Obamakare in the UK
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Something we have to look forward to:
Filthy NHS wards are being plagued by pests – with maggots found in slippers and rats in maternity units, it was revealed last night.
Hospitals are so dirty that pest controllers were called out to 20,000 infestations in the past two years.
Experts warned that the appalling levels of hygiene added to the danger to patients from the deadly superbugs MRSA and C.diff, which multiply in the same environments as pests.
Official figures obtained by the Tories show that 80 per cent of NHS trusts reported problems with ants, 66 per cent with rats and 77 per cent with mice.
Cockroaches were reported at 59 per cent of trusts, biting insects or fleas at 65 per cent, and bed bugs at 24 per cent.
There were infestations of maggots at a further 6 per cent of trusts. And many of the pests were in clinical areas.
‘If you’re lying in hospital with an open wound, the last thing you want to worry about is rats and cockroaches in the vicinity.’
Despite millions being ploughed into the NHS since New Labour came to power in 1997, many hospital buildings are still dilapidated.
The information collated by the Conservatives amounts to a roll call of failure to improve hygiene in England’s hospitals. And the number of infestations is likely to be greater because only three-quarters of trusts responded to the Freedom of Information requests.
Clive Boase, of Pest Management Consultancy, said insects such as flies, ants or cockroaches can be carriers of superbugs.
He added: ‘These infective insects disperse through the hospital, possibly into clinically sensitive areas.
‘If they come into contact with a vulnerable patient, there is a chance the patient may then develop a healthcare-acquired infection.’
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8:50 AM
We don’t have government-run healthcare in the United States, except for the VA. And the VA has pretty high levels of satisfaction. Nobody has proposed that the federal government should be running healthcare for the rest of us in the way that the National Health operates in Britain. Even Medicare and Medicaid, which are paid for by the government, are provided by private doctors, and have been since their inception. The bill passed yesterday doesn’t even go that far. Private insurance companies will still collect the premiums, and private doctors and hospitals will still provide the care. So I think it is time to stop trying to scare people with completely irrelevant stories about maggots and rats in some other country’s hospitals.
.-= Joe Markowitz´s last blog ..What Liz Cheney Doesn’t Know =-.
10:41 AM
Joe, I hope you’re really not that naive. Nancy Pelosi said this:
Mrs. Pelosi is already talking about expanding ObamaCare. She favors adding a “public option” to compete with private insurers. “Once we kick through this door [and pass it], there’ll be more legislation to follow,” she told liberal bloggers on Monday.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704743404575127540906168462.html
That’s called Socialized Medicine and it’s called NHS. If you think private insurance companies can stay in business with the “endless” pockets of the government standing against them then I have a bridge in San Francisco to sell you.
12:51 PM
You are right that the ultimate goal of a lot of the people supporting the public option, is to eliminate private insurance companies. But that is still one giant step away from having the government actually own and manage the hospitals, and for doctors and nurses to be government employees. So even if we eventually get rid of private insurance, we are not even close to talking about getting rid of private doctors or private hospitals. And even in Britain, private medical care still exists, and a lot of people do not use the National Health system.
And what is so great about private insurance companies anyway? They waste more money than any government program you can think of.
.-= Joe Markowitz´s last blog ..What Liz Cheney Doesn’t Know =-.
1:22 PM
Joe, government is the WORST conduit to direct scarce resources. History has shown this to be a truism. The goal of Democrats is to nationalize healthcare lock, stock, and barrel. If private insurance companies go out of business who do you think will be operating the hospitals? And yes, private care does exist in the UK (Stephen Hawking enjoys this because people donate money for his care because the NHS did a piss poor job of it) but few can afford it (but those who do enjoy better healthcare than their countrymen).
Please elaborate as to how private insurance companies waste so much money.
5:45 PM
Does anyone remember the problem at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center?
“Curtis Mills, a former Army sergeant from Shapleigh, said he became frustrated by endless waits for treatment at Walter Reed, which has been called the Army’s premier caregiver for soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mills, 33, was unable to bathe himself during the week it took him to arrive at Walter Reed. His wife, Penny, teenage daughter Jessica and toddler son Conan found him covered with blood and dirt.”
“It would be hard for any American to remain unmoved when reading of the rodent- and cockroach-infested rooms of Building 18 and the bureaucratic delays and inefficiencies that have bred despair for wounded men and women soldiers and Marines even in the better quarters.”
It’s amazing what we choose to remember, and the nonsensical excuses that are uttered in defense of ignorance. If you think a government “influenced” health care system will be better, maybe you should ask some of the veterans at Walter Reed.
