Good Morning America, how are you ...

[uwe]

Welcome - albeit some 120 years late! - to the Communist club!!! 

 
"Germany has Europe's oldest universal health care system, with origins dating back to Otto von Bismarck's*** Social legislation, which included the Health Insurance Bill of 1883, Accident Insurance Bill of 1884, and Old Age and Disability Insurance Bill of 1889. As mandatory health insurance, these bills originally applied only to low-income workers and certain government employees; their coverage, and that of subsequent legislation gradually expanded to cover virtually the entire population."


*** A commie if there ever was one, just look at his pic:



Not to be mistaken with this guy though:

[Dave W]

 

We'll see what's left after a watered-down porked-up conference bill is passed by both houses. It's not any far-reaching reform. IMO the most important part is eliminating denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions. That's one big step forward.

[uwe]

Make no mistake: Health insurance in Germany is a ghastly behemoth, full of red tape, nonsense and costly as well. Trying to reform it a nightmare, because you don't know where to start and what side effects small reforms in places have. The pharma industry, the insurers, the hospitals and doctors and even the patients have all settled into it very comfortably, danke schön, and every group abuses the system at one point or another.

But the alternative of a voluntary health insurance system isn't one. No, a mandatory health insurance system won't buy you the newest Porsche in medical treatment (but doesn't keep you from doing it if you are wealthy enough), but it guarantees a minimum sensible standard for those parts of the population which for whatever reason don't have the economic might to always keep themselves reasonably insured on a private basis. An insurance being able to withdraw cover from someone when he needs it the most is an obscene thing in any non-Third World Country. I'm not talking about shiny teeth implants, abortions or cosmetic surgery, I'm talking about something fundamental like cancer treatment which you should be entitled to no matter how many cancer-stricken relatives and ancestors you have.

I understand that to liberty-minded Americans, the state forcing yourself to insure yourself is a discomforting thought (though people accept mandatory car insurance without complaining), but trust me that in a generation from now US citzens will not need a law to compel them. If developments are anything like they are in states that have had mandatory health insurance for a while, then loss of health insurance will be perceived as a most devastating event/threat in any individual's life, an event to be prevented at all costs out of your own personal interest.

[Chaser001]

I have my doubts that the universal health care system in the U.S. will function even half as smoothly as what exists in Europe.  I hope I am proven wrong. 

[gweimer]

Having made sure that we had medical insurance all along the way, I can tell you that it's not cheap, but if we didn't have it, we'd have been homeless a very long time ago.  We get about $45,000/year in prescription benefits, and I'd guess at least $10,000 for visits.  We still dump $7000 into a flex account, and we usually run that out in the last month of the year.  Even before this bill, my costs have been changing, and I officially hate CVS Pharmacy (parent company also owns CVS/Caremark, our prescription plan holder.  They *required* us to switch to CVS in order to be covered at all).
I think time will tell how well the plan works.  While it means that I'll still be on the hook for a few more years, at least my son can stay on our health insurance while he's in school.  The mandatory insurance could cost him a lot afterwards, but he's rarely sick, and I'll probably tell him to pick a basic plan with a high deductible.

[eb2]

Forget it.

[OldManC]

Forget it.

You and me both!  

--------------------

Edit:

Actually, since this topic was broached I'll say a bit and then shut up. The only way this was passed was by starting the tax increases (to pay for it) this year, but deferring the bulk of the plan until 2014 at the earliest, otherwise the true costs would have made it unacceptable anyone who looked at them, even many in Congress. Good luck to everyone over the next three and a half years until these provisions begin. It will get MUCH worse before it *supposedly* gets better.

Health care in the U.S. has been tied either to employers or the government since the mid 1940's (with government intervention growing exponentially since 1965). How anyone thinks even more government intervention will help is beyond me, but I won't argue the point here because I understand there's another view. I am and have been very much in favor of health care reform in the U.S. As someone who has paid out of pocket for my family's coverage for years, I know how out of whack it is. Most Conservatives don't disagree. There were some great ideas put forward by Republican members of Congress over the last few years that were immediately shut down and ignored. To say we have been 'against' reform is a lie. Conservatives are mostly against the government model for health care, not health care reform itself. Big difference.

