Hello Carles, define "atrocious" health care in Canada and Britain.

Alessandro,

January 18, 2003 the Canadian Press had an article with the headline "Send Cancer Patients to U.S, Alberta MDs Urge" Story begins: "Breastcancer patients whose wait to see a specialist has jumped up to eight weeks from less than four should be sent out of province for treatment, the president of Alberta Medical Association says"

January 16, 2000 New York Times Headline "Full Hospitals Make Canadians Wait and Look South"

Both Britain and Canada show signs of continuing disparities in access and outcomes linked to socioeconomic status. "Wealthier is healthier" is perhaps the single most widely replicated finding in the health field.
According to the Brookings Institute When the Government is in control of Health Care, the Nations Health will have to compete with other areas for funding. When tax revenues are lower than expected do you really want the government to make the decision wether they should cut education spending or health care spending?

Sadly, the US will inevitably have National Health Care simply because the private system has done everything in it's power to discredit itself by continually narrowing the the population of those it will insure while raising the cost to the insured. It's a bad case of utter abuse of oligopoly power.

Many of the abuses are due to the lack of caps on malpractice lawsuits. Doctors spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on malpractice insurance due to liberal judges who allow multi-million dollar payments.

In Florida the average OB/gyn paid $173,000 in malpractice insurance in 2001, while in California (which has caps on malpractice suits) the average premium was $48,000. III Org - page 14

The cost of malpractice insurance in turn gets passed along to the insurance company in increased costs. If we intend on solving the health care situation, capping malpractice lawsuits would be an excellent place to start.

A number of issues must be simultaneously addressed, making many constituencies unhappy as Hillary found out in 94. Medicare/aid now pays for the majority of health care today and I agree with the author that Federal control of prices has not exactly been the answer - either here in the US or elsewhere. Equally, individual mandates are useless unless coverage can be purchased at a reasonable rate - for low income as well as those with medical conditions. Then add the overlapping and non-integrated information systems, malpractice rates as well as politics of how much should be covered and who receives coverage, children, illegal aliens, the poor, those with cancer or diabetes, and you have a conundrum without easy answers.

It's funny that you didn't take the time to research your statement: "If given the choice, I am certain the majority of Americans would prefer to be in control of their own Health Care, as opposed to allowing a Government run entity decide which procedure's are necessary and which are not."

I found this in under a minute: February 22, 2007 - U.S. Should Provide Health Care/Insurance For All, American Voters Tell Quinnipiac University Poll; Most Would Pay Higher Taxes For Health Care

By a 64 - 31 percent margin, American voters say, "It's the government's responsibility to make sure everyone in the United States has adequate health care," according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today.
Asked if they were willing to pay higher taxes for guaranteed government-subsidized health care, a striking 53% said yes, while only 42% said no.

Your own source (http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml) supplies these facts: In 2004, the United States spent 16 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care. It is projected that the percentage will reach 20 percent in the next decade (2).

Although nearly 47 million Americans are uninsured, the United States spends more on health care than other industrialized nations, and those countries provide health insurance to all their citizens (4). Health care spending accounted for 10.9 percent of the GDP in Switzerland, 10.7 percent in Germany, 9.7 percent in Canada and 9.5 percent in France, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (5).

The lack of health care coverage is the leading causing bankruptcy and is causing people to think twice before starting their own business. I'd rather have a compassionate health care professional overseeing my health care than a profit orientated bean counter in the insurance business.

We pay more per capita and a higher % GNP than any nation in the world for less care and are less healthy than citizens covered by national health care. If they can do it, why can't we?

Medicare has analyzed liability costs and found them to be about 2% of total cost.

"Medicare has analyzed liability costs and found them to be about 2% of total cost."

I'd ask for a link, but the details of that moronic study are a complete waste. The actual dollar values of the court awards are dwarfed by the effort and expense by the thousands of hospitals and doctors trying to avoid being the target of the next lawsuit.

Perhaps a hypothetical will illustrate. In a situation that occurs in 1 in 300 people/year, a test which costs $75 might in rare circumstances uncover an underlying disorder and save the patient's life. Doctor doesn't order test and a sympathetic jury awards the victim's mother $2 million.

Now, every doctor hears of this tragedy and thinks, gee, I hope that doesn't happen to me, better chalk that $75 fee up on the patient's insurance (neither I nor the patient are 'really' paying for it anyway) and protect myself from a similiar fate. A 1 in 300 situation equates roughly to 1 million people per year times $75 equals $75 million/year.

So did the lawsuit cost $2 million or $77 million (plus 75 million more annually)?

That's certainly not to say I'm totally against some measure of universal coverage, just pointing out the silliness of the 2% study.

I actually think the idea may have some merit and here's another useless analogy to demonstrate why.

Imagine if car dealerships were run like hospitals. The commisioned salesperson/doctor work nearly identically in that they both get paid based on how much healthcare/car they sale you. The only difference is that now you pay the same monthly payment regardless of which vehicle you and the salemen agree on. The salesmen has no reason to talk you out of getting all the options and you want the best vehicle you can possibly get. The free market is broken, and predictably the required monthly car payment would skyrocket as everyone passed over economy cars for hummers and jags.

