"Government run health care"

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That is how the RW frames it, that is how the media reports it, and that is how many of us here phrase it.

Stop it.

It is the PAYMENT system we need to focus on.
Insurance corporations need much tougher regulations and/or eliminated.
The drug industry needs to be overhauled and provide affordable medication for all.
What we currently have is a system that caters to Wall St. while ignoring us here on Main St.
Accountants decide which treatments they can afford for you.

My title's frame is used to frighten people in to thinking that the government will be making medical decisions.
Don't succumb to these "fear tactics".
Don't use their terminology.

The correct terminology is "National Health Insurance"

http://www.pnhp.org/


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I guess that's okay.

.

things when the evidence is all around us that it isn't.

Do you understand why medicine is a different type of "commodity" than offered in either the banking or automotive industries?

The closer you are to having these 5 elements present for a given commodity, the better the market delivers the product. The more you deviate from these elements, the worse the market performance.

5 elements of a perfect market


1. All firms sell an identical product.
2. All firms are price-takers.
3. All firms have a relatively small market share.
4. Buyers know the nature of the product being sold and the prices
charged by each firm.
5. The industry is characterized by freedom of entry and exit.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/perfectcompetition.asp

I didn't understand that!

:eyes:

"Government run health care" and "bureaucratic healthcare" is "Whoa! Do you know just how it's being run NOW, RIGHT NOW by Big Insurance?"

Part D, doughnut hole, no negotiations with Big Drug, on & on under Bush. Don't let me get started.

Yes, "National Health Insurance" or (my preference) "National Health Plan"!

for..(eyeglasses, dental care, a better test.. .).. It's not the Government.. It's your INSURANCE company.

They are practicing medicine without a license. Ask any MD and they will tell you about the nightmare of jumping through the insurance company hoops. The companies won't even tell MDs what procedures and lab tests are covered--and they also dictate which prescription medicines they will pay for. And it doesn't matter if the doctor tells them that the patient has a negative reaction to the scrip drugs they will finance--its their drug or nothing.

THIS is what needs to be hammered home to folks about health care.

:nuke: LOL!

Don't get my husband started on how much he hates them. He fights those damn companies every day--he's trying to save a patient's life, but they're trying to make more money for their company higher-ups and their stockholders. Why can't our country admit that the patient is more important than the stockholders?!

Systems like the NHS we have here in Britain provide universal health care more cheaply and effectively than the government paying private providers to do so does, because none of the money gets taken out as profits.

I do agree that it's a political non-starter in the US, though, sadly.