How the Health Crisis was solved 80 years ago.

[Sirrus_Asura]

Wrong. When the number of participants goes up, the cost per participant goes down. Haven't you ever bought anything in bulk? Same rule applies - you buy more, the price per unit goes down.

Something seems off about this, but I can't quite put my finger on it. (no sarc)


Edit: In its application to healthcare / taxes and such.

[Gadritan]

Something seems off about this, but I can't quite put my finger on it. (no sarc)


Edit: In its application to healthcare / taxes and such.

That's b/c it doesn't apply in the same way when you're dealing with a service.

In the case of services it's possible that it could actually cause an increase in prices.

I stress that it's possible, not probable. So don't freak out.

(This could be due to the number of participants exceeding the number of available service providers such as doctors etc, which would in turn cause them to be overworked and raking in overtime and possibly demanding higher salaries, or companies having to higher more personnel and passing the bill along to the consumer. That's an extremely simplified explanation of a possible scenario, but it happens.)

[Sirrus_Asura]

That's b/c it doesn't apply in the same way when you're dealing with a service.

In the case of services it's possible that it could actually cause an increase in prices.

I stress that it's possible, not probable. So don't freak out.

I'm freakin out man.

Actually thanks. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I think your first sentence summed it up what I was thinking.

[Gadritan]

I'm freakin out man.

Actually thanks. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I think your first sentence summed it up what I was thinking.

lol, np. I'm still anticipating someone spazzing and telling me what a fucking retard I am for saying this, then attempting to disprove my theory by buying 400 boxes of Fruit Loops @$1/piece and screaming "SEE! ITZ CHEAPERZ THAT WAY!"

[Olo401]

Something seems off about this, but I can't quite put my finger on it. (no sarc)

Edit: In its application to healthcare / taxes and such.

Maybe a more clarified example is needed - how about regional school districts? This is actually something being debated in Rhode Island now - Several towns are having trouble meeting their school budgets, and making cuts really isn't an option anymore since things have already been cut back to the bone in some towns already.

So the proposal was made to merge the 20-something town school boards into 5-6 regional school districts. Aside from the savings in administrative personnel payrolls, another large chunk of savings would come from buying supplies in bulk for the entire district, because the larger group purchase would cost less per unit.

Similarly if a group of people, or companies, collectively purchase a health insurance plan, they would all receive a bulk discount on their premiums (similar to insurance offered by a large employer - the company saves money for each employee because its employees buy insurance in bulk)

lol, np. I'm still anticipating someone spazzing and telling me what a fucking retard I am for saying this, then attempting to disprove my theory by buying 400 boxes of Fruit Loops @$1/piece and screaming "SEE! ITZ CHEAPERZ THAT WAY!"

Well it's your own example, but it's the premise that is correct. Having 1 group buy 400 boxes of cereal for a dollar each ($400 total) is exponentially cheaper than each person buying their own cereal at 4 bucks a box ($1600 total).

[Gadritan]

What you're saying makes sense Olo, it's just not guaranteed to be cheaper is what Sirrus and myself are getting at I believe.

[Sirrus_Asura]

So the overall cost spent on the services go down at a certain rate.

Question is, is the amount money being put into the system still enough to support it?

[eunhye]

YouTube - Officer Does Not Like anti-Obama Poster: "It ain't [America] no more, OK?"

"It ain't no more, OK?"

what an idiot cop.

[Olo401]

What you're saying makes sense Olo, it's just not guaranteed to be cheaper is what Sirrus and myself are getting at I believe.

How do you figure costs won't be lower when you have every insurance carrier in the country submitting bids to the health insurance exchange, and then having people picking which of those plans they want? (Div. A Title II of HR 3200) Or not picking any of them in favor of their current private or employer-offered coverage? Or choosing Medicare, CHIP, or VA coverage if eligible? The exchange also basically eliminates the restrictions placed on private and state-based nonprofit insurance companies from competing across state lines as well, which opens up the market across the entire country.

How do you figure all that increased competition, combined with the increased supply of clients who currently do not have and cannot afford health insurance, would not drive the cost of health care down?

