[Grovenet] Chance to be involved in your future -

Sun Mar 4 09:51:48 PST 2007

The article starts out with a lie. Employers have not been providing 
health care for 150 year. The aarp sends out crap mailings scaring 
elders into donating to save their social security and so on.
I posted in my first response that the article starts out with a lie, so 
I didn't read further. Well I did later and found it to be sourced from 
the aarp, which prompted me to post a more truthful history of the problem.
The aarp is now using health care as their scare tool to gain funds. The 
link goes to an article and prompts you to 'take the pledge'. What do 
you think they are going to do with your address?

Talk about being closed minded.

Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:
> Clearly you didn't read it. 
>
> It doesn't ask for donations. You don't have to be a member of AARP to be
> involved in the initiative. 
>
> It speaks to the state of the nation's healthcare today. Anyone (including
> me) who has been involved in trying to pay for their healthcare without
> benefit of employer-provided health insurance knows what an expensive mess
> that is. 
>
> Please, Steven, before you open your mouth, open your eyes and think about
> what you're seeing and hearing. 
>
> Ron D'Eau Claire 
>
> P.S. Even though you apparently thought it was for AARP members, you must be
> very young to consider people over 50 "elderly" <G> 
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com] On
> Behalf Of Steven
> Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2007 10:55 PM
> To: Forest Grove local interests list
> Subject: Re: [Grovenet] Chance to be involved in your future -
>
>
> Like I said, I don't agree with the lies in your article.
> Yes, there are problems with the current system being tied to employers. No
> I don't side with an organization that scares elderly folks as a 
> tactic to gain donations from them.
>
> Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:
>   
>> Oh, so you do agree with the position the AARP is taking in the
>> initiative I provided the link to read. As you quoted: "While the 
>> system that prevailed during this "golden era" came to be regarded as 
>> the norm by (if not the birthright of) American physicians and their 
>> patients, from a broader perspective that system is clearly an 
>> unsustainable aberrancy. At some point the mounting costs of "no 
>> limit" health care had to generate its own backlash. * **The system 
>> had to implode.*
>>
>> Strange, I would never have thought that from your original comments.
>>
>> I was just making folks here aware of the initiative for those who are
>> interested.
>>
>> Ron D'Eau Claire
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com]
>> On Behalf Of Steven
>> Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2007 9:22 PM
>> To: Forest Grove local interests list
>> Subject: Re: [Grovenet] Chance to be involved in your future -
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *The "economic" golden era*
>>
>> Any health care economist worth his or her salt will tell you that
>> from
>> an economic standpoint, an ideal health care system is one in which 
>> patients pay directly for their medical care. In such a system, patients 
>> freely choose their own physicians, and together with their physicians 
>> make all medical decisions, mindful that any costs incurred thereby are 
>> theirs to pay. Cost controls are therefore automatic. During the 1920s 
>> and for the next few decades, this "ideal" system existed in the United 
>> States. Inasmuch as doctors at the time had very little to offer in 
>> terms of expensive (or effective) therapies, and since patients' 
>> expectations were (appropriately) low, this system worked extremely well 
>> from an economic point of view.
>>
>> *The "medical" golden era*
>>
>> This economic equilibrium began to falter in the 1930s, and the 
>> disequilibrium rapidly accelerated in the years following World War 
>> II. The first kink in the armor of direct contracting between 
>> physicians and their patients occurred during the Great Depression, 
>> when hospitals began to suffer from patients' inability to pay their 
>> bills. Over the initial objections of physicians, financially stressed 
>> hospitals prevailed on state legislatures to legalize the insurance 
>> schemes that became known as Blue Cross. In order to assuage the moral 
>> indignation of physicians, however, the Blues were created as 
>> non-profit, provider-oriented insurance organizations.
>>
>> "Provider-oriented" meant two things. First, Blue Cross (and later,
>> Blue
>> Shield) did not try to tell physicians how to practice medicine. 
>> Physicians were free to practice as they saw fit, and the Blues would 
>> simply pay the bills on a fee-for-service basis. Second, the boards of 
>> trustees of local Blue Cross and Blue Shield organizations were loaded 
>> with prominent local physicians and hospital administrators.
>>
