We can’t have socialized medicine in the United State- our insurance premiums will go through the roof and a bunch of unelected bureaucrats will be making our helath care decisions for us. :mad:
I’ll just make the same point I always make; find me anyone – rich, poor, whatever - who has lived with universal healthcare in any country anywhere in the world who thinks it’s a bad system.
I’m not saying absolutely everyone will endorse the system, but it’s overwhelmingly popular.
And I just don’t get if the principle - not always the practice, because its a political football, but the principle - is good enough for the public school system, why not healthcare ?
Absolute rubbish, the bold part,and this has no place in a factual debate.
Who do you think pays the wages of all those hundreds of thousands of hospital staff ?
These costs have to be met through taxation, and many prescription drugs actually cost significantly less than the flat fee that is charged for them.
Our health service is only used as political capitol because it is such a significant issue in our everyday lives, as such it is a hot button topic, but when you truly look at the cost per person, and look at the population coverage you find that the UK health service is cheaper to run than the hotchpotch in the US.
pkbites
Why should anyone describe you and your life as more deserving than that of another ?
Lets see if we can work this out using the slippery slope argument.
First, let us deny treatment to those who we decide are undeserving, who should those be and who should decide.
Well, perhaps that should be part of an election issue, vote for the package that presses your buttons.
OK, so we say maybe criminals, beggars, unemployed, drug users and a list that include others too should be included as being denied effective treatment.
Well since you are such a hard working professional, how about your parents, your brother, maybe your wife’s sister, every family has an errant individual.
So how will you argue that maybe one of your work colleagues sons deserves crap medical treatment ?
These wasters are not contributiing to the ‘greater good’, so perhaps we should also include folk who are mentally deficient, maybe none of us should keep pets, they don’t contribute to the overall good either.
What about those unpleasant individuals who worked hard, but their company went down along with their medical isurance, surely noone would ever miss those.
Those gay people who keep getting that AIDS thing, or anyone else who indulges in risky behaviour, they couldn’t possibly afford the treatment, so let them die, along with the overweight who should pay much more or those born with genetic preponderance to certain very expensive illnessess.
So what we do is just let everyone pay for the health care they can afford, and if they cannot afford the cover for some conditions, well that’s tough why should they soak up from those who can.
There has been a study in the UK completed and reported upon in our media, it states that those who live in the more prosperous regions of the UK live up to nine years longer than those in the poorer regions, without universal healthcare this figure would almost certainly increase, social divide would become greater, we would probably become more combative and competitive, and nasty, it would become a dog eat dog country, just like the good old US.
This viewpoint makes no sense to me. Western nations with national health care pay less per capita on health care than does the US. Why do you think premiums will go up if health care were nationalized in some way? And why do you prefer than insurance co bean counters make your health care decisions rather than govt bureaucrats? In my experience with the systems in both the US and Canada, govt bureaucrats interfere with doctors’ decisions to a far lesser degree than insurance companies do, though the system is still far from perfect. Admittedly, I’m biased, but I prefer living under our system to yours, having experienced both of them.
What about those of us who were working part/full time and still couldn’t afford insurance?
What about when people get laid off, through no fault of their own?
H’uh? What about people who are too sick to work, or who have “pre-existing conditions” that insurance won’t cover, even though it’s a life or death situation?
Good god, how can we be so cold?
I could say this about a million different things that our taxes pay for. Sorry, not impressed.
What about people who have insurance through their workplace, but it’s not very good insurance? They can’t afford to go somewhere else, and as for “get another job”, hello? Look at the freaking economy! Unemployment isn’t always a choice, and I resent the HELL out of people who say it is!
:mad: Okay, I’m sorry, but I’m shaking here now. This is a VERY sore spot for me
Your health may depend on the “piece of shits well being.” TB was almost eliminated in the U.S., but lack of healthcare for the worthless meant that, not only is TB still around, there are now antibiotic-resistant forms that could kill someone economically justified like yourself. What if something SARS-like pops up among those uninsured parasites? They could spread it to real people before meeting their just desserts.
The only answer is for you to patrol your neighborhood with a .30-.06*, watching for people who look uninsured. Or you could realize that giving a shit about others is called “enlightened self-interest,” and is the basis of society. Your call, guy.
*'cause its got the range to whack the unisured before they can contaminate nice people.
Ok, I have not read everything here, but as to why should there be National health care, (asside from the the moral issues which we all clearly do not agree on): Because it is cheaper!
The average working insured joe is still paying on the order of $50-$100 a month in health insurance. As a freelance I have to find my own insurance which is a lot more expensive ($350/month, don’t ya just love NY). All health insurance works under the principle that most of us do not need thousands of dollars worth of healthcare eery year. On the average you pay more to your healthinsurance company then you would pay in Dr. bills. But should you be in an accident, or get sick you are covered, because all the other working joes are paying there health insurance and have not been in major accidents and are thus paying for you to be in the hospital. The larger the pool of insured the cheaper the cost per person.
