# All you poor, deluded sufferers of communist health care in Europe, take heart **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 24, 2012, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855 "2012-04-24T22:56:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/61 "2012-04-26T00:12:10Z")
Late returning to this thread, but I just noticed an interview quote in the article I linked. I wish we could all think of when debating healthcare (underlined emphasis mine). [QUOTE=Dr. Otis Brawley] **You’re a stickler for acting on the basis of scientific evidence. Where does that come from?** I grew up in the inner city of Detroit with people who were not formally educated but who were wise. My father was also very inquisitive. I was influenced heavily by this and by the Jesuits in my high school, who taught me about the scientific process. They taught me there are three things: things that are known, things that are not known, and things that are believed. Very frequently doctors think of things they believe as things that are known. When you talk about cancer screening, many doctors of my generation and older never took a course that covered screening and don’t understand the basic principles. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/62 "2012-04-26T00:14:47Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > I think there’s a reasonable point there, although I don’t have the energy to dive into that entire thread. Suppose we had single-payer government run healthcare, something like Canada or England or Australia (which I support, and which it sounds like you support). The system presumably only has a finite amount of money to spend, which means that not everyone who wants it to treat everything is always going to get treated. Which means, almost by definition, there will be situations in which someone is denied potentially life-saving treatment purely for financial reasons. Now, if the system is well-designed it will in fact be extreme cases where there’s both a very high financial cost and a very low gain in terms of quality of life, and goodness knows such as system would have VASTLY fewer people die from lack of healthcare than our current system, but let’s not kid ourselves, to run such a system you basically HAVE to put financial values on human lives. That’s exactly what happens now, except an entity that makes more money the less it spends on care is the one making the decision. Of course, in the real world, that amount of money for treatment is very rare. And all we can do is the best we can with the resources available. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/63 "2012-04-26T00:26:07Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > I’d be remiss if I didn’t repost Bricker’s previous foray into the _inhuman monster_ camp: > > [It is acceptable for people to die because they can’t afford the proper treatment.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12041602&postcount=246) > > I believe he later said something along the lines, that he meant that if it costs 900 billion dollars to give a 98 year old man three extra seconds of life, it’s okay. I meant just the opposite: it’s acceptable to let the 98 year old die under those circumstances. And I can’t believe anyone disagrees with me. Does anyone? ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/64 "2012-04-26T00:27:05Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I meant just the opposite: it’s acceptable to let the 98 year old die under those circumstances. > > And I can’t believe anyone disagrees with me. Does anyone? That’s what I meant,\* it’s okay to let them die\*. Of course the real world rarely has super-drugs that you have to milk from mutant spiders under the light of a full moon. Usually the prices are in a reasonable range. Well, reasonable for America. The rest of the world pays a lot less for treatments than we do. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/65 "2012-04-26T00:29:11Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Using his own gray-is-black-if-I-say-so “reasoning,” any reasonable person would conclude that the Brick has lost his bet: > > Oh, would the SDMB be delighted if you were actually a man of your word. 😃 My bet was with EP. If he has a gripe about my determination, I’ll hear it. But it’s absolutely obvious that the terms of the bet were laid out clearly. I conceded the actual point being made was valid. But it’s equally clear the specific terms I laid out were not met. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/66 "2012-04-26T00:32:08Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > That’s what I meant,\* it’s okay to let them die\*. > > Of course the real world rarely has super-drugs that you have to milk from mutant spiders under the light of a full moon. Usually the prices are in a reasonable range. Well, reasonable for America. The rest of the world pays a lot less for treatments than we do. Yes. Then you’re right. And at some point we’ll reach a price point when it’s not ok. The question I was responding to in the original thread sought to trap me by asking, yes or no only, if it was ok to let them die. Do I take it by your repetition of this that you disagree? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/67 "2012-04-26T00:32:10Z")
