Universal Health Care

[madanthonywayne]

madanthonywayne FINALLY something i agree with health DOES require a whole of government approach. For instance social housing, education, employment ect

While we agree that health is affected by all those factors, I would not consider that a justification for government intervention in all those areas. You'd have government controling every aspect of your life!

Government should be a neutral player, perhaps offering services to those unable to provide for themselves (the lame, the blind, whatever). It should absolutely not control every aspect of your life. It should only stick its nose into a situation when absolutely necesary.

 

[Asguard]

you think providing housing trust homes to people on low incomes or unemployment benifts and rental surport is controling me? thats ridiculas

 

[pjdude1219]

the us will eventually have universal health care the only question is will it be designed for the benifit of the people or for the benifit of the corporations

 

[joepistole]

I think Mad further proves my point, confuse the issue with missleading and inaccurate arguements; create strawman arguements " scrapping the whole system". No one is proposing scraping the whole system. Ignoring facts, I suggest we use the United Nations standards for healthcare quality, which is consistent globably. And using that measure, the quality of our healthcare is still very low.
As for people knocking down our doors to get healthcare in the United States, I would ask Mad to provide some numbers and examples to back up that position. I can only remember a few heads of states coming to the United States for experimental treatments. They had advance cancers.
When we get out of the leadership classes and talk about regular folks, we have people in the United States traveling to places like India and SE Asia for medical treatment. Because treatment here in the United States is too expensive. There are even folks going to those locations for dental work.
By the way Mad, when it comes to the life style issues you mentioned, the French are pretty bad. They like smoking, drinking and fatty foods, much more than we do in the United States. And guess what, they have better heath quality than we do.
Now watch, Mad will comeback with something critical of the United Nations. Because neocons hate the United Nations. It goes against their basic belief system. Please see Straussian political philosophy.

 

[Myles]

While we agree that health is affected by all those factors, I would not consider that a justification for government intervention in all those areas. You'd have government controling every aspect of your life!

Government should be a neutral player, perhaps offering services to those unable to provide for themselves (the lame, the blind, whatever). It should absolutely not control every aspect of your life. It should only stick its nose into a situation when absolutely necesary.

I have never met anyone in Europe who feels like that. The only thing that's being controlled is disease.

 

[joepistole]

As previously stated, Mad has proven my arguments. His response was a typical neocon response. It is a good example of what citizens in the United States hear from our leadership and the healthcare industry. The idea is to create confusion and fear which perpetuates inaction and the healthcare industry and their allies win at the expense of the people. Necons have learned they don’t need to win arguments, just confuse folks. He creates false arguments and fails to support his claims with evidence.

Since Mad challenges the Infant Mortality Rates referenced in the Word Health Organization documentation included in the article by the University of Maine and previously referenced by Asguard, let’s look at what the United States Government says its IMR rate is as it compares itself to the rest of the world. The information below is sourced from the World Fact Book published by the United States Government. Using these numbers, the United States ranks itself number 42 in infant mortality globally. It has the highest IMR of all industrialized countries falling behind South Korea and Cuba.
Country IMR
179 Croatia 6.60 2007 est.
180 United States 6.37 2007 est.
181 Korea, South 6.05 2007 est.
182 Cuba 6.04 2007 est.
183 Faroe Islands 6.01 2007 est.
184 Isle of Man 5.72 2007 est.
185 Italy 5.72 2007 est.
186 New Zealand 5.67 2007 est.
187 Taiwan 5.54 2007 est.
188 San Marino 5.53 2007 est.
189 Greece 5.34 2007 est.
190 Monaco 5.27 2007 est.
191 Ireland 5.22 2007 est.
192 Jersey 5.08 2007 est.
193 United Kingdom 5.01 2007 est.
194 Gibraltar 4.98 2007 est.
195 Portugal 4.92 2007 est.
196 Netherlands 4.88 2007 est.
197 European Union 4.80 2007 est.
198 Luxembourg 4.68 2007 est.
199 Canada 4.63 2007 est.
200 Guernsey 4.59 2007 est.
201 Liechtenstein 4.58 2007 est.
202 Australia 4.57 2007 est.
203 Belgium 4.56 2007 est.
204 Austria 4.54 2007 est.
205 Denmark 4.45 2007 est.
206 Slovenia 4.35 2007 est.
207 Macau 4.33 2007 est.
208 Spain 4.31 2007 est.
209 Switzerland 4.28 2007 est.
210 Germany 4.08 2007 est.
211 Andorra 4.03 2007 est.
212 Czech Republic 3.86 2007 est.
213 Malta 3.82 2007 est.
214 Norway 3.64 2007 est.
215 Finland 3.52 2007 est.
216 France 3.41 2007 est.
217 Iceland 3.27 2007 est.
218 Hong Kong 2.94 2007 est.
219 Japan 2.80 2007 est.
220 Sweden 2.76 2007 est.
221 Singapore 2.30 2007 est.

