Since politicians lately have announced plans for a national health care systems, fears over socialized medicine have reappeared. Is socialized medicine really as bad as people say it is. For example, I’ve heard stories of people who die waiting for surgeries and those who die because of rationing medicines. There are fears that the goverment will become the one who determines who lives or dies. Is socialized medicine really something to fear?
I read such stories on this board. I don’t know whether or not they’re true. But anyway, as I already writen several times here, people can die waiting for surgery only in countries were there are actually waiting lists for surgery. Until know, I only heard of such waiting lists in the UK and Canada (though there could be others I don’t know about). There are plenty of countries with a public healthcare system and no waiting lists.
And the plain remedy to the “waiting list” issue is probably to spend a bit more on the public healthcare system.
A public health system (I’m not going to use the word “socialized” since that seems to be such a bad word in the US) is a wonderful thing, and I’d hate to live without it.
Among the advantages:
[ul]
[li] You never need to worry about not getting treated if you’re ill. If you’re sick, you can go to hospital, and you don’t get a bill at the end of it. [/li][li] If you really don’t want to go to a public hopital, there are plenty of private hospitals around. You are quite free to have private health insurance if you want it, and from what I hear, it doesn’t seem to be any more expensive than the US version[/li][li] The existence of universally available health care seems to have kept employers out of the health insurance biz (I only know one person who has employer-provided health insurance, and such a thing has never been offered by any of my jobs). This reduces the amount of leverage employers have over employees. I’ve heard a number of times on these boards and elsewhere people stressing about not wanting to leave their otherwise-crappy jobs and get a better one “because I’d lose my health insurance”. Wouldn’t happen here.[/li][/ul]
There certainly are waiting lists in the public system for non-essential operations (hip replacements spring to mind) - but then, anyone who didn’t want to wait and could afford it could simply get private insurance or pay for a private operation. And if you couldn’t afford that, you would be waiting for your operation forever, rather than just a couple of years, which I fail to see is an improvement!
I’m pretty confident, too, that countries with universal health care need to spend less on health than countries without (no stats to hand, but I’m sure I could dig something up) which is another big advantage
Yeah, remember that plenty of people cannot get essential medicines or surgeries under a private healthcare system.
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/universal.htm#heal
That was in 1990 though. i think its closer to 15% in the US now, i have no idea what other countries pay.
Aspidistra in Canada we’d call that a 2 tier system and likely burn you at the stake. Which speak volumes about the Canadian system, when you think about it.
A mix of public and private health care is likely the best way to go. When governments take over health care funding they tend to want to take over health care providing, as they wish to minimize the amount of tax money going in. This drives central planning and locks the government into a position where their flexibility of the health issue is gone. Too many people rely on it for their health, jobs etc.
There is also the issue of costs. It seems that health cost rise faster than tax revenues leading to ever increasing percentages of the tax stream feeding health care to the exclusion of education or other governmental matters. What happens when you no longer have enough money to pay for everyone’s expensive treatments?
Grey What is wrong with the government providing health care? My wife recently went to a non-private hospital to give birth. The whole process of dealing with the hospital was without fault. I could not think how it could have been better in terms of facilities and service.
Any other contact I have had with non-private hospitals has been great. I know this is just one person - but there you go.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: No. The myth of the Big Bad Socialized Medical System has been perpetuated in the United States by the health care industry and various politicians, who are out to protect their own interests. According to the latest figures from the Center for Disease Control, around 14% of Americans (39.4 million people) have no health insurance of any kind whatsoever, including Medicare or Medicaid.
If you define “a good health care system” as providing affordable, basic medical service for as many citizens as possible, the United States routinely gets spanked by countries with “socialized medical systems,” including Canada and Cuba(!). Similarly, according to the World Health Organization, the United States overall ranks 37th out of 191 countries in providing health care for its citizens – behind Columbia (22nd), Norway (11th), Singapore (6th), and France (1st).
