Political Discussions
Do you Support or Oppose Obama's Healthcare Reform Bill?
Posted by aaron4unitruth • 9/19/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: healthcare, healthcare reform, obama, obama healthcare, politics, poll
Do you Support or Oppose Obama's Healthcare Reform Bill? Poll shows 21 against and 9 in favor as of 09-19-09. 6 Days left to vote.
www.theartdeptchronicles.blogspot.com
User Comments
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I wish Obama had a plan. So far I'm hearing about different bills that Congress is working on.
Those numbers, you give, however, smell fishy. Don't get me wrong. I know there is significant opposition (www.gallup.com/tag/Healthcare.aspx). But 21 and 9 per cent? Where are those numbers coming from?
Can't really do much with the question options you offer in your poll either.-
I too was surprised to see that most of the people who answered the poll were against the bill. The numbers are coming from www.theartdeptchronicles.blogspot.com
I started the blog to bring attention to issues that are being addressed in mainstream media but are not being reported on accurately or ignored altogether. The numbers are not scientific; I devised the question and made available the answers I feel most people identify themselves with. I expected maybe a 50% opposition and was surprised to see how many people are not buying into what Obama is saying. Of course I do not know who voted or where they are located but it does give me an idea of how the issue was manipulated early on during discussions and speeches aired on mainstream media. Only after the opposition grew considerably and could not be ignored did they begin reporting a bit more accurately.
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Polls that say "Days left to vote" may not be scientific...
...also may be spam.-
I would say it's spam
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What really needs reforming is the costs of healthcare...Regulations intended to protect the public are exploited by monopolists...The consumer is charged hundreds of dollars for medicine that costs pennies to manufacture...-
That's one of the horrors of our current system. Those without insurance pay lots more than the insurance companies pay, because those without insurance have no leverage, and they have no basis for any comparison shopping. Coercive capitalism is what we have now, or monopolists, as Gerry says, but nothing even a little bit like a free market. That fact alone helps makes all the "socialist" rhetoric on the right ring hollow.
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The profit margin of the healthcare industry is only about 12%. A lot of that overblown cost stems from regulation and the extraordinately high cost of medical labor and office space. One thing that occurred to me though is if you decentralized hospitals more, you could save a lot of money on land. To see what I mean, just notice how tall those buildings are - they're seldom less then 12 stories and on high priced commercial land.
Further, too much of the suggested solution involves denying care, something which should be eliminated instead of encouraged. Is it really that irrational to spend 17% (or more) of the American economy on health care when over 17% of the American public is elderly and sick? If you wanted to spend less on health care, you should've had more children to spend the rest! -
My concern with the 17% of gda is that most companies spend significantly less. That makes our products more expensive than theirs. -
@xmarks: Not necessarily, and anyways, the reason we can pay more is because the advantages of doing business here (cheaper electricity, better freight infrastructure, cheaper land, good legal and copyright protections, stable demographics) outweigh the downsides relative to other modernized countries.
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JJ:
I haven't seen stats to back up what you are saying. Do you have links?
Keep in mind that we are not competing with just modernized countries. We are competing with every country on the planet. Import/export figures show that we have more companies leaving the U.S. than entering the U.S. (at least in terms of production). One of the issues is that it is much cheaper to produce in other countries. One of the big costs is healthcare.
Let's say there is a brand new country that has poor transportation, spends only 1% of its GDP on healthcare but then you add up all of the costs and risks companies find that it is 15% cheaper to produce there than here, many companies will go there. If we were to be able to lower healthcare costs to (say) 10% of GDA (a 7% reduction) the difference between U.S. and country X would now be 8% instead of 15%. That would be enough to bring some companies back and to lower the risk of more companies going.
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"...Regulations intended to protect the public..."
lol. your optimistic outlook on the intentions of legislators is both refreshing and amusing-
Unfortunately I agree with you...
I should have stated Regulations "supposedly" intended to protect the public... -
I figured that it was just a slip
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Yes, in fact, much of that overblown cost comes from regulations, like bans on drug importation.
