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A.M.A. Opposes Government-Sponsored Healthcare Plan


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Just in case you thought all doctors were so gung-ho.

 

WASHINGTON — As the health care debate heats up, the American Medical Association is letting Congress know that it will oppose creation of a government-sponsored insurance plan, which President Obama and many other Democrats see as an essential element of legislation to remake the health care system......

 

......But in comments submitted to the Senate Finance Committee, the American Medical Association said: “The A.M.A. does not believe that creating a public health insurance option for non-disabled individuals under age 65 is the best way to expand health insurance coverage and lower costs. The introduction of a new public plan threatens to restrict patient choice by driving out private insurers, which currently provide coverage for nearly 70 percent of Americans.”

 

If private insurers are pushed out of the market, the group said, “the corresponding surge in public plan participation would likely lead to an explosion of costs that would need to be absorbed by taxpayers.”......

 

.......The medical association said it “cannot support any plan design that mandates physician participation.” For one thing, it said, “many physicians and providers may not have the capability to accept the influx of new patients that could result from such a mandate.”

 

“In addition,” the A.M.A. said, “federal programs traditionally have never required physician or other provider participation, but rather such participation has been on a voluntary basis.”

 

In an interview, Dr. Nancy H. Nielsen, president of the American Medical Association, said she was delighted by Mr. Obama’s plan to address the doctors.

 

“Health care reform is as important to us as it is to him,” Dr. Nielsen said. “We will be engaged in discussions in a constructive way. But we absolutely oppose government control of health care decisions or mandatory physician participation in any insurance plan.”

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No way....people who stand to make less money are opposed?

 

So its okay with you that the doctors be conscripted into government service to work for what ever wages the government deems adequate? That is what forced participation means. In America, at least up until now, we don't do things like that. As you are a socialist, I can see where you would see government running health care to be perfectly natural, but forcing people to do the work for a specified wage seems like it crosses the line into communism. Does this bother you at all? And by the way, are you willing to also be conscripted into some position at a specified rate of pay? Really I am just trying to get at where you would draw the line, if at all on government establishment of compensation limits. I suppose as a bureaucrat the point is moot? I can't wait until you get a real job and we can see how you feel about these things.

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Ok, again, I'm a Liberal, not a socialist. I believe in government regulation and some government ownership. Doctors will still make a lot of money. What will happen is a reduction of cost to the system.

 

All of us work for a secified wage already. We decide to work somewherea nd we agree to be paid a certain amount. The trick is to make that amount fair to all involved.

 

BTW, I've had real jobs...quite a few of them actually....3 at a time actually. It doesn't change the way that I feel.

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Also, calling me a socialist isn't really scary to me. I don't cringe at the words because I know that the system has the best of intentions. It doesn't always work in real life (which is something that it has in common with capitalism), but it still has good intentions at its core. So does communism actualy.

 

I should actually clarify by saying that I'm a social liberal, not just a liberal.

Edited by suv_guy_19
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So its okay with you that the doctors be conscripted into government service to work for what ever wages the government deems adequate? That is what forced participation means. In America, at least up until now, we don't do things like that. As you are a socialist, I can see where you would see government running health care to be perfectly natural, but forcing people to do the work for a specified wage seems like it crosses the line into communism. Does this bother you at all? And by the way, are you willing to also be conscripted into some position at a specified rate of pay? Really I am just trying to get at where you would draw the line, if at all on government establishment of compensation limits. I suppose as a bureaucrat the point is moot? I can't wait until you get a real job and we can see how you feel about these things.

 

AT this point I doubt you will change his mind in the least. IF the gov can decide what is reasonable and proper payment for Doctors it won't be a big step too deciding what is reasonable and proper for wage earners as well.

 

All one has to do is look to Canada and Britain to see that socialized mediciene sucks. When the Gov can tell you like in Canada that you aren't worth the money and time to perform certain procedures because of age etc, well, welcome to the new United Socialist States of America.

