What ? No poll on the Healthcare ruling by SCOTUS set for Tomorrow?

Quote from Doctor_Wu : I agree and IMO costs will continue to rise and that will make single payer seem more practical and desirable. I don't think they ever wanted to control costs.

No, that really wasn't the intent. CSPAN had an excellent panel discussion a while back with a bunch of health care experts and economists which was about the most rational discussion that I've heard in this whole debate. It included the guy who served as the principal architect for Romney's deal as well as served as the primary consultant in developing the approach for Obama's. Wish that I could remember his name so that I could find it. Worth listening to.

In any case, he, as well as the others recognized that all basically stated directly that the elephant in the room is costs and that nobody has any real good ideas what to do about that short of complete, wholesale changes to pretty much everything about how healthcare works in this country with all that means both positively and negatively.

I agree that costs will push us to a single-payer system eventually like it or not. There still will be some form of premium care for those individuals and companies who can afford it , but the bulk of people will be under something more along those lines.

Quote from Gotchaforce : Its actually pretty hard to emigrate to places, have you ever looked into it?? (although why would a conservative know anything about emigration/immigration)

If your life was in danger and shortened because of the squalid conditions here in the US, wouldn't it be priority one to try? I guess you libs are the type to sit in a burning building because it might be hard to get out. Two tickets to Utopia. Anyone else boarding?

Love the banner ad on SD.
Damn they're quick.

Quote from hsjpatman : Love the banner ad on SD. Damn they're quick.

They know their audience, SD skews pretty heavily towards the right.

Quote from Mike A. : I agree that costs will push us to a single-payer system eventually like it or not. There still will be some form of premium care for those individuals and companies who can afford it , but the bulk of people will be under something more along those lines.

Premium care will probably still be available as you say. Of course the middle class that has become accustomed to decent insurance and wide decision making ability w/r/t both doctors and treatment options are going to be in for a shock when the inevitable standardization resulting from single payer kicks in.

Quote from riptide_slick : It seems to me throughout my years of observation here on TP that many here are upset about having to pay taxes for anything that doesn't directly benefit them. Some are probably even mad at having to pay taxes for things that do directly benefit them.

This time i think they are upset about taxes that will degrade the quality of the product in question.

Quote from Doctor_Wu : Premium care will probably still be available as you say. Of course the middle class that has become accustomed to decent insurance and wide decision making ability w/r/t both doctors and treatment options are going to be in for a shock when the inevitable standardization resulting from single payer kicks in.

Who says that with single payer people can't choose their doctor and treatment options? Using Canada as an example, patients can do both.

Quote from travfar : A big reason why our citizens are not very healthy is that they don't get preventative care. They let things go until it's a crysis. In countries with a good healthcare system where preventative care is available to all, they catch things early and nip in in the bud. Good cheap access to preventative care == healthy citizens. Expensive higher barrier care == not healthy citizens. For example, Americans see a doctor 4 times a year. Taiwanese see a doctor 12 times a year. Doctor visit in the US, about $100. Doctor visit in Taiwan $10. Where we've implemented similar preventative care "experiments" in the US, people have gotten healthier and costs have dropped. And that's because all those countries have cheap preventative care to help their citizens stay healthy. Part of the health care bill was cheap/no cost preventative care.

Until these studies account for racial demographics, I'm not interested in a comparison of how lily white Sweden's health statistics compare to ours with our 30% black/Hispanic population.

Quote from Frogstar : They know their audience, SD skews pretty heavily towards the right.

Fiscal responsibility and helping out others...

I guess you're right.

Quote from paperboy05 : Fiscal responsibility and helping out others... I guess you're right.

Which one of those is the gop known for?

Quote from Ryu-bom : So for everyone calling this unconstitutional, does it mean they were wrong....

Shhhhh.......

Quote from Tony_Danza : Which one of those is the gop known for?

Touche

Quote from Ryu-bom : So for everyone calling this unconstitutional, does it mean they were wrong

Not necessarily. I don't think many people thought the Obama admin would argue the tax aspect after going on a year long tour telling everyone how it wasn't a tax.

Quote from TheObserver84 : Who says that with single payer people can't choose their doctor and treatment options? Using Canada as an example, patients can do both.

For one, the stimulus bill of 2009 contained about $600 million (IIRC) to study treatments for various common ailments and with the purpose being the creation of standard practices & treatments. So, I think standardization of treatment is very likely. That is the typical response of a bureaucratic entity faced with serving a large population.

Diversity in treatment costs is in part b/c different doctors in different places approach problems differently, and often innovation is connected to that diversity. I fear we are going to slow our rate of medical innovation. Hopefully I'm wrong.

How long do Canadians wait to see the specialists? The basic reality is that scarcity is ever present, and attempts to mitigate it via fiat will result in fewer options. IMO, our government will probably limit the peoples' access to certain things, certain treatments, certain kinds of specialists. It's hard for me to imagine that a single payer system would allow every person wanting specialized cancer treatment to, for example, travel to MD Anderson in Houston to get the best care in the world. If they don't, then the waiting list to get into Anderson will be very long. Hopefully I'm wrong.

Quote from Frogstar : That's not an answer Well, I pay for health insurance and co-pays right now, and I have a family member who's been in the hospital a number of times over the last few years. Should I really believe the $300 the hospital bills for a bag of saline is just to pay for the bag of saline and operating overhead, or is it $100 for the bag of saline and overhead, and $200 to subsidize people who don't have insurance and don't pay any of their hospital bills? Play with the numbers all you want, but up until now, everyone that pays for healthcare in the US has already been subsidizing those who don't. If someone has insurance, they're more likely to go in for preventive care before a minor health issue becomes a major one.

I understand all of that, and agree that health care costs are outrageous, I just don't see how this law will change any of that.
What I do see coming from this, is a lot of people not bothering to get insurance, when the fine is less expensive than the insurance coverage.
Seeing that the insurance companies can't deny you coverage, what's to stop anyone from just paying the fine and waiting to get coverage until they have to use it?