I have. What do you want to know?
Some insurance plans won’t do it even with a referral, and that’s what we’re referring to when we say we already have rationed care in this country. Most insurance plans have limits on what types of specialists they’ll pay for, how many office visits you can have, how long you can stay in the hospital, etc.
And of course, while it’s easy to say you can get service if you pay for it, the reality is that most people who lose their jobs also lose their insurance. People who suffer a debilitating illness usually lose their insurance (according to the Ohio State/Harvard study in June, fifty percent either hit their lifetime cap or simply get dropped in the first year). Those people already have an economic hardship.
I’m a U.S. ex-pat (mom is French Canadian) and I grew up on both sides of the border. I have no idea where some of the horror stories come from. There is no “rationing”, no panels to decide what kind of care you’re worthy to receive, and wait times are no different than in the U.S., when it comes to emergency care.
And when people ask me about wait times, I used to point them to an article from the Houston Chronicle that I used to have bookmarked on my computer: a U.S. woman went to the ER at a Dallas TX hospital for a suspected broken leg, waited 19 hours, then left without seeing a doctor. She was still billed for the hospital visit.
The Dallas Morning News published the story on a Tuesday, the hospital changed its policy the following day. The same hospital was already battling a PR problem because not long before, a man died in the ER following another 19 hour wait. My original link has expired, but here’s a different link
How do Canadians generally feel about their health are system? CBC had a contest inviting Canadians to nominate and vote for The Greatest Canadian. People could nominate anyone throughout Canadian history. The winner: Tommy Douglas, the man responsible for the creation of universal health care in Canada.
If you look the guy up in Wiki, you’ll see some of the same anti-Medicare arguments were put forth by the medical profession and resulted in a doctors’ strike in 1962. “Oh, noes! The government will interfere in medical decisions! And we’ll lose income!”
So it looks like it’s the same sort of thing. Those who fear losing income loudly scare people into thinking the government will interfere with patient care. (Which insurance companies already do.)
Ah, so Brits are babies who are always running to the doctor! 
One worry is that, if something’s free, people are going to take advantage of it, waste it, overuse it, and there won’t be enough left for people who really need it.
The fear is that government-run health care = socialism = Soviet-style rationing, where you have to wait in line to buy toilet paper and there’s a twelve-year waiting list for a new car.
Another worry is that there are a lot of Americans who don’t trust the government. They don’t want to trust the gummint with the health of their families, and for the gummint to have that much power over them and information about them scares the bejeebus out of them.
Wasn’t there someone on the boards who lost his job and so could not longer afford his psychiatric medication, and because he was no longer medicated it made him too unstable to be employable?
No job = no meds. No meds = no job. Yippy!
They come from my friends who have lived in Europe. Just yesterday, my coworker/friend who lived in Britain for 4 or 5 years told of how she was refused antibiotics (or something) to get rid of an ear infection. She was dizzy and vomitting but the doctors told her she couldn’t have any medicine because “it would get better eventually anyway”. She then received a lecture on how stupid Americans just get all the drugs they ask for because the doctors need to keep customers (or some other insane reason). My Spanish friend (Madrid native) found it bizarre that one could go to the doctor for an ankle sprain.
Just because you haven’t heard these stories doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Well, you see, that’s just it. Where do you get the idea that it’s free? It’s not free and will never be free.
If by “minority” you mean 88%. Of the 12% without insurance, many are only temporarily without coverage (e.g. between jobs) and many could have cheap coverage if they wanted (e.g. Medicaid-qualified) but choose not to have it. Half my college class is out of insurance because they graduated in May but don’t have jobs yet. Others simply balk at the price of paying their own way.
ME!!! It’s not pleasant in the least. Endless runaround, millions of forms, and the treatment is, well, lacking. For instance, the Army doesn’t fill teeth- they just pull them. I wish I were exaggerating but I’m not.
