for example, remember school lunch? subsidized food that was controlled by the government. it was sustenance at a very affordable rate. but, now, honestly, how many of us ate that shit? not many. it was low grade horsemeat that met a certain government standard of quality. and it was very apparent that that standard was very low. this is what i imagine happening to healthcare if it were to be socialized.
i had reduced price/free lunch and was happy to have it it was kind of shitty, but it was infinitely better than no-thang
Yes, this is America and we need to take care of our own.
In 2006 approximately 75% of the children born at the public John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas were born to "undocumented citizen" parents and were paid for by taxpayer $$$.
Uhh what does this have to do w/ anything other than engendering anti-immigrant sentiment? It doesn't really have to do w/ healthcare, it has to do with the fact that any person born in this country is a citizen.
my sister works for a decently sized ad company and she only has medical but no dental. She makes 6 figures yet her company cant spring for dental coverage? NYC what gives?
Dental "insurance" is a scam. It's not insurance. It's a discount plan. You basicaly pay a monthly fee to get discount dental fees. It's worth it if, like me, you have a lot of dental work you need but for someone that just needs one or two cleanings a year it's not worth it.
BTW, I'm a healthy non-smoking 27 years old male. I pay, with dental, about $200 a month.
Yes, this is America and we need to take care of our own. We are suppose to be the leaders of the world and we cannot even provide proper healthcare for all our citizens. The socialist answer is a cop out. I think that the socialist answer to this question is without doubt just plain dumb...by the way, I am not calling you (Motown) dumb. I just think that there are millions of Americans suffering from bad health and cannot afford health insurance to do that much about it. Many older americans suffer even more...morally I think the way things are being done now is so wrong. Wanting free healthcare for all Americans doesn't make one a socialist, but just a good human being!
Amir
I was obviously joking. Here though are some arguments that I can think of off the top of my head that I've heard voiced before in opposition to universal health care in the U.S.:
1) It will be too expensive and take too many tax dollars to run
2) Most government run programs are ineffecient and so would a government run health program
3) With having to serve the masses of people, specialty health services such as dealing with rare forms of cancer or whathaveyou will suffer and might not be available
4) In a private enterprise market the best services can be offered at the best prices. That might mean that some things are very expensive, but that means that they are "the best" just like a Mercedes or Jaguar in cars, you have the top doctors in their given fields who come with their price
5) It's socialism - it's the Right's main argument against just about any form of government program or intervention since the turn of the century
In our current system, think of how much $$ private insurance companies spend on advertising and huge CEO salaries (collectively about 25% of their total expenditures). Add up the number of insurance companies ... pool together all of that collective $$ that is essentially being wasted.
I'm too lazy to actually do the research, but we're talking about a big mudda grubbin' amount of money. And folks argue that socialized medicine would be too expensive? Why? Where do you think insurance companies get the money that they spend on advertising, etc? Right ... us! Well, in a socialized system, advertising is not necessary.
I know ... Pinko talk. I certainly don't think we'll ever make the switch. Force insurance companies out of business in this country? Hartford, CT wouldn't stand for it! Hee hee.
Now, the problem with offering socialized medical care as an "option" ... well, private insurance companies have the right to refuse care. Folks with pre-existing conditions do not get new policies, by and large. So, the "sick" folks will have to go with their only option (socialized care) while healthy folks will likely opt for private care. This makes the percentage of "sick" folks using socialized care too high which will put socialized care out of business. Insurance companies rely on $$ from healthy folks to spend on sick folks. If the sick/healthy ratio is too high ... no good for business.
Its a complicated issue. Part of me wouldn't mind being Canadian in my twilight years.
I know your joking....I just think that those who are totally against some sort of free or discounted healthcare for all are a joke!! Again, as THE leader of the world we should be able to come up with some sort of way of taking care of it's peoples. And yes, I wouldn't mind paying higher taxes if I knew that I could get affordable healthcare...shit, right now I don't where my tax dollars are going (that's not directed at Iraq). There are too many of piss ass excuses in this country not to do the right thing by all. People worry about America falling because we will be attack from oustide our borders, but we will fall because of what we do to ourselves within this country!
we can talk about socialism and money issues all we want but what it comes down to is this:
AMERICANS ARE GREEDY BASTARDS WHO WANT SHITTONS OF MONEY TO THEMSELVES AND DO NOT WANT TO SHARE IT WITH ANYONE
Doctors have to pay enormous sums of malpractice insurance because we are such a litigious society; they spend almost half of their annual income to make sure they are covered if some freakazoid wants to sue their ass. We have almost no sense of personal responsibility (see the lawsuit against McDonalds for 'making people fat' - yo dumbass, get off the fucking couch and get some exercise and don't eat at McDonalds) and want to blame others for our own mistakes.