So the overall cost spent on the services go down at a certain rate.

Question is, is the amount money being put into the system still enough to support it?

If anything, the reduced cost of the entire system would save more money as time goes on. For everyone.

[Gadritan]

(This could be due to the number of participants exceeding the number of available service providers such as doctors etc, which would in turn cause them to be overworked and raking in overtime and possibly demanding higher salaries, or companies having to higher more personnel and passing the bill along to the consumer. That's an extremely simplified explanation of a possible scenario, but it happens.)

^ that's part of it. I said possible, not probable. There's so many variables to account for you can't say 100% _____ will happen or ______ will happen.

[Gadritan]

Well it's your own example, but it's the premise that is correct. Having 1 group buy 400 boxes of cereal for a dollar each ($400 total) is exponentially cheaper than each person buying their own cereal at 4 bucks a box ($1600 total).

You're still missing the point there though. When dealing with a service it's not as cut and dry as an actual product.

Apples and oranges.

[Dimmauk]

YouTube - Officer Does Not Like anti-Obama Poster: "It ain't [America] no more, OK?"

"It ain't no more, OK?"

what an idiot cop.

At least he didnt arrest them right?

http://www.aclu.org/images/client/ranks.jpg

[Olo401]

At least he didnt arrest them right?

http://www.aclu.org/images/client/ranks.jpg

http://www.duckdaotsu.org/temp/nypd500x334.jpg

We were like fish in a trawling net to them.

[guartz]

I hear there is a democrat talking about co-ops now. Not a bad idea.

[Restrat]

On the comparison with buying in bulk and health care, health care costs are an average- if you have 9 people who don't go to the doctor or get sick and one with cancer that costs $50,000 to treat, in one year each person would be paying $5,000 plus administrative costs. The goal is to get EVERYONE in one program, so you have 10.7 million people with cancer and 300 million without it. The idea is you pay a little when you're healthy so you don't need to pay a lot when you're sick.

Also, similar to buying in bulk, you cut down on a lot of costs that you don't normally thing about. For example, at costco, I'm not paying as much partly because they don't hire as many people, they don't have someone designing aisle layouts and such that other stores have, they don't spend money on the store's appearance that Quality Markets down the street has. With health care, I wouldn't be paying to support a team of specialists at each hospital who deal with insurance, and I wouldn't be paying to support United's profits.

[Rhinox]

So much Stupidity to respond to I don't know where to begin.

[Rhinox]

I guess I'll start with captain neocon.

You expect anyone to believe you would ever stray outside your extremist standpoint and vote Republican? Really? Why bother? The Republicans are never going to win you over, so stop acting like a swing voter. I don't run around preaching that the left needs to change back to their "core" in order to win me over. I will never vote for a liberal. I believe in myself, the liberty of others, and individual worth too much to just say that a government bureaucracy should be substituted for all that. I don't want to be treated like a child. Apparently you do.

so... you're admitting you're nothing but a Republican hack then? I mean not that we didn't already know that just nice to see you finally came to terms with it.

Everybody with a clue knows that you don't have any options if you can't afford private insurance. The more people who can't afford private insurance, the more that jump on the public plan. The more people that jump on the public plan, the more expensive it gets for everyone. The more expensive it gets for everyone, the more people are forced to ditch their private insurance to be in the public plan.

As time goes on, it ceases to be an "option" for more and more people as the price goes up and up and up. This plan DOES put the foot in the door for socialized medicine. There is no stopping that.

Wrong. again you know nothing. The more people that use it the less the costs will be because it would be spread out over a lot of people. sorta how you can become a millionaire by collecting 1 dollar from 1 million people. Make sense? and I hope it does put the foot in the door. We need socialized medicine. We're the only industrialized country in the world that doesn't have it.

1) What is the actual purpose of the bill? To give Americans choices? Competition? As I've demonstrated above, it does nothing of the sort. There are real and genuine ways to implement choices and competition. You do this by implementing tort reform. You do this by getting rid of the law allowing states to ban the sale of insurance across state lines. You facilitate the free market and everybody prospers.

