I favor National Health Insurance as an option for consumers. You can have the national policy, or provide yourself and your family with a private policy. The national policy will cost. Just because you are a citizen and tax payer does not mean that you get free health care.

Let the public and private sectors compete and see who provides the best service at the lowest prices. The administrative overhead in the public sector for health insurance is lower than for private companies. Medicare runs at less than 2% administrative overhead compared to more than 20% in private companies.

If more people feel that they are getting a better value with the public plan than a private plan, then they will stay with the public plan and more people may choose that option as well.

This is what the private insurance companies do not want and why I think that they have been fighting National Health Insurance. They talk about free market competition, but they do not want any of that in their business.

It would appear as if being on one of the short ends of "managed care" has actually provoked American doctors to remember the Hippocratic Oath. Where once they were largely in cahoots with health insurance companies and HMO's, those corporate entities relentless surge towards the bottom line has forced doctors towards the interests of their patients, where they should have been in the first place.

Democrat candidates, are you listening? Doctors are rich people, so you should listen to them even if you don't listen to working stiffs like us.

Having one's health dictated by remote bueaucrats in insurance company cubicles is no longer an option. The insurance industry has behaved so abominably in this regard that healthcare coverage must be taken away from them lock-stock-and-barrell. THEN we can start work on breaking-up the
healthcare oligopolies.

"Mangled" Care has been a patent disaster...and, yes, Democrats, are you listening? Single-payer now, and trust-busting next!

USAn : Democrat candidates, are you listening?

Hell no!!! Go against their bread and butter lobbyists? PUH-LEEZE!
Should have been behind President Kucinich....

I noticed that Maggie Fox didn't let the words "single payer" show up once - but perhaps she's from a country where "national insurance" means just that. The insurance industry has co-opted the term universal insurance just to keep the public confused - not too hard to do, since Americans aren't very attentive anyway.

Too bad the author didn't poll nurses for their opinion on national insurance. Nurses, being on the front line, are more aware than anyone except the beleaguered patients themselves of the brutality of our current system.

I am infuriated that Hillary Clinton's solution is to force us into a mandatory insurance plan. They tried that in Massachusetts, it's been a disaster and costs have risen much faster than the national average. So just how is her plan an improvement over theirs?

Obama told a union leader in 2003 that we need single payer health care but we also need the right people in Congress and the White House and the support of the public to make it happen. One advantage of being President is it provides a "bully pulpit" which notables such as FDR and LBJ have used to gain public support for policies.

I believe if Obama gets elected, and if we dump corrupt Congress people, we will end up with single payer health care. But we have our work cut out too. HR 676 now has 88 cosponsors!

kathyodat

A national health insurance plan does not consist of competing insurance carriers all trying to take in more in premiums than they pay out in claims. It consists of society promising to deliver the most care to individuals that we can collectively afford. For those who have heard Obama say he will not support a "mandate" for individuals to buy private coverage (or be fined in some manner), he is actively denying what the carriers want (ie., a government requirement for individuals to pay tolls to corporations) while delicately dancing around to avoid accusation that what he really wants is a 100% government takeover of medicine---because such a social position is eminently swift-boatable before an election.

The only game plan that is ever gonna work to get single
payer is to first elect Obama and a full slate of Democrats in Congress. Then progressives go into WE SHALL BE HEARD mode and demand the plan they want. This only works AFTER a successful election. It backfires before an election.
Let Obama dance into office, and fear not. Both he and his wife are easy to get on the right side of this--provided you don't demand they tip the hand to much and get defeated first by racists and corporatists.

To provide comprehensive, universal health care to a nation's citizens on the basis of medical need and NOT the size of one's wallet, a public healthcare system is the most efficient. If for-profit health care could provide comprehensive an universal health care to all a country's citizens more efficiently, I haven't seen the situation or country where that is the case. Or the health economists who claims it can. Health care doesn't fit the market model.

