Healthcare - Can We Cure Its Ills?

Healthcare - Just an Idea
There are a few of big considerations you have to take into account.
First is that health insurance companies are huge. Huge enough that they could probably create their own army and attack the government in a coup.
Second - we don't want the government taking over and slowing the health care industry down. It's slow enough.
Third - Prevention of diseases has to be a big part of this.
Fourth - Drug and health related research have to dealt with as well.
Fifth - The Doctors and Health care providers will be tough...If not tougher the insurance companies.
Sixth - Drug Companies....Something has to be done.
Seventh - Computerization of records and more fluid transfer of records from one health care provider.

I'm going to explain this quickly. It's a rather boring subject on the whole, so explaining it quickly will be the best for all of us.
First health insurance can be dealt with this way. We are a market economy, so why not let this work in our favor and utilize what is already set up.

People that are covered by a health insurance through work keep that insurance
People that are not insured at all. Whether they are jobless, homeless or just an independent business owner. You get the insurance companies together and you say we are going to offer this whole group of people to be covered together. The people in this pool are divied up without knowledge of class. Each person in that pool is examined and given a health risk from 1 to 5. 1 being Best health and 5 being Dire! Each of the insurance companies has to take the same number from each number. That way it is even.
After that everyone will have healthcare. The divied up people premiums are payed by the government if individuals are without work, homeless or with no means to pay an insurance premium. People that own there own self employeed would be able to pay a premium. That is the costly part at first.

Second we don't want the government taking over, but we also don't want insurance companies making all these exceptions, referrals and such.
So the government says that each insurance company......By the way in this system, there will be no independent insurance companies that work outside the system. They are either in or out. Any, the government sets a set of guidelines that every insurance company must follow. So that every insurance company has the same strict guidelines to adhere. There will not be choice. If they are to stay in business they must comply.
It will seem tough for them, but they will stay because there is a lot of money involved.

Third - We set up and require that people to manage their health. In particular the prevention of diseases is going to be paramount. People that
continue to smoke will not only have to pay more for cigarettes, but also have to pay something on their insurance. Anything that raises their risk, they must contribute what ever that access is. And there is no in or out for people either. They are in the pool. If they continue to drink and drug and need assistance from addiction specialist and hospitals, their rates will go up.
So, you say...How are the poor and the homeless going to pay. Well there will be none. A mission to be get every soul off the street. If they are jobless they will give jobs and places to live. Some of the jobs will be building these new places for people to live. People that are mentally challenged or have mental disorders will be set put in appropriate institutions. This is a wholly different topic I would like address at a different time.

Fourth - Also as part of this prevention effort, drug and health research will help offer grants to fund reseach and development for drugs. Incentives would
be based on the type of drug and the risk its development would help. This would help with the drug companies. Many drug companies complain that
drug prices are so high, because of the cost research and development. Not really true, because Canadian drug prices are far lower. It has more to do with the power we give drug companies in the United states and the cost of advertising these drugs.

Fifth - Doctors and Healthcare providers would have to adhere to the same things the insurance companies would have to do. They have to accept insurance
from every carrier and at set prices. Procedures would have set codes and prices across the board. No acceptions.

Sixth - Drug companies would have to come up with a cost analysis of every drug they produce to justify the price they charge. Whatever they put in they get
out with a 20% profit. Eventually this would be off set by the fact that the government would fund all research and development through the corporations so
that eventually the prices would fall.
Also companies such as Rite Aid, CVS, etc. would not be allowed to mark up the price of medicines to insane levels.

Finally I must say the one of the most important elements to this is that everyone is accountable. Including the patient.
I know there are probably huge gaping holes...I also don't have a staff of accountants to run numbers, but the cost the government puts into the system,
will eventually be returned.

I also think the risk assessment idea could be used to feed the starving people on our shores. Each person gets assigned a health risk number and
a corresponding food number that tracks the degree to which you stand. 1 being overweight and need of nutritional guidance to 5 malnurished. The hunger
number would assessed by each doctor and it be considered when re-evaluating your risk number.

Just some ideas....
........................................................................

JB had some great thoughts about the holes in my plan:

Each person in that pool is examined and
> given a health risk
> from 1 to 5. 1 being Best health and 5 being Dire!
> Each of the
> insurance companies
> has to take the same number from each number. That way it is even.
> After that everyone will have healthcare. The divied up people
> premiums are payed by the government. That is the costly part at
> first.

*** They are going to charge out outrageous amount to the government to take on the "Dire! 5" people. ***

Well the 1 through 5's would be distributed across the board evenly to all insurance companies.

>
> Second we don't want the government taking over, but we also don't
> want insurance companies making all these exceptions, referrals and
> such.
> So the government says that each insurance company......By the way in
> this system, there will be no independent insurance companies that
> work outside the system. They are either in or out.
> Any, the government
> sets a set of guidelines that every insurance company must follow. So
> that every insurance company has the same strict guidelines to adhere
> to.
> There will not be choice. If they are to stay in business they my
> comply.
> It will seem tough for them, but they will stay cause there is a lot
> of money involved.
>
> Third - We set up and require that people to manage their health. In
> particular the prevention of diseases is going to be paramount.
> People that continue to smoke will not only have to pay more for
> cigarettes, but also have to pay something on their insurance.