Now add to that the fact that insurance companies are very much for-profit businesses. So a certain amount of the $50-$100 per person is going into profit.
So now imagine all of america is insured, all 250,000 of us, by one non profit organization (the state). Suddenly the cost of healthcare becomes an average of about $20/month a person, you working joe pay less money for health care. As a return for this service, and because it is easier to cover everyone, then keep track of who does and does not get coverd, 225,000 of us pay $25/month (rather then $20) to cover those who do not pay anything.
How is that for a purly self-interested reason for national-health care
I am sorry Gorsnak, That was a lame attempt at being facetious. The mad smiley :mad: in my drive-by threw you off. I was just making fun of the doomsday warnings made by conservatives back when HillaryCare was debated 10 years ago. ISTM we now have the costs of HillaryCare, without the benefits.
Actually, I pretty well agree with you. The way things stand now, insured [and the employers of the insured] are already subsidising the uninsured [and the employers of the employed uninsured].
How am I jacking up the insurance costs of others? If I have to see a doctor, I pay for it with this thing called “cash”. Maybe you’ve heard of it. When my brother broke his hand, they payed for it with this “cash” as well.
This focus on health insurance as if it’s a necessity seems to be relatively new. What did people do who were injured or needed treatment 50 years ago, before it became commonplace for health insurance to be part of every job package from executives all the way down to bagboys?
Insurance is supposed to be for the unforseen emergency, the unlikely disaster that might strike. Most people who buy insurance are supposed to end up paying more into the plan than they get in benefits, that’s how insurance works, that’s why those companies can stay in business. For most people, health insurance is a net loss.
I’d say my family was unlucky to have ended up with a costly injury during the period they were uncovered, statistically that probably shouldn’t have happened.
I really don’t understand the vitriolic nature of this debate. In what way does your need for something allow you to use force to get it from someone else? I don’t understand how you can measure the healcare system in this country and say that it is so inadequate that we need to enslave all of our doctors to fix it
It seems to me that medical care is just like any other service. No one suggests that we should have a nationalized food production system (at least not seriously for the last few decades). Why do we insist on treating it as some kind of entitlement just because people need it?
Seriously. Obviously, there is a certain amount of health care which is in my best interest for everyone to have. That is, a certain level of health care (a safety net if you will) is in everyone’s best interest. But this does not extend to any and all actions which could save a person’s life. And it certainly does not mean that we do anything possible to save someone.
I think that our insistance on treating health care as an entitlement prevents us from thinking of health care (at least for the indigent) as charity. Why can we not simply set up charities to provide health care for indigent people? Broomstick why does being “at the mercy of the kindness of strangers” have such a stigma attached to it? Why do you feel the need to take my money by force to prevent you from ending up this way?
Yes, but do they really get the same care? I saw your earlier mention of this and that you allowed that infant mortality and longevity may not be the best measures of health care quality. How about waiting lists for non tranplant surgeries? How about lability of expensive diagnostic equipment? If we grant that people in the US pay more for medical care, where is the proof that said care is the same as that recieved elsewhere? It might be interesting to note how much of our longevity and general good health (especially as compared to earlier times) is a result of sewage treatment and food production / distribution advancements. We might find that medical care (that is treatments provided by doctors contribute very little to such statistics). And, while we are examining the validity of longevity statistics, It should be noted that recent increases in infant mortality rates are partly due to INCREASES in our ability to save babies. Specifically, some babies which might have simply been considered fetal deaths were able to survive long enought to be considered live births instead.
As to your second question, you missed the point altogether. I preffer the I make my health care decisions. I want to choose which insurer I use. I want to choose which doctor I see. And I want to have the final say on which procedures are performed. If I need a procedure that I cannot afford I will certainly not be knocking on your door to steal the money for it. All I ask in return is that you extend me the same regard.
One more thought on health care costs:
Iva, you might want to check out the companies’ portion of each of those workers insurance costs. True, the worker may only be contributing a small share, but the company typically makes up the rest (or negotiates for some lowered costs through quantity). I think you’ll find (unless these workers are in very large comapnies indeed) that the actual costs are not that different. I have never noticed that much difference myself.
Interesting article on a small part of Canada’s healt care system.
Do Canada’s doctors like the system?
Finally, I have a question to ask, especially to those of you who “do not want people dying in the streets”. If you are so sure that this is the prevalent attitude in the country, why does participation in your socialized medicine plan du jour have to be mandatory? Why not establish a private insurance/charity company? Everyone who wants to support indigent people’s medical care could join. The rest of us would be free to negotiate individually, in concert (via HMO), or through insurance companies for doctors services. Doctors would be free to participate in either scheme. My questions (all of them probably) boil down to why do you guys insits on using force for this?
