What is the Catholic view of governent-paid health insurance?

[markomalley]

I support Physicians for a National Healthcare Program, which advocates streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer, which would save more than $400 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.
It’s not government run healthcare, it’s privately provided, publicly funded healthcare, in which medical people make a decent living and nobody makes an exorbitant profit.

(part 2)

I discussed, above, ad nauseum, the limits on health insurance pricing and what that does for health care availability. In summary, there are always limits as to the funds available and those limits force decisions to be made. Sometimes those decisions are unpleasant.

The second point I wish to discuss is the mechanisms of pricing in this country.

My thesis here is that unless you are paying for your own health care out of your own pocket (not by way of a third party), you don’t care what it costs. You care about the price of the premiums you pay (or the taxes that are levied upon you), you care about the co-pay (which is a set amount regardless of the price of the service), and you care about its availability. That is all.

Think about it: if you go to CVS for a 30 day prescription for a drug, it doesn’t matter to you if the drug’s overall price is $30 or $3,000. Your concern is the $10 copay that CVS exacts from you. You may not even know what CVS bills the insurance company (or the government). If you go to a neurosurgeon, you may not know that she bills the insurance company $250 or $500 for the visit, you are concerned with the $20 copay – and whether or not your referral paperwork was done properly. If you are hospitalized, you think about the $100 per day fee you have to pay and whether your insurance will pay for one overnight or 10 overnight visits. You don’t care about the $1,500 per night fee (plus $20 for the box of kleenex at your bedside) that the hospital charges the insurer on top of the copay.

Think about this for a minute: if you had to pay CVS directly for the drug, you would care if they charged $30 or $300. And if you could get the $300 CVS prescription for $250 from Rite-Aid or Walgreens, you would be more likely to go to one of those places rather than CVS, wouldn’t you? And if you had to choose a neurosurgeon who charged $250 and one that charged $500, all other factors being equal, you’d likely pick the $250 one…if it came out of your own pocket, wouldn’t you? And if enough people chose to go to the cheaper drug store and the cheaper physician, the more expensive alternatives might change their pricing strategy to stay competitive.

That is the nature of the problem. The USA’s healthcare system is not really a free market system. It is centrally controlled for pricing. Right now, the controls come from large insurance companies. In the system you advocate, the controls will come from a single nonprofit payer (that is publicly funded) – but it will still be centrally controlled.

You are probably asking yourself at this point, “what is the problem, we can just control costs by controlling how much providers get reimbursed, right?”

The problem is this: the providers, rather than trying to actually increase value for the consumer, have a psychology of trying to increase reimbursement rates from the insurers (or the government). That is profoundly different than how a marketplace actually works.

Want proof of this? Go into your files and grab a few insurance explanations of benefits. Depending upon your insurer, you will see a few different columns of numbers on there. One of them will say something along the lines of “amount billed” and another one will say something along the lines of “amount allowed.” I will wager you that, in the vast majority of cases, the “amount billed” is greater than the “amount allowed.”

Have you ever noticed this? Have you ever wondered why?

Insurance companies (or the government, in the case of Medicare or Medicaid) have set rates they pay for each type of product or service that is covered. They base those amounts upon what they determine to be a “reasonable” charge. They determine what is “reasonable” by keeping records of every claim that is made for a given service (or med or whatever), taking an average, and then applying a percentage to that average. A provider has to agree to accept that “reasonable” amount if she wants to be in that insurer’s network. And being within various insurer networks is the way that they get paid.

The way that providers increase that average (and thus the amount that they will be reimbursed) is by always charging more than what is “reasonable” – knowing full well that they won’t be reimbursed everything, but knowing that they are slowly moving the average up.

So what incentive does a provider have to increase value to the consumer in such a system? The answer: none, whatsoever.

Here’s one other example: pharmaceutical companies. When they go out and research a new pill, are they ever concerned with what the end cost of the pill will be? No, not hardly. They are concerned with whether the pill will be covered by insurers (or by Medicare / Medicaid). Because that’s where the money comes to them. And, thus, we have hyper-expensive drugs.

