The same is true in the US. Does my citing that my insurance is awesome prove that the US system is superior?
The nature of failure of health care delivery systems is that you don’t know they suck until you’ve been failed, at which point you probably won’t be in any condition to tell us about it.
No it isn’t. What would happen to an 80 year old uninsured man in the United States?
…why don’t you ask the massive pools of people who either don’t have insurance or have insurance but not enough?
Well duh. What does that have to do with the conversation?
…lags in comparision to Australia, Canada, Sweden, Denmark and Norway. How does it compare to the US?
What on earth are you talking about? Where is this made up pap? What has this got to do with union guys and gold plated plans? What is this rubbish about dumping people into the same pools? You’ve written a load of nonsense.
No, it’s just that those actually living under those systems know better. The only people who ever argue against UHC are libertarians who have never lived under such a system, and that is because they have no fucking idea what they are talking about.
Yes. Behind 4 other countries with very similar UHC systems. You also didn’t mention whether or not the objection other people have brought up (the USA data being skewed by ignoring cancer cases that go completely ignored) is correct or not. And even then, that’s one disease in one country. It could be simply a statistical abberation. Maybe the UK is just bad at dealing with cancer compared to other countries – that’s what it looks like when you notice that it lags significantly behind other UHC countries, not just the USA. Also, where is the statistic for the USA again?
Cozy gold-plated plans? Man, I dunno which planet you live on, but where I come from, benefits (even for unions) have been slashed in almost every field, and we just passed a law that prevented health care providers from completely screwing people over. And even then, UHC doesn’t preclude private health care. Those union guys can keep their gold-plated plans.
I see, just those advantage eh?
What you do need to understand is that all the benefits of UHC are in addition to the ability to pay for private treatment. Yes, the treatment available to wealthy Americans is equally available to those in the UK willing to pay for additional private policies. (which are still cheaper than in the US).
Of course not too many choose that route because the NHS is good enough for the majority of us and deals with our mundane ailments and catastrophes very well (and at no charge). But should we wish we can pay extra.
So the well-off have access to all the gold-plating that you do in the US, *PLUS *universal coverage of a slightly less dazzling nature open to everyone.
And all at a cost per capita less then the USA. (and the NHS is by no means the only or best model of UHC but it is a damn good try)
So I’m not seeing who is losing out under UHC, can you elaborate?
No, I think the fantasy suiff is restricted to anti-UHC types. UHC simply works. You can cherry pick data here and there, but countries with UHC spend less and people live longer.
You should spend a moment to reflect on why you oppose UHC so much that you have to actively look for data that supports your pre-conceived bias. Is it really worth letting the country go bankrupt and have people die to support your libertarian fantasies?
You seem to equate UHC with the UK only. As well as being 20 years after the fact, the article you cite lists four countries that performed better than the UK, and three of them were UHC models.
At that time, UK GDP spending on healthcare was was sub 8%. GDP itself has grown exponentially in the interim, and healthcare was also prioritised for over a decade with historic levels of investment, bring the annual rate to sub 10% of GDP.
“Privation due to heavy tax burdens” is simply not a feature of modern liberal democracy. No one ever suffers privation due to heavy tax burdens. You may as well worry about an epidemic of people being accidentally smothered by Band-Aids. It’s nonsense.
Oh, man, now I want that in my sig.
I want to clarify this. I seem to recall, there was a British pol not long ago who talked about dismantling NHS. The Tories had to distance themselves from that screwball.
But there are Brits who actually think that way. They are children of wealth and privilege who have been able to “top up” and buy their way past the care given to commoners, because Britain does not outlaw private care; And they are the particularly stupid (and thankfully rather small) proportion of the ruling class who don’t understand the natural popularity of the system, because they don’t see how they need it, they aren’t considering how others need it, and they take too much for granted. They are few and they are ridiculous.
