# side effects of socialized health care **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 4, 2004, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690 "2004-06-04T20:02:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/41 "2004-06-05T04:54:14Z")
Letter for 37 cents, that is. Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/42 "2004-06-05T05:23:00Z")
> [@Plan B](#): > > Well, for one thing, we could expect more Americans to be dissatisfied with their health care, as is the case in Canada: That assumes that Americans are satisfied with their healthcare…which, from what I’ve seen, is not the case. And I’m among the insured. There is no way the government could be more inefficient, arbitrary, or full of bizarre and occasionally contradictory rules than some of the health care plans I’ve been on. Perhaps you’ve never had the joy of calling up and saying “If I go to Dr. X for Y problem, will that be covered, yes or no?” and been told that there’s no way of knowing that, and the person on the other end of the line can’t tell you until 3 months after the appointment - at which time, you’ll have to cough up all the money, that you may or may not owe, and they’re not going to show you a bill until then, either, so you can’t set aside money, in case none of it’s covered. I don’t see how a government employee could do worse without sending electric shocks over the phone…plus, more people would get coverage. > [@Bill H.](#): > > Speaking as someone who has started several new companies, and as someone who’s friends are pretty much all of that same breed, I can say this is nonsense. There are many advantages and many advantages to working at a startup, but I’ve never lost a potential employee (or had an employee quit) because he went somewhere where the health benefits were better. I did. I had to turn down a job because there was no insurance offered for 3 months, and once it was offered, it was beyond pathetic (and possibly illegal in the state - but that’s not a fight you want to fight when you actually need the insurance). ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/43 "2004-06-05T08:03:53Z")
> [@Plan B](#): > > From what I’ve read, waiting periods for routine procedures like pap smears are outrageously long. My middle class cousin in Toronto had to wait about three days to get an x-ray after he broke his ankle playing hockey. These are things that the poorest American can have done immediately with or without medical insurance. Let’s skip the anecdotes, shall we? > [@](#): > > [**Boston found to endure longest wait for doctors**](http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/06/04/boston_found_to_endure_longest_wait_for_doctors/) > The Texas-based consulting ?rm Merritt, Hawkins & Associates surveyed 1,062 physician specialists’ of?ces in 15 major cities and found Boston patients wait longest for appointments. The study, released this week, found that new patients in Boston wait an average 37 days to see a cardiologist, 45 days to see an obstetrician-gynecologist, and 50 days to see a dermatologist — the longest waits of the 15 cities. Patients schedule appointments with an orthopedic surgeon in Boston 24 days in advance on average, the second longest delay after Los Angeles, where patients wait 43 days. > > Overall, the survey said, Boston has the longest waits while patients in Washington, D.C., can see doctors the fastest, within 8 to 15 days. Since the numbers are averages, **some cardiologists in Boston, for example, had four-month waits,** while others could see patients in as soon as seven days. Now, I’m not sure how the numbers compare to Canada’s health care system (since it seems like Canada has become the default representative of a “socialized” health care system), but I think it’s fair to say that neither the US or Canada can claim to have a flawless health care system – the question is merely whose system is worse off. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/44 "2004-06-05T11:21:15Z")
Here’s my recent OP on the topic, which was a comment on a WSJ article: > **[Socialized medicine: WSJ plays the ol' "Canada card"](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=253386)** > > Cites are from The Wall Street Journal, “Canada’s “Free” Health Care Has Hidden Costs” (editorial), Pierre Lemieux, 2004/4/23. Every year Time, Newsweek, or one of the major “news” mags does a story along the lines of “Who Was the Real Jesus,” and... ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/45 "2004-06-05T12:18:46Z")
Great post, **Zag**. As hellish as your illness can be, I consider your valued input here to be the pure silver lining of its heavy, grey cloud. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/46 "2004-06-05T16:25:50Z")
> [@Apos](#): > > Why do we want to treat healthcare differently than all other goods. > > I think the most obvious answer is that we like to think healthcare is different because my god man, people’s lives are at stake. It is not just that people’s lives are at stake. It is also that your need for health care is determined by many factors, some of which is the luck of the draw. I can accept the fact that a rich person will live in a nicer house and drive a nicer car. But, I am not comfortable with the idea that a rich person should get great medical care to treat minor ailments while a poor person who is unlucky enough to have a serious health problem gets very poor health care because they can’t afford it. In this case, a rationing system based on price just doesn’t produce equitable outcomes in my view. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/47 "2004-06-05T16:32:52Z")
