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Half Devils/Half Politics Poll


Daniel

  

48 members have voted

  1. 1. What do you care more about?

    • Devils re-signing Parise
      33
    • Supreme Court Health Care Decision
      15


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Wrong on all accounts. Prices are not going up because of evil pharmaceutical companies and evil insurers. You have high demand for an expensive and scarce service. Prices will most assuredly go up. There is also no way you can bring down administrative costs in any significant way if there is a third party paying. Let me put it this way, if I had to personally had to pay for your necessary medical care, I damn well want to know what your doctor visits were for, why you needed that operation, why it cost so much. That will require a lot of paper work whether that third party is me personally, an insurance company or Uncle Sam.

Rather, what will bring prices down are governmental price controls. What do you think cutting Medicaid/Medicare reimbursements to doctors is designed to do? And what happens when you put a price ceiling on something? You get less supply of that something.

I'd rather have a single payer system anyways. That being said, reimbursements for Medicare need to flattened so that you don't see abuses in the system of people being pushed towards treatments that have higher reimbursement rates. Again, here the argument is flatten the rate, broaden the base. Specialist are overpaid in our system, GPs are underpaid. Shift that so that specialists get less and GPs more and you will have more GPs and greater access. Less specialists could hurt, but usually a bit of a wait to see one isn't gonna kill you and if it is, the GP will let you know and I would hope that there could be a way to allow more needing patients skip in line. I'm over-simplifying, but you get the point.

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We need more people in the political section of the forum more often. I don't want to go to a pure politics message board because they're always overrun with people. When someone says something and then 20 people give the same retort, it's hard to really have a discussion. Plus I feel people are more irresponsible/trollish on those boards.

Let's keep #9 where belongs (for an nonrestrictive price).

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We need more people in the political section of the forum more often. I don't want to go to a pure politics message board because they're always overrun with people. When someone says something and then 20 people give the same retort, it's hard to really have a discussion. Plus I feel people are more irresponsible/trollish on those boards.

Let's keep #9 where belongs (for an nonrestrictive price).

I agree. I thoroughly enjoy political debate, even if I completely disagree with the other posters, that's ok. We're all Devils fans and I can get over other posters being on the other side of the healthcare debate. Having discussions like this can only raise awareness in the minds of people and, hopefully, a knowledgeable public will make better decisions. It's also good to hear individual stories because when you just look at data and numbers, you can lose sight of the human factors in these things.

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I'd rather have a single payer system anyways. That being said, reimbursements for Medicare need to flattened so that you don't see abuses in the system of people being pushed towards treatments that have higher reimbursement rates. Again, here the argument is flatten the rate, broaden the base. Specialist are overpaid in our system, GPs are underpaid. Shift that so that specialists get less and GPs more and you will have more GPs and greater access. Less specialists could hurt, but usually a bit of a wait to see one isn't gonna kill you and if it is, the GP will let you know and I would hope that there could be a way to allow more needing patients skip in line. I'm over-simplifying, but you get the point.

Couple of points. In a sense I agree with you on the single payer system. That is, if we've come to the point where it's accepted wisdom that everyone is entitled to medical care, might as well go all in. However, a true single payer system is still a price control system. In fact, it's even worse, as private transactions between doctor and patient are illegal. That's why a lot of wealthy Canadians will go to Buffalo or Michigan for medical care.

Also, while doctors do push patients towards expensive services or diagnostics to pad their own wallets, they also do it because of plaintiffs' attorneys. Whatever the reason though, you are crossing over into the territory of price controls when you say that some doctors are overpaid and some aren't. Sure you can make a value judgment in coming to that conclusion, but writing that judgment into the law comes with consequences. While I'm no fan of Sarah Palin, she is right that true government control over healthcare creates "death panels." (BTW, I'm fully in favor of death panels if I'm the one footing the bill).

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

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Couple of points. In a sense I agree with you on the single payer system. That is, if we've come to the point where it's accepted wisdom that everyone is entitled to medical care, might as well go all in. However, a true single payer system is still a price control system. In fact, it's even worse, as private transactions between doctor and patient are illegal. That's why a lot of wealthy Canadians will go to Buffalo or Michigan for medical care.

