Valid point. The studies do not address national health problems such as obesity which may account for the decrease in health outcomes in the US.
We do spend more money in the US on health care but, in return, we get the latest medical technology and short waiting times as a result. I’m not sure Americans are willing to trade that in for a UHC system.
You are correct in that SOME Americans benefit from the approximately double spending on healthcare; the ones with insurance. Those without insurance have quite long wait times for some procedures that impact their lives.
Bitching about wait times in Canada is frequently about hip and knee replacements for the elderly, and other procedures that impact quality of life (but not necessarily mortality). What is the waitlist like for an uninsured person in the US who would like a knee replacement so they can walk without pain?
I think this is somewhat similar to the polls showing that though nearly everyone hated Congress, they thought their particular Congressperson was fine. (Most get elected by high margins, after all.) If a person in the US hates his healthcare, (not his coverage) he can switch. This implies that most people like their coverage or will rather say they do than admit to being lazy about something so important. Plus, lots of the trouble with our healthcare system is too much service/technology, not too little.
I suspect that the poor people stuck for hours in the emergency room are happy about getting anything at all, so even they may say they are satisfied.
Some americans? The overwhelming majority of americans are insured or could afford insurance (household income above $70,000 but choose not to purchase)
The wait time would be quite short if they can pay cash…I’d think they would jump to the front of the line and be able to shave off a large percentage of the cost of the procedure to boot. Those without insurance would get care through the government (either medicaid, medicare, or the charity system of hospitals) and would probably have to wait quite some time. The question is why do we all want to put ourselves in this position…why increase wait times for everyone?
Also, look at the wait times for things like neurosurgery. I doubt many of these procedures are merely quality of life issues. Mark Steyn quipped about the 10 month waiting time for a maternity ward after a Canadian woman had to be flown to Montana to give birth b/c all the NICUs in Canada were full.
Here’s a chart from 2008 listing some wait times. Warning PDF file.
I think you misinterpreted your own analogy. It sounds more like people are not happy with the state of healthcare in the US (read: what they hear on the news) but are satisfied with their own personal health care. Do you see the disconnect?
But what I’m getting at is the only people likely to be subject to rationing or long lines are those you are dismissing as insignificant.
To most people the state of healthcare is exactly their own doctor. We aren’t swamped with stories about hospitals some place else the way we’re swamped with what Congress is doing. My point was that people are usually happy with things they feel they have some control over, like a Congressman they voted for or a doctor they chose.
Here’s 600,000 losers who are going to have a pretty long wait time,since their insurance is going to be priced out of reach by Aetna.
That’s OK though. The Chair and CEO Ron Williams told analysts, “The pricing we put in place for 2009 turned out to not really be what we needed to achieve the results and margins that we had historically been delivering.”
So Aetna will continue to achieve good margins and returns for stockholders, so everything is good.
Tough shit though for those 600,000 though. Let them eat cake.
I’m not here to defend insurance companies. We all know their purpose is to make a profit for shareholders. I’m in favor of social saftety nets (as are most Americans). I’m also in favor of insurance reform. What I am NOT in favor of is the complete dismantling of a system that the overwhelming majority of Americans are content with. There are other ways to achieve the goal of making sure everyone has adequate care.
I am not dismissing them. There are better ways to help those who have to wait or cannot afford medical care without tearing the whole thing down and starting over.
So, the overwhelming majority of Americans feel they have control over their healthcare. And they do for the most part. Also, a majority of this overwhelming majority feel they are losing control of their healthcare choices if this bill is passed. And they would be correct.
Then why don’t you like the plan the Senate is considering? No dismantling is proposed, and 70% of Americans will keep whatever insurance they have now.
Because it is nothing more than a back door to single payer.
No, they are not correct, except for the minority who is gaming the system by not buying health care though they can afford it, and having the mass of the insured support them when they get to the point of their lives where they need it.
The under- and un-insured will gain more control over their healthcare, by being able to afford it.
There have been studies showing that the uninsured have higher mortality rates than the insured. Is this something you are willing to accept because of the paranoid fantasies of the right?
How on earth does that work? What is it about passing moderate legislation that makes it impossible to prevent far more radical legislation from being passed down the road?
They are not correct because you say they are not correct?
There have also been studies that show that education and health outcomes are related irrespective of household income. The situation is not as simple as you make it out to be.
Oh, the expansion of medicare for people age 55 and above is a good start. The inability to switch from your current plan to another unless it meets the new standards enacted by congress. Employers finding more cost efficient to eliminate their insurance coverage in favor of the public option. Prices rise for private insurance as more people move to the public option. The ability of the government plan to bleed red ink in order to undercut private insurance and attract more people until private insurance companies go out of business. Barney Frank was honest enough to admit that offering a single payer bill would be suicidal but that a public option would be a backdoor to a single payer system. This really isn’t difficult to understand.
My original point stands then; Look to the north, where your neighbouring country has a single payer system that cost a LOT less, and leads to significantly better health outcomes (at least according to my meta-study cite) Even if we do have wait lists, they do not lead to poorer health outcomes for the population (this is because the waitlists are prioritized by the severity of the condition, not by how much money the patient has)
And, even though you can say that “the overwhelming majority of Americans are insured or can afford their own insurance”, you must know that your insurance is horribly overpriced. In addition, you are simply dismissing those who don’t have (and can’t afford) insurance, as well as those who are denied claims. These people would love to be on a wait list.
And then this would lead to a situation where the government would pay a similar amount per person as in Canada (eg 50% of what it is now), and you would have the same or better health outcomes. Where is the problem in this?
Oh right, the insurance companies would not be making the money for the CEO payments.
But what this thread is about is that many of the same people who think a public option will be so generous it will quickly put the private insurance industry out of business have been going on about how nightmarishly stingy and rationed it will be.
But the more unpleasant it would be to be on the public plan, the more of a selling point the private insurers would have to help them stay in business–and the less it would cost the taxpayers. And there would also be such a thing as “gap” insurance, wouldn’t there?
And if employers do manage to pass off the cost of their employees’ coverage in large numbers, won’t that create jobs and stimulate the economy?