The problem is that a single payer insurance scheme won’t change any of that basic mentality. Can you imagine what prices would be like if cars, houses, groceries were run like health care? I shudder at the thought.

 

[markomalley]

No, I had my information well before seeing SICKO. It’s just that for others who may not be as academically oriented, Moore sums it up pretty good. But I suggest people do their own research.

I also met the President of Costa Rica (many years before I saw SICKO) when he came to give a talk at our university. He himself didn’t know that his country was above ours on its health system (and WHO used the exact same parameters to rank all countries), but the gist of his talk was how Costa Ricans had decided to put people first (instead of military build up, war, and multinational corporations)

Costa Rica is interesting. From the Christian Science Monitor back in March, 2010:

(snip)

But there’s another arm of the country’s medical system – the public system – which is relied upon by a majority of the population. While celebrated by Costa Ricans for “universal access,” it’s often criticized for long wait times and delays in treatment.

(snip)

“If I have to get thrown into this massive government health care insurance business and end up going to the driver’s license office every day when I need to go to the doctor, yeah, I’ll go to Costa Rica for treatment, not move there,” he told listeners Tuesday, according to a transcript on his website.

(snip)

But, if … did move to Costa Rica and chose to initiate the process of residency, he’d be required to pay into the government-run social security system – which runs the health care system too. Under law, all people employed in Costa Rica must contribute 5.5 percent of their salary to the state-run social security system and employers are required to match their payment with 9.25 percent. Even those here for retirement are obligated to contribute under new immigration laws, regardless of whether they hold private insurance.

“The strengths of our health system (is) that it is universal, that it’s based on the idea of solidarity and that it’s fair,” says Dr. Ana Morice, vice health minister in Costa Rica. “What we need to improve is access to health services. Many times someone requests an appointment and doesn’t receive it until a year later. In that area, we have much to improve.”

Costa Rica is interesting because their private healthcare system is world-class (far better than the US system). But the public system is no better than any other government-run system…long waits, overcrowding, and short supplies.

Still, there is one really good thing about it. All Doctors must participate in the public clinics, but they are also allowed to, at the same time, allowed to work in the far more lucrative private system. So typical doctors will work in the government clinic for a couple of hours and then spend the rest of their day working in private practice.

So if you have money, Costa Rica is great. If you don’t, well, it’s definitely better than nothing.

My question for you is if you are advocating a two-tier health system like that?

 

[triumphguy]

Americans - in the form of Government and private dollars - pay MORE per person for their health care, and still many millions of people are uninsured, than Canadians pay for the universal, Government (i.e., taxpayer) paid healthcare offered in Canada.

The “free market” often comes at a price.

Many countries have better health overage for their population than than the US, and yet pay LESS per capita than Americans.

 

[markomalley]

Americans - in the form of Government and private dollars - pay MORE per person for their health care, and still many millions of people are uninsured, than Canadians pay for the universal, Government (i.e., taxpayer) paid healthcare offered in Canada.

The “free market” often comes at a price.

Many countries have better health overage for their population than than the US, and yet pay LESS per capita than Americans.

What in the world makes you think that the USA has a free market for healthcare?

 

[triumphguy]

I don’t really - I’m just making a point.

However, do you really think a true free market would improve healthcare for everyone?

Where is the profit in tending for the poor? Especially in their last years of life?

 

[markomalley]

I don’t really - I’m just making a point.

However, do you really think a true free market would improve healthcare for everyone?

Where is the profit in tending for the poor? Especially in their last years of life?

Set aside the poor for just a second…I will address that in a bit.

In an authentically free market…one that is not characterized by some sort of oligarchy…there are natural forces in play that keep prices in control. High prices are largely ruled out because people won’t buy. And the drive is always to reduce prices in order to attract additional customers. But, in order to charge lower prices, the business needs to seek out ways to reduce his costs so that he can still make a profit while charging those lower prices.

Sure, there will be some businesses who want to cater to a richer clientele. They will charge more (but will offer more luxury or additional services). But, just as with the automobile market, not everybody can afford a Maserati, so some people make due with Nissans or even Kias.

