By legalizing drugs and socialized medicine being connected, I mean that I don’t think the government will want to legalize something that is unhealthy because it will only cause health care expenses to rise further.
I have a good idea… Before you screw with something as critical as health care, how about trying an experiment with something less important? Why don’t you socialize, say, footwear? Create a shoe tax, and have the government collect all the money, decide who needs shoes, who should make the shoes, and who should distribute them.
Do that for five years, and let me know how it worked out. If you can get better shoes for less money from the government after that time, go nuts on the medicine thing.
As for maintaining a ‘two-tier’ system… I don’t know how common it is, because I’m not that familiar with European health care systems. But I can tell you that once the government gets into the business of deciding who gets medical care, there will be great pressure to do away with a second tier for the wealthy. Constituents will complain that the rich get better treatment. See how your citizens like waiting in a line for a hip replacement for a year, while some rich guy rolls past them in his wheelchair to get his in a week. Wait until the newspaper article start showing up claiming that of all the doctors who went to medical school, 90% of the ones who got straight 'A"s are in private clinics, and the ‘C’ average boys are the ones doing public health care. Once you open this political Pandora’s box, it’s very hard to keep it halfway open.
Interestingly, the present UK govt has been dead-set on introducing ‘public-private partnership’ systems into public services, particularly into healthcare. And the reality on the ground is that with private organisations running the system, they do no better and often worse than regular NHS setups. The “private sector = efficiency” mantra has been throoughly discredited in the UK, and not just in healthcare.
So you just leave the ‘C’ boys working in the shitty hospitals but don’t tell anyone?
Well, I based that on a report that the local fox station did regarding people working on their own in Arizona. Very unfair that one woman found that if she had stayed in the corporation she was working before, that being slightly overweight would have still gotten her insurance, doing it on her own the premiums demanded to her were crazy, compared to the rates the corporation got from the same insurance company.
You need to expand your horizons:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2086511/
As for companies going away, I do think it is naive to pretend that health care costs are not a factor in their decision to move out of the U.S.
Then why do companies offer health care plans?
From an economic standpoint, your argument makes little sense. ANY benefit you offer to an employee gives you a competitive advantage over other equivalent employers who do not offer that benefit.
You’re leaving out an important test: It’s not just how good the shoes are, or how much they cost society, but also how many people who need shoes are able to get them.
I’m not convinced (based on real life examples of national health care, rather than thought experiments) that the overall quality of health care would go down, or the overall cost would go up, if we adopted such a system. However, even if it did, I’d still be willing to make that tradeoff if it meant people with crappy jobs would be able to get medical care outside of an emergency room.
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
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.
Despite a last-minute infusion of more than $8 million to prepare students for the tests, 11,700 of the city public school system’s 80,000 third graders scored in the lowest of four categories on their math or English tests, or on both, putting them below the cutoff for promotion and in danger of being held back. The proportion who scored in the lowest category was slightly lower than it was last year, but teachers and principals were given discretion then in deciding promotion and were able to consider several other factors, including class work. As a result, only 4,800 third graders were asked to repeat the grade.
BTW, the current budget per student yearly is $11,500 and I think the courts are forcing them to increase it substantially. Yeah, that oughta solve the problem…“If we could just have $20,000 per student then these programs will work.” :rolleyes:
As it happens, my dealings with the California DMV have always been rather smooth. The only time there was a problem was a couple of months ago, when I failed to apply for a duplicate title (because I lost my originals when I moved to Washington) after my tags had already expired. It took one “Statement of Fact” form and a 37-cent stamp to fix it. As for the WA Dept. of Licensing (DoL), my dealings with them have been exceptionally smooth and friendly.
Hi, my name is Sam, and I don’t understand how socialism works. Vote Bush!
Let’s start with something simple… like, say, the mail. Obviously, socializing the mail service would create an incredibly inept an inefficient system, and people would flock to private industry that could deliver each letter faster and cheape- Oh, wait…
OK… rail service! We can regul- Hm, damn.
OK, let’s do the opposite. Instead of socializing stuff, let’s go whild and privatize stuff! We can take all those utility companies and sell them off to the lowest bid- Oh, wait, DAMN. That didn’t work, either.
Conclusion: Um, socialism is bad, mmmkay.
No kidding? Who’da thunk it!
What kind of backwards ass country do you live in where it takes a year for hip replacement surgery? Hyperbole aside, come on.
See how other citizen who was sitting around in pain because his hip was f*ed and he couldn’t work even an entry level job anywhere waits a month and gets surgery! See him not give a flying fuck that Bill Gates got his in a week, because at least he got one! And without paying thousands in premiums, so he could feed his family!
