djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Oct 30, 2013 22:56:00 GMT -5
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt Japan ranks 55th in the world in physicians per capita. the US is 53rd. canada is 57th. Japan has 50% more physicians per capita than the global average. there is no doctor shortage in Japan. i don't know what else this article got wrong, but they got off to a bad start. I can find several articles mentioning their shortages.... they have a whopping 2.6 doctors per 10,000 fewer than us. they have 0.7 doctors per 10,000 MORE than Canada. so, in the absolute sense, these articles are wrong. i am not saying that they are not seeing a problem. they probably are. what i am saying is that there is no shortage of doctors in Japan. there may be a shortage of rural doctors. there may be a shortage of specialists. i have no idea. but there are no shortages of MD's.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Oct 30, 2013 22:58:17 GMT -5
According to statistics from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Japan has only 2.1 doctors per 1,000 people. This is the same figure as Canada, but it is well below the average of 3.1 for the OECD’s group of 30 economically developed nations. Only Mexico, South Korea and Turkey have lower figures. Greece leads the group with 5 doctors per 1,000 people, while Germany has 3.5, France has 3.4, Australia has 2.8, Britain has 2.5 and the United States has 2.4. Narumi Eguchi, chief researcher at the Japan Medical Associat ion Research Institute, told Japan Close-up in an interview the 2.1 figure may be even lower than it looks because it includes a significant number of doctors who are semi-retired: “In other countries, physicians tend to retire in their 60s or 70s, but lots of doctors in Japan stay in practice into their 70s or 80s, and this number includes those aged physicians. They work less than other, younger physicians.” Meanwhile, the general population is also aging as well, which increases the demand for many categories of medical care. well, there you go. no doctor shortage. there is an HOUR shortage. and that might also explain the low pay: they are working part time.
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skweet
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Post by skweet on Oct 31, 2013 6:49:43 GMT -5
And the ones trying to repeal it DIDN'T vote for it.... the same can be said of ANY law. that doesn't give the minority the right to sabotage their government. surely you must realize how insane governing on that basis is. please tell me you understand that. Our government was designed so that no group could individually run the country into a ditch unquestioned, even when that group is the majority. One man's sabotage is another man's heroic patriotism. Surely you must see points in history, and foresee points in the future where the majority follows a misdirected leader down a path that the minority must stop, using the tools that have been afforded by our founders. You may agree with the ACA, but would you give up minority rights in exchange for it?
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2013 7:46:31 GMT -5
Dj, number of doctors per person really is not a metric that you can benchmark between countries with radically different systems. For example, if our doctors make 3x more money than Japanese doctors, it's not unreasonable to conclude that our doctors might be more productive and more talented than theirs.
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billisonboard
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Post by billisonboard on Oct 31, 2013 8:30:03 GMT -5
Dj, number of doctors per person really is not a metric that you can benchmark between countries with radically different systems. For example, if our doctors make 3x more money than Japanese doctors, it's not unreasonable to conclude that our doctors might be more productive and more talented than theirs. Not sure what "more productive" and "more talented" mean in this context. Is it getting through more patient consultations and surgeries quickly? Talking patients in to using more of their services?
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workpublic
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Post by workpublic on Oct 31, 2013 8:33:02 GMT -5
a large majority of his first and lessor for his second run voters did. many of them still do. because like you said, their decision making process/cognitive reasoning abilities are child like. plus i find that statement a weak cop out of an excuse. you can do better than that. many of us knew/know he is a liar with an overall anti American agenda from the git go. that's why we voted against him.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2013 8:45:22 GMT -5
If we'd all eat Kobe steak if it wasn't so darn expensive, why not just make it cheap?
If we'd all rather sleep with Scarlett Johansson if she wasn't so unavailable, why not just make her available?
If time travel's impossible because of Paulian Exclusion, why not just violate it?
... In other words, the kludge of PPACA is essential to the 'benefit' - otherwise it's just an open-ended candy-from-the-sky unfunded gimme mandate. People love benefits without costs: Obamacare promised that. It was a dangerous, foolhardy, and unmaintainable pledge.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2013 8:51:54 GMT -5
Less-than-soup-to-nuts comprehensive individual plans that didn't meet HHS' revised "grandfathering" criteria since March 2010. A Federal Register memo from that year observed a likely 40-67% of all individual plans would be cancelled as a result of HHS regulations on Obamacare.
This stuff was all there if people were looking. And lots of people who chose to insure themselves against catastrophic events and manage their own maintenance health costs are justifiably wondering how a government that can't set up a website for $150 million given three years to do it can manage their healthcare better than they do.