In any given city (or even sizable town), there are tens and hundreds of doctors. Each of them work as independent businesses (or you might have a few of them working together as a practice, in order to save money). Unless those doctors ALL decided to unionize and fix their pricing (and I mean ALL – just a few bucking the system would ruin price-fixing attempts), there is no way that medical pricing would not fall under those basic economic rules.

Look at drug pricing. Big Pharma doesn’t care what they charge for medicine. As long as insurance companies agree to cover the meds. What if they had to appeal to average people? How would they change their R&D and manufacturing strategies?

I am not saying immediately, but within 10 years, we would see dramatic changes for the good, throughout the medical community…drastically cutting costs for everybody.

(Look at it this way, if Doctor “A” charged $50 for a 15 minute appointment and Doctor “B” charged $150, which would YOU see…if you had to pay the bill?)

Those changes, in of themselves, would make medicine, as a whole, more affordable for everybody. And those changes, in of themselves, would help the “not-so-poor” who are now would be really hurt by high costs (if they didn’t have Medicare and Medicaid to turn to).

As for the really poor.

Do you realize that a doctor cannot write off care he/she gives to the poor as a charitable tax deduction? Two reasons: first, the poor person is not a registered charity with the IRS and, second, nobody can write off services they provide for charitable purposes (not even those provided to recognized charities). Doctors and dentists still provide “free” services to charity cases. But I wonder how much more they’d do if incentives were provided, like allowing those services to be written off?

Do you know that there is a program where a doctor’s/dentist’s medical school bills can be forgiven, in exchange for a few years worth of service? That is the source for most military doctors. What if that kind of program was expanded a little bit to provide free clinics in greatly underserved rural and poor urban areas?

There are any number of other specifics, but the point is that increased centralization really won’t help anybody, even the poor. Maybe we should look to restoring medicine to its free market basis and…then…look to see what we, as a society, can do to help the poor.

I will close with a quote that I post every now and again from Dorothy Day, foundress of the Catholic Worker movement. She wrote the following, all the way back in 1945:

We believe that social security legislation, now balled as a great victory for the poor and for the worker, is a great defeat for Christianity. It is an acceptance of the Idea of force and compulsion. It is an acceptance of Cain’s statement, on the part of the employer. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” … Of course, Pope Pius XI said that, when such a crisis came about, in unemployment, fire, flood, earthquake, etc., the state had to enter in and help…But we in our generation have more and more come to consider the state as bountiful Uncle Sam. “Uncle Sam will take care of it all. The race question, the labor question, the unemployment question.” We will all be registered and tabulated and employed or put on a dole, and shunted from clinic to birth control clinic…

(snip)

But who is to take care of them if the government does not? That is a question in a day when all are turning to the state, and when people are asking, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Certainly we all should know that it is not the province of the government to practice the works of mercy, or go in for Insurance. Smaller bodies, decentralized groups, should be caring for all such needs…The first unit of society is the family. The family should look after its own…“When did we see Thee hungry, when did we see Thee naked?” People either plead ignorance or they say “It is none of my responsibility.” But we are all members one of another, so we are obliged in conscience to help each other. The parish is the next unit, and there are local councils of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. Then there is the city, and the larger body of charitable groups. And there are the unions, where mutual aid and fraternal charity is also practiced…But now there is a dependence on the state. Hospitals once Catholic are subsidized by the state. Orphanages once supported by Catholic charity receive their aid from community chests. And when it is not the state it is bingo parties!

 

[triumphguy]

The problem is the “big pharma”, “big medicine” and “big insurance” will not allow a real free market to happen.

 

[markomalley]

The problem is the “big pharma”, “big medicine” and “big insurance” will not allow a real free market to happen.

Exactly.

And that’s ultimately why they support “BIG GOVERNMENT” – because they see that as the best possible way to ensure predictable and healthy returns for their investors.

And if it doesn’t serve anybody, who cares? Their investors are taken care of.

 

[lynnvinc]

While celebrated by Costa Ricans for “universal access,” it’s often criticized for long wait times and delays in treatment.