> [@Plan B](#): > > Great idea about the experiment Sam, I agree 100%. But wait, hasn’t that experiment been done already? Here’s just today’s update on the disastrous results: > > [Public Education Screws Poor Kids-Makes Sure They Stay Poor](http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/04/nyregion/04READ.html?ex=1086926400&en=75c6f7af5824a9a6&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE) > > Brief Excerpt: > > As many as 10,000 third graders, twice as many as last year, are expected to be held back this year under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s tough new promotion policy, according to citywide test results announced yesterday. This argument is just plain silly. To even begin to prove what you are trying to prove (i.e., that the problem with public schools is that they are government-run), you would have to show at the very least that the quality of schools is correlated more strongly with whether they are public or private rather than with the poverty level. And, in fact, there are many public school districts here in the Rochester area that are excellent. It just so happens that the city school district, with its concentration of students from poor families and neighborhood, broken homes, etc. is one of them. And, by the way, private schools have certain advantages, e.g., they can cherry-pick which students they take. The issue of education in areas of concentrated poverty is indeed a big problem and it is not helped by the willful ignorance of people who refuse to look at what the causes might actually be. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/48 "2004-06-05T16:54:00Z")
If you want to see the future of health care (under a socialized, government-run scheme), you can see it in action now…just visit any inner-city public hospital. You will see people waiting in an emergency room waiting for treatment,sometimes for trivial illnesses (as long is such healthcare is “free”, there will be an infinite demand for it). At the same time, the staff will be going crazy dealing with serious accident cases, drug overdoese, etc. That is the dilemma: if you establish that asome service (like healthcare) is a basic “right”, and given fro free, you will have a constantly increasing demand for this service. What NO government (in the USA, Canada, or Western Europe) has ever determined: HOW MUCH healthcare can society afford? Should taxpayers fund heart transplants? Aggressive care on 90-year olds? Indefinite treatment of chronic alcoholics? Nobody has the answer. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/49 "2004-06-05T17:22:55Z")
I disagree, **ralph124c**. The reason emergency rooms are crowded “sometimes with [people who have] trivial illnesses” is that poor people have nowhere else to go. With UHC, people could go to their family doctor instead of clogging ERs. And there’s another thing: How often do people _with_ insurance go to their doctors? Until I lost my job, I had insurance. How often did I go to the doctor? Well, a couple of years ago I had a cyst remved from my back. A couple of years before that, I was had a bout of gastritis and I needed medical help. I had “cat scratch disease” around 1990 or so, and I went to the doctor then. If and when I get insurance, will I go to the doctor more often “just because it’s free” (or cheap, anyway)? No. Certainly there will be people who will abuse the system. But I’ll bet dollars to navy beans that, except for a spike when UHC first takes effect, most people will continue their current habits. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/50 "2004-06-05T18:33:14Z")
> [@](#): > > I disagree, ralph124c. The reason emergency rooms are crowded “sometimes with [people who have] trivial illnesses” is that poor people have nowhere else to go. With UHC, people could go to their family doctor instead of clogging ERs. But more would choose to, leading to doctor shortages. > [@](#): > > And there’s another thing: How often do people with insurance go to their doctors? The answer is, “More than do now”. This is a basic law of economics. If YOU wouldn’t, that’s fine. That just means you’re not on the ‘margin’. But there are people who would like to go to the doctor today who can’t afford it (or we wouldn’t be having this discussion). The whole point to socialized health care is to allow more people to seek treatment, is it not? This means there will be more demand on the system, as well as presssure to limit supply for cost containment. And don’t underestimate the number of people that will go to the hospital for trivial reasons. There are hypochondriacs all over the place. I know people who rush their children to the hospital every bleemin’ time they have a fever. I can’t count the number of times someone has told me “You should go to the hospital!” after I cut myself, or announced I was feeling sick, or whatever. When I went to the hospital for hurting my back, I was stuck in a waiting room with a whole bunch of people the staff knew by their first name because they were regulars. A number of street people fake symptoms simply so they can use the hospital as a warm resting place. The staff gives them a quick checkup, then puts them on a gurney in the hallway for a few hours and kicks them out the door. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/51 "2004-06-05T19:20:12Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > What NO government (in the USA, Canada, or Western Europe) has ever determined: HOW MUCH healthcare can society afford? Should taxpayers fund heart transplants? Aggressive care on 90-year olds? Indefinite treatment of chronic alcoholics? > Nobody has the answer. 😕 Except that all are available on the NHS in the UK :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/52 "2004-06-05T20:00:58Z")