 

It is getting pretty bad when Bama says we are out of money but still is pushes for extreme social programs to be implemented and we can't pay for the ones we have now.

 

How about we fix what we have now, not add more to it.

 

WAKE THE FUCK UP it is not a dream!

Edited by mikem12
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Also, calling me a socialist isn't really scary to me. I don't cringe at the words because I know that the system has the best of intentions. It doesn't always work in real life (which is something that it has in common with capitalism), but it still has good intentions at its core. So does communism actualy.

 

I should actually clarify by saying that I'm a social liberal, not just a liberal.

Please, tell something we didn't already know......

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When the Gov can tell you like in Canada that you aren't worth the money and time to perform certain procedures because of age etc, well, welcome to the new United Socialist States of America.

 

 

Please provide cited examples. The only people who decide how others are treated in Canada are doctors and nurses and the average doctor makes over 200K per year.

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Ok, again, I'm a Liberal, not a socialist. I believe in government regulation and some government ownership. Doctors will still make a lot of money. What will happen is a reduction of cost to the system.

 

All of us work for a secified wage already. We decide to work somewherea nd we agree to be paid a certain amount. The trick is to make that amount fair to all involved.

 

BTW, I've had real jobs...quite a few of them actually....3 at a time actually. It doesn't change the way that I feel.

 

I did not call you a socialist as an insult. It is simply a direct observation, that you have just again confirmed. Honestly, it doesn't hurt to have a socialist liberal, or what ever description that you like, chiming in. But to the point, if you believe in a little government ownership, then you believe in government ownership. It is kind of like claiming to be just a little bit pregnant, or little bit gay.

 

And "all of us" do not work for a specified wage. There are no rules in the US, yet, that say if you want to work in a particular field that you have to accept a particular rate of pay. You are free to ask for what ever you want, and employers are free to offer what ever they want. With the exception of states that force union membership in union shops, the bargain extends to the individual. This is however, what doctors will be forced to accept under at least one of the proposals. Up until now, doctors had a choice: if they accepted medicare, then medicare paid a certain rate. Fair enough. The new proposal dictates that doctors will be forced to accept these new patients at a specified rate of compensation. Since you are not a doctor, and you think that $200K should be enough for any body, then you might be better suited to communism as a philosophy. Even socialist systems general don't compel people to work in a field where workers are paid less than the market would indicate. And I am happy for you to be the board communist, but only if you are willing to accept the same limits, namely, we get to determine what is enough for you to get paid.

 

In the US, a tremendous number of people are self employed, or own small businesses, and work on commissions. They tend to be the ones that make the best incomes. None of them are very excited about a system that would limit their success.

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http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_12523427

 

 

Debunking Canadian health care myths

 

By Rhonda Hackett

Posted: 06/07/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT

 

 

Related

Jun 7:

What do we pay for, anyway?As a Canadian living in the United States for the past 17 years, I am frequently asked by Americans and Canadians alike to declare one health care system as the better one.

 

Often I'll avoid answering, regardless of the questioner's nationality. To choose one or the other system usually translates into a heated discussion of each one's merits, pitfalls, and an intense recitation of commonly cited statistical comparisons of the two systems.

 

Because if the only way we compared the two systems was with statistics, there is a clear victor. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to dispute the fact that Canada spends less money on health care to get better outcomes.

 

Yet, the debate rages on. Indeed, it has reached a fever pitch since President Barack Obama took office, with Americans either dreading or hoping for the dawn of a single-payer health care system. Opponents of such a system cite Canada as the best example of what not to do, while proponents laud that very same Canadian system as the answer to all of America's health care problems. Frankly, both sides often get things wrong when trotting out Canada to further their respective arguments.

 

As America comes to grips with the reality that changes are desperately needed within its health care infrastructure, it might prove useful to first debunk some myths about the Canadian system.

 

Myth: Taxes in Canada are extremely high, mostly because of national health care.

