Excellent short recap of 2 Dem healthcare plan - From Reuters

[kristopher]

(Reuters) - Following are details of healthcare plans offered by Democratic White House hopefuls:

* New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's health care plan, estimated to cost about $110 billion per year, would require all Americans to get health insurance. Under a public-private partnership, they would keep existing coverage or choose from private insurance options members of Congress receive. Individuals may also choose a public plan similar to Medicare. Plan creates new federal subsidies for those who can't afford coverage and imposes new mandates on large employers to provide health insurance or help pay for it. Small business will receive tax breaks to provide health coverage. Plan forces insurance companies to give coverage to everyone, ending discrimination based on pre-existing conditions. Drug companies would also be required to offer fair prices.

* Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's plan provides health coverage for almost all Americans. Creates national public insurance program to allow individuals and small businesses to buy affordable health care similar to that available to federal employees. No one will be turned way or charged more due to illness and everyone who needs it will receive a subsidy for their premiums. Requires all employers to contribute toward health coverage for their employees or toward the cost of the public plan. Creates a national health insurance exchange to reform the private insurance market. Mandates that all children have health care coverage.

http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN2363970720080223

I like the fact that Obama's plan comes is a good first step to a functioning single payer plan. My view of Hillary's plan is that it does nothing to set up a mechanism to control prices; you need the single payer to do that.

In Japan, they have UHC w/ no individual mandate.

However they do mandate that all employers above X size (I believe it's about 5,000+- employees) provide insurance to all employees. Those not ensured by their employer are eligible to enroll in the government's single payer program; and although there is medical care available outside the system, there is very little that the system doesn't provide.

Costs are brutally managed - hand cranked beds, lots of small wards and few private/semiprivate rooms, lots of old equipment, but all the modern stuff also, needed care is there now and they aggressively treat even terminal cases with up to date care. And it is not expensive. Statistically they spend about 1/3 as much as we do, per capita; and of course their health care deliverable stats (infant mortality, lifespan etc) are better than most - including the US. For most people, they pay into the system about $100 - 175 a month depending on family size, and about a $5 deductible for physician visits, prescriptions, and common special procedures. Dental is, of course, included.

I've had a lot of experience as a user of their health care system and ours. I'll take theirs any day. They really want you to be healthy. I have a friend who is a plumber. I gave him a hand once clearing a backed up toilet. After I observed that it must be unpleasant to do his job sometimes, he corrected me by replying wih a big grin "It smells like money to me!"

Here, I get the creepy feeling that a lot of health care providers have the same view of me. They barely see ME, I'm mostly just something they can run through their newest shiny and very, very expensive machine in order to churn a payment out of the insurance company.

I note that a couple of people posting here say they are doctors. I mean no insult, nor disrespect. It is just, I'm sorry, but I'll never believe the profit motive improves medical care. It works well to push the margins of technology, but the 2/3s we spend more than Japan result in an extremely lopsided benefit for us.

It should be clear to even the most obtuse that the profit motive produces, along with that amazing technology and medical opulence, perverse incentives that measure system success by increased used of medical care and increased dosing with the most expensive medications that can be slipped by the almost completely pro forma watchdogs.

Our system is fundamentally and fatally flawed.

At least, that's the way I view it.

[sandnsea]

1. Horrible, terrrible comparison

It would sure be nice if college gradutes learned how to read. I assume a journalist at reuters graduated.

Hillary's plan provides a subsidy for a TAX CREDIT. Obama's plan provides an actual subsidy with premiums based on income. His plan has all the cost cutting and insurance regulation measures, with REAL assistance for working people.

[kristopher]

2. That's importaant, but not as important as the move towards single payer

In a one paragraph summary you have to sacrifice some details. I agree the point you bring up is significant, but I think the structural difference where she has the government using the existing insurance industry and he doesn't is the key point. Because of that his plan has a chance of getting costs under control and hers doesn't.
Also, I don't believe her mandates w/penalties will NEVER get through congress. Period. Even if the Dems have a solid majority.