This arrogance was front-and-center with Hillarycare too. It's unAmerican, and it won't be long tolerated.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2013 9:09:17 GMT -5
If you can find my thread that was added to this one, it states it in there. I believe they are predicting something like 50-75%, up to a possible 80%, of folks with independent coverage. That's a pretty absurd amount of people...and a huge lie to the American public. not to argue- but i am wondering what these plans are that are getting "cancelled". are they catastrophic-only policies? and if they are cancelled and replaced, is the replacement at lower cost? is it a better plan? and if so, why are people bitching so much? because "Obama Lied"? are we all such children to think that politicians never lie? or that Obama is some kind of saint? or that he even knew what he was saying? here is the crux of it based on what i know and have heard Obama promised "you can keep your plan if you like it" you cant...the regs in the ACA make catastrophic plans illegal now so for those that only wanted that type of plan, they are screwed..... now they get a plan that covers mental, ob gyn, and everything else, when they dont think they need or want it it is another example of government knows what you need better than you do so all the single policy holders who wanted only BASIC coverage now cant get it....and they are being forced to buy much more extensive and EXPENSIVE coverage you may think that is fine and dandy....most Americans like their freedom of choice....we have kind of gotten used to it and yes....Obama knew what he was saying......at least imo......the question is then, why continue to tell the lies all the way through a few months ago?
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2013 9:32:57 GMT -5
The irony being that overutilization of care in a fee-for-service healthcare setting is a prime driver of cost inflation. The whole idea of the maligned Heritage advocacy of mandated-coverage-or-bond was to compel 'skin in the game' - moving swathes of Americans off catastrophic policies and onto comprehensive ones, while leaving millions totally uninsured in the event of either catastrophic or maintenance needs, is both the predictable outcome of PPACA reform and the worst possible combination with guaranteed issue and community rating from a cost-control perspective. The individual market that has been horribly mutated by PPACA is where the savings get driven by savvy consumers.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2013 10:28:01 GMT -5
Dj, number of doctors per person really is not a metric that you can benchmark between countries with radically different systems. For example, if our doctors make 3x more money than Japanese doctors, it's not unreasonable to conclude that our doctors might be more productive and more talented than theirs. Not sure what "more productive" and "more talented" mean in this context. Is it getting through more patient consultations and surgeries quickly? Talking patients in to using more of their services? I don't know. I just know it is not the number of doctors per capita.
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workpublic
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Post by workpublic on Oct 31, 2013 10:32:09 GMT -5
many japanese doctors are doctors because their fathers were doctors. so they get to be doctors by any means necessary, among those there are "less productive" "less knowledgeable" "less talented(not very good at what they do)" it's pointed out in one of the articles i linked RE: japanese doctors.
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billisonboard
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Post by billisonboard on Oct 31, 2013 10:32:16 GMT -5
Not sure what "more productive" and "more talented" mean in this context. Is it getting through more patient consultations and surgeries quickly? Talking patients in to using more of their services? I don't know. I just know it is not the number of doctors per capita. Need to consider what job the doctor is doing:
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Post by usaone on Oct 31, 2013 12:54:23 GMT -5
Definitely not a good thing if he lied. But the devil is in the details. We switch plans almost every year. Blue Gross/Blue Shield offers us a menu of about 7 plans every year to chose from.
So what exactly is happening? Folks have one less option to choose from?
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Oct 31, 2013 13:32:10 GMT -5
Dj, number of doctors per person really is not a metric that you can benchmark between countries with radically different systems. then please, do me a favor, and tell everyone ELSE to stop using it. tyia.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Oct 31, 2013 13:33:17 GMT -5
not to argue- but i am wondering what these plans are that are getting "cancelled". are they catastrophic-only policies? and if they are cancelled and replaced, is the replacement at lower cost? is it a better plan? and if so, why are people bitching so much? because "Obama Lied"? are we all such children to think that politicians never lie? or that Obama is some kind of saint? or that he even knew what he was saying? here is the crux of it based on what i know and have heard Obama promised "you can keep your plan if you like it" so what? he lied? wow. still my beating heart.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Oct 31, 2013 13:35:55 GMT -5
If we'd all eat Kobe steak if it wasn't so darn expensive, why not just make it cheap? we don't all eat anything. my wife and son are vegetarians. If we'd all rather sleep with Scarlett Johansson if she wasn't so unavailable, why not just make her available? personally, the sexiest woman i know is 51. i am generally not attracted to people simply for looks.If time travel's impossible because of Paulian Exclusion, why not just violate it? ... In other words, the kludge of PPACA is essential to the 'benefit' - otherwise it's just an open-ended candy-from-the-sky unfunded gimme mandate. People love benefits without costs: Obamacare promised that. It was a dangerous, foolhardy, and unmaintainable pledge. i don't believe Obamacare promised anything of the sort.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2013 14:43:35 GMT -5
The sum claim for the net benefit of Obamacare was that it would expand coverage - both broaden the base of covered Americans, if not universalize it, and deepen the coverage of the average American to improve quality - and at the same time bend the cost curve downward. Because the mechanisms of Obamacare as implemented in fact impose upward price pressure on both healthcare providers and healthcare insurers, and specifically incentivize the riskiest consumers to enter the risk pool while disincentivizing those at the low-risk end of the pool, the second of these is flatly contradicted by the real world (as a reasonably open-minded survey of existing data in 2010 should have concluded). The first may also be questionable, because the undoubted coverage benefit of expanding Medicaid and creating guaranteed issue for pre-existing conditions is mitigated by the variability of Medicaid eligibility from state to state and the strong fiscal pressure on generally healthy people losing their less-than-Bronze-level coverage to opt out of the market.