I worked for a French couple, and they said that their income taxes were even higher than here - because their taxes went to that. Add on the fact that a majority of our income taxes fund private wars for our corporate controlled government and there is nothing left over for spending on social services that the voting population actually wants.
So until all these egotistical motherfuckers learn to live with less excess, we will always be at the mercy of the rich.
see the lawsuit against McDonalds for 'making people fat'
I actually don't have a problem with a lawsuit against a multi-billion dollar company with millions of dollars of advertising towards young children for serving sub-standard food. That's sub-decent-humanity standard, not sub-FDA standard, of course. I'm not educated on the lawsuit in question, but anything that publicly questions the practices of an institution like Mickey D's is ok with me.
again, we are suppose to be the leaders of the world...we are able to do all sorts of things, but cannot afford to pay for healthcare for all americans??? Besides, chaos doesn't reign in the the countries of Europe who have free health insurance for all their citizens. I mean we(america) are planning a trip to Mars in about 20 years or so. According to some, it may at least 3 or 4 trillion dollars to do this..fuck dat! Also we are spending our money on something that is dividing our country..you cannot tell me that free healthcare will cost more than the war in Irag or the probable war in Iran???? Just doesn't compute. If others around the world can do then we can def. do it too!
..........And Whitey's on the moon!!![/b]
Amir, Mrs. Wu has a masters in Public Health and worked for a health care think tank, so I posed some of your questions to her and here is her break down.
Why isn't there a national/univseral system of health care coverage?[/b]
The healthcare lobby which includes insurance companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, large (corporate) purchasers and others is opposed to major reform of the system. Insurance companies particularly have a lot to lose. They make a huge amount of money by selecting their coverage pool. By and large they like to limit this to people who will not cost them a lot of money. Adding 47 million Americans to their roles will almost certainly expose them to greater costs. Without a tremendous increase in gov't spending on healthcare for those added bodies, the insurance companies knwo that it will come out of their bottom line.
Large employers, like GE, for example, are afraid of any kind of gov't intrusion. They fear that a national/universal system would limit their options in bargaining for their employees and would increase their costs.
Drug companies are terrified that gov't regulation will mean cost controls which will eat into their profits.
Bottom line is all of these players are doing well under the status quo so they have little incentive to make the major shift required to cover everyone.
There are also major obstacles in a capitalist system to restructuring health care. The system is massivley fragmented. An universal system would require the coming together of a thousand players. Prevention of illness is incredibly hard to measure and thus it is hard to incentivize, which the bedrock of the capitalist system.
States like Oregon have asked for medicaid wavers which allowed them to alter the rules about how healthcare was provided to low income people but their were tough choices to make in order to increase the number of covered individuals. In Oregon covered more people by limiting the amount of care they received. This is how they achieve coverage in many national plans in other countries?
Isn't our system, despite its flaws, the best in the world?[/b]
No, in fact, despite having the highest per capita spending on healthcare we rank about 34th in overall quality of care. Shocking.
My experience with a nationalized healthcare was pretty interesting. 1987-88 I lived in France. I badly tore the ligaments in my ankle playing soccer and was covered fully from trauma care to rehab. Amazing. France still had a very strong private sector system so that the rich could get extra/personalized service. I got the flu and my host mother call Dr Habibi. The motherfucker made a house call.
When I went to France in 2003. My host mom went in to have cancer surgery. Not only was she given a weeks hospital stay for a procedure that would have been outpatient surgery here in the states. She was given 6 months paid medical leave so she could recuperate. Because she lived alone, she was assigned a nurse who came in to help her with rehab and general daily living tasks. I was just amazed to see this in action.