…And are there any guidelines for treatment of the elderly in the NHS? Can an 80 year old get a heart transplant? Unlimited dialysis for life? Because here in Canada, there is already talk about refusing life-saving surgery to people of a certain age, because we can’t afford it. ---
**Author:** ![Plan\_B](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Plan\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plan_B)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/53 "2004-06-05T20:06:03Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > …And are there any guidelines for treatment of the elderly in the NHS? Can an 80 year old get a heart transplant? Unlimited dialysis for life? > > Because here in Canada, there is already talk about refusing life-saving surgery to people of a certain age, because we can’t afford it. That is genuinely scary. I take good care of myself. I could easily get screwed by a system like that. ---
**Author:** ![Plan\_B](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Plan\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plan_B)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/54 "2004-06-05T20:16:21Z")
> [@jshore](#): > > This argument is just plain silly. To even begin to prove what you are trying to prove (i.e., that the problem with public schools is that they are government-run), you would have to show at the very least that the quality of schools is correlated more strongly with whether they are public or private rather than with the poverty level. And, in fact, there are many public school districts here in the Rochester area that are excellent. It just so happens that the city school district, with its concentration of students from poor families and neighborhood, broken homes, etc. is one of them. Exactly my point. Leftists who are sincerely concerned about income redistribution and people having the ability to move up the economic latter should take a good hard look at the state run schools as one of the bad guys. Sounds like in Rochester the middle class and rich kids will get a good education and a chance to go onto a top 300 college. And the poor kids, well the heck with them. BTW, there are schools that succeed with poor kids who enter kindergarten unprepared. It can be done, it has been done and it is being done. Best comparison would be Catholic schools vs public schools in terms of results per dollar spent. And do you think the NYC schools could get it together if only they had more money? ---
**Author:** ![Plan\_B](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Plan\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plan_B)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/55 "2004-06-05T20:23:01Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > Or just those with insurance lose? This is from post #9, if anyone is interested. Only if you don’t accept the laws of supply and demand. The day I stop making widgets, the price goes up. If I stop buying them the price goes down. So when a surgeon retires the price of medical care goes up. Obviously this is a theoretical point. I don’t think that if this imaginary guy/gal in the northwest retires that somehow every other surgeon will raise his fees by $1. But let’s multiply this by thousands and it becomes real. Not only people leaving the field, but what do they tell their kids, their nieces and nephews, reporters, etc? Net result of socialized medicine=less of the extremely hard working types in the field=higher prices. ---
**Author:** ![Plan\_B](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Plan\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plan_B)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/56 "2004-06-05T20:29:35Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > Let’s skip the anecdotes, shall we? Have you been applying that rule to all posts without discriminating between those you agree with and those you disagree with? Is there perhaps something in the SDMB rules about a prohibition on anecdotal evidence that I missed? ---
**Author:** ![Plan\_B](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Plan\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plan_B)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/57 "2004-06-05T20:38:49Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Gee **Plan B** , does the B stands for Bloomberg? 