* Note this does not include territories claimed by the United States like Puerto Rico. The infant death rates in the territories of the United States are even higher. So the net effect of excluding them is to lower the over all reported IMR for the United States.

Note also Mad was kind of selective in his quoting of the Wikipedia article. Below is a portion he excluded:

The infant mortality rate correlates very strongly with and is among the best predictors of state failure.[1] IMR is also a useful indicator of a country's level of health or development, and is a component of the physical quality of life index. Some claim that the method of calculating IMR may vary between countries based on the way they define a live birth. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines a live birth as any born human being who demonstrates independent signs of life, including breathing, voluntary muscle movement, or heartbeat. [Some claim] that some countries only count as live births cases where an infant breathes at birth, which makes their reported IMR numbers somewhat lower and raises their rates of perinatal mortality. [cite needed]
In order to minimize this problem, UNICEF uses a statistical methodology to account for these reporting differences. "UNICEF compiles infant mortality country estimates derived from all sources and methods of estimation obtained either from standard reports, direct estimation from micro data sets, or from UNICEF’s yearly exercise. In order to sort out differences between estimates produced from different sources, with different methods, UNICEF developed, in coordination with WHO, the WB and UNSD,2 an estimation methodology that minimize the errors embodied on each estimate and harmonize trends along time.3 Since the estimates are not necessarily the exact values used as input for the model, they are often not recognized as the official U5MR estimates used at the country level. However, as mentioned before, these estimates minimize errors and maximize the consistency of trends along time."

Bottom line, what Mad did not say, the WHO adjusts it's infant mortalty numbers to compensate for the reporting variances Mad referenced in his previous posts.

It is interesting that even the French with all of their smoking, drinking and fatty foods, they are number six on the list!

Link to Article on father of neoconseratism and educator of our conservative leaders:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Leo_Strauss

Link to Site For Americans to Arrange Travel Overseas for Medical Treatment:
https://www.healthbase.com/hb/pages/customer-videos.jsp

 

[S.A.M.]

I find the healthcare system in the US beyond belief. A student I know was working 2 hours away from campus when her appendix burst. She had the choice of going nearby and paying astronomical costs with a doctor who was not part of her student plan or be driven down 2 hours to get to one who was.

Guess which one she had to take. She could have died.

Its a horrible, inhumane system.

 

[sandy]

I find the healthcare system in the US beyond belief. A student I know was working 2 hours away from campus when her appendix burst. She had the choice of going nearby and paying astronomical costs with a doctor who was not part of her student plan or be driven down 2hours to get to one who was. Guess which one she had to take. She could have died. Its a horrible, inhumane system.

She should have pretended to be an illegal alien. Then it would have been free. For future reference, she should not have such a restrictive student plan. She could probably get Blue Cross/Blue Shield for about $40/month if she's fairly healthy.

 

[Myles]

She should have pretended to be an illegal alien. Then it would have been free.

What a sick answer to a post about health

 

[pjdude1219]

She should have pretended to be an illegal alien. Then it would have been free. For future reference, she should not have such a restrictive student plan. She could probably get Blue Cross/Blue Shield for about $40/month if she's fairly healthy.

its not free if the costs are passed on to another. not everyone is fucking rich like you and can afford healthcare. i know people who pay something like one fifth of their monthly wages to pay for health care.

 

[superluminal]

She should have pretended to be an illegal alien. Then it would have been free. For future reference, she should not have such a restrictive student plan. She could probably get Blue Cross/Blue Shield for about $40/month if she's fairly healthy.

Sandy, you don't know shit. And if she's fairly heathy? Oh goody! I'm not quite as "healthy" as the next guy, so I'm less able to afford the health care that I need more than the next guy! Fuckin' A! What a GREAT system!

