Irony is that that construction worker probably voted for someone who wants to take away his healthcare.
ETA: Kinda super ninja’d by Johnny L.A. there.
I, too, live in Colorado and that is not why I voted against that proposal. I personally think we can afford comprehensive medical care for everybody, yet I was in that 70%.
Got a cite that the US has a higher standard of living, higher prices and higher wages than Europe, Canada, Australia?
I mean, Australian minimum wage is about $13.6 US hourly, which is higher than any US state. France, the UK, New Zealand and Canada also have higher minimums than anu US state, and I doubt the people washing bedsheets in hospitals are getting a lot more than minimum wage. They certainly aren’t round here, in the UK; the local hospital was advertising last week.
From the World Bank 2016 GDP per capita:
Euro area - 34,886
European Union - 32,058
North America - 55,927
USA - 57,466
Countries in Europe with a higher GDP per capita than USA:
Luxembourg - 102,831
Switzerland - 78,812
Norway - 70,812
Ireland - 61,606
Iceland - 59,976
Notable EU countries:
Germany - 41,936
UK - 39,899
France - 36,855
Others in your list:
Australia - 49,927
Canada - 42,157
New Zealand - 39,426
I have no idea why some people think the rest of the world sits on their hands waiting for America’s innovation.
Most of the medical advances over the last 200 years — the critical period for improvement — were found by French, German and British chemists and scientists. Admittedly the French and German pharmacutical corporations today, not to mention those in the Far East are pitiably small mom & pop affair with tiny budgets and not much research.
Still, I saw a news item the other day about a breast cancer breakthrough:
The Manchester researchers behind the test said it could reduce the number of women having surgery to remove their breasts, by narrowing down their risk.
The test, on blood or saliva, looks at 18 genetic variants known to affect the chances of getting breast cancer.
Cancer charities said it would have a real impact on women and lead to fewer being diagnosed with the disease.
The Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) test will initially be available for patients having tests at St Mary’s Hospital and Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester for BRCA1 and 2 gene mutations, with a family history of breast cancer.
BBC
Dunno how soon America will get it, and certainly not free of charge as in the NHS…
And tiny Ireland too:
*Irish scientists have discovered that a drug used to treat alcohol addiction may have a role to play in combatting chemotherapy resistance among patients being treated for the most common type of lung cancer.
*Irish Health
Of course, there are scientists ranging from Egypt to Brazil to Russia and all the rest researching non-stop.America does not bring it all; just charges more for what they have to their citizens than elsewhere.
Good facts MemoryLeak, but I wasn’t referring just to Europe and Australia. Americans also look at the cost of medical care in Mexico and Thailand and think that’s where we’ll get to with a simple fix. And some of the countries above pay significantly higher taxes than in the US also, I don’t contend it’s impossible for us to pay higher taxes for a public health system, but I do say it’s politically impossible to have that kind of tax increase for a the kind of comprehensive health care that people get through private insurers, mainly paid by their employers.
Filbert, their are a tremendous number of hospital beds in major metropolitan areas where the cost of business is very high. If the people operating the washing machines are employed by the hospital they are making more than minimum wage, and a host of regulations and taxes and just plain high cost of living, not to mention side deals profiteering will make the cost of washing bed sheets higher, and everything else the hospitals do also. Plenty of those costs are just an artifact of bad governance here, so if you have a solution to that please come on over and tell us how to do it.
Something that works in other countries, even in comparable economies to the US, doesn’t necessarily work here. I wish it did but we have to have a system that will provide for over 300 million people with wide-ranging sub-economic systems, and a lack of central control over much of our economy that won’t readily change if we suddenly want a single-payer healthcare system, and the majority of voters don’t want one. There are plenty of different reasons why they don’t, some of them think they’ll lose benefits they already have, some of them don’t want to pay another nickel in taxes, some of them don’t want government control of healthcare, and whatever their pet peeve is about it very few of them will even consider the big picture.
You should start a new political party: The Medical Cost is Too Damn High!
Yes, assuming we agree that “level of medical care” is judged by medical outcomes. Nearly every other country does better, and they pay less. QED. I’m not understanding what you’re asking, here.
I think Americans want more from their health care than makes sense for covering everyone under a public health care plan. I don’t think Americans will pay for what they want. Americans won’t accept some notion of medical outcomes based on a nationwide average. The majority want all the available care for themselves no matter the cost without paying any more for it, and certainly Americans don’t want to pay more to cover the cost of people who are now only getting the lowest level of care. Our medical outcomes are great in the eyes of Americans when who have quality insurance. We can only make substantial gains by providing that to people who don’t have that coverage now, and we can’t and won’t pay for that. The solution has to be less than the ideal or we’ll never make a dent in the problem.
