|
03-24-2010, 06:43 AM
|
|
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by ijusluvit
I'm disappointed you haven't responded to the reasons I gave for why the process was "cleaner" than any previous landmark legislative effort. I'm not calling you any names, I'm asking you to respond to the issues.
And I'd like your response to today's hot one: the states challenge to the law written around the contention the federal government cannot require citizens to purchase health insurance. If you re-read the statements you cited above, it is the only SPECIFIC objection to the new law. (The nebulous references to future state budget problems are just that - nebulous.)
Here's a simple quiz:
Do you agree this new law is unnecessary because people are already protected, they can receive the health care they need in any hospital emergency room?
Do you agree one of the nation's greatest problems is the millions who don't contribute; either by their refusal to work, or how they take advantage of government programs?
Most of the TOTV posters who are unhappy with the new law totally agree with and continually cite these two points in attacking the new law.
The question then is, Who pays for the millions of uninsured emergency room visits and those who won't contribute? Answer: The insured.
You are so sure health care premiums will skyrocket and you will lose what you have. You are so sure the new law will bankrupt our nation. It is far more likely the financial participation of millions more citizens will finally stabilize health care costs. There is absolute proof of what has happened in recent years to health care costs in this nation, compared to all other developed nations. We must reverse this trend. The states cannot or will not do it.
Additionally, you and I and all the politicized special interests were not around yet when states adopted the rather common sense idea that everyone who drives a vehicle should be insured. Mandatory auto insurance is not a perfect analogy to health care, but imagine where we would be without it.
|
To your arguement concerning emergency room visits...
"The president and members of Congress claim that the uninsured must be held accountable for their care by imposing a substanial tax because they fail to take out coverage, despite only accounting for 2.7% of total health spending. However, a study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association in October 2008, says the uninsured are not responsible for crowded emergency rooms (emphasis mine):
The JAMA study also found that patients with public insurance, such as Medicaid and Medicare, are more likely to crowd into emergency rooms for minor complaints than are the uninsured. Only about 17 percent of E.R. visits in the United States in the last year studied were by uninsured patients, about the same as their share of the population.
That isn’t the only way people with subsidized insurance add more burdens to the system than people with no insurance at all. A 2007 study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine looked at charges and payments for 43,128 emergency department visits between 1996 and 2004. “What surprised us was that uninsured patients actually pay a higher proportion of their emergency department charges than Medicaid does,” reported co-author Reneé Hsia, a specialist in emergency medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. “In fact, 35 percent of charges for uninsured visits were paid in 2004, compared with 33 percent for Medicaid visits.”
So why are emergency rooms so crowded? The JAMA study blames a rising population, a falling number of emergency departments, and understaffing that prevents stabilized patients from being admitted to other parts of the hospital.
The authors of the study realized this defied what was believed to be fact:
Unsupported assumptions include the beliefs that uninsured patients are the main cause of emergency department overcrowding, that uninsured patients have less acute conditions than insured patients, and that uninsured patients use the ER mostly for convenience.
“We have a crisis in the emergency department and we have a crisis with the uninsured, but it is crucial that we do not assume that the latter is causing the former,” [Dr. Manya F.] Newton emphasized.
“If we attempt to solve emergency overcrowding by creating policies based on inaccurate assumptions, common knowledge, or what ‘everybody knows,’ we will waste limited resources, fail to address the root causes of the problem, and potentially increase the barriers to care faced by 47 million uninsured Americans,” Newton concluded.
This won’t put the rhetoric to rest, but it is a important piece of information that needs to be put out in the debate.
http://www.unitedliberty.org/article...cy-room-visits
"The uninsured, it’s said, use emergency rooms for primary care. That’s expensive and ineffective. Once they’re insured, they’ll have regular doctors. Care will improve; costs will decline. Everyone wins. Great argument. Unfortunately, it’s untrue. A study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that the insured accounted for 83 percent of emergency-room visits, reflecting their share of the population. After Massachusetts adopted universal insurance, emergency-room use remained higher than the national average, an Urban Institute study found. More than two-fifths of visits represented non-emergencies. Of those, a majority of adult respondents to a survey said it was “more convenient” to go to the emergency room or they couldn’t “get [a doctor's] appointment as soon as needed.” … Medicare’s introduction in 1966 produced no reduction in mortality; some studies of extensions of Medicaid for children didn’t find gains.
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/0...r-fallacy.html
Now, as to your comments concerning the " (The nebulous references to future state budget problems are just that - nebulous.)"
I invite you to read the CBO report always touted and the NEBULOUS references to SAVINGS in the future, and the NEBULOUS tax increases that need to take place in the future, dependent on many unknown or unrealized factors !
|