Nationalized Health Care is Broken

Parent Cafe
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<p>I really like John Stossel, and thought this was interesting.</p>

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<p>HillaryCare anyone?
<a href=“http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/09/socialized_medicine_is_broken.html[/url]”>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/09/socialized_medicine_is_broken.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Our system works fairly well if you have a large employer or are government employed. Try being self-employed or work for a small company, have the slightest existing condition or are past 40, and see what you get.</p>

<p>Don’t get too complacent because your access to health care can be gone in 18 months (COBRA).</p>

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<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=363896[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=363896&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Seems to me that we just had this discussion.</p>

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<p>My insurer just decided I don’t need my migraine medicine.</p>

<p>I’d rather wait than not get it at all.</p>

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<p>While not perfect I bet the forty million or so people here without any healthcare would gladly take it. I have lived under both systems and I can assure you that nationalized is the way to go. The other benefit that is not spoken about very often is that many people are very unhappy with their current jobs and simply stay put to keep their insurance. With national healthcare people become far more mobile, which is good news for employees, not so good for employers!!!</p>

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<p>I’ve also lived under both systems. H had a serious health issue while we lived in Canada – yet we were quoted an 8 - 9 month wait for treatment. Fortunately, we were able to take care of the issue in the US, but at least we HAD that option. </p>

<p>Poor health care for everyone is not a better option, imo.</p>

<p>Alwaysamom, it is not the case that every poster reads every thread.</p>

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<p>Stossl (as usual) didn’t bother to do his research. If he did, he’d find out that his Canadian data are five years out of date, and that, according to the CEO of Aetna, median wait times for ELECTIVE surgery are now three weeks, less than the median wait times for cancer surgery in the U.S.</p>

<p>Now I know the CEO of Aetna is a flaming liberal, looking to put himself and his company out of business by supporting a single-payer system; what’s surprising is that he provided the data to back it up. </p>

<p>“Our system works fairly well if you have a large employer or are government employed.”</p>

<p>Yup. Work for the government. Daughter waited 8 1/2 months. And had to change insurance TO single-payer to get it.</p>

<p>Anyway, it is a really easy hypothesis to test. Adopt the Edwards health plan. Let the single-payer system compete head-to-head with private insurance in the U.S. (as it already does among state employees in Washington State.) Let consumers vote with their dollars. On an even playing field, I suspect the privates won’t last long (they don’t in my state). But if they do, they’ll have to do an awful lot better than they do today.</p>

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<p><a href=“http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070914/belinda_Stronach_070914/20070914?hub=Health[/url]”>http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070914/belinda_Stronach_070914/20070914?hub=Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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My experience while living in Canada was that the national health care was great for the run of the mill colds and ear infections, but it really fell down when we had a serious problem.</p>

<p>I saw a doctor in May and was able to schedule MAJOR surgery at my convenience, for July. The wait was my choice. I do know that the wait for a comparable procedure in Canada is up to two years, depending on the province.</p>

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<p>“Poor health care for everyone is not a better option, imo.”</p>

<p>This must be the most selfish quote I have read on CC. I am sure you H’s condition was not life threatening, after all it is better that he had the option to get it fixed sooner than for some other poor soul to die due to lack of coverage!</p>

<p>The same old " I’m alright jack" attitude.</p>

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<p>I’m for a two-tier system of health care, so I’m not in total disagreement with sjmom, but I have to agree with counting that the “poor care for everyone is not a better option” quote is one of the most selfish things I’ve ever heard.</p>

<p>Be honest, sjmom: it’s not better for you, because you have options - it is better for many others.</p>

<p>As for the article itself, it ignores a few important issues, as befitting something that’s clearly written with an agenda in mind. For example, it ignores the fact that Canada spends far less of its GDP on healthcare than the US - so even if we assume that all its criticisms are true and Canada’s system has worse outcomes than America’s (which is only true using the crappy old data that was used here, cherrypicking, and with an addition of good old-fashioned making things up), per dollar spent the outcomes are still better.</p>

<p>Also, sjmom, mini makes a compelling point via his quote from the CEO of Aetna - though I would like to see the source for that, just to be sure it’s totally on the level.</p>

<p>Finally, your article about Belinda Stronach is irrelevant. It’s clearly stated there that she went outside of Canada because the procedure she was getting was done best by a specialist team in California. That’s not so much about public or private as it is about being the best of the best - and no one has ever denied that, for those who can pay the exorbitant costs, specialist clinics in the US are the best, compared to other alternatives, public or private, around the world.</p>