“And what is so great about private insurance companies anyway? They waste more money than any government program you can think of.”
I would like to see statistics please.
.-= THE LIBERTY PEN´s last blog ..Updates =-.
7:21 PM
Joe, I hate to self promote, but here is evidence…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nUYRPdX6Wc
Once there is a single payer plan, and hospitals fail, (Actually, they’ll probably fail prior to that), that’ll be the justification to take over the hospitals. After all, if it’s OK for the government to own GM and Chrysler…right?
9:03 PM
Good point about GM. We know how well that went. And Chrysler was bought out by Fiat (no pun intended).
8:39 AM
The Walter Reed scandal showed some big problems with the VA, but overall the levels of satisfaction reported with the VA are pretty high. Matt, I watched your video, but it didn’t say anything about what is supposedly so bad about single payer. All it said was that a lot of the people supporting health care reform want to get to a single payer system eventually. That is no secret. But where is the evidence that single payer would lead to hospitals failing? Hospitals are failing now because they must treat the uninsured without reimbursement, and must use a lot of resources just to deal with billing and collections. What a waste! The countries that have single payer all spend less than the US on healthcare and pretty much all get better health care results, by just about every statistic you can cite about life expectancy, infant mortality, etc. That is a fact. Private health insurance spends about 30% of every dollar that we pay in premiums on administrative costs and other costs unrelated to providing health care. That is a fact also. (But the new health care bill will require insurance companies to spend about 80% of what they take in on actually providing health care. At least that is an improvement.) Who can defend that kind of waste? I don’t hear anyone explaining what is so great about private health insurance.
.-= Joe Markowitz´s last blog ..What Liz Cheney Doesn’t Know =-.
10:34 AM
Joe, did you ever think that insurance companies would rather spend 0% on administrative costs? Why don’t you tell me how much the government spends on administrative costs then we can compare.
And my friend uses the VA for his medical treatment. It’s great as long as he can wait. What happened when he couldn’t wait? He got sent to a PRIVATE hospital.
A vast majority of Americans are very happy with their insurance/healthcare. I am one of them. 59% of Americans are against Obamakare.
11:11 AM
There is a lot of debate about administrative costs. Here is a pretty balanced summary: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/07/administrative_costs_in_health.html To make the most extreme comparison, some people quote figures that Medicare only spends 2 or 3% of its budget on administrative costs, while private insurance can spend upwards of 30%. But as the Klein article points out, that is probably not a fair comparison. What is inefficient about our system is that we already have three very large but very different single payer systems operating, one for the elderly, another one for the power, and another one for veterans. Then we have hundreds of private systems, which represent a huge administrative headache for employers as well as for hospitals and doctors. And if you compare our system with a single payer system like Canada’s, overall we probably spend twice as much on administrative costs as they do. The point being not necessarily that we should adopt the Canadian system, but that everyone should be able to agree that it is in everyone’s interests to make the system more efficient, and it would be good if we could do that without the ideological blinders that are telling us that private is good, and public is bad, or vice versa.
.-= Joe Markowitz´s last blog ..Is Bi-Partisanship Dead? =-.
11:58 AM
By the way, that 59% poll number you cite includes a lot of people who think the health care reform bill is not liberal enough (people who want single payer or at least a public option presumably). Also a lot of other polls report different results depending on how you phrase the question. http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2010/03/health-care-reform-an-opinion-summary.html But now that the legislation has passed, those poll numbers are not going in the direction you might think. Gallup is reporting today that 49% believe passage of this bill was a good thing, with only 40% saying it is a bad thing. http://www.gallup.com/poll/126929/Slim-Margin-Americans-Support-Healthcare-Bill-Passage.aspx
And I saw an article the other day (unfortunately I can’t find the cite) which made the terrific point that when George Bush was president, one of the things that Republicans most admired about him was that he refused to pay attention to polls. Now that Obama is president, all of a sudden Republicans are telling Obama he should be paying attention to the fact that a majority supposedly don’t think health reform is a good idea. Shouldn’t they be admiring him for standing up for what he thinks is right, the way they did with Bush? And the president himself made the point the other night that it is strange that so many Republicans seem so concerned that the Democrats are doing something that is not very popular. Could it be that the Republicans actually know that what the Democrats are doing could turn out to be pretty popular after all?
.-= Joe Markowitz´s last blog ..Is Bi-Partisanship Dead? =-.
1:57 PM
“And what is so great about private insurance companies anyway? They waste more money than any government program you can think of.”
