Who will be the US "Big 3" in 2016?

A lot of work needed, no doubt. Fortunately there are lots of working
models to learn from.

If you want to be scared, check out the number of personal
bankruptcies which are caused by medical expenses and the stories
behind them.

 

Everyone who want to lower health care cost in the US should write to their
Senators and ask them to vote to stop debate, on pending tort reform
legislation so it can come up before the Senate for a vote, and you will
have more Doctors and Nurses. I have a personal friend, a well known heart
surgeon who no longer practices because of Mal Practice Insurance costs.


mike hunt

 

That statement is too stupid to deserve a reply.

mike hunt


spend billions to change their manufacturing facilities over from RWD, to
build the more costly. less safe FWD vehicles to make vehicles smaller and
lighter, yet still have sufficient room for five people that American
wanted.

At the some time, because of date certain deadlines, we had to do required
emission and crash improvements, sucking up more millions of dollars of
capital. The imports needed only improve the small vehicles they already
produced, in low cost countries, to meet emission and crash improvements.
By setting date certain deadlines, rather than goals to be met as new
technology could be developed, the government set back innovation in the
America automobile industry by ten years. It would have been far better to
set goals rather than timetables, as the government now does, and allowed
those billions to spent on R&D rather than production facilities. The far
better vehicles of today in terms of crash safety, fuel efficiency,
nearly zero emissions, as well as the improved reliability and longevity
could have been available ten or even fifteen years sooner.

..

 

But medicare pays less than private insurance. And private insurance
pays less than you do with no insurance. How the hell can it be
Medicare's fault that the price is high. The fact is that Medicare
runs a very tight ship. (Except for Bush's welfare subsidy to Big
Pharma masquerading as a drug plan for seniors.)

Yep, what we have now is the most expensive health care in the world.
When you look at it that way, hard to imagine that the government
could make it worse.

 

You must have your head pretty far up something if you haven't heard
that:

1. The US is virtually(?) the only industrialized nation that does
not have universal nationalized health care

2. The US has the highest per capita health care costs in the world
by far.

3. The overall quality of US health care is mediocre.

4. All the above are getting worse.


Read up:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/07/050712140821.htm

The United States continues to spend significantly more on health care
than any country in the world. In 2005, Americans spent 53 percent per
capita more than the next highest country, Switzerland, and 140
percent above the median industrialized country, according to new
research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The
study authors analyzed whether two possible reasons - supply
constraints and malpractice litigation - could explain the difference
in health care costs. They found that neither factor accounted for a
large portion of the U.S. spending differential. The study is featured
in the July/August 2005 issue of the journal Health Affairs.

The study authors reviewed health care spending data on 30 countries
from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
for the year 2003. U.S. citizens spent $5,267 per capita on health
care. The country with the next highest per capita expenditure,
Switzerland, spent $3,446 per capita. The median OECD country spent
$2,193 per capita.



http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/medical_errors.html

http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5436968

http://dll.umaine.edu/ble/U.S.%20HCweb.pdf

http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2006-02/2006-02-28-voa59.cfm?CFID=23244871&CFTOKEN=46366533

http://www.theolympian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060502/LIVING03/60502055

 

WHO THE **** CARES?

Take it to email or an appropriate newsgroup.

Just go to alt.autos.toyota if you want to see what you're turning this
previously fine newgroup into.

 

You think the government can not make things worse? You have never been in
a VA hospital or seen by a VA doctor. Piss poor doctors and second rate
coverage if you can even get into a Hospital or find a doctor

You are confused Medicare sets the rates charged by hospitals and doctors in
a given area, and sets them high. I don't know what private coverage you
have but my coverage arranges with doctors and hospital to pay far less than
Medicare allows per person in the area. The reason Medicare pays five
times as much as the VA for the same coverage, is Medicare payments to
hospital are a round about way to reimburse hospitals and doctors for free
emergency care they must provide, under the Hill Burton Act, for the
indigent.. The only was a doctor can charge you less than the Medicare rate
is for him not to treat Medicare patients

Paying for drugs was never a problem for me but I now spend around $250 less
a month for my meds, since the drug law went into effect, and I do not buy
part 'D'. The sad part is, even though I never applied for SS, because of
the Medicare law I can not even buy private coverage unless I sign up and
pay for part 'B.'

