Hospitals do agree to take a smaller payment for medicare and medicaid patients. They either take the lessor payment or cannot take the patients who have that insurance.

With medicaid and medicare there is only three steps, care, contracted insurance company and payment from government. The government doesn't actually run medicare and medicaid. They contract to Blue Cross and Blue Sheild to do all the coding and billing and such.

Medicare pays doctors in my area in a reasonable amount of time. They sometimes even pay faster then private insurances.

My brother works in a hospital in Louisville. That hospital is tight on money and it's not because of Medicare/Medicaid. It's because they put their money in the stock market and lost.

bump...

still waiting to find out why it is that we have to be in such a hurry to pass legislation that won'ttake effect until after the next presidential election...

In the state of maine (i believe the state insurance anyway) is 5 years behind.

And... Medicare never pays the whole bill.

I don't understand why it's that way in your state and not my city.

The doc knows what Medicare pays when he contracts with them.

Before all the idealists run away with the ball...

...I already have social health care. I am a full-time student and I qualify for the county health insurance plan. Sounds great, right?

Not...

The "system" decides who I can and cannot see as far as a doctor/health care provider.

I have come up with this quote pertaining to the county-provided health care (which would be similar to a federally-run system)...

"the poor are the world's guinea pigs..."

I have the choice of two clinics... one is in a high crime rate part of town that is ooky to drive through, and most of the clientèle there look like homeless people or minority social cases. I stand a high chance of getting mugged or who knows what just going to that neighborhood. The other (an only other) clinic accepting this social health care is called "academic internal medicine." ALL of the doctors you get to see are interns, every one of them. I haven't seen a real, practicing physician in years. I am their guinea pig as they learn to be real doctors. And... this is the depot of a large majority of the county health plan's victims ... errrr... I mean patients. Ultra sub-standard health care, howbeit free to me.

I think a great example of what the entire system would turn to nearly over-night if it became a state-run or federal-run health care system across the nation. If you have excellent coverage now, it will be lowered to a different level. If you have poor coverage now, it will be raised a bit. If you have zero coverage, you may be offered a health plan... maybe. Nothing guarantees that 100% of the population will have health coverage.

The pros of this are... my prescriptions are only $1.00 co-pay per pill type, (top THAT with any Blue Cross coverage), and I do not pay any co-pay for doctor visits at all. I also had an operation about a year ago which required an overnight stay in the hospital, and I never had to pay one penny. I never got one single hospital bill. And, 2 weeks ago I had to go to the emergency room, and E.R. visits are completely covered.

The ONLY thing that un-nerves me is that the doctors willing to accept this coverage plan are all interns. Or, from my experience, they are questionable medical professionals who seemingly take this insurance because they can't hold up a decent practice otherwise. (or so it seems) That makes me worry. As a human being I too deserve the doctor that has 30-40 or so years of medical experience, I am of the opinion that an experienced doctor is going to offer me better health care coverage, and as a poor person, I am denied the best. So much for capitalism...

I think where the regulation needs to exist is more regulation in what doctors are able to bill the insurance companies, and for how much. Most people have heard the horror stories of folks getting their hospital bills, and just ridiculous charges for the most meaningless things will be on the bill. I'm being creative here (not actual) but say, fifty buck for two aspirins, and stuff like that. It happens. It should not happen. THAT is why health coverage is so expensive. The American Medical Association (AMA) represents one of the largest lobbyist group towards Congress. So does the pharmaceutical industry lobby...

Personally, I kind of feel life sucks a majority of the time, and instead of preserving this miserable existence of slavery to taxes and the U.S. government, I would rather euthanasia were legalized, and I could simply choose to go to be with Jesus at anytime as I grow older. After all, the medical profession's bread and butter are the elderly...

I came up with this quote a few years back...

"The elderly are to doctors what the Christmas season is to retail marketing..."

Careful quoting Wikipedia... they aren't a credible research resource. For one, any Economy 101 student could tell you that the European Union is NOT legitimate to be put on a chart of GDP. They are NOT a nation. They are a grouping of nations, thus it biases the graph to put them ahead of the U.S. GDP.

It is relevant, however, to note the U.S. GDP at 14.3 trillion... the largest economy in the world... has only for competition, the next closest economy to the U.S. is Japan, at 4.9 trillion... France, is 2.8 trillion... our US GDP is over 5 times the amount of France's economy... PLUS... the population of France is only 65 million people, total... the U.S. population is around 307 million (we have 4.7 times more people in this country, and we produce 5+ times the amount of GDP than France...) Numbers make a difference, plus what one poster noted... people in France, as a whole, eat better and take care of themselves better on average than the people in the U.S., so what works in their culture isn't going to work in the land of McDonald's hamburgers and soda pop galore... we are talking two entirely different cultures here...

Instead of having as you stated "the most effective and efficient health care system in the world in a couple of years"... we would have a system that does not fit our culture whatsoever, and it would flop and cause the American tax payers billions, if not trillions in bad debt...

The U.S. Census clock is here:

http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html

A better resource for economic statistics is the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis

http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=5&FirstYear=2008&LastYear=2009&Freq=Qtr

That's one huge problem right there... it should be the same LOWER price for everybody, all of the time. The regulation needs to be at the billing-cycle level.

It actually shows evidence of a system that discriminates against and presents a disparate impact against the rich. Just because a person is rich does not mean they should be expected to pay more for health care, or be involved with a system that has learned to turn it's head when the doctors start to bill the insurance companies whatever their greedy little minds determine is a fair payment.