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Actually, we do have a nationalized food production sytem, city slicker.
If I can’t quit my job without endangering the life of my kids, how “free” am I free? If I can’t switch careers because I can’t risk being uninsured, society is poorer (literally) as a result.
As I said before, the answer to your last question is “enlightened self-interest.” If society has doomed me to die because I’m uninsured, what interest do I have in society? What’s to stop me from pullin’ a “John Q” (remember that stinker?), or join the freakin’ Taliban? I have always wanted to say this: that attitude is why America is going to hell in a handbasket. What are you trying to do, bring back Communism?!
If everyone enjoyed a lifestyle like you do, there’d be no one around to serve you, your Highness.
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Methinks you don’t understand the definition of “nationalized.” Farm subsidies (while I’m not a fan of them and think they are harmful for the most part) hardly constitute a nationalization of the food production system. That would require the government to take over the farms themselves.
How free am I if I have to give up my money so that you can switch jobs? Qutie frankly, if you can’t switch jobs because of health insurance reasons - tough beans. Not my problem.
The only real sympathy I have in this system is small-business owners. They really do get the shaft. They’re smart, taking initiative, creating jobs and they get screwed (sometimes) becuase of the nature of the health industry right now.
This is quite possibly the dumbest post I’ve ever read on these boards. Well, from you anyway. Society has not doomed you to die because you’re uninsured. I’m currently uninsured. I’m hardly doomed to die.
America is not going to hell in a handbasket. It’s actually quite a nice place to live for the vast majority of the population.
Honestly, the best argument for a national health system is the ideal of prevention rather than treatment. Cost effectiveness. It’s much cheaper to get people in to see their doctor before things get bad than to have them go to the emergency room. Moreover, it would help prevent diseases like TB from spreading. I don’t really want to see a national health service a la the NHS. But some of the talk that’s being bandied about on the Hill right now is for a tax credit for insurance. The details haven’t been worked out, and it’s probably a few years from fruition, but something along these lines is coming.
Real mature debating style.:rolleyes:
It needs to occure to you that in a free, capitalistic society, someone has to lose. We can’t all have the same. It doesn’t work.
Taking from one to give to the other eventually fails.
Also, disagree if you want, but personal attacks are against the rules here. I am not the only one who opposes nationalized health care. In fact, I am in the majority!
Geez, let’s not get overdramatic here. Endangering the lives of your children?? The odds of your kids having a life-threatening disease aren’t very high, and if they did contract such a disease (pediatric cancer, for instance) the chances that medical science will save them isn’t that great.
As I said before, the odds are greatly in the insurance company’s favor that the value of the premiums you pay them will exceed the value of the health benefits you actually charge them over a given period of time. That’s how they stay in business.
It’s also cheaper to prevent my car from breaking down by having regular oil changes and such, but car insurance doesn’t pay for that. I think people really have a misunderstanding of what insurance is supposed to be. I mean, you could probably pay for the actual check-ups at the doctors for less than you pay for the insurance that gives you a co-pay option on that, otherwise the insurance company would be losing money by offering a co-pay.
Having insurance to cover regular check-ups is like paying for “phone bill insurance” that pays half my phone bill every month.
The only way insurance actually saves you money is if you are terribly unlucky and manage to have a costly injury or disease you didn’t see coming.
If all we want is for people to have regular doctor visits, we don’t need insurance for that. People would have plenty left over to pay for those if they weren’t paying insurance premiums.
Based on the thread title, I assumed this thread would be about what kind of national public health care system we should have in the U.S., assuming we will have some such system. Basically there are three possible alternatives to our current “free-market” system:
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A British-style national health service, with doctors as state employees.
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A Canadian-style single-payer health-insurance system, in which the doctors remain self-employed, or employed by hospitals which might be public or private, but the government has replaced all the health insurance companies, and general tax revenue has replaced health insurance premiums.
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A “managed care” system, which they have in Germany, I think, and which Clinton tried to introduce here in his first term, in which private companies continue to handle health insurance but there are extensive government subsidies and legal standards to make sure everybody, or almost everybody, is covered.
I vote for option 2. I’ve never met a Canadian who had anything really bad to say about it. Option 1 is, for better or for worse, too alien to the American way of doing things. Option 3 is too, well, complicated, too prone to abuse and requiring too much bureaucratic management.
Is this a hijack?
You know, I think I still have a copy of the complete HillaryCare plan as proposed out of her committee, and it was pretty long and complicated. As a law student, I do have to deal with the CFRs occasionally, but that plan alone was a 1000 page bound book. So I think your conclusion about option 3 is pretty solid.
Agreed, but it was so much fun I couldn’t stop myself.
I will now tell real-life stories of uninsured moppets with big, dewey eyes.
But hospitals in Vermont and other northern tier states are full of Canadians who wanted procedures either unavailable or on a HUGE waiting list back home…