I love the way observations of its socialist nature are tossed aside as mere pejorative criticism. Even if your thinking isnt sophisticated enough to discern the various reasons for socialisms cataclysmic failure in practice I take it you are not so ignorant as be unaware of the historical record of its cataclysmic failure. With this in mind to point out it is an idea founded upon socialist misconceptions is a damning indictment worthy of consideration.
I have to laugh at the description of profits as waste. Profits are infact the most powerful safeguards against waste. Its the fact that someone is going to be making money out of the venture which causes the costs of providing a service to be continuously driven down. One of the prime reasons government departments squander untold billions is because it is not their money. No-one stands to gain whether something is provided at a cost of $10 or $1000. Infact the incentives in a government department are generally to increase costs and inefficiency. If you get paid the same whether you see one or ten patients in a given time then to what end of that scale are you going to tend to? People in general want to lighten their workload as much as possible. In private enterprise this sentiment is moderated by the personal cost of doing so. In a government department this force of moderation is removed and hence we see the massive size, waste and inefficiency of nearly all government departments no matter how minor or insignificant their actual duties.
Another chucklesome point is the tacit assumption that the installation of government provided healthcare entails the replacement of healthcare decisions based on economic criteria with healthcare decisions based upon 'humane' criteria. No, what you are doing is replacing healthcare decisions based upon economic criteria with healthcare decisions based upon political criteria. Unless you consider the politcal class intrinsically superior to those who ply their trade in the private sector then this warrants some cause for concern. The resources are always going to be employed in whatever fashion the present governing party decides best suits their interests. I cant be bothered to type anymore
No, in fact, despite having the highest per capita spending on healthcare we rank about 34th in overall quality of care. Shocking.
Im assuming this is the WHO ranking? if so its worth pointing out the WHO doesnt measure ovall quality of care as in the survival rates ect. but by how closely it conforms with their vision of a how healthcare system should function. The reason it comes in at 34th is not because of the quality of the care but by the WHO's ideological reservations about the way it is accessed.
Also concerning france the price you pay for 'free' healthcare can be seen in things such as their huge unemployment and the multitude of frances other economic problems
We have free health care here in the Uk. Its part of the welfare state, which is another socialist idea 'Americans' are not keen on. You may have to wait longer for treatment, but the Doctors are just as capable. Its been discussed at length on here before.
In the UK you pay 40% tax if you earn from ??33,300 and above. As opposed to the US # 25%: from $30,651 to $74,200 or # 28%: from $74,201 to $154,800.
It would take a HUGE hike in your taxes to set up. This would have obvious negative economic repercussions. So I don't see this ever happening in the US.
Yeah MOke's spot on - this is the area of expertise I work in and am 100% behind a national health service. However, I could never see the USA starting up a proper system today - you have to remember that the UK has had the system since 1948, a very different social structure to that of today. It's also the second largest employer in the world and that kind of system doesn't spring up over night.
Despite the system's flaws (and they are many), healthcare for everyone is still one of the few things I'm happy that my tax money is going toward.
While i like to lurk i had to wade in on this one.
Access to health care is a fundamental human right. Anyone who disagrees with that has some serious problems. So for the wealthiest nation in the world to have people who literally cannot afford health care is beyond a joke in my opinion. I guess it all just depends on the level of egalitarianism the (voting) population sees as appropriate, which in the case of the US is very low, hence massive inequality.
I know here in Australia, if the government tried to take away our right to free/heavily subsidised health care, then the people would just vote them out and vote in someone else who wasn't going to fuck it up. I guess the only draw back is that you pay higher taxes. We have the medicare levy, which is an additional 1.5% income tax that everyone (apart from the very very poor) pay which supports the system, that provides free or very heavily subsidised health care to every citizen, plus any visitors in Australia from a number of (mainly commonwealth) countries. I don't think 1.5% is that much of a burden; and it certainly hasn't fucked our economy which is one of the most robust in the world...
Access to health care is a fundamental human right. Anyone who disagrees with that has some serious problems.
It's funny, the people who tend to disagree with this are the same ones who seem to think we have the right to have people dying overseas "defending our freedom".. that it's the governments job to protect us from enemies, but not illness. Riiiight... What exactly are we defending, again..?
