I see your point. However, my fear in a government run health care system also goes along with that obscure form of brain cancer. In some forms of the system, you'd have to wait a few months to even see the brain cancer specialist that could diagnose the issue. Or