I don’t know.
One never tires of the classics.
How does this also not apply to your own judgement in these matters, Starving Artist?
How are you in a position to judge them as being better or worse? What gives your judgement greater weight than theirs? I’ve never seen you claim that you’ve had personal experience with both American and non-American systems to comparatively judge them. Neither have I see any evidence that you’ve done any detailed research on all the different health care systems, and if you have you’ve been hoarded your cites all to yourself and not sharing them with us. So how can you state with such extreme confidence that American care is “excellent” and theirs is “mediocre”?
I don’t know how much of a “reputable source” you consider the Daily Mail, but thisis the closest thing I could find. Admittedly it is more a case of a child with an extremely rare condition for which the only treatment is in the US, and
but hey! It’s something.
Angry Lurker is correct about rationing in the broader economic sense. As Thomas Sowell put it:
By that (quite sensible) reasoning, EVERY economic system “rations” resources, as Elvisl1ves has already pointed out:
I’m sure I betray my liberal sensibilities when I say that “rationing” medical care based on who needs it most rather than who can pay most seems like the most logical system to me.
As someone who has actually used both the US and UK healthcare systems including undergoing surgery, I have to say that both systems work just fine. The facilities in the US are nicer-looking and more modern, but any variation in care had more to do with individual doctors than the systems themselves (and I have had both excellent and crap doctors in both countries).
Of course, my US surgery experience came out well in large part because I had health insurance through my employer. Which was the state (I worked for a state university at the time), through the state group insurance plan. And, essentially, UHC is just the same idea on a grand scale: a group insurance plan covering millions.
Incidentally (as I’ve said before) I’ve also used private insurance under the UK system. If I need a procedure under the NHS I can call my GP’s office in the morning and have an appointment the same day, then get a referral to the hospital of my choice based on facilities and waiting times. Conversely, if I wanted even a simple procedure under the private insurer I had to get a letter from my GP, then call the insurance company, explain the procedure, get pre-approval which was only good for a set period of time, notify the private medical facility, wait for them to give me an appointment and hope it happened before the approval period ran out. Oh, and if while I was there it was discovered that some other work needed to be done, I’d have to contact the insurance company again while at the facility to ensure that they could perform the procedure. And if anything went wrong, I’d get dumped back onto the NHS for emergency care.
The NHS is not bright and shiny. It does struggle to provide care for everyone with the resources it has. And it’s not perfect - you get mistakes, bad doctors, bad decisions, people who slip through the cracks in the system, politicians interfering with local care and so forth. But many of those things you also get on the private system and - here’s the really, really important thing - it covers everyone.
So yes, you get the odd story of someone with a rare disease not being able to get the treatment in the UK or a lab messing up mammogram results or a database recording people’s organ donor preferences incorrectly. What you don’t get is 45,000 people a year dying for lack of care. No, let’s be fair and scale that down for the UK, which has about a fifth of the population of the US - 9,000 deaths per year. If 9,000 people were dying in the UK every year due to failures of the NHS, people would be storming the Houses of Parliament. Instead, the few failures there are are rare enough to be front-page news when they happen.
I think that speaks for itself.
Stop being logical, thoughtful and well informed about this issue.
You’ll make someone’s head explode.
Can you really be this dense? Of course they pay for it. Seriously, what’s wrong with you? They are all part of one giant health care group, they all pay. And in return they all get coverage. What’s hard to understand about that? Seriously.
Lesser quality care? No sir, cutting edge. Wait time? Didn’t happen. Sucking at the public teat? He paid premiums and they covered him, no public suckage. Government input? None. Didn’t fill out a form, only person who decided anything about his care was his physician.
I cared for my dying Mother In Law, following a devastating stroke, in my home, for 6 yrs. She was provided 2 hrs of home care a day, 7 days a week, in home Dr’s, PT’s, OT’s, Blood suckers, hospital stays, ambulance transfers, whatever she needed. All covered by her insurance. Her provincial drug plan insured she never spent more than $100 a year on her meds. Was this sucking at the public teat? No she paid into the UHC plan her entire life. Again, no suckage. Same as you, she paid insurance, she received coverage when she required it.
Do you see where the savings are yet? She wasn’t in a nursing home for those 6 yrs, she was with us. Can you begin to imagine, even calculating the costs of providing those services in our home, how much cheaper that was than the cost of housing her in a nursing home would be?
The only difference is, as no point did she have to worry about being denied coverage, she didn’t have to worry if she changed jobs, or what Doctor she saw or what hospital she went to. Her premiums, for UHC were a fraction of what you are paying, for better coverage. Why? No government/insurance company hacks to deal with, and no profiteering hospitals or executive billion dollar bonus’s, no legions of paper pushers and duplications of office work. Throw in the savings of people getting there health issues dealt with at the onset, instead of only once they become life threatening, and on going care for conditions that require maintenance and that savings is where the funds come from to provide far better care for our seniors than you can hope for with even the highest form of private insurance.
Your arguments are ridiculous, have been roundly proven to be false, and yet you persist.
