Terry Hamblin

I'm back again everyone, and glad to be here! Some months ago I wrote a post about single payer Health Care.
1.- I used the single payer system in Spain for about ten years and it was excellent. Also all of the problems that we have here in the U.S. did not exist.
a.- No healthcare insurance companies to figure out ways to wring you dry. Just a small increase in individual income tax. (I heard no complaints).
b.- No huge hospital bills to ruin you just paying co-pays.
c.- No huge Doctor bills to do you in just paying co-pays.
d.- The Spanish government cut deals with "Big Pharma" to reduce drug costs to the people.
and on and on.....
One of you challenged my love for the Single payer system by citing te VA as a single payer non-workable system. I have found recently the the VA has done an extreme turn-about. I went into a clinic in Hayden hospital in Phoenix some weeks ago for an appointment. When I left the VA about 5 years ago it was because there were so many veterans crowded in there that you always had to stand for an hour or so to have your appointment. When I got there recently there were 6 people in the clinic and 3 other clinics that I saw were closed. The VA has made outlying clinics available to veterans so very few now go to the main hospital. I was taken care of half an hour early and I got the VA to pay for my prostate cancer radiation treatments at a top shelf facility, because the VA does not do radiation treatments. On the other hand I found out that the hormone shots that the Urologist administers to shrink the tumor cost $7,320 EACH! You need four of the shots over a two year period! (co-pay of around $5,000). I went back to the VA and asked them to administer the shots, no problem!

All in all I am shifting my care back to the VA!!

Trooper745 Loc: Carolina

I don't know how good Spain's Healthcare System really is. Guess it's all in who you ask.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-healthcare-idUSKBN0NK0FX20150429

http://healthcare-in-europe.com/en/story/11756-spain-s-huge-public-health-deficit.html

saltwind 78 Loc: Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

Terry, I agree. I just don't understand how so many of the working and middle class v**e against their own interests. Only the wealthy benefit from the traditional health insurance we have in this country.

crazylibertarian Loc: Florida by way of New York & Rhode Island

As I've written here several times without a single response from any of the socialized medical care cabal on OPP, you think single payer is so great? APply it to your own occupation or business, if you have one.

Terry Hamblin

Well crazylib, I am retired and I have a United Health Care Advantage plan. I recently went through Radiation therapy on my prostate, (get ready, when you get old enough you too will enjoy being told that your PSA is too high and you should go to a Urologist!) Long story short, after doing a 12 point biopsy, the Urologist recommended that I do radiation therapy and gave me a hormone shot to shrink the tumor, which it did, ie.. PSA dropped radically. I then went to my first appointment with the Oncologist and he outlined the plan. Since I could see the co-pay bills surging upward in my future, I went and talked to the Financial advisor available in the Oncologist's office and she asked me if I was a Veteran and I said yes. She told me to go to the VA and ask them to do the radiation therapy and since the VA does not do that, they referred me to the same Oncologist and authorized payment through the VA, ($24,000). But I still received a co-pay bill for $1,273. Upon reviewing the bill I discovered that the hormone shot, (Lupron), costs $7,320 per shot, thus the big co-pay. Since I had already been told that 3 more Lupron shots over a two year period were necessary, I went back to the VA and asked if they would administer the shots and they said yes very rapidly. I could not get the VA to pay for the first shot because my treatment had not been authorized at the time, but I will save about $5,000 in co-pays since from the VA the shots are free!
Crazy, I don't understand your comment about applying single payer to my business or occupation. Single payer is for each individual regardless of occupation or business. If it comes to pass, the individual simply calls for an appointment and goes into a clinic to be treated. Yes taxes will be a little higher but you will not be strangled by a Health Insurance provider, or a huge Hospital bill and you will not have astronomical doctor bills. If the system is put into effect and run properly, it is all FREE!
The VA by the way has cleaned up it's act to the point where I am going to return there for my health care in it's entirety. I have talked to several providers at the Hayden VA hospital in Phoenix and have been assured that the aim of the VA is to prove the single payer system and beseech Congress to adapt the system once it is proven.
Maybe you are rich and famous and can pay easily for everything that the Health Care Industry can throw at you but most of us little guys would appreciate not having the bills h*****g over our heads.

permafrost Loc: Minnesota

Hello crazy,

First I think all of us should thank Obama for putting a fix on the VA to help a horrible situation..

