Clinton unveils new healthcare plan...v.nottooshabby :eek3:

[6SpeedTA95]

Hillary Clinton, Democratic Senator for New York and US presidential candidate made a speech at George Washington University yesterday where she unveiled her strategy for health care reform, focusing on a seven point plan to reduce healthcare costs.

Speaking to an audience of health professionals and academics, Clinton made light of the previous time she "tangled with the issue", in 1993 as First Lady, saying that she had the "scars to show for it" but had learned a lot from the experience.

Clinton said there were three parts to her approach on healthcare: lowering costs, improving quality and making sure everyone is insured which she described as a "moral imperative". The speech yesterday focused mainly on lowering costs.

Clinton set the scene by describing how US healthcare presently costs 16 per cent of Gross Domestic Product and by 2016 it will be 20 per cent, "That means that within less than 10 years, 20 cents out of every dollar produced in America will be spent on healthcare," she said. This compares with a maxmum of 12 per cent in other wealthy countries.

The Senator then talked about how obesity in the US had contributed significantly to rising healthcare costs:

"About 30% of the rise in health care spending is linked to the doubling of obesity among adults over the past 20 years."

And another two thirds of healthcare spending is on treatable diseases such as diabetes, asthma and heart disease, she pointed out.

But perhaps her most scathing comments were on the administrative costs and the amount of money wasted through inefficiency.

"More than one in four health care dollars goes to administration," said Clinton, adding that "64 per cent of private insurance plans' administrative costs are dedicated to underwriting health risks, sales, and marketing".

6 times more is spent on health care administration in America than in other countries, she said, and referred to a recent independent report that showed the US spends nearly 100 billion dollars more on administration that has " nothing to do with delivering good health care".

Clinton cited examples of labs that repeated tests because the previous results were unavailable, and examples of stroke patients being given thousands of dollars for surgery that didn't work.

If so much money is going into the system, then why doesn't it deliver better results, was the thrust of her opening messages.

"If we spend so much, why does the World Health Organization rank the United States 31st in life expectancy and 40th in child mortality; worse than Cuba and Croatia?"

Clinton used the event to unveil her seven point plan to tackle the spiralling healthcare costs:
Focus on prevention: wellness not sickness. For example the retailer Safeway changed their whole employee healthcare system to incentivise and resource preventive activity and their healthcare costs stayed flat when the rest of the country's went up by 7.7 per cent. Clinton mentioned incentivising insurers by requiring those that deal with federal employee healthcare to bring in preventive strategies.

Use more computer technology: to increase security and accessibility of records, reduce costs and errors, and share research. For instance at the moment if you get taken into an emergency department they can't access your medical records to find out your history and current use of medication. After Katrina, many people's medical records were lost because they were on paper and damaged by the floods. "In fact, if all hospitals used a computerized physician order entry system, an estimated 200,000 fewer adverse drug events would occur, saving roughly 1 billion dollars per year", said Clinton as a cost saving example.

Co-ordinate and streamline the care of chronically ill patients. The cost of caring for this patient population accounts for 75 per cent of national healthcare spend, said Clinton, something that she found "astonishing". She gave an example of a streamlined co-ordinated system that was already working in Oregon, where an elderly patient with several conditions was having her care managed and co-ordinated centrally to ensure her treatments were compatible and working together.

Offer individuals and small businesses market access to larger insurance pools. The purpose of this part of the plan is to "lower costs and end insurance company discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions," said Clinton. She sees this as part of a system of universal coverage, where "insurance companies cannot as easily shift costs through cherry picking and other means". This means that people with pre-existing conditions would be offered insurance on a par with others, "prohibiting insurance companies from carving out benefits or charging higher rates to people with health problems".

Improve the quality of care to help drive down costs: for example by "establishing an independent public-private Best Practices Institute". Clinton envisages the Institute being "A partnership among the public and the private sector, to finance comparative effectiveness research, so that doctors, nurses and other health professionals, as well as consumers and businesses, would know what drugs, devices, surgeries and treatments work best". She cited a recent study by Dartmouth researchers that found close to one third of the 2 trillion dollars spent in the US goes to care that is "duplicative and fails to improve patient health".

Get prescription drug costs under control. Americans pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs; and yet in most instances the research and development of those same drugs was carried out and funded in America. Clinton said studies had shown that branded drugs were up to 55 per cent more expensive in the US, with the top selling brands over 200 per cent more expensive, compared to other industrialized nations. The cost of prescription drugs as a percentage of total healthcare costs is going up faster in America than anywhere else. An important part of the solution would be to allow Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices, to allow importation of cheaper drugs, and generics.

Reform medical malpractice: in a way that works for doctors and patients alike. By way of example, Clinton offers one alread in use: "I have offered one solution that has been used successfully at the University of Michigan Hospital system. It's called the National Medical Error Disclosure and Compensation (MEDiC) Act as I have borrowed it from the University of Michigan to put it into law".
When addressing how these changes would be financed, Clinton stressed the self funding nature of her seven point plan:

"The money we save from the waste we eliminate and the way we change how we care for people should be used to help finance coverage for the 45 million Americans who have no insurance. Also, when you insure everyone, it will maximize the impact of the prevention programs I have recommended -- with earlier care as opposed to emergency care -- as well as cutting administrative costs."

I have to say this isn't half bad. While there are definately changes I would make, she is not centralizing healthcare functions, just organizing the insurance function of the industry.