Unfortunatley, Canada's healthcare systems -there are 14 of them - are being methodically attacked by levels of government who are more interested in providing tax cuts after tax cuts that now the ability to finance it properly is being seriously compromised. However, that doesn't change the situation that a publicly funded and publicly operated health care system can more efficiently provide comprehensive and universal health care to a nation's citizens than a for-profit system.

kathyodat: Right on! Hillarycare is Mittcare is expanded "Mangled Care".

How come half don't support a fair system?

Waterboard them till they do.

The University of Indiana, which is certainly not known to be as a hotbed of progressive political thinking, had the audacity to actually go and ask the people who deliver healthcare what they think of a national organized health carte system and:

"b" Ackermann said in a statement.

The Indiana survey found that 83 percent of psychiatrists, 69 percent of emergency medicine specialists, 65 percent of pediatricians, 64 percent of internists, 60 percent of family physicians and 55 percent of general surgeons favor a national health insurance plan."

My suggtestion to the Universit6y of Indiana researchers is that they ask the general public the same questions. If the results are similar,then it is time to have a talk with our bought and paid for congressional and senatorial representatives.

Question one is: Why have you not passed such a measure? For all the presidential contenders the question should be: Will you sign such a measure once passed?

This ought to be just as important a campaign issue as the Iraqi war because the primary funding must come from the bloated Pentagon war budget.

Single payer is better for your health and cheaper on your wallet than the rest of the brands.

("but the insurance companies don't like it...")

Tell them if they don't like the American Way they can all go to Dubai

I agree with you Poet April however our corporate media journalists will not even raise the issue of universal health care unless they value their jobs. Too many Democrats and Republicans know that any discussion of curbing the runaway MIC is political suicide (in their minds anyway) especially when those funds could be used for health care.

Having said that, whomever is crowned as the Democrat presidential canidate, can then speak about these taboo topics as the MSM would be unable to ignore them. If the Democratic contender though carries on with their usual rhetoric, then it's pretty much a slam dunk that nothing will change if they end up occupying the White House in January.

BeForKids April 1st, 2008 11:26 am:

"The insurance industry has co-opted the term universal insurance just to keep the public confused"

You can say that again, BeForKids. I've often heard Americans argue against universal coverage because "free healthcare is not really free" or some such derivative. Of course your taxes pay for it, or your leader could borrow the money from China if you like. Either way, public insurance is much less expensive than what you pay now. That is a good thing, unless you own an insurance company. You don't, do you?

KEM PATRICK April 1st, 2008 11:45 am:

"How come half don't support a fair system?"

Well KEM PATRICK, one reason I know of is that, in countries where such a system has been proposed, the doctors are a little wary of such a fundamental change in their business practice. Once they get used to it though, they appreciate being able to deal with medicine and not having to turn away patients who can't pay.

Are ALL of the three viable candidates still in the running honest and not already bought and paid for?

Let's hope so, because one of them will be our next president. ___ If there's an election.

Why am I so cynical? ___ Wish I weren't. Perhaps it's because we should be, or because of history repeats and we've all heard it all before and nothing changes because money talks.

kathyodat, I am prepared to try what you suggest. Nothing else has worked. What do we have to lose?

Congress could not be more corrupt. Not only do they line their pockets with "donations" from insurance companies, but they create socialized medicine for themselves. There should be a law against this.

Calling this government a rule by law has turned into a cruel joke for the poor, and Dubya could not have exercised his sick sense of humor without help.

There is great clarity of thought in this survey/article for a national health care plan, and by those in the health care field who in good conscience, knows where we we should be going in controllong the cost of health care.

Unfortuantely, as a nation, we have been so brainwashed by the Wall Street and Madison Avenue elite that America has an absurd fear of socialism.

With the disastrous consequences of unregulated capitalism over the past 25 years, including deregulation, privitzation, downsizing of labor, outsourcing of jobs and increasing massive inequality of wealth, it is time America wakes up to the reality of absolute class warfare and the delusions of an oppressive capitalistic culture.

