Whats your opinion on the universal health care reform President Obama wants to have passed by September?

I don’t think the public option should be involved at all. I’m a VA employee, a veteran, and a patient in the public system. It’s better to just go to a real doctor than deal with these guys.

You’re playing with fire if you want a government-run healthcare system. As someone who’s lived with government healthcare for a while (out of convenience I should add), it’s better just to pay for a caring doctor’s help. And that’s what I’ll continue to do when I’m in a bind.

When people say that you go on a waiting list – it’s no joke. Veterans only make up about 5% of the population and the government can’t even manage this right. Just imagine the chaos if everyone were on this plan!!

I’m done thinking about it. I don’t know if I’ll approve of the finalized plan or not. But, it doesn’t matter because it’s not like we get to vote on it or anything. I’m not against reform altogether, but have serious doubts about what will ultimately be done. I guess I’ll just hang on and go along with the ride at this point.

Sorry for the pessimism. Have some kittens

@NowWhat
the public option IS NOT public care. There will be no government employed doctors under the public option. The public option is insurance. you will still be able to choose your own doctors and hospitals.

First of all there are five plans working their way through Congress, the details of which are changing as amendments are added.

@MontyZuma It does make it very difficult to have an opinion, doesn’t it

Let me rephrase.. the public option is a pubic insurance program that subjects you to government rules and regulations. You’ll get government guidance on how to take care of yourself, like this (sorry I don’t know how to make links yet):

http://vaww.index.va.gov/search/va/va_search.jsp?LC=9307&PQ=end+of+life+decisions&PT=end+of+life+decisions&QT=your+life.+your+choice.&RPP=10

@NowWhat Unlike the private option that subjects you to the terms and conditions of a private company where the best interests of it’s shareholders comes first.

I’m with @YARNLADY.

@NowWhat Sorry, VA ≠ public option of health care insurance

Like Social Security, I’ll believe it when I see it but I’m not counting on it.

I’m a college grad, working 60 hours a week at two jobs, one of them for the biggest food manufacturer in the world. 24, male, no medical conditons. Semi-bad eyes, and I could use to see a dentist (been a few years).

I can’t get health insurance. The only option offered through my employer that I can afford AT ALL, is their bare bones plan (I mean BARE bones, damn near useless). That plan would cost about 1/5–1/6 of my yearly income, and as such, I cannot afford it. No one has a stand alone plan that’s worth a damn either. Give ME a public option. I would GLADLY submit myself to waiting lists (which is conservative propaganda btw, and wouldn’t be a problem since you could use your own doctor), if it meant that I could get ANY coverage (along with the other 47 million un-insured Americans).

Not to mention our private run system, has muddied things up so badly that the US now has the 37th ranked health care system in the world (that’s behind Coasta Rica, The United Arab Emirates, etc). You know who’s ranked first? Terrible socialist France. In fact ALL of the “socialist” government run healthcare systems are ranked at least 10 spots higher than us (the UK, Canada, Germany, France, Switzerland, Sweden, etc).

Only further showing me that the conservatives are wrong on this is all the crap they’re making up to get people to side with them. Death panels, government funded abortions, all immigrants covered under the plan, etc, etc. .... Your argument should be able to stand on its own merits, not because you lied and scared people into siding with you.

All they are doing is trying to make Obama fail, so that they can retake power. If the conservatives ruin this for us, I don’t think I’ll ever forgive them (and as liberal as I sound in this, I voted for Bush [and Obama]. I favor ideas I agree with over the parties).

I live in Australia, I go to any doctor I want when I want and it is free, I just give them my government issued card. There is dental care as well, but I prefer to go to a private dentist so I pay out of my own pocket.

People complain about the service but to me it is amazing not to have to pay, I so far have had nothing to complain about.

In the USA I was self employed a large portion of my working career and there were times I could not afford medical insurance so I paid out of my own pocket then as well.

If you don’t like what the government dishes up then pay for what you want yourself.

@rooeytoo Very good point. Many people also complain their insurance company won’t allow this or that, but what they really mean is the insurance won’t pay for it, and they can’t afford to pay for it themselves.