My folks just got back from a vacation in Grenada, and their friend twisted her ankle while on a hike. Cost of ambulance, emergency room visit, & x-rays? $16.[/b] In GRENADA. A developing country the size of like, Manhattan. Meanwhile her husband tried calling the states to get in touch with his primary care physician, so he could get a referral for an orthapedist on the island. He got the dude's nurse, who said he was out of the office. No clue when he'd be back. Oh well, it's kind of an emergency, could she give the referral? Absolutely not!
We have free health care here in the Uk. Its part of the welfare state, which is another socialist idea 'Americans' are not keen on. You may have to wait longer for treatment, but the Doctors are just as capable. Its been discussed at length on here before.
In the UK you pay 40% tax if you earn from ??33,300 and above. As opposed to the US # 25%: from $30,651 to $74,200 or # 28%: from $74,201 to $154,800.
It would take a HUGE hike in your taxes to set up. This would have obvious negative economic repercussions. So I don't see this ever happening in the US.
It would take a huge tax hike but wouldn't it be less money than most people currently spend on private heath insurance? The US spends nearly twice as much per capita on health than the UK which offers free treatment to 100% of the population so I can't see that switching over to a free healthcare system would be implausible in cost terms, just politically unpalatable for the administration that has to introduce the new taxes.
Profits are infact the most powerful safeguards against waste.
Then why has the price of insurance gone up while the quality of care has gone down? Talk to anyone that actually works in the medical profession ... insurance companies are less and less willing to pay for anything. Yet, profits are through the roof. No pattern there? When you see the same pattern from one insurance company to the next, its not like the consumer can just choose the "good" insurance company over the "bad" following the simplistic rules of capitalism. If you work for a company, you get the insurance that they are willing to pay for or you purchase your own (at a huge personal cost). So where is the "profit motive" for insurance companies? They can give out whatever the hell they'd like and people are stuck with them.
My argument is that money spent on advertising, a huge amount of money in this country, would be unnecessary with socialized care. Private insurance companies, with the huge marketing costs and CEO payouts, are hugely inefficient. I would take a somewhat corrupt government system over private care any day. Government officials would have to burn bushels of cash to match the excess spending of private insurance companies.
And as for the history of socialism ... well, you just haven't seen the "cataclysmic failure" of capitalism yet.
Changing the welfare regime over night is nearly impossible. Currently, Scandinavian countries still have the "best" overall welfare performance at all, including health care. Anyway, it??s hard to compare the countries regarding the health insurance system alone. The welfare regime in general is completely different. If you think about free health insurance you have to take that into consideration.
just a thought though... maybe you can organize a group of working dj's who do not have coverage, call yourself a company and get some sort of group rate/premiums? I dont know what the legality of that is but something to think about or find more about?
Back when I didn't have a 9-5 job that gave me health insurance, I was seriously considering starting a DJ union or something of that nature for that very reason. Then I went back into the 9-5 world and I never thought about it again.
For people that are in that sort of situation, you should really consider doing something like this. It never seems that urgent until you get sick or into some sort of accident, only then is it too late.
When I broke my leg, I was lucky I was still paying Cobra from my previous job. What was really fucked was the previous month I almost stopped paying it, but my girlfriend urged me to continue my checks. If I wasn't covered I would have been REALLY fucked.
While I love my Canadian health care. It does have its problems. And I'm hoping someone starts doing something about it before it gets really bad. But anyways...
Side topic...
I was watching a documentary a few weeks back. And it was going into problems that many countries are now facing. It was about qualified health care providers leaving other countries by the boat loads. Leaving many of these counties severely lacking doctors, nurses, etc. It was pretty interesting.
again, we are suppose to be the leaders of the world...we are able to do all sorts of things, but cannot afford to pay for healthcare for all americans???
dude....the agrument of socialism with regards to free healthcare is moronic! As I said before, it's a cop out and those who support the socialist view on free healthcare know this. It's a scare tactic that diverts people from truly addressing the inequalities within the healthcare system in america...for that matter in ameria in general. For the record, your thinking doesn't have to be "sophisticated to articulate to this! Dolo, I don't know you but you come off real elistist and 'above others' in your posts sometimes. I would love to throw you in with a bunch of poor uninsured people in the waiting room at Kings County Hopsital in Brooklyn...I wanna see you try to explain that their thinking isn't sophisticated enough.