**So what about poor people who can't afford insurance in the first place? The government now has to pay their extra premium for smoking?***

I think homelessness and poverty can be dealt with more effectively as a problem in and of itself. It is a topic I plan to approach soon that I hope will answer this question more throughly.

> Anything that raises
> their risk,
> they must contribute what ever that access is. And there is no in or
> out for people either. They are in the pool. If they continue to
> drink and drug and need assistance from addiction specialist and
> hospitals, their rates will go up.

***Will this cause more people NOT to seek help due to their rates going up? Also, typically these are people who can't afford insurance in the first place, (i.e. they are drunk and have no job) so again does the govenment take over their extra premium costs?
And where do you draw the line on what constitutes something that your rates could get raised for?***

It just very well might, but may also increase the chance that these people will seek a clean and sober life. I've watched Intervention enough to know that people tend to take the plane to a treatment facility when they get cut off.
Prevention of addiction is a whole different topic that needs to be addressed though. These aren't people working 3 jobs just to keep food on the table and still have no health insurance.
Addicts are people that will live under a bridge to continue there habits. So addressing addiction and preventing addiction, just like the prevention of diseases would have to be paramount.


> So, you say...How are the poor and the homeless going to pay. Well
> there will be none. An mission to be get every soul off the street.

*** That would be nice but impractical. ***

If we took 1 tenth of the money we spent on the war in Iraq and put it toward getting people off the streets it wouldn't be so impractical. I think US policy has to be more egocentric. How can we cure the world's problems if we can't even cure our own.


If
> they are
> jobless they will give jobs and places to live.

*** They have a system like this in Jacksonville.

Some people just refuse to work. Some people refuse the free housing. In Jax, if you are homeless they give you a job, clothes, a place to live and food.
Yet there are still TONS of homeless people. They are given everything they need to get back on their feet and yet many of them never do. Many of them just make bad life choices and cannot change.***

Very true. There are lost souls out there that have given up on life. As I said earlier this is a topic in an of itself that I hope to address going forward.

> Some of the jobs will
> be building these new places for people to live.
> People that are
> mentally challenged
> or have mental disorders will be set put in appropriate institutions.

***WHo is paying for these institutions? What about the lazy that just don't want to work? Nothing's wrong with them, they just have addictions that prevents them from keeping a job. How are they dealt
with?***

>
> Fourth - Also as part of this prevention effort, drug and health
> research will help offer grants to fund reseach and development for
> drugs. Incentives would be based on the type of drug and the risk its
> development would help.
> This would help with the drug companies. Many drug companies complain
> that drug prices are so high, because of the cost research and
> development.
> Not really true, because Canadian drug prices are far lower. It has
> more to do with the power we give drug companies in the United states.

***There is lots of funding for research on drugs currently and they are incredibly expensive to develop. I'm not sure how much profit drug companies make, but they take a lot of risks. Drugs take decades to develop, scientist are expensive, the machines they use are expensive, and the drug companies liability is huge in a lawsuit if their drugs kill people. It takes a lot of money to make drugs! I can't comment on Canada b/c I do not know how much drugs are or why they are so cheap. If drug companies are pocketing excessive tons of money then that is wrong, but they certainly spend a TON of it producing drugs. Just think, if there was no financial incentive, many of these companies would not exist, drugs would not be made, and people would still be dying or in pain. I hear the pharma industry is having to make a lot of cuts recently and it is now harder to get a job there. That means less research gets done. Less drugs are developed. Less cures are
found.***

This is true, but in America drug companies spend many more times on advertising than they do on the amount it takes to develop a drug
>
> Fifth - Doctors and Healthcare providers would have to adhere to the
> same things the insurance companies would have to do. They have to
> accept insurance from everycarrier and at set prices. Procedures
> would have set codes and prices across the board. No acceptions.

*** You want to make sure doctors make good money too.
You don't want anyone doing that job.***

Well for doctors to buy into the system things would have to stay the same as far as pay scale. We are not talking about a completely communist system here. You know where the Russian Doctor makes the same wage as everyone else. Capitalism can need to help drive the system, not bring it down.

>
> Sixth - Drug companies would have to come up with a cost analysis of
> every drug they produce to justify the price they charge. Whatever
> they put in they get out with a 20% profit.

***What about the other 100,000 compounds they put a ton of money into researching that never were marketable? What is their profit on drugs now? (When you take into account ALL their expenses(lawsuits, scientists, lawyers, equipment, marketing)? ***

Marketing and advertising are a huge chunk. Doctor's offices see almost as many drug company representitives as they do patients. I know that is a stretch, but they are a lot of drug company pushers out there. Not to mention the budgets that are put into tv advertising. How many commercial breaks are there without a commercial for Cialis or Nexium, etc....

