Gee, Curt. I guess you approve of taking health care decisions away from you and your doctor and place them into the hands of the health insurance companies who routinely (and improperly) deny coverage.

The latest GOP “hero”, Scott Brown, voted FOR the Massachusetts system when he was a state senator.

You wrote:
“Medical malpractice suits are a significant contributing factor to the rising cost of health care.”
FALSE!!! This represents something like 1% of costs.
This is another example of why the Party of No shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions better left to adults.

Jumping in & jumping on, there’s this lie as well:

“Other countries such as Canada and the U.K. that have government-run, single-payer options have long waiting lists and poor quality care.”

In fact, satisfaction surveys have shown that both Canadians and Brits LOVE their healthcare system, with satisfaction rates up in the 80% range — much, much higher than what Americans feel about our broken system.

Diano: Malpractice suits themselves are somewhat inexpensive when compared to the total costs of health care in America, hence the figure you cited. However, they lead Doctors to order largely unnecessary additional tests left and right that costs thousands of dollars a pop just to cover their own rear ends.

Bailey: Satisfaction is not a measurement of either waiting time or quality. The facts that Schroder mentioned are on legitimate: Long wait times for routine procedures are common.

EK –

When I go into my doctor’s office for a routine blood test, it’s not unusual for me to wait an hour or more in the waiting room, then another half-hour once it get back to the exam room.

The few times that I’ve had to go to the hospital for routine outpatient procedures, I’ve waited hours to get through the registration red-tape, then more hours before anything was actually done.

Everybody waits. Welcome to real life. Go find something else to be a crank about.

All the usual scare tactics and none of the facts, I see you do not stray far from the party line. I love when detractors compare US healthcare to Canada and the UK. There is a whole world out there of other countries that also have single payer systems that are consistently ranked the best in the world in terms of care and cost: Sweden, Denmark, France, Holland…shall I go on. Sure they pay more in income taxes, but without having to pay for healthcare, secondary education, end of life care, child care Americans actually pay more out-of-pocket costs for these same services.

It’s great to see the great mustachio get crapped on like this. No one buys these crap talking points anymore. People want better more affordable healthcare and as always the democrats have delievered. Just stay quite Curt, we know you are weak. You caved to Gerlach and you should cave on this crap legislation too.

Curt Schroder is shameless in support for his Big Campaign Donors – HIGHMARK HEALTH PAC, HARLEYSVILLE INSURANCE PAC, INSURANCE EXECUTIVE, CHAMBER PAC, PENNSYLVANIA BANKERS PAC.

Curt – you need to get out of Public Service – where you are supposed to Serve the Public – not the Insurance Companies!

Shameful!

One question: Do you want us to repeal that single payer scourge which is the most popular government run health program in the US? Do you want to repeal Medicare??

How does Rep. Schroder know of what he speaks when he has gold-plated coverage, doesn’t pay for coverage out of his own pocket and receives financial support from several large health insurance providers? Sorry, ZERO credibility. Start paying for your own and your family’s health care out of pocket, and stop accepting contributions from large health care companies, then MAYBE we’ll start listening to what you have to say. Until that time, please give it a break.

If campaign contributions disqualify an elected official from making a judgment on policy, then I suppose most of the Ds should be disqualified for being in the pocket of the trial lawyers. Its a really silly point.

Both sides have and can make solid arguments. But when the loudest objections are picayune points that do not dispute the heart of the matter, they only serve to confirm the validity of Rep Schroeder’s case.

Keep up the good work Curt.

ChescoTom-It’s NOT only campaign contributions that disqualify this elected official from making a judgment on policy, primarily it’s the fact that we as Pa. taxpayers pay for his benefits. Let him pay out of his own pocket first then his judgment will have more credibility.

Either Schroder is one of the most ignorant state legislators that we have or he is a complete stranger to the truth. He knows, or ceratinly should know, that PA has, within the past few years, adopted significant, effective measures to reduce the number of frivolous medical malpractice suits. For example, a lawyer must get an independent certification that the suit has merit before the lawyer is permitted to file it in court and there are serious penalties for both the lawyer and the client if that rule is violated.