Also, while doctors do push patients towards expensive services or diagnostics to pad their own wallets, they also do it because of plaintiffs' attorneys. Whatever the reason though, you are crossing over into the territory of price controls when you say that some doctors are overpaid and some aren't. Sure you can make a value judgment in coming to that conclusion, but writing that judgment into the law comes with consequences. While I'm no fan of Sarah Palin, she is right that true government control over healthcare creates "death panels." (BTW, I'm fully in favor of death panels if I'm the one footing the bill).

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

While I certainly wouldn't call them "death panels", I agree that if you have a single payer system, you have to ration care to keep prices down. I'm all in favor of denying that an 70 year old person, who's got end stage liver disease or any terminal illness, get some radical $1M treatment. You have to draw a line somewhere. You have to say, hmmm, you might gain full mobility in your shoulder if I replace the joint, but if we go with a cheaper treatment, you will be able to live day to day with minimal pain, although your golf game may suffer. That's the trade off. If you want affordable, accessible care, you have to tell some people no.

Also, if gov't could provide better incentives for people to live healthier lives by focusing on preventative care, making PSAs about smoking, eating well, etc. that will help drive down costs by way of not needing them.

We could also aid that by trying to decrease obesity and diabetes by not subsidizing corn and as a side effect of that, subsidizing junk food/sodas, would be good, but that's a whole other discussion.

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The austerity measures are not what's keeping them on life support, it's WHY they're on life support. Read what a real economist has to say on the matter: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/opinion/krugman-europes-economic-suicide.html

Ok, well, you may not care that a well respected group like the WHO says about healthcare, then I don't know what to tell you. I mean, I'm sorry, but it's fact that Cuba outperforms the US. Do you not believe the statistics on things like infant mortality rates that the WHO puts out? And you can bet a million dollars that if people could, they would buy prescription pills from Cuba just like they do from Mexico and Canada.

The issue in the US has never been that it's lacking in skilled doctors or that it can't perform cutting edge procedures, it's that the cost of that care is prohibitively expensive and when people don't have the insurance, they are forced to use the most expensive avenue of care, ERs. The argument for universal healthcare is nearly IDENTICAL to the right's argument for lowering taxes. Flatten the rates and broaden the base. That is EXACTLY what this bill does, except for healthcare coverage, not taxes. More people paying, a more even rate over the whole of the country.

While it is not the best bill, it's a step in the right direction. What really needs to be controlled is the cost of prescriptions, i.e. pills that are $5 here and $1 in the rest of the world, and providing a reasonable fee schedule for procedures performed.

LOL did he just quote Paul Krugman in a real conservation?

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Also, if gov't could provide better incentives for people to live healthier lives by focusing on preventative care, making PSAs about smoking, eating well, etc. that will help drive down costs by way of not needing them.

We could also aid that by trying to decrease obesity and diabetes by not subsidizing corn and as a side effect of that, subsidizing junk food/sodas, would be good, but that's a whole other discussion.

A fool's errand. Any government program to get people to engage in healthier behavior, short of bans on unhealthy living, will be about as successful as encouraging 15 year old girls to read Proust instead of the Twilight books.

Living healthy and eating healthy takes a lot of discipline. Pizza, McDonalds and beer taste a lot better than bean sprouts, tofu and unsweetened ice tea. Sitting on the couch and watching football or playing video games is a lot easier than going to the gym regularly and jogging two miles at six in the morning.

I've seen every PSA imaginable, and live in Micheal Bloomberg's NYC. I still smoke, drink, eat too much crap and exercise too little. It was even worse when I didn't have my wife around to cook some fish every so often.

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A fool's errand. Any government program to get people to engage in healthier behavior, short of bans on unhealthy living, will be about as successful as encouraging 15 year old girls to read Proust instead of the Twilight books.

Living healthy and eating healthy takes a lot of discipline. Pizza, McDonalds and beer taste a lot better than bean sprouts, tofu and unsweetened ice tea. Sitting on the couch and watching football or playing video games is a lot easier than going to the gym regularly and jogging two miles at six in the morning.