Its always possible to take the question to absurdity, where reason’s sidewalk ends. Do you want to take the chance of a child becoming terribly ill and/or contributing to a public health hazard if her parents cannot afford proper vaccinations? If it costs $1.50? Let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/68 "2012-04-26T00:37:42Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Its always possible to take the question to absurdity, where reason’s sidewalk ends. Do you want to take the chance of a child becoming terribly ill and/or contributing to a public health hazard if her parents cannot afford proper vaccinations? If it costs $1.50? > > Let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late. At that price point, I have a different answer. But the gravamen of the original discussion was _is it ever_ ok? It most certainly was not “What should our ordinary policy be?” ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/69 "2012-04-26T00:38:30Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Yes. Then you’re right. > > Do I take it by your repetition of this that you disagree? Of course I have a bar where we have to worry about the capacity for treatment to others. I suspect that bar is a lot lower for you than for me. If you’re too poor to afford food we give you food stamps. I have no problem with our culture giving medical care to someone who is too poor to afford healthcare. To reiterate, the rationing you mention _happens now_. It’s just a guy who makes more money the less care he gives out is the one that makes the decision. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/70 "2012-04-26T00:43:54Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > I think there’s a reasonable point there, although I don’t have the energy to dive into that entire thread. Suppose we had single-payer government run healthcare, something like Canada or England or Australia (which I support, and which it sounds like you support). The system presumably only has a finite amount of money to spend, which means that not everyone who wants it to treat everything is always going to get treated. Which means, almost by definition, there will be situations in which someone is denied potentially life-saving treatment purely for financial reasons. Now, if the system is well-designed it will in fact be extreme cases where there’s both a very high financial cost and a very low gain in terms of quality of life, and goodness knows such as system would have VASTLY fewer people die from lack of healthcare than our current system, but let’s not kid ourselves, to run such a system you basically HAVE to put financial values on human lives. How that actually appears in the system is longer wait times, not denial of treatment. If there isn’t enough money, more clinics aren’t opened, more doctors aren’t hired, and more MRI machines aren’t bought, but people aren’t told that they can’t have treatment because there isn’t any money for it - they’re told that it’s going to be a six month wait before they get that knee replacement. I’m not going to say that life-threatening surgeries and treatments are always done in a timely fashion, but there is certainly triage going on to establish who gets what resources and when. Someone about to die from blocked arteries gets their open-heart surgery; someone who has some heart problems that need clearing up but isn’t about to die from them gets bumped until next week. The more I hear about the US American healthcare system, the more surprised I am that anyone ever gets any treatments paid for, when your whole system is dedicated to making money for insurance companies and denying payment to patients. As far as I can tell, the endgame for American medical insurance companies is to take as much money as possible from everyone and never, ever pay any of it out. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/71 "2012-04-26T00:52:57Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > My bet was with EP. > > If he has a gripe about my determination, I’ll hear it. But it’s absolutely obvious that the terms of the bet were laid out clearly. I conceded the actual point being made was valid. But it’s equally clear the specific terms I laid out were not met. Personally, if I can choose between winning a wager and getting someone to change a viewpoint, I’ll take the latter. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/72 "2012-04-26T00:54:56Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Personally, if I can choose between winning a wager and getting someone to change a viewpoint, I’ll take the latter. Wanna bet? ---
**Author:** ![Candyman74](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Candyman74](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Candyman74)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/73 "2012-04-26T02:41:59Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > My understanding is in Britain they have the NICE program that evaluates comparative effectiveness, and they cover treatments up to about $40,000 a year in Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY). So a cancer drug that costs $100k and adds 6 months will not fall under that equation, but most everything else will (I think). My impression is as long as the procedure averages out to $40,000 a year or less in quality adjusted life years you are ok. They do it in dollars and everything! As an aside I’ve experienced some excellent instantaneous, excellent, free, excellent, repeated, excellent NHS service recently. Instantaneous. Repeatedly. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/74 "2012-04-26T02:45:48Z")
> [@Candyman74](#): > > They do it in dollars and everything! > > As an aside I’ve experienced some excellent instantaneous, excellent, free, excellent, repeated, excellent NHS service recently. Instantaneous. Repeatedly. I don’t have a pound sign on my laptop. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$44444$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$444444444 ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/75 "2012-04-26T02:50:49Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I don’t have a pound sign on my laptop. > > $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$44444$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$444444444 Hold down the [alt](http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codealt.html) key and type 0163 🙂 (or option 3 on the Mac. £) ---
