Mark Care

I have extracted my ideas about health care as a set of requirements in the strictest sense for a future of health care that serves us all nobody left out. You have to think with a new brain and see with new eyes to see this future. This is a future that may be unrecognizable from where you stand right now. You will have to be able to form new tools to assist yourself in assessing what is possible when you have all the freedom & resources you need. Come from a context of abundance & comprehend this powerfully effective future. NOW...

Fast-forward to the future where health-care has no connection to the economy or politics or the law. Here's what I see:

An abundance of doctors & paramedical professionals who have mastered both preventive medicine & holistic medicine as well as anything that can help including traditional allopathic (AMA) through acupuncture etc.
An abundance of hospitals & clinics that can handle both psychological & medical needs of communities.
A healthier populace who has been trained since conscious to take positive control over their own health through proper nutrition, exercise & mental health.
A grass roots, community level guild of healers & healing organizations that run the process of maintaining 1-3 above by being directly in touch with the consumers of health care themselves.
A capital & economic system that provides for, but does not control #4 in a way that medical innovations & needs are provided as the population needs them. A dynamically balanced external economy will be able to do this out of the excess of it's success. (I'm specifically not talking about the present day mentality of tax the rich).
The quality of doctors & para-medical personnel will improve as schools show up in abundance & the economic incentives of getting rich dissipate into history. Old World dynasties of families of doctors may or not tend to be things of the past.
Correcting mistakes, lacking the incentives of a get rich fast lottery for lawyers notwithstanding, will be a matter of applying the required change at all levels of the community not just more legalese written into paperwork for patients to sign away.
Life & Death will be treated with dignity in all cases - no longer a matter of money.
The Hippocratic Oath will be observed & affirmed by all who are in the profession.

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Mark de LA says

The primary condition for success is the context of abundance in health care. Therefore step number 1 says:

An abundance of doctors & paramedical professionals who have mastered both preventive medicine & holistic medicine as well as anything that can help including traditional allopathic (AMA) through acupuncture etc.

I agree & support this as a possibility for the future because 12268

I disagree with this as not being possible in the future because 12269

Mark de LA says

seth 2009-07-19 08:19:35 12267

Yes this is possible in the future. I imagine that there are communities somewhere on earth today where it is being done.

You really need to observe the format which is similar to 627.

Mark de LA says

MR 2009-07-20 10:46:51 12267

These are 2 general questions I have been unable to answer yet:

1. Is there enough healthcare facilities & resources, doctors, nurses, laboratories, etc to service the population's needs except for cost. Another way of phrasing this question is if it were all free is there enough to go around with reasonable triage for trivialities?

2. What is the expense in taxation of all the resources provided for health care? What are the overall taxes for hospitals, doctors, pharmacies, laboratories, nurse & para-medicals salaries etc.

If all taxes were to go away could that lack of taxation provide enough to free the healthcare industry from a condition of crisis & scarcity to abundance & dynamic equilibrium?

Another way of describing this is: Draw a circle around all that is health care (including mental health care) in the U.S. (we would best heal our own so that later we can others) - now divide health care into the consumers of it & the providers. My thesis: All that are taxes by all entities of governments on the provider side, if eliminated would begin to provide abundance beyond any abundance generated by redistribution of taxes from outside the system. How much is that? Perhaps government should hurt rather than the taxpayers. Removing taxes from the system would be the first step in making health care independent of the economic system.

Mark de LA says

Until Markcare gets here (it's a long term futuristic proposal) , Krauthammer has a 2 step good interim proposal which is sensible & will fill in the gaps for which the current insurance system is blamed for.

source: ...

(1) Tort reform: As I wrote recently, our crazy system of casino malpractice suits results in massive and random settlements that raise everyone's insurance premiums and creates an epidemic of defensive medicine that does no medical good, yet costs a fortune.

An authoritative Massachusetts Medical Society study found that five out of six doctors admitted they order tests, procedures and referrals -- amounting to about 25 percent of the total -- solely as protection from lawsuits. Defensive medicine, estimates the libertarian/conservative Pacific Research Institute, wastes more than $200 billion a year. Just half that sum could provide a $5,000 health insurance grant -- $20,000 for a family of four -- to the uninsured poor (U.S. citizens ineligible for other government health assistance).

What to do? Abolish the entire medical-malpractice system. Create a new social pool from which people injured in medical errors or accidents can draw. The adjudication would be done by medical experts, not lay juries giving away lottery prizes at the behest of the liquid-tongued John Edwardses who pocket a third of the proceeds.