I've seen every PSA imaginable, and live in Micheal Bloomberg's NYC. I still smoke, drink, eat too much crap and exercise too little. It was even worse when I didn't have my wife around to cook some fish every so often.

lol. I get your point, but look at what's happened with smoking. A lot less people smoke now than 20-30-40 years ago. Getting the information out there helps. Yes, mcdonalds tastes good and is easier than finding healthy food, but why is that? It's connected to what I was saying about farm subsidies. Corn is VERY heavily subsidized and even insured. You may ask, are vegetable treated the same way? The answer is no, they're not. Grow healthy fruits/vegetables and you get no subsidies. Be Monsanto or ConAgra and grow sh!t tons of corn and meats full of hormones and are genetically modified, get a ton of subsidies. See how this works? lol. If one had incentive to eat healthy, one would more likely(not will) eat healthier. If healthy food was cheaper than mcdonalds, people would buy it more, period. But when you can get in 300+ calories for $1 at mcd's, why are you gonna spend $5 to get 300 calories from fruits or veggies?

As I said, the whole subsidies providing incentives to eat crappy food is a whole other discussion, but very related to health and healthcare.

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lol. I get your point, but look at what's happened with smoking. A lot less people smoke now than 20-30-40 years ago. Getting the information out there helps. Yes, mcdonalds tastes good and is easier than finding healthy food, but why is that? It's connected to what I was saying about farm subsidies. Corn is VERY heavily subsidized and even insured. You may ask, are vegetable treated the same way? The answer is no, they're not. Grow healthy fruits/vegetables and you get no subsidies. Be Monsanto or ConAgra and grow sh!t tons of corn and meats full of hormones and are genetically modified, get a ton of subsidies. See how this works? lol. If one had incentive to eat healthy, one would more likely(not will) eat healthier. If healthy food was cheaper than mcdonalds, people would buy it more, period. But when you can get in 300+ calories for $1 at mcd's, why are you gonna spend $5 to get 300 calories from fruits or veggies?

As I said, the whole subsidies providing incentives to eat crappy food is a whole other discussion, but very related to health and healthcare.

At best this stuff will help out at the margins. Even the decrease in smoking rates hasn't helped all that much. Smoking is also a different kind of animal than junk food. Hard to explain why, but it just is.

The best you can hope for is to tax consumption of unhealthy stuff to pay for the costs of treating the medical consequences. But again, that's a tax on poor people.

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I would imagine that places where smoking has really gone down are the places where cigarettes have been taxed the most.

It's gone down across the country, but I'm sure moreso in places like NY or places that are better educated. That's kinda what I'm talking about when it comes to incentives to live healthy. It's the reverse of that, but works the same. If someone so chooses to live their life in a way that runs the risk of letting themselves become a burden to society by becoming seriously ill, then they should be taxed to provide monies to cover those costs. Absolutely ok with that. And I smoke so it's not just me not caring because it doesn't affect me.

At best this stuff will help out at the margins. Even the decrease in smoking rates hasn't helped all that much. Smoking is also a different kind of animal than junk food. Hard to explain why, but it just is.

The best you can hope for is to tax consumption of unhealthy stuff to pay for the costs of treating the medical consequences. But again, that's a tax on poor people.

That's why I would rather see it go more towards subsidies for healthy foods than taxes on junk food. Make healthy stuff cheaper not crap more expensive. Although a slight increase in cost of junk food via removing subsidies would be acceptable to me.

If the gov't is gonna subsidize stuff, it might as well be something that will repay us through lower healthcare costs, right?

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I'd rather have a single payer system anyways. That being said, reimbursements for Medicare need to flattened so that you don't see abuses in the system of people being pushed towards treatments that have higher reimbursement rates. Again, here the argument is flatten the rate, broaden the base. Specialist are overpaid in our system, GPs are underpaid. Shift that so that specialists get less and GPs more and you will have more GPs and greater access. Less specialists could hurt, but usually a bit of a wait to see one isn't gonna kill you and if it is, the GP will let you know and I would hope that there could be a way to allow more needing patients skip in line. I'm over-simplifying, but you get the point.

Would much rather have single payer as well.

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Would much rather have single payer as well.

I think it's the clear way to truly lowering costs. When you have a single payer, you have such leverage on costs of treatments because it's a take it or leave it situation. Either take $X for an x-ray or don't do it and you gotta assume that if it's still profitable, it will be done. I know Japan, in the case of x-rays said $X is what we'll pay and the industry responded by pushing manufacturers to create cheaper x-ray machines. I believe this was done by cutting out some of the more advanced and lesser used features on the machines, but that's, again, a trade off you have to make.

