Politics
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- identity0
when does this law take effect?
- 2012-2014. Enough time
for the Republicans and the
Health Industry to make plenty
of money off Americans...utopian - then they get to make money off Americans by LAWeieio
- haha yeah utopian you don't think this was a win for insurance companies and pharma?? Did you see the stockmathinc
- market today? They're in utopia over this bill.mathinc
- But yeah I know I know, this bill is really to help the people of this country. So genuine these politicians are.mathinc
- The people who voted for this bill REALLY stuck it to big pharma and the insurance companies today! haha.mathinc
- They just gained a boat load of new customers. I'll bet their trying to figure out how to salvage their business!mathinc
- Or maybe you can help people while also creating opportunities for the industry?ukit
- fuck.. grammar fail I meant: *they'remathinc
- Is that completely crazy? I guess you'd prefer that the markets had tanked...?ukit
- ukit, no one is being helped unless costs are being reduced. No one. Costs aren't being addressed and the customer pool has just gotten bigger.. who wins?mathinc
- pool has just gotten bigger.. who wins? Who do you think wins in this?mathinc
- If what you got out of what I said was that I wished the markets tanked then you're a fucking idiot. I pointed out the markets to show you thatmathinc
- to illustrate that the insurance and pharma are winners because of this bill.mathinc
- Who wins? How bout the 32 million people who couldn't get insurance?ukit
- 2 + 2 ukit, 2 + 2.mathinc
- Oh that's great that they fixed the access part of healthcare. Now how about the actual reason those 32 mil didn't have the fucking access to begin with?mathinc
- fucking access to begin with? You're right though, everyone wins. People who couldn't get insurance, the insurance companies themselvesmathinc
- "Oh that's great"
Yeah big fucking deal! 32 million people just got access to health care for the first time.ukit - companies themselves, big pharma, doctors, they all won, so why didn't we do this sooner you might wonder? Ohhh right, reality.mathinc
- reality is why we didn't do it sooner. What a shame that whole reality thing.mathinc
- Insurance companies can't drop you when you get cancer. Whoop di fucking do!ukit
- Ukit, why didn't they have access?mathinc
- Simple question.. why didn't they have access?mathinc
- Since I have to get back to work.. cost was the reason they didn't have access. Since cost is why they didn't have access thenmathinc
- exactly what were the tough decisions that were made to fix the cost (and vis a vis access) problem? None.mathinc
- Mandate the access, fuck the cost problem. Seems like a good solid long term solution to me.... brainless.mathinc
- And I love how you act like I could care less about the people who didn't have ins. I do. I was one of them a year agomathinc
- and I'm a diabetic. This is just not how you go about solving things as far as I'm concerned. It's a political win, not a practical win.mathinc
- most people will get heavy subsidies. combine that with local insurance exchanges to get better rates an millions more can now afford itspifflink
- can now afford it.spifflink
- 2012-2014. Enough time
- ********0
- lowimpakt0
"Health Care Reform Passes--Now Let's Start Health Care Innovation
Posted by: Bruce Nussbaum on March 22, 2010
To the surprise of many, Congress passed legislation this weekend that extended US healthcare to nearly everyone in the country. Bravo. The US joins the 19th century. The next trick is to try actual innovation in health care that lowers costs and increases the healthcare experience for Americans. There is almost nothing in the bill passed that does that.
The US already spends far more on healthcare innovation than any other country. But government healthcare R&D has gone into life sciences that haven’t paid off (genome) or advanced medical procedures that are extremely expensive and help extremely few people. In terms of longevity, the US lags Europe and Asia.
US healthcare needs platform innovation that uses social media to connect people to the medical system in new, cheaper, more personal and more productive ways. Hello Health is one way to go. It’s founder, Dr. Jay Parkinson, has just launched The Future Well, a design consultancy that promises to extend the new social media model for wellbeing across the country.
US healthcare also needs the kind of demassing and decentralization that design and innovation consultants can provide. Memorial Sloan- Kettering (MSK) did workshops with students at the Parsons School for Design to come up with small, inexpensive, neighborhood chemo centers and it just completed the first in Brooklyn.
The Mayo Clinic is innovating broadly in health care.
Clayton Christensen has a great book on The Innovator’s Prescription that calls for disruptive innovation in healthcare based on new business models. This is a very important book.
Now that the US has extended healthcare to all its citizens, the next step is to cut costs and improve outcomes and experiences by harnessing the best thinking of designers and innovators. Most of the concepts and tools are already at hand."
- ukit0
Hey mathinc, you seem to be saying that 100% of the problem can be solved by reducing the cost.
