I have different ones, like say, mortality rates. The US is dead last in a ranking of industrialized countries in mortality amenable to medical care i.e. prevantable deaths. at twice the cost. And by the way, as far as ability to see doctor same day/next day, the US only ranked in the middle of the pack at twice the cost. http://www.cmwf.org/usr_doc/site_docs/pdfs/national_scorecard_2008_ex2.pdf Now I know you'll come back with some more anectdotal evidence, like "that wouldn't happen to me, I have access to the finest doctors" - this is akin to Robert Mugabe saying Zimbabwe's system is the best because he can afford to go to Europe for treatment - you're extrapolating your experience on to everybody elses. Chances are if we maintain the present system, someday soon you too will no longer be able to afford insurance and you would chagne oyur tune. .
So how will putting the middle class in the same system as 45 million (or whatever) more people make these numbers better? Also your "preventable deaths" number goes out the window if you take into account that if a person never got health care in the first place in another country, or was not in a hospital, it does not count. And the numbers all seem pretty suspect when they come from the common wealth fund.
I doubt there will be any widespread changes to our health system any time soon so this is not a hot topic for me but I just see better solutions that may be easier to realize. Increase nursing and medical school grants from the federal government Have medical coverage as part of the unemployment benefits. Increase public school's medical care for children. The school nurse is a joke. How about having something like most public universities have. Decrease the cost of script drugs.
You said the magic words. Many patients wait months for an appointment and surgeries. The US doesn't keep that kind of statistic so it is impossible to compare our country's wait times to other countries. You are deluded into thinking that no one waits to see a specialist in the US.
Ofcourse you wait. The times are just much slower and you have no options to see them directly. I prefer to see my gen Dr. but he always refers me. I have a headache he says neurologist....etc. Do you work at some place like kelsey seybold? I called there once for a appointment and I didn't know they have some kind of their own coverage. their waiting times were crazy.
yes ofcourse it is. But it directly acts on problems instead of making widespread changes just because we do not have a system like the UK.
That's really a cop out. Get the numbers from any source you want, WHO, Mckinsey, Brookings, whatever - the story is the same. US public health overall lags in comparison to other countries. And costs twice as much. basically I think your argumetn is this, you are hard working red blooded american and you have great great awesome health care, since it is not socialist, and it is better than any socialist health care could ever be cause it's not socialist. As for the losers who don't have it, they don't really concern you much. And the fact that the system is tremendously inefficient and costly also doesn't concern you much, because at least it is not socialist. Am i right?
You have no data to support the claim that wait times else where are longer than here in the US. NONE. There is none because that data is not gathered in the US. You are just making this up because it supports what you believe to be true. Also, you are comparing the US to the UK system. There are MANY social healthcare programs that the US could evaluate while putting together our own plan. Ours sucks. Big time.
This is my argument. I have a job and healthcare. It may not be the best healthcare compared to the rest of the world. The people without helthcare will benefit because they have none and anything is better than nothing. The rich will benefit because their companies no longer have to pay 75% of the healthcare for employees. They will use a private system and coverage for themselves. The middle class (me) will be lumped in with the poor and the unemployed into a system that will now have longer wait times (due to the millions of extra patients in the same system) and they will be paying for it with taxes.
