And the States offer healthcare to those too poor to buy it through Medicaid. If we need to expand that, so be it. I don't know if it makes me a hateful social Darwinist, but if someone can afford their own health insurances but chooses to go without, I don't feel much sympathy for them. (But I will continue to donate to charity hospitals that will treat them.)
Link? Is the reason that the lower health care cost per employee is offset by the higher wages per employee? Or is this a soft dollar problem?
I've spent a little time on this thread and have barely read much of it so pardon me if some of the points have been raised but here are my two cents. I've been going back and forth for the last ten years regarding universal health care and if you asked me ten years ago I was dead set against it for the reasons many have cited here. Now as someone who works for a small business which I'm a co-owner in my opinon has shifted. My business doesn't make enough money to pay for my health insurance and I have to pay for it myself. I have a plan with a high deductable mainly there incase I suffer something serious. As someone who is relatively healthy and without kids this isn't too much of a problem but if things change I can see some problems down the road. As a business owner of a small company high health care and insurance costs are a real drag on potential growth because we can't grow unless we can make enough money to pay for health insurance at the sametime since my own health insurance deductable is high if I get ill not only does my company lose money from my lost productivity I end up losing even more money paying for my health care. With universal health care though we wouldn't have to worry about health insurance as an issue in regard to hiring new people. Even though we might pay some more in taxes that burden would be spread out enough that it would be less than the costs we would pay for getting private health insurance now. If more comprehensive and lower costs insurance plans were available I wouldn't have to worry about the double whammy of lost productivity and high health care costs if I get hurt either. So from my standpoint both professionally and personally universal health care is sounding better and better.
Couldn't find one, and I don't completely know the reason. When Nissan was considering building their truck plant in Beaumont (the one that ended up Mississippi), I was told that. And that was 5 years ago, when the dollar was much stronger.
Workers bear the direct costs of Canada's healthcare system, and wages aren't higher to make up the difference. If the US adopts a universal healthcare system, it'll almost assuredly be directly supported by the employers like Germany's and now Massachusetts's.
Anecdote: My plant is being bought by a new company. The current company has a very generous benefit package, and the new company's benefit package is certainly not as good. The current company has an HMO that is about as inclusive as they get. The new company has two choices, but they try to push everyone toward the relatively unmanaged high-deductible plan (very low upfront cost). One of my co-workers has a daughter with MS. Her medicine costs $7000/month, of which he pays $20. Under the new plan, he will pay over $4000 in January every year, and then get the rest for free. He is certainly thinking about changing jobs. Having just watched SiCKO, I was thinking about it and asked him if he'd considered moving to a country with universal healthcare. To my surprise, he had lived in the UK for several years working for Texaco. He said that while his daughter's medicine was certainly cheap enough there under the NHS, he could never get her into an NHS specialist that understood her condition. They were booked up for months in advance. So he ended up buying relatively expensive supplemental insurance to pay private doctors. He said that in the UK, he paid easily twice the amount out of pocket as he has since he's been back in the States. That story got me to thinking, and I realized the major misrepresentation in Moore's movie. He concentrated on people with problems here in the US, many of them special needs problems, while the people he interviewed in the other countries were pretty average patients. Those that he interviewed in other countries wouldn't have much of a problem in the US system. I'd really like to see a comprehensive documentary done that shows the problems in all the systems.
wait...Moore misrepresenting sides of stories? Get out of town!! Who would have thought he used such tactics!? But you bring up an interesting point. Superficially, it sounds great. Free healthcare for everyone but there are hidden costs there that have to be thought about.
To my surprise, he had lived in the UK for several years working for Texaco. He said that while his daughter's medicine was certainly cheap enough there under the NHS, he could never get her into an NHS specialist that understood her condition. They were booked up for months in advance. HMOs pull this kinda sh*t too.