I love the way observations of its socialist nature are tossed aside as mere pejorative criticism. Even if your thinking isnt sophisticated enough to discern the various reasons for socialisms cataclysmic failure in practice I take it you are not so ignorant as be unaware of the historical record of its cataclysmic failure. With this in mind to point out it is an idea founded upon socialist misconceptions is a damning indictment worthy of consideration.
I have to laugh at the description of profits as waste. Profits are infact the most powerful safeguards against waste. Its the fact that someone is going to be making money out of the venture which causes the costs of providing a service to be continuously driven down. One of the prime reasons government departments squander untold billions is because it is not their money. No-one stands to gain whether something is provided at a cost of $10 or $1000. Infact the incentives in a government department are generally to increase costs and inefficiency. If you get paid the same whether you see one or ten patients in a given time then to what end of that scale are you going to tend to? People in general want to lighten their workload as much as possible. In private enterprise this sentiment is moderated by the personal cost of doing so. In a government department this force of moderation is removed and hence we see the massive size, waste and inefficiency of nearly all government departments no matter how minor or insignificant their actual duties.
Another chucklesome point is the tacit assumption that the installation of government provided healthcare entails the replacement of healthcare decisions based on economic criteria with healthcare decisions based upon 'humane' criteria. No, what you are doing is replacing healthcare decisions based upon economic criteria with healthcare decisions based upon political criteria. Unless you consider the politcal class intrinsically superior to those who ply their trade in the private sector then this warrants some cause for concern. The resources are always going to be employed in whatever fashion the present governing party decides best suits their interests. I cant be bothered to type anymore
Sadly, moral government cannot simply be reduced to a P&L line on a spreadsheet, least of all in the spheres of healthcare, education and the military.
Profit is not the nemesis of waste, that's just some inane maxim from a second rate self-help business tome.
Socialism is not the nemesis of the free market economy and nor are they mutually exclusive unless you are so anachronistic or naive as to think of the world in red or dead terms. You missed your time - you should have been on McCarthy's staff.
Most people in responsible jobs do not want to lighten their workload as much as possible, they want to do the best job they can. In healthcare, this is even more true.
People in private enterprise do not necessarily work harder or smarter. I suspect you may be living proof of this.
Doctors have to pay enormous sums of malpractice insurance because we are such a litigious society; they spend almost half of their annual income to make sure they are covered if some freakazoid wants to sue their ass.
malpractice insurance is high because insurance companies are making an enormous profit. lawsuits only account for 1% of the costs of malpractice insurance.
moreover, the overwhelming majority of lawyers would never take "frivolous" malpractice cases. med mal cases are always taken on a contingent basis, meaning that we don't see any money unless our clients actually win. we have to lay out all the costs for these cases, and if it is a med mal case, that will mean we are required to get a medical expert, which at a minimum, is like a $30,000 investment.
insurance companies have so much money that they plant these myths in people's heads about all these so-called "frivolous cases". trust me, its bullshit. most of the med mal cases we have taken are tragic stories. why would law firms invest thousands of dollars on a frivolous case that could be easily disposed of? all these republicans lobbying for tort reform are not looking out for the average joe. your insurance costs are not high because of litigation. even if they were, how would you feel if your doctor f*cked up and cost you the life of a loved one?
Comments
i had reduced price/free lunch and was happy to have it
it was kind of shitty, but it was infinitely better than no-thang
baby steps. literally
any subject he possibly can ... just ignore it ...
Dental "insurance" is a scam. It's not insurance. It's a discount plan. You basicaly pay a monthly fee to get discount dental fees. It's worth it if, like me, you have a lot of dental work you need but for someone that just needs one or two cleanings a year it's not worth it.