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<p>Since I’m not going to go into detail about my husband’s problem, you have no idea whether or not it was life threatening.</p>

<p>I’m not going to argue with those who choose to take the poor health care comment as the ultimate in selfishness. It’s not worth my time. That’s not what I intended to convey, but I’m tired of the stupid arguments here. I was describing our experience.</p>

<p>Reducing the level of health care so that more people die, as Stossel says, is not good, imo. US health care encourages medical research that benefits people all over the world. Emergency rooms help those who have no insurance. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than what most people in the world experience.</p>

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<p>That’s a massive straw man argument, because most health care in the world is utterly terrible. The correct fact that conveys a useful perspective is that the US’s health care is 37th in the world, behind many other developed countries, including many that spend far less on health care as a portion of GDP than America does.</p>

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<p>40 million people are uninsured. How could we reduce the level of care below that?</p>

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<p>All you are doing here is pitting one anecdote against another (Stossel’s interviewees vs. the CEO of Aetna). Does anyone have facts to contribute? </p>

<p>I don’t know what I think about nationalizing health care except that I want to remove it from the hands of employers, where it wastes time and money better spent on improving their businesses, and that the marketing and sales costs of the pharmaceutical and health insurance companies don’t add much value to the process.</p>

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<p>Does anyone have actual facts about the demographic make-up of that “40 million uninsured” population? That’s 13% of the population – what is the historical percentage?</p>

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<p>I would still like to see very detailed statistics of who actually is uninsured, why and for how long.</p>

<p>I took SJmom’s statement that we should aspire higher than lousy healthcare for everyone. There are serious problems with nationalized healthcare and pretending them away doesn’t help anyone. A serious discussion begins with acknowledgement of the problems of the current system AND possible alternative systems for the purpose of not making things worse with unintended consequences.</p>

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<p>I would love to see manidtory health care in america. Market driven. </p>

<p>What does health care compete with?</p>

<p>cell phones
smokes
new cars
couches
Cancun
Cable TV
starbucks</p>

<p>Yes, for some it competes with </p>

<p>food
clothes
shelter</p>

<p>I am out in that health care world everyday. There are alot of people who choose not to buy or don’t see the value of insurance. Yes, absolutely there are some that can’t truly afford it and a voucher system would help them. But there is a large segment that doesn’t want to spend the money for coverage, they don’t value coverage enough to move it up the priority list past a new Ipod. If only vera wang or Calvin Klien made wearable policies…</p>

<p>I know that sounds harsh, but for 20 years I’ve been out and about and sometimes the story just doesn’t match what you see when you look a bit closer. I’ve sat down with high net worth people who don’t have or want coverage either. </p>

<p>So I say require it, voucher for those who can’t afford and make those who can buy something, even a high deductible to at least have something</p>

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I agree that having it in the hands of employers is not ideal – but I want in the hands of bureaucrats even less.</p>

<p>My feeling is that as soon as the government gets involved in things, it goes from bad to worse in short order. Can you imagine getting healthcare through the DMV?</p>

<p>Opie, I agree about the voucher for those who really can’t afford healthcare. But I don’t want to live in a nanny state, where some state or federal agency dictates what I have to buy. People who forgo health insurance for a fancy house or car are stupid, imo. But being stupid is not against the law, and people should be allowed to make bad decisions. Doesn’t the SCHIP cover kids?</p>

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<p>" Doesn’t the SCHIP cover kids?"</p>

<p>Opie’s statements about choosing to forego insurance are very important. I find that interesting because here in New York the income requirements to qualify for state healthcare are very, very high. Multiple times the poverty rate. At what point does a person take responsibility for his own healthcare, instead of having his fellow citizens pay for it?</p>

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<p>“My feeling is that as soon as the government gets involved in things, it goes from bad to worse in short order. Can you imagine getting healthcare through the DMV?”</p>

<p>Let 'em compete side-by-side. The privates begin at a 19%-33% disadvantage - overhead and profit. They are stupendously inefficient, resulting in much longer waiting lists in the U.S. than in Canada for those who HAVE insurance. Lousy care. But if they want to compete, they’ll have to make the care better. My experience - having run a business for a decade with offices in both the U.S. and in Canada, and having personally experienced both the privates and single-payer in my own state - is that the privates can’t compete either on price or quality. But I would love to see them try.</p>