You didn’t read Smiling Bandit’s whole post, did you? All public employees in U.S.A. are kneecappers who screw everything. It’s only private contractors who have Yankee ingenuity, excellence and work ethic. Yes, yes, in all public-health care proposals for America so far, doctors and nurses would still be private employees or entrepreneurs, but don’t you know? Once you get your grubby Socialist hands on medicine you won’t stop until everyone works for Big Brother and carries Chairman Mao’s Red Book to work.
<sarcasm off>
The sad thing is, that it really isn’t true. Inefficiency can be found in both the private and public sectors and so can efficiency. Moreover it is no exaggeration to state that some of the inefficiency that does exist in government agencies is deliberately fostered by right-wingers whose agenda is to encourage Americans to hate their government. I’d offer some links to articles making this case, but it wouldn’t do any good: Right-wingers won’t believe anything but what right-wing think tanks tell them.
The right to life is the right to not be killed. Heck, even the U.N. agrees.
Note, in discussions of health care and other topics (like food shortages, etc) the idea that not giving someone health care or not feeding someone is infringing on their right to life. That, of course, is bullshit. The right to life limits what people can do to one another. You can’t kill others. However, that does not mean you have to provide for others if you choose not to do so.
Not that I can tell. Look, for instance, at the WaPo article. That was a report of a study that was very specifically targeted at Type 2 diabetics -
Well, Obama and the Dems said we would save all this money with preventative care, and therefore we could cover more people without increasing spending. That doesn’t seem to be the case.
That is a very true statement. The distinction though is that if Company A is inefficient it allows Company B to out compete. Inefficiency in business translates into higher prices, worse products, and lower service. Those three things tend to destroy a company that’s functioning in a competitive marketplace.
Typically, the response to that statement would include pointing at a variety of giant corporations and highlighting their inefficiencies, higher prices, and crappy service. And you’d be right, near-monopoly power has that effect. When you *can’t *choose a more efficient company, the inefficiencies get worse. To me Microsoft is the worst example of this, and now Apple if following in the footsteps.
You then need to realize government has a monopoly, and thus no reason for efficiency. Why is the DMV and Social Security office only opening from 10am until 4pm? Why do they only have one counter open during lunch? The DMV doesn’t give a shit if you’re unhappy because what are you going to do? Get your license somewhere else?
Banks used to operate like that until one of them decided they could make money if stayed open until 6pm. They could make a little more if they opened on Saturdays. Now most if not all banks have to provide better hours to deal with competition.
Note that none of this has to do with socialized health care since each hospital is still independently run and government involvement is nil other than collecting premiums (taxes) and paying claims.
Because the legislative body that runs them has slashed (or at least stagnated) their budget and reduced their manpower. This is done because the electorate’s screams of “NO MORE TAXES!!!” is somehow louder or more politically expeditious to address than the screams of “WE NEED MORE CLERKS IN THE DMV OFFICE!” We tend to hold our legislators directly responsible for our tax level, but we blame DMV problems on the DMV, shielding those who actually control how the DMV operates.
It’s unfair and unreasonable to claim bureaucratic malaise, inefficiency, or even deliberate malfeasance when the real problem is budgetary. And to apply this to a theoretical discussion of government health care is simply wrong.
If you want to compare efficiency of similar systems, compare the overhead costs of a private health insurance company with the overhead of, say, Medicaid for the administrative side of provision of service. All available comparisons show that existing universal care systems in all other industrialized countries are cheaper to operate than our existing private system.
Rights are something that you can do alone and not hurt anyone.
Any time your desires involve another, it becomes something that is not necessarily your right.
Most rights are protected by getting people to leave you alone, so anything that forces someone to do something FOR you, it is skirting the edge of the rights issue.
Equal access is a right- but not anything beyond that, IMHO.
And I am in favor of universal socialist healthcare, but I don’t see it as a right- I see it as something that a major universal government who is stealing my money in the form of taxes should provide.
It is just another application of force to make ‘right’; it isn’t a right.
Was that written by the Libyan member of the Human Rights Commission?
Remember, we’re talking about government here, not individual people. The government that exists by consent of the governed. It appears that you are arguing that a right to life involves only the government not actively killing people, but that the government standing by while people die due to preventable causes is not a violation of any rights.
Another question away from healthcare - does the government have an obligation to do something about a bridge that is exceedingly dangerous? Do people driving on the bridge have any kind of right that involves expecting the government to protect them from it collapsing? Or is this right only that the government can’t blow it up while they are on it?
Does the cost/benefit calculation include the value of quality of life? That should be a factor also.
Nevertheless, I do agree that some types of prevention are not cost effective, while some are. It all depends on the cost of an untreated disease, the probability that it will occur, and the cost of prevention.
Yes, and taken up via the NHS, which is the main employer. There are other employers in the private sector, except for Er services, and they’re not funded by National Insuarance, so there’s more than one payer as well as more than one employer.
Everyone, everywhere, has to work within a budget. Budgets get slashed all the time. The simple fact of the matter is that those in charge of the DMV don’t give a shit about efficiency or productivity, or responsiveness. The same budget that allows 4 staff from 10am-4pm would could be used from 4pm - 10pm. It would also allow for 1 staff from 10-12, 19 from 12-1, and 1 from 1-4. The point here is that a business seeking profitability looks at their customer base, and responds to it.
A cafe that serves most of its customers during lunch has more staff during lunch than before or after. A wine bar isn’t going to be successful if its only open for breakfast, it figures out when most people want to drink wine and opens during those times. The DMV doesn’t give a shit, it opens when it feels like it. What does it take to get them to respond to complaints?
