Hope you enjoyed your rant.
Yeah, I sure did. You're always a joy to do battle against.
How about you? I?ll bet you were fuming.
But, rants are most enjoyable when I?m speaking the truth while destroying your arguments at the same time.
I?ll bet you weren?t expecting for someone to actually call you out on all of your misrepresentations, and your untruths, and your lies.
You might want to call it a ?rant?; I call it a thorough whipping against your bias and lies.
To return to the subject.
So, when you find yourself at a loss for words, you want to restart the conversation?
All malpractice costs, including defensive medicine excused by fears of malpractice claims, comes to 2.5% of total health care spending.
Statistics and polls. One has to choose to go with what might seem expedient at the moment when all else is fails.
Look, the statistics that most matter lately about government controlled healthcare, aka: Obamacare, is that, the majority of the people are against it, and they were against it all along, and they will continue being against it. Heck, even some democrats who voted for Obamacare, are now running scared and talking about repealing Obamacare in the next congress; and the rest of the democrats that voted for Obamacare who are not mentioning "repeal", are running so scared that they dare not mention their votes nor the bill on the campaign trail for the November election.
So, why aren?t you talking about ?that reality?? Oh, yeah, could it be that it wouldn?t be politically expedient to tell the truth?
Of that total, 60% represents defensive medicine, 20% is what victims get, and 20% is what lawyers get. (That's .6% of medical costs going to victims, .6% going to lawyers, and 1.3% going to defensive medicine.)
So, why aren?t you talking about the many negatives about government healthcare, aka: Obamacare? I?ll bet that you will never mention the negatives, will you? How about, it will make getting healthcare more expensive, and companies will drop people from their company paid plans, and people will be mandated by government, for the first time in history, to purchase a service or product. How about, as a result of companies having their expenses going up because of mandated healthcare and higher premiums, that unemployment will rise as a result of many companies having to lay off people in order to make up the difference.
In other words, malpractice costs don't explain medical inflation. There are other explanations for medical inflation.
Ok then, why aren?t you talking about those other inflationary items? Why aren?t you talking about how the democrats always block any proposals for across state lines competition for the purchase of healthcare plans? Why aren?t you talking about the very high cost of regulations from government for a lot of the services provided by healthcare providers?
Professional researchers, people who examine these questions academically without an agenda
You must be one of the most na?ve people in the world.
Everybody has an agenda, including many researchers and academics involved in healthcare, especially a lot of people who depend upon government grants for research and/or their government jobs.
(unlike, say, you)
I never claimed to be unbiased.
I have, however, said that I would prefer for people to make their decisions outside of party lines and outside their ideologies. I still believe in that.
On the other side, you are the most biased and unbending posters that I?ve ever had the displeasure of having a discussion with.
say the lack of diagnosis of chronic conditions, and the failure to do anything about incipient chronic conditions, are one big cause of medical inflation.
Yeah, right!!! That?s just more of your na?ve mentality.
The lack of diagnosis and treatment of chronic conditions is not necessarily the reason for the high cost of healthcare or malpractice insurance. Wasteful and redundant spending, like using many specialists and performing a lot of clinical but unnecessary examinations, and the cost of government regulations, have a lot to do with a lot of the high cost of healthcare and malpractice insurance.
Doctors wouldn?t bring up the cost of healthcare if they, for example, didn?t have to refer people to ?specialists? for further diagnosis and treatments. A lot of that extra work is done for defensive purposes by doctors fearing malpractice lawsuits.
So, it?s not just the cost of malpractice insurance that matters. It?s the associated cost of the extras that doctors have to perform, that bring up the cost of healthcare. Without the threats of malpractice lawsuits, perhaps malpractice insurance could?ve been lower, but the associated costs of the ?additional tests and treatments?, also brought up the high cost of healthcare. Without those additional demands brought into existence from the fear of lawsuits, healthcare and even malpractice insurance costs could?ve been kept much lower.
You don't have an answer for that. Never did. Never tried to.
You only see what you want to see. That makes you more blind than anyone who has ever lost complete vision in both eyes.
Just told those victims to go die in a corner somewhere.
That?s so plainly stupid.
What is it with people like you? Do you think that making such remarkably asinine statements is in any way going to win you the argument?
You?re not even being original.
You?re just copying from one of your radical lefties in congress who this year uttered one of the stupidest statements ever heard in congress. So, is Alan Grayson a hero of yours? 'Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly.'" So, how much more stupid can you get?
Get past the political.
Try to follow your own advice and perhaps you?d then get beyond your asinine ideology which believes that big government is best for the country and the people. Supporting government healthcare is mostly a political move by democrats, but, you?re too blind and ignorant to realize that.