 

In actuality, taxes are nearly equal on both sides of the border. Overall, Canada's taxes are slightly higher than those in the U.S. However, Canadians are afforded many benefits for their tax dollars, even beyond health care (e.g., tax credits, family allowance, cheaper higher education), so the end result is a wash. At the end of the day, the average after-tax income of Canadian workers is equal to about 82 percent of their gross pay. In the U.S., that average is 81.9 percent.

 

Myth: Canada's health care system is a cumbersome bureaucracy.

 

The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn't when everybody is covered.

 

Myth: The Canadian system is significantly more expensive than that of the U.S.Ten percent of Canada's GDP is spent on health care for 100 percent of the population. The U.S. spends 17 percent of its GDP but 15 percent of its population has no coverage whatsoever and millions of others have inadequate coverage. In essence, the U.S. system is considerably more expensive than Canada's. Part of the reason for this is uninsured and underinsured people in the U.S. still get sick and eventually seek care. People who cannot afford care wait until advanced stages of an illness to see a doctor and then do so through emergency rooms, which cost considerably more than primary care services.

 

What the American taxpayer may not realize is that such care costs about $45 billion per year, and someone has to pay it. This is why insurance premiums increase every year for insured patients while co-pays and deductibles also rise rapidly.

 

Myth: Canada's government decides who gets health care and when they get it.While HMOs and other private medical insurers in the U.S. do indeed make such decisions, the only people in Canada to do so are physicians. In Canada, the government has absolutely no say in who gets care or how they get it. Medical decisions are left entirely up to doctors, as they should be.

 

There are no requirements for pre-authorization whatsoever. If your family doctor says you need an MRI, you get one. In the U.S., if an insurance administrator says you are not getting an MRI, you don't get one no matter what your doctor thinks — unless, of course, you have the money to cover the cost.

 

Myth: There are long waits for care, which compromise access to care.There are no waits for urgent or primary care in Canada. There are reasonable waits for most specialists' care, and much longer waits for elective surgery. Yes, there are those instances where a patient can wait up to a month for radiation therapy for breast cancer or prostate cancer, for example. However, the wait has nothing to do with money per se, but everything to do with the lack of radiation therapists. Despite such waits, however, it is noteworthy that Canada boasts lower incident and mortality rates than the U.S. for all cancers combined, according to the U.S. Cancer Statistics Working Group and the Canadian Cancer Society. Moreover, fewer Canadians (11.3 percent) than Americans (14.4 percent) admit unmet health care needs.

 

Myth: Canadians are paying out of pocket to come to the U.S. for medical care.Most patients who come from Canada to the U.S. for health care are those whose costs are covered by the Canadian governments. If a Canadian goes outside of the country to get services that are deemed medically necessary, not experimental, and are not available at home for whatever reason (e.g., shortage or absence of high tech medical equipment; a longer wait for service than is medically prudent; or lack of physician expertise), the provincial government where you live fully funds your care. Those patients who do come to the U.S. for care and pay out of pocket are those who perceive their care to be more urgent than it likely is.

 

Myth: Canada is a socialized health care system in which the government runs hospitals and where doctors work for the government.Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt says single-payer systems are not "socialized medicine" but "social insurance" systems because doctors work in the private sector while their pay comes from a public source. Most physicians in Canada are self-employed. They are not employees of the government nor are they accountable to the government. Doctors are accountable to their patients only. More than 90 percent of physicians in Canada are paid on a fee-for-service basis. Claims are submitted to a single provincial health care plan for reimbursement, whereas in the U.S., claims are submitted to a multitude of insurance providers. Moreover, Canadian hospitals are controlled by private boards and/or regional health authorities rather than being part of or run by the government.

 

Myth: There aren't enough doctors in Canada.

 

From a purely statistical standpoint, there are enough physicians in Canada to meet the health care needs of its people. But most doctors practice in large urban areas, leaving rural areas with bona fide shortages. This situation is no different than that being experienced in the U.S. Simply training and employing more doctors is not likely to have any significant impact on this specific problem. Whatever issues there are with having an adequate number of doctors in any one geographical area, they have nothing to do with the single-payer system.