He also knows, or certainly should know, that such requirement has significantly reduced the number of medical malpractice suits filed in PA and that pressure has been taken off the premiums for medical malpractice insurance. You don’t hear about doctors leaving PA due to the rising cost of those premiums any more, do you?

Which is Mr. Shroder: ignorance or inability to tell the truth?

Is Mr. Shroder trying to be deceptive or is he ill informed? Any time anyone trys to link Mass. to single payer they are one or the other. What Massachusettes has is not single payer which is why it is going bankrupt.
Proposed single payer legislation in Pa (HB 1660 & SB 400) would give comprehensive health care to every Pennsylvanian(no co-pays & no deductibles). Everyone would pay the same percentage of their income & businesses the same percentage of payroll. All of this would replace the premiums paid to insurance companies.
After all why do we need a toll both (insurance companies) to stand between us and our docs with their hand out?
HealthCare4ALL PA did a study last year of all the public employers in the Commonwealth. We used the Open Records Act to get the actual figures from every municipality, county government, school district and even the state itself to see how much each would save under HB 1660 & SB 400. The combined savings is over $2.3 BILLION per year. You can look at the results of your particular municipality or school district at http://www.healthcare4allpa.org. Click on Resources & then Taxpayer savings. If you scroll down the page click on your County. You will be amazed.

Maybe Mr. Shroder should do the same. Nothing like some education to help shape ones’ opinion.

A medicare-for-all system (such as in HB1660) is likely to bring down the cost of malpractice suits. A significant part of the awards in these cases is to cover future medical expenses, which would be nil under a medicare-for-all system.

It would be good to have an economic impact study so that we can quantify the costs and savings of medicare-for-all. Please ask Sen Pileggi to bring the impact study proposal to the floor of the PA Senate for a vote.

BB is on to something. Any changes in the healthcare laws should require our electeds to opt-in to any system that they deign to foist upon us.

I welcome some new astroturfers… err… commenters to the debate.

I hardly think that an interest group such as the SEIU- and union-backed website referenced above is more credible than a well-informed representative. But I do appreciate the effort by the healthcare workers. It is a very pretty website despite their obvious bias. The main hurdle to healthcare is cost containment and the rising costs of healthcare. This union has no incentive to keep costs down. In fact, it has a disincentive to do so. The union wants costs high so it can inflate its membership rolls at the expense of patients and taxpayers.

Stephanie if you have ever paid a malpractice premium, you would know that the significant portion of the cost is not payments for future care. It’s the potential for punitive damages. This leads to doctors practicing preventative medicine. Nothing in these bills attempts to contain either of these tremendous costs. These are two of the largest drivers of healthcare costs. Rep. Schroeder is correct in stating the need to tackle them head on.

Mr. Schroder appears to have all his insurance lobby talking points made in this little story he is telling. Unfortunately they are not fact based.
Yes,wealthy people from other countries come here for treatment, the quality of our doctors and hospitals is not the issue here.
The real cost driver is our for profit insurance system! The health of the American people should not be a commodity! Bought and sold on Wall Street! Our real cost savings can be found by eliminating the for profit part of the insurance industry! That is somewhere between 8-25% of costs or more, compared to the 1% tort reform would bring. Now you tell me which number is better!
But I guess it doesn’t matter to Mr.Schroder anyway since he has “No skin in the game”. We will continue to provide his entitlement program while he works hard for the insurance industry.

ChescoTom we agree (partially) on something!
“Any changes in the healthcare (sic) laws should require our electeds (sic) to opt-in to any system that they deign to foist upon us.”

If its good enough for us, it’s good enough for them, although I do not characterize it as they “deigned to foist upon us.” It’s A START to reform that was much needed in this country. Once Rep. Schroder pays his own health care and that of his family members out of his own pocket like the rest of us, and once he stops accepting ANY AMOUNT of money from health care companies, then he can speak with credibility about the single payer system. Until then, ZERO CREDIBILITY.

