Japan and all the other industrialized nations
> > with universal health care follow the social-insurance model. Medicare,
> > too, is based on the social-insurance model, and, when Americans with
> > Medicare report themselves to be happier with virtually every aspect of
> > their insurance coverage than people with private insurance (as they
> > do, repeatedly and overwhelmingly), they are referring to the social
> > aspect of their insurance. They aren't getting better care. But they
> > are getting something just as valuable: the security of being insulated
> > against the financial shock of serious illness.
> >
> > There is another way to organize insurance, however, and that is to
> > make it actuarial. Car insurance, for instance, is actuarial. How much
> > you pay is in large part a function of your individual situation and
> > history: someone who drives a sports car and has received twenty
> > speeding tickets in the past two years pays a much higher annual
> > premium than a soccer mom with a minivan. In recent years, the private
> > insurance industry in the United States has been moving toward the
> > actuarial model, with profound consequences. The triumph of the
> > actuarial model over the social-insurance model is the reason that
> > companies unlucky enough to employ older, high-cost employees-like
> > United Airlines-have run into such financial difficulty. It's the
> > reason that automakers are increasingly moving their operations to
> > Canada. It's the reason that small businesses that have one or two
> > employees with serious illnesses suddenly face unmanageably high
> > health-insurance premiums, and it's the reason that, in many states,
> > people suffering from a potentially high-cost medical condition can't
> > get anyone to insure them at all.
> >
> > Health Savings Accounts represent the final, irrevocable step in the
> > actuarial direction. If you are preoccupied with moral hazard, then you
> > want people to pay for care with their own money, and, when you do
> > that, the sick inevitably end up paying more than the healthy. And when
> > you make people choose an insurance plan that fits their individual
> > needs, those with significant medical problems will choose expensive
> > health plans that cover lots of things, while those with few health
> > problems will choose cheaper, bare-bones plans. The more expensive the
> > comprehensive plans become, and the less expensive the bare-bones plans
> > become, the more the very sick will cluster together at one end of the
> > insurance spectrum, and the more the well will cluster together at the
> > low-cost end. The days when the healthy twenty-five-year-old subsidizes
> > the sixty-year-old with heart disease or diabetes are coming to an end.
> > "The main effect of putting more of it on the consumer is to reduce
> > the social redistributive element of insurance," the Stanford
> > economist Victor Fuchs says. Health Savings Accounts are not a variant
> > of universal health care. In their governing assumptions, they are the
> > antithesis of universal health care.
> >
> > The issue about what to do with the health-care system is sometimes
> > presented as a technical argument about the merits of one kind of
> > coverage over another or as an ideological argument about socialized
> > versus private medicine. It is, instead, about a few very simple
> > questions. Do you think that this kind of redistribution of risk is a
> > good idea? Do you think that people whose genes predispose them to
> > depression or cancer, or whose poverty complicates asthma or diabetes,
> > or who get hit by a drunk driver, or who have to keep their mouths
> > closed because their teeth are rotting ought to bear a greater share of
> > the costs of their health care than those of us who are lucky enough to
> > escape such misfortunes? In the rest of the industrialized world, it is
> > assumed that the more equally and widely the burdens of illness are
> > shared, the better off the population as a whole is likely to be. The
> > reason the United States has forty-five million people without coverage
> > is that its health-care policy is in the hands of people who disagree,
> > and who regard health insurance not as the solution but as the problem.
> >
> >

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