 

And these are just some of the myths about the Canadian health care system. While emulating the Canadian system will likely not fix U.S. health care, it probably isn't the big bad "socialist" bogeyman it has been made out to be.

 

It is not a perfect system, but it has its merits. For people like my 55-year-old Aunt Betty, who has been waiting for 14 months for knee-replacement surgery due to a long history of arthritis, it is the superior system. Her $35,000-plus surgery is finally scheduled for next month. She has been in pain, and her quality of life has been compromised. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Aunt Betty — who lives on a fixed income and could never afford private health insurance, much less the cost of the surgery and requisite follow-up care — will soon sport a new, high-tech knee. Waiting 14 months for the procedure is easy when the alternative is living in pain for the rest of your life.

 

Rhonda Hackett of Castle Rock is a clinical psychologist

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.........For people like my 55-year-old Aunt Betty, who has been waiting for 14 months for knee-replacement surgery due to a long history of arthritis, it is the superior system. Her $35,000-plus surgery is finally scheduled for next month. She has been in pain, and her quality of life has been compromised. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Aunt Betty — who lives on a fixed income and could never afford private health insurance, much less the cost of the surgery and requisite follow-up care — will soon sport a new, high-tech knee. Waiting 14 months for the procedure is easy when the alternative is living in pain for the rest of your life.

 

Rhonda Hackett of Castle Rock is a clinical psychologist

Uh.........arthritis is a degenerative disease.

 

There is nothing to promise "Aunt Betty" will be pain-free after the surgery because the 14 months worth of waiting could have caused extensive damage.

 

Follow up question: If Aunt Betty is on "a fixed income", does that mean she is retired, disabled, or poor? In that case, were she in America she would have got the surgery far sooner, and the costs would be covered by Medicare/Medicaid.

 

Aunt Betty might find this interesting

Knee replacement surgery is a common surgical procedure that allows for an effective reduction of pain and adequate restoration of function for the vast majority of patients suffering from advanced knee osteoarthritis or other forms of arthritis. In the last decades, the growing needs of the population have made this procedure, along with hip replacement, the second most popular orthopaedic surgery. In Canada, in 2006, the rate of knee replacements reached 106.9/100 000 persons, in sharp progression from the past decade. This sharp rise in demand has translated into growing waiting lists. Governments have tried to tackle this problem, and with the allocation of new funding and the development of new policies, more patients are being operated. But wait times remain a problem; recent Canadian data show that, depending on the province, the median pre-surgery wait time range from 112 to 291 days and still today an important proportion of patients are not operated within six months, the maximum acceptable waiting time benchmark established in Canada.

 

Waiting for knee replacement surgery represents a significant burden for patients as they experience great pain, suffer functional limitations and loss of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) for many months. Some authors have suggested that long delays for surgery could result in patient's deterioration in terms of pain, functional limitations and HRQoL and may have negative impacts on post-surgery outcomes.

Edited by RangerM
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Please provide cited examples. The only people who decide how others are treated in Canada are doctors and nurses and the average doctor makes over 200K per year.

 

The movie star that died as a result of head trauma skiing was denied a cat scan that would have proved she had bleeding on the brain.

 

it's common knowledge, transplants, dialisys [spl], major surgeries that require specialist can take as long as a year to be availible.

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Yes, but you don't recognize the difference between liberal and socialist...so I guess I am telling something that you don't know.

 

 

last time I heard by definition of liberal is socialist. IF you like I can look up the definitions for you.

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The movie star that died as a result of head trauma skiing was denied a cat scan that would have proved she had bleeding on the brain.

 

The actress refused treatment...and she was not denied anything. No one is denide anything that's needed. She was taken to a hospital with a CT and it is not known whether or not she got one. She was then taken to one of the finest hospitals in the country...and she wasn't covered by Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec anyway..because she isn't a resident of Québec. She was a paying patient.

 

You don't seem to know what you're talking about. The possible problem in the actresses situation resulted from the lack of a medical helicopter.

Edited by suv_guy_19
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