Re: {OT:} AARP Facts about healthcare

Richard Yates wrote:
ktaylor wrote:
On Aug 5, 9:30 pm, edspyhill01 <edspyhil...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
FACT #2: No legislation currently in Congress would mandate the
rationing of care. Period.

This article seems very deceptive to me. One does not have to
legislate rationing care or medicare limitations for it to emerge
because it will be the regulatory agencies that manage the bill. AARP
is not naive enough to miss this point. Some sort of rationing, for
example, will have to be instituted. It will be an appointed
bureaucrat who will determine how the rationing will go, not any
legislation.

The AARP email makes an attempt to correct the gross distortions - soem are outright lies - that are being disseminated. To that end it includes short descriptions to directly dispute those points. It does not look to me like it is intended to convey all of the complexity in the issue.

Insurance companies and others are saying that the bill will explicitly mandate rationing. That is not in any of the bills. They play on the fears dredged up by the word "rationing" and imply that it is something new.

Guess what: care is rationed now at every level. Some get more and some get less and some get none. Your sentence "Some sort of rationing...will have to be instituted." is simpy naive. OR COUSE there will be rationing, just like there always has been rationing and just like there is rationing now. "Rationing" is just a buzzword intended to alarm not to inform or solve. The point is that the "rationing" now is too extreme in its inequality of distribution.

"It will be an appointed bureaucrat who will determine how the rationing will go..." Well, right now you have a claims adjuster in charge of your rationing. He is a bureaucrat. His explicit job and the measure of his performance is how many claims he can deny. Your insurance company is a bureaucracy. The most successful ones are those that can:

1. Best avoid insuring the people that are sick or at higher risk for getting sick,
2. Get the most money from you as premiums,
3. Pay out the least money in claims.

This is all just straightforward economics. Insurance companies are not evil or greedy. They are playing the role that we have set for them. There's nothing controversial or even wrong with it. It's just business and result of the obvious incentives of economics.

And THAT is why access to medical care should be managed in the public, not the private, sector.





Agree almost 100%. One doesn't have to be Michael Moore to point out examples of evil and greed in the insurance industry. Most of this occurs in step #3 above.
And yes, I agree that whatever the inefficiencies (questionable) introduced by public-administered health care, it will be less than the continued avarice, greed and incentives to do the wrong thing that we have now.
And it doesn't matter whether I or my surgeon WANTS to work for the government. Healthcare may be a right (as I believe) or a privilege (as the right would have us believe). But our licenses are a PRIVILEGE, and if we can't do what's right we should find another line of work.

Steve
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