And you never even touched my post about how a typical middle income american who wants to be independent has no real hope of affording the all but impossible costs of health care.

 

[Asguard]

all this is truly amazing, i had to go to hospital the other day and then my partner did few weeks later. I went to the closest public hosptial which is around the corner from my house. I wasnt very happy with the treatment so when my partner needed to go i took her to the hospital at uni (one of the 2 trauma centers in the state). My point is that my thoughts we only on which hospital gave the best clinical care and not on which i could aford or which i was alowed to atend.

 

[joepistole]

Yes Asguard, our healthcare system makes no sense. I have very good insurance. But last year I had a pulmonary thrombosis. Being a paramedic, you know that is a serious life threatening event. This is not an uncommon condition. It is not a new condition. It is an easily treatable condition, and not hard to diagnose. I was taken to our regional trauma center (which is also a medical training center) where I laid for a 36 hours before they were able to diagnose and begin treatment for my afliction. That is scarry. I was starting to get very concerned laying the hospital bed as to why no one was treating me. It was a foreign born and trained doctor who finaly saw me and quickly diagnosed my condition. That week in the hospital cost in excess of $55,000 dollars. The hospital had lots of technology. But they were not able to use it very efficiently or effectively. Fortunately for me, my health insurance paid all but about $4,000 dollars of the expense

 

[Asguard]

Thats amazing, if that happened here you would probably diagnosed by the ambo's who would have taken you to the royal adilade or flinders and treated at once. If you had ambulance cover (which only costs about $50 a year for a family) you would have paid nothing if not the cost would probably been around $200 for the emergency abulance and still nothing for the hospital

 

[joepistole]

Interesting, the Ambulance was on top of the amount previously quoted. My Ambulance bill was $1,000. Here is an link to an article explaining the serious problem with the costs of our healthcare system. The author of this article runs an economic think tank. He is proposing that we give vouchers to our citizens which can be redeemed in countries with better healthcare quality number than those of the United States. So that would include Canada. The voucher would be 75 percent of the cost of the proceedure in the United States. He is proposing that our citizen would pocket any unused funds. Additionally we would pay a premium to the healthcare system of the foriegn country. In the end, the American government, foriegn government, and the citizen would all be better off in the end. Now we know that is not going to fly with our domestic healthcare industry! They are already claiming that drugs purchased in Canada are not of sufficient quality to be imported by citizens.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dean_baker/2007/11/outsourcing_healthcare.html

 

[Norsefire]

I've always considered healthcare as a service that should always be Government backed, and free.

 

[madanthonywayne]

I have never met anyone in Europe who feels like that. The only thing that's being controlled is disease.

An old joke in the US is: "I'm from the government, I'm here to help". When we in the US hear that, we know we're in trouble.

Sandy,
A serious question for you. Do you believe that individualism and free enterprise are a hallmark of what the USA stands for?

Let me answer, yes.

I was an engineering consultant for two years. Trying for the entrepenurial thing. Nothing grand mind you. I have a modest home, typical middle america lifestyle. BUt for those two years I was sans insurance. Why? Because, even with my modest lifestyle and perfectly reasonable consultants income, I could not afford the health costs! I would have had to sell my house. Literally. I had to all but force the company to hire me as a regular employee so I could take advantage of the bulk pricing of insurance that only large companies get!

You all can figure out what this means.

As a self employed person, I'm completely aware of this problem.

I had great insurance when I was in college thru 7-11. It cost me almost nothing ($100 a month, at most, for the whole family). It's the whole reason I worked there. I had a wife and child to support. I could have had a job paying much better, but without benefits.

So throughout my college career, I worked 2 ten hour shifts every Friday and Saturday nite (third shift) to meet the minimum 20/week requirement to get the insurance.

For the past few years I've been paying about $1,000 per month to insure myself and my family. I've recently switched to a high deductible policy (about $6,000 deductible) combined with a health savings account. So now I'm paying only about $350/month.

I completely agree it's bullshit that big companies should get a better deal than everyone else on insurance. But socialized medicine is not the answer. Perhaps a law requiring that insurance companies charge everyone the same price for the same coverage?

Sandy, you don't know shit. And if she's fairly heathy? Oh goody! I'm not quite as "healthy" as the next guy, so I'm less able to afford the health care that I need more than the next guy!

