Originally Posted by Mikeyy

My health insurance is deductable now. Its the cost that is out of hand. Its doubled in 9 years. I think Conrad has proposed some coop situation. How do we get the medical costs down? I mean shouldn't I be free to buy my drugs from other countries.

Originally Posted by faithful_servant

Not a deduction against income, a credit against taxes.

If you want your medical costs to go down, encourage all the European drug manufacturers to invest the kind of money American drug manufacturers do.

If you want medical costs to go down, increase the number of medical providers and let the market drive down costs. Just put in place a program where a person's medical education can be paid for if they agree to spend 7 years working wherever the gov't tells them to at a set rate of compensation. This increases market pressure and creates a large body of low cost service providers. Make it so that the Drs. have to spend 7 years in practice before they put their 7 years of gov't work to make sure that they have the experience they need to have and if they fail to do thier 7 years of service, tag them for the cost of their education at a 30% APR.

Originally Posted by Mikeyy

What is wrong with charging the same price for your drug everywhere. Who decided the American people should subsidize the entire planet?

Originally Posted by Adept1

Yes it's TRUE.

Even you KNOW it to be true.

This PROOF refutes EVERY argument that the liberal fools have.


There are two MAJOR fields of medicine where costs have been rapidly falling for several years. They are currently less than ONE/FOURTH of what they were only ten years ago.

WHY?

Because the government AND the insurance companies do NOT cover them.

You doubt it?....check yourself.

Cosmetic surgery and Lasic procedures.


Just like EVERY product..............competition and innovation brings down the prices.

Still doubt it?


Check out "flat screen TV's", computers, cell phones, ........same story.

GET THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF OUR WAY!

Originally Posted by faithful_servant

So now you're going to tell the rest of the world that their drug prices have to go up so that we pay less?? I'm all in favor of having some kind of review process for exhorbitant prices, but someone has to pay the cost of researching these drugs and that's us because we live in the country where the lion's share of the research is done. We also have substantially higher standards for releasing new drugs into the market, further escalating the research costs. [sarcasm]But, we'll just pass that cost on to the millions of suffering Africans so that we can have lower drug costs here.[/sarcasm]

Originally Posted by faithful_servant

Not a deduction against income, a credit against taxes.

If you want your medical costs to go down, encourage all the European drug manufacturers to invest the kind of money American drug manufacturers do.

If you want medical costs to go down, increase the number of medical providers and let the market drive down costs. Just put in place a program where a person's medical education can be paid for if they agree to spend 7 years working wherever the gov't tells them to at a set rate of compensation. This increases market pressure and creates a large body of low cost service providers. Make it so that the Drs. have to spend 7 years in practice before they put their 7 years of gov't work to make sure that they have the experience they need to have and if they fail to do thier 7 years of service, tag them for the cost of their education at a 30% APR.

Originally Posted by zoobie555

We can't support our growing deficit with further tax credits. It's a good thought and in better economic times would probably work.

Originally Posted by faithful_servant

I guess I should clarify that I'm working from a POV of providing maximum healthcare to the most people. There's really only three ways of doing it:
1. The gov't (the taxpayers) pay for it.
2. Employers pay for it.
3. The consumers pay for it.

In all 3 scenarios, the cost eventually gets pushed onto the consumers. But with a tax credit, we remove the gov't from the majority of the cases and allow the employers to directly fund their employees healthcare. Give the consumers the same deal and allow them to take a tax credit for their healthcare expenses. Afterall, if the gov't is going to require that everyone has healthcare, someone has to pay for it. If the gov't pays for it, the $$ comes from taxes, so why not just cut out the middleman?? There will definitely need to be caps on both the amount and types of healthcare costs that are creditable so that people don't end up taking credit for a boob job, but we can easily make the system far more efficient by going directly from the employer/consumer to the healthcare provider. I like analogies, so let's try this one:
Which is better?
Buying a house by paying someone directly for it?
or...
Buying a house by giving the money to the gov't and then having them pay it to the homeowner?
The 2nd option sounds pretty dumb, yet that's what gets avoided if we give a tax credit for healthcare expenses.



I'd expand my concept to teachers as well. Let's hit the market with a bunch of teachers who are motivated to succeed, instead of motivated to get tenure/union protection for their job.