>> Not only did such a system preserve the direct physician-patient 
>> relationship, it also paid the bills more reliably than did patients 
>> themselves. The system worked to so well that soon physicians became 
>> willing to countenance the formation of private health insurance 
>> companies, as long as those companies followed the same general 
>> guidelines set by the Blues.
>>
>> Health insurance proved to be so popular that, during the wage and
>> price
>> controls of World War II, companies began offering it to their employees 
>> in lieu of higher wages. After the war, American labor unions began to 
>> demand that employers provide health insurance as a benefit of 
>> employment. The government liked this idea, too, and in order to 
>> encourage it, tax laws were changed to make the provision of this 
>> benefit extremely attractive to employers.
>>
>> *It is important to note that this new tax policy created a
>> fundamental
>> change in how health care was paid for. In effect, it shifted a huge 
>> chunk of the fiscal burden for health insurance from consumers and 
>> employers to the government, where it remains to this day. *Within a few 
>> years, the majority of American workers had employer-provided health 
>> care insurance, heavily subsidized by the federal government.
>>
>> Then in the 1960s, the federal government became directly involved in 
>> paying for American health care on a large scale with the institution 
>> of Medicare, and then Medicaid. Since that moment, the proportion of 
>> health care spending directly attributable to the government has 
>> steadily grown
>> - from 24% of all dollars spent on health care in the 1960s, to 40% by 
>> 1990. *Today, when you include tax subsidies for health insurance, fully 
>> 51% of America's health care spending is accounted for by the 
>> government, and paid for by taxpayers.*
>>
>> Since politicians can tax the people only so much, a lot of this 
>> spending has been piling up in the form of the national debt, awaiting 
>> our children and grandchildren.
>>
>> But *for physicians and their patients in the second half of the 20^th 
>> century, the resultant system seemed nearly perfect*. While patients 
>> retained complete freedom of choice regarding which doctors and 
>> hospitals they used, and while the physician-patient relationship 
>> remained largely free of outside influence, somebody else was paying 
>> the bills. There arose an almost complete dissociation between 
>> providing (and consuming) health care, and paying for it.
>>
>> *This economic arrangement did at least two things that would
>> ultimately
>> spell its own doom.** * *First*, it allowed the American health care 
>> myth to flourish - the notion that the best possible care should be 
>> provided to everybody, and that where health care is concerned, there 
>> are no limits. It created expectations that ultimately could not be met.
>>
>> *Second*, this system fostered the development of the
>> medical-industrial
>> complex. Since any medical advance that seemed useful would be paid for, 
>> powerful corporations arose dedicated to meeting the bottomless demand 
>> for medical advances. The pharmaceutical companies, hospital suppliers, 
>> and medical device companies began turning out a steady stream of 
>> improved and expensive technology. Ironically (given that this whole 
>> system had evolved largely due to physicians' attempts to shield 
>> themselves from corporate influence), these corporations used their 
>> considerable marketing clout to influence the decisions, the practice 
>> patterns, and even the demographic distribution (such as patterns of 
>> specialization) of the medical profession.
>>
>> The* bottomless expectations of patients and physicians,* coupled with 
>> the never-ending meeting (and flaming) of those expectations by 
>> industry, created a rapidly spinning positive feedback loop. The more 
>> health care the doctors and patients got, the more they wanted. The 
>> more they wanted, the more the medical-industrial complex was happy to 
>> provide. It was inevitable that those paying the ever-mounting health 
>> care costs (i.e., employers and the government) would eventually reach 
>> the breaking point. While the system that prevailed during this 
>> "golden era" came to be regarded as the norm by (if not the birthright 
>> of) American physicians and their patients, from a broader perspective 
>> that system is clearly an unsustainable aberrancy. At some point the 
>> mounting costs of "no limit" health care had to generate its own 
>> backlash. * **The system had to implode.*
>>
>>
>>
>> Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:
>>   
>>     
>>> Nothing provides you with more security than your closed mind,
>>> Steven.
>>> You are saved the effort of thinking and caring.
>>>
>>> You have lots of company.
>>>
>>> Ron D'Eau Claire
>>>
>>>
>>>   
>>>   
>>>     
>>>       
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