It could not possibly be as long as the waits I have here in the U.S. – one time 7 hours, and usually 2 to 5 hours. Even in India, where I do research, the waits are much shorter.

Plus, since we are such a wealthy nation, much much more wealthy than Costa Rica, I’m sure we could actually do much better with socialized medicine than we do with the horrible system we have now. We actually now pay more per person for medical care than anywhere in the world (also in the WHO stats), and yet we are 37th (used to be 35th some 8 years ago). So with even less than the money we’re spending now, we should be able to have the very best medical system in the world if we go to socialized medicine. People would then be a lot healthier, medical waits would be shorter, we’d live longer, our workforce would be more productive, and we’d save money. There’d be less risk of communicable diseases like TB. Instead of costly treatment of poor people as they die at a younger age (bec they couldn’t afford medical care when their conditions were minor), they’d be living longer and healthier. A good book on this is MAMA MIGHT BE BETTER OFF DEAD: THE FAILURE OF HEALTH CARE IN URBAN AMERICA, by Abraham.

It’s really a win-win-win situation to go to socialized medicine (something well beyond Obamacare). So why are we focused on lose-lose-lose.

 

[Ian_Ward]

Hopefully they support that the government should take care of its people!!!

 

[Viki63]

A government funded system, while it likely will be able to help the problem of excessive costs in the short term, will have disastrous consequences in the long term. The problem is that the entire system needs to be restored to having natural free market controls…that is the only way that, in the long term, that the problem can be kept under control.

I can’t agree with you. Medicare works very well for people who have it.
We have had natural free market controls, for everyone under 65, since Medicare was instituted to protect the elderly. The obvious happened: big insurance’s first duty is to its stockholders, so they must try to maximize profits.
People do get sick and have accidents, its’ a fact of life. No reason we can’t all contribute to a pot, as we do with Medicare, so that when someone needs medical care they don’t have to go bankrupt.
I don’t think, mark, that you realize the enormous stacks of paperwork that physicians have to process, from hundreds of insurance companies, just to get reimbursed for treatments. Each doctor has to have a billing processor just for that,.
It’s not entirely the huge profit that CEOs of insurance companies make, it’s the advertisements, the billing expenses, etc that cost so much.
Obviously someone has to make decisions on what to pay for. But why should it be some clerk in an insurance company, denying care that your doctor thinks you need, so that she can get points for maximizing profits?

 

[markomalley]

I can’t agree with you. Medicare works very well for people who have it.

Does it really?

Not even considering the fiduciary fallacy of how Medicare runs, I don’t see that it works well at all.

You pay a tax your whole life and then you receive hospitalization insurance that doesn’t even cover all your expenses (I just looked it up, you will pay a $1,156 deductible for each hospital stay under 60 days, then $289 per day from day 61-90, $566 per day for day 91-150, and 100% of the bill beyond day 150).

You need to see a doctor outside of a hospital admission? You are out of luck. Medicare (Part A) doesn’t cover it.

If you want more, then you’ll have to pay premiums when you are retired to cover that (Medicare Part B is not free – it’s $100 per person per month – unless you were successful 2 years before you retired. Then it could go up to as much as $320 per month). That’s on top of the taxes that you payed from age 16. And that still doesn’t cover everything. There is still a deductible every year and there is still coinsurance. Your doctor prescribes you some medicine? Hope you can pay for it because Part B doesn’t cover it.

Well, Uncle Sam comes to the rescue. Medicare Part D. Throw on another $38 per month per person. But, still, they’ve got those copays and they have a formulary that says what drugs are and aren’t covered. One cool thing about Part “D” is the world-famous “donut-hole” – all drug costs between $2900 and $4700 per year are 100% the patient’s responsibility.

Now if you don’t like all that, you can go to those evil commercial insurers and get supplemental insurance to take care of all the gaps. For a fee.

Now, of course, we don’t care about rich retirees. We care about the poor. So let’s say you have a couple who made $20,000 per year before retiring. They retired at age 67. They could count on getting about $1800 per month from social security. $1250 per month for the widow when her husband dies. Of course, they have to pay taxes on that so the take-home will be actually less. Of course, making $20,000 per year, they didn’t have too much of an opportunity to save much of anything. The husband’s employer went out of business, so the pension he was counting on was gone. So they are completely dependent upon social security and medicare. Thank goodness their little factory house was paid for.

