Typing, actually.
I don’t speak that way.
Funny story though, we spend more on education than Britain or Australia. Which would indicate very strongly that our education spending is not something that needs to be increased.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_edu_spe-education-spending-of-gdp
You also spend much more on medical care, and yet you only cover around 70% of your population, large amounts of spending simply does not equate to a good or comprehensive service - you has just hoist yourself on your own petard with that argument.
The US health system, if it can be called a system at all, is heavily subsidised by the rest of the world.
Oh yes, that’s right, and it’s true but you will never get a Libertarian to admit it.
The US sucks in medical professionals that have been expensively trained from all over the world and repays absolutely nothing to those nations that paid to train them.
Libertarians will then mention that this is free markets at work and that medical practitioners will go where the market will pay most for their skills - conveniently ignoring the fact that the reason that the US can pay more, is that it simply does not pay the full cost of providing medical care in the first place - by training enough competent people in the first place.
Yes, that’s right, poorer nations subsidise the US medical system, so that it can exclude a multitude of its own citizens from comprehensive coverage and inflate costs.
That’s the way of the world, the US poaches the best talent from the poorer EU, the EU poaches talent from the poorer Third World
Because the country doesn’t have comprehensive welfare, or UHC and people work like dogs?
Relative is the key word though. i.e. would the additional dollars in your pocket buy you more? the same? less?
How much would you end up paying directly out of pocket to cover those things that previously were covered by taxes?
If you live in Alaska and the Russians come marching over the border will your extra cash cover, say, an A10 or an F16? And those road potholes that appear when the thaw hits, have you got enough left to cover repairs?
I spend more on my personal transport system than my neighbour. Trouble is, he has a modest but practical BMW 4-door. And I have a platinum and emerald pogo-stick. Shiny, but a bugger get shopping home.
Forgive me, but I think I’d best ram the point home here. Spending a lot doesn’t mean what you bought is any good.
Quite true. We’re all fiscal conservatives now.
Depends on the province. In fact, in some provinces, it is illegal to provide, on a private basis, a medically necessary service that is provided by the public system. In some provicnes, furthermore, it is legal to do so but is illegal to charge more than the public system would pay, thereby making it effectively impossible to do.
Canada really has no significnat health insurance industry because the goverments of the provinces have made enough things illegal to kill it. (Obviously, dental insurance is going strong.)
What’s the status on compliance with the Quebec court case that said outlawing of private insurance for basic care was a violation of human rights?
I looked at that a few years back, just by memory I do remember that even I agreed that there should be the freedom to pay more for prompt or better care, but what I found out is that there are indeed now places that do offer private health care in Canada as a result of this case, but they are not becoming as important as many proponents thought.
There was a report that Canadians could expect just about 5 to 10% of the health care to eventually be provided by private institutions because as it turns out the efficiency and costs are still in favor of the current health care system.
I agree, but government health care works best when it’s accountable and nothing creates accountability better than the ability to easily get your health care elsewhere.
Why? Once you’re making claims on your (private) health insurance, you’re no longer making them as much profit. They don’t want to keep people who are actively using it.
So if you’re not happy with the benefits they’re giving you, they don’t mind if you leave. If you leave, you’ll be some other insurance company’s problem.
There’s no profit motive for the government. They can still be held accountable- but it’s very clear that accountability is *not *a motivation for private insurance.
I agree it doesn’t make private insurance accountable, but then most people aren’t going to use it. Just enough that the government won’t want to look bad in comparison. If the government has no competition, voters don’t know how to determine if the system is working or not. Many just assume it is. For example, almost all Brits know that their system gets better results than the US system, but few know that theirs is the worst performing of the wealthy European countries.
…hey man, are you going to stop just making stuff up and inventing facts out of no where? I’m sure that you are off to google right now to find some metrics where Britain is behind other wealthy European countries in healthcare, then everyone else will point out that you are reading the statistics wrong, you will ignore them, then you will do it again with another invented data point. Surely its time for you to concede that “yeah, you guys seem pretty happy with your system, it sure seems to work well, I’ll leave you guys to it!”