You want my support for national healthcare insurance? Fine. Here’s what you need to present:
- Make it optional. I’m not talking about opt-out of benefits. I mean opt-out of paying into it.
- Don’t tax my benefits. This is sorta #1 but more explicit.
- Don’t cap what the program is willing to spend. I don’t want doctors rationing medicine and treatment because they have a budget.
- Cover catastrophic costs (chemo, surgeries) but leave a high copay for the rest. I don’t want a doctor or patient spending and spending due to a combination of moral hazard and CYA. Otherwise, you get patients going to get treatment for a splinter and doctors ordering 30 MRIs “just to be safe” (<–exaggerated, I know).
- Require some sort of service in return. Americorp, military, licking stamps at the post office, I don’t care. If I give someone money, they better give me something in return. Even Habitat for Humanity requires that the recipient help build the next home. No reciprocation, no deal.
So, OP, you want to know why everyone is against it? Because you want to steal my money for something I don’t want or need, and we all end up like Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. I’m tired of the SDMB liberal mafia making out like UHC is obviously awesome and I’m either fear-mongering, ignorant, or stupid to disagree.
One aspect you might be missing is the fact that the health care industry (i.e. health insurance providers and pharmaceutical companies) is profiting from the current system and is lobbying hard to prevent any reform. It’s been reported that the health care lobby spent $263.4 million in the first half of this year. That includes money to run ads, and money to hire activist organizations which encourage and assist protests.
One other reason is sort of hinted at in your OP. Some worry about putting in a system that isn’t perfect, because they feel certain that once anything of this type exists, they’ll never be able to repeal it. They fear spending the next couple of centuries trying to fix the imperfections of the current plan.
So they argue for what they see as the ‘perfect’ version of UHC, and against all other versions.
I think that opposition by certain large businesses and ignorance of the facts are much more common reasons than this one. But this one is in the mix.
Of course the NHS is evil - people like Stephen Hawking wouldn’t stand a chance in the UK. :rolleyes:
In America money is all powerful. The anti health care group has the money to broadcast disinformation across the country. They have 6 lobbyists working on every single representative and senator. They have the money to control the message. Most TV is commercial. The health care companies are big sponsors of programming. They exert power over the newspapers , Tv and radio.
It is very hard to change things in the big corporate world. Just look at how the financial pros that screwed up the economy got away with it and got tax money to make them whole again.
This is really the only reasonable answer to the OP’s question. Almost all the other posts are opinions. This is not even a GQ topic. Should be in IMHO.
Neither the NHS nor an “NHS-style” program would tell you that you cannot have Procedure X at any cost*. NHS-covered patients have a number of private supplemental insurance policies available to them, and are in no way constrained from paying for services out of pocket. This is just a taster of the misinformation that is feeding into the current outcry.
It’s worth noting that the NHS itself is based around a “market” system- General Practitioners are reimbursed based on the number of NHS patients on their rolls in any given year. If patients don’t think the doctor is doing a good job, they can go find a new one whenever they feel like it.
This view, though perhaps understandable, fails to take into account a fairly obvious point- that under a universal coverage system, it will no longer be necessary for you to fill out an encyclopaedia in order for your healthcare provider/whoever to determine whether you’re eligible for coverage- because of course you will be. This will eliminate more than half of the bureaucrats-per-patient currently required to administer eligibilty-dependent programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
*this, of course, assumes that Procedure X isn’t illegal due to dubious efficacy/safety concerns/whatever, and of course that is in no way dependent on who is paying for your healthcare.
Moving from GQ to GD.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Further, I don’t think it’s an opinion to say that a great many of the people protesting are only doing so because the president is of a different race than them, and that scares them.
Signs held by protesters saying “Death to Obama. Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids.” are not about healthcare debate, they’re about fear and hatred.
As for the OP would say that few people are actually against anything. They’re against anything that gives them a chance to yell at the colored man. Actual discourse accounts for maybe 10% of the current ruckus.