People are sent to the US for services as, at times, it is more cost effective than buying equipment for locations where it is rarely required. There are always people who will complain about wait times. Those are people who feel their need is greater than their physician does. Often old people get a little stiff in the joints and want a new knee or hip. Doctor realizes there is no real need, only a desire. They wait for services, and get a lot of press. These are very simple things to understand if you’d just let go of your political agenda and engage your grey matter.
You keep accusing us of being Liberal, but Canada has a Conservative government, currently, and often, since UHC was introduced. None have made any effort to roll back UHC. It would cost them their seats. So, it’s not about Liberal or Conservative, it’s about a better way. Lower premiums, everyone is covered, for everything.
Profiting from health care is akin to profiting from police or fire services in civilized nations of the world. It’s predatory capitalism at it’s worst. That they’ve convinced persons, such as yourself, to willingly drink the Koolaid of conservatism and turn a blind eye to what’s plain for everyone else to see, speaks to the power of the politics of fear. Here’s a clue: when politicians are only preaching fear, they are manipulating you. Much like GWB scared/manipulated the whole world into a war based on a outright lie. The greater evil isn’t what he did but that people like you learned nothing from the experience. That’s some strong Koolaid. You claim to be all about costs but care not that his little foray is still costing your nation exponentially more than UHC would. But he’s not a liberal, so that’s not so evil to you.
Personally, I enjoy arguing with brick walls more. The brick walls don’t make you want to punch them in the teeth because of their smug, proud ignorance. In fact, brick walls don’t even *have *teeth.
One thing that, IMHO, merits pointing out from time to time is that European/Canadian “Conservatism” != (official) GOP “Conservatism” — which, in turn, has only a handwaving resemblance to the brand of “Conservatism” that seems to be espoused by SA, RR, et. al. To them, I would imagine that the Conservative Party in Canada and the Tories in England are borderline socialists.
ETA: SA is a fleeching maroon.
Frightfully sorry. I don’t know my Toad-in-the-Hole from my bubble and squeak.
Then how do you regard the Canadian Liberal party? Full-blown socialists? And our New Democratic Party, even further left? Communists?
The Liberal party was in control from 1993 to 2006. Canada should be, by your logic, a full-blown socialist state. Yet private corporations continue to thrive, personal freedom is intact, taxes are not crippling…
I gather, then, you’re just using the label “socialist” in the same brain-dead, drool-drowning manner of the teabaggers - a lazy-ass way to say something is bad without taking the time to pry your glazed eyes away from America Idol long enough to educate yourself on even the basic rudiments of what socialism actually is.
Um, I think he’s just trying to say, for the likes of Starkers, Canadian Conservative ain’t nearly rabid, nor ignorant enough, to be considered ‘true’ conservative, y’know, like the GOP.
And equivocation, not an attack.
Well, that the GOP is being led around by its moron fringe, soon to be its moron center, isn’t really all that surprising.
Not to mention your Spotted Dick…
There’s the first world, in which liberal liberal, and conservative is conservative, and then there’s the USA, in which liberal is conservative, and conservative is bat shit insane.
Well played, madam.
Indeed, and thank you.
As for me, in SA’s pantheon I’d be right in there with Trotsky or Stalin or Ivan the Terrible — you know, one of them Commonists.
So, Starving, what do you suggest we do about this problem, which ISTM is caused directly by righties shrieking in protest at the suggestion that the requirement be funded - by the government, since no one else has the resources to do so?
Should all accident victims who can’t show proof of insurance, maybe because they lost their wallet or purse in the course of the accident, be left on the pavement to bleed to death? How about a mugging victim, since stealing purses and wallets is what muggers do? Let’s suppose my seventeen year old daughter, half Mexican and an American citizen, is clubbed on the head and her ID (including her US passport) is stolen. She’s got dark hair and eyes, she might be a furriner, so shall we just ship her unconscious body to Laredo and shove her over the border?
Hey, I’ve got an idea. Let’s require everybody to have a microchip imbedded in their arm with their insurance, citizenship and maybe bank balance statistics. Or maybe a tattoo on everyone’s forehead. And then we could coordinate the chip with their credit rating, so they couldn’t buy and sell without it…haven’t I heard this somewhere before?
The Mark of the Best Buy.
I probably should just let this mess expire of natural causes, but here’s a guy who’s apparently seriously arguing that all taxes are theft, yet even he’s in favor of single-payer health insurance. Not only that, but it seems kinda like he’s insulting Starving Artist, there.
Nah, this thread ain’t about to die. I’ve been busy and away from the board and will continue to be so for the next several days but I still need to find out what Bryan Ekers thought of that study I linked to upthread.
And perhaps to see what he thinks of this government agency too.
Pssst…any of the rest of your are free to look at them and comment as well, though I’m sure I could write your responses and their accompanying denials and excuses and equivocations beforehand myself.
Seeing as how I don’t regard taxes as theft and likely don’t believe many of the other things he’s pretending to believe in that little experiment or trap or whatever it is he thinks accomplishing with that silly thread, and given the fact that he’s demonstrated not only considerable gullibility and naivety in both of these threads but appears not to be able to spell very well either (it’s “brakes” when you can’t stop your car, schmuck, not “breaks”), I don’t think I’ll spend too much time worrying about his insults.