Her husband died a couple of years ago, so she’s down to $1,250 per month ($1,113 a month after Medicare is deducted). And then she fell. Broke her hip. They decided to put in a replacement hip. The hospital visit (7 days) ran her $1,156 and the 60 days in the nursing home for rehab ran her $8,640 ($144 per day copay). She didn’t have the savings to pay the extra amount so she had to mortgage the house to the nursing home company. She should be able to get the deed back in a year or so, so no big deal.

I haven’t discussed when she hits the donut hole, though – since her doctor has her on both Lipitor and Nexium, as well as the other usual cocktail of meds, she generally hits that donut hole around May or so every year. She sure is happy when October comes round.

The point is that you may think it is a panacea, but it is not. It is no better than, and, in most cases, worse than the health coverage most Americans have through their work.

And the pricing problem I discussed earlier (how doctors, pharma, and so on game the system to move the reimbursements up) still applies.

We have had natural free market controls, for everyone under 65, since Medicare was instituted to protect the elderly.

No we haven’t. That’s the point. We haven’t had free market controls in place since health insurance became near universal in the 20 years after WWII.

Prices are fixed by a very few insurance companies. Doctors, pharmaceutical companies/pharmacies, hospitals all game that system to increase the prices.

The obvious happened: big insurance’s first duty is to its stockholders, so they must try to maximize profits.

True, corporations do have a responsibility to their shareholders.

Are you telling me that making a 4-6% profit is immoral? See the actual net profit margins I clipped above.

People do get sick and have accidents, its’ a fact of life. No reason we can’t all contribute to a pot, as we do with Medicare, so that when someone needs medical care they don’t have to go bankrupt.
I don’t think, mark, that you realize the enormous stacks of paperwork that physicians have to process, from hundreds of insurance companies, just to get reimbursed for treatments. Each doctor has to have a billing processor just for that,.

Actually, I do realize that and recognize that this is a HUGE part of the problem.

But do you seriously think that under a “single payer privately run publicly funded” health insurance scheme that there will magically be no paperwork to process?

It’s not entirely the huge profit that CEOs of insurance companies make, it’s the advertisements, the billing expenses, etc that cost so much.

Where are your figures to back up that claim? You have made the assertion earlier that There is no reason to be paying one third of our healthcare dollars to the insurance companies for advertising and profits,

I demonstrated to you with hard numbers that this was not true.

Obviously someone has to make decisions on what to pay for. But why should it be some clerk in an insurance company, denying care that your doctor thinks you need, so that she can get points for maximizing profits?

So it should instead be some clerk in a single-payer privately run publicly funded outfit that should make the decision instead?

Or how about a faceless government bureaucrat working in a poorly lit office deep inside the catacombs of the Department of Health and Human Services?

 

[markomalley]

It could not possibly be as long as the waits I have here in the U.S. – one time 7 hours, and usually 2 to 5 hours. Even in India, where I do research, the waits are much shorter.

Plus, since we are such a wealthy nation, much much more wealthy than Costa Rica, I’m sure we could actually do much better with socialized medicine than we do with the horrible system we have now. We actually now pay more per person for medical care than anywhere in the world (also in the WHO stats), and yet we are 37th (used to be 35th some 8 years ago). So with even less than the money we’re spending now, we should be able to have the very best medical system in the world if we go to socialized medicine. People would then be a lot healthier, medical waits would be shorter, we’d live longer, our workforce would be more productive, and we’d save money. There’d be less risk of communicable diseases like TB. Instead of costly treatment of poor people as they die at a younger age (bec they couldn’t afford medical care when their conditions were minor), they’d be living longer and healthier. A good book on this is MAMA MIGHT BE BETTER OFF DEAD: THE FAILURE OF HEALTH CARE IN URBAN AMERICA, by Abraham.

It’s really a win-win-win situation to go to socialized medicine (something well beyond Obamacare). So why are we focused on lose-lose-lose.