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It's gone down across the country, but I'm sure moreso in places like NY or places that are better educated. That's kinda what I'm talking about when it comes to incentives to live healthy. It's the reverse of that, but works the same. If someone so chooses to live their life in a way that runs the risk of letting themselves become a burden to society by becoming seriously ill, then they should be taxed to provide monies to cover those costs. Absolutely ok with that. And I smoke so it's not just me not caring because it doesn't affect me.

NY and a lot of those other places are are better educated also have some of the highest cigarette taxes in the US. Most smokers I know who want to quit do it for the financial reason as the main one and the health affects are just a bonus according to them.

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Carp - I'm neither a liberal, nor a conservative. I've voted both Democrat and Republican in past elections. I'm pretty much somewhere in the middle, economically conservative and socially liberal.

That being said, how are our roads and bridges looking with all those tax dollars and government oversight right about now? I know your argument will be, there's not enough tax dollars to pay for repairs, so tax the 1%. It's the liberal answer to everything - tax and spend. Problem with that is, unless you control your costs, eventually you have nothing left to tax. And there is a difference between enforcing clean air and water laws, and mandating someone purchase a product from a for-profit private institution. That is what I have a problem with. There are very good elements of the law, like barring insurance company from declining coverage for pre-existing conditions, allowing children to stay on their parents policy until age 26, etc. But the individual mandate is wrong in my eyes.

If you knew how to read you would have understood that I was providing an "extreme" example to make a point. If you knew anything about politics or law you would understand how decisions like this open the door for the government to continue to erode individual rights and personal liberties down the road...it's called precedent. That was my point, this decision is dangerous in what it represents as far as judicial interpretation, not necessarily what it represents with respect to this particular statute.

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That's why I would rather see it go more towards subsidies for healthy foods than taxes on junk food. Make healthy stuff cheaper not crap more expensive. Although a slight increase in cost of junk food via removing subsidies would be acceptable to me.

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It's gone down across the country, but I'm sure moreso in places like NY or places that are better educated. That's kinda what I'm talking about when it comes to incentives to live healthy. It's the reverse of that, but works the same. If someone so chooses to live their life in a way that runs the risk of letting themselves become a burden to society by becoming seriously ill, then they should be taxed to provide monies to cover those costs. Absolutely ok with that. And I smoke so it's not just me not caring because it doesn't affect me.

That's why I would rather see it go more towards subsidies for healthy foods than taxes on junk food. Make healthy stuff cheaper not crap more expensive. Although a slight increase in cost of junk food via removing subsidies would be acceptable to me.

If the gov't is gonna subsidize stuff, it might as well be something that will repay us through lower healthcare costs, right?

Healthy food is cheap and readily available despite the nonsense about food deserts we're often told about. You can get a healthy salad at McDonalds and veggies at Walmart. You can buy Lean Cuisines for a few bucks at any bodega or drug store. People just like the Big Mac better.

Employees at my wife's former company were given subsidized Weight Watchers programs. A few morbidly obese women tried it and failed. Occasional success was eating half a pizza instead of a whole one for dinner.

There's a reason why most people who attempt to go on diets ultimately fail and why most gym memberships don't get used after a few months. Somehow I don't have my hopes up that Nancy Pelosi can come up with a law to change that, even if she took the time to actually read the bill.

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Healthy food is cheap and readily available despite the nonsense about food deserts we're often told about. You can get a healthy salad at McDonalds and veggies at Walmart. You can buy Lean Cuisines for a few bucks at any bodega or drug store. People just like the Big Mac better.

Employees at my wife's former company were given subsidized Weight Watchers programs. A few morbidly obese women tried it and failed. Occasional success was eating half a pizza instead of a whole one for dinner.

There's a reason why most people who attempt to go on diets ultimately fail and why most gym memberships don't get used after a few months. Somehow I don't have my hopes up that Nancy Pelosi can come up with a law to change that, even if she took the time to actually read the bill.

Thing is though there are plenty of healthy people out there who do exercise and eat right and they still drop dead in their 40s and 50s.

