McCain vs Obama on healthcare

[stephen]

Deregulation is not the main reason for rising healthcare costs.

1. Indigent care is draining resources from hospitals, thus driving up costs to paying patients, or ,more times than not, insurance pays a large majority of that added cost. To curb their losses, insurance companies have to raise their premiums and their copays.

2. Mass tort law and huge settlements. I'm the first to agree that if a company knowingly does wrong they should be severly punished. The problem I see is that pharmacudicals, and to a smaller degree doctors, are being slammed with huge punitive damages suits even if they had done everything in their power to prove a particular medication is safe. I wont agrue with compensatory damages though.


If those 2 areas are reigned in I can see the costs of health care coming down dramaticly. As I said, neither Obama's nor McCain's plan addresses the reasons for rising healthcare. They only address the end results.

Now as far as fraud in the current system goes, the govt could add 10x the number of investigators to curb the fraud and save $30B a year on the low side. I also believe it should be MUCH harder to receive medicare certification. Especially now, when jobs are getting harder to find, adding 50K new well paying jobs, while still saving taxpayer money would be a great idea.

i see what you're saying, and that's really a great idea. as i stated before though, obama does have one clause in his policy that SLIGHTLY attempts to curb the rising cost...by putting a cap on malpractice insurance. that's the sort of thing i'm referring to when i talk about regulations. i understand that's not the ONLY way to address the problem, but it's a lot better than deregulating (which is part of mccain's plan).

[BanginJimmy]

i see what you're saying, and that's really a great idea. as i stated before though, obama does have one clause in his policy that SLIGHTLY attempts to curb the rising cost...by putting a cap on malpractice insurance. that's the sort of thing i'm referring to when i talk about regulations. i understand that's not the ONLY way to address the problem, but it's a lot better than deregulating (which is part of mccain's plan).

Capping malpractice insurance, does that mean premiums, coverage, or payouts? Caps on any of those will do nothing. There MUST be a set of guidelines for juries to use when awarding settlements. I can see compesatory damages for a bad decision, but there is no need for punative damages in any case where there isnt proof that the party being sued was knowingly indifferent to the health and safety of those that were injured.

[stephen]

Capping malpractice insurance, does that mean premiums, coverage, or payouts? Caps on any of those will do nothing. There MUST be a set of guidelines for juries to use when awarding settlements. I can see compesatory damages for a bad decision, but there is no need for punative damages in any case where there isnt proof that the party being sued was knowingly indifferent to the health and safety of those that were injured.

he wants to cap coverage. insurers charge doctors an arm and a leg, which causes them to charge us 2 arms and 2 legs to make up the difference. like i said, it's not going to completely solve the problem, but it does atleast address one portion of it. neither plan is fool proof, but obama atleast has a decent start.

[BanginJimmy]

he wants to cap coverage. insurers charge doctors an arm and a leg, which causes them to charge us 2 arms and 2 legs to make up the difference. like i said, it's not going to completely solve the problem, but it does atleast address one portion of it. neither plan is fool proof, but obama atleast has a decent start.

I actually think that plan will make matters worse. It will encourage docs to keep more cash on hand than they do now so they can afford it if they get sued. A doc I was in Afghanistan had 50M worth of coverage, and He told me others hat kept as mush as 250M.

What needs to happen is tighter restrictions on what you can sue for. Even as far as saying that if you sue and lose, you pay for the defense.