I’m not getting it. All Americans want access to reasonable health care without going broke. If we can pay for it by eliminating waste and becoming as efficient as Europe, we should. No one wants us to be like Mexico - they go to Mexico for health care out of desperation.
And we have gatekeepers now. I can’t get an MRI because it would be nice to hang up on my wall. A doctor has to approve it. Let’s make these approvals based only on medical necessity, not just maybe needed and we have to pay off the machine anyway reasons.
Here is a PDF comparing many metrics across many countries;
Commonwealth fund
The US spends more, FAR more, than other countries per capita.
Yet most of our outcomes are middling or worse.
US Government spending per capita WITHOUT universal healthcare already is higher than most country’s spending WITH universal healthcare.
This was also true before the ACA .
The Commonwealth Fund has a wide variety of publications comparing international healthcare. Ours sucks.
There are certainly ways we can make our health care cheaper, and better. Other countries have done it. But Tripolar is right, even then there are just some things that can’t be covered, because if they were, they’d break the government. Some health care systems can’t even fix your knee in less than six months. Others have poorer cancer survival rates because they only cover older, cheaper treatments or screen less to save money. There are always tradeoffs and one way we can do better than everyone else is to have an honest discussion about the tradeoffs and design our health care system with the involvement of the public, rather than having “experts” make these decisions as other countries do, in secret, so that no one actually knows what’s covered and what’s not.
If you’re spending 17-20% GDP on one thing, and you take huge profit out of that equation - say just 5%, it doesn’t become “unaffordable”. As I said above, it’s an even more bizarre position that ‘unamerican’.
So, for example, if you are unburdening business of its contribution to (employee) healthcare, Gov should take back some of that new benefit to business (in order to fund the take back of employee healthcare).
US healthcare is the biggest con trick of the post war world.
Best I can understand, the OP is predicated on the idea that everyone’s medical coverage must be exactly the same, so either everyone gets the level of care that the rich in America get, which we can’t afford, or you somehow force rich people to slum it.
But here’s how it works in the rest of the developed world: everybody gets good medical care. Everyone gets the treatment they need.
But if you’re rich, and you want your replacement hip done today by Doctor House with a golden scalpel, then fine, you can go private. It’s not rocket science.
That’s a reasonable summation but let me add this; the public gets what it votes for - different political parties have different ideas about funding/efficiencies/wider economic pressures, etc.
Publically funded healthcare is in a perpetual state of renewal and innovation - everyone invested wants to achieve more with finite resources.
You’re right, Americans want more! Especially those with gold level health insurance. They pay large and they expect access, without a wait. Unfortunately, it’s that very ‘pay for purchase’ attitude that ruins any health care reform, from the start, I’m afraid.
The only way instant access is assured for those with deep pockets, is to have equipment sitting idle awaiting their demand. In a universal system access is expedited based on need not dollars. Which allows for an efficiency that sees these expensive machines in constant use, huge savings are thus realized.
Until you change the, “I’m paying, and I want what I want when I want it!”, attitude, nothing will change I’m afraid. Persons used to getting what they want, buying their way to the front of the line, are never willing to make the slightest sacrifice on such, even to allow access to those with lesser means.
In systems where no ‘pay to purchase’ attitude was ever encouraged or allowed, people seem to understand the concept of triage as applied to medical resources, as a way to provide for everyone, instead of just the wealthy, as a sacrifice worth making.
I mean do wealthy Americans demand instant access in emergency rooms? From Police or fire services? They seem to understand the concept for those things.
But, to be perfectly honest, once you’ve established a pay for access process, it’s nearly impossible to turn that train around. You’re expecting the powerful and mighty to forego an ‘entitlement’, to provide for the less worthy, (as measured in dollars.) That’s a big ask! I wish y’all great Good Luck with that, but I’m honestly not seeing a path from where to are to single payer/universal coverage.
You know the two are not mutually exclusive?
I mean, you know it’s not illegal to pay for healthcare in 29 developed countries?
This is essentially a debate about what constitutes, or rather who defines, “comprehensive” medical coverage, and in addition, who’s got the courage to push through the tax levels necessary to provide the “comprehensive that means medically effective at the point of need as defined by the doctors” cover: you don’t have to prevent people from seeking gold-plated “comprehensive means anything I want when I want it, never mind if a doctor says it isn’t necessary or won’t help” sort of cover, if they or their employer is willing to pay for it in addition to the necessary taxes.
But that turns on an argument about what is a basic public/community service and what is a private marketised commodity.
Can you name two such countries? I say two, because I can name one already: The US.
And it’s pointless to say that some countries have bad outcomes, even if it were true. If there were even one country that gets better outcomes than us across the board (instead of, say, 29 of them), then we should copy that one country’s system, and who cares what anyone else does?
Actually, the US is near the top in cancer survival rates:
https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=91106
That is actually one area where paying more gets us more.