I guess you missed this part of my post. But if you want to compare it, I know Canada made huge cuts to health care during the 90s in order to get the budget balanced without raising taxes. And it wasn’t until the late nots that shit hit the fan and people demanded the government address wait times. A store that makes people wait an hour doesn’t do as well as a store making people wait 30min. How often have you gotten frustrated and left because a line was too long?
Government doesn’t have to respond to their customers because they have no where else to go. And with that said they still do a better job with health care than the private sector.
First, the California DMV near me is cleaner, had friendlier people, and is more efficient than any WalMart I’ve ever been to. If you are clever enough to make an appointment, you can be in and out of there with a new license in 1/2 hour. They are now behind in vehicle registrations - which might have something to do with their budget being cut.
So, the people who manage the DMV do care. At least where I live.
Yes, in private industry we work under budgets, and budgets get cut. But only PHBs refuse to acknowledge that at some point budget cuts go too far, and kill either the output of a place, quality, or both.
I really do not think the DMV is at all analogous to nationalized health care, nor do I think that the supposed inefficiency and lack of responsiveness you ascribe are all that compelling an argument. Nor is it universal. Forgive an anecdote, but my local DMV office has several staff throughout the business day, and I have never waited more than 5 minutes to be served. However, once upon a time I lived in a much larger city nearby where people would literally camp out all night to be far enough forward in the queue to be served between the office’s opening and closing.
Yes everyone works within a budget, and as you say, a business that doesn’t budget enough on providing its service will fail. And yes, a government office like the DMV isn’t going to close just because people do not like the service. But the business can at least change the service it offers or charge more or differently for its service. The DMV cannot decide what kinds of paper shuffle are required nor how many copies it needs to file. It does not set the price for license tags or title transfers. And it probably does not purchase its own equipment or supplies, these being procured by some interdepartmental purchasing office. So the DMV has no control over the costs needed to provide its service, nor over the income stream provided to it since that is set by the legislature, not by market forces.
And if a business sees a large increase in customers coming through its doors, it can hire more staff, add more counters, and accept the business. The DMV cannot, it is stuck with whatever the legislature doled out last year. Again, the screaming about service levels is then directed at the DMV, not at the parties actually responsible, who are the legislators busy basking in the warm glow of the voters for having ‘reduced wasteful government expenditures’.
Government offices, including actual (in other countries) and hypothetical (in the US) health care administrative offices, ARE ultimately held responsible though. They are responsible to the voters who elect the people who legislate the parameters under which they operate, and fund those operations. Your own example of Canada responding to complaints about service levels seems to demonstrate this.
Your very last sentence seems to completely agree with my position, so I really don’t know what you are going on about (unless you just really hate the DMV ;):D).
No, not that dire. They will however refuse to see the error of their already bad diets and exercise regimes, when treatment to overcome all of those things is so easily in their grasp.
Do you really believe that? Are you aware of what the treatment is for diabetes? Do you think making diabetes treatment free means people will be incentivized to get it?
Whether or not a triple bi-pass is free, I don’t want one and will avoid needing one. I have car insurance that will replace my totaled car, I still avoid accidents.
It’s not, which is what I said. But the DMV and social security office both suffer from the same issue that Comcast suffers from, that of monopoly power. If there isn’t any other choice it doesn’t matter what you do to your customers. And they both responded in the same way, it took years of complaining to the point people would rather bolt shit to their roof before Comcast finally cleaned up a bit.
The DMV is a fact of reality in how government operates. It doesn’t tell us whether or not to socialize something, but it does tell us the likely results.
It also shows the powerful motivator of cash. There is a range in which I’ll pay slightly more for less hassle. I’ve left Walmart with long lines to go to Target with shorter lines. I’ve left Aldi with its dehumanizing practices and one cash register to pay more at Cub or Rainbow.
But you don’t want that when it comes to health care.
Now, apply what you just said about the DMV to a medical office.
Responsible yes, responsive no. Shit really had to hit the fan before the government took wait times seriously, much like most localities addressed issues with the DMV. The response time is then based on election cycles which in Canada can be anywhere from 8months to 5 years.
I really hate the DMV with a fiery blaze that burns deep in my soul. Oddly enough because of an anti-immigration rule that requires I go to a government office to show them a piece of paper from another government office and hope that they’ll pass it on to a third government office who I hope will bother to look at it.
And even with all these problems, UHC is still better than the alternative. The point is to be honest about what you’re talking about. We’re comparing two extremely shitty systems and trying to sort out which is slightly less shitty. It’s quite literally like deciding who is worse ATT or Comcast.
Don’t most US states have free emergency treatment in some way? Or if not free officially, then in practice it is, because either a few people have minimal health incurance only covering emergencies or because the hospital doesn’t try to hard to chase up debts that it can never get back?
I had heard that this would encourage people to not get preventative treatment because that would cost them personally, but if they waited till it got serious then they could go to the ER.
I doubt many people would actually do that because, well, being sick sucks. Same for healthcare in general. If the cost of treatment were a factor in people’s long-term health decisions, then the US would have much lower smoking rates than industrialised countries with public healthcare services.
We don’t have a “DMV” in my state. Motor vehicles are handled by a Dept. of Revenue. And I don’t really get the hate. Yeah, there are lines. So what?
Go to the private MD, DO, or LPN hereabouts & they’ll give an appointment they have no expectation of making. They’ll schedule you to wait an hour to get in.
Go to a hospital emergency department, & it may take 4+ hours for a procedure.
Chiropractors are faster, but they’re quacks.
Where is this private medicine that’s faster & better than the DMV, instead of five times slower? And do I have to hire a concierge-care multi-specialty physician and pay his entire middle-class salary out of pocket to get it?