Let's say there is some way out there to drastically reduce costs that for some reason wasn't considered. What does a drastic cost reduction look like, realistically - 10%? 15%?
The people that insurance companies refuse to cover, people with serious illnesses, aren't a 10 or 15% difference in terms of the bottom line. They are more like a 10000% difference. We're talking hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to treat these people, versus trivial cost for your average customer.
If I reduce the cost of treating someone from $1.3 million to $1.2 million, does that suddenly change the equation so much? It seems to me that absent a change in the law forcing their hand, companies would still have every incentive to not cover these people.
- ukit0
Why do people keep saying there are no attempts at cost control? I would say the biggest one is something that was actually in the Stimulus bill, which may be why people overlook it, but it's still relevant - digitizing the entire medical records system.
Most hospitals right now amazingly still use paper and pen to keep medical records. All of this critical information is stored in big boxes of paper off in a room somewhere. There is no coordination between hospitals, and no aggregation of data so that you can analyze overall trends, standardize treatments, or do programmatic analysis of treatment efficiency.
http://www.openclinical.org/emr.…
"Electronic medical record systems lie at the center of any computerised health information system. Without them other modern technologies such as decision support systems cannot be effectively integrated into routine clinical workflow. National penetration of EMRs may have reached over 90% in primary care practices in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, but has been limited to 17% of physician office practices in the USA.
As Tony Abott (Australian Minister for Heath and Ageing) said in August 2005: "Better use of IT is no panacea, but there's scarcely a problem in the health system it can't improve"
Another example is the creation of an independent commission to oversee the growth of Medicare and make reforms as needed to keep costs in line without having to go through Congress where nothing gets done. They is what Sarah Palin called "a death panel." It's pretty funny to hear Republicans crying about how Obama wants to cut Medicare, when they were opposed to creating it and recently introduced a budget that would eliminate it entirely.
Third example, there is a program they are rolling out within Medicare called Medicare bundling. Essentially what this does is change the compensation model for doctors so that instead of getting paid for every single treatment they prescribe which leads to overprescribing expensive treatments, they will be paid for overall care of a patient over a given period of time. So compensation based on quality of care which is what a lot of people have been asking for for some time.
This is a pretty radical change in terms of how the industry does business so it will be implemented in Medicare as a testing ground first, but the goal is to roll it out to the entire industry if it's a success.
- Yeah because that change is one that doesn't step on the toes of any of their corp masters. ;)mathinc
- LOL, cmon, what are you like a born again left winger now?ukit
- Do you actually disagree with any of these though? They all seem pretty logical.ukit
- No I don't like government. It's not transparent to you that the health care bill didn't step on any of the benefactors? :)mathinc
- It in fact helps the benefactors?.. No?mathinc
- Helps and hurts...it's a compromise reflecting the reality of the American system where you aren't going to bring an industry to its knees overnight.ukit
- industry to its knees.ukit
- But if its a total sellout, why do you have aspects like the end to recision, which don't help the industry but put a burden on it.ukit
- Sup0
100s of lawsuits will now be filed to stop this injustice called ObamaCare®.
- If not 1000s.Sup
- I hope Obama patented that phrase...he could make billions off of it.WrappedInBooks
- http://www.youtube.c…utopian
- mathinc0
They go hand in hand ukit. I'm not saying that fixing cost would eliminate the issue of access. But the big problem here is the cost. It's a real threat to this country. Just looking at the total cost and how much it's risen is cause for serious alarm. Here is the big issue I have with this bill, it doesn't touch the cost portion of the problem at all.
Yes, access is a big problem. But thinking politically the lack of access is something that could drive people to vote and be vocal about solving the cost issue. Now that we've basically mandated access, who gives a shit about cost? The actual costs of healthcare are now hidden between doctor, pharma and insurance companies for the most part. Where are we going to be getting the political support to solve the REAL issue that threatens the economy of this country?
I'm not discounting the fact that there are people who can now go and get health care, that's a good good thing. But now that we've mandated away the symptom and thus eliminated the reality of cost from people like you and I, how the fuck are we going to fix the big reason why we're in this situation to begin with? I'm not some cold bastard who thinks that health care is only for the privileged. I'm practical and I have serious doubts about the viability of this. I know I know, other countries have this so we can too.. which imo is a magical way of justifying this solution.. however with the current economic situation we're in making a transition from where we are now to where other countries are is going to be extremely costly. To not address the big issue, because of politicians being so tightly tied to special interests and corporations, I think this being some sort of 'solution' is a fucking joke. If you're going to reform healthcare, then reform it. Not mandate that everyone is now strapped to a flawed system.