Where have you seen signs like this?
In the news probably.
And just because you’re saying second hand stories on the internet, doesn’t mean they actually happened. Cites plz.
Most people who use the VA think it provides excellent care. Maybe you’re simply very, very critical. Perhaps you’re irrationally so? http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1376238,00.html
Under the current plan you aren’t going to pay into it unless you make more than $250k a year.
They aren’t set on this yet, but even McCain wanted to do this.
That isn’t in the current plan.
You can’t just walk in and get an MRI. You need to have a doctor think you need it.
A healthier nation is what you get for this. In any case, the current plan has a public option in it, in order to get the public option you pay for it, just like any other insurance. Very poor people will get it as part of their government benefits, like food stamps.
Unless you make more than $250k a year they currently don’t want to steal your money. In any case, it’s beyond stupid to suggest that this is theft. Is a highway you’ll never drive on theft from you? It simply isn’t a sensible argument.
You’re definitely ignorant. And you are spreading untrue rumors, so you’re fear mongering. I don’t know if you’re stupid or not.
All good points, I’ll look at them from the perspective of someone living in Canada
- Make it optional. I’m not talking about opt-out of benefits. I mean opt-out of paying into it.
It comes from income taxes, so you can’t really opt-out of it because the pot of revenue generated for the government through income taxes gets divvied up in various ways.
And you’re saying you never need any kind of health care? You’re very lucky.
- Don’t tax my benefits. This is sorta #1 but more explicit.
You can actually claim deductions for a lot of out of pocket expenses you had to pay for things like dentistry that weren’t covered by your provincial health plan
3) Don’t cap what the program is willing to spend. I don’t want doctors rationing medicine and treatment because they have a budget.
Unlike private insurance, they don’t. For example, when I was still living and working in the U.S. I had a crappy insurance plan that covered me up to something like $100,000 of stuff within X amount of time. Beyond that, the co-pay got ridiculous or I was SOL.
- Cover catastrophic costs (chemo, surgeries) but leave a high copay for the rest. I don’t want a doctor or patient spending and spending due to a combination of moral hazard and CYA. Otherwise, you get patients going to get treatment for a splinter and doctors ordering 30 MRIs “just to be safe” (<–exaggerated, I know).
That doesn’t really happen. It’s too impractical, a waste of resources and the College of Physicians would probably look into a doctor’s behavior if he was being an idiot and abusing the system. Doctors still have malpractice insurance in Canada.
Having a co-pay for everything except catastrophic illness would defeat the entire purpose of the system: that everyone has access to medically necessary health care. There would be a disparity for those who are well off and wouldn’t hesitate to go to the doctor and those who are poor who would hold off until the situation is dire. Also, you are much more likely to end up with people making arbitrary decisions about what is catastrophic and what isn’t. (Then you’d get those pesky Death Panels).
If only catastrophic events were covered, overall health would decline. Parents would be less likely to bring kids in for routine examinations and vaccines, most preventative medicine would go out the window, major things would get diagnosed late while the sumptoms still seemed trivial.
- Require some sort of service in return.
Again that would defeat the purpose of providing equal access for all. My grandma suffered from severe dementia and developed a neurological disease. She couldn’t walk or even feed herself. What exactly would you have her do in return for all the health care she received?
In fact, in some cases, you can’t even do it when three different doctors request that it be done, and consider it medically necessary, unless you want to pay for it yourself. Oh yeah, that was in America, and for someone covered by an employer provided group policy.
Good thing we don’t have rationing here in America.
I don’t think you really understood what he was saying here. “Taxing his benefits” refers to the proposal (put forward by McCain and Obama) to tax the value of the employer-provided health insurance that covers most Americans. In theory, it would be a tax on the employer (and hence something of a disincentive for employers to offer their employees health insurance) but in practice it’d just come out of people’s paychecks (which I’m not keen on either).