BTW, I'm a healthy non-smoking 27 years old male. I pay, with dental, about $200 a month.
every child should be fully insured
I was obviously joking. Here though are some arguments that I can think of off the top of my head that I've heard voiced before in opposition to universal health care in the U.S.:
1) It will be too expensive and take too many tax dollars to run
2) Most government run programs are ineffecient and so would a government run health program
3) With having to serve the masses of people, specialty health services such as dealing with rare forms of cancer or whathaveyou will suffer and might not be available
4) In a private enterprise market the best services can be offered at the best prices. That might mean that some things are very expensive, but that means that they are "the best" just like a Mercedes or Jaguar in cars, you have the top doctors in their given fields who come with their price
5) It's socialism - it's the Right's main argument against just about any form of government program or intervention since the turn of the century
I'm too lazy to actually do the research, but we're talking about a big mudda grubbin' amount of money. And folks argue that socialized medicine would be too expensive? Why? Where do you think insurance companies get the money that they spend on advertising, etc? Right ... us! Well, in a socialized system, advertising is not necessary.
I know ... Pinko talk. I certainly don't think we'll ever make the switch. Force insurance companies out of business in this country? Hartford, CT wouldn't stand for it! Hee hee.
Now, the problem with offering socialized medical care as an "option" ... well, private insurance companies have the right to refuse care. Folks with pre-existing conditions do not get new policies, by and large. So, the "sick" folks will have to go with their only option (socialized care) while healthy folks will likely opt for private care. This makes the percentage of "sick" folks using socialized care too high which will put socialized care out of business. Insurance companies rely on $$ from healthy folks to spend on sick folks. If the sick/healthy ratio is too high ... no good for business.
Its a complicated issue. Part of me wouldn't mind being Canadian in my twilight years.
AMERICANS ARE GREEDY BASTARDS WHO WANT SHITTONS OF MONEY TO THEMSELVES AND DO NOT WANT TO SHARE IT WITH ANYONE
Doctors have to pay enormous sums of malpractice insurance because we are such a litigious society; they spend almost half of their annual income to make sure they are covered if some freakazoid wants to sue their ass. We have almost no sense of personal responsibility (see the lawsuit against McDonalds for 'making people fat' - yo dumbass, get off the fucking couch and get some exercise and don't eat at McDonalds) and want to blame others for our own mistakes.
I worked for a French couple, and they said that their income taxes were even higher than here - because their taxes went to that. Add on the fact that a majority of our income taxes fund private wars for our corporate controlled government and there is nothing left over for spending on social services that the voting population actually wants.
So until all these egotistical motherfuckers learn to live with less excess, we will always be at the mercy of the rich.
I actually don't have a problem with a lawsuit
against a multi-billion dollar company with
millions of dollars of advertising towards young
children for serving sub-standard food. That's
sub-decent-humanity standard, not sub-FDA standard,
of course. I'm not educated on the lawsuit in
question, but anything that publicly questions
the practices of an institution like Mickey D's
is ok with me.
..........And Whitey's on the moon!!![/b]
Amir, Mrs. Wu has a masters in Public Health and worked for a health care think tank, so I posed some of your questions to her and here is her break down.
Why isn't there a national/univseral system of health care coverage?[/b]
The healthcare lobby which includes insurance companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, large (corporate) purchasers and others is opposed to major reform of the system. Insurance companies particularly have a lot to lose. They make a huge amount of money by selecting their coverage pool. By and large they like to limit this to people who will not cost them a lot of money. Adding 47 million Americans to their roles will almost certainly expose them to greater costs. Without a tremendous increase in gov't spending on healthcare for those added bodies, the insurance companies knwo that it will come out of their bottom line.
Large employers, like GE, for example, are afraid of any kind of gov't intrusion. They fear that a national/universal system would limit their options in bargaining for their employees and would increase their costs.
Drug companies are terrified that gov't regulation will mean cost controls which will eat into their profits.
Bottom line is all of these players are doing well under the status quo so they have little incentive to make the major shift required to cover everyone.
There are also major obstacles in a capitalist system to restructuring health care. The system is massivley fragmented. An universal system would require the coming together of a thousand players. Prevention of illness is incredibly hard to measure and thus it is hard to incentivize, which the bedrock of the capitalist system.
States like Oregon have asked for medicaid wavers which allowed them to alter the rules about how healthcare was provided to low income people but their were tough choices to make in order to increase the number of covered individuals. In Oregon covered more people by limiting the amount of care they received. This is how they achieve coverage in many national plans in other countries?