Just my opinion of course, I'm a designer what the fuck do I know?
- But you were against the public option.DrBombay
- And still am. If you think costs are an issue now, let government run it!mathinc
- Medicare has less overhead and no for profit model. And it would compete with private ins companies.DrBombay
- So what's your solution then?ukit
- So if you didnt want it, don't get it. The INS companies were afraid of competition and rightfully so.DrBombay
- That is why it isnt in the bill. Or did you miss that part?DrBombay
- Because Medicare wouldn't have a blimp, luxury boxes, corp retreats, bonuses, a stadium, golden parachutes etc.DrBombay
- Private jets, shareholders or any of that overhead.DrBombay
- So the waste of the federal government exceeds all of those things?DrBombay
- Yeah you're right instead of all those luxuries it would simply be mired in the slog of bureaucracy and waste. You just don'tmathinc
- want people to have fun in blimps and sky boxes. Medicare is going bankrupt how the hell can you keep trumpeting that as a success??mathinc
- a success?? While socially worthwhile to the people it supports, it's a drag on the whole.mathinc
- and completely unsustainable.mathinc
- taxes will have to go up to take care of our seniors who you don't care about.DrBombay
- It's ok, you should just tell people that. You don't have to act like you care about anyone but yourself.DrBombay
- But seriously, you would like to get rid of medicare? Sounds like it.DrBombay
- Why am I debating you fucking scumbags?DrBombay
- ukit0
Hey I mean I'm no expert either, but in the earlier conversation you keep repeating again and again that if you bring down costs it solves the access problem. I just don't see how that would really happen.
You also haven't really spelled out what reforms you want to see that they are not doing. I'm also just a designer, but as someone who works in the technology industry, it seems to me that digitization has the potential to be the biggest driver of efficiency. Which incidentally was not factored into the CBO's estimate since it was not technically part of the HCR bill.
- ********0
They will drag this HC thing out forever...law suits and arguing and BS waste of time....we will be talking about this distraction at least for another year! Just keep talking about HC...forget about the economy and jobs...yeah yeah yeah yeah!!!!
- BattleAxe0
the real solution is too obvious
get rid of the insurance companies and there bottom lines
why do we need them
- *theirBattleAxe
- Agreed.luckyorphan
- SOCIALIST MUSLINS!DrBombay
- thair *74LEO
- DrBombay0
Holy fuck
http://twitter.com/GOPBoehner/st…
- ukit0
This on the other hand, totally real
"Former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich said Obama and the Democrats will regret their decision to push for comprehensive reform. Calling the bill "the most radical social experiment . . . in modern times," Gingrich said: "They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years" with the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s."
I don't think that's anything close to true, but what the fuck is he getting at here?
- DrBombay0
The blacks should obviously still have to eat at separate restaurants and stuff in Newt's eyes. And if not, he think all of the followers of the republicans do believe that.
- fooler20
“The time is at hand this year to bring comprehensive, high quality health care within the reach of every American. I shall propose a sweeping new program that will assure comprehensive health insurance protection to millions of Americans who cannot now obtain it or afford it, with vastly improved protection against catastrophic illnesses. This will be a plan that maintains the high standards of quality in America's health care.”
Richard Milhous Nixon (R)
- BonSeff0
I want to rub my gay ballsack all over Sup™
- DrBombay0
Glenn Beck says maybe 'Jesus Martinez' would like health bill but not 'Jesus from Nazareth'
http://www.examiner.com/examiner…All class
- Jesus would really enjoy stereotyping people because of their ethnicity.DrBombay
- jesus was from texasBonSeff
- and was whiteBonSeff
- I heard it stays white out later there.DrBombay
- jesus blessed my homogay french faggy homo ballsackBonSeff
- and then you rubbed it all over a Guatemalan immigrant that Glenn Beck hates.DrBombay
- "and it was good"BonSeff
- sounds like pornographiesDrBombay
- Chuy MartinezBattleAxe
- 762mm0
"Beck said that the Jesus he knows would never support a redistribution of wealth" - Glen Beck
fucking moron.
- ukit0
"the Jesus he knows would never support a redistribution of wealth."
Yeah, but uh, didn't Jesus say...
Actually wait a fucking minute, this is a guy who believes that God forbids you from drinking 7 UP, that Jesus had time to stop off in America before his crucifixion, that God gave Cain black skin as punishment for killing Abel, and that Joseph Smith discovered the will of God by reading off a bunch of stone tablets that could only be viewed through the bottom of his hat.