Our corporate culture is solely about bloated corporate bottom lines, not people. It is time the people get just as tough as the corporations.

American society must come to realize that the healthcare insurance industry deserves to be not only downsized or out-sourced, but put entirely out of business. There will be great sqeeling from one the greediest pigs of capitalism (the insurance industry), but it will be a great leap for the common good of America.

National health care is the only answer.

Unless doctors can create a lobby that can outgun the pharma and insurance lobbies, their opinions won't count for much.

Although there are a lot of doctors with nice big houses in my neighborhood, the big pharma executives and people with a niche in the insurance business own nicer and bigger houses than the doctors.

Many doctors see the writing on the wall, and probably feel that the exorbitant medical fee party will soon be coming to an end, especially if the economic downturn is deep and long-lasting. Those days of charging anything they want (as they already do with uninsured consumers)may be quickly approaching an end.

And this is what I've felt needed to happen all along: exposure of medicine in the US for the criminal enterprise it really is. How many have already been fleeced for everything they own? The whole thing must collapse before it can be built anew. Hopefully, we are nearing such a collapse.

I just finished reading the 3 chapters on health care in the U.S. in David Cay Johnston's book Free Lunch - Chapter 21 - Unhealthy Economics/Chapter 22 - Less for More/Chapter 23 - Hooked on Drugs. I found these three chapters more informative on our health care system than anything I have read. David Cay Johnston gives an overview on how our country arrived at a for profit health insurance system instead of a health service system. I believe that after reading these three chapters there can be no doubt that continuing a for profit health insurance system is folly & the only solution is single payer health service.

Every politician needs to read these chapters. A business model of health care has & will be forever a travesty to this nation!!!!!

Doctors themselves are a big part of the health care problem in the U.S. They are taught in medical school, as their first and last lessons, that they are more intelligent than everyone else. When they graduate, they take their huge incomes as proof of their superiority.

The medical part of their education consists primarily of memorization. Their thought processes are nearly nonexistent, and they have no concept of cause and effect. Misdiagnoses are the rule, and the treatments they offer are the ones that they see in advertisements in their professional journals.

To see a doctor at all you must first prove that you have money; and whether or not you have insurance, you must fill out a lot of forms. You must give them your social security number - as if they were going to pay you for consulting them.

When the doctor sees you he will tell you how you're feeling. You might point and say, "Doctor, it hurts here," but if the doctor disagrees that you are in pain then he will tell you that it cannot hurt there: "Hmm, I never heard of that." He will order a huge number of very expensive tests to find out what you're really complaining about, and then send you home sick and without hope of a diagnosis.

I could go on and on - but a lot of you already know what I'm talking about.

The solution to this problem of the deification of doctors is - more doctors! Hundreds of thousands more. We should take Cuba as a good example for the U.S. and graduate and license at least a million more doctors. The medical lobbies and schools will object that the U.S. simply does not have a million people intelligent enough to be doctors. Bullshit! Doctors should be as common as waitresses, and they should be forced by competition to provide affordable prices, and they should listen to their patients.

We need at lest a million more doctors so that they will be forced to give competitive service and prices, and to scale their self-images back down to human proportion. Doctors are among the most obnoxious people in the country, just below neocons in repulsiveness. A little humility is needed in this profession, and a million more doctors are the answer.

They're all Republicans too.

I want to open a restaurant, the only one in town. When a doctor comes to eat, I'll ask at the door how he intends to pay. I'll demand ID, and I'll need to photocopy his drivers and medical licenses. When the waitress comes to s/his table, she will remind him that, "Food costs money, how the hell are you going to pay?"

kathyodat

I missed you excellent posting while posting mine.

In turn I sense you might be right about voting for Obama in that he cannot appear to be too liberal in order to get elected, but that his true compassion and progressive nature will prevail for the common people over corporate interests once he is elected.

It is all about a new vision for America, and hope is the life blood of democracy.