And you never even touched my post about how a typical middle income american who wants to be independent has no real hope of affording the all but impossible costs of health care.

I agree, that sucks. But I'm not ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater and go to a socialized system. As I said, what about requiring that insurance companies charge everyone the same rate for the same coverage?

Short of that, the high deductible/health savings account route is pretty good. Also, consider having your spouse get a part time job at some company that offers insurance.

I suggest we use the United Nations standards for healthcare quality, which is consistent globably. And using that measure, the quality of our healthcare is still very low.

As I said, those stats are misleading, especially because lifestyle, demographic differences, and reporting differences account for much of the variance. To truly measure the quality of the healthcare system, you should judge the success rates for specific diseases.

By that measure, the US does quite well indeed. Rudy Guiliani recently noted in an ad that the prostate cancer he was recently treated for has a much higher survival rate in the US than in the UK.

the five year survival rate for prostate cancer to be 98 percent in the U.S. and 74 percent in Great Britain.

And it's not just prostate cancer:

U.S. outcomes beat the U.K not just for prostate cancer, but for a wide variety of cancers and other diseases, where survivor time bias is not at issue. According to a study published this year in the British medical journal, The Lancet, for all types of cancer, the U.S. ranks number one among industrialized nations: 62.9 percent of women with cancer survive for 5 years, 66.3 percent of men. Britain ranked 16th for women (52.7 percent) and 15th for men (just 44.8 percent).

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/10/31/rudy-was-right/
So the US is ranked number one in survival rates for all types of cancer.

Thats amazing, if that happened here you would probably diagnosed by the ambo's who would have taken you to the royal adilade or flinders and treated at once. If you had ambulance cover (which only costs about $50 a year for a family) you would have paid nothing if not the cost would probably been around $200 for the emergency abulance and still nothing for the hospital

Ambulance service fees are decided on a local basis. I called 911 once when my wife passed out from severe abdominal pain. The ambulance rushed out and took her to the hospital, and the total bill was only $50. No ambulance cover required.

 

[Asguard]

HHAHAHAH

what a silly idea rather than fixing your own system, not only that you would be putting aditional pressure on the strategic planning of those countries. You know the US wanted to take our goverment to the WTO to force us to get rid of the PBS? Only time i have felt happy about the way our former goverment delt with the US

oh and about ambulance costs, in queensland the ambulance service is covered under the emergency service levy so its free and in SA the ambulance service will send out 3 bills and then forget about it because it would cost them to much to take the debt to court. The ambulance service union wants to adopt the Queensland model country wide so ambulance cover is automatic

 

[joepistole]

Mad, the numbers i got from the American Cancer Society do not jive with the numbers cited by Rudy. It appears, the United States maybe better at detecting prostrate cancers, but treatment results appear to be similar. The CATO Insitute is an conservative advocacy group. In fact it received an award for being the best advocacy group. So it is far from unbiased.
The United States can no longer afford it's current healthcare system. That is the point that conservatives don't seem to get! Our government has created a government run healthcare system that does not work well, and is unquestionalby the most expensive and inefficient healthcare system in the world. Through its regulation of our healthcare industry it has created a bloody mess, because of special interest legislation designed to prevent free market competition.
We need to do three things. First, we need to break up the healthcare monopolies...that means free markets...that means if I can get drugs from Canada cheaper; I should be allowed to get my drugs from Canada...that means that we allow more doctors to be trained. We take down the unnecessary barriers to entry into the profession.And we need improve the way we train doctors...too much time is spent on non-medical training. Second, since everyone has a healthcare risk, everyone should be paying a healthcare premium. In other countries, they do it through a tax. Everyone needs to pay a fair share of the healthcare expense we all pay now regardless if we have insurance or not. Third, we need a common and efficient administrative/information managment system that allows us to significantly cut back on unnecessary and inefficient administrative activities.

 

[joepistole]

Well, yea Asguard! If we cannot fix our system, let's use yours! But even if your system would allow it. Our government would never allow it. It would take too much money out of the pockets of special interests here in the United States.
When our citizens tried to go to Canada for prescription drugs made by American manufacturers, the pharma industry leaned on our government to stop it. Our pharma industry has no interest in having its customers in the United States buying prescription drugs from Canada at lower prices than those offered in the United States.