BTW, it’s not just the end-users that pay out — the US government spends more on healthcare per capita than all other developed-world nations that the OECD tracks healthcare-spending data for, apart from Iceland and Norway.

There’s no doubt something needs to be done about this. But it’s become a repub-v-democrat hot-potato issue, and the healthcare industry has their lobbyists running in top gear, so I’m not holding my breath…

With regard to the Mother and Child Scheme: – The medical establishment skilfully manipulated the Catholic Church to do its dirty work on this!

Kevin

in either case, as Dervala mentions, it is going to be a tax. The healthy subsidize the unhealthy, and American corporations subsidize their workers. Effectively, a corporate tax.

Furthermore, the law is in California, at least, does not allow insurance companies to discriminate against the chronically ill, or pregnant women. Effectively they have privatized a socialist system, where everybody pays according to ability to , and withdraws according to need.

In fact, this is the same as what any State owned service would do, except the private companies cream off a profit, a profit that cannot be confused with a real profit created by a startup software company, as the insurance company is not really creating any wealth -just moving money around the place.

Of course, that is the only way that health insurance could work, or else the old, the chronically sick and the people who actually need it, would be priced out.

That is to ignore the 40 million uninsured, but my point is that a totally privatized system makes no sense even from a free market point of view. It clearly has to be more expensive for the same number of people covered.

It also seems weird and wrong that employers have responsibility for their workers’ healthcare. For small companies (and large), it’s crippling. As an employee, it makes me feel indentured. And those of us who are fit and healthy enough to work are probably least in need of health coverage.

Something’s broken. Tort reform will go a long way, but it’s not the full story. Back the Fifties, when Ireland was still a third-world country, the Minister for Health, Noel Browne, introduced the Mother and Child Scheme that guaranteed healthcare to every mum and child up to sixteen (against ferocious opposition from the Catholic Church). It was hugely ambitious, but it said something about the priorities of a dirt-poor country. We have not forgotten it.

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Noel_Browne

Last year I had a miscarriage in Ireland and was looked after with great kindness and respect by an overstretched local maternity hospital. I was never asked for a credit card on several follow-up visits. The service was just chaotic enough that yuppies who can afford it buy health insurance for private care, but the basics were there for anyone, no questions asked. I probably didn’t need free care—I would’ve been willing to pay at least part—but I was proud that Ireland still puts that value on all forms of motherhood, even beyond special cases. Babies aren’t a luxury. :(

BTW, I highly recommend Jessica Mitford’s “The American Way of Birth” as a great introduction to the politics of the birth industry. May she rest in peace.

That makes their malpractice the most expensive. It explains why some states have no commercial malpractice insurance available. A “bad baby” is defined as one that’s imperfect in virtually any way. Even the threat of a malpractice suit, or its investigation, is expensive.

This is one area where the conservatives and liberals, not to mention those caught in the middle, need to have a meeting of the minds. Tort reform, long a credo of the Republicans, and one opposed by Democrats (that’s how, after all, the Democratic candidate for vice-president made his millions and it was from those “in his business” who funded his primary campaign).

Polzarization causes stagnation in reform. When the two don’t talk to each other in the first place, or when a new proposal doesn’‘t take the concerns of both into consideration, the posturing and other sources of delay are inevitable. Of course if you’re a Liberal or a Conservative you can (conveniently) choose to ignore the views of the other, let alone consider compromise.

Kerry is painted a “tax and spend liberal,” Bush a conservative that won’t support needed health reform. That’s left your friend, five months pregnant, dangling in the middle. Like most of us. The number of Americans covered by health insurance has been halved in recent years. The half that still have it have increasingly high deductibles or co-payments, or less coverage than previously.

“Pre-existing condition?” Why should anyone expect an insurance company, established just like a startup software company for the purpose of making money, to “insure” against the inevitable? That’s not “insurance.” It’s an area funded only by some government program which handles the needs of special cases like hers (a “special case” being someone not employed by a large corporation prior to impregnation, as such coverage is increasingly rare in small business). And who pays for it? The employed share the additional burden of what should be a small minority of special cases.

Start defining those “special cases” in broad terms and the expense obviously rises. The U.S. has the best technology in the world in biotechnology. Yet the death rate for infants is lower in Scandinavian countries where there’s less technology but more hands on treatment, a smaller drug problem, and other advantages. But there are also cultural differences which make the same delivery systems untenable. For the U.S. to try to copy Swedan’s plan would be as inane as Sweden trying to use the one in Canada.