"More than half of U.S. doctors now favor switching to a national health care plan"

But as Cheney would say, "So?"

"What do you think this is, a friggin democracy??"

When Canada switched to a national health plan, way back in the dark ages, the Doctors who opposed it all left the country ( i am generalizing here) and guess where they went?.. yup the good old (buck first) USA.

So ask Your doctor if they support national health care.. if they say NO, then you should seek a different doctor, one who puts CARE ahead of the BUCK$$

Here's the link to Indian University:

http://www.medicine.indiana.edu/news_releases/viewRelease.php4?art=844

I prefer folk medicine and remedies over Corporate Whore Western Medicine anyday. One great remedy: Cannabis. It's good for people with stomach issues, bipolar issues, cancer recovery issues, etc. Oh that's right America, you believe I belong in jail, how silly of me while the Big Pharma industry maims and kills, and the Managed Care Industry laughs all the way to the bank while stepping on people's graves.

So cheney, do you really want a new frigging HEART ?

The citizen interested in taking individual action for maximum benefit to the individual and society will demand maximum value (outputs over inputs) in each sector. 1/3 of your healthcare dollar is spent on unnecessary, wasteful paperwork. Another 1/6 is spent on various other wastes. But this only assumes that the average value in Canada, UK, and other European countries is actually a good value. The value of Cuban healthcare is 28 times higher than the US, in dollars. Figuring in workforce labor, overall Cuban value is substantially lower but surely greater than the 2x figure in Canada/UK/Europe. Cuba, and the others, prove that the high salaries of US doctors, and the corporate welfare provided to US big pharma and hi-tech medicine, block US citizens from receiving top value. The capitalists avoid the topic of value because value is the real measure of performance. Outputs over inputs. You start demanding best value and you will have found the achilles heel of the Friedmanite "laissez-faire" capitalist rackets.

Doctors Support Universal Health Care...for themselves

Canada and England have a national healthcare plan. It's cheap. All you have to do is hope you get treated before you die. Why do you think all the doctors are flockinf here from Canada. If you like what the govt did for our veterans you'll love what they'll do for you. Whenever the feds say "I'm with the govt and here to help" run. It's their mettling in busines(banking included) that corners the market for a few. I just want the coverage my congressman gets. I pay for that. Who do you think will pay for this anyway? One more layer of administration certainly won't help.

Ghawar writes:

"The medical part of their education consists primarily of memorization. Their thought processes are nearly nonexistent, and they have no concept of cause and effect. Misdiagnoses are the rule, and the treatments they offer are the ones that they see in advertisements in their professional journals."

While I agree with much of what you say, I do not agree that most doctors are 'incompetent' because being a good 'troubleshooter' is just as important as memorization for their profession. Regardless, I agree that many of them act as if they are gods among men. Nevertheless, there are those who really do care about their patients, though I doubt it's majority.

Also, it is repulsive when you go to a doctor's office and the first thing they do is try to verify whether or not and to what extent you can pay. That's enough to make you sick (or even sicker) right there.

Right robertsgt40, and that's the exact scare tactic the insurance industry uses to get us to oppose a single payer health care system. Oh and that's also why Canadians flock here by the zillions to get treated in America (in reality, it's the other way around). So don't believe the propaganda, my man,investigate and discover the truth for yourself.

Let's just take a survey of the different health systems out there. Use a good one as a model, and go with it. Right now we pay twice as much per capita for worse care. The lobby and Congress stand in the way.

GHAWAR: 20 years ago I met a guy with a brain tumor whose mother was hip enough to pursue the naturopathic route. The guy went on a RIGID diet--mostly juiced vegetables and brown rice and totally healed. I have seen MANY conditions called incurable heal with dietary changes.

A woman friend about my age had incredible stomach pain. They put her through a battery of tests, but the medications cause OTHER side effects. She said to me tearfully, "Sioux, they're just like us. They don't know." My step-mother spent hundreds on medical tests that revealed nothing. My cousin was diagnosed with Lyme disease but I think he had M.S. And the list goes on and on.