This is two years old but still relevant. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_28/b4042072.htm The Doctor Will See You—In Three Months JULY 9, 2007 The health-care reform debate is in full roar with the arrival of Michael Moore's documentary Sicko, which compares the U.S. system unfavorably with single-payer systems around the world. Critics of the film are quick to trot out a common defense of the American way: For all its problems, they say, U.S. patients at least don't have to endure the endless waits for medical care endemic to government-run systems. The lobbying group America's Health Insurance Plans spells it out in a rebuttal to Sicko: "The American people do not support a government takeover of the entire health-care system because they know that means long waits for rationed care." In reality, both data and anecdotes show that the American people are already waiting as long or longer than patients living with universal health-care systems. Take Susan M., a 54-year-old human resources executive in New York City. She faithfully makes an appointment for a mammogram every April, knowing the wait will be at least six weeks. She went in for her routine screening at the end of May, then had another because the first wasn't clear. That second X-ray showed an abnormality, and the doctor wanted to perform a needle biopsy, an outpatient procedure. His first available date: mid-August. "I completely freaked out," Susan says. "I couldn't imagine spending the summer with this hanging over my head." After many calls to five different facilities, she found a clinic that agreed to read her existing mammograms on June 25 and promised to schedule a follow-up MRI and biopsy if needed within 10 days. A full month had passed since the first suspicious X-rays. Ultimately, she was told the abnormality was nothing to worry about, but she should have another mammogram in six months. Taking no chances, she made an appointment on the spot. "The system is clearly broken," she laments. It's not just broken for breast exams. If you find a suspicious-looking mole and want to see a dermatologist, you can expect an average wait of 38 days in the U.S., and up to 73 days if you live in Boston, according to researchers at the University of California at San Francisco who studied the matter. Got a knee injury? A 2004 survey by medical recruitment firm Merritt, Hawkins & Associates found the average time needed to see an orthopedic surgeon ranges from 8 days in Atlanta to 43 days in Los Angeles. Nationwide, the average is 17 days. "Waiting is definitely a problem in the U.S., especially for basic care," says Karen Davis, president of the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund, which studies health-care policy. All this time spent "queuing," as other nations call it, stems from too much demand and too little supply. Only one-third of U.S. doctors are general practitioners, compared with half in most European countries. On top of that, only 40% of U.S. doctors have arrangements for after-hours care, vs. 75% in the rest of the industrialized world. Consequently, some 26% of U.S. adults in one survey went to an emergency room in the past two years because they couldn't get in to see their regular doctor, a significantly higher rate than in other countries. There is no systemized collection of data on wait times in the U.S. That makes it difficult to draw comparisons with countries that have national health systems, where wait times are not only tracked but made public. However, a 2005 survey by the Commonwealth Fund of sick adults in six nations found that only 47% of U.S. patients could get a same- or next-day appointment for a medical problem, worse than every other country except Canada. The Commonwealth survey did find that U.S. patients had the second-shortest wait times if they wished to see a specialist or have nonemergency surgery, such as a hip replacement or cataract operation (Germany, which has national health care, came in first on both measures). But Gerard F. Anderson, a health policy expert at Johns Hopkins University, says doctors in countries where there are lengthy queues for elective surgeries put at-risk patients on the list long before their need is critical. "Their wait might be uncomfortable, but it makes very little clinical difference," he says. The Commonwealth study did find one area where the U.S. was first by a wide margin: 51% of sick Americans surveyed did not visit a doctor, get a needed test, or fill a prescription within the past two years because of cost. No other country came close. Few solutions have been proposed for lengthy waits in the U.S., in part, say policy experts, because the problem is rarely acknowledged. But the market is beginning to address the issue with the rise of walk-in medical clinics. Hundreds have sprung up in CVS, Wal-Mart (WMT ), Pathmark, (PTMK ) and other stores—so many that the American Medical Assn. just adopted a resolution urging state and federal agencies to investigate such clinics as a conflict of interest if housed in stores with pharmacies. These retail clinics promise rapid care for minor medical problems, usually getting patients in and out in 30 minutes. The slogan for CVS's Minute Clinics says it all: "You're sick. We're quick."
I guess your point was I am just against everything socialist. This is untrue. I think we should further socialize schools of higher education to make it cheaper for students. We are losing the battle of education in graduate school levels. It should be almost free but harder to get in. It would probably cost us the same in the end.
Don't you think that if we had better healthcare coverage for EVERYONE, that we would have healthier people, therefore have less people going to the doctor? Our system treats the problem. Other systems prevent the problem. Less problems equals less doctor visits.
I am all for health care instead of sick care but it is naive to think that covering 45 million more people will result in less patients.
I've read this whole bloody thread and I have yet too see any quantitative proof or demonstration that longer wait times are inevitable. Nor have you shown anything remotely close to proof that it is more expensive. I'm not calling you an idiot or anything, I'm just saying that your argument was very unconvincing.
caseyh you keep mentioning that you are going to squeeze the middle class, but the middle class is the group healthcare is increasingly becoming unaffordable for. a bunch of small businesses (who employ middle class people) already can't provide health insurance. iow, its the middle class who would seem to benefit the most in the long run as a whole
same number of Doctors 45 million more patients. How does that work out to be less wait times? I'm not calling you an idiot or anything, I just want to hear what you have to say.