That attitude is inhumane in the extreme. It's the way Michael Vick treated dogs. You treat poor people the way Michael Vick treated animals.
It is the attitude of people like you that has caused so much damage to the country and its people. While some people believe that government handouts and government control of everything is the way to go, the real effect is that, more people become dependent and will never get a career or a regular job, more people become poor, more people end up homeless, more people end up with no hope at all. That's where you and the democrats don't realize that you're the ones treating people like "dogs". My dog and my three cats are dependent on me for everything. You and the democrats want to treat people the way I treat my pets, although my pets will have a much better life than the who become dependent upon government. Did you notice that this year, more people are in the poverty ranks than in the last 50-60 years? That's what relying on government results in.
More big government, in the form of government controlled healthcare, would cause more people to die than the current system we have. But, you?re incapable of doing any kind of analysis as to why that would be. At best, you?re just a surface thinker who can?t go deep into analysis of the issues. Your thinking is done with that big muscle in the center of your chest. No thinking can be possible from there. Good intentions don't bring people out of poverty and don't create healthy human beings.
I won't accept that. I know we can do better.
We can?t do any better at all if we keep heading in the direction in which you and the democrats think we should go. In fact, it?s that same kind of direction which has led this country astray for the last 80+ years.
More of the same is just pure insanity.
I know because every other western country does better.
What planet are you on? Would that be the planet of the blind and the brainless?
That is, they spend much less than we do, get better results, their citizens live longer.
Yet, all of those countries depend upon the U.S for a lot of their defense and for a lot of those services which you claim cost their citizens less. Whenever the U.S. subsidizes any of those countries, in any way, with costs or with our research or with our products or our services, their costs will be less than for us in the U.S. A lot of those countries might have lowered costs of many services, but at our expense. Meanwhile, try to compare apples against apples next time.
One more thing that you and a lot of other people always forget to do is to compare the size of our country against the size of those other countries. It is a lot easier to administer and hold down costs in a much smaller country that is also less complex. You cannot compare what happens in a country like Finland against what happens in a much bigger country like ours. Finland?s population, as an example, is about the size of one of our cities, thus, a lot easier to manage.
Those are the facts at issue here.
All that you presented is your version of the facts, which ends up being mostly spin on the real situations.
All you've offered, all you've ever offered, is polemics.
You got that partially right.
I do offer the opposite arguments to your spin and lies. Lies and spin are not facts, and they should not be allowed to go unanswered.
However, I do also offer the real facts, which you refuse to acknowledge because they would be detrimental to your ideological nonsense.
And while you can fool some of the people all the time with polemics (like JohnMcGrew) and all of the people some of the time (like Sarah Palin does) you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
The only fool in any of these discussions is one by the name of ?Dana?.
Where it matters the most, is with the ?real people?. You don?t have the real people in mind when you talk about ?people?. You?re talking about people like you, and about the most clueless in society who are swayed and easily lied to.
You are losing the argument, and you will take a big whipping come November from the voters, aka: the real people. Those voters have opened up their eyes and they can see through your lies and spin, which is the same as that of the democratic party.
Eventually facts will out.
The facts are, indeed, coming out. And the real facts are being heard. Your lies have never equated to the truth. That?s why the people are now realizing that they?ve been duped, and are now getting ready to throw the liars and the bums out.
It took 45 years of Cold War for facts to win out against Soviet Communism.
You really are very ignorant.
The cold war was a series of events involving threats and diplomacy which did, indeed last some 40+ years.
But, if it were up to the democrats, the cold war would?ve been lost a long time ago by the U.S. and in favor of the USSR. In fact, for many years, there were many progressives and democrats who wanted to be like the USSR. And those people are still with us, and they call themselves progressives and socialists, and democrats and liberals. The politics and ideology they practice is very close to what defined the old USSR, namely, big government control over the economy and the people. You are one of them, but, you're too far into the ideology to even realize how you're part of the problem.
You are not smart enough to realize how similar ?YOUR? party is to the old USSR. And, don?t give me that garbage about you not being ideological. You support exactly the same views as the progressives in every one of their issues. You may want to deny it, but like they say: ?if it sounds like a duck, and walks like a duck, and walks like a duck, then by golly, it is a duck!?. You are a duck, aka, a progressive democrat that for all intents and purposes, is very much a communist. You can?t fool me and you?re not fooling anybody else.
I suspect it will take less with you, because in our time all those who want facts have access to facts.
You are like the person who can?t see the forest for the trees.