Dr. Robert Mendelsohn wrote two important books, "Confessions of a Medical Heretic" and Mal(e) Practice." He speaks of the bloated nature of the doctor's ego, describes the field as an ersatz priesthood with arcane formulas and near deferential status allotted to the MDeity. Until feminism, women were completely deferential to their doctors; and the early councils on studying abortion were composed of men and nuns.

If I am in a car accident I'll take a doctor over a tailor to get stitched up, but mostly I have avoided the field like the plague. Hospitals have more germs than anywhere else, and Nader did a book on all the side effects of various "cures" and the fact that some patients take upwards of 5 of these chemical cocktails daily, and there's never been research done on how these interact in combination. The key is to really eat natural food, get exercise, avoid stress or use exercise/yoga/meditation to balance it and rise aboe it, and practice peace and decency in a world that's mostly gone amok, but for the magic and mystery of the marvels that surround us in Nature.

Amazing considering that as a rule, doctors are conservative thinking people.

chessgames56

Being a good 'troubleshooter' is *not* something that is common in medicine. Good diagnosticians are very difficult to find.

As for the completeness of medical training: I had a doctor who claimed, when I reminded her about side effects from a medication, first claimed that *the drug rep* claimed never to have heard of it, and then admitted that she did not report the incident to the FDA, as doctors are requested, (but not, apparently, required), to do. This was from an assistent professor of medicine.

I could give you a number of examples where laymen were able to diagnose illnesses that had stumped doctors.

Try to report a resident's errors. Even if you can document it with info from medical journals, all you can expect is the run-around - and that includes for pure negligence. If you have any bad effects/outcome, you are left to suffer with them, unless you can find another physician that will admit that a fellow witch doctor (apologies to real witch doctors) screwed up.

Still have faith in medical training?

Chessgames56 - You are correct about doctors. I have a Medicare advantage plan that has so far paid for a year of unbelievably expensive diagnostics and doctor visits, with only a series of bothersome co-pays which I can handle ok. I'm alright insurance wise, and I wish everybody could have the same coverage I do. Having cleared that hurdle, I now find you still can't get decent medical care. It is a pure assembly line. My PCP doesn't remember me from one visit to the next, and does not have time to review my medical history before I come in. He is like making an appointment to sit down with a gum machine. I've been to a half dozen robotic, bewildered specialists in as many months, and have seen some erronious, fabricated diagnostics that a PA friend describes as "grotesque". I don't see how even an ethical practitioner could function in a system like ours. The bottom line is that we are all in charge of our own health care. The best we can expect from our overpaid soft mechanics is that they give us the lab tests and referrals we ask of them. Don't expect proactive care. Know your risk areas. Write everything down and keep copies of all your records. Assume your doctor is trying to kill you. I'm surprised the number of patients who die every year from medical mistakes and omissions is as low as it is.

ascott -

"I could give you a number of examples where laymen were able to diagnose illnesses that had stumped doctors."

The best medical web site is emedicine.com. It's the one medical professionals use when they need to bone up on stuff. You can easily register an account with them, and search up every imaginable thing. And I can assure you that you will know much more about your own specific condition than your md has time to learn. Armed with a little knowledge you can at least prevent these arrogant charlatans from blowing smoke up your ass.

If Obama were for change he'd at least follow---follow, the public. He's no leader. He's actually going in the opposite direction---against single payer.

kathyodat (BeForKids) comment, about the fifth comment from the top, was exactly right.

The Doctors want more money and Hillary Clinton's plan gives them more money by forcing everybody to pay premiums. Hillary Clinton's plan does not provide universal coverage, equal coverage, fairness, etc. In fact it allows care to get worse and worse.

The Doctors are NOT your friends folks. STOP referring to them as if they're authorities!!! This reminds me of the peace movement, passing around quotes from Generals when they say they're opposed to the Iraq occupation. Bunch of alligators.