Leaving aside the moral problems of socialized medicine (you do realize that socialized medicine is utterly immoral, right?),

I don’t know where your wait time is 7 hours in the US. Are you talking about in an emergency room or an urgent care center?

In the US, we have appointments. Sure, sometimes the doctor is delayed because of a previous appointment, but c’mon…that’s the exception.

I know of no place in the US where you have to wait a year to get an appointment to see a provider.

As for prices, you are absolutely right on that. Our prices are out of control. The current system of third party payers assures that. There are no free market controls on prices, since very few people actually pay for their healthcare. True socialized medicine would certainly reduce costs, but at what price?

 

[Nate13]

If you want one undeniable reason why government healthcare will be more costly than private here it is:

usatoday.com/money/economy/income/2010-08-10-1Afedpay10_ST_N.htm

Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.

Considering gross percentage of payroll compared to gross ratio is usually on the order of 15%-30% that is incredibly significant. In service businesses like insurance that percentage of total revenue can reach up over 50%.

Just based on those numbers I could assert that there is a reasonable chance that a government run health insurance business with government employees will probably at least raise the cost of healthcare by 15%. Any supposed savings that government healthcare will save us would probably be gobbled up by payroll increases alone.

 

[lynnvinc]

Leaving aside the moral problems of socialized medicine (you do realize that socialized medicine is utterly immoral, right?),

Whaaa??? Socialized simply means that we as a people want to make sure that all of us are cared for no matter what an individual’s medical condition or ability to pay. It means caring and sharing. It is surely God’s way and what He would have us do as a democratic, wealthy nation. Our evils of selfishness and lack of socialized medicine redound to us as sins of omission in this day and age.

In the past it may not have been possible to have such programs as socialized medicine. Medicine was not as advanced, and many doctors structured their fees according to how much people could pay, during a time when our communities were face-to-face relationships, and we knew about everyone. Today we live in a much different world, and it has become our Christian duty to institute socialized medicine, as well as other programs that help people survive and meet their minimum life requirements, perhaps even thrive.

I know this is very difficult for people to believe, but when you seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness, all things will be added unto you. If we are generous and provide the necessary taxes and make sure we provide the necessary medical and other help for people in this our democracy, that is surely doing God’s will. Voting to maintain the status quo or to lower our taxes and decrease our socialized social programs and leave people to die is a reflection of our selfish human nature. Touting such evil as good is the devil’s work. We have allowed the devil to infiltrate our hearts and minds.

I feel bad about being part of such a selfish, other-hating, and destructive nation. I would feel happy to pay more taxes that would see to it that everyone had good health care and other helps when needed. I understand that there would be those who abuse such a good and merciful system, but I would not want to throw the baby of goodness out with the bathwater of cheaters and loafers. I would rather us work to reduce the cheaters or loafers as much as possible.

 

[Nate13]

Hopefully they support that the government should take care of its people!!!

Does the government own us, or do we own the government? Your statement here is somewhat disturbing.

 

[Viki63]

Mark, you clearly have facts and figures at your fingertips, and more time than I do (I’m a nurse, working full time) but I still disagree with you. Most people throughout the country are underinsured, they just won’t realize it until sickness or injury hits, Most of our bankruptcies occur because of medical bills. This never happens in the rest of the industrialized world.
I agree with lynnvinc that government administered healthcare, publicly provided, is the way out. I wish you wouldn’t call it socialized medicine, because it isn’t. The doctors would still make the decisions, not second-guessed by anyone, within rational guidelines.
Nobody lives forever, and there have to be limits. But they should not be based on the patients’ ability to pay, which they are now.
There are 18,000 members of PNHP, Physicians for a National Health Program, who support a NHP, which is basically improved Medicare for everyone. It appears to me that PNHP are farsighted professionals who have figured out what’s wrong with our system and how to fix it, and it hasn’t been implemented yet because big insurance has enough power to control the government. You’re telling me those 18000 MDs are all wrong? Here is their proposal.

