All of the points presented in the article are questions that need to be considered. I guess most of us are aware of all the faults and corruption of the current system. On the other hand, I am convinced that the solution is not to have a single payer universal health plan. If you have a single payer - be it government or whoever - that single payer can decide what to pay for and what not, and can dictate what doctors and other providers can do and cannot do. It is the (definite) end of doctors exercising their clinical criteria; the (definite) end of the doctor (or any "provider") and patient relationship and agreement. Many of the questions posed in the article are very genuine, but the answers could be very ambiguous. Should the govenrment pay for unnecessary services? I Who decides what is necessary and what is not? Should the government pay for services related to "self-inflicted" medical problems... like problems related to smoking? This can be a very controversial issue; someone could argue that almost any health problem is "self inflicted"... maybe you ate too much, or did not exercise enough, or did not do a screening test early enough... almost anything could be used as an excuse to deny coverage for a medical service. Sorry, a universal single payer system is not the answer to our current flawed system.
Removing any and all barriers to a truly free market for providers and facilities. Then we will actually have reviews of quality and result by providers, prices by facilities competitive.
You’ve got nothing but projection of the current “sickness and death” model. I remind you, “health and wellness” is the worthy end.
One must come to the conclusion that you are simply a status quo sock puppet. No wonder your mother is so disappointed….
“Are clinicians to be paid for missed or last minute cancelled appointments? If people fail to come to an appointment, and no service is provided, why should clinicians be paid? This is an expensive mistake that is no one’s fault in some cases, or only the fault of the patient. Why must society as a whole pay for this mistake? On the other hand, if people fail to come in, how can clinicians have any”
Definitely not. They provided no service therefore deserve no compensation. It’s not like the waiting room is empty. They just call the next person. If they want to work 10 or 12 hour days they have enough patient possibility demographics to do so. Please. That’s a ridiculous, unincluded question by an honest broker.
“Are experimental treatments covered? What makes a treatment experimental as opposed to supported by evidence? What about lab tests? Does anything a practitioner orders deserve to be paid for, or are some lab tests unnecessary and not deserving of coverage?”
If the patient is willing and consensual, of course. How do you think advancement will occur otherwise.
“Yet, PCP’s have only minimal training in the implementation of these kinds of interventions, which include lifestyle medicine, nutritional programs, exercise programs, and vaccination. Primary care physicians’ training, like all allopathic training, emphasizes disease management through medications, and this is the area of their greatest expertise.”
The average MD has not one single hour of nutritional studies involved in achieving a degree. You are completely right in your claims and comments turning this topic. Pro active lifestyle should be incentivized in some way. Those with little opportunity to lead a high quality of life good diet, with little access to non-industrial agribusiness toxic from input to product, must be considered also. I think the best policy practice here would be ridiculously high syntax and all of the intersectional results of the policies that we suck at. Education, opportunity, access to healthcare, lack of infrastructure without an automobile. Just a few.
“Should only medically trained individuals be eligible for coverage by a national health care system — e.g., MD’s, DO’s, RN’s, PT’s etc., but not chiropractors, naturopaths, acupuncturists, herbalists, homeopaths, etc.? How do we decide where to draw the line between what and who is covered and what is not? Do doctors get to decide? Legislators? The public? The media?”
The line is where unbiased, double blind peer reviewed highly credible science deems a possibility of being beneficial. No matter the practice or prescription. As if the current models pill pusher paradigm produces health and wellness? GTFO
5. “Should the government pay for any and all medications, even when cheaper alternatives exist? Or should some of the more expensive drugs be paid for by the individual? If there is no check system, what’s to stop doctors from prescribing the most expensive drugs available, thus driving up the cost of health care unnecessarily?”
Are you even serious? The leverage afforded by a single payer true #UniversalHealthcare policy over everyone supplying inputs will be immense. Our insurance company tells them what we pay for it. Not the other way around. It will be in the single digit pennies on the dollar. No more exploitation of private insurance policy holders and the taxpayers. And it’s current architecture, Medicare/Medicaid is nothing but corporate subsidy.
“the government cover illness caused by doctors (iatrogenic illness)? Shouldn’t doctors have to pay at least some of these costs, since they are responsible for the illnesses? Why should society at large have to pay for the mistakes of doctors?
Medical errors comprise a large portion of today’s health care budget, about $20 billion dollars annually, according to reports in 2019). This is therefore no small concern. It’s easy enough to give doctors a free pass on medical mistakes by acknowledging that no one can be perfect, and that errors are in this sense just the “cost of doing business.” However, if there are no limitations to payments for medical mistakes, doesn’t this encourage a kind of sloppy approach to the practice of medicine?”
Actually, $20 billion is a piss in the ocean of money flowing into healthcare. In 2019 our combined personal and government spending on healthcare was $4.2 trillion so your $20 billion is the equivalent of reducing a $42 bill to $41.79$
The real money in our current healthcare dynamic is insurance payments. 1/3 of the total for poor coverage, corporate profits and executive class theft, that’s the only word for it.