While I think states should be allowed to have their own plans, this is a hell of a good start to opening the debate in a rational manner. In fact this is a very VERY similar plan to what Romney unveiled in his home state and yet he's criticizing the plan? I can understand a few aspects of criticism but it seems like a reasonable plan to me.

[JaJae]

Some of the details of her actual plan were released and it sounded more like a plan for the press than a plan for America. She essentially wants socialized healthcare for people who choose it, private health care for people who choose it and the option for Americans to have the healthcare granted to Congress. Essentially she took a poll and added everything she thinks America wants and threw it all into one incoherent plan in an attempt to pacify everyone. The problem with her plan is that it offers absolutely no solutions to the crisis we're facing involving increased medical costs, in fact her plan compounds them. Her plan only makes the situation worse.

When asked if her plan would cover illegal immigrants, she basically said she'd get back on that... meaning she's unsure if she would like illegal immigrants to receive free medical coverage.

We need to reform our healthcare system to stop the spiraling of healthcare costs and the blank check prices the government is implementing. I know for a fact that in NJ illegal immigrants can go down to local hospital in Princeton (home of the show House) and apply for free medical care and be given a essentially a free card that allows the family to go in to the hospital to receive free treatment. My business was sponsoring a man for citizenship who had a wife and a five year old. In order for us to sponsor him we had to provide him with health insurance. He flat out refused our health insurance because he was getting care for free at the hospital. We had to argue with him to take our insurance, but he didn't want to pay for it. And even after he had insurance he continued to get treatment on the tax payer's dollar.

Hillary's plan is essentially follows this mentality. We all have to pay taxes to unnecessarily provide a service for people.

[SoFlaJDM]

Originally Posted by JaJae

When asked if her plan would cover illegal immigrants, she basically said she'd get back on that... meaning i'm just finding a way to trash her because she's the biggest threat to the GOP
.

fixed for accuracy

[Rouger2]

It seems to me that she has some good ideas about making health care more efficient, but how much is debatable and would not be known until they were put into effect. She does not take on the drug companies for their insane profits just telling us how bad the problem is and that we should be able to import drugs. That just seems so crazy to me. The drugs often made here are sold and shipped over seas for a faction of what they sell them here for, and we are to have them shipped back here so we can buy them at the lower foreign price. Since there is no competition in the drug industry they are not a part of our capitalistic system so we should just allow them a good profit and set their prices. That would save all this crazyness of sending them overseas first. You know she would never want to set prices so in that way she is more like a republican than a democrat. What about the huge profits that the Hospitals make. They are also not part of the competitive capitalistic system. Since there is no competition it is absolutely the responsibility of the government to set prices. They have price guidelines in Texas for auto insurance companies because there is so little competition in the industry, allowing them to rip off drivers, so why not do the same in the health industry where there is almost no competition.

[Publius]

Originally Posted by SoFlaJDM

fixed for accuracy

if i could give you a negative rep right now, I would for this post. It adds nothing to the thread and is an effort to reduce discussion, because his post is very valid. Just because you don't agree with his beliefs doesn't give you the right to try and oversimplify them into some "ooo, you think she is a boogeyman! boogie boogie boogie!" argument. Argue his points or shut up.

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by SoFlaJDM

fixed for accuracy

Not at all true. Throughout this entire campaign and political career Hillary has consistently waited for popularity feedback before giving her opinion on issues. She is purposely not disclosing her stance on that issue when asked about her healthcare plan. You would think when unveiling a plan you would answer questions on the issues. She's purposely refusing, which has become a routine tactic for her campaign.

[RMNIXON]

I still think it is the slow poison pill approach because she did learn in 1993 that we would not swallow the whole plan at once. Bottom line the plan is to make everybody pay for everybody elses health insurance and choice is a problem in that scheme of things. It will be chipped away at little by little as the real costs become a reality.

[6SpeedTA95]

Hillary will be on Foxnews tomorrow I plan on watching it. It will be interesting to see the questions they hit her with.

This plan is far from perfect but its a great stepping stone to opening up the system for discussion. I still feel that kerry had one of the best proposals I've ever seen.

[SoFlaJDM]

what show/time?

[6SpeedTA95]

Originally Posted by SoFlaJDM

what show/time?

dont know but they were talking about it friday...let me see what I can dig up for us

[6SpeedTA95]

Chris Wallace show 6pm...my guess is that is EST.

[SoFlaJDM]

Originally Posted by 6SpeedTA95

Chris Wallace show 6pm...my guess is that is EST.

let's get ready for "some people say...." questions then

[6SpeedTA95]

Originally Posted by SoFlaJDM

let's get ready for "some people say...." questions then

It should be pretty good, Wallace is a bit wierd the way he asks questions I agree, but it should be pretty good none the less.

[SoFlaJDM]

Originally Posted by 6SpeedTA95

It should be pretty good, Wallace is a bit wierd the way he asks questions I agree, but it should be pretty good none the less.

yeah, it should be good... hillary is also expecting those types of questions as her husband did...

and if you mean incredibly biased when you say weird, yeah... i agree

[RMNIXON]

Originally Posted by SoFlaJDM

let's get ready for "some people say...." questions then

Cause she is too afraid of O'Reilly?


He might pick on the girl!

[6SpeedTA95]

Anyone see this? I went to the inlaws to celebrate my wife's bday.

[SoFlaJDM]

Originally Posted by 6SpeedTA95

Anyone see this? I went to the inlaws to celebrate my wife's bday.

i had to work too late