We need a simple, comprehensive National health care system for EVERYONE.

I do not want to live around sick or damaged people in my country. We are the odd ones out among the industrialized world; all of the others at least attempt to be actual societies.

I am sick of the focus on money that characterizes this current "system" and resent the huge bureaucratic waste and victimization it spawns.

Many large practices rely on part time personnel to minimize benefit requirements, but they do have full time personnel and the health insurance costs are expensive for any business. It must be embarrasing when an employee of a doctor's practice doesn't have health insurance!

Secondly, many doctors are tired of the second guessing and denials of coverage by claims adjusters.

Next, all the paperwork requires additional employees.

Finally, insurance companies are always playing games such as suddenly refusing to reimburse for time spent with patients in the hospital. Large practices, even hospital based practices, find themselves refusing new patients with coverage from a given company because its impossible to make enough money to survive.

Doctors used to hate the concept of "socialized medicine" because it would limit their incomes. Now they are just tired of the stupid games designed to help the insurance company hold on to every nickel.

I know a man who broke his hip 3X and was never told by his doctors to monitor his calcium consumption. He was lactose intolerant and unaware humans make a whole new skeleton every 4 years.

I know a person whose severe hip and knee arthritis was resolved in 1 day by eating a whole bag of dried fruit. His doctors recommended replacing his hip with titanium!

I know a man whose whole epidermis was fibroid since he was very young, had been attending a dermatologist for years who told him his condition was his normal skin. He resolved his skin fibroids by bathing in a cup of h2o2 to a whole bath of water 30 minutes daily.

I know a kid who cured his mom of hep-C by spiking her tea, unknownst to her, with h2o2 for a few weeks. Her doctor told her in amazement one day that she was cured, neither of them aware of her sons stealth treatment.

The average American is carrying 2 pounds of parasites that are mostly worms, mites and fungus.

Regarding the US federal government buying your hellth care for you: Katharine the Great got ate out in high style while socializing medicine in Russia. She also made barely a dent in the real problems of the common people and lived extravagantly all the while. Hitler was chief of a socialist party. Wolfs in sheeps clothing, foxes in the hen house, all politicians.

Americans worried about one payer system like in Canada.

Canada does not nhave 14 systems, it has one system. Each province can make choices within the system but it is one universally available system. Medicine in Canada is PRIVATE, not government run. What the government provides is not health, it is insurance. It is the insurance companies that are not allowed to compete with the government provided insurance. Doctors, like in the US, bill the only insurance company available: the government. Because of this monopoly, doctors have to accept a reduced fee or opt out of the system (5% DO). The benefit to doctors is that paperwork is greatly diminished and the government does no interfere with the practice the way US insurance companies do. The problem with financing comes from the fact that Canada is reluctant to allow for services outside the system. Europeans combine gov. insurance with other insurance or patient paid services. By being purist Canada has seen its system go from 1st to 14th. France (number 1) has a combination of gov. and private insurance. This is better.

As a doctor, I would hate to work in the US, even for more money. It is difficult for a doctor to fit the money factor into health. You end up working for free or feeling like a monster. I love not having to worry about expense to my patients. Billing is so incredibly easy, who wants the headaches? There is much to be unhappy with in Canada's system, but only compared to what could be, not compared to the US. The situation in the US is shameful for such a rich country. Look at Cuba for heaven's sake, and that is with the US constantly undermining it. Double shame. We need fewer secretaries, less space and we never have to explain anything to the government. Nobody ever calls to ask why you did this or that or why you ordered anything. All they care about is that you delivered what you charged for, that's it. They send a letter to patients asking them if they saw the doctor that day. if someone is billing suspiciously he gets investigated. In 20 years of practice I have never been investigated or questioned by the government.

It boggles my brain that you Americans even have to debate this! A single-payer "universal" health care system is by far THE most important social service a country can have.