Daschle asks Americans for health care stories

[cal04]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081206/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/obama_health_care

President-elect Barack Obama and his aides are determined not to repeat the mistakes the Clinton administration made 15 years ago in trying to revamp the nation's health care system. Some of the lessons learned: Move fast, seize the momentum and don't let it go.

Tom Daschle, Obama's point man on health reform, discussed the early strategy for revamping the nation's $2 trillion health care system. Details of Obama's proposals won't be finalized for a while, but the political and public relations strategy is coming into place.

The strategy begins with giving people the chance to highlight their concerns and experiences. Daschle invited people around the nation to hold what amounts to house parties from Dec. 15-31. Obama's transition team will gather the information that's provided from those meetings and post the material on its Web site, http://change.gov.

By asking anybody and everybody to share their health care experiences, Daschle is confronting one of the major criticisms of 15 years ago: that the effort to craft former President Bill Clinton's plan for universal coverage was too secretive.

"We have to make this as inclusive a process as possible," Daschle, the former Senate majority leader from South Dakota, said in a speech in Denver, his first since Democratic officials confirmed last month that he had been offered the job as health and human services secretary and that he had accepted.


Sign up to host a health care community discussion over the holidays
http://change.gov/page/s/hcdiscussion

Senator Tom Daschle, leader of the Transition's Health Policy Team, will be selecting one of these meetings to attend in person. And just like the Obama campaign did with its platform meetings this past summer, after the meetings are over, the team will use the advice to put together their final recommendations for the new administration.
http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/daschle_asks_americans_to_help_reform_health_care/

[Lugnut]

1. K&R n/t

[EFerrari]

2. I'm going to use this op to ask Tom Daschle to press on FBI about their fake anthrax case.

No expert that doesn't work for BushCo believes Ivins did it. And if they're right and I believe they are, that means we are still at risk.


This is, finally, a PUBLIC HEALTH issue, no?

:shrug:

[mwooldri]

3. I've gone left my feedback.

In short: look at the UK, and learn.

UK's NHS is not perfect but it covers 100% of the population with the vast majority of services provided free of cost at the point of delivery. For things such as medicines, the payments are cheap compared to what we have and even those payments can be capped and waived, and in everywhere except England, even medicine costs are going to go away.

Bottom line:

a) healthcare must cover everyone, no exceptions.
b) everyone must be able to afford the healthcare - to remove the barrier impose free at the point of delivery and free or highly subsidized medicines and medical supplies.
c) Not just doctors visits and hospital stays - cover everything, dentists, opticians, psychiatrists...

Mark.

[John Q. Citizen]

5. So do you think the care providers, the nurses, the doctors, are going to want to

work for a gov. service.

It's true, military doctors are in essence British style practitioners. But i think the fact that people are assigned to a care provider
is a deal breaker for both patients and doctors here.

Of course, I'm a proponent of a mixed market.

I think some things work much better socialized and some things work much better under free enterprise. I guess that's why i prefer a single payer fee for service system. I also think it's more politically feasible.

edited to add.-

PS I'd take an NHS in a NY minute over what we have now or a hybrid public private like what we have now. So it's not like i'm shocked that you would want it. I'd consider it for sure

[mwooldri]

6. Oh there's an internal market in the NHS

It is in some ways similar to a traditional HMO; it just covers everyone in the UK. It's more complex than that though, because there's the vertical integration here: your primary care physician has a budget; a fixed income for all his patients, but they get a fixed base pay packet too not linked with that budget but they get other incentives too.

People can choose their primary care physician; they're not assigned one and stuck with it. Yes you have to pick one, but you don't have to continually see that one. In my home village we have about 15,000 people and 13 doctors in a central practice.

Doctors can generally choose their patient too. They're not stuck with a list of patients to work with; they can fire them.

It used to be that if you needed something specialized, you had no choice other than who your primary care physician referred you to. It's changed: you still need to go through your GP (unless it's an emergency of course) but you can choose your hospital and specialist... even private hospitals are getting in on the act now.

[ColbertWatcher]

4. Dear Senator Daschle ...

... my country will lose one of its last remaining manufacturing industries because we don't have universal healthcare. This industry, the car makers, cannot compete with manufacturers in other countries because those countries have socialized medicine.

Please make sure my country doesn't install some half-assed healthcare system that benefits insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies (or any other corporation for that matter) at the expense of decent-paying, union jobs and the overall health of citizens of the United States.

Thank you,

The American people.