What about the Head Start program;
“Head Start,” the flagship pre-kindergarten program introduced in 1965, has been a $166 billion failure. That’s the upshot of a sophisticated multi-year study just released by the Department of Health and Human Services.
And then;
“Why is this important? Because $166 billion has been squandered on this program over the past half century, and the Obama administration is wasting even more, even faster. The president already increased annual spending on Head Start by more than a third last year, from $6.8 billion to $9.2 billion. He has made clear he does not intend to stop there.”
Now Amtrak:
“Congress just approved a $1.2 billion subsidy for Amtrak, but given last year’s loss of $1.3 billion, the new money will be used to cover operating losses rather then repairs to infrastructure or for service improvements. Amtrak CEO Davis Gunn says the mammoth subsidy will just cover operating expenses.”
“Amtrak is a stark American failure, eating up billions of taxpayer dollars while continuing to provide poor service. On-time performance continues to suffer. Some experts say that it will take $2 to $3 billion just to fix the rails.”
From another site:
“With 30 years of failure under its belt, Amtrak has received nearly $25 billion in taxpayer dollars, with no prospect in sight of ever breaking even. Under the Amtrak Reform and Accountability Act of 1997, Congress mandated the rail service to be self-sufficient by December 2002, or come up with a liquidation plan. But late last year, Senate leaders blocked Amtrak from even doing a liquidation study of itself.”
I can provide more examples of governmental failure, can any reasonable person posit that health care will be any different?
.-= THE LIBERTY PEN´s last blog ..Updates =-.
3:16 PM
I can’t find a cite to the HHS report on Head Start, only a quote that you apparently took from Pajamas Media. But if HHS truly found that Head Start is nothing but a waste of money, what does the HHS report say is the justification for continuing the program? My guess is they think the program does have some benefits. Amtrak loses money because it must pay the railroads for use of freight line right of ways. That is the way it was set up from the beginning. But even if it had been set up the way it should have been, with its own rail lines for passenger service, I will grant you that it probably would still need a subsidy. Car travel is also heavily subsidized in the sense that people do not pay for all of the negative externalities that they create when they drive (air pollution, use of valuable land for roads that could have been used for private development, foreign wars to secure our oil supplies, health costs to people who live near freeways, infrastructure for suburban development that is encouraged by car travel, etc.)
But what do these examples have to do with insurance companies? I have yet to hear anyone tell me what private insurance companies do that is so great.
.-= Joe Markowitz´s last blog ..Is Bi-Partisanship Dead? =-.
4:17 PM
In a Gallup poll for 2006-2008, 75% of respondents said they were happy with their healthcare insurance/coverage. That’s pretty high so obviously there are some people out there who disagree with you.
Amtrak is forced to run unprofitable routes. The NE corridor is the only one they make money on.
You bring up some good points about the negatives associated with travel by car however you also forget all the positives like job creation, personal mobility, home ownership, real estate, lowered costs for food, clothing, electronics, etc…
5:38 PM
Yes, most people are happy with their coverage. That is why the new bill is not going to change things very much for most people. But you have to remember that the reasons that most people are happy are that (1) their employers are paying for it, so they have no idea how much it is actually costing them, which is a lot more than they realize; and (2) they don’t need it very much. Maybe they won’t be so happy if they have to be hospitalized and they find out their coverage isn’t as good as they thought it was. Or if they lose their job.
.-= Joe Markowitz´s last blog ..Is Bi-Partisanship Dead? =-.
5:54 PM
Read your words again;
“And what is so great about private insurance companies anyway? They waste more money than any government program you can think of.”
You’re not getting it so I will show you the operative words: “They waste more money than any government program you can think of.”
Your preceding assertion fabricates a position that insurance companies produce more waste than government programs. Thus, in light of your supposition that, “they produce more waste,” you require a submission for defense wherein private insurance companies are superior to the government.
In another comment you offer the contention that private insurance companies spend 30% of our premiums on unrelated health care variables. With governmental intrusion this figure will decline by 10%, creating “slight” improvement. Again, you require a defense for the 10% variance since you deem it inexcusable.
Your entire premise is predicated upon the fact that private insurance companies produce more waste than the federal government. This is a fallacy, and quite myopic.
Regarding Head Start:
From Cato; “Head Start, the most sacrosanct federal education program, doesn’t work.”
“What’s so damning is that this study used the best possible method to review the program: It looked at a nationally representative sample of 5,000 children who were randomly assigned to either the Head Start (“treatment”) group or to the non-Head Start (“control”) group.”
From CNSNEWS.com
“The 27-page report, titled “Head Start Impact Study Final Report,” states bleak findings.