Seriously, just search “health care” or “public option” on this site, you’ll get about 14 other questions exactly like this one that I’ve already answered. Bottom line though is we need reform because 50 million people don’t have health care, 14,000 a day lose their health care, 17,000 a week are filing bankruptcy because of medical bills (making them the largest source of personal bankruptcies in this country), 22,000 people a year die because of inadequate health care, the average family pays $1,200 a month for a plan and many can’t afford that, countless people are underinsured (they take a major medical plan w/ a high deductible and low lifetime maximum because they can’t afford private insurance), the private health care industry has an incentive to deny care and many people are being told every day that their cancer treatments or other life saving treatments aren’t covered, many people have insurance plans that still leave them with out of pocket expenses they can’t afford, many plans have annual maximums that wouldn’t begin to cover you if you became sick with a chronic illness, there are over 400 conditions which are considered pre-existing conditions by the health insurance industry for which they can deny you coverage or charge you exorbitant rates. Bottom line, our health care system is broken and needs to be reformed. The goals set forth are the right goals, they aim to address all of these issues, and the plan now circulating could do that. The problem however is getting a public option (something like an expansion of Medicare) that anyone could get put into place. This would force the for profit insurance companies to continue to offer service as good as the public plan at a competitive cost, and if they couldn’t they would go out of business. Even if a public option didn’t force them out of business, it would bring their profits from billions a year to mere millions, which is why they’re spending $14 million a day in a PR campaign to convince Americans that a public option will result in rationing and death panels. Ironically however, rationing of health care, and panels set up to discuss how to avoid paying for medically necessary care happen every single day in this country under our private insurers. Bottom line, it’s absolutely necessary, every industrialized nation in the world has a better health care system than ours and they are all socialized, either the care or the insurance (and we’re talking about insurance here, not care, which is a distinction the scaremongers don’t want you to make). Honestly, if the plan passes without a public option, it will be useless, maybe not right away, but eventually we’ll be back to square one, and we’ll be dealing with this again in 15 more years.

@dalepetrie Please, could you break up your posts with some paragraph breaks once in a while, I find this an almost impenetrable wall of text. That said, GA!

Sorry, some times I get going too fast and don’t realize how much I’ve got. I usually do try to break down larger posts, it’s these ones that are about what should be 2 to 3 paragraphs long that I sometimes just leave as one and then look at it later and think, boy, that should have been 2 or 3 paragraphs. The 20 to 50 paragraph ones, I usually do a pretty good job of separating my ideas w/ paragraphs.

“Not to mention our private run system, has muddied things up so badly that the US now has the 37th ranked health care system in the world (that’s behind Coasta Rica, The United Arab Emirates, etc). You know who’s ranked first? Terrible socialist France. In fact ALL of the “socialist” government run healthcare systems are ranked at least 10 spots higher than us (the UK, Canada, Germany, France, Switzerland, Sweden, etc).””

France’s health care is ranked first by the Paris-based WHO. The french system is unaffordable and is in equally bad shape as Britain’s. We’ve known for decades that we must reform it before it runs the country into the ground. Punitive tax burdens and tiny defense budgets aren’t enough to feed this bottomless pit. That anyone would think our system is anything to emulate just boggles the mind.

@Jack_Haas How could your system be “unaffordable” when your per capita expenditure is roughly half (~$3,000) what ours is (~$6,000). Michael Moore, in his documentary “Sicko,” interviews a group of American expatriates living in Paris (and their spouses and friends), and they all seemed much happier with the French system than the American one. He also went on a ride along with a mobile French doctor who made house calls which, apparently, is a normal thing in France, but unheard of here.

I take it that your main objection to the program is the level of taxation, not the quality or the availability of the medical services. In terms of taxation levels France does rank 5th in the world; but you also rank 9th in life expectancy, while America ranks 30th in the world and 47th in life expectancy (Non-WHO statistics) .