>>> Thus driving up the price of health care for the rich, and eventually for every human being. Once the bar is raised for the rich, the separation in dollars between what the rich pay and what systems like medicare pay is even greater, so the doctors b-itch even more, and the cost of health care goes up for the poor as well.

Welcome to capitalism...

Stiffer regulations need to be in place preventing the greediest of doctors from pilfering the insurance systems for profit.

Most employer based insurance plans also have a provider directory that lists who the insured can see, like a public option would. Those with insurance also get higher premiums to cover all the uninsured care being given by hospitals and doctors, so I dont so much mind highering my premiums so that ALL can have healthcare. I am seriously rooting for a reform of some sort, but I realize the details (of which I am sure there will be many) will be important. All good so long as we dont keep doing what we have done so far.

The difference of an HMO and the coverage I have provided by the county, is that the HMO doctors are real doctors. I am a guinea pig because I am poor, and one of the only clinics I can go to is ALL interns, not even real doctors. Or, I can go to a doctor's office in the ghetto, surrounded by slum and crime, never knowing if I will get to the appointment without being mugged... God forbid I should actually be able to see actual WHITE (real) doctors in the rich section of town...

No.... I'm poor, so I am not allowed on that side of the tracks...

I feel that is partial discrimination.

I am poor, therefore I can't see better, proven, experienced, real doctors. Or, the only doctor I can go to see is in a ghetto, surrounded by crime. There is something wrong with that picture.

On a national level, depending on geographical location, a person could end up with really $hitty health care, or being assigned a health care provider in a slum or ghetto where they would not normally travel for business. The problem with a national system is that it brings down the quality of health care. There will be no incentive to the research and development crowd to invent better ways to provide health care. Instead it will invite more corruption, and medical professionals who will spend even more time trying to figure out how to beat the system and bilk it for every penny possible.

As an idealist, one could wish for universal health care, but as a realist, it doesn't fit a capitalist economy where the incentive to better one's self is connected to being able to be compensated for it monetarily. Socialism and health care wipe out the incentive to do any better. We have the amazing medical technologies in this country because researchers have had the compensatory incentives to create and invent new forms of health care. Socialize everything, make it so there is no incentive to grow, and there will become a stagnation in the system, and a severe decrease in quality over time.

The answer is not in socializing the system... As I stated above, policy and regulation needs to be tougher in the billing side of health care. Right now doctors do not have enough regulations on how much they charge the insurance companies for medical services, etc. This has allowed health care costs to inflate beyond what the average working person could possibly afford and puts a greater burden on the insurance industry. Today, if you are not insured, and you go to the hospital, you are pretty much screwed. It should not be that way.

Taxing the rich and middle class to pay for socialized health coverage of the poor is not the answer.

But to the poor, it makes no difference because the poor will always be trodden under the feet of society. Health care or no health care, there are a hell of a lot more battles in life due to poverty than simply health care.

We live in a society and culture that cannot help but be discriminatory toward the poor. If you do not have money, then you cease to be of any importance to our culture. It doesn't matter if you are Republican or Democrat, if you are poor, you will eventually be treated like crap in America. Throwing the homeless and starving a bread crumb called health care is a futile liberal politician's attempt at being nice to a possible voting constituency.

I have it...

...keep the poor alive long enough to vote for me in the next election...

... in reality, that is the bottom line and only motivation for any of this.

After all, dead people can't vote....

Interesting... Wouldn't you say?

I am also speaking out against the majority of private insurers as well if you put two and two together.

So, we have a government paid comittee to oversee our organization that we contracted out to. Then we have to pay all the employees of this company that we contract out too. Remember, profits have to be made in order to pay wages. Then additional paperwork from billing companies (my mother works for one that bills for both medicade and medicare, and mainecare), all of who need to get paid. As well as the medical staff.

We need to eliminate middle men. I say again, this is as absolute as a mathematical theorem; The more people you need to pay, the more something will cost without improving the quality of the said service, or product.

If you want to make it cheaper, cut out middle men, cut out red tape, cut out some waste.

If you don't care about the quality of medical coverage, than go ahead, have another comittee appointed to oversee another company, or bureau, so we can live falsely under the illusion that we "don't have to pay" anymore.

90% of docs work for a hospital. The hosptial contracts, not the docs. Many, if not most, private practices don't accept medicare and medicade.

I think you will find medicare and medicade short change hospitals in your area as well.

As i said, my hospital does get paid, but they do lose money each time they take a patient with that insurance. Which leads me to believe that government run (or subsidized) programs are part of our problem, and therefore, not part of the solution.

All the other first world countries take care of their sick and we can too

We are going to stop the insurance company holocaust of sick Americans that has been going on for decades. No more corporate death panels.

Way to think in slogans mirror...

Unfortunately to achieve said goals, the solution may be less obvious to many.

Insurance companies are forcing women in 45 states to get sterilized before they can get coverage. We need to stop this Nazi policy by the corporations

An insurance company executive called people with muscular distrophy "dogs"

Interesting... Accusing corporations of being national socialists...

I get ya. So, do you think bluecross blueshield also falls under this catagory?

I thought it would be a good idea to bump this thread because
we are getting back into discussing how to reform health care
in the U.S.

This is problem which will have a huge impact on both our
economic as well as physical health over the coming years and
should be at the forefront of the minds of all americans.

Our system is badly broken and is providing us all with poor
healthcare at outrageous cost. We should urge our lawmakers to
adopt a single payer system much like the French system and
the earlier we do it the better it will be for us in terms of
medical care and our economy!