If there is free health for all, Where do all the health care workers come from to help millions more people?
As a former Health Care Worker I know that a doctor spends 4 years in college, 4 years in medical school, 4-5 years as a resident, and 2 years getting his/her fellowship.
I am 60 yo and on Medicare Advantage. It takes me 6 weeks to get a 15 minute doctors appointment. What will happen when we add millions more people to the waiting lists.
Where are the nurses, the hospital beds, the medicines?
How are you on medicare if you’re 60? Do you have kidney failure?
The US has fewer doctors per capita compared to other western nations.
They do seem to have more nurses. Fewer hospital beds.
Either way, most people don’t need much health care for most of their lives. So even with more insurance I don’t know how much demand will go up.
If it did become a problem, there is nothing stopping us from creating more physicians. I believe one of the major bottlenecks is limiting the number of residencies.
Nobody is asking for “free” healthcare. We all understand that healthcare has to be paid for.
The question being asked by many is ‘Can Americans get health care that is less expensive, more accessible, and also of good quality, for all?’
You seem to be saying that because it takes you six weeks to get an appointment and that your doctor visit only lasts 15 minutes, that allowing others to also have healthcare will take something that you value, but aren’t really happy with, away from you.
Do you think the attitude of “I have mine, but I don’t want you to have any because it might make my situation worse” is a good plan for healthcare?
Do you think that there is any way that all or most Americans can get health care that is less expensive, more accessible, and also of good quality, for all?
If by “free” you mean “free to the patient” or “free at the point of delivery”, other developed countries with free healthcare services appear to cope with the problem of finding sufficient healthcare professionals to meet demand. Do you imagine that the United States is uniquely incompetent in this respect? If so, why?
This does not appear to be a problem in other western nations. Do you have any thoughts as to why the US seems to have waits even without delivering to everyone?
You should remember, as a former health care worker, that Health Care mostly comes from nursing aids and hospital porters. To a lesser extent from qualified Nurses, and to an even smaller extent from Medical Doctors.
If the USA decided that it wanted to provide better health care to people who are missing out in the present system, you wouldn’t start by just employing the thousands of qualified medical doctors who would be willing to move to the USA if they could get work permits.
On the contrary, in this case I think the word “free” is a red herring. The underlying question is one that is not often asked amidst the question of “who should pay”.
If the new system does not result in more overall health care, merely saving money, it doesn’t appear it would lead to a healthier nation. If it does result in more health care, where are all the providers of this going to come from? Have you been to a doctor’s office lately that hasn’t been pretty full?
However, other countries manage to provide better results with less money. So if we can successfully copy them, I’d say we’d be getting some health care for free by the reform.
As noted, all other advanced countries that have government provided health care and spend far less per capita than the US does.
One of the reasons that figures into this (but not the biggest one) is that people go see a doctor early when something goes wrong and when it is fixable for less money and other resources.
So with such a system there could well be less demand on resources including staff.
The US system is basically designed to waste a lot of money and give crappy care. (See the tables for infant mortality. There’s 45 places that do better than the US.)
Excellent idea. I know a woman from Russia, who was a doctor there. When she moved to the US to get married she could not work as a doctor here, but was stuck in doing things way below her training.
Test them. Certify them. Make them do internships. But don’t exclude them.
Maybe you should switch plans or doctors. I’m 68, on Medicare (but not Medicare Advantage) and I can get appointments very quickly, even faster if I go to urgent care in my clinic.
If you live in an underserved area, I can see your problem. The solution to that is “free” healthcare and maybe paying for med school, especially for specialties and regions where there is a shortage.
Not everyone who wants to go to med school - and is qualified - can, since it is so expensive.
I want to be taxed and then, as a taxpayer, to have access to health care on the same basis that I have access to interstate highways.
I don’t ever again want to be told “I’m sorry but that provider isn’t covered by your policy”. Or “The medicine that your doctor prescribed is not covered by your insurance”. Or “the doctor approved this procedure but your insurance hasn’t given it the green light”.
We don’t have a system. We have a non-system.
It’s like buying a plane ticket and getting on the plane and instead of taking your seat, you are handed a box of seat parts and nuts and bolts and you get to assemble the goddam thing in the aisle. All the while the flight attendant tells you you’ve been cleared for takeoff but the captain hasn’t received an engine yet, so could you please contact your airplane engine mechanic again?
Yeah, there’s some kind of misconception going on here.
First, it’s not like suddenly all the current doctors, nurses, and other health care workers are suddenly going to stop doing that as their jobs if some sort of UHC scheme gets implemented. They’re just going to get paid by someone else other than the patient (which is mostly the case these days anyway).
Second, there will almost certainly have to be some kind of mandated patient acceptance- currently, the issue is that a lot of doctors choose what coverages/payers they want to deal with- some may take Medicare, some may take Cigna, others may take Aetna, and others may like United Health. Some may take all of them, some may take none. So there will have to be some mechanism to prevent doctors from just choosing not to accept UHC. Likely it will eventually be a fait accompli, as employers will just quit providing health insurance, and doctors will have no choice but to accept UHC payments or risk losing patients.
Yes, I am very, very familiar with the US health care system as I’ve been an a RN for 30 years and also a patient for longer. And I have been to a doctor’s office lately- sorta.
Just last week, on my most recent visit, I logged on to “Doctor on Demand” via my phone at 11 pm on a holiday night.
I “saw” a physician (not a nurse) via video link.
My “visit”, for which my health complaint which was simple, was completed in 11 minutes and my pharmacy texted me that my prescription was ready within one hour.
I don’t get why people think there will be a sudden, massive, surge in demand for service if we go to universal health coverage.
Do they believe there is a massive pool of sick/needy people who up until now have been unable to access medical care? (Wow - that would really paint the US as evil, wouldn’t it?)
Do you think that people who haven’t been able to get medical care at all couldn’t wait an additional couple weeks for that first appointment? When they’ve already been waiting for years?
Do they believe people go to the doctor for fun?
When they expanded Medicaid in my state, including extending coverage for dental and vision, yes, there was an initial uptick in demand but it didn’t swamp the system and things settled down again within the year.
This. It’s not ‘free’ so much but more like after you checked out of a supermarket and the cashier tells you how much you saved today.
We actually have a health care system which is lower quality and at a much higher cost than most first world nations. With that said no system is perfect and one can find defects in any health care system.
Probably not, though. Overall, preventative care does not save money automatically (cite, cite). Also, one of the ideas under Obamacare was that people would reduce their visits to emergency rooms if they got subsidized coverage, and visit their primary care physicians instead. It didn’t work out - both visits to the emergency room and to PHPs went up (cite).
TANSTAAFL. Universal coverage means that demand for health care services is going to go up.
If we implement some form of M4A, the idea is to reduce payments to doctors and hospitals and nurses and pharmacies and so forth, as well as save on administrative costs. On average, currently doctors lose money treating 65-80% of their Medicare patients. So the idea is that doctors need to treat a lot more patients, for a lot less money.
“Buy at seven, sell at five, make up the difference on volume”.
It is theoretically possible that we could cover a lot more people, and spend less money overall somehow. It’s the “somehow” that presents problems.