Having personally briefed the PA House Republican Caucus three (3) times on HB 1660, I can state, as a matter of fact, that Mr. Schroder’s article is a red herring and a canard. It also laughable that he launches a partisan diatribe against the “Family and Business Health Security Act” when he knows that Healthcare for All Pennsylvania is fiercely non-partisan, and that our House and Senate (SB 400) bills both enjoy wide bipartisan support for the current economic impact study resolution working through each chamber. For a look-see, check out the names of fourteen (14) GOP Senators who are co-sponsoring the study process (SR 267). In the name of civility, decency, and comedy?, Mr. Schroder, you could save face right now by recanting, and then agreeing to sign on with the House economic study, like all good evidence-based policy makers are wont to do.

Apparently Representative Schroeder thinks he can just make it up as he goes. He scrupulously avoids footnotes or links because it is rather difficult to back up lies with documentation. Fortunately there are plenty of readers of PA2010 who are far better informed than Schroeder is (and considerably more honest), and their comments lay his lies and motives bare. Schroeder and his family don’t need single-payer healthcare because they benefit from a gold standard benefits package that provides comprehensive health and dental plus life insurance, for which he pays nothing. He also need not worry about things like caps or pre-existing conditions.
Schroeder would deny the rest of us the benefits we provide him. Of course if single-payer becomes law, Schroeder would still have those wonderful comprehensive benefits, but he’d have to fork over 3% of his income for them, just like the rest of us. Instead he chooses to enjoy wonderful free healthcare while accepting generous campaign contributions (from the same special interests that become the only losers when we enact a single-payer system.
I am the endorsed Democratic candidate for the Pennsylvania General Assembly in the 41st Assembly District in Lancaster, Pa. When I am elected I will strongly support HB 1660. Every Pennsylvanian deserves the same health benefits Representative Schroeder enjoys, and I will be delighted to pay my fair share for those benefits rather than rely on the taxpayers to pick up my tab.

Curt Schroeder is an idiot.

Whatever broadbased metric you use, life expectancy, infant mortality, days lost from work due to illness…the U.S. lags behind almost all other developed countries, and behind some not so developed countries.

A Health Insurance Company makes money by providing as little as possible. How is that compatible with societal health?

Do not confuse our lealth science(tops) with our health care delivery(abysmal).

A hybridized single-payer is ultimately the way to go.

Glad to see so much “thoughtful” and I use that term loosely considering all of the ad hominems, commentary to my article. Allow me to make a few responses to the post and I won’t even call any of you “idiots,” or “ignorant.”

Malpractice costs impact healthcare not so much by the premiums that are passed on to the insured or insurer, but because of the increased utilization of services that come with defensive medicine practiced out of fear of being sued. Additional tests, procedures and prescriptions drive costs up. Take a look at any study and increased utilization of services is a major factor in rising health care costs.

Contributors: You didn’t mention the Insurance Federation. OF course the reason is you didn’t see them on my reports as they haven’t given to me in YEARS! REason: I have frequently opposed them in committee and on the floor. I’ll take my contributors ANY DAY over Big LAbor, Trial Lawyers and other wealth redistributing, collectivist organizations pursuing a European style social welfare agenda.

Medicare – I don’t think one has to oppose Medicare in order to oppose government control and take over of the rest of our health system.

Lee Levan – I know as much about the history of malpractice activity in the general assembly as anyone. I led the fight on the floor in a 5 hour debate when the House passed my medical malpractice amendment a number of years back. Unlike the watered down version that eventually passed and that you cite with approval, my version had real TEETH, eliminated joint and several liability, placed a form of caps on damages and made significan reforms to venue (wheere a case can be brought). The only meaningful reform to survive the Senate’s assault on my version was the venue reform. So please Lee, I don’t need a lecture on not being aware of what we have done on malpractice!