As evidenced by the rage through Europe, when the Neo-Cons took to the streets and brought the People to the polls, enacting sweeping medicare privatization, because the People were fed up - FED UP - of their health care system!
Yeah. We’ll beat 'em up if they adopt the European system.
Peace,
mangeorge
I’m with Johnny on the DMV thing. I never have a problem, nor do I have to wait a long time. Especially if I make an appointment. I’ve never seen a clerk doing her nails, either. The DMV I go to a very busy one, too, in El Cerrito, CA.
On the OP;
Doesn’t the fact that demand for medical services goes down as the price goes up mean that a lot of people aren’t getting the health care they need?
Peace,
mangeorge
Short answer: yes. Sure, its unlikely that anybody thinks about the decisions they make in such terms. But the reality is that one of the most well-estalbished principles of economics in virtually every market and human action is this: people respond to incentives. People who use seatbelts drive more recklessly. People who live in societies where medical technologies exist that can easily cure a lot of conditions brought on by reckless behavior engage in more of it. This isn’t a good or a bad thing (though it can work out to be a good or bad thing in certain situations, measured by some more particular concept of good/bad), just a reality.
For instance, what do you think the effect of the wider and still growing availability and safety of stomach stapling surgery is going to be on people’s eating habits? It’s too soon to tell, but I’ll bet you 20$ the effect is obvious: an increase in obesity.
Gee Plan B, does the B stands for Bloomberg? 
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.
Like many times before, the foreign cites the opponents to health care reform pretend that prove their points do not really do so, on closer inspection, many times the parties in the examples are concluding that there will be changes, but they rarely advise to drop the entire system. or conclude that the American system would be better…
As a former EMT, I have the same gut reaction as you. But the contrarian/economist in me wants to really explore that idea. Healthcare is a good. Some people have more of some goods, some have less. This isn’t something we are going to change anytime soon, and it’s not entirely clear that, even if everyone had the same level of income, we’d even WANT to change it because people have different preferences. Larry might want to spend more money on healthcare than Joe, and Joe might want to spend more on a car with airbags when Larry prefers to save that money to support his cigarrette habit. At some point, we have to acknowledge that people with more money can, if they want, get better healthcare just like they can get better cars and so on. 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. But that emotional reaction is belied by the reality that people’s lives are at stake to a greater or lesser extent in virtually every case in regards to various goods: why are we singling out healthcare? What neighborhood you live impacts your lifespan, as does what you eat, how much you drive. In so many many cases, you can make yourself safer by spending more on safety and insurance. But the reality is that most people can’t afford to live as massively risk free as possible with current technologies: and even if they could, they would still prefer to spend their money on other things. And on top of that, we know very clearly that people DON’T act as if they believe living longer was the be all and end all goal to be maximized.
Now, along with that, I should note that Americans in general have a very “heroic” centered concept of helping others. That is, if there’s some major emergency that can be quickly corrected by an application of heroic dering do, we’re all for it. Emergency rooms: you MUST treat all that come through your doors if their life is at stake! We don’t like to pay for the care of others generally: but if there’s an exciting, dire situation, we’re willing to make an exception, even to spend millions of dollars on saving a nobody with no money.
And yet, we give exceedingly short shrift to things like preventative medicine: even though they would PREVENT many of these heroic disasters at a MUCH LOWER COST.
Inexplicably, in this country we are willing to subsidize extremely expensive proceedures like emergency room care, but we aren’t willing to do the same for far less expensive things that would prevent the larger expenses. In fact, this attitude seems fairly pervasive: if there’s something to be done that’s quick, fast, and incredibly expensive, we seem to prefer that option to something that’s much more subtle, proven to work, and far far cheaper. I’m not sure how we solve that particular problem: but boy is it weird!
Let’s put it this way: there are many factors that could cause a national healthcare system to both increase AND decrease the amount that people cost the nation in healthcare costs. Moral Hazard would tend to increase it, and of course nationalizing it would of course mean the nation would be paying out of taxes. But increased availability of preventative medicine would tend to decrease the amount people would need to spend on healthcare. How does it all shake out: darned if I know. But my suspicion is that Sam’s suspicions is closer to the reality than most other people’s here.
Hi, my name is Sam, and I don’t understand how socialism works. Vote Bush!
Hi, my name is Zagadka, and I like to make personal attacks in forums where they don’t belong!
You mean like Fed Ex? Or UPS? Or E-mail? Or how about the fact that it’s illegal to compete with the post office for certain types of mail delivery? And are you sure you really want to hold up the post office as an example of excellent service and efficiency?
Yeah, that Amtrak is sure setting the world on fire, huh?
