Jakor

How would you do it? What policies would be most important and effective in your opinion?

(Please leave the political party cheerleading at the door)

math+sci=asian

I would mandate decreased prices for medical school (root of doctor shortage, people get in heavy debt for a stressful job- a major concern for doctors). I would base costs on packages, not the amount of treatments given. Electronize medical records, increased incentives for regular checkups, probably take prostate cancer checks off (too inefficient for money), add some stuff that's supported, take off some stuff...basically make things more efficent. Add a public option- ok, I know what people are saying, but they actually decrease prices because they provide competition to companies. I would probably scrap medicare and medicaid, instead offering reduced prices- too much strain on the system. Figure out some way to make incentives against obesity and smoking (maybe tax breaks if you can quit or lose weight?). Raise taxes to pay for these things (hell, let's pay for it using a carbon tax and kill 2 birds with one stone... throw in stuff like soda and candy taxes... we need some way to pay for this. I'm against raising taxes for rich ppl).

No death panels here.

Edit:
Also, mandated buying of health insurance (lol big part left out), with scaled pricing, similar to taxes.

And no government-run health care. Socialism not good. Public option, however, is not socialism.

Mr. Bojangles

I really wouldn't mind floating the bill for the ~18% people who don't have healthcare in this country. I bet it'd be less than a trillion dollars too...

How to pay for it? Legalize, regulate and tax small amounts of currently illegal drugs. The drug trade is one of the largest and most lucrative industries in the world, and we leave it to criminals who use the profits to fund their own enterprises.

The reason the US has the best survival rates in the world is because of our healthcare. And I don't particularly want the government screwing around with it.

Cuse0507

I agree with Mr. Bojangles.

math+sci=asian

Mr.Bojangles, I don't think that would be a good idea at all, outside of marijuana (that definitely needs to be legalized). That wouldn't generate nearly enough money, but marijuana needs to legalized at the least to free up the prison system.

Lol it has taken me 2 years to convince my immigrant dad that use of drugs is illegal. He's like, "No way, only if you sell. If that happened there would be way too many people in jail." Nice to know that my dad has common sense.

Smallz3141

I don't understand why they just don't let people enter medicare at an earlier age...any age! The public is happy about it, it works (some people will clamor up that it is going bankrupt...but that's because of funding not simply ineffectiveness), and it is cheap for people to enter into. Just a thought.

Mr. Bojangles

It's some money...better to reap the rewards of the $45-280 billion a year paid by drug consumers than to spend billions trying to fight drug use, and imprison thousands of people for it.

MosbyMarion

Sooo, do I get godlike powers to enforce my changes? Or do they have to actually work? Because the real solution to the healthcare crisis is for Americans to quit whining and go take care of themselves. I'd make people realise that if they live on twinkies and slim jims they can't complain if they get fat and depressed. I'd make people stop expecting to look like a supermodel, run like an athlete, think like Einstein, and eat like a gourmet. I'd reinstall the self-reliance and determination that made this country in the first place!

Oh, and I'd tell them to eat onions. Cures everything.

chickenfight!

Copy Japan. They live the longest.

MosbyMarion

chickenfight!: Please don't. I've been to Japan, and I'll take our life over here, messed up as it can be, any day.

GoingGalt

Woah, woah, woah.

"Add a public option- ok, I know what people are saying, but they actually decrease prices because they provide competition to companies."

I liked what you were saying until this.

Now, at first glace you would think this to be true. Unfortunately not.

Whenever anything has a zero explicit price associated with it, consumer demand will increase substantially, and health-care is no exception. It won't decrease prices but actually run insurance companies out of business because it monopolizes the market. The bad part about government monopoly is the increase in cost or inefficiency.

With a public option, you have already:

1. Eliminated choices by destroying the health-insurance market.
2. Created a terrible government monopoly.
3. Increased mal-practice and special-interest attempts by insurance companies struggling to compete with the Government.

It would be nice if the competition between government and private companies lowered prices but it only reduces the market. Look at the U.S. Post Service monopoly; Fed-Ex and friends are forced to find other markets that the U.S. Postal Service doesn't exist in and the U.S. Post Office is still bankrupt.

GoingGalt

"Sooo, do I get godlike powers to enforce my changes? Or do they have to actually work? Because the real solution to the healthcare crisis is for Americans to quit whining and go take care of themselves. I'd make people realise that if they live on twinkies and slim jims they can't complain if they get fat and depressed. I'd make people stop expecting to look like a supermodel, run like an athlete, think like Einstein, and eat like a gourmet. I'd reinstall the self-reliance and determination that made this country in the first place!"

Articulate this and make it a public service announcement. "Shut up and work."

We need more people to think like you.

MosbyMarion

^Note: people who have real problems, like cancer or blindness, through no fault of their own, may object to that. However, IF people would "shut up and work" most of the time, there would be plenty of resources to care for the people who really need help.

GoingGalt

This is true. That's where the free market comes in handy: A Free Market for Health Care.

debrockman

As the wife of a physician, who is a benefits manager and an MBA who used to work in a hospital, I've seen a lot.

1.) Tort reform. My husband is a radiologist. He will tell you that easily 20% of the tests ordered are for things that the doctor doesn't really think you need, but if he doesn't order them, and something happens, the doctor is toast.

2.) Before we expand coverage to everyone, we need to have the people in place to handle it. We don't have enough doctors, nurses, technologists, etc. to handle the load we have, let along 45 million more. Worse, since there is a shortage of people, academia has suffered the most because they pay the least. Take a look at professional journals. The teaching hospitals are dying for staff.

3.) For heavens sakes....don't legalize drugs. Don't we have enough health problems with cigarettes? Alcohol? We tax them. If that was the answer, wouldn't the problem already be solved? Believe it or not, many people do not use drugs because they are illegal. If they are legalized, more people will use them and we will have more health problems to deal with. And if you have ever worked with substance abuse patients, you know it is a very very tough problem to beat.

4.) We need to stop the proliferation of duplicate high tech equipment. Not every hospital needs every piece of equipment.

5.) We need to stop interfering in the free market. Example. Hilary Clinton believed that we had too many specialists back in the 90s and that it was increasing the cost. So the big liberal idea was to cut the number of specialists. Now we have a shortage of specialists. Now the specialists run the show. Have you noticed all the free-standing cardiology centers? Orthopedic hospitals? Imaging centers? To keep the services of the specialists now, hospitals have to allow the specialists to build (and bill for) their own facilities. This has caused the cost of healthcare to spiral out of control.

6.) Stop Nancy Pelosi. She hasn't got a clue about what she is doing.