“illnesses that result from other kinds of behaviors that are known to be harmful or risk-prone, such as injuries resulting from riding without seatbelts, or riding motorcycles or bicycles without helmets, injuries that result from texting while driving, or drinking while driving, eating lots of junk food, such as fast food, sugar, soda, etc., exposing oneself to excessive radiation, including cell phones, sun exposure, and possibly others. At what point do we become a nanny state? How do we encourage good behavior without becoming medical policemen?
No one wants our government to be facilitating unhealthful behaviors, by underwriting all the costs of health care associated with these behaviors. This seems to be the height of fiscal folly, as well as downright unethical, as it is enabling such self-destructive behavior. But it’s not at all clear that illnesses can always clearly be ascribed to any one behavior, nor is it clear that those who fall prey to such behaviors should be left completely high and dry by the health care system. Some behaviors deemed harmful by some are not viewed as harmful by others. It would seem some compromise needs to be forged between the opposite poles of enabling the problem, and regulating or punishing people’s behaviors so much that we become a police state. Who decides this? How do we determine what the proper balance is between enabling behaviors that are anti-health and taking away people’s person freedoms? Where do we stop regulating and just let people live their lives without being penalized by the state for every behavior the state determines to be harmful?”
This is satire, right? Magnitude more death and illness caused by the myriad of corporate entities that create the toxic soup we live in. The temerity to present this nonsensical gibberish as legitimate talking points is beyond my comprehension. I guess the morally bankrupt barrel has no bottom.
illnesses caused by tobacco usage, eating sugary foods, or other self-destructive behavior be covered by the government? Why should the people’s taxes pay for medical services caused by people who choose to make themselves sick?
Another apparent no-brainer. Why should our citizens have to pay for the illnesses people inflict upon themselves? Sympathetic as one might be to those who become addicted to cigarettes or other drugs, and even in acknowledgement that it is a form of addiction, it is difficult to countenance the converse notion: that all tobacco related illnesses “should be fully covered by a national health insurance plan. This appears to expose the government to the accusation that the government is enabling tobacco smokers or addicts to persist in their harmful habits. Even assuming that we may want to parse this idea gingerly, and with plenty of compassion, it remains unclear how tobacco-related illnesses and other illnesses that come from reckless behavior should be handled under a national health plan.”
That’s what private and current Medicare/Medicaid plans do. Who’s buying this bullshit?
It seems to me that a national health care system in the US can be used to further reduce health freedom, dictating that people opt into unnecessary but profitable “treatments”. I am not for it at all.
All of the points presented in the article are questions that need to be considered. I guess most of us are aware of all the faults and corruption of the current system. On the other hand, I am convinced that the solution is not to have a single payer universal health plan. If you have a single payer - be it government or whoever - that single payer can decide what to pay for and what not, and can dictate what doctors and other providers can do and cannot do. It is the (definite) end of doctors exercising their clinical criteria; the (definite) end of the doctor (or any "provider") and patient relationship and agreement. Many of the questions posed in the article are very genuine, but the answers could be very ambiguous. Should the govenrment pay for unnecessary services? I Who decides what is necessary and what is not? Should the government pay for services related to "self-inflicted" medical problems... like problems related to smoking? This can be a very controversial issue; someone could argue that almost any health problem is "self inflicted"... maybe you ate too much, or did not exercise enough, or did not do a screening test early enough... almost anything could be used as an excuse to deny coverage for a medical service. Sorry, a universal single payer system is not the answer to our current flawed system.
Removing any and all barriers to a truly free market for providers and facilities. Then we will actually have reviews of quality and result by providers, prices by facilities competitive.
You’ve got nothing but projection of the current “sickness and death” model. I remind you, “health and wellness” is the worthy end.
One must come to the conclusion that you are simply a status quo sock puppet. No wonder your mother is so disappointed….
“Are clinicians to be paid for missed or last minute cancelled appointments? If people fail to come to an appointment, and no service is provided, why should clinicians be paid? This is an expensive mistake that is no one’s fault in some cases, or only the fault of the patient. Why must society as a whole pay for this mistake? On the other hand, if people fail to come in, how can clinicians have any”
Definitely not. They provided no service therefore deserve no compensation. It’s not like the waiting room is empty. They just call the next person. If they want to work 10 or 12 hour days they have enough patient possibility demographics to do so. Please. That’s a ridiculous, unincluded question by an honest broker.
“Are experimental treatments covered? What makes a treatment experimental as opposed to supported by evidence? What about lab tests? Does anything a practitioner orders deserve to be paid for, or are some lab tests unnecessary and not deserving of coverage?”
If the patient is willing and consensual, of course. How do you think advancement will occur otherwise.
Are all elective surgeries paid for by the health care system, or just some? Who gets to decide which are covered?
This isn’t a hard separation or lying to draw. The same as any other medical issue should be deciding. Science.
“Yet, PCP’s have only minimal training in the implementation of these kinds of interventions, which include lifestyle medicine, nutritional programs, exercise programs, and vaccination. Primary care physicians’ training, like all allopathic training, emphasizes disease management through medications, and this is the area of their greatest expertise.”