Didn’t work in California, because they did it in a very idiotic way. In Canada, we’re busy privatizing all kinds of things, including our air traffic control system.
You know, if you’d bother to read my cite rather than focusing your efforts on cheap shots, you might see that it’s a link to the government of Alberta’s official waiting list registry. Go ahead and follow the link and browse around looking at the length of wait for ‘quality of life’ type operations. I’ll wait here for the retraction about my ‘hyperbole’.
Oh, hell. Here’s the current waiting times for hip replacement in Edmonton, by facility:
Miseracordia Hospital: 51 weeks
Royal Alexandra Hospital 39 weeks
University of Alberta hospital: 42 weeks
Here’s the current waiting list for an MRI scan:
Grey Nuns Hospital: 22 weeks
**Miseracordia Hispital: ** 27 weeks
Royal Alexandra Hospital: 35 weeks
University of Alberta Hospital: 35 weeks
These numbers, by the way, are the number of weeks it took to service 90% of all people seeking such services. I wonder how long the unlucky 10% had to wait?
And if you think Canada is an aberration, it’s not. And if you think it’s only for elective surgery, it’s not. Let’s look at the waiting lists in Britain: This article This should scare the daylights out of you:
Can you imagine being diagnosed with cancer, and having to wait TWO MONTHS after your GP refers you to an oncologist? I have a friend in the U.S. who was just diagnosed with cancer. She is not rich, she lives in California (which I understand has a lot of problems in the health care system), and she is managed by an HMO. After her GP suspected she had cancer, he applied for a CT scan. She had it within a week. The CT showed a mass, and she was on an operating table in less than two weeks. She had a malignant adrenal carcinoma, which is very aggressive and fast growing. They got the whole thing out, and she now has a 30% five-year survival rate. If she were in Britain or Canada, she would be DEAD. After the operation, BTW, she had an oncologist follow up immediately, and within 3-4 weeks after discharge from hospital she had a followup with a specialist in adrenal cancer, which is a very rare form of cancer.
Again, from the Canadian perspective this level of treatment is outstanding. And my wife is a nurse and has a very good perspective on this stuff.
Before you guys go marching off towards socialized medicine, you’d better understand what it is you may be giving up.
Like… a private medical insurance company?
Oh, OK. Whose story do you want, my mother’s or father’s? Both spent YEARS being JERKED AROUND by these nutjobs, being changed from doctor to doctor because the doctors kept recommending expensive surgeries. When they finally collapsed - after YEARS of pain and suffering (my mother is a photographer, and her injury was her right elbow - a chip of bone broke off and got lodged in the joint. This took them TWO YEARS to determine. My father had his hip replaced when he was 16, in 1968. Over time, it needed to be replaced again, as calcium and other buildups were making it excruciatingly painful for his job as a mechanic, which involves a lot of bending and lifting). Anyway, after years of being shuffled around experts and having probes and preliminaries, after YEARS of sitting there for HOURS each day on the telephone demanding to speak to supervisors, they both finally got their surgeries. With co-pays, of course. And y’know what? The TOP EXPERT private surgeon used by the insurance company fed up my father’s. A surgery he looked at as the future to a life of full mobility was shot to fing hell. NOW they find out that he has nerve damage. Insurance company says, tough shit, you’re screwed. Now we get to spend more years - while he is suffering and can barely walk with a cane, and is working half time - fighting the god damn insurance company to get more surgery approved.
Do you want my uncle’s? Marathon runner. Hard worker. Father of 4. Injures his back, loses his job. Wife divorces him. Doens’t have insurance. Now sees his kids on the weekends and lives off of disability.
Or do you want my story? I’m schizophrenic. I have severe social anxiety disorder. I can’t leave the house without being sedated. I can hardly hold down a job, now can I. But since I’m no longer a student, and now 25, I will no longer be covered by my father’s insurance, and guess what? I’M SCREWED. You get it? If not for my parents, I’d be one of those crazy f*ing homeless people talking to a wall you’re spitting on and calling a lazy slob who needs a job. No meds. No therapy. No hospitalization. NOTHING.
As it stands, I was blessed with a full 6 days of partial hospitalization by my insurance carrier last week, that expired today, and I got a 3 day extension. I’m living through this day by day. Sit around hospitals in group and individual therapy all day. Come home. Be taken everywhere by “the van”. Sit around reading and posting on the damn SDMB.
Yea, private healthcare is the eighth wonder of the f*ing world.
You think I’m a little passionate in this post? You bet your god damned ass I am.