(2) Real health-insurance reform: Tax employer-provided health care benefits and return the money to the employee with a government check to buy his own medical insurance, just as he buys his own car or home insurance.

There is no logical reason to get health insurance through your employer. This entire system is an accident of World War II wage and price controls. It's economically senseless. It makes people stay in jobs they hate, decreasing labor mobility and therefore overall productivity. And it needlessly increases the anxiety of losing your job by raising the additional specter of going bankrupt through illness.

The health care benefit exemption is the largest tax break in the entire U.S. budget, costing the government a quarter-trillion dollars annually. It hinders health-insurance security and portability as well as personal independence. If we additionally eliminated the prohibition on buying personal health insurance across state lines, that would inject new and powerful competition that would lower costs for everyone.

...Read the whole editorial here. It has some nice reasoning & at least is not just righty-lefty pelic. Part (2) is somewhat of a new idea at least in it's totality.

Mark de LA says

seth 2009-08-08 17:30:28 12267

Finally some good sense from a Republican website ...

source: What if We Win the Healthcare Fight?

The problem is that if we do that… we’ll still have the present healthcare system. Meaning that we’ll have (1) flat-lining wages, (2) exploding Medicaid and Medicare costs and thus immense pressure for future tax increases, (3) small businesses and self-employed individuals priced out of the insurance market, and (4) a lot of uninsured or underinsured people imposing costs on hospitals and local governments.

We’ll have entrenched and perpetuated some of the most irrational features of a hugely costly and under-performing system, at the expense of entrepreneurs and risk-takers, exactly the people the Republican party exists to champion.

Not a good outcome.

Even worse will be the way this fight is won: basically by convincing older Americans already covered by a government health program, Medicare, that Obama’s reform plans will reduce their coverage. In other words, we’ll have sent a powerful message to the entire political system to avoid at all hazards any tinkering with Medicare except to make it more generous for the already covered.

If we win, we’ll trumpet the success as a great triumph for liberty and individualism. Really though it will be a triumph for inertia. To the extent that anybody in the conservative world still aspires to any kind of future reform and improvement of America’s ossified government, that should be a very ashy victory indeed.

None of this is backed up with anything. It is bad-mouthing the system (?) without much fact nor even motivation. Start thinking again & find some new ideas instead of the tired rhetoric you are currently reading. Rhetoric without content cures nobody.

Mark de LA says

seth 2009-08-08 17:22:26 12267

Tort reform is a good idea. But From Krauthammer's 2 step plan leaves out one of the biggest problems with the current health insurance industry: cancellations, lack of coverage when changing jobs, and inability to get insurance for preexisting conditions. Also I don't see anything in it that will encourage (or mandate) more people to get insurance, nor are there any provisions in it to make coverage more affordable. IOW, it does not address the major problems. But let me know if i missed something.

Re read Krauthammer he covered most of that. Separating health insurance from employment was his lead in idea.

Mark de LA says

Here is the Wolfram Alpha calculations for how much in taxes is being paid by the healthcare industry assuming health care is 17% of GDP taxed at a rate of 20%: It nets out to be about 468.4 billion per year. GDP is for 2007. These are estimates you can plug your own figures into Alpha & see what happens.

Mark de LA says

source: ... This issue goes well beyond the issue of religious freedom, and it highlights the unprecedented threats to limited government and liberty that Obamacare poses to all Americans, from the most devout Catholic to the most committed atheist. Americans are faced with two choices: politicized medicine and an unprecedented consolidation of power and control in Washington, or repeal.

...

Mark de LA says

MR 2012-02-12 11:41:13 12267

seth 2012-02-12 10:43:43 12267

Why can't the insurance company just raise the premium to cover the cost of the contraceptive care. This idea that the new rule is forcing the companies to offer it for "free" me thinks might just be spurious. It becomes part of the insurance companie's cost of doing business which cost must needs be covered from its revenue stream.

If you read what Obama said of the so-called compromise he said they couldn't do that! It's a catch-22. Those who don't want to pay for contraception must buy the insurance, but if you buy the insurance the cost of contraception is included in the permiums. Go figure.

What you would have to do is have a declaration from the insured that exempts him from contraception & abortion & his premiums would have to be lower than those for those who declare they are OK with contraception & abortion, imho. .... which leads to other exemptions like mammagrams & obgyn for males. Soon it is as big a mess as it is today. Like exemptions for unions etc.

Mark Care

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