Question for universal health care advocates

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

There has needed to be a serious overhaul of both medicare and medicaid.

Sadly the actual infrastructure needed to make such a scheme work is virtually non-existant. You can throw money at something all you like, but you can't make it stick.  This started primarily under Reagan's destruction of the great society programs, and sadly carried on by all his successors.

That's the problem, medicaid isn't working. The 40 million number are largely the "working poor" people who don't earn enough to afford health insurance (let alone have it included in work packages), but not poor enough to qualify for federal assistance.


Firstly medicare and medicaid had been only running since 1965/6 - one year later is certainly not a decent enough time frame, since it required people to sign on etc etc. Sometimes cost effectiveness isn't the issue look at the defence bugets between 1978 and 1982 - a 75% jump in 4 years, with only a 9% increase in hardware.

What needs to happen, IMHO (supporting doctors, patients, and reducing costs)
1) Increase the income thesholds.
2) Cap medical malpractice suit payments for pain and suffering, work with insurance companies to reduce the Doctor's premiums by 25%
3) Reduce government interferrence into medical practices.
4) REDUCE the red tape and bureaucracy. Streamline communcation between doctors and bureaucrats.

Universal healthcare is expensive, but you'll find that one of the bigger costs is in the fact the bureaucracy running it. You cannot really adapt the present system to fit Universal healthcare, it would collapse. You need a massive overhaul and genuine healthcare reform.