Are you familiar with the American system (47 million uninsured; insurance is tied to employment, so you have to keep your job; all kinds of arbitrary exclusions, rescissions and denials, etc)? We have thousands of people waiting in line overnight to get medical care in charity clinics run by groups like Remote Area Medical and Doctors Without Borders, who usually only do this sort of thing in third-world countries.

Seriously, would you trade your system for ours?

i am definitely FOR health care reform. i have lived in denmark, and was “lucky” enough to need to go to a doctor while i was there. it was seriously the best ‘going to the doctor’ experiences i have ever had.

it was really cool. everyone is issued these little cards that look like credit cards they have your name and a long number on them, and all you do is swipe it. no paper work no “co-pay”. it was like being on a time machine into the future!

(well i hope that is our future at least)

@alive Blah. Same thing in the military, and in the VA too. And it’s the biggest joke. You can’t honestly say you wouldn’t fear an Army dentist.

@NowWhat i think you are assuming that a “public option” means that you have to see a doctor (or dentist) who is employed by the government. Is that a fair characterization of your position?

If so, then I must first say that right now there is no set bill, so we can only guess what TYPE of public option will proposed.

Just from my own imagination, one type would be like the VA. however, another type, and the one that the president and the democrats have been using as their slogan, is “medicare for all”.

in the medicare scenario, i can see any doctor i please (and so can everyone else, including you)

and since i do not know any Army doctors, or dentists, i can’t imagine i would seek one out. to answer your question… ya i would be scared to go to an army anything…

thankfully that is not the scenario, so i don’t think i will have to worry about it.

Argh. This is not a public health care option. It is a public insurance option. Doctors will not be employed by the government. The government will be insuring the patients.

@alive @lefteh So what you’re asking for is more government control? Call it what you want, but at least we can agree- this is just more government in our lives.

@NowWhat i don’t see how it is more government control… can you explain that comment?

@NowWhat – what they’re saying is that having an additional way to obtain insurance adds a choice, regardless of who provides the insurance, because insurance is just how your medical bills get PAID. The government is not looking at getting rid of our system of privately run clinics, doctors, nurses, hospitals, specialists, etc….they’re just looking for a way to make it easier for the masses to access this type of care. One way, indeed the only way as evidenced by the fact that every other industrialized country on the planet does this, is to institute a government plan that guarantees insurance (and thus access to health care) to anyone who wants/needs it.

If you tell someone, right now you have two choices…sign up for your employer’s plan, or opt out of having insurance. Well you’ll be telling them, now you have a third choice. That is NOT less choice. No one is going to force ANYONE to buy into this plan.

“So what you’re asking for is more government control? Call it what you want, but at least we can agree- this is just more government in our lives.”
how exactly is giving your elected servants more discretion in how to do their jobs worse than letting people, who are only interested in your money, decide over your life and death?

It has no place in America,we as Americans can deal with problems without the Governments help.

@Mandomike Are you equipped to fund your own medical research? To organize your own police and fire protection, your own libraries, your own old age security? Can you deal with H1N1, terrorism and global warming all by yourself? What happens when $6 trillion disappears out of the economy because an unregulated stock market bubble bursts and threatens to bring down the entire world economy? Can you restabilize the economy all by yourself? Can you create a jobs program to put people back to work or keep them out of foreclosure? Can you figure out all by yourself which investment mutual funds are on the up-and-up and which are Ponzi schemes? Are you self-educated?

Insurance is one of the things that government can do very, very well. It can spread risk across the largest possible risk pool so that you don’t have the healthy opting out and not paying their fair share. It eliminates the sort of cherry picking that gives rise to exclusions for preexisting conditions, automatic denials and rescission. Medicare, for example, has much lower administrative overhead (1% -3%) because it does not have to make a profit; it has uniform procedures and enormous economies of scale. The private sector has between 20% and 30% administrative overhead—that’s money you pay that doesn’t go to your care—in part because health care CEOs pay themselves $300 million per year. And, despite their being age 65 and older, that segment of the population is the healthiest in the nation.

Are we really a nation where everyone is only out for himself? Do you really have so little regard for your fellow American that you won’t contribute to a program that helps the whole country?

