Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley speaks to students in the Medical Education and Research Facility’s Prem Sahai Auditorium on Monday. Grassley said work on health-care reform should start all over again.(Charlie Anderson/The Daily Iowan)
Posted on 03/09/2010 9:54:10 PM PST by iowamark
Lawmakers need to scrap progress made so far on health-care reform and start anew, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, told those gathered on the UI medical campus on Tuesday.
“There’s widespread agreement that our health-care system has serious problems,” he said before the crowd of roughly 200. “Unfortunately, Congress has spent a year creating bills that wouldn’t work.”
Grassley’s position as the ranking Republican of the Senate Finance Committee has made him a poster child for opposition to the Democrats’ health-care agenda. Locally, Democrats say the Republicans’ position is indicative of a disconnect between politicians and their constituents.
Iowa’s senior U.S. senator touched on the usual conservative talking points: Bills already drafted would increase government bureaucracy, infringe on patient-doctor relations, and lead to rationing of medical benefits.
Instead of the complete health-care overhaul many have called for, Grassley said incremental changes would suffice.
But Dane Hudson, the president of the University Democrats, said that would be detrimental to the process.
“To take all the work we’ve done over the past year — all those months and all the headway we’ve made — just to scrap everything and start over again is a complete waste of time,” Hudson said.
Tom Fiegen, a Democrat hoping to compete with Grassley in November, said he’s observed varying degrees of support for health-care reform among Iowans. However, the people most reluctant to support reform, he said, have largely been misinformed by the Republicans.
“We’ve got to talk to people who are in the middle and tell them, ‘If these price increases continue, pretty soon you are not going to be able to afford it,’ ” Fiegen said.
Ideally, Grassley said, a fresh push for health-care reform would focus on providing incentives for young doctors to practice in underserved areas of the country, including parts of rural Iowa.
Recent years have seen a decline in the number of medical-school graduates choosing to pursue careers in primary care — family medicine, general pediatrics, and general internal medicine.
In fact, by 2025, the U.S. is expected to see a shortage of as many as 159,000 physicians, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. And an increase in access to health-care could exacerbate that shortage.
The shortage could be particularly problematic for Iowans, because many rural communities already demand more primary-care doctors.
The issue is complex, said Roger Tracy, the director of the UI’s Office of Statewide Clinical Education Programs, noting that in the last five years, only around 45 percent of UI Carver College of Medicine graduates chose to train in primary care; during the mid-90s, that number was as high as 60 percent.
And even of those who do pursue primary care, only around half of UI medical graduates who train in Iowa end up practicing in Iowa.
“One of the most important issues to me relates to how health-care reform will affect the long-term ability to recruit health-care professionals to rural states such as Iowa,” said Lyndsay Harshman, a third-year medical student.
First rule of holes is... stop digging
Democrats on health care are like a guy who turns the wrong direction on the highway. After driving for hours, his wife says “I think you went the wrong way, we have to turn around”.
And the guy instead floors it, saying “but we’ve come too far to turn back now”.
Pissing in the wind, Grassley....the dems and progressive know best for us.... you know, we are like little children who need to be told to take their medicine while we are kicking and screaming to not take it.
Here’s a question I haven’t heard anyone ask:
What effect on healthcare costs does the tax policy of punishing successful doctors and nurses ?
Seriously. Between the high tax rates and high malpractice insurance rates, doctors are probably only taking home 1/3rd of their salaries. So how much of the large salaries they command is due to the knowledge that Uncle Sam is going to take a big chunk of it ?
If we replaced the existing income tax with a 10% flat tax with no deductions, exemptions, or credits, it would generate the same tax revenue. If there were no corporate taxes, malpractice insurance would also be lower. Successful people like doctors could work for 20% less and still come out ahead just because of the tax difference.
What effect on healthcare costs does taxing of medical appliances and instruments?
If the objective was "to lower the cost of healthcare", it makes no sense to increase the cost of the tools of the trade.
Irrespective of whether or not you scrap Obamacare, you have ALREADY wasted one year of TIME.
IT’S CALLED A SUNK COST!!!
Apparently, Economics 101 is not a mandatory requirement at the University of Iowa.
But by all means, keep on tacking on the MARGINAL COST of wasting more ADDITIONAL days, weeks, and months on this Obamacare non-starter.
Carry on...y’all are doing a bang up super job there.
“What effect on healthcare costs does the tax policy of punishing successful doctors and nurses ?”
It discourages them from entering the profession. Doctors would be more likely to stay in rural areas if they can make a profit doing so. Rather then congress simply giving them a handout, after their money has been laundered through congress, they should pay less taxes.
“It discourages them from entering the profession.”
I think that is certainly true, but what is also true is that they’ve been pretty successful in passing their high taxes and malpractice insurance costs on to insurance companies and eventually to the patients.
I’m not knocking them for it. It is the way any business is run. You first decide how much money you want to take home after all the BS yet still be worth it to be in that business. Then you try to price your product or services so you end up with at least that much “left over” after the government is done screwing you. If you can’t get your price, you either don’t go into the business or you leave the business.
The government pretends that they can get all their taxes from the “rich” without it being passed along in higher prices to the “middle class” and “poor”. I think healthcare costs demonstrate the lie, but nobody seems to be making the connection. Trying to punish these “rich” with high taxes has backfired.
Whenever Obama talks about “only raising taxes on the top 2%”, he is including virtually EVERY doctor in the country. That doesn’t bode well for healthcare costs.
He has been consistently outspoken against the current health care legislation.
Republicans will have a House majority in the next congress, and a better proportion in the Senate.
There will be a Republican president in January of 2013.
Grassley is a fixed point.
I live in Canada, care is much better in the USA. That folks have to pay for what they get usually means they get better service.
Maybe it has something to do with farm subsidies. I dunno.
If they actually have to pay for it. So many people here get their health insurance through their employer that they have no idea how much it is costing the employer. Having insurance insulates the individual from knowing what healthcare costs, and if their employer offers insurance they do not have enough incentive to shop and find out what it really costs. Or that the cost has been hugely inflated by the taxes and malpractice insurance a doctor has to buy.
A doctor ends up paying over 50% in taxes between Federal and State levels. I think doctors would be happy to cut their charges by 20% if the Federal income tax rate was dropped from 35% to 10%, and that the service would be exactly the same. Malpractice insurance for an OBGyn in Florida can be over $200,000/yr.
I don’t think we get better medical service from paying these huge embedded costs. These are dead sunk costs, and not being spent on better medical equipment, drugs, or training — they are just LOST to governments and insurance companies and don’t contribute anything to the medical services provided.
Its Really Quite Simple ,Americans want Health Care to cost Less Period . Letting the Government Run the Health Care system would be a Fiscal And Moral Nightmare Period. Case Closed
““There’s widespread agreement that our health-care system has serious problems,””
“There’s widespread agreement that the solutions to our supposed health-care problems have serious difficulties -
”
There. Got it right.
The scary thing is that, if the government could actually force health care to cost less, a large majority would support doing so, even though it’s no business of the government how much a private company charges me for health care.
--and Deace locked his lips on Mike Huckabee's cheek.
If America wants to address subsidies, fine.
Public TV.
Planned Parenthood.
And public "education"--more money; dumber students.
Perhaps Obama will nationalize agriculture next.
It worked so well for Ukraine.
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