Gold plated benefits package – yes, we have a great package and yes, we should be paying just like in the private sector. However, what we should also be doing is going to a part time legislature where we make most of our income from private sector jobs and have NO health benefits provided by the taxpayers! In fact, I introduced a package of bills to do just that (and more). Believe me, it would be worth going that route just to take away your favorite talking point as to how I need to support taxpayer funded care for everyone. My guess is though you would rather see us keep the benefits so you can keep the argument!

Chuck Pennachio – when did you brief the House GOP Caucus? And partisan diatribe? REally – show me where I mentioned party.

Life expectance, infant mortality etc… Talk to Doctors who have practiced in other countries and they can explain why these figures are misleading. For example, because of our technology there are babies born alive in this country that would not be born alive in others. Yet not all of those babies survive thus skewing the statistic to make it seem like we lag so far behind in some of the measurements.

So for all of you who champion sngle payer or some other form of government mandated universal health care, where does it end? Universal government housing, food, clothing? After all, these are necessities as well.

Curt Schroder

It appears that you need some instruction Curt. The measure requiring a certification of merit before filing a medical malpractice suit, which has significantly reduced the number of med mal suits, was adopted by the PA Supreme Court; not by the legislature as you described. Perhaps you didn’t know about that rule?

It will continue to reduce such suits prospectively and thus lessen the pressure on medical practitioners’ insurance premiums and indirectly health care costs. Evidently, you don’t know as much as you think you do.

my comments on his comments:
Posted By Curt Schroder On March 23, 2010 (10:52 am) In Opinion, Voices

With the federal government already expanding its intervention into the health care system, there’s a liberal crusade underway to institute a single-payer health care system in Pennsylvania.

This would be a disaster. Single-payer systems take health care decisions away from you and your doctor and place them into the hands of government.
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actually, nothing could be further from the truth. current private insurers dictate much of care based on their for profit system. Physicians in Canada NEVER have to be questioned by preauthorizations for procedures or labs, unlike America where physicians are bombarded every day with paperwork and justifications. It is exactly the opposite. I suggest Curt needs to talk to his doctor to see how much of his time is devoted to paperwork.

Other countries such as Canada and the U.K. that have government-run, single-payer options have long waiting lists and poor quality care. In 2008, the waiting time between referral from a general practitioner to treatment in Canada was 17.3 weeks. There are countless examples of people from those countries who have traveled to the United States to receive care. Recently, Canada’s Newfoundland Premier, Danny Williams, decided to have heart surgery in Florida due to the waiting time for surgery.
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Danny Williams story is below, but waiting lists is one of the easiest things to fix. Canada spends too little on their system (60% less than we do). And we have our waiting lists too. Ask any woman how long it takes to get a screening mammogram, a diabetic to see an endocrinologist, a Philadelphia resident who has to go to a primary care physician at a “safety net” clinic. All of them are in the 3-6 month range. The difference is that Canada tracks their waits. We ignore them by not tracking them. But they exist and it is just as long for many procedures.

While people claim health care is “free” in single-payer systems, it is not. Government-run health care systems are subsidized by the taxpayers. Since this system is paid for by taxpayers, it is under-supplied with the latest diagnostics and other technologies such as MRI machines and CT scanners, because they are too expensive and their use leads to more consumption of health care services.
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if there are fewer diagnostics, why does their use lead to “more consumption”. I suspect he doesn’t know what he is talking about. Canada rations resources which is actually not a problem for us. If we adopted a single payer system, we have a head start because we have so many resources. But what it really does is to ask the question of every doctor to exercise clinical judgement and really examine the patient and ask if they really need this MRI or CT scan. Unlike America where we order tests for everything and this DOES lead to more consumption.

Several years ago, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts instituted their “universal” health care system, which is now bankrupting their state budget. This year, the Commonwealth Care program is already $47 million over budget and will cost taxpayers almost $1 billion next year alone. Average Massachusetts premiums are the highest in the nation and rising. Massachusetts is also experiencing a crisis in physician accessibility where people can be forced to wait to see primary care doctors for as long as 100 days. This program is already too expensive to meet their goal of trying to cover their uninsured population and is having unintended negative consequences.
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The Mass plan is failing because it is reliant of for profit, private health insurance who take 20% off the top. So there is not enough money left to pay the real providers of care – doctors, nurses, social workers, etc and hospitals. We would replace the private insurers which cuts out the middle man and pay doctors, hospitals, etc. directly. Much more efficient.