**Author:** ![mister\_nyx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@mister\_nyx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mister_nyx)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/76 "2012-04-26T03:04:50Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > America is just a wealthy version of a 3rd world country anymore. Don’t worry. A few more years of GOP economics and we won’t be a wealthy version of anything anymore. > [@Bricker](#): > > Well, I’ve learned something. > > I don’t believe I lost my wager, as I think **EP** concedes. > > But I must admit that I said what I said because I was confident that the story’s illustration was wrong in concept, not just wrong in specific detail. > > And in fact, I see now that it wasn’t. It was wrong in the specifics, but correct in the intention: companies do seem to seek recission for highly trivial reasons. I had no problem with a company denying coverage for cancer after it learns that a person was previously treated for cancer, even if a mild form of it. That makes perfect sense. > > But I did not realize that companies had the business plan of denying coverage for a typo on weight, one not even submitted by the applicant. > > So I’d like to spend a bit of time in research, and see what the result was when these decision were (as they must have been) challenged for bad faith. > > But I owe **EP** an apology – I thought you were exaggerating. Turns out you were merely misrembering a detail. The “acne medication” bit was because this was an example that was all over the news a couple years back. Anyone who is even faintly informed on the topic is familiar with the fact that someone, somewhere, was denied coverage for needed medical treatment because of failure to disclose previous treatment for acne. It’s hard for me to believe that someone would make the point you made due to legitimate ignorance. It requires ignorance of something so well-publicized that it strikes me more as a zealous commitment to ignoring reality. [QUOTE=miss elizabeth] eta: I see he posted while I was typing, and was open minded and intelligent as I thought he would be. [/QUOTE] He maintains that he “won his wager”, which is only tenable if you steadfastly ignore the spirit of the discussion at hand. I don’t see why anyone would consider this admirable. > [@Lobohan](#): > > Well, reasonable for America. The rest of the world pays a lot less for treatments than we do. Given the unique characteristics of the market for pharmaceuticals, that’s inevitable. If we had a single-payer health system with the ability to negotiate price over an entire national population, like say France, our prices on drugs would drop some, France’s (and Canada and the UK and Germany and so on) prices would go up a lot, and conceivably there would actually be a legitimate problem with there being no financial incentive to bear the huge financial risk of drug discovery. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_the\_Immortal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/77 "2012-04-26T03:43:45Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > My bet was with EP. > > If he has a gripe about my determination, I’ll hear it. But it’s absolutely obvious that the terms of the bet were laid out clearly. I conceded the actual point being made was valid. But it’s equally clear the specific terms I laid out were not met. To be fair, you apparently proposed the bet because you were skeptical that coverage for treatment of an aliment _as grievous as_ a heart attack would be denied because of something _as trivial as_ forgetting to mention having taken acne medication. No, you didn’t use the term “as grievous as” in the actual bet, but you didn’t use the term “coverage” in your original draft either and were perfectly willing to change the letter of the bet to match its spirit in that case. We can only speculate whether or not you would have proposed the same sort of bet if **Euphonious Polemic** had remembered that it was treatment for breast cancer and not a heart attack, but surely you can see why people have a gripe with your determination. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/78 "2012-04-26T06:16:13Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > How that actually appears in the system is longer wait times, not denial of treatment. There are cases of partial denial of treatment, but in Spain I know of one: google “aitana tapones” to get a ton of hits about her (all in Spanish). [This one](http://www.digital-factory.es/ayudaaitana) is very complete. It’s a girl who was born with a congenital cardiopathy (along the lines of “missing several important veins between her heart and lungs”); she’s had several operations (most under the Spanish UHC system and therefore with no direct cost to the family), but the “big fix” ones can only be done at Boston’s Children’s Hospital: she needs three of them, for a total cost thereabouts of half a million dollars (the values I get are in euros, of course, and anyway they’re estimates, but that’s what the back-conversion comes to). The family has a campaign asking people to send bottle caps (sending them via Spain and Portugal’s biggest courier is free) which they sell to a recicling company, and this money goes toward the operations. So far she’s undergone the first operation and they have money [for the second one](http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2012/04/03/alicante/1333474487.html). ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/79 "2012-04-26T06:41:30Z")
> [@Cat Whisperer](#): > > How that actually appears in the system is longer wait times, not denial of treatment. Last time I looked into this, it’s only true of surgeries too. The average wait times throughout the US and UK (last time I checked, several years ago) were almost equal for emergency room treatment (222 minutes in the US, 4 hours in the UK). ---
**Author:** ![BlankSlate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blankslate/32/80_2.png) [@BlankSlate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlankSlate)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855/80 "2012-04-26T06:44:13Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > Unfortunately, we seem to have a lot of inhuman monsters in this country. But, but, this is a Christian nation. ```php ``` [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-you-poor-deluded-sufferers-of-communist-health-care-in-europe-take-heart/619855.md?page=5)