@Zuma, as it turns out H1N1 or Global warming are not much of a problem, as far as what Government can do very well is spend our money,,thanks but no thanks I choose to spend it my self.Your argument about medicare not having to make a profit just makes my point, that would drive the private insurance companies out of the game which means that the Government would hold all the cards, thanks but no thanks.

@Mandomike
What is it exactly that makes Americans capable of dealing with problems without government (to which there is, by the way, not a single instance in history where that has been demonstrated) and those Somalians, who do not have a government, are incaple of that, and have seen their country and society slide down into chaos, crime, and barberism?
How do you think will the US fare when their government controlled institutions collapse (police, the entire justice system, firestations, hospitals, schools, roads and highways, water and sewage systems, telephone networks, electrical grids, garbage removal services, regulatory agencies that ensure the safety and quality of products, food and medications, agencies that enforce workers and customer’s rights, basic research institutions (it was public research into basic science that discovered the giant magneto resistance effect, which enabled the private industry to develop high capacity hard drive), air traffic control, anti trust enforcement agencies, the satellite network and deployment system (it was government funded development that brought about the possibilites of satellite based navigation, communication and television systems, weather monitoring and prediction systems))? Where do you think the US would be today if there was no government to provide all these services? (My educated guess is, without a central body to coordinate defensive military strategies, to coordinate armies and battle groups and to provide soldiers with appropriate weaponry, your country’s territory would be neatly divided by Mexico and Canada) And where do you think the US would be headed if these services were to disappear suddenly? How much better do you expect the US to fare than Somalia?

”that would drive the private insurance companies out of the game which means that the Government would hold all the cards, thanks but no thanks.”
No it would not. It has not in Germany. German private insurance companies are alive and kicking, so this disproves your claim.

Well let’s see, my great grand parents, my grand parents, my parents and I will do just fine, Government should only be used for protection from foreign and domestic threat and for infrastructure and I am for the government helping those who can’t help themselves other than that stay out of my life.

@Mandomike Private insurance companies are just middle men. You pay them your premium and they pay your medical bills—only they take 20% to 30% off the top for profit administrative costs, and waste, fraud and abuse—and they game you when you try to collect. Who couldn’t love that deal!

H1N1 and global warming not a problem? Naw, that’s your selfishness talking; you just want more money to spend on yourself.

@Mandomike Right here’s your problem, the health care industry is run by companies who care about one thing…. profit…. They could give two sh*ts about you, your health, or whether they pay you any money (well not all of them, but EASILY the large majority). They will try to weasel their way out of any and all money they owe you should you make a claim. I think that can very easily be pointed out by the fact that health insurance premiums have gone up 4 and 5 fold in the last decade, while health care and claims have gone down.

Or for another point, how about the fact that there are 40 million un-insured americans who simply can’t afford it. Like myself. I’m a college graduate, working for a well to do company. But the CHEAPEST health insurance offered by my company would literally cost me about 1/6 of my yearly income.

Besides, did you know that the Federal government is ALREADY paying for health care of anyone uninsured? If I go to the hospital right now for say, a broken leg. The hosptial BY LAW cannot turn me away. They MUST provide medical care too me. Later when I say I can’t pay the bill, guess who does pay it. The Fed. Who lobbied to get that part of the law passed so that health insurance companies would have no burden in that? Health insurance companies. Who’s lobbying now and in the past with billions of dollars to insure that doesn’t change? Health insurance companies.

If we had a public option, it would allow people who are currently going to the ER for health care the ability to go to a regular doctors office, which is on average 6x cheaper. And also, rather than paying absolutely nothing into their healthcare, they would be paying something into it (further offsetting the cost to the American tax payer). I believe the estimate was something like 1.2 trillion dollars off the deficit in the next 10 years.

If you want the government to stay out of your life, fine, more power to you… Don’t buy a public option when (and I say when because even if it’s not now, it WILL be passed in at least my life time) it comes out. But the rest of us would greatly appreciate a public option that will give the vast majority of 40 million un-insured people insurance, whilst lowering the deficit, and providing better health car because it’s more orderly.

Side note, whats your opinion on Medicare and Medicaide?