If any of the legal challenges against the cumbersome subsidy system win out (I see merit in them, not because I'm rooting for Obamacare to fail but because Obamacare as written simply shouldn't have become law, any more than a novel should be published before it's proofread and edited) then there exists a real possibility that Obamacare might net reduce the proportion of Americans with insurance while accelerating cost inflation.
It's even more arguable, however the subsidy question gets resolved in the courts, that Obamacare's reforms will negatively impact the accessibility of healthcare provision for Americans, and that this impact will be visited most on the poorest.
Most importantly, you were paying more attention than a lot of voters. For a lot of voters, the soundbites they remember are "this will add not one dime to the deficit" and "you can keep your healthcare plan. Period." Watching the costs of the program explode while reading cancellation notices is a sobering reality check for these guys.
You may believe that the product sold to the public was "okay, we'll level with you. Healthcare already costs more than double per capita here than anywhere else on Earth. But we need you to pay more for it, to make it fair for people who can't access it now."
I believe people presented with that argument would say "hang on - it's unfair that some people can't afford healthcare, so you're making it more expensive so more of us can't afford healthcare? And then you're going to tax us more to help some of us out with subsidies we only need because you're making everything more expensive?" Which is why I believe that argument wasn't made. It was a loser. The Big Lie worked better - for a while.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2013 15:50:07 GMT -5
Definitely not a good thing if he lied. But the devil is in the details. We switch plans almost every year. Blue Gross/Blue Shield offers us a menu of about 7 plans every year to chose from. So what exactly is happening? Folks have one less option to choose from? the problem is that the government has again made decisions for everyone.... more of the nanny state bullshit why cant someone CHOOSE to have just a catastrophic policy? they had one for years, but now suddenly it no longer suffices? you may not want one....but that doesnt mean someone else didnt find value in it for them and the insurance companies apparently made money off those policies....otherwise they wouldnt have been offered
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AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP
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Post by AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP on Nov 1, 2013 6:07:52 GMT -5
Less-than-soup-to-nuts comprehensive individual plans that didn't meet HHS' revised "grandfathering" criteria since March 2010. A Federal Register memo from that year observed a likely 40-67% of all individual plans would be cancelled as a result of HHS regulations on Obamacare. This stuff was all there if people were looking. And lots of people who chose to insure themselves against catastrophic events and manage their own maintenance health costs are justifiably wondering how a government that can't set up a website for $150 million given three years to do it can manage their healthcare better than they do. This arrogance was front-and-center with Hillarycare too. It's unAmerican, and it won't be long tolerated. So, Obama and the Democrats knew that they were lying- knew that Obama was lying each and every time he made the promise to sell the train wreck: if you like your plan, you can keep your plan. Period. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Period.
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AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP
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Post by AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP on Nov 1, 2013 6:13:29 GMT -5
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fairlycrazy23
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Post by fairlycrazy23 on Nov 1, 2013 7:54:00 GMT -5
There is going to be a huge uproar when the employer mandate goes into effect, or actually more like October/November 2014 when open enrollments is for many companies.
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workpublic
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Post by workpublic on Nov 1, 2013 8:57:32 GMT -5
1. some are some aren't 2. no 3. no let's cut the parrot talk re the canceled plans "they were all crap plans anyway" that is not true.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2013 9:27:03 GMT -5
This is the fundamental conceit of people who don't trust the market.
They actually believe that individuals, maybe self-employed, maybe just looking for their own deal, went out and bought a product that was crap, kept a product that was crap, because they were too dumb to know it was crap. More comprehensive plans were out there, but they were idiots and didn't go for them. Thank God Big Government can correct their mistakes! How foolish they were to buy clothes or furniture or day trips or meals out or meals in or pay light bills with money they should have budgeted for healthcare expenses! How selfish of them to use their alloted healthcare budget for only their own perceived needs, when millions of Americans needed subsidy from them for their needs!
