Maybe Republicans, after passing this obscene Prescription Drug Vote Buying Scheme, will begin to understand that they were right all along about the Welfare state. Buying votes through permanent entitlements is a really shitty idea, and it is not helpful for anyone. Check out the sick state of mind as presented in the NY Times:
But Ernest D. DeBlasis, 73, echoed the view of many when he said the new coverage “amounts to peanuts.”
“It’s not going to help me,” said Mr. DeBlasis, who spends half the year here and half in Marlboro, N.J., where he was an architect. “Let’s hope Congress revises this thing before it takes effect in 2006…”
Joseph S. Shapiro, 89, out for his morning stroll on the boardwalk, said: “People have to pray that they get very ill. If you are in semi-bad shape, you get very little or nothing from the new Medicare bill..”
Of the new drug benefit, Mr. Forzese said: “I don’t expect to get much out of it. I don’t think it will help unless I really get sick and need a lot of medicines.”
The Greatest Generation speaks- they want a free ride.
Emperor Misha I
Euthanasia, anyone?
I’m slowly beginning to be for it.
Terry
Didn’t a former governor of Colorado say something to the effect that “it was the duty of the sick and infirm to die.” I think he was even a Democrat.
Kimmitt
Social Security and Medicare make it possible for my grandfather to live independently and with dignity at the age of 73. I pay my payroll taxes happily, secure in the knowledge that they are going to millions of good causes just like grandpa.
JC
Ah, I just love it when the right takes off the compassion mask.
Emperor Misha I
Bull shit, JC.
You hand somebody a $400 billion free ride (which we all know is going to turn into a trillion at least before we’re done), and they turn around and call it “peanuts”?
Pardon me for being cold, but that kind of ingrate is no more deserving of my compassion than a garden slug.
JKC
Misha-
I agree that the bill stinks, but what do you suggest as an alternative? Euthanasia isn’t going to sell well…
Slartibartfast
I’m pretty sure we weren’t euthanizing people BEFORE prescription drug welfare. Just a hunch.
JKC
The problem is that Medicare was set up in an era where there weren’t any of the “wonder drugs” now available, and the reimbursement scheme paid for surgery and other specific treatments, because that’s what doctors did. There was no such thing as effective medical management of high cholesterol, hypertension or coronary artery disease, just to give a few examples. (Screenings are not covered under Medicare, with a few exceptions.)
Add to that an extremely greedy pharmaceutical industry*, and an easily-bought Congress et voila: the current mess.
*Please spare me the whining about R&D costs. That used to be true, but now Big Pharma spends more on marketing than anything else.
Slartibartfast
Well, bad on the pharmaceuticals industry for coming up with wonderdrugs. Bastards. They should just stick to making aspirin.
JKC
Slarti-
Nobody (reasonable) faults the drug companies for helping to keep people alive & healthy. I’m also happy to see drug companies recoup their R&D costs and reward their shareholders.
I’m not happy about Americans paying higher drug costs than anyone else in the West so that we can be subjected to a barrage of “ask your doctor about…” ads on TV.
The problem with the Medicare bill isn’t a prescription drug benefit per se. It’s the lack of cost controls (as pointed out by John) and the fact that the bill contains more pork than an Oscar Meyer processing plant.
Slartibartfast
Wait…so, you think the government ought to be involved in cost controls within industry? As in regulation of pharmaceuticals industry?
Oops, I used the R-word. Penalty box?
JKC
Slarti-
If the government is going to pay for prescription drugs, it seems to me they have a right to negotiate favorable prices, just as private insurers do. The current bill forbids that.
Slartibartfast
Ah, it’s a problem with the premise; the part that goes “If the government is going to pay for prescription drugs…”. I don’t particularly think the government OUGHT to be helping people buy their drugs. I definitely don’t think people who’re retired and don’t need it should be the recipients of the largesse of you and I via the government.
See, I think the government paying for prescription drugs is nearly a guarantee that the prices will be higher than they’d otherwise be. For one thing, we’re going to see a rather extended brouhaha over whether people covered under some government prescription drug program gets to decide whether or not to buy generic. For another, I think you’re going to inevitably see kickbacks to doctors who’re willing to write bogus prescriptions in exchange for cash.
In short, the program itself will have to be regulated.
