Right on! Considering that my current health insurance reimburses me $20/month of my health club membership fee if I go at least 8 times per month, we already have this type of incentive in place in some ways. The insurance company isn’t in business to make me healthy, they’re in business to make money, so the only reason they would subsidize my excercizing would be if it makes me healthier and IN TURN, I cost them less to insure.

In a government run program, we could reduce the cost to insure people with a similar incentive of tax breaks for those who excersize, eat healthy, etc. Doesn’t the UK have incentives for people if they are able to lower their blood pressure or cholesterol levels, have a healthy weight, etc?

I’m not saying it is THE solution, but what’s currently out there isn’t working as well as it should for Americans (yes, I believe in American Exceptionalism), so maybe this can be a part of the solution.

The larger point is how the heck is Obama going to both see the economy to better times and undertake health care reform at the same time?

One of the problems with the current system is those of us lucky enough to have good insurance usually don’t know what anything costs beyond our co-pay. Yes, I get an EOB (Explanation of Benefits) for every bill, but usually can’t decipher it. And I never know what a procedure or office visit will cost BEFORE I’ve seen the doctor. I tried to find out once. My insurance is supposed to pay 100% for dentist visits, but I kept getting bills for small amounts because the charges where greater than “reasonable and customary”. I tried to find out what was reasonable and customary for an Adult Cleaning and X-Rays. It took 7 phone calls. At first my insurance didn’t want to tell me. I had to speak to a manager, then she made me get the diagnostic code for each procedure. Then the dentist’s office didn’t want to tell me what they actually charged. And that was for a routine cleaning. Who has time to do this for everything? In the end I called around and every dentist in my area and under my insurance plan charged the same thing. Isn’t that reasonable and customary?!?

The ads in the Sunday paper quickly tell me what the grocery store is charging for food. I can compare Wal-Mart to Target with little effort. The cost for gas is advertised on the street corner with neon numbers. Why is the cost for health care so hidden? What do they have to hide? Where is the competition? BTW, I would not simply pick the lowest cost doctor. But I would like to know where I stand financially. What do you call the physician who graduates at the bottom of their medical school class?

Doctor.

As a health care worker I have to say that the benefits of a universal health care system are undeniable. That’s why the United States is the only industrialized nation that does not have some form of universal health care. As a result we spend much more per citizen on health care with less positive objective outcomes (such as life expectancy and infant mortality).

People complain about the cost of implementing a universal health care system but what they fail to take into account is the cost if we DON’T implement some form of health care reform.

Currently we spend 25% to 30% of all our health care dollars on health insurance company overhead costs, much of the money used to pay excess executive pay such as the Angela Braly of WellPoint who took home a salary over 9 million dollars a year. In addition, the bloated overhead costs are in part due to the amount of work insurance companies perform looking for ways to ACTIVELY DENY CARE!!!

in addition the millions of uninsured patients frequently use the emergency room for medical care that cost 2 to 3 times as much as the care provided by a primary doctor. Those costs are past on to those with health insurance so in essence we are all “taxed” for this inefficient type of medical care. The uninsured are also more likely to seek medical care when simple problems have progressed into much more costly, life threatening conditions.

This is not mention the economic cost. US industries are put at a competitive disadvantage when they have to pay for health care costs and these costs are built into the price of their products.

Several foreign auto makers recently sought economic aid from their governments in the recent economic downturn but it was GM that filed bankruptcy. Maybe the extra $1200 priced into each one of its cars to cover health care costs had something to do with it.

Many people are job-locked, not able to find work that would take advantage of their true potential because they are afraid of losing their health care.

A single payer system would do away with health insurance companies that serve no real purpose but to suck up a large percentage of our health care dollars and would bring the US into the new century with the rest of the industrialized world.

But with health care and pharmaceutical lobbies throwing millions of dollars at congresspeople and Senators I think that unfortunately single payer health care is a pipe dream.

Yes like the fire department, police department, libraries, and military. =)

I think there is a feeling of entitlement – that everyone should have health care. This was not always the case….
But here we go on the illegals and welfare cases…. If “THEY” get free medical care, then why can’t the working class have free medical care also? I think that is where the sense of entitlement, or “I want it too” feeling is coming from.
If, on the other hand, the freebie handouts quit, then people would eventually quit thinking they are ‘entitled’ to it, and actually strive harder to go out and earn it for themselves – usually via a good job. With the sense of entitlement now here, there is no compelling reason for them to try harder to get/keep a job…. the opposite is true – “If I quit working the the government will take care of my needs.”….. That’s the thought process that is killing America….

What’s the answer? I don’t know. Bringing back personal responsibility would be a good start…. and no more bailouts would be another good start. If something fails, then it fails. That’s real life, survival of the fittest and all that. We’ve lost track of it.

Nice thought provoking post, David

An even more troubling conclusion of the same study is that uninsured workers would be seven times more likely to lose their jobs than those with insurance. In other words, a costly mandate on businesses designed to reduce the number of American workers without health insurance would likely swell the ranks of those who are simultaneously uninsured and unemployed — aggravating the very crisis it is ostensibly designed to address.

Putting the most vulnerable American workers at risk of unemployment in the middle of a recession is, quite clearly, the wrong direction to go. ”

This comes from an article on Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=ajuYsywnyhxM

They even have one potential solution: making all medical expenses, pre-tax, not just those offered through an Employer.

cd :O)

Another area (nail?) where we have it backwards is our mental health. Good mental health has also shown to dramatically reduce physical health care costs. Yet may Americans don’t have this coverage or it is limited. I can direct you to peer reviewed researched (on request) showing people who get treatment for depression have half the medical (medicaid) cost of those getting treatment for their depression. Yet the government program greatly restricts this treatment.