😉 Damn, that is scarier than Sam’s post above :eek: > [@GIGObuster](#): > > Anyhow, correct me if I am wrong, but I think the article is critical of the decision of Mayor Bloomberg to crack the whip at a very lenient system that allowed poor performance students to pass the grade, as I see it, this shakedown will then point to better solutions, and coming back to our discussion: > > These health care discussions always seem to attract very incomplete of misleading cites. Good point. I obviously am a lot sloppier in my work here than most. I was just in a hurry to find something from the day’s news to back up the point that state schools are a terrible thing for poor kids. So I just ran over to Google News and found that article. The important point to me is that such a large number of mostly poor kids are getting shafted so badly. Thousands of these poor kids being left back. And that has to be just the tip of the iceberg. I concede that the main point of the article had something to do with Bloomberg’s plan vs. some older plan. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/58 "2004-06-05T20:56:33Z")
> [@Plan B](#): > > So when a surgeon retires the price of medical care goes up. Obviously this is a theoretical point. I don’t think that if this imaginary guy/gal in the northwest retires that somehow every other surgeon will raise his fees by $1. But let’s multiply this by thousands and it becomes real. Not only people leaving the field, but what do they tell their kids, their nieces and nephews, reporters, etc? Net result of socialized medicine=less of the extremely hard working types in the field=higher prices. I fail to understand why you assume this mass exodus from the medical professions will occur. > [@Sam Stone](#): > > …And are there any guidelines for treatment of the elderly in the NHS? Can an 80 year old get a heart transplant? Unlimited dialysis for life? > > Because here in Canada, there is already talk about refusing life-saving surgery to people of a certain age, because we can’t afford it. OK, yes, there are some limitations, regulated by [NICE](http://www.nice.org.uk/). But people excluded from treatment can still seek it privately - which at least isn’t any worse than a private system where only heavily-insured patients can seek such treatment. But it’s not ideal. ---
**Author:** ![pervert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbe5ce/32.png) [@pervert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pervert)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/59 "2004-06-05T21:07:14Z")
> [@](#): > > But people excluded from treatment can still seek it privately - which at least isn’t any worse than a private system where only heavily-insured patients can seek such treatment. But it’s not ideal. I’ve got a lot more to say later, but I have to address this one point. The private health care available in countries with universal health care is not as inexpensive as that here. It is fallacious to say that under a universal health care scheme there would still be private health care, so anyone wanting to pay could still get the same treatment. The market changes drastically when the government takes part in major sections of it. It is impossible right now for many to simply pay for medical care out of their own pocket because the government funds so much. I’ll expand on the principle later, but for now look at it this way. If you want to say that just as much private care will be available for those of us who want it under a universal health care system then you have to include how you are going to encourage enough extra hospitals, nurses, and doctors to enter the field under such a system. If you take over paying for medical care with the doctors which exist now, how will you provide the extra medical capacity needed to take up the extra patients without reducing care for everyone else. Unless your point is similar to **jshore** ’s that government rationing is somehow more fair than market rationing. But if that is the case, please don’t imply that universal coverage will provide the same care we have now while also caring for those out of the system. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2004, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690/60 "2004-06-05T21:39:14Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] [list] [li]Waiting Lists. This is inevitable. When you lower the cost for something, demand increases unless the demand is completely inelastic. .[/li][/QUOTE] How many times will I need to respond to your posts on this topic that “waiting list” can’t be “invevitable”, since they don’t exist in most countries with a public healthcare system?. If there were only _one_ public healthcare system without waiting list on the planet, your comment on it being “inevitable” would be false. And it happens that these are the _exception_, not the norm, in countries with public healthcare. If they make you _that_ unhappy, you might consider demanding that your government properly fund the system instead of stating over and over again that they’re “inevitable”. And (once again), contrarily to free bread or free cards, demand is unlikely to rise as a result of heart transplant being free. And finally, for someone who has a private health insurance, medical care is exactly as free as for someone who has a public healthcare insurance. So how is it that people with private healthcare insurances aren’t all abusing the system, spending all their time at the hospital or at their doctor’s, and that the private assurance schemes don’t collapse or reach ludicrous prices? There’s no reason to believe that someone covered by a public insurance scheme will behave differently that someone covered by a private insurance system. They’re both are exactly in the same situation, money-wise. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/side-effects-of-socialized-health-care/248690.md?page=4)