Emperor Misha I
I agree on both counts, JKC. The “euthanasia” comment was, obviously, aimed at the bleeding ingrate quoted in the post, not a general policy suggestion on my part.
Now, as to other suggestions – yes, I DO, actually have one. How about keeping the government’s slimy, incompetent, overpaid, bureaucratic, hopelessly inefficient tentacles out of my wallet altogether?
JKC
Misha, I know I won’t change your mind, but consider this article in the New England Journal of Medicine.
BTW: the complete text of the same article (not available on-line) states this:
Overhead cost of American private health insurance: 11.7%
Overhead cost of Medicare: 3.6%
I respect your belief that government shouldn’t help with health care, even if I disagree with you. But the old nostrum that somehow government is always “inefficient” needs to be put to rest.
TM Lutas
jkc – The dirty secret is that the canadian system is incompetent and dangerous to those trapped in it. It delays care and there is a steady stream of people going south of the border for treatment in the US. Often, it’s US medicine that’s saving canadian lives.
If we go the route of Canada, where will we go when the US starts having dangerously long treatment delays, Mexico? Not quite the same thing.
JKC
Yawn, TM. The problem with the CAnadian system is that it’s underfunded. (Hint: ask yourself who has the bigger economy- the US or Canada.)
Your argument also fails to refute that the fact that while Canada may spend less, more of the money goes to patient care, as opposed to useless private-sector bureaucrats.
Random Numbers
I’m afraid the overhaed costs of Medicare are higher than the report indicates, JKC. The article in question fails to account for filing and compliance costs not engaged by fedral employees. The private insurance overhead estimate includes costs of compliance but the medicare overhead estimate doesn’t.
Try again with honest figures next time.
Random Numbers
Drat! I hhate typos!
JKC
Random-
I’m not good enough with statistics to clarify that. I assumed that the NEJM was fairly even-handed: it’s not like I sourced Buzzflash here.
Do you have a better link?
TM Lutas
If the Canadian system is underfunded to provide good coverage whose fault is that? You can often get good results from a bad system if you throw enough money at it. The last I heard, Canadians weren’t similarly disadvantaged in their housing, transportation, and food budgets as they are in quality of medical care. Maybe it’s because these other features of canadian life are dominated by the private, and not the public, sector.
Kimmitt
Nobody’s happy with their health care system, and no health care system really does what we think it ought to. This is a call for further experimentation and close examination of the Dr. Dynasaur program in Vermont, which was an interesting public/private hybrid.
Emperor Misha I
JKC: All very nice but, without even touching upon how famously good government-run institutions are at cooking their numbers, it’s still beside the point.
I’m sure you’ll agree that Somalian healtcare would be a step down for us, yet I’m sure that their overhead is absolutely awe-inspiring compared to ours.
Yes, I know, it’s an extreme example, but the essence is the same: Canadian CommieCare doesn’t work, so it doesn’t really matter how cheaply they can make it not work.
Which would you rather do? Spend $40,000 on an Infiniti that runs or spend $15,000 on a Trabant that never leaves the lot?
If somebody could find a government-run system that delivers a product as well as ours and STILL does it cheaper, I might sit up and listen, but that’s not likely to ever happen.
And Kimmitt: I’ve heard the “OK, so maybe sawdust doesn’t make for good bread, but why don’t we try it with just a LITTLE bit of sawdust this time?”
I’ve seen all I want to ever see of socialism and the abject failure that it always is, thank you very much, so don’t expect me to ever cheer on yet another “let’s try it, just ONCE more! It’ll work THIS time, we PROMISE!”
JKC
Misha-
The problem in the US (and the rest of the West) is that we want that Lexus, but we’re only willing to pay Hyundai prices for it. And we’d better not have to wait for it, either.
Of course, if “CommieCAre” as you describe it, were so inferior, Canada and the EU would have shorter life expectancies and higher infant mortality rates than the US. Too bad that’s not the case…
Emperor Misha I
If you think you can measure every aspect of Quality of Care by looking at infant mortality and life expectancies, then you have a simpler world view than I.
But what do I know?
I only worked for years in a socialist healthcare system.
Emperor Misha I
Oh, and as to the first point: We already HAVE that Lexus, and I’d like to keep it, thankyouverymuchly.
Everybody else who wants one as well had better line up and work for it, because I’m not paying for their free ride.