You are also like the liberals who live in their liberal enclaves all over the country, and have never met the real opposite side. You are the kind that talks about never having met a republican voter, but that's because there aren?t any around you. If they don?t exist in your neck of the woods, then they?re not real. It?s the same with your ideology. If you?ve never thought like the opposition, you?ll never understand why they are so adamant that they?re the ones that are right and you are wrong.
Unlike you, I have been on both sides of the arguments. In fact, I?ve been on many different sides of the argument, not just the two. So, I very well understand your side of the arguments, and I also very well understand all the ?other sides? of the arguments. You haven?t grown beyond what you grew up with. I was brought up a liberal, in very liberal grounds up in Manhattan, and the Bronx, and Harlem, and Brooklyn. Yet, after examining what was all around me, including the neighborhoods and what was causing the poverty and the people to continue voting for ever larger government intrusion into their lives, I realized that, what was wrong was the politics that was buying votes through the promises of taking care of people through government largess, and not really through improving people?s lives through their own hard work and own initiatives. The democrats were and still are about making sure that the people become dependent upon government for everything in their lives. The democratic party would be the beneficiary of people becoming ever more dependent upon government.
Government controlled healthcare is nothing but the latest prize to be captured by democrats, which will further make people more dependent on government to provide for them. That?s the agenda, and that?s what you are defending. If you understand the agenda and support it, then you are a very big part of the problem
.
Statistics are not the problem, nor is understanding them part of the solution.
It doesn?t even matter if healthcare was 100% free, and didn?t cost a dime to anybody or any company or any government. But, government is very inefficient, and very wasteful, and when they get involved in anything, costs always go up, no matter how much spinning is done, or how many lies are told.
The big picture, which includes healthcare, and the totality of all government controlled social services, is the problem. Therefore, I will never give an inch.
What is needed is for the country to get back to the constitution, and to enforcing our bill of rights. Under the constitution, a lot of what government has undertaken in the last 100 years is illegal.
Healthcare is illegal through its mandate that everybody has to purchase health insurance, under penalty of law if they don?t.
So, Dana, old buddy, it is you again, who is on the wrong side of what America really is about. You, more rightfully than me, belong in that communist heaven that you accuse me of wanting. But you are too blind and too committed to your ideology to even begin to realize the problems with your way of thinking.
Regarding the high cost of malpractice insurance, here?s a more honest article about the real costs:
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2009/08/06/reduce-the-high-cost-of-medical-malpractice/Here?s parts of it:
The next time you take your child to a doctor, scrutinize carefully the doctor?s bill.? What it won?t tell you is that an average of 10 cents out of every dollar you pay goes to the malpractice insurance doctors must have to protect themselves in case a patient sues them.
Malpractice premiums cost some doctors many tens of thousands of dollars a year, not because an individual doctor has a history of making mistakes, but because in some states juries make excessively generous awards knowing that insurance companies pay.
Medical specialties with the highest premiums include obstetrics and neurosurgery.? Malpractice insurance premiums for obstetricians range from $200,000 per year in high-cost states to $20,000 annually in low-cost states.? Resolving a suit takes at least three years, taking physicians? time away from the practice of medicine.
According to Towers Perrin, a global professional services firm, malpractice litigation costs $30 billion a year , and, since 1975, direct costs of litigation avoidance have grown at more than 10 percent annually.
But that?s less than half the story. To avoid being sued, doctors view patients with two sets of eyes.? One set is the caring, compassionate, medical professional.? The other set is a defensive strategist, looking at an individual who tomorrow may call a lawyer to sue. ? And, to be fair, sometimes doctors make avoidable, even negligent mistakes and injured patients are entitled to be compensated for their losses, and perhaps for some pain and suffering.
The defensive strategist dominates medical practice today.? Doctors use excessive tests and other procedures to avoid lawsuits, and stay out of certain areas of medicine?most notably obstetrics.? The net result is higher costs for medical care.
There?s a comment below the article worth quoting and which points to the unmentioned problems:
Sounds like everyone is confusing costs. Doctors are generally constrained in charges by insurance company?s price schedules which are calculated as a percentage of Medicare fees. Malpractice fees are indeed high but are not directly able to be passed on to patients but are part of business overhead for doctors. The cost of malpractice insurance may only be $10 billion but that doesn?t take into account unneeded testing such as bloodwork, MRI,PET scan, CT that has resulted in ?intensity creep? across the entire medical landscape. Ask your friends who have gone to the ER for a headache or abdominal pain and probably 95% had a CT. These are only a few categories of cost that will continue to increase unabated without some different malpractice approach.
During the health care reform debate one of the big points made by conservatives was that malpractice costs are a big contributor to health inflation.
