Wouldn't it be great to have 'free' healthcare like they do in Europe - and die unnecessarily.
People keep telling me how great it would be if we had a nice, organized system of nationalized healthcare here in the US, but I've always been skeptical. I keep hearing horror stories of people dying while waiting for basic operations or even not being able to get simple tests in Canada or Germany. All of this anecdotal evidence has made me leery of the concept. Clearly I'm not alone given the extremely negative reaction to Hillary Clinton's attempt to socialize our healthcare system in the 90s. Yet people keep telling me how great it would be and how so many Americans are uninsured and don't get adequate healthcare.…
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26 - bhw
If a person is dying, he/she should get full treatment regardless of his or her earnings.
Well, we do have Medicaid.
27 - Dave Nalle
>>If you were to limit health care to one factor, than surely it should be that health care should be equity. Health care should be equally accessible and available to everyone in your country.<<
When you try to create equity in a system like this all you do is take more money from the wealthy to provide inferior care for everyone. You don't bring up the quality of care for the poor, you bring it down for everyone else.
>> Americans love to just debate on ways they can improve public services for those that can AFFORD to pay for them. This means nothing to the people in the U.S. who can't afford healthcare. <<
I think it's debatable that there are all that many who can't afford healthcare and also don't qualify for medicaire. The shortcoming in the US system is not with the poor, but with those who ought to have enough money to afford basic insurance, but don't make it a priority and won't unless they are subsidized somehow.
>>Why is it that we Americans always keep this arrogant attitude that the have-nots did something to deserve to not get the opportunities we all get. I’d gladly risk waiting in line with everyone else if it meant changing the system to be fair for everyone, not based on how much money you make.<<
This isn't at all the attitude as regards healthcare. We HAVE healthcare for the genuinely poor and indigent, excellent healthcare. Medicaid compares favorably to any system in the world, and more than provides for the poor.
>>I'll tell you right now that it doesn't matter how quickly your diagnosed with cancer in the United states, because for a lot of people its not affordable to get treated for it anyway. Where's the humanity in a private health care system?<<
The doctors are still human, probably more human and more concerned than the bureaucrats in a government run system. And the stats don't lie. If you get cancer here in the US the private system will diagnose you faster, treat you in a more timely manner and has an enormously higher chance of saving your life. Speedy diagnosis and treatment are the key to surviving cancer.
>>Secondly, Canada is working on reforming and improving their health care within the socialized framework. Sure there is always wastage in a social system but it’s ethically sound and it works better than the Private system currently. <<
Not according to the statistics. Or the many Canadians coming to the US to get treatment they'd have to wait for in Canada. And frankly, I'd rather be ethically unsound and alive than ethically sound and dead.
>>If Canada could create a program that educated people to stop going into the hospital every time they had a cold, then it would be the best system in the world (if it isn't still considered the best).<<
I think we can agree that every healthcare system would benefit from more patient education.
Dave
28 - Big Time Patriot
"I was going to suggest that one of the best ways to make our system work better would be to crack down on frivolous lawsuits and excessive settlements."
Well of course "frivolous" lawsuits and "excessive" settlements are bad. But one persons "excessive" settlement is the sum total that one disabled person might have to live on for the rest of their lives. What amount would you settle on to support yourself the rest of your life if you could never work again? Would 50,000 last you 50 years?
As a conservative you know that one of the biggest motivations for people is money. If you reduce the financial penalty for bad work, what do you think would happen to the level of work? I mean, as a conservative, you have to admit that when you make failure easier, failure is likely to increase, right?
So cutting down on lawsuits is likely to increase the rate of error in medical care, correct? It may reduce costs, but at the logical expense of increasing the error rate...
Am I missing some part of this argument?
29 - RJ
"THat's high for your contribution. What percentage of the premium is your company covering?"
50-50...
"And how good do you consider the coverage to be?"
It's pretty damn good. My deductible is relatively low, too. (And I would like to keep it that way, just in case...)
30 - RJ
Also, some of my coworkers are worse off than me.
A female co-worker who is in her early 60's gets health insurance only through our company. It covers her and her 60-something husband. But it's more than $500/month, although it is the more expensive PPO...
I like Bush's plan that will allow small businesses to cooperate in this area, and therefore garner smaller insurance premiums. Frankly, I don't see a downside.
31 - RJ
"But if I don't even "own" my body, what do I own?"
