Comments on The Belmont Club,"The murky future of health care"

Rufus.
Oh, and thank God we didn’t nominate Romney. He might have lost, and we would have ended up with Obama, and National Healthcare.

Or he might have won and we'd end up with Romneycare on the way to National Healthcare.

Sounds like the man who admitted that he was warned that if he voted for Goldwater we would end up in a land war in Asia and by gum they was right.

We need National Law care with lawyers assigned to locations based on an impartial government agencies determination of need and their pay to be based strictly on objective criteria of productivity with no Lawyer making more then double the average income in their SMSA. Oh and public rights to claim damages for any harm arising from the lawyer's acts as determined by a review board staffed by government clerks.

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blogstrap,
(who was appalled that we are debating an article from HuffPo)
The fact that the HuffPo or The Daily Show have any standing in a conversation among adults is a system flaw. They provide a wedge from the Left for making people comfortable with accepting arguments delivered via Saturday Night Live and Late Night. In my opinion there are equally discreditable sources on the ostensible Right, such as Donofrio's blog, that serve only to muddy the waters and prevent meaningful discussion. In the distant past a more conservative and self confident culture was comfortable with gatekeepers enforcing standards on who was considered a credible source. This demanded a highly self critical stance on the part of the providers of information. That ethical sense was internalized, as an expression in a mature society of what Max Weber called "Organic Solidarity" and is a mark of professionalism. The loss of that quality among Journalists is partly a function of shifting market forces and more a result of the termite like destruction of key institutions, academia, law and journalism, for over a century. This began long ago, certainly by the time of the Fabian Society of Sidney and Beatrice Webb and has accelerated under the label post-modernism.

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Personally I believe that every licensed hospital should receive a flat subsidy from their local government, amount based on the size of the catchment area, to provide basic stabilization and referral emergency services for ambulatory patients. The anticipated costs of basic services should be displayed and information should be provided to a patient prior to service being rendered as to the anticipated costs that they might be facing. These estimates should be based on a historical record of fees generated in similar cases and should be available for the top 50 basic walk in conditions. That does not apply to catastrophic injuries or complex infections or cancers but does apply to many simple cases. If someone walks into an ER as I did with a cut finger the Nurse should say to them "We can bandage you and send you to the County Hospital for free (or $50) or if you need a stitch it will cost you $200." What should never happen is their saying "Don't worry about it Let's take a look." followed by their rinsing it with water and putting a bandage on and then sending a bill for $1,100, as happened to me.

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Ernie G,
(who described a dog bite)
How’s the dog?
My suspicion is that hospitals are carrying phantom bills to the uninsured as a health care version of the “toxic assets” that ate the housing industry. Eventually someone is going to have to balance the books.

steeple,
(who called Obama an "economic moron")
During his years teaching across the Midway at The University of Chicago Law School did Obama ever visited the Economics Department, at that time directly across from the Law Quad in the top of Social Science Research? My belief is that he only would have been there if he got lost looking for a bathroom.

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Perhaps the key metric is not the number of doctors but rather the ratio between the numbers of doctors and lawyers?