 

[Nate13]

I agree with lynnvinc that government administered healthcare, publicly provided, is the way out. I wish you wouldn’t call it socialized medicine, because it isn’t. The doctors would still make the decisions, not second-guessed by anyone, within rational guidelines.
Nobody lives forever, and there have to be limits. But they should not be based on the patients’ ability to pay, which they are now.

At some point though it will be a government entity of some sort who determines what is reasonable in providing people a chance at life. This is apparent already in Medicaid as Mark described. You said yourself there has to be limits, and it will be the government who ends up deciding what those limits are. And it will not be personalized in anyway because it will be based on trends and doing what is supposedly in the best interest of everybody. There will be gaps in coverage as Mark showed in Medicaid based on what serves the most people or based on what worked out politically so each party felt like they got a win.

 

[markomalley]

Whaaa??? Socialized simply means that we as a people want to make sure that all of us are cared for no matter what an individual’s medical condition or ability to pay. It means caring and sharing. It is surely God’s way and what He would have us do as a democratic, wealthy nation. Our evils of selfishness and lack of socialized medicine redound to us as sins of omission in this day and age.

No, it doesn’t.

Socialized (fill in the blank) means that government owns / controls the means of production for (fill in the blank). That is not my opinion of the definition of the word, that is what the word means (see the American Heritage Dictionary entry)

Since you weren’t using the appropriate definition in your discussion, I’d like to know if it is your opinion that the Church teaches that government should own and control the means of medical production. I don’t wish to go on some sort of long rant about how you are wrong when you and I may be talking about two different concepts altogether.

I feel bad about being part of such a selfish, other-hating, and destructive nation. I would feel happy to pay more taxes that would see to it that everyone had good health care and other helps when needed. I understand that there would be those who abuse such a good and merciful system, but I would not want to throw the baby of goodness out with the bathwater of cheaters and loafers. I would rather us work to reduce the cheaters or loafers as much as possible.

If you were a citizen of another country and had such disgust for your country’s system, I would encourage you to look into immigrating to this country.

It would be considered hateful if I was to recommend that you look into emigrating and moving to a more socialist state, like Cuba or Venezuela, so I won’t do so. Part of the greatness of this country is the ability for free speech and the opportunity for all to effect peaceful change through our system.

Naturally, I will oppose any effort to move this country any farther down the road to socialism, something that each and every pope has vigorously opposed since the days of Leo XIII, but it is your civil right to do so.

May I suggest that, as a more constructive use of your time, rather than whining about what a horrible people Americans are and how much you loathe us all?

 

[markomalley]

Mark, you clearly have facts and figures at your fingertips, and more time than I do (I’m a nurse, working full time) but I still disagree with you. Most people throughout the country are underinsured, they just won’t realize it until sickness or injury hits, Most of our bankruptcies occur because of medical bills…

I agree that most people in this country depend upon insurance and they don’t realize the limitations of that insurance until its too late.

I agree with lynnvinc that government administered healthcare, publicly provided, is the way out. I wish you wouldn’t call it socialized medicine, because it isn’t. The doctors would still make the decisions, not second-guessed by anyone, within rational guidelines.
Nobody lives forever, and there have to be limits. But they should not be based on the patients’ ability to pay, which they are now.

If the means of production are controlled by the government, that is exactly what it is. I am really sorry if that makes you feel uncomfortable, but it is what it is.

Unfortunately, if the “public” is funding some health insurance scheme, the “public” will have a say-so as to what is covered or what is not covered. It is naive to think otherwise.

There are 18,000 members of PNHP, Physicians for a National Health Program, who support a NHP, which is basically improved Medicare for everyone. It appears to me that PNHP are farsighted professionals who have figured out what’s wrong with our system and how to fix it, and it hasn’t been implemented yet because big insurance has enough power to control the government. You’re telling me those 18000 MDs are all wrong? Here is their proposal.

There are a total of 805,000 physicians in the US (2010 projections). I would say that it is very possible for 2% of the country’s physicians (i.e., 18,000 out of that 805,000) to be wrong.

Again, don’t get me wrong. I absolutely do not like the system we currently have. Unfortunately, I see a single payer system as moving in the exact wrong direction.