Originally Posted by zoobie555

Please change your screen-name to Inept1.
No comment on your personal attack or your lack of creativity.
Cosmetic surgery and Lasic procedures come down in price because they rely on electronic innovations, and that is something that comes down in price considerably. Other fields of medicine go up and up, even for those that pay cash and don't have insurance. Silly you......are you trying to make a claim that ALL fields of medicine do not get new and more modern equipment constantly? Are you trying to claim that cosmetic and lasik doctors do not spend time on their patients, and they do not have a staff, office, insurance(malpractice), operating room, and oh yea add in ADVERTISING....What they don't have is a bunch of bureaucratic paperwork to handle. We could bring the price of drugs down further and faster by cutting the life span of patents my, my now that's clever. - but that isn't exactly fair to the corporations that invent them and invest big bucks on R&D, not very good capitalism is it, to drive the hardest working companies out of business and running the entire industry into the crapper?

Other fields of medicine don't respond to the free market the way the ones you mentioned do. If they did, insurance companies would be out of business and health care costs would be low. Except for the fact that the insurance companies are totally regulated by GOVERNMENT......not just to enforce the written contracts (which is ALL that should be controlled) but to put so much stuff into the contracts that the insurance companies HAVE to charge more. Maybe someday when scientists can invent a robot doctor that works 24 hours a day without rest or a salary, with the artificial intelligence level suffice to obtain a PhD - then as we outsource the manufacturing of our invention to 3rd world contries to produce it faster and cheaper, healthcare costs would be affordable. Have you researched Obama's plan.......that is EXACTLY the intent.....the government will "determine the course of treatment" and NO others will be allowed. Doctor enters symptoms into computer....computer says what is allowed to be treated or tested further for after considering "importance level" of patient.

Keeping government out of healthcare is one thing that goes with the grain of a free market and capitalistic society - but getting rid of insurance companies, legitimate (though often unscrutable) private businesses that provide a service (occasionally, when they decide to pay their claims) to their customers... that sounds rather anti-capitalistic, don't you think? What do you have against business and the free market? So I guess you didn't realize that when "coverage" is provided by the government that the COMPANIES will soon be "OUT OF BUSINESS" due to unfair competition. If you think that people NEED more medical care then why don't you just provide care to those that need and can't afford rather than destroy the present system?

Although getting rid of the government provided protection that keeps insurance companies from being sued would be a good step. Without that protection, health insurance companies would have to pay claims, and health care providers wouldn't have to raise their rates to cash customers to make up for the pittances that insurance companies offer in lieu of full payment.
Good luck with that lawsuit against government when the insurance companies and all their jobs and "investment funds" are gone.......I don't understand your comment about "insurance companies not being sued".........or are all those multimillion dollar court settlements just my imagination?
But people that spend 7-8 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to become Drs. are still going to expect high salaries, require numerous assistants to run their practices and hospitals, pay their rent and utilities... and healthcare is not going to be affordable for the lowest classes of society (or even people with upper-middle class incomes who become seriously ill with diseases such as HIV or cancer) without the cost-averaging of insurance, or a government safety net. SO THEN YOU'LL AGREE THAT THE NUMBER OF DOCTORS AND NURSES IS GOING TO GO DOWN UNDER THE NEW SYSTEM?........By the way look in any phonebook and check the names of the doctors......most are already coming from foreign countries.

Even with the reduced cost of elective surgeries such as lasic or cosmetic surgeries, those procedures are now being outsourced to countries such as Thailand, whose surgeons and medical facilities are maintained to the same or HIGHER standards than those in the U.S. (and whose medical industries are actually accredited by U.S. accrediting agencies and standards) and where a patient can get the same procedure and quality of care outside the U.S. included lodging and airfare for the same price or LESS than just the cost of the procedure alone here in the U.S. - and get a vacation to an exotic location thrown in for free. Good for the patient, and for Thailand, but not exactly good for the U.S. which is where these procedures and technologies were pioneered.
Now you are beginning to grasp "the market concepts" that control prices........People will travel long distances to SAVE money so when you make it more expensive everywhere in the country people will go elsewhere.You have figured out that the plan WILL destroy care here. The proper question should be "How come they can do it just as well and so much cheaper?" Competition

But hey, we can always move to a system where all American citizens seek medical care outside of the U.S., whether it is a hangnail or a liver transplant - and where the lowest economic classes simply suffer and die for a lack of basic healthcare that is only affordable to the upper class - why not - it works in places like Haiti.