Now as for single payer, looking at the pathetic condition of health care cost and the lack of anything look like an improvement, I have started to think that single payer may be the only way to go..

Cost is out of control. It is not the insurance, they could care less.. What it seems to be is the health care for profit with no regulation on that. the ACA put some control on profit by the insurance carriers, but nothing has been done to stem the drug or direct medical cost..

A single payer would give the power of free market into the hands of the population rather then leaving the power exclusively in the hands of the supplier..

Other nations who use the single payer concept have much lower costs then we do. I feel that in time this will be the solution which has to be installed.

crazylibertarian Loc: Florida by way of New York & Rhode Island

I'm a physician and I've dealt with all these other government 'solutions' my entire professional career. I have had elevated PSAs and a 12 point prostatic biopsy which came out negative. I don't want to e a burden to my children. This system will explode eventually, Bills would be no where near as astronomical without Medicare and Medicaid. I might be out of a job without them but I'd take my chances.

I prefer freedom.

permafrost Loc: Minnesota

How do Medicare and Medicaid drive up costs??

I have heard over and over about all the Drs who will not accept them because they do not pay enough for the Dr to be happy..

I have never found a problem finding a Dr. No particular wait. But I do think I have been scheduled well in advance.

crazylibertarian Loc: Florida by way of New York & Rhode Island

They unleashed a tsunami of demand beyond comprehension. In New York State alone, costs exceeded in just five years what the projections were for the entire country 25 years into the future.

Welfare mothers took their kids into ERs 2 #AM because of colic that could easily have waited six ours to go to an office.

Unscrupulous physicians took advantage opening store fronts in the ghettos, practically d**gging patients in off the street for blood pressures and other minimal services. Patient sneezes, physician says, "Gesundeheit," has the patient sign a form and sends in a bill.

permafrost Loc: Minnesota

Had not heard that.... Bad news...

crazylibertarian Loc: Florida by way of New York & Rhode Island

Of course you've not heard it. It's been kept under wraps. Government never admits an error. It finds problems with its programs and blames them on others. Stalin blamed it on counter-revolutionaries. Remember 'predatory lenders?" They came into existence only after the Clinton Administration threatened penalties under the Community Reinvestment Act.

Those examples I cited are just the beginning. There were hundreds of others.

Government is always the enemy.

saltwind 78 Loc: Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

crazy, I know that Obama care was especially hard on doctors. The paperwork was impossible. This problem can be fixed. It beats having ten to twenty five million people, many of them children in this country go without any health insurance.

crazylibertarian Loc: Florida by way of New York & Rhode Island

There always will be people who will neglect their children no matter what. Whether health care, food, shelter or clothing, no matter what is available, there will always be horror stories. As a human being, as a Christian, I have an obligation but that doesn't mean that government has a right to require that I do so. As Milton Friedman once said, everyone should be free to do good with his own money.

Terry Hamblin

[quote=crazylibertarian]I'm a physician and I've dealt with all these other government 'solutions' my entire professional career. I have had elevated PSAs and a 12 point prostatic biopsy which came out negative. I don't want to e a burden to my children. This system will explode eventually, Bills would be no where near as astronomical without Medicare and Medicaid. I might be out of a job without them but I'd take my chances.

I prefer freedom.

Crazylib, as a physician maybe it is your handwriting in this post that confuses me??? "This system will explode eventually"-- You mean the ACA I assume and I agree, Insurance rates are going up and up and the small businesses have not been raped as yet! "Bills would be no where near as astronomical without Medicare and Medicaid, I might be out of a job without them but I'll take my chances" You are saying that Medicare and Medicaid bump up Doctor bills???, but without them you might not have a job??
I had a very good friend in Spain who was an excellent Doctor, he complained that in the single payer system he did not get paid as much and he had a lot of paperwork to contend with. His parting comment was, "If I don't work within the system I will have no patients since no one is going to give up the free stuff, go outside the system and pay"....

I know that Libertarians want everyone to be free of everything, but no huge insurance bills, no huge hospital bills, and no huge doctor bills would be a really good start in that direction!

crazylibertarian Loc: Florida by way of New York & Rhode Island

[quote=Terry Hamblin]

Your friend was right and what kind of a friend are you to advocate the same thing that's screwing him over?
Your overall argument is sophistry at its basest. As Milton Friedman said, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Someone has to pay for it. I can assure you, that with every program, incluiding Medicare, Medicaid & the ACA, there are people waiting to figure out how to to get the most money out of it.