I have introduced House Bill 2179, which protects the freedoms and liberties of Pennsylvanians by enabling citizens to reject federally mandated health care and maintain control of health care plans and providers. My legislation would amend the Pennsylvania constitution by putting the question to voters at the polls.

While we all agree our health care system must be reformed, single-payer systems are definitely the wrong direction. We must address the core problem of skyrocketing health care costs to address this growing crisis. I believe that health care should stay in the private marketplace with consumer choice and competitive pricing.
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Well, that would be an interesting ballot question. We can ask them, should Pennsylvania require everyone to stay with for profit, private health insurance or should the state establish a government funded, single payer plan that covers all residents? I think I would love to see that placed in front of the voters.

Medical malpractice suits are a significant contributing factor to the rising cost of health care; therefore, tort reform must be included in any health care reform measure. When doctors have to look over their shoulder in fear of a lawsuit, they tend to over-treat, over-prescribe and over-medicate. This increase in utilization of services is a major cost driver in health care. I have introduced House Bill 1228, which sets limitations on the recovery of punitive damages, and requires that 80 percent of these awards be payable to the state Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error (MCARE) fund, which helps to keep doctors in the Commonwealth.
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Canadian docs pay one third to one fifth of what they do in Pennsylvania for malpractice premiums. Their single payer system discounts all future health care costs which dramatically reduces malpractice premiums without depriving citizens of the right to sue of pain and suffering. I prefer that than removing patients rights to recover from a true malpractice case. for example, Schroeder would limit these women from suing for pain and suffering. He should read the story and think about that. http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20100316_West_Philly_Abortionist_Faces_More_Charges.html

In another measure to control the cost of health insurance for many small businesses, I have introduced legislation establishing a community rate for businesses with 50 or fewer employees, which spreads the risk across all employees that are insured by that health plan. House Republicans have numerous sensible alternatives that will address the core problem of rising health care costs and stop a government takeover, proposals that can be found here.
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Businesses would be totally relieved of funding health care with the passage of the state single payer plan. It doesn’t get any cheaper and they get far better benefits than any small business can negotiate on their own.

We are at a crossroads regarding the future of our health care. I believe that health care decisions should stay in your hands, not government. We are the last line of defense against a government takeover of your health care. My colleagues and I will continue to fight to protect your health care freedoms and choices and stop a massive government intrusion, which aims to control health care without addressing the cost drivers causing the current availability crisis.
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Actually, the real cost driver is the for profit private insurance industry. Why don’t’ you do something to control them? Single payer is far more efficient and with lower administrative costs.

The writer is a Republican representing Chester County’s 155th Legislative District.

Excellent use of astroturfing Chuck. Well played. It is less obvious, however, when you can disclaim responsibility by not posting yourself. Or telling your drones to avoid cutting and pasting. How do I get on your “rapid response” e-mail list?

Curt’s article is full of misinformation and lies. In Canada they have long waiting lines form routine visits, not for urgent care. Candada also has better health outcomes than the USA, and we have very long waiting lists for “in-network” doctors visits, routine care and non-emergency surgery. What Curtis proposed is what we have always done. Healthcare is a right. In PA we have a tradition of taking care of our own. Single-Payer is not the MASS. Plan, which is a hybrid of Insurance and Public Option.We need to get the profit out of health care and let doctors and other healthcare providers compete for the dollars, then we would see affordable healthcare, paid by taxes via the goverment of PA. I’m a doc for Single Payer. Most of all lawsuits are due to patients who are afraid they will not get medical treatment the rest of their lives, if we had goverment paid, through our taxes, healthcare, then you would see a huge decrease in malpratice suits and in malpractice insurance costs. More docs would stay in PA!