Which itself also needs explaining for a non-US type. One of the reasons healthcare is most often provided by the employer in the first place is that it’s supposed to be tax-exempt, so the money on insurance comes out of your pre-tax earnings. If health insurance were subject to tax, that would sort of remove that advantage.
To Americans health care is NOT public policy.
To most other Western nations health care IS a matter of public policy.
You would be hard pressed to find any Americans who would say “You know I’ve never called the police once in my life. Why should I pay taxes for something I don’t use.”
Americans accept police and fire protection is public policy and will be paid for out of taxes whether or not any one actually uses it.
Not so with healthcare.
No American would say, “You’ve been robbed? Well you should’ve paid Brinks to guard your home, accept your loss.”
Yet most Americans have no problem saying, 'You broke your arm? Well you should’ve bought insurance."
Now there is no correct answer to whether or not healthcare in America should be a matter of public policy like police or fire protection.
But that is WHY the difference. Europeans have a lot of differences with Americans, especially on social issues.
I remember during former President Bill Clinton’s affair, all the Europeans I talked with were like “So what, who cares?” Now I’m not saying all Europeans would’ve said that, but that seemed to be the general attitude.
I remember I was working at a company and I got five days a year and I didn’t use mine by December 31st, so I lost them. You lost sick days but not vacation days
I was complaining and the intern, who was a Dutch girl looked at me and said “Mark, you should stop complaining and just be thankful you DIDN’T NEED to use them. Isn’t it better to healthy than to need to use the sick days?”
And you know she had a point.
So on healthcare there are differences, but it really boils down to this: Does America want to make healthcare a matter of public policy?
It’s not free, your father paid for it when you were a child and you pay for it now as an adult.
THIS.
Some of the things I’ve found about the UK system:
A 9-month wait for arthritis treatment: Delay can mean a lifetime of agony for victims
**
Guidelines state that patients should receive treatment within three months of the first symptoms appearing. But the average wait is nine months - and GPs are not trained well enough to know what help to offer. There is no cure, but experts say that if arthritis is diagnosed in the first three months, drugs can be given which limit its progression. This means the disease will not be as painful as it would have been if the condition was diagnosed later. **
The GUIDELINE is 3 months from symptom to treatment. This just to get a prescription.
Delays In UK Child Brain Tumour Diagnosis
Significant numbers of children in the UK are suffering from preventable levels of disability, particularly blindness, and premature death because of poor diagnosis of brain tumours. ----- The average time between the onset of symptoms and diagnosis in children in the UK is between two and three months, that’s up to three times longer than the rest of Europe and the USA.
This hits home because a friend of mine went through this and his son was moved via private jet to a facility after doctors diagnosed a seizure/brain tumor in a timely manner. There was no wait for an MRI or other equipment.
When I had kidney stones I went to the hospital emergency room and got an X-ray and MRI with no waiting. I went back to my doctor twice and a specialist twice over the next 2 weeks to change pain medication and on the last visit I was offered the option of operating which I took and they were removed 2 hours later. DONE. I can’t begin to imagine what a target of 18 weeks would be like from diagnosis to treatment.
Patients forced to live in agony after NHS refuses to pay for painkilling injections
The NHS currently issues more than 60,000 treatments of steroid injections every year. NICE said in its guidance it wants to cut this to just 3,000 treatments a year, a move which would save the NHS £33 million.
This is a nothing treatment that my doctor would give me in a routine office visit. It would be like getting an aspirin.
All the horror stories are current and follow a major improvement of delays that the UK system has focused on. This is the new and improved NHS system.
Case in point. I don’t see a government program reacting to a couple of dissatisfied patients. I do see money spent to tell us how great it is.
A problem worthy of an appropriate solution and not a massive government program. Tax funded or Tax rebated Cobra would be a good start. Lets focus on and fix what’s broken. Everybody is behind this 100%.
I have heard a lot of arguments about health care. The fact that you believe you have good coverage is not compelling. Your company cost goes up by a chunk every year. Eventually, most employers decide to cut coverage, make employees kick in ,or buy a cheaper plan. What you have today may not be what you have next year.
Most of the people who are facing bankruptcy due to health problems had coverage. The companies just decide not to pay. They love you until you need them, then they get rid of you.
Do people just regurgitate shit these days if the shit agrees with their existing stance on an issue? Instead of doing so, let’s go to the actual survey itself. 46% of respondents were treated within 3 months, 32% had to wait 6 months or more, and 23% had to wait over a year. Digging deeper, we find that fully one third of those who had to “wait” in reality waited over 6 months after symptom onset to see their GP for the first time. If I get treated 9 months after onset, but didn’t visit my GP until 8 months after onset, I don’t think that’s really a terrible thing. It does appear that there are some actual issues, primarily getting faster referrals to specialists and choice of treatment options. That’s not really anything that we’re unfamiliar with in America.
Come on people, read this stuff if you want to toss crap around.
Want to bet there are more horror stories about the US system than there are about the NHS?