Its a public option because you can keep the plan you have you don't have to use the public plan stupid. What are the real and genuine ways of doing this? The "free market" solution that been proposed here is garbage. Would you like to add a new one? or would you like to continue spouting the garbage by Newt and Bill crystol without having any real substance.

But what? The democrats couldn't fit in 2 paragraphs about tort reform and eliminating a silly law because what? They couldn't tack on another page to their 1000 page bill?

Even if they were determined to lower prices (yeah, right), why wouldn't they put something like that in the bill? I mean, in addition to the public option they could implement those two things which would "lower" prices even more. But why don't they? Because it means more people being able to afford private insurance. Because it means less people on the "public" plan. Never trust a Democrat to lower prices. Always trust a Democrat to expand government and raise taxes: the two things that have shown to dig the bottom of any recession deeper.

The bill is already to complicated for retarded redneck people to understand. Btw I don't see what is wrong with allowing people to continue to sue doctors for gross negligence any tort reform that would exclude doctors from responsibilities should they fuck up is beyond stupid.

2) You are saying that Democrats actually want to listen to Republicans to be nice? So what do you call the screams of bloody murder and "scare tactics"? Real civil huh? How many unions do you see representing the right at these town halls? How many t-shirts and reserved seats do you see for the right? Look to your own rent-a-mob armies that receive special treatment at these things.

What are you crying about? that the Astroturf brownshirt mobs bussed by and given talking points by Unitedhealth group is being treated like everyone else now that the opposition is allowed in?

3) Most people want health care reform (myself included). I want tort reform. I was increased competition. I want all the things that have been shown and shown again to lower prices and increase the level of goods in any market. That's the health reform I want because I know it will work. The left just wants to make the government bigger because it can. It sounds like a great thing to help people with their "health care" - it's a warm fuzzy subject that we wish everyone had. It's too bad that such an issue is only a talking point for the left to create a bigger government that thinks it can spend your money better than you can.

Most people (53% last time I checked) do not want anything to do with Obamacare. Only 30 something percent actually want it.

polls mean nothing. They're only as acurate as the bias of the ones asking the questions Olo already went over this.

Funny how you claim to want reform yet you Politicize health care and how you pretty much patronize everyone that wants it and breaking it down to something that's 'warm and fuzzy'. I can see through the shit you posted here.

Before everyone starts applauding how amazing this public option is, why is everyone so quick to dismiss free market ideas that everyone knows in their heart will work quite well. It may not solve the problem, but at least it will give people a better idea of how big of a problem there will be left to solve. Most of America knows that. Do you?

What Free market ideas? name me one that hasn't already been discussed and dismissed here as not feasible already. Fuck not even Michael steele knows what some alternatives are and he is the leader of your fucking party.

[Rhinox]

Look, "death panels" is a strong word. It's also an effective political machine. I don't blame them for calling it out. However, "death panels" essentially translates to "government paid employees that are supposed to talk to the elderly to present to them the option of dying in an effort to save costs by cutting down on end of life care."

Is that something you really want the government doing?

edit: I like you, I think. Were you being sarcastic or not?

THIS IS NOWHERE IN THE FUCKING BILL YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER.

You obviously are either dishonest or retarded and don't know what end of life counseling is.

My money is on the latter.

Exactly. This borders too close to the issue of assisted suicide. Letting people know it's "okay to die" gives some the message that we "WANT you to die".

It's hard to know the difference. Letting people know "it's okay to give up" is not a message the government needs to be sponsoring.


It doesn't matter who does it. And what @ the doctors working exclusively for the government?

............. holy shit you can't be this stupid lol. Say hi to glenn beck for me next time you call in to his radio show.

Again lol nowhere in the bill.

I honestly don't think it's a matter of dumbing it down for people. It's a matter of making sure the message is powerful and impacts many people (the target group being the elderly).


This is also a third option (charities to cover the uninsured that don't qualify for government programs) that Democrats are reluctant to embrace.