Amen, sister! :)
32 - Dave Nalle
BTP, the flaw in your argument is that it doesn't have anything to do with the reality of tort reform. No one is talking about limiting judgements to $50K. I haven't heard of any proposal that caps real damages - things like loss of salary and medical costs. The idea is to cap punitive damages which are highly subjective and can be set insanely high by a sympathetic jury. A reasonable cap on punitive damages seems perfectly fine to me. It would stop people looking at medical lawsuits as a kind of big cash lottery.
IMO a big part of the problem is also the lawyers. Their contingency fees ought to be capped as well. Let them get 30%, but limit it to a maximum total of no more than actual expenses plus a flat amount, or a smaller percentage - like 10%. Leave it profitable for them, but something has to be done about a situation where taxes and lawyers take away more than half the money before the plaintiff sees a cent.
Dave
33 - RJ
"Or the many Canadians coming to the US to get treatment they'd have to wait for in Canada."
I've heard that hospitals along the Canadian border in Vermont and New Hampshire are over-run with Canadians who are willing to pay out-of-pocket for timely care.
Anecdotal, yes, but still...
34 - bhw
Sorry, but the real problem is juries, aka, everyday Americans, who are handing out humongous awards.
I don't think there should be a cap on punitive damages, and if there is one, it shouldn't be as low as $250K, which is what's being proposed.
A doctor removes the wrong kidney -- the healthy one -- or amputates the wrong foot, and he gets slapped with a $250K fine? Not nearly enough.
35 - Dave Nalle
>>I don't think there should be a cap on punitive damages, and if there is one, it shouldn't be as low as $250K, which is what's being proposed.
A doctor removes the wrong kidney -- the healthy one -- or amputates the wrong foot, and he gets slapped with a $250K fine? Not nearly enough.<<
But remember, those punitive damages are in addition to any real damages. There's a value for losing your foot which is not punitive. Something on the order of half a million, most likely for something like that. That's the base point the punitive damages are added onto.
Dave
36 - Big Time Patriot
That is a good point about the punitive versus the real damages, I always smoosh them together in my mind. The question still remains, if money motivates people, and we remove some of that motivation through reducing possible financial penalties, what can a conservative really expect to happen except that there will be an increase in medical mistakes.
It might be a good trade off to make medicine more affordable, but don't try and hide the fact that more mistakes is what your are buying that price drop on..
37 - sydney
This isn't at all the attitude as regards healthcare. We HAVE healthcare for the genuinely poor and indigent, excellent healthcare. Medicaid compares favorably to any system in the world, and more than provides for the poor.
In response: "To begin with, we have the worst infant mortality rate of any industrialized nation, and 18 percent of our residents have no health insurance. This is the only industrialized country where a serious illness or the need for chronic care can actually bankrupt a person. We spend more than any other country on healthcare while leaving 42 million uninsured (see the chart)."
38 - Dave Nalle
There was no chart, Sydney. That said, we're not 'leaving' them uninsured. Most of them are choosing not to be insured. Studies show that the majority of that 18% could rearrange their budget priorities to purchase health insurance, but don't feel that it's a top need. The truth is that most people between the ages of 18 and 30 don't think they need health insurance and for the most part they're right - with the occasional horrible exception.
There are some few who for one reason or another are living on the borderline and can't arrange their budget to get insurance. For them we do need some sort of discounted or subsidized insurance.
With 18% uninsured what you don't see is an equivalent 18% needing healthcare and not being able to afford it. While there are some shocking examples of people being bankrupted by healthcare needs, as a statistic they are a vanishingly small number of actual cases.
It's bad to be uninsured, but only if you need insurance. I didn't have health insurance by choice until I hit 30, and in the 15 years since then that I've had it I really haven't needed it, but I might, so I pay for it.
Dave
39 - alienboy
re post 27: ">>If you were to limit health care to one factor, than surely it should be that health care should be equity. Health care should be equally accessible and available to everyone in your country.<<
When you try to create equity in a system like this all you do is take more money from the wealthy to provide inferior care for everyone. You don't bring up the quality of care for the poor, you bring it down for everyone else."
Dave, what you describe is just a poor implementation, not an inevitability.
40 - Dave Nalle
Exactly right on both points, Alienboy. The nature of a marketplace system assures competition which produces quality, but it also creates weird gaps and opportunities for individuals to make mistakes in the kind of coverage they get and how they use their health insurance. Poor implementation is part of the system, and covering that implementation gap is where the government has a role to play. Scrapping the whole system and moving to a centrally managed system would bring quality down for 80% of the population in order to bring it up for 20%. That doesn't seem like a good move.
Dave