“In sum, this report finds that providing access to Head Start has benefits for both 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds in the cognitive, health, and parenting domains, and for 3-year-olds in the social-emotional domain. However, the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by first grade for the program population as a whole.”
The report can be found here: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/hs/impact_study/reports/impact_study/executive_summary_final.pdf?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email
I can provide more independent sites if you like, they all tell the same story. And with all due respect, there is no justification for the program to exist, not at a 165 billion dollar loss.
So, do the private insurance companies produce more waste than the Head Start program? No, they don’t. If they did, they wouldn’t be in business.
Lastly, you ask the question what private insurance companies do well. I have no complaint on mine. They pay their end as I pay mine.
.-= THE LIBERTY PEN´s last blog ..Updates =-.
7:51 PM
I’m not sure how I got myself into defending Head Start, a program about which I know very little, and I’m not sure exactly how it is relevant to whether the government could do a better job of paying for health care than private insurance companies, but I’m sure I led myself into this trap, so here is what I would say about it. I sent my kids to private nursery school for a number of reasons, not very many of which were related to whether they would be able to out-perform other kids on standardized tests by the time they were in first or second grade. I spent quite a bit of money on nursery school. Do I think it was wasted? Probably some of it was. Maybe they had unnecessary staff people, maybe they wasted money on supplies, maybe some of their programs were not educationally sound. But overall, they spent the money that we paid for nursery school on facilities and staff and other nursery school kind of stuff, and I’m sure my kids got some socialization and other benefits out of it, so the money was not wasted. Head Start is nursery school for poor kids. Do they waste more money than my private nursery school. I have no reason to think they do, and the study does not indicate that. Are there benefits to the program. The study says it helps kids get ready for kindergarten. Do those benefits “wear off” by the time the kids get to first grade? I guess that is what the study shows. What does that mean? I have no idea. Does it mean that every penny spent on Head Start is wasted? If you think that, then every other pre-school program, public or private, could be a waste also.
In any case, I still haven’t heard an answer to my question about what wonderful things private insurance companies do.
.-= Joe Markowitz´s last blog ..Is Bi-Partisanship Dead? =-.
8:12 PM
Well Joe, one thing private insurance companies do very well is preventative screening (so they can pay a small bill now not a big bill later when the patient becomes sick) and that’s why the US has higher cancer survival rates than any other socialized healthcare countries. Be it breast cancer, rectal cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer… in the US under private, for profit healthcare, you’ll catch your cancer early and live longer.
2:29 PM
Uuuh Ooooh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I giggle inside…. :-0
.-= THE LIBERTY PEN´s last blog ..Updates =-.
8:22 PM
Socialism we can believe in
.-= Matthew´s last blog ..Stupak’s Executive Order. =-.
9:50 AM
Harrison you found one statistic where the American health care system may have better success rates than European systems, and you automatically assume that the reason for that success must be because private insurance companies are paying the bills? Why not give some credit to the doctors ordering those tests? And how do you know cancer survival rates for people on Medicare aren’t included in your statistics, or aren’t just as good? You need to prove that using private insurance companies is either making us healthier, or that they are saving us money, and I don’t think your chart does that.
And even if your chart could be used to support the idea that private health insurance is better, what about these charts? Couldn’t they be used to prove that private health insurance is actually killing us?
Life Expectancy (years):
Men Women
Japan 76.2 82.5
France 72.9 81.3
Switzerland 74.1 81.3
Netherlands 73.7 80.5
Sweden 74.2 80.4
Canada 73.4 80.3
Norway 73.1 79.7
Germany 72.6 79.2
Finland 70.7 78.8
United States 71.6 78.6
United Kingdom 72.7 78.2
Denmark 72.2 77.9
Infant Mortality Rate (per 1,000 live births):
United States 10.4
United Kingdom 9.4
Germany 8.5
Denmark 8.1
Canada 7.9
Norway 7.9
Netherlands 7.8
Switzerland 6.8
Finland 5.9
Sweden 5.9
Japan 5.0
Death rate of 1-to-4 year olds (per community of 200,000 per year):
United States 101.5
Japan 92.2
Norway 90.2
Denmark 85.1
France 84.9
United Kingdom 82.2
Canada 82.1
Netherlands 80.3
Germany 77.6
Switzerland 72.5
Sweden 64.7
Finland 53.3
Death rate of 15-to-24 year olds (per community of 200,000 per year):
United States 203
Switzerland 175
Canada 161
France 156
Finland 154
Norway 128
Germany 122
Denmark 120
United Kingdom 114
Sweden 109
Japan 96
Netherlands 90
.-= Joe Markowitz´s last blog ..How Bi-Partisanship Works =-.