Socialized medicine is not a panacea, and it’s certainly not cheap – but if you’re truly concerned about keeping as many Americans as healthy as possible, it’s better than what we’ve got now.
(Semi-amusing anecdote: One of the segments for Michael Moore’s now-defunct TV Nation television show was the “Health Care Olympics,” pitting hospitals in the United States, Canada, and Cuba in a competition to treat a patient with a broken bone. In treating the problem quickly and with minimal cost to the patient, Cuba won, followed by Canada, and the United States came in last. However, NBC refused to air the segment in its original form, saying that the United States could not be shown losing to Cuba – so it was edited with Canada the winner, followed by the U.S. and Cuba. Maybe someone was worried about sparking an exodus of Americans fleeing to Cuba…?)
Actually I’m very much in favour of the “public” part of the current system remaining as strong as possible - the current government is currently trying to get as many people as possible to take up private health insurance (with mixed success) but I’m very happy with giving it a miss (even though at some points I could have actually saved money by doing so)
The public system in Oz is indeed a public hospital system, not a public insurance system. Public hospitals are state owned/run
Am I understanding you correctly - there are no private hospitals in Canada at all? Or if I’m wrong in that, then how does the Canadian system differ from ours?
(my last postthat was a reply to Grey by the way, in case that wasn’t clear)
I’ve grown up in a country with free healthcare, standard prescription costs plus free prescriptions, dentistry and orthodontics for the under 18s.
It’s not perfect, but at least the sickest, rather than the richest, get treated first.
The poorest people will always have the worst health, sick people can’t work. For those reasons alone it should be obvious why the people who are treated worst by a private health system, are the ones who need it most.
Can somebody answer a rather ignorant question for me… If an American is seriously injured, his next of kin cannot be traced and he is unconscious - it cannot be established whether he has health insurance, what happens?
They treat him for whatever they can figure out is wrong with him.
The emergency room docs and surgeons do what is absolutely necessary to stabilise them and if they don’t have medical insurance they send them a bill after the fact. (Sometimes said bills cause heart attacks because of the exorbant cost of healthcare and so cause yet ANOTHER bill… you can see the problem here right?)
Two points:
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We already have healthcare rationing in the USA. It’s just done by who can afford insurance as opposed to some other system.
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SOME form of public healthcare is coming. Health care can’t continue to consume an ever growing percentage of GDP without something popping.
Question:
Is it possible that insurance is providing the growth of health care costs itself through the pooling of risk to pay higher costs? Have we de-incentivized the industry from finding cheaper, more efficient means to acheive health care goals since, with private insurance, cost is no object to the consumer of health care services?
What happens if he can’t (or won’t) pay the bill?
Mangetout-
Then he goes to collections and assets could be seized, wages garnished, bankruptcy could be forced, etc.
It’s just as if any other debt wasn’t paid.
A hospital in the US can’t deny someone critical care but they CAN force payment.
I think it tends to mask the issue since it does spread the cost around. As premiums and (especially) deductibles rise, that does send pricing info to the consumer, though. Of course, since most people get their insurance thru work without any direct payment, that does further mask the whole pricing mechanism even further.
I’d like to point out that doesn’t happen often. Hospital debts are often settled for less than the amount owed if the person is in real financial hardship (if you can’t pay because the mortgage on your new beach house and the payments for the new BMW are too high, you’re out of luck). A payment plan is another way to go.
In some circumstances, a hospital may just waive the bill altogether.
It’s impossible to make a blanket statement about these things.
Not exactly like if any other debt wasn’t paid. It’ll go to collections, but because of the way health care debts are regulated, if the person pays anything at all on a regular basis (such as $5 a month), no matter how big the bill is, then forcing bankruptcy, garnishing wages, and seizing possessions is not an option for the hospital. I’ve known several people who have done this when they couldn’t afford to pay the whole bill or even make large payments on it.