new thread universal health care != single payer?
My brother in law was a senior member on Hillary's health care package pointing out the BIA failures and successes from the Indian point of view, one among many. At my home before all this got any press notice in the planning stage he explained that the consensus was that a credit card sized document with the persons picture and all medical history as well as social security info embeded in the card that would be required to be presented at time of service to ensure that errors where at a minimum and fraud minimised. No card pay cash up front. Since he was leaving in the morning I explained that a rather large group of americans would be apalled and trying to impose such a thing would could cause serious civil disobedience. (note Indians are used to having their lives run like this whenever dealing with whites) He was amazed. I was amazed that although he could be excused the friggin Clintons would even begin to try that.
Now having been on the receiving end of Indian Health Service which is run by the feds, and horror stories of VA hospitals (Born on the 4th of July dont miss by much) I dont think much of Government run health care.
Single Payer is different. The entire country in one health pool paying premiums via payroll deduction and accepted everywhere that federal money is accepted. Right now the administrative overhead of multiple plan, multiple choices has to be a huge overhead. Contract the administration out to a private entity. Go to whom I choose, docs negotiate rates with the administrators, close oversight by the feds to catch cheating. Lots of details as well as gotchas what does everyone else think?
thanx,
bill
