What Do You Think About This Health Care Plan

[dtotire]

via Alternet



High-Quality, Universal Health Care Is Possible -- With No Premiums or Deductibles

By Maggie Mahar, Health Beat. Posted July 16, 2008.

What's more, this new plan from Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel would rein in health care inflation and insulate our health system from lobbyists.



This article appeared originally as a two-part series on Health Beat.

Most plans for health care reform that stress "choice" give families the opportunity to choose from a menu of plans that offer insurance at different prices. In effect, families are "free to choose" the health care plan that they can afford. (More accurately, they are "forced to choose" the plan they can afford.)

Imagine, instead, a proposal for health care reform that guarantees free, high-quality health care for all Americans. No premiums. No deductibles. Under this plan, the government insists that all insurers offer the same comprehensive benefits to everyone, including: office and home visits, hospitalization, preventive screening tests, prescription drugs, some dental care, inpatient and outpatient mental health care, and physical and occupational therapy.

These benefits are more generous than Medicare's and more comprehensive than what 85 percent of all employers offer their employees. (Individuals who want to purchase coverage for additional services like concierge medicine, experimental drugs for serious conditions, complementary medicines or more mental health benefits could do so.)

If this all sounds too good to be true, you need to read Healthcare, Guaranteed: A Simple, Secure Solution for America by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel. Published this month, Healthcare, Guaranteed offers a bold, refreshing plan for health care in America. The charm of the proposal is four-fold: It faces up to the fact that reform won't pay for itself, and it offers a funding mechanism that is fair and efficient and could deliver high-quality care nationwide. It regulates insurers, forcing them to concentrate on quality. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this plan insulates our health care system from the lobbyists who, today, have far too much control over our health care system.

Emanuel has the background and experience needed to help draft a blueprint for health care reform. An oncologist who also has a Ph.D. in political science and now serves as chair of the Department of Bioethics at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health, Emanuel is attuned to the ethics as well as the politics of medicine, and he understands the needs of seriously ill patients. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/91609 /

[izquierdista]

1. Same old shit

It doesn't get to the root of the problem -- private insurance. As long as insurance companies have quarterly profit targets, health care will take a back seat, no matter how worthy the claim.

There are only 3 ways to finance health care: (a) the government owns the hospitals and pays the doctors -- like the VA operates; (b) doctors and hospitals operate as private businesses, but the government pays the claims and sets the prices -- like Medicare operates; and (c) doctors and hospitals send fanciful billings to insurance companies who wheedle it down to as little as possible.

Option (c) just doesn't work and should die a quick death. Anything that increases the numbers of people eligible for VA benefits and eligible for Medicare coverage is preferable.

[Cleita]

2. Here's a comment by Don McCanne, MD of PNHP

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

Ezekiel Emanuel is certainly correct when he states that we must focus on health care costs as we expand health care to everyone. He is also correct when he implies that current political proposals such as electronic medical records, wellness programs, quality incentives, and disease management programs would not have any significant impact on controlling spending. But he is wrong when he implies that there is no reform proposal that would both control costs and cover everyone.

A single payer national health program is specifically designed to include everyone automatically, and to slow the rate of growth in spending, while shifting funds from wasteful administrative services to more beneficial health care services.

He concedes that reducing the waste of the insurance industry is “valuable,” but then he dismisses it as a “1-time savings.” Since it is a fundamental structural change in the health care financing system, it is not a one-time savings, but rather it is a change that shifts the curve of the health care spending down to a new lower trajectory - permanently. All of the other cost-saving features of the single payer model each have the effect of further lowering this trajectory.

Although he mentions that cost control will require comprehensive reform, his own model, which he developed with Victor Fuchs, doesn’t seem to address the cost issue that he says (and we agree) is so important. They would establish a voucher system for purchasing private insurance and fund it with a regressive value-added tax (VAT). They would control spending by providing only a “basic” plan for everyone, but allow individuals to purchase services or coverage beyond the basic plan.

more at link tp://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/february/focusing_on_coverage.php scroll down to comment.

[PDJane]

3. The other half of the private insurance thing

Is that private insurance can simply cut you off.

That is why a doctor's malpractice is so high; it isn't necessarily because of the litigious system. It is because if he screws up, there is no-one who will cover the patient's health care for the rest of their life. It's insane.

It's long past time for a single-payer system that covers everyone in the US. The US spends enough every year--2.8 Trillion at last look--to finance a top-of-the-line medical system for everyone.