Its getting laughable watching you throw stuff in the air and hoping that it sticks. I’m not entirely sure what your obsession is with Britan and its healthcare system: but the thread is about “socialized medicine” and single payer systems and Britain isn’t the only country with UHC.
Name the stat that would convince you Britain is behind continental Europe in terms of health care and I’ll get it for you. This one is just too easy. C’mon, pick a stat, any stat. And after you’ve explained that one away, we can go to the next six which you can explain away.
…, I didn’t make the claim. YOU made the claim. You’ve already assumed the outcome and now your gonna go find evidence to prove it. That isn’t how critical thinking works.
And do you really think that one stat would convince anyone? It will take more than one datapoint to prove your assertion.
So here is the first stat that you need to find: prove that Brits don’t know where there healthcare stands in comparison to other European nations.
And see how you’ve changed “wealthy European countries” to “continental Europe”? Lets see how many more times your assertion changes until you can find the correct google hit to
'prove" your point.
If in fact we tax the poor at that rate, then we’re screwing up. At the moment, I don’t think we are, but I could be wrong; there is a history of deliberate disenfranchisement in the USA. But that would be partly a function of regressive taxation and largely a function of poverty, rather than a function of total tax rates. By the way, guess what people who are really poor (whether due to taxes or not) tend not to purchase with their discretionary income? Health care. So the people who are actually suffering privation in this country (and they do exist) are going without health care. And you want us not to treat this symptom of poverty why, again? To save them from privation?
See how you just shot your own argument down? Yes, the AMA are engaged in restraint of trade. They are also opposed to socialized medicine. They’re trying to drive up the price of care while providing less. And they should be dealt with. But that is the limiting factor that undermines the very ground of your argument that reduced prices will decrease the number of physicians.
A job as a physician is a good middle-income job that largely keeps up with inflation. That’s still going to be attractive when it’s also a public service job funded by the state, and thus less prone to market slowdowns. In fact, most of the money made by doctors in the USA is probably state subsidy, already. Cutting the amount of overcharge on the part of those doctors who don’t take Medicare now isn’t going to mess stuff up that much.
And our doctor supply is a real problem already, and we need a better plan to fix it than overcharging patients and driving the base of future demand into bankruptcy. Can you say “unsustainable”? We need to be training more doctors and nurses. But the so-called “supply-siders” didn’t bother with anything practical like that when they were in power. So so much for them.
I’m not; I found out what it really means.
Good.
Sounds like you are against it.
Let’s be clear. There are huge losses in these tradeoffs. There really really are. Enormous. Larger than a small country’s GDP. REALLY FREAKIN’ HUGE. Hundreds of billions of dollars huge.
And those losses are an externality to most voters, or even a gain. Because those losses are going to be taken by the private middlemen in health insurance. They lose a lot. A few very highly compensated doctors take big pay cuts. A rich minority face higher taxes. The rest of us win or hold even.
Your loss is my gain. 
What I’d love someone to do is compare the health care outcomes of Americans with insurance to UHC systems. If insured Americans have better health care than those in UHC systems, then it would prove that insured Americans would actually be giving something up in exchange for covering everyone.
Oh, and as for Britain:
25th in infant mortality
13th in life expectancy
And as covered before, dead last in cancer survival rates.
Now as for the other part of my argument, if Brits are indeed aware of these shortcomings, why are they not calling for imitating the systems of continental Europe, rather than bitterly clinging to their outmoded model of the government directly supplying health care?
More interesting tidbits:
The elderly are shifted from private coverage to medicare (plus supplements) and they use the most health care dollars.
The very sick become disabled and are shifted to medicare and they, too use much of our health care dollars.
Private insurers are basically cherry picking who they cover. When someone gets really sick
they usually lose their private insurance and end up with socialized health care. Private insurance
does not cover the people who need health care the most. The government does.