Under a government run system everyone will be issued a pinto regardless of circumstance and if you need a Lexus you can fly to Japan and pay for it your damn self or get on the waiting list at # 387 (I hear we've got funding for 17 imports this year).

Charles wrote: "If given the choice, I am certain the majority of Americans would prefer to be in control of their own Health Care."

Well, yes, you would say that wouldn't you. But here's the rub: Australia has universal free health care that is so popular even among conservative voters, it has become the third rail of Australian politics and any government attempting to dismantle it will be committing suicide. The reason: having a good national health care system is all about how you do it. If it's done in combination with adjunct private health insurance, and levied on a sliding scale that is manageable for everyone, it actually works and creates jobs.

Therefore, Americans like Charles, who I assume has never experienced such a thing, is probably not qualified to make the kind of moral-value judgments he's making in regard to this.

Fact is, high-quality health care should be a right, not a luxury for a few - and it's possible for it to happen under a national-health-style system without it burning huge holes in taxpayers' pockets OR creating a massive bureacracy. It also doesn't have to have the negative connotations sometimes associated with Canadian and British national health systems.

I am not going to run through the whole argument again on these threads as we've been here before.

Just remember: like your mum told you, how do you know you don't like it if you've never tried it.

Charles, when you've had a decent system of this kind for a few years and you still don't like it, come back and argue. I suspect you probably wouldn't. But until then, and with all due respect, I'll just suspect that you're spouting a whole lot of ill-informed right-wing claptrap and have an axe to grind.

My brother-in-law is a gastroenterologist of some 40 years experience, practicing in Florida.

He makes a LOT of money in his private practice, plus several endoscopy centers he and his partners operate in several towns in his area.

He's an independent voter, with libertarian ideas, for the most part.

He believes the only rational solution to our broken health care system is a single payer system.

For those who are interested, he introduced me to this proposal, which was put together by a group called Physicians For A National Health Plan.

Clav: this looks very similar to the system we have here. The best part about the single-payer system is that it actually works. Nothing's perfect, but it's a good system and as a general rule, it means no one falls through the cracks. Combining it it with optional add-on private health cover and tax credits is what makes it popular among voters who are inclined to vote on the conservative side of politics. It means everyone's happy, which isn't easy to accomplish these days.

Hypothetical? Analogy? wasted effort.

Malpractice is a small cost (which could be greatly reduced by disciplining the 10% of doctors who incur 50% of the costs, if the AMA were willing) compared to fraud, which is extensively inflicted on the insurance systems by both patients and providers.

But this is the best medicine of all.

A little visit to Dr Pacific every day is guaranteed to keep the blues away. All free too under the universal Aussie taxpayer enjoyment system. Not bad for a convict colony.

A criminal record is no longer required, but probably helps - especially if you're dealing with the current government because you know what they say about honour among thieves. But you can't come here without a visa, Yanks, so don't get any ideas ...

Malpractice is a small cost

Gastros in Florida pay $100-150K/yr in premiums. Hardly a "small cost."

Maybe we should take Will's advice...

fraud, which is extensively inflicted on the insurance systems by both patients and providers.

As someone with family medical bills of over $100K per year ($60K in meds alone), I can tell you that few patients can even understand the paperwork that comes with either Medicare or private insurance, let alone commit fraud. On the contrary, we find that the $10/hr provider insurance clerks make numerous mistakes, usually in favor of the provider.

Patient fraud occurs with phony accidents, slip-and-falls, etc.

Shooting the lawyers would take care of that, and also have the added benefit of getting rid of the majority of Congress and the state houses.

The average cancer patient isn't likely to be committing fraud.

Too right ... they'd be too busy trying to stay alive. The only real fraud committed here under Medicare has been comitted by providers claiming too much - a doctor bulk billing way over the odds, for instance. When you added it up, he'd have had to have been seeing a patient every two minutes to get back what he was claiming from the government.

However, even those things are few and far between. America, truth is you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying this.

Let go of the fear. This is really the sort of service that governments SHOULD be providing. They are there for us, remember, the taxpayer - not for themselves.

Another savings that that hasn't been mentioned is the reduction in car insurance rates that would occur if auto insurance didn't have to cover health care.

Charles,

well written and well presented. Your Ronald Reagan quote make me think of the current media blitz about the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

Walter Reed is a perfect example of government run hellth care.

Excuse me, but the Walter Reed scandal is yet anonther example of Bush Administration war profiteering-privatization. IAP Worldwide Services, a company run by two former Halliburton executives, received a large contract to run Walter Reed. The Senate investigation indicates the privatization bid was rigged to show false cost savings. Walter Reed is actually another perfect example of the corrupting influence of the profit motive in hellth care.

So how come the private hospitals don't look like Walter Reed? After all, the profit motive is their M.O.

What it really illustrates is that private business working with the Federal Government is a bad marriage. The Federal Government proves itself repeatedly and reliably as a poor instector of the services it is paying for. The private hospitals on the other hand, are excellent watchdogs.