When it comes to issues like health care, I don't like to think of myself as partisan. I think there are things that the government can do on a small scale that can be effective. I support giving people opportunities. I do not support, however, people who would not otherwise need such assistance forced into a government program because the government needs to suck in more and more people in order to stay afloat. I also do not support programs that send the message "if you don't want to work hard, the government will make up for your laziness".

We have charities for health care every since the bubonic fucking plauge. It doesn't work asshole. You can't cover everyone with charities.

In this situation, there are alternatives, and I want to pursue them before we start making the government bigger and more expensive.

aww how cute guys. It thinks its a libertarian. Sorry you lost any fucking say by going along with the 2 needless wars.

Bush isn't the model Republican or conservative. I strongly support his foreign policy, but his stance on other issues was mediocre at best. What we can learn, however, is that when Bush wanted to do health care, Democrats opposed it. Typical.

Here we go again. Its like the story of peter denying Jesus except in this case Jesus is a retarded baffon in GWB. What healthcare reform was GWB doing again? I'm surprised he had time to propose anything between the record setting vacations he took in office and the hundreds of thousands of Civilian deaths he is indirectly responsible for.

On a side note, I'm happy to see that you believe government got us into the mess (although we disagree whether or not it is really Bush's fault). I'm less delighted to see that you believe government can get us out.


Old. Nobody cares. Halliburton is not some conspiracy that secretly plotted 9/11 or something. There is no story there.

But on the topic of where your tax dollars go. They go to FedEx because USPS can't be trusted to get a package from point A to point B overnight.

Only that the VP was once the CEO of Halliburton up until he was picked VP he then manufactured a war and gave the biggest military contract in history to them. But hey I'm sure its just a big coincidence.

YouTube - Officer Does Not Like anti-Obama Poster: "It ain't [America] no more, OK?"

"It ain't no more, OK?"

what an idiot cop.

Hey troll, I see you this

Woman Arrested at McCain Event for "McCain=Bush" Sign | Video | AlterNet

and raise you this

Daily Kos: Army Veteran Arrested for Political Bumper Sticker

and this

Woman Sues Over Anti-Bush Bumper Sticker - Oddities News - redOrbit

and this

� Kansas Woman Ticketed for Political Bumper Sticker - Blogger News Network

lets not forget this

MoxieGrrrl.com: Woman Gets Booted Off a Plane for Anti-Bush Shirt

oh and this

Denver Residents, Alleging First Amendment Rights Were Violated, Sue White House Event Planners - Blogcritics Politics

am I making my point clear?

Wrongly Arrested Bush Protesters Talk About Their $80K Government Settlement On Hardball | Crooks and Liars

well good.

USATODAY.com - Arrested Bush dissenters look to the courts

You're still missing the point there though. When dealing with a service it's not as cut and dry as an actual product.

Apples and oranges.

no. Its about Economics not products. and Yes it really is that cut and dry. Exactly how do you think Insurance companies claim they reduce premiums? By spread the risk across millions of people.

I hear there is a democrat talking about co-ops now. Not a bad idea.

That democrat is a dino and he has no pull whatsoever. btw even if progressives were to fail and abomination of a co-op was to be proposed the GOP would still be against it. Chuck grassley has already said as much

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

Saying you can keep what you have now, while true, is nothing but flat out bullshit on the part of Democrats. "You can keep what you have now..." and then they leave out the part that your going to pay extra taxes if you don't have "acceptable care".

Edit: Yet if all Dem's care about is reducing costs and all that bullshit why that penalty? When they put bullshit like that in there it really makes me think Rush is right about the 51% of Americans goal.

[Rhinox]

Saying you can keep what you have now, while true, is nothing but flat out bullshit on the part of Democrats. "You can keep what you have now..." and then they leave out the part that your going to pay extra taxes if you don't have "acceptable care".

Edit: Yet if all Dem's care about is reducing costs and all that bullshit why that penalty? When they put bullshit like that in there it really makes me think Rush is right about the 51% of Americans goal.

What? care to point out where it says you will pay fines if you keep your current plan?

Swampy can you name me one 'free market' solution that can guarantee coverage for everyone and not exclude people because of pre-existing conditions?