Interesting article on Obama health care plan

Just want to comment... that mentality is why you became a nurse, isn't it?


We need more like you.

I was going to say the same thing.

Also, salaried doctors would not do the tricks that I have seen dozens of times.. that is a doctor randomly walking through a hospital, poking his head in a patient's door and signing the chart to get a slice of the pie.

In working with a charity several years to help poverty-stricken people in the USA you would be amazed at the number of cases I turned up going over medical bills trying to negotiate the payoff for the hospital. We investigated the charges when we noted multiple doctors in a short period of time. One case I was able to prove that 3 of the 6 doctors had never actually administered care to the patient or had provided insight for a diagnosis and we got those charges dropped from the invoice.

Imagine how many cases around the country are going unchecked.

Universal healthcare with salaried doctors will eliminate this kind of problem and also the serious problem of unnecessary testing and other things that corporate doctors do to pad the bill and bring more income for the hospital and themselves.

Sue,

There are plenty of us who do the same who oppose mandatory taxpayer-funded healthcare.

It is hardly a sign of lack of compassion that people oppose further government intrusion into their pocketbooks and lives.

all the mony obama is talking about is gona come from nurses and probably doctors pay . nurses seems to be a little be" to expensive" for obama socialist era .

Interesting piece on the possible effects of Obama's proposal:

How ObamaCare Will Affect Your Doctor
Expect longer waits for appointments as physicians get pinched on reimbursements.

At the heart of President Barack Obama's health-care plan is an insurance program funded by taxpayers, administered by Washington, and open to everyone. Modeled on Medicare, this "public option" will soon become the single dominant health plan, which is its political purpose. It will restructure the practice of medicine in the process.

Republicans and Democrats agree that the government's Medicare scheme for compensating doctors is deeply flawed. Yet Mr. Obama's plan for a centrally managed government insurance program exacerbates Medicare's problems by redistributing even more income away from lower-paid primary care providers and misaligning doctors' financial incentives.

Like Medicare, the "public option" will control spending by using its purchasing clout and political leverage to dictate low prices to doctors. (Medicare pays doctors 20% to 30% less than private plans, on average.) While the public option is meant for the uninsured, employers will realize it's easier -- and cheaper -- to move employees into the government plan than continue workplace coverage.

The Lewin Group, a health-care policy research and consulting firm, estimates that enrollment in the public option will reach 131 million people if it's open to everyone and pays Medicare rates, as many expect. Fully two-thirds of the privately insured will move out of or lose coverage. As patients shift to a lower-paying government plan, doctors' incomes will decline by as much as 15% to 20% depending on their specialty.

Physician income declines will be accompanied by regulations that will make practicing medicine more costly, creating a double whammy of lower revenue and higher practice costs, especially for primary-care doctors who generally operate busy practices and work on thinner margins. For example, doctors will face expenses to deploy pricey electronic prescribing tools and computerized health records that are mandated under the Obama plan. For most doctors these capital costs won't be fully covered by the subsidies provided by the plan.

Government insurance programs also shift compliance costs directly onto doctors by encumbering them with rules requiring expensive staffing and documentation. It's a way for government health programs like Medicare to control charges. The rules are backed up with threats of arbitrary probes targeting documentation infractions. There will also be disproportionate fines, giving doctors and hospitals reason to overspend on their back offices to avoid reprisals....

Right or wrong, more doctors will close their practices to new patients, especially patients carrying lower paying insurance such as Medicaid. Some doctors will opt out of the system entirely, going "cash only." If too many doctors take this route the government could step in -- as in Canada, for example -- to effectively outlaw private-only medical practice....

So how should we reform our broken health-care system? Rather than redistribute physician income as a way to subsidize an expansion of government control, Mr. Obama should fix the payment system to align incentives with improved care. After years of working on this problem, Medicare has only a few token demonstration programs to show for its efforts. Medicare's failure underscores why an inherently local undertaking like a medical practice is badly managed by a remote and political bureaucracy....

Private plans already pay doctors more than Medicare because they compete to attract higher quality providers into their networks. This gives them every incentive, as well as added leverage, to reward good clinicians while penalizing or excluding bad ones. A recent report by PriceWaterhouse Coopers that examined 10 of the nation's largest commercial health plans found that eight had implemented performance-based pay measures for doctors. All 10 plans are expanding efforts to monitor quality improvement at the provider level....

There are plenty of alternatives to Mr. Obama's plan that expand coverage to the uninsured, give them the chance to buy private coverage like Congress enjoys, and limit government management over what are inherently personal transactions between doctors and patients....

full piece: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124208383695408513.html

When a family member gets cancer or is an accident premiums will be raised. Those people too will join the elderly and permanently disabled in Medicare.
Healthy people will pay for their insurance and then join the public system when they need the most healthcare.

If we achieve Single Payer everyone with an income will pay and all Americans will have the same insurance. coverage.
I doubt Congress will vote for low quality care when THEY will have the same.

OPINION
How ObamaCare Will Affect Your Doctor Expect longer waits for appointments as physicians get pinched on reimbursements.

At the heart of President Barack Obama's health-care plan is an insurance program funded by taxpayers, administered by Washington, and open to everyone. Modeled on Medicare, this "public option" will soon become the single dominant health plan, which is its political purpose. It will restructure the practice of medicine in the process
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124208383695408513.html

I don't doubt that, Jolie. But we can't pay the kids' medical bills. Shouldn't we, as a society, take care of them? I certainly understand not wanting government intrusion, but one can, in the UK, certainly, supplement the NH with private insurance.

Somewhere between the NH model and what we have now is a solution, because this is sure broken.

What the Obama plan boils down to is ensuring that every American has equal access to quality health care.

I don't understand why this is a problematic concept. Part of the American Dream as outlined by our Founding Fathers is that all are created equal and that we all have equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
For many Americans this American Dream has been derailed by substandard health care delivered because of medical insurance altering medication prescriptions and giving generics whose inactive ingredients cause severe reactions with other medications. Substandard health care because they are turned away from doctor's offices and forced to pay much higher rates at a hospital and must opt-out of expensive procedures that they cannot afford but may save their lives.
Derailing the pursuit of happiness because the rising costs of medical insurance means more and more people are becoming uninsured and thereby racking up huge charges and debt in order to take care of simple procedures.

This is not about upsetting the American Way by replacing Capitalism with Socialism; it isn't about "isms" at all. This is about fulfilling the promise that was given to all Americans and those who would become Americans at the very establishment of our nation.

Any patriot should be able to see that.

Actually as I recall the debates, it was clear to me that the current health care that Congress enjoys is the benchmark for what the universal health care is supposed to meet.

So any talk about reducing the level of care is based on misinformation.

Actually the overall cost is going to be about $2,500 per household. This amount can easily be taken from federal budget already allocated for programs which are defunct, no longer work and are simply drains on the economy. This is precisely what the plan is. Obama's complete plan is to isolate programs that can be cut out that will pay for this so that nobody feels any greater tax impact from the universal health care implementation.

Check out the Obama perspective instead of listening to what Rush Limbaugh has to say:

http://healthreform.gov