Because of all the old folks in Florida, they get all of their drugs free
and need not pay a monthly premium.


mike hunt

 

Only in your small world LOL


mike hunt

 

I guess we would be better off if the government gave us all free medical
care, free drugs. Why stop there? What about giving us a free insured car
to go to the doctor, as well as buying the gas to run it. How about a free
cell phone to call 911 if needed? How about three months paid medical
leave for us and our families when somebody gets sick? How about maid
service when we can't clean the house when we get sick. How about paying
somebody do to our grocery shopping? How about a minimum wage of $25 a
hour, and a 30 hour week so we don't have to work hard to get the things we
'need?' How about a displaced worker payment equal to our take home pay,
when all of our jobs go off shore because of all the imports we buy? How
about a free college education like in Russia, so we can go to China to
design the Toyotas they will soon build there for the American market? Hell
we can just raise the death tax to 95% and raise tax rates for the rich to
90% again, the rate in pre President Kennedy days, at least till the rich
start moving out of the county, like they are doing in France

mike hunt

 

Obviously you don't care about things that are important. So why not just
overlook the off-topic threads and move on? Or killfile some folks. You
pencil necked geek.

 

Obviously you don't care about things that are important.[/QUOTE]

I care.

But you don't get into heated debates about health care in the middle of
my son's school Christmas play.

Everything has an appropriate time and place, and an inappropriate time
and place.

I suppose you go to Wendy's and stand at people's lunch tables and start
screaming your opinions about welfare, right? After all--according to
you--"you care" and therefore it's appropriate, right?

 

Detroit can build cars? That is a new one.

 

I base my above comments on Canada, which has had Gov. basic medical
care for many years at a nominal quarterly cost per individual.
Medical costs in Canada are much less and even those who don't have a
good medical plan or lots of money get the same care.
A big cost saving in Canada is the approx. 30% cost in the USA of
insurer overhead cost.
As for drugs they are much lower cost in Canada and there is a rebate
based on income. Those with lots of money can afford the drugs.

The stories of USA citizens, often seniors, who can't afford required
medical procedures, is very sad.
Even China has very low cost or free medical.

 

Nonsense, it will be Clinton's fault.

 

Since I never listen to talk radio, I can only venture my view on why
Detroit is doing so poorly.

1. It isn't the foreign competitors killing the US auto industry. The
US auto industry is killing the US auto industry.

2. Hell, I think that the big 3 have slept with the union leaders. How
else did they negotiate wages that even an engineer would be envious of?

3. The time for backing the unions down should have been done beginning
inn the 1950's. Compensation should reflect services rendered.

JT

 

As I recall, the economy was doing pretty well back in those Kennedy
days.

The rich can leave as long as they pay the 95% exit tax that will fund
our nationalized health care. Like Bill Gates told the graduates,
life isn't fair.

And why shouldn't we raise the lazy bum rich kids windfall tax to 95%
(of the estate over $1 million)? Like Bill Gates told the graduates,
life isn't fair.

I love how you snip the bottom half of my post and then jump back up
and top post your response. Must have been something there that
really bothered you.

 

I think that if you consider the production per manhour in US and
compare it with manhour in Europe that you will see that the Europe
figure is much much higher

In Europe people work much fewer hours, have longer vacations, have
better job security

The market economy is in effect in both cases but the European one has
a more humane touch and is actually working better

Look at the value of the dollar for one thing

The dollar compared to the pound is close to 1:2 now and it used to be
1:1 a few years back

The raltionship between the Dollar to Euro is also slipping dollar used
to be $ > Euro and is now $ < Euro

Europe is still working off the effects of the former east problems but
even with those problems the manhour in Europe gives higher
productivity than the manhour does in US

I am then talking about Europe as a whole

The former east part is still lagging way behind both but changing
quickly as time goes by and new generation of people grow up

The older generation living under centralised government that ended
roughly 16 years ago has really high unemployment rate and are used to
the central taking all initiative

When the new generation born after the fall of the Berlin wall is
coming of age things are changing a lot

The strange thing is that as Europe is changing away from centralised
government because of its failures than US is going more and more
towards centralised government

It is happening so gradually that everyman is hardly noticing it

More and more big brother tendencies is deteriorating the productivity
of the manhour in the US system

The unions in many big cos in US are much more a hindrance for
increased productivity than the general system in effect in Europe

 

and that their cars have been and in some cases are still less
reliable than their Japanese competitors. And lastly, Ford and GM
are saddled with some very, very high retirement and healthcare
costs that makes each car the actually are able to sell less
profitable. GM and Ford are currently losing BILLIONS of dollars
annually because of all of this.

You mentioned that they could still make a comeback. They better do
something very drastic soon or it ain't gonna happen.

 

I agree completely. Even if, by some miracle, GM and Ford were able
to suddenly start making desirable cars, the current union contracts
(salary, healthcare and retirement costs) would kill any profitability.

Unions and their stupid contracts have gotta go.

 

Mike. I gotta tell you, this is one of the few times I agree with
you. Anything run by the government is always more expensive -- and
usually poorly run too.