I'll keep it simple for you. Things are expensive because there aren't enough of them for everyone to have one. There are 2 possible reasons for this. 1. There aren't enough natural resources to produce them. (not the case with medicines) 2. The producers are purposefully limiting the amount they produces they can make more money. When you take away the incentive to make lots of money, you also take away then incentive to invent new drugs because the primary reason people produce things is to make money. (not save the world, although that probably plays a little part for many) When the government steps in and pays for everything by taxing those with money, it still cannot buy medicine the companies are unwilling to produce. Therefore even though healthcare is "free," everyone can still not get all the medicine they want, because if the government forces producers to overproduce at a price that doesn't maximize profits the incentive to produce new drugs goes away and no new drugs are made. The government generally isn't too stupid about this so they generally don't force companies to produce at an non-profit maximizing rate. Therefore shortages necessarily will occur in a universal healthcare system just as they do now. Scarcity is a fact of life, deal with it. The difference between the two systems is now the individual has the option of paying the large price for scarce goods if he so chooses. In a government rationed system (universal healthcare) market forces are ignored and people are served on a first come first served basis or on some arbitrary other system (political ties, etc.) While now some people are denied drugs because they can't afford it, in a government managed system more people will be denied drugs because the government said so and there aren't enough to go around. In one there is a possibility of getting expensive drugs (however slight), in the other you'll be denied because there aren't enough to go around. ie mandatory rationing. Then a black market will probably emerge, and the rich will then get their drugs anyway.
I'll keep it simple for you. Your post is a lot of theoretical wanking. It's almost as bad as your anecdotal wanking. There is a wealth of data demonstrating that other industrialized countries get significantly better health outcomes than the US with their universal (socialist!) systems and they pay less per capita on health care. If you want to make a meaningful contribution to the discussion provide some concrete evidence that the US is providing superior healthcare to its citizens for the same or less money.
see, this is your problem. you don't care about anyone other than yourself. who cares about "hidden costs"? it is the right thing to do and it is not superficial. we are the wealthiest nation on earth but not the most civilized. we do a poor job of taking care of the needy. and by needy, i mean the average american family without access to healthcare and education, free access. there is nothing to argue about. every other industrialized nation has universal healthcare. europeans and canadians aren't richer than us but they travel far more because they have the safety net of healthcare. can you image if you didn't have to worry, that it wasn't a luxury but a basic american right? can you imagine that?
as gifford said. prove it. england, germany, france, canada all have universal healthcare. all have life expectancy, infant mortality, and the amount of people with general diseases to be at least similar to if not considerably better than the US. and they all spend a lot less of their gdp on healthcare. if we continue to spend 25-30% more than other countries on healthcare, yet go through a universal healthcare system. please explain to me why our quality of health would decline. give me statistics.
I never said it was better, I just said changing to another system wouldn't make all the problems magically go away like people seem to believe. There are fundamental factors that are never going away no matter how much we wish them to. Wow, what a concept. but I will say comparing the US to other countries is comparing apples and oranges. The US is much much bigger than other countries and what may work well with one population doesn't necessarily mean it will work well for others. Its like comparing the US literacy rate to those in other countries and asking why we we're behind. Just because those other countries don't have million upon millions of immigrants coming in every year who aren't learning english and thus screwing with the results doesn't mean their system is superior to ours, just that it works for them.
Does a person have to shoot himself in the head to know it'd be a bad idea? Like I said above, no western industrialized country with the same cultural, economic, and demographical, exists as the US to compare it to. More people means more problems. Its a lot easier to make a system that works for 10 million people than for 256 million. As for my other point, More ppl to go see doctors because it free = doctors are more busy. more doctors are busy = need more doctors to keep proportion the same. more doctors to keep proportion the same = lowering standards. lowering standards = worse healthcare in long run. long run mind you, not the day after its implemented.
you do know that when i say costs, it doesnt have to be financial..right. costs could be a decrease in actuall effeciency, quality of care, etc etc
Why don't you show us where anyone anywhere changing to another system would "make all problems magically go away". What supporters of universal healthcare do say is that- "There is a wealth of data demonstrating that other industrialized countries get significantly better health outcomes than the US with their universal systems and they pay less per capita on health care." You analysis is gems like- And now I see that your claiming that because no other country is the same size with the same demographics as the US it's useless to look to their systems to see how we can do better. Brilliant. I'm convinced.