American Foriegn Policy Sucks

American Foreign Policy Sucks

Rupert: Brandon, till this very moment this world and the people in it have always been dark and incomprehensible to me and I've tried to clear my way with logic and superior intellect. And you've thrown my words right back in my face, Brandon. You were right to, if nothing else a man should stand by his words. But you've given my words a meaning that I never dreamed of, and you've tried to twist them into a cold, logical excuse for your ugly murder! Well, they never were that, Brandon, and you can't make them that … tonight you've made me ashamed of every concept I ever had of superior or inferior beings. But I thank you for that shame, because now I know that we're each of us a separate human being, Brandon, with the right to live and work and think as individuals, but with an obligation to the society that we live in.

This is a line from the movie Rope by Alfred Hitchcock. I picked the line, because it made me think of American Foreign Policy and how Washington thinks of itself in the world.
Currently I am reading Noam Chomsky's book Failed States. In reading it I have really gotten a good perspective of American foreign policy and the view that we are above everyone.ained terrorists may have already made there way home to roost...
Chomsky points out for example that we didn't pay our UN dues from the Reagan years through the beginning of the Bush II administration, and that was only done because were trying to get international backing for the war with Iraq.

It's also pointed out by Chomsky that Washington sees UN treaties as irrelevant if it doesn't agree with them.
The best example of this is Non-prolifiration. We push so called rogue states into compliance through inspections and sanctions, yet America is one of the biggest treaty breakers.
Are we a rogue state too? Washington discards any international policy that doesn't mesh with its own.

So what is to be done about this problem?
Well I think the new administration has to take a long hard look at nuclear issue for one. Not many people know that there is a far greater risk of nuclear war than even in the 80's and it is not because of Rogue states.
While we get updates from the International Space Station we are also working towards putting missles in space. They may already be up there and according to Chomsky they are already up there.
This would mean that America, China and Russia could at some future point have missiles that could strike a target in a matter of minutes, rather than in hours. Meaning the decision to make a nuclear strike would have to be made in a matter of minutes if not seconds.
There is also the very plausible possibility of a nuclear space race.
Ridding the world of Nuclear weapons have to be paramount.
There are those that may argue that nuclear weapons prevent more wars than they cause. Well that could be. I grew up in the 80's wondering if we were going to be annihilated at any moment by a nuclear war. World War III. Movies such as the Day After brought the aftermath of a nuclear war into perspective and down to level of the everyday person. I think the threat of nuclear war may have prevented a conventional war between the two super powers.
Just the fact that nuclear air bursts alone could wipe out most of the electronics of the modern era is a scary enough thought. Add to that the devastation one nuclear bomb might have on a city. Let alone if it was an all out nuclear duel.
The arms race has seemed to trickle out of the thoughts of most Americans after the fall of the Iron Curtain, but it is a very real and ever present threat today.

Not to mention that terrorists might get there hands on a suitcase nuclear bomb or cypher enough nuclear material to be able explode a dirty bomb in a major city.
I don't like to make predictions, but I think unless foreign policy, and mind set does not change we will be in a dire state in less than 10 years.
Does anyone remember just before the war with Iraq there was a call for muslims to come help fight the invaders from the West?
This call was heeded and the War with Iraq has created far more terrorist than it has prevented. This is the war on terror right? Or is it.
We went into Iraq to rid them of WMD's, but the true agenda was shown shortly after they found said WMD's and all of a sudden we were going to create a democracy.
Iraq is the ultimate training ground for terrorists now. There are terrorist attacks all over the place. This giving the terrorists great training in a real world environment.
These are now well trained terrorist that can now go back to there home countries, Germany and even America and plan attacks with hands on knowledge.
This situation in Iraq is always being compared to Vietnam. I think it is much more like Afghanistan's war with Russia in the 80's.
I think we need to find a viable exit strategy from Iraq, but we also need a plan for Afghanistan. For the first time since the beginning of the Iraqi war there have been more casualties in Afghanistan than in Iraq.
Not to mention that Afghanistan now produces 90% percent of the worlds supply of opate related drugs. Where does this money go? What if this money if being funneled into terrorist organizations?
I think America needs to take a step back and realize that we are no better than any other country on a global basis. "We're each of us a separate human being, Brandon, with the right to live and work and think as individuals, but with an obligation to the society that we live in."

I think a lot can be learned from that line.
Who are we to dictate our own agenda and toss treaties off our back like a cowboy at a rodeo? Maybe we have to lead by example and not by force of will and might.
There is also the subject of Pakistan. Another cloaked Rogue state that we are feeding weapons, military technology and money. Does this sound familiar.
Can anyone say Iraq and Afghanistan in the 80's? Add to that the fact that Pakistan is a nuclear weapon nation now, and is a safe haven and probably a training ground for terrorists in hiding.
We soon will not be dealing anymore with a few terrorist cells, but with entire populations that want to wipe us of the map.

Note: Just finished writing this story and ran across this on yahoo news:
Authorities search for India bombers who killed 39
It think these trained terrorist may have already gone home to roost....

Another related story on Yahoo news (July 28) entitled: Bush hails Pakistan as strong ally....