There's a horrible consistency to it, all predicated on the unpleasant notion that people doing the optimal thing - carrying minimal catastrophic coverage to take the sting out of unexpected healthcare emergencies, and managing their maintenance health costs out of the household budget - are in fact more stupid than people letting the government make their decisions and define their horizons.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 1, 2013 9:44:22 GMT -5
You may believe that the product sold to the public was "okay, we'll level with you. Healthcare already costs more than double per capita here than anywhere else on Earth. But we need you to pay more for it, to make it fair for people who can't access it now." you are moving the goalposts. what i objected to was that ObamaCare was sold as a "free ride" to anyone. it wasn't. i can't remember, at ANY point in the debate where anyone said anything of the sort. what it promised to do was three things: one- to insure many of those that were either uninsured or uninsurable. two- to bend the "cost curve" down. and three- to make it affordable for those of limited means by offering subsidies. now, if you are claiming that HOW it did that was rarely discussed, you would be correct. but it was neither explicitly claimed, NOR was it ever presumed by anyone with more than a casual knowledge of the bill, that this would be done for "free" or by magic. let's be serious, Mojo.I believe people presented with that argument would say "hang on - it's unfair that some people can't afford healthcare, so you're making it more expensive so more of us can't afford healthcare? And then you're going to tax us more to help some of us out with subsidies we only need because you're making everything more expensive?" Which is why I believe that argument wasn't made. It was a loser. The Big Lie worked better - for a while. yes, it was going to get more expensive for some- which is where the fight came from. again, i think that anyone who is not hopelessly naiive knew that. was it advertized? of course not.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 1, 2013 9:46:50 GMT -5
Definitely not a good thing if he lied. But the devil is in the details. We switch plans almost every year. Blue Gross/Blue Shield offers us a menu of about 7 plans every year to chose from. So what exactly is happening? Folks have one less option to choose from? the problem is that the government has again made decisions for everyone.... you mean like what drugs you can use, who you can sleep with, or what sort of birth control choices you can make? yeah- i f'ing hate that.more of the nanny state bullshit why cant someone CHOOSE to have just a catastrophic policy? they had one for years, but now suddenly it no longer suffices? there is a very good reason why you should not just have a catastrophic policy. do you know what it is?you may not want one....but that doesnt mean someone else didnt find value in it for them and the insurance companies apparently made money off those policies....otherwise they wouldnt have been offered insurance companies make money by betting against the insured. that is the opposite of health advocacy. iow, if you care about HEALTH, then you are asking the wrong question.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 1, 2013 9:51:17 GMT -5
1. some are some aren't 2. no 3. no let's cut the parrot talk re the canceled plans "they were all crap plans anyway" that is not true. work: let's get something straight for both now and in the future: when i ask a question, it comes from my mind, not from some talking points memo. those questions were questions i had, not questions i am repeating. i asked, and if your answers are FACTUAL, then i am satisfied. but for the record- i could just as easily accuse you of "parroting responses"- so this rhetorical knife cuts both ways.
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 1, 2013 9:52:34 GMT -5
This is the fundamental conceit of people who don't trust the market. or someone who loathes insurance companies, such as myself.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2013 10:27:39 GMT -5
Joined-up thinking required of serious people, dj. Your first point describes a promise to insure more people. Ceteris paribus, that costs more money. Since the "more people" here are the high-risk population, it costs a lot more money. I'm not sure most lay people without experience in the industry appreciate how much more money we're talking there. Your second point describes a promise to reduce costs. The first promise raises the bar on this: the President's emphatic pledge that the bill must add "not one dime" to the deficit (conveniently, this stricture on the bill only extends to the law if you faithfully uphold it, and thank God, Obama never promised to do that. Well, just that one time. Two times, Roberts fluffed it. Three times, he got re-elected. But apart from that, not at all. And heck, are we really going to count something he said just three times against him? He's a yappy guy. Says a lot. They can't all be Nobel Prize acceptance speeches). Your third point describes a redistributionist scheme: subsidy by the rich of the poor. I'm not at all sure this was ever part of the sales pitch, actually, to the extent that I'd like to see your source. I'd substitute the more sourcable pledge that if you have healthcare, you can keep it. Period. That explicit claim meant that the magic of expanding coverage and cutting costs was somehow going to leave the existing structure alone. When Republican critics called Obamacare a 'government takeover' of healthcare they got responses like this: www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2010/dec/16/lie-year-government-takeover-health-care/It is pure revisionism for you to recast the promises made for Obamacare now as having always made clear they would change insurance as people had it, and that it would cost some people more so it cost others less. Neither of those things were promised; both are obviously true.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2013 10:30:36 GMT -5
You would prefer there were no health insurance? A philanthropic world of free medicine and free love?
Wouldn't we all.
Sadly, in the real world, socialization of risk has to be monetized to harness the profit motive, or enforced by the oblique violence of legal mandate. Or both, as with Obamacare.
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