Isn't our system, despite its flaws, the best in the world?[/b]
No, in fact, despite having the highest per capita spending on healthcare we rank about 34th in overall quality of care. Shocking.
My experience with a nationalized healthcare was pretty interesting. 1987-88 I lived in France. I badly tore the ligaments in my ankle playing soccer and was covered fully from trauma care to rehab. Amazing. France still had a very strong private sector system so that the rich could get extra/personalized service. I got the flu and my host mother call Dr Habibi. The motherfucker made a house call.
When I went to France in 2003. My host mom went in to have cancer surgery. Not only was she given a weeks hospital stay for a procedure that would have been outpatient surgery here in the states. She was given 6 months paid medical leave so she could recuperate. Because she lived alone, she was assigned a nurse who came in to help her with rehab and general daily living tasks. I was just amazed to see this in action.
I have to laugh at the description of profits as waste. Profits are infact the most powerful safeguards against waste. Its the fact that someone is going to be making money out of the venture which causes the costs of providing a service to be continuously driven down. One of the prime reasons government departments squander untold billions is because it is not their money. No-one stands to gain whether something is provided at a cost of $10 or $1000. Infact the incentives in a government department are generally to increase costs and inefficiency. If you get paid the same whether you see one or ten patients in a given time then to what end of that scale are you going to tend to? People in general want to lighten their workload as much as possible. In private enterprise this sentiment is moderated by the personal cost of doing so. In a government department this force of moderation is removed and hence we see the massive size, waste and inefficiency of nearly all government departments no matter how minor or insignificant their actual duties.
Another chucklesome point is the tacit assumption that the installation of government provided healthcare entails the replacement of healthcare decisions based on economic criteria with healthcare decisions based upon 'humane' criteria. No, what you are doing is replacing healthcare decisions based upon economic criteria with healthcare decisions based upon political criteria. Unless you consider the politcal class intrinsically superior to those who ply their trade in the private sector then this warrants some cause for concern. The resources are always going to be employed in whatever fashion the present governing party decides best suits their interests. I cant be bothered to type anymore
Im assuming this is the WHO ranking? if so its worth pointing out the WHO doesnt measure ovall quality of care as in the survival rates ect. but by how closely it conforms with their vision of a how healthcare system should function. The reason it comes in at 34th is not because of the quality of the care but by the WHO's ideological reservations about the way it is accessed.
Also concerning france the price you pay for 'free' healthcare can be seen in things such as their huge unemployment and the multitude of frances other economic problems
Yeah MOke's spot on - this is the area of expertise I work in and am 100% behind a national health service. However, I could never see the USA starting up a proper system today - you have to remember that the UK has had the system since 1948, a very different social structure to that of today. It's also the second largest employer in the world and that kind of system doesn't spring up over night.
Despite the system's flaws (and they are many), healthcare for everyone is still one of the few things I'm happy that my tax money is going toward.
Access to health care is a fundamental human right. Anyone who disagrees with that has some serious problems. So for the wealthiest nation in the world to have people who literally cannot afford health care is beyond a joke in my opinion. I guess it all just depends on the level of egalitarianism the (voting) population sees as appropriate, which in the case of the US is very low, hence massive inequality.
I know here in Australia, if the government tried to take away our right to free/heavily subsidised health care, then the people would just vote them out and vote in someone else who wasn't going to fuck it up. I guess the only draw back is that you pay higher taxes. We have the medicare levy, which is an additional 1.5% income tax that everyone (apart from the very very poor) pay which supports the system, that provides free or very heavily subsidised health care to every citizen, plus any visitors in Australia from a number of (mainly commonwealth) countries. I don't think 1.5% is that much of a burden; and it certainly hasn't fucked our economy which is one of the most robust in the world...
ps. feels good to lose my strut virginity.
LOL !
Yeah till you mortgaged that ass to China & Japan...
It's funny, the people who tend to disagree with this are the same ones who seem to think we have the right to have people dying overseas "defending our freedom".. that it's the governments job to protect us from enemies, but not illness. Riiiight... What exactly are we defending, again..?
My folks just got back from a vacation in Grenada, and their friend twisted her ankle while on a hike. Cost of ambulance, emergency room visit, & x-rays? $16.[/b]
In GRENADA. A developing country the size of like, Manhattan.