[SUB]You know, it’s a real bitch to strip out color formatting when quoting you.[/SUB]
If you’d like to start counting them, you could start with my father, who was in a major car collision with an elderly driver and suffered a head injury that left him with the faculties of a toddler for months. After years of rehab to re-learn how to talk, dial a telephone, and hold a conversation, plus a few operations for the physical damage from the crash, the insurance company decided that my dad was faking and thus refused to pay.
They brought out their own doctors who ran rigged tests (“Are you sure you didn’t mean to answer this?”) and decided he was fine, and threatened to sue for fraud if my parents tried to fight.
Financially destroyed, when I was 10 we moved from a million dollar house to a small condo. My dad now subsists on the disability payments he gets from social security.
I don’t believe this. Not until I see it. I’ve worked in government too long to think that they can do anything with less bureaucratic mess.
Bullshit. What was that, like, 1 guy? Again, this is an example of the “disagree with me? Racist/idiot/ignorant fool/ jerk!” trick that permeates this debate. Liberals want to act like it’s the right wing that flings this stuff around, but I see it all the time on here and in liberal media.
“Why does the right disagree with the left?”
“Well, they’re mostly stoopid idiotic morons! Q.E.D.”
- So since you want to transfer wealth by force, I’m against it. Offer up a government corporation like Fannie Mae or Amtrak that will compete with private insurance by not seeking profit, but don’t force me to pay for it.
- I’m talking about employer benefits.
- See, to me, that’s upside down. You should pay the first portion and the gov’t should pay the second. There shouldn’t be a limit on coverage, it should be a deductible. This should vary according to what treatment you’re getting. Simple, cheap things, you pay a higher portion of.
- You misread or misunderstood. I didn’t say “catastrophic events”. I said “catastrophic costs”. It doesn’t matter what it is. After a certain $ level is reached, the gov’t pays the rest. I started a thread on that recently, but the search isn’t working right now.
- It could just be money. And I realize that it’s not applicable to anyone. There’s no way I could present all the caveats here because a) there’s not enough room, and b) I’m not a doctor.
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Sorry, the lawyer was late for the deposition so we didn’t get it all down. And as soon as I figure out how to upload the voice recording, I’ll give you that cite.
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OH! Well, you didn’t tell me it was *just *rich people being kicked- again- around. Well of course I’m all for it, then. Those thieving bastards shouldn’t have went and made all that money. :rolleyes: I forgot to a liberal “Only hurts the rich” is the same thing as “Harmless”. Can you explain why anyone making $250k a year owes anyone else anything?
Because they will profit more from it, because health care for everyone will help the economy. Why do you get to use a road I paid for? Why do your children go to school for free on my taxes? I think you should take some time and learn how the country actually works before getting high-and-mighty about how liberals are destroying the nation.
Also, what makes you think anyone who makes over 250k a year is taxed at the magical *right *amount now? They were taxed much higher in the past, maybe that was the magic *right *amount.
When you’ve worked in healthcare, we’ll talk. No government program- not one- is even close to the ridiculous snarl of idiocy that is the US healthcare billing system.
also, I’ve noticed one huge difference between the American horror stories and the NHS:
The NHS horror stories are usually about long delays before getting access to treatment.
The US/private insurance company horror stories are usually about totally denying access to treatment.
Logical fallacy. I said many people protesting are doing so for racial reasons, that has nothing to do with vilifying people who disagree with me. This started as a GQ thread, and the original Q was “why do so many americans seem against” the reform. My answer is that many of the people who seem to be against it are going to be against anything the President does/says/thinks.
I did not say that everybody who is against it is a racist. That would be a generalization, itself a fallacy with no place in debate.
The problem with most political debates is that they quickly degrade from debates to noise. People get passionate about their stance, and come to believe that anybody who disagrees with them somehow causes them harm.
All of this is true without socialized medicine. Socialism doesn’t create the need for rationing, it just makes rationing more likely to be uneven, unjust, & price-based; the last of which means even those who get treatment suffer economically.
I’m not pretending.
This is absolute garbage and the exact polar opposite to my experience with the same condition. The plural of anecdote is not data, and there are horror stories from each side.
I think there’s some ground for compromise here; but do you really want high copays for pulling splinters?
You realize that the Nordic countries get A LOT for their high taxes, right? You’re not helping your argument here; better you would have stuck with the dingy crappy NHS hospitals in Britain.
I have not dealt with them so I don’t know if the experience is any good or not. What was the experience like? Do you think that any sort of national health care program will be like the VA?
I am at this point neither for nor against proposed changes in health care. In fact, as mentioned above, the debate is so cloudy that I don’t know what to think. If it is in fact true that we spend significantly more per capita than other countries and don’t get anything for our extra money, then I agree that something has to change. If our current health care system weakens our overall economy, then I agree that something has to change. If big pharmaceutical companies are trying to increase the price of drugs by erecting barriers to trade, then I agree that something has to change. I want to know what the change will be, what it will cost and how it will be an improvement over the current situation. I want to hear appeals to my pragmatism, not my altruism.