The average MD has not one single hour of nutritional studies involved in achieving a degree. You are completely right in your claims and comments turning this topic. Pro active lifestyle should be incentivized in some way. Those with little opportunity to lead a high quality of life good diet, with little access to non-industrial agribusiness toxic from input to product, must be considered also. I think the best policy practice here would be ridiculously high syntax and all of the intersectional results of the policies that we suck at. Education, opportunity, access to healthcare, lack of infrastructure without an automobile. Just a few.
“Should only medically trained individuals be eligible for coverage by a national health care system — e.g., MD’s, DO’s, RN’s, PT’s etc., but not chiropractors, naturopaths, acupuncturists, herbalists, homeopaths, etc.? How do we decide where to draw the line between what and who is covered and what is not? Do doctors get to decide? Legislators? The public? The media?”
The line is where unbiased, double blind peer reviewed highly credible science deems a possibility of being beneficial. No matter the practice or prescription. As if the current models pill pusher paradigm produces health and wellness? GTFO
5. “Should the government pay for any and all medications, even when cheaper alternatives exist? Or should some of the more expensive drugs be paid for by the individual? If there is no check system, what’s to stop doctors from prescribing the most expensive drugs available, thus driving up the cost of health care unnecessarily?”
Are you even serious? The leverage afforded by a single payer true #UniversalHealthcare policy over everyone supplying inputs will be immense. Our insurance company tells them what we pay for it. Not the other way around. It will be in the single digit pennies on the dollar. No more exploitation of private insurance policy holders and the taxpayers. And it’s current architecture, Medicare/Medicaid is nothing but corporate subsidy.
“the government cover illness caused by doctors (iatrogenic illness)? Shouldn’t doctors have to pay at least some of these costs, since they are responsible for the illnesses? Why should society at large have to pay for the mistakes of doctors?
Medical errors comprise a large portion of today’s health care budget, about $20 billion dollars annually, according to reports in 2019). This is therefore no small concern. It’s easy enough to give doctors a free pass on medical mistakes by acknowledging that no one can be perfect, and that errors are in this sense just the “cost of doing business.” However, if there are no limitations to payments for medical mistakes, doesn’t this encourage a kind of sloppy approach to the practice of medicine?”
Actually, $20 billion is a piss in the ocean of money flowing into healthcare. In 2019 our combined personal and government spending on healthcare was $4.2 trillion so your $20 billion is the equivalent of reducing a $42 bill to $41.79$
The real money in our current healthcare dynamic is insurance payments. 1/3 of the total for poor coverage, corporate profits and executive class theft, that’s the only word for it.
“illnesses that result from other kinds of behaviors that are known to be harmful or risk-prone, such as injuries resulting from riding without seatbelts, or riding motorcycles or bicycles without helmets, injuries that result from texting while driving, or drinking while driving, eating lots of junk food, such as fast food, sugar, soda, etc., exposing oneself to excessive radiation, including cell phones, sun exposure, and possibly others. At what point do we become a nanny state? How do we encourage good behavior without becoming medical policemen?
No one wants our government to be facilitating unhealthful behaviors, by underwriting all the costs of health care associated with these behaviors. This seems to be the height of fiscal folly, as well as downright unethical, as it is enabling such self-destructive behavior. But it’s not at all clear that illnesses can always clearly be ascribed to any one behavior, nor is it clear that those who fall prey to such behaviors should be left completely high and dry by the health care system. Some behaviors deemed harmful by some are not viewed as harmful by others. It would seem some compromise needs to be forged between the opposite poles of enabling the problem, and regulating or punishing people’s behaviors so much that we become a police state. Who decides this? How do we determine what the proper balance is between enabling behaviors that are anti-health and taking away people’s person freedoms? Where do we stop regulating and just let people live their lives without being penalized by the state for every behavior the state determines to be harmful?”
This is satire, right? Magnitude more death and illness caused by the myriad of corporate entities that create the toxic soup we live in. The temerity to present this nonsensical gibberish as legitimate talking points is beyond my comprehension. I guess the morally bankrupt barrel has no bottom.
illnesses caused by tobacco usage, eating sugary foods, or other self-destructive behavior be covered by the government? Why should the people’s taxes pay for medical services caused by people who choose to make themselves sick?
Another apparent no-brainer. Why should our citizens have to pay for the illnesses people inflict upon themselves? Sympathetic as one might be to those who become addicted to cigarettes or other drugs, and even in acknowledgement that it is a form of addiction, it is difficult to countenance the converse notion: that all tobacco related illnesses “should be fully covered by a national health insurance plan. This appears to expose the government to the accusation that the government is enabling tobacco smokers or addicts to persist in their harmful habits. Even assuming that we may want to parse this idea gingerly, and with plenty of compassion, it remains unclear how tobacco-related illnesses and other illnesses that come from reckless behavior should be handled under a national health plan.”
That’s what private and current Medicare/Medicaid plans do. Who’s buying this bullshit?
It seems to me that a national health care system in the US can be used to further reduce health freedom, dictating that people opt into unnecessary but profitable “treatments”. I am not for it at all.