You think my situation is rare? Fake a 5150 and spend some time in a mental hospital. And those are the ones WITH insurance. Go to the back side of your local “normal” hospital, to the psych admit ward, and sit in the lobby for 8 hours. Watch the bevy of people they drag in, medicate, and let loose again. I’ve done it, not by choice, but because I’ve BEEN ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE.
You think we are alone? There are 43.6 MILLION - MILLION Americans without ANY health insurance. That is 15%. And that excludes those on medicare:
Five years ago, yea, I was like you. Yea, I sat there and said, “socialized medicine is wrong, the level of care drops, blah blah.” Five years ago, I was a flag waving young Republican. I still have an American flag hanging in my room, and I have for 12 years, since I earned it at my Eagle Scout ceremony when I was 13. I would have done you proud, Sam.
Amazing how much 5 years and a little personal experience can revolutionize your outlook on life, isn’t it?
Fourty three point six million. 43,600,000. PEOPLE. INDIVIDUALS.
Yea, take your god damn faster lines and rich doctors. I’ll draw my own f*ing line, over here with the people of this country who have been screwed around by private medical insurance for decades. We are the unwanted, the unwashed masses. We are the people you drive by on your way through the city and try to ignore. The people who don’t have a chance to go to private schools, whose public schools are shit. The people who private industry screws around.
The people you forget about, pretend don’t exist.
On behalf of each and every one of those people, we deserve more. More than you have offered, more than you can offer. We need basic medical care for every man, woman, and child in this country. We need to be able to stand up and say, "we don’t leave anyone behind. We grab our less fortunate brothers and sisters by the elbow and help them up from the dirt. We care mor about our national identity, our national safety, our national health, than we do about a bottom line and increased profits. We are a great nation, and we care for our people.
If we can’t say that… I don’t want to be an American.
If you’ve read this far, thank you, this has been very personal for me, and I’ve had to stop writing several times. I’m sure many of you will think this is over the top and melodramatic, but this is literally life or death for me. But thank you for at least reading all of it, instead of skimming it and brushing it aside as some liberal whining. The past five years shook me to my core on this issue. I saw the front lines of this battle, and it isn’t pretty. So yes, I do take it very personally when you say no to this. No, I have no idea how I will live come September, when I won’t be able to afford my meds anymore. Yes, that scares the shit out of me more than a horde of terrorists, not only for me, but because this path is well trod, and this country has failed. Failed its millions of people. And I am serious. I, someone who bought into the ideal of a perfect America as much as anyone on the planet 5 years ago, I don’t want to be an American anymore. I may not be, come September. I may have to flee this great country for better opportunity.
As a matter of fact, I wait considerably longer (30 - 60 min.) at my HMO with an appointment than I do (5 - 15 min) at the DMV with an appointment.
I don’t know, for sure, what that means. Do I? I know it’s not the doctors fault. She (or sometimes he) is as busy as hell.
Other stuff;
Purchase rebate = 4 - 6 weeks. Or never. Tax refund = 2 weeks. Less, actually.
Mail = $0.37, 2-3 days. Hard to compare, but 2-3 days by other = coupla bucks.
I can’t think of any others to compare right now. Anybody? Any comparisons that actually favor private enterprise? Careful, now. No corporate double-talk.
Pandora’s Box? How about a can of worms.
Peace,
mangeorge
While this is certainly possible, I don’t think that applies across the board when talking about health care. Sure, if you gave away free plasma TVs, I’m there. On the other hand, if my dentist became free, I’d hardly be lining up at his door on a weekly basis. In fact, I’d go just as often as I do now, which is once a year, or when there is an emergency. Same goes for doctors. I’m not going to cough while someone grabs private parts every week, just because it doesn’t cost me anything. So, while I’d not go to the doctor any more often than I do now, at least those who couldn’t afford coverage or good coverage could go when they needed to, which some would argue saves money in the long run. An ounce of prevention and all that…
Our health care system currently sucks, and is going downhill fast. A large majority of the folks working at the company I work for make 6 figures (tech firm), yet our best health care plan pays a maximum of 15K in yearly benefits, and we actually pay a decent sum of money for this. I’m one of those people who would happily pay my own way for standard health care, but want coverage for those emergencies that only the richest of the rich could pay for without going broke. Ten years ago, my company’s policy covered up to two million per year, cost much less than what I pay now, and I made a fourth of the money I make now. This is for someone who is VERY WELL OFF, so it’s certainly no picnic for those who are unemployed or underpaid.
Come on, Sam. The only real restriction is that the others aren’t allowed to put mail in mailboxes, and I read that they don’t want to. Do you really think one of those are going to take a letter from my house to yours?
Talk about prohibited competition. Ask the airline lobby about this one.
BTW; there are a couple very successful Amtrak corridors.