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I agree with your point jeremey, but drug importation is a dicey situation. Many countries do not regulate the content of their prescription medication to the same high standards as in the U.S. So, while it would bring down some of the cost of prescrip meds, it is a give and take scenario.
Of course, some would say that the counter-point is that the FDA's rules can be too stringent at times. However those families that have lost loved ones to drugs that needed more testing would disagree. -
Anti: What if drug importation came with a criteria of said drugs being certified FDA compliant? Many import companies certify imported goods to a variety of conditions.
One possible work around anyway -
I would be amenable to that. And let me say that it really isn't the drugs from Canada that are so worrisome. It is those that come from Mexico and other Latin America companies that, when compared to our prescript drugs are very substandard in many cases.
But with FDA approval, comes increased cost, so this begins to be a circular argument. lol -
Many other countries do pricing fixing of their RX. That contributes to our high costs as the companies attempt to make up the lost profit from these other countries here. Basically we are subsidizing their RX costs.
While you may turn out to be right regarding the FDA costs eventually making the costs the same, I would love to let the free market have a go on that one. Even if you are right on balance, there would be some arbitrage opportunities on specific medicines and times. -
@xmarks: First of all, no, they do not "try to make up their lost profit here." Price is determined by supply and demand, and if those other countries were really that big of a bother to them, they wouldn't sell to them. The price that we experience is because we WILL pay it, not because they won't.
Second, the problem with import companies is it's a very expensive middleman that adds close to as much to the cost as the original price difference. Remember, if the cost there is $50, and here is $500, a middleman can easily sell it to you for $400 when he bought it for $50. -
I would say that if anything, big pharma loves to sell to most other countries because of the lack of FDA-like regulations that they have to contend with. That is just my opinion, though.
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JJ: Actually that is exactly what they do. When you have price controls in one market, you price in accordance to that market's pricing. Then you look to regain the profit elsewhere. IF THERE IS a reasonably competitive market, profit motivation with force companies to compete to bring prices down. In our current situation thought there are 1.) too few companies competing for supply/demand curves to be efficient and 2.) all the companies are facing the same situation. I can't find the link but there was in interview of a (I believe) Pfister exec stating this very thing. It was on a PBS program trying to prove socialized healthcare was the way to go.
As for the other countries, they can make a profit selling RX but more importantly they are able to allocate their overhead/development costs over a bigger base. Additionally, if they start cherry picking which medicines they will/will not supply a given country, they can have their rights to sell reviewed. Think of it this way. If you could realize a profit $10/capita in the U.S. but only $1/capita in the EU, if your choices were to either walk away from the $1/capita or make $1/capita what would you do?
Third, the middle man offers fewer value adds (when compared to developing a medicine). This makes it much easier for competition to drive down the margins of middlemen as more companies are willing/able to step up and take that place. Even if that doesn't happen and a middleman sells it to me for $400, making 8 times what they purchased it for, I still pay $100 less. Win/Win. -
Anti: some of the medicine sold in CA, for example, is made in the very same factories as the ones made in the U.S. There are no differences in the production based on the two markets, only labeling as it goes out the door.
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@xmarks: Even in the situation you describe, the variations in rates of insurance coverage and purchases of people without insurance will create a de facto competition of "buy, don't buy." Supply and Demand holds. I'm sorry, health care costs go up when more people are covered (85% in 2006 vs. 66% in 1996, US Census)
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How does that relate to the conversation?
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Well xmarks I don't doubt that at all. Years ago when I lived in South Carolina as a young man, I worked for a time in a grocery store. It was one of a chain of stores in the south at the time, I don't even know if they exist anymore - Food Lion. At any rate, one day I was working and the bread vendor came in, I asked him if the name brand bread was better than the generic because he was stocking both varieties. He said they are made in the same factory and the only difference was the bag they put them in.
I have bought generic bread ever since, lol. -
Despite knowing that I still can't bring myself to by "BEER" beer.
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I agree, along with most of you, that the present healthcare system needs reform. However, some things included in the bill that the Obama administration was trying to pass were simply shocking. From automatic bank withdrawals to the infamous "death panels". I do not know how I can ever trust in his administration again if those are the kinds of things he will be pushing throughout his stay in office.
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