Meanwhile her husband tried calling the states to get in touch with his primary care physician, so he could get a referral for an orthapedist on the island. He got the dude's nurse, who said he was out of the office. No clue when he'd be back. Oh well, it's kind of an emergency, could she give the referral?
Absolutely not!
It would take a huge tax hike but wouldn't it be less money than most people currently spend on private heath insurance? The US spends nearly twice as much per capita on health than the UK which offers free treatment to 100% of the population so I can't see that switching over to a free healthcare system would be implausible in cost terms, just politically unpalatable for the administration that has to introduce the new taxes.
Then why has the price of insurance gone up while the quality of care has gone down? Talk to anyone that actually works in the medical profession ... insurance companies are less and less willing to pay for anything. Yet, profits are through the roof. No pattern there? When you see the same pattern from one insurance company to the next, its not like the consumer can just choose the "good" insurance company over the "bad" following the simplistic rules of capitalism. If you work for a company, you get the insurance that they are willing to pay for or you purchase your own (at a huge personal cost). So where is the "profit motive" for insurance companies? They can give out whatever the hell they'd like and people are stuck with them.
My argument is that money spent on advertising, a huge amount of money in this country, would be unnecessary with socialized care. Private insurance companies, with the huge marketing costs and CEO payouts, are hugely inefficient. I would take a somewhat corrupt government system over private care any day. Government officials would have to burn bushels of cash to match the excess spending of private insurance companies.
And as for the history of socialism ... well, you just haven't seen the "cataclysmic failure" of capitalism yet.
Anyway, it??s hard to compare the countries regarding the health insurance system alone. The welfare regime in general is completely different. If you think about free health insurance you have to take that into consideration.
Yeah ... I don't kid myself into thinking that we'll actually move over to socialized care. More like a "wouldn't it be nice" thing.
Back when I didn't have a 9-5 job that gave me health insurance, I was seriously considering starting a DJ union or something of that nature for that very reason. Then I went back into the 9-5 world and I never thought about it again.
For people that are in that sort of situation, you should really consider doing something like this. It never seems that urgent until you get sick or into some sort of accident, only then is it too late.
When I broke my leg, I was lucky I was still paying Cobra from my previous job. What was really fucked was the previous month I almost stopped paying it, but my girlfriend urged me to continue my checks. If I wasn't covered I would have been REALLY fucked.
Health Insurance =
Side topic...
I was watching a documentary a few weeks back. And it was going into problems that many countries are now facing. It was about qualified health care providers leaving other countries by the boat loads. Leaving many of these counties severely lacking doctors, nurses, etc. It was pretty interesting.
Amir
Sadly, moral government cannot simply be reduced to a P&L line on a spreadsheet, least of all in the spheres of healthcare, education and the military.
Profit is not the nemesis of waste, that's just some inane maxim from a second rate self-help business tome.
Socialism is not the nemesis of the free market economy and nor are they mutually exclusive unless you are so anachronistic or naive as to think of the world in red or dead terms. You missed your time - you should have been on McCarthy's staff.
Most people in responsible jobs do not want to lighten their workload as much as possible, they want to do the best job they can. In healthcare, this is even more true.
People in private enterprise do not necessarily work harder or smarter. I suspect you may be living proof of this.
malpractice insurance is high because insurance companies are making an enormous profit. lawsuits only account for 1% of the costs of malpractice insurance.
moreover, the overwhelming majority of lawyers would never take "frivolous" malpractice cases. med mal cases are always taken on a contingent basis, meaning that we don't see any money unless our clients actually win. we have to lay out all the costs for these cases, and if it is a med mal case, that will mean we are required to get a medical expert, which at a minimum, is like a $30,000 investment.
insurance companies have so much money that they plant these myths in people's heads about all these so-called "frivolous cases". trust me, its bullshit. most of the med mal cases we have taken are tragic stories. why would law firms invest thousands of dollars on a frivolous case that could be easily disposed of? all these republicans lobbying for tort reform are not looking out for the average joe. your insurance costs are not high because of litigation. even if they were, how would you feel if your doctor f*cked up and cost you the life of a loved one?