4:20 PM
If these health care systems are superior, why do so many people come here for care? And why don’t we cut through all the crap and call it what it is, leftists thinking that they are entitled to a non-existent right.
.-= THE LIBERTY PEN´s last blog ..Updates =-.
7:52 AM
People come to the United States for care because we have some of the finest hospitals and doctors in the world. They do not come here because we have such a wonderful system for paying those doctors and hospitals. Those hospitals will be the first ones to tell you how much they hate dealing with Blue Cross or Aetna, and how much they also hate billing and trying to collect from people whose insurance does not cover the full cost of the visit.
.-= Joe Markowitz´s last blog ..How Bi-Partisanship Works =-.
9:38 AM
Joe, many drug store chains (like Walgreens in Washington State) are refusing to accept any more new Medicaid patients because they are losing money on 95% of them. Never heard that about private insurance companies.
I think you should movie to Canada and experience rationed care, denial of service, and waiting lists for yourself. It would make for great blogging!
1:32 PM
Please show me one Walgreen’s that will give away prescription drugs if my private insurance coverage does not reimburse for them. Show me a Walgreen’s that will let me pay whatever I want for drugs if I work for a company that does not provide health insurance. Tell me you’ve never heard of a private insurance company that drops people because of pre-existing conditions, or because policyholders have exceeded their lifetime cap, or that terminates policies when people get sick because they found out that somebody forgot to disclose some illness they had 20 years ago, on their insurance application. Then show me the drug stores that will keep giving prescription drugs away to people who have had their private insurance revoked for any of those reasons. It is true that Medicaid reimbursement rates are too low. That is a problem Medicaid should fix. But don’t pretend that everyone else is covered, because millions of people are not.
.-= Joe Markowitz´s last blog ..Big Nuclear Arms Reductions (yawn) =-.
2:41 PM
Joe, the point was that many drug store chains are refusing new Medicaid customers because they lose money when they sell them prescription drugs. This fact was in response to what you wrote regarding private insurance:
“They do not come here because we have such a wonderful system for paying those doctors and hospitals.”
If Democrats are successful in destroying private insurance companies do you think prescription drugs will be easier or harder for people to get?
Also, if you have wrecked 5 cars do you think an insurance company should be forced to offer you coverage? Of course not. Healthcare is a finite resource. Companies should be allowed to charge more or deny coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. If not, the vast majority of limited resources will go for a few while the rest of us will suffer. No thanks.
And your case about somebody forgetting about some disease they had 15 years ago and thus having their coverage canceled are extremely rare and when Obama told this story it was quickly debunked.
Fact is, a vast majority of Americans LIKE their healthcare insurance and never have a problem with it or their coverage.
Getting the government involved in this more is a bad idea. AT&T just announced Obamakare is going to cost them $1 billion this year and, guess what? They said they will drop prescription benefits for most former employees that currently have this coverage:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100326/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_at_t_health_care
Obamakare is already killing jobs and it’s been not even a week! No wonder Obama said we should get used to high unemployment figures for the foreseeable future.
3:04 PM
As a matter of fact, I do think that if we destroyed insurance companies prescriptions would be cheaper, as they are in the countries that have eliminated insurance companies from the equation. As for the pricing of health insurance and whether you should still be able to get it even if you are sick, I guess we just have a philosophical disagreement on that. And the AT&T story was interesting, but it appears that most of the charge they are taking was due to the closing of a tax loophole that allowed them to deduct 100% of the cost of a drug benefit even though 28% of that cost was already subsidized. Shouldn’t taxpayers only get deductions equal to what they are paying?
.-= Joe Markowitz´s last blog ..Big Nuclear Arms Reductions (yawn) =-.
8:51 PM
Joe, that was covered in the article:
“Under the 2003 Medicare prescription drug program, companies that provide prescription drug benefits for retirees have been able to receive subsidies covering 28 percent of eligible costs. But they could deduct the entire amount they spent on these drug benefits — including the subsidies — from their taxable income.
The new law allows companies to only deduct the 72 percent they spent.”
I fail to see how you think going to socialized healthcare would lower drug costs. Do you know why drugs cost what they do in the U.S.?
6:54 PM
“As a matter of fact, I do think that if we destroyed insurance companies prescriptions would be cheaper…”
That’s what I was waiting for, what else should the government take over Sir? The pharmaceuticals industry? When will it be enough? It is obvious that big government suites you, and you certainly would have no problem forcing everybody else to conform to your socio-political ideology (via governmental mechanisms). Unbelievable.
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