The Ojai Post

Wake up America! "it does not require a majority to prevail but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds."-Samuel Adams The day we lose our will to fight is the day we lose our freedom.

Show me how it will be paid for and tell me who will make the care decisions.

Medicare shortchanges patients, manufacturers, and care providers. And at the current rate will be bankrupt in seven years. Social Security is doomed as well. Obama's man Geithner said as much last week.

I am not questioning the motives of those who feel health care is a right. But again, do you want it run by the same people who can't run Medicare?

And really - who is going to pay for it? Here's an open question to anyone on the Post - How much do you expect to pay for your share? $500 per month? $100 per month? Anything at all? This question needs to be answered honestly before anything is decided, and the truth should be out there fore everyone to see. It's only fair.

"Show me", I don't know what age you are. I happen to know a large number of folks who have recently reached the age where they can drop their "private" insurance and get public Medicare of right. They have been eager to do so. "Private," for-profit insurance is expensive. Sure, its real fine, sounds pretty, until you actually develop health issues and need it to be there. Then you discover that you are in a constant fight for care, and constant threat of being dropped. You pray you live until Medicare kicks in so you can actually obtain care.

If there are issues with Medicare, fix it. But you don't drop what works in favor of what emphatically does not work and never will. For-profit health insurance is a suckers game. Its bad for the country, since nobody actually has health security, we have no real preventative care, and we suffer poor outcomes. Its bad for doctors and health care professionals, who spend all their time attempting to get reimbursed, and too often, give in to the incentives to simply give you the health care they are paid for rather than the health care you need. (Perhaps you have not noticed how the best doctors in communities around the country no longer accept insurance?)

Overall, countries with universal, single payer health care deliver better results at a fraction of our costs. That should be the end of the debate. Why don't we adopt what works better and costs less? What is it about the U.S. that prevents us from adopting the most intelligent, proven policies that cost the least and work the best?

It is now to the point where it is a competitive issue - we cannot restore our economy if our working people remain saddled by this broken private, for-profit insurance scam.

Do you know that Cuba, 90 miles off of Florida, spends $300 per capita annually on health care, provides universal health care for all, and achieves better health care outcomes than we do?

Isn't that embarrassing when we can't even match Cuba? Isn't there something wrong when we spend almost 50 times what Cuba spends per capita to achieve poorer results? Isn't there something wrong when we spend 50 times per capita what Cubans spend to deliver better health care to ALL of their citizens, and yet we have over 50 million people with no access to a doctor at all?

When you pay an individual insurance company executive more than $1 billion in a single year, as has happened multiple times in recent years, that is money that did not go to a doctor or anyone who provided any value anywhere in the health care services value chain. That represents huge amounts of health care not delivered. What possible sense is there in spending huge amounts of our health care dollars on middlemen who make more money if they deny care to you when you need it, and make more money if they don't pay doctors to do what is necessary? What possible sense is there in putting control over your health care in the hands of someone who makes out like a bandit if you die, and loses money if you live?

Insurance company mouthpieces try to scare us with the claim that somehow, we lose choice and control over our health care if we had single payer. What a ridiculous insult. If we had single payer, nothing prevents those with the money from paying their own doctors for the care they want, period. The ONLY thing single payer would do is change the person with control over health care for those of us who do not have the cash to pay our doctor up front from a private megalomaniac who makes more money if we die and is incentivized to deny us care we have paid for, to a person accountable to us. Duh.

So, in answer to your question: I'll gladly pay the $300 a year Cubans pay for the results they achieve. And if I have more money and want something more than that, I'll pay my doctor directly, or perhaps consider a private insurer, who, if single payer were an option, would actually have to be in a business that better make good on its promises - because unlike today, people would have a choice to say no if the insurers do not provide value.

Anonymous #3...Yes, some people look forward to Medicare - they are people like you who are living for the moment and not thinking ahead. They're the same people who are all excited about finally getting that Social Security check. After all, they paid into it all those years, right? Wrong.

Social Security is a ponzi scheme. The same people that you want to trust with your health care have NOT kept their promises and put that money in a lockbox. They consider it part of the General Fund.

My age is irrelevant. But I have practical experience with Medicare, caring for two different parents. If you're reasonably healthy at 65, it sounds like a good deal. At 85, Medicare has been cutting back on your approved procedures and equipment for years. AND THE PEOPLE PROVIDING THE CARE ARE PAID PEANUTS. Simply put, your care becomes rationed, almost imperceptibly at first, but evident later on.

This is the future of single payer.

Finally, I don't agree with any of your premises. The United States has the best health care in the world. Cuba!!! Give me a break. I don't see people lining up to move to Cuba for their health care. I'm laughing my ass off at that one. And you don't like insurance? Insurance is a time-tested way to spread risk and provide protection. Do you know why health insurance in particular is so expensive? Because there are 50 states with 50 different sets of regulations that companies have to deal with. Policies should be available nationwide with no interference from state legislators. Finally, insurance and pharmaceutical companies are publicly held for-profit institutions. If you want to participate in their success, buy some shares for crying out loud.

Anyway - I'll grant you, health care is expensive. Insurance is a hassle. Imagine what it will be like when you get for free from the same folks who gave us the DMV.

Let's all quit begging to get something for nothing. If they pay for it, THEY MAKE YOUR DECISIONS. And you still haven't answered my initial question so I'll ask again. Who will pay for it?

"Show Me," I did answer your question. I guess you don't like the answer.

You actually sound like a paid health insurance industry troll. Are you? You make the same tired, long-disproven arguments.

As to Cuba, you are right. You should laugh. People from other countries laugh at the gross farce of the U.S. of A. being trounced on basic services by a third world communist country. We Americans could laugh too, if it weren't so tragic. The fact is, Cuba delivers better health care results, and universally for its citizens, at a fraction of the cost. It is comical in a way.

You criticize Medicare for "cutting back" care when you are 85, but deny the reality of your for-profit alternative: No care long before 85. Just a whole bunch of money in some swindler's pocket, and a whole bunch of sick and dying people who paid in over the years but get nothing.

Oh, and now the problem with insurance is that states attempt to regulate it, in order to ensure it will actually be there to deliver on the promises its customers have paid for when they need it? I know about your "single federal standard" - it is one that precludes any lawsuits or accountability over pricing, denials of coverage, reimbursements to doctors, etc. Much of it is already in place.

As a troll, I guess you succeed just by engaging in a debate on your so-far-off-the-map-of-rationality-and-fact arguments. So, points to you: Once again, instead of a thread of intelligent discussion on how to structure the best policy for the common good, we are engaged in addressing long-disproven arguments for more of the same broken health care system. Thus is progress stalled.