I just want a sig. ;_;
The shorthand version to this can now be: ‘Olympic Opening Ceremony’.
Sometimes, when people on here refer to ‘socialized medicine’ - like they didn’t go to ‘socialized’ schools, it almost feels there’s an implication UHC has been imposed on the rest of the developed world and only the USA has avoided the yoke of oppression.
The reality is the rest of the develped world is also democratic and populations have a choice - the only developed country that has not given a choice is the USA.
Fwiw, I really hope the working and middle class people of the USA one day enjoy what most in the developed world are proud of and even consider their birth right.
The only people that lose out under UHC are
Those who are emotionally invested in anti-statist philosophies
individuals and groups that may see their income drop under a UHC system (pharma, certain specialists, etc).
Most of the criticisms can be traced back to one of those two groups.
If you’re saying UHC is a choice people express through their vote, then Americans are given that choice every two years. Anytime they want they could elect a slate of candidates to Congress who promised to implement real UHC. They keep choosing otherwise.
So let’s see if I understand this. Someone can be driven to malnutrition by housing costs that make up 50% of their income, but a tax burden of 50% can’t possibly be the culprit?
And BTW guys, I’m not against UHC. What I am against is used car sales jobs. “Oh, you’re health care will be just as good as your current insurance!” “No, it won’t cost you extra, it’ll even be cheaper!” “You’ll never be denied access to care like your insurance company does!” “You’ll never have to wait if your problem is actually important!”
There is no free lunch. All systems have tradeoffs. It is ridiculously easy to refute UHC supporters because they go right into the argument denying the existence of tradeoffs. That’s not only wrong, it’s three-year old logic.
The trade offs, overwhelmingly, are on the provider side of the equation. Doctors don’t tend to make as much, especially specialists. Insurance companies, of course, tend not to make such astronomical profits. There is some slow down in pharmaceutical innovation, as old drugs remain profitable and newer versions of old drugs aren’t so easy to sell when you only have one customer.
I’m not sure if my salary as a nurse would go down, or not; it’s not something I’ve ever considered. I honestly don’t care, if it means I can get health insurance for myself and I wouldn’t have to turn people away because they don’t have the right insurance plan. I’d be happy to take a pay cut if it came with health care for you.
Unless your feelings are unanimous, the reduction in benefits for being a doctor will result in fewer doctors than there would otherwise be. That’s economics 101. So you get fewer providers and more patients. That impacts patients.
There’s a reason that we keep on putting off the Medicare provider cuts that were imposed in the 90s. Because if we do that, it’s recognized that it won’t just affect providers. It will also affect patients.
In addition, we were assured by the administration that the Medicare Advantage cuts wouldn’t affect patients. Except the administration doesn’t actually beleive that, which is why they are putting off the cuts until after the election.
Provider cuts affect patients. There’s no way around that.
I can’t claim to have spoken to every single health care provider in the US, of course. As of March 2008 (the last year I can find number for) 59% of doctors supported a national healthcare system, up from 49% in 2002. “The Indiana survey found that 83 percent of psychiatrists, 69 percent of emergency medicine specialists, 65 percent of pediatricians, 64 percent of internists, 60 percent of family physicians and 55 percent of general surgeons favor a national health insurance plan.”
Support is widespread among specialties, perhaps not always for single payer, but some sort of government intervention to mandate coverage and assist low income individuals with paying for it.
American College of Physicians:
American Academy of Family Physicians:
American Academy of Pediatrics (endorsement):
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists:
And, of course, the Physicians for a National Health Program are very clear that they do want, point blank, a single payer national healthcare program:
Sadly, the American Medical Association is still a hold out, I do admit.
What providers want is for the US government to subsidize their businesses. Health care for all means more customers. They are willing to take a hit on per customer profit, but they would not accept a hit to overall profit.
So then we agree that we need not worry too much that: “the reduction in benefits for being a doctor will result in fewer doctors than there would otherwise be.”?