The next few years will be interesting. I'm not happy about the vote last night but am sure the conversation is not over. Anyone who thinks it is is not well informed. We'll see how it goes...

[Highlander]

Ours works... sort of...

[Chaser001]

The problem with all this is that Nancy Pelosi is about as far from Otto von Bismarck as the Monkees are from Cream. 

[Pilgrim]

I think folks are a lot more excited/depressed than they need to be.

It was passed as a bill; it will be signed.  Many of the provisions don't go into effect for years.

As soon as it's signed into law, both parties will start whittling at it and modifying it, and what the law(s) will actually be by the time they go into effect is yet to be seen.  

The important thing is that for the first time there's a starting point - the end point is not yet clear to anyone.

[lowend1]

I understand that to liberty-minded Americans, the state forcing yourself to insure yourself is a discomforting thought (though people accept mandatory car insurance without complaining), but trust me that in a generation from now US citzens will not need a law to compel them. If developments are anything like they are in states that have had mandatory health insurance for a while, then loss of health insurance will be perceived as a most devastating event/threat in any individual's life, an event to be prevented at all costs out of your own personal interest.

Three points, and I will attempt to stay away from politics:
1) Big difference between car insurance and health insurance. Car insurance is required because there's a possibility of you destroying someone else's life or property. Otherwise, we could all pay our own way the next time one of us rolls our Unimog into a ditch.

2) We can't assume that everyone who doesn't have health insurance is economically disadvantaged. There are the elderly (who already have their own broken gov't system - Medicare), children (also covered by another system), illegal immigrants (?) and those who opt to spend their money elsewhere. The actual number of people who want health insurance but cannot afford it is about 25% of the numbers we hear as being "without".

3) To echo what George said, there is almost universal agreement that reform is necessary, but to leave out interstate commerce and tort reform shows in which direction the ship has been pointed.

There are a couple of positive points (portability, covering offspring til age 26), but they hardly justify the price tag on this one.

[uwe]

Hey, you guys are holding a sophisticated, measured discussion with valid points on what was a violently debated topic and where the wounds are still fresh. I'm proud of you!

The bill is far from perfect and probably contains some horrible cock-ups that will have to be rectified later. Any legislative project of this magnitude would under any government. I'm fully in agreement that medical malpractice claims and judgements are out of bounds in the US and that the Democrats have issues tackling that as they have too many plaintiffs lawyers among their ranks.

My car insurance example was warped, agreed, but so is saying that your own health is as private an insurance issue as the non-insured damage to your own car. Health issues do not affect just the individual. They affect his/her spouse, the children, they affect employers, they affect the health of other people and they even affect a state's economy. No other country spends as much on its hospital emergency rooms as the US. That is in large part because they are the last resort of the uninsured. And while that probably makes US emergency rooms the best state of the art equipped emergency rooms in the world, it is neither economic nor efficient to spend vast amounts of money on as late a level as that.

Bismarck and Nancy Pelosi would have probably not gotten along well. He hated socialdemocrats - I guess Ms Pelosi would qualify as one in his eyes - with a passion and saw them as the potential downfall of ze Reich. Yet he introduced health insurance for two main reasons: To curtail the rise of the socialdemocratic party whose increasing popularity benefitted from medicine taking great steps in the late 19th century, yet being only affordable for few AND because he wanted to turn Germany into an industrial giant (hard to believe today, but Germany was late in the game as regards the Industrial Revolution) and felt that health insurance of the workforce was one way to speed up that process and give it a solid foundation.

[lowend1]

Hey, you guys are holding a sophisticated, measured discussion with valid points on what was a violently debated topic and where the wounds are still fresh. I'm proud of you!

It's because we all fear The Wrath of Dave.

[lowend1]

Just found these two quotes in a Benz forum, of all things. Enjoy... or not.

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
Winston Churchill

"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress."
John Adams

[OldManC]

The individual mandate is one thing that could get it repealed if the Supreme Court decides to get involved... I've read some pretty convincing articles on why that mandate violates the Constitution, as I think it does. Something this transformative (the government takeover part, not health care reform in general) really calls for a Constitutional amendment, and the arguments for and against this version of 'reform' could certainly lead to that...