When it's your time to go, it's your time to go.

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I totally understand that. For some it will go up, some down. Although, the idea with the younger people not currently buying insurance, $1 is an increase from $0, right? Older people value health insurance more than the young and healthy, for obvious reasons. My point was that, on the whole, the cost of healthcare SHOULD go down. This, however, is contingent on the insurance companies not gouging us people and simultaneously bringing down their administrative costs. The research shows that country's with a universal healthcare policy, pay less as a % of GDP for healthcare, and that's just a FACT, not opinion.

You realize these things are called tariffs, right? It's not at all odd to have a tax on foreign goods to give an advantage to domestic products.

Right yea I understand that. But the the argument would just be, well in general young people have less money too

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Austerity appears to have helped in Estonia.

I'm coming to the conclusion though that whether it works will be cultural thing. In very recent memory, Estonia was a dirt-poor communist country, so much of the population is used to deprivation. There are also hungry entrepenuers there (Skype was invented in Estonia).

From all accounts though, Greeks, at least the ones that are still there, are lazy and have grown dependent on their government goodies while refusing to pay their taxes. Austerity or no austerity, they're up sh!ts creek.

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Slippery Slope. The Definition of Junk Food would soon exapnd to everything except vegetables. Removing the Corn Subsidies would increase the price of all food and possibly other products as well, not just junk food. Corn is mostly used in Feed (Cows, chickens, etc), Ethanol and exports. Only a small percentage is used for high Fructose Corn Syrup and its cousins.

If less corn was grown because it wasnt subsidized, farmers would have to switch to other crops at very high expense. If "healthy" food was cheaper, there would be a bigger demand for it, increasing the cost to comsumers.

Im not saying Im for the subsidy, just noting that things do not happen in a vacuum and there are always unintended consequences when the govt gets involved.

So, just drop the subsidy for when corn is sold for synthesis or extraction of sugars or other substances. Done. And I'm not so against the price of beef going up a bit because the feed is minimally more expensive. Red meat is too cheap, again, this causes an health issue. Red meat is ok, but not at every meal. America eats a ton of red meat, so I think if the price of beef went up 50 cents per pound, it wouldn't kill anyone. People might eat more leaner meats instead. I understand the ripple effects of what taking away that subsidy could do. I'm in favor of defunding these super corporations that run the agriculture industry right now. I'd rather have farmers deciding how to farm, not Kraft, not Monsanto, not ConAgra. It's silly that farmers can't even keep the seed of their corn because it's owned by Monsanto since it's a genetically modified seed and therefore is patented by them. Insanity. We just don't need to aid industry that would do fine on it's own.

Healthy food is cheap and readily available despite the nonsense about food deserts we're often told about. You can get a healthy salad at McDonalds and veggies at Walmart. You can buy Lean Cuisines for a few bucks at any bodega or drug store. People just like the Big Mac better.

Employees at my wife's former company were given subsidized Weight Watchers programs. A few morbidly obese women tried it and failed. Occasional success was eating half a pizza instead of a whole one for dinner.

There's a reason why most people who attempt to go on diets ultimately fail and why most gym memberships don't get used after a few months. Somehow I don't have my hopes up that Nancy Pelosi can come up with a law to change that, even if she took the time to actually read the bill.

You obviously don't live in a city.

Mcd's salads are nothing but trickery to make you think you're eating healthier. The minute you put dressing or chicken on it, you're racking up the calories and fat.

When I lived in Baltimore, you could not walk to a Wal-Mart, there was a grocery store, but I was in a decent area and even then it was the only larger store for in the area. If you go into the less than nice neighborhoods in Baltimore, there's not any grocery stores. There's tons of available fast food, some 7-11s bodegas, etc. Nothing that would carry any vegetables. These areas do exist, period.

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When I lived in Baltimore, you could not walk to a Wal-Mart, there was a grocery store, but I was in a decent area and even then it was the only larger store for in the area. If you go into the less than nice neighborhoods in Baltimore, there's not any grocery stores. There's tons of available fast food, some 7-11s bodegas, etc. Nothing that would carry any vegetables. These areas do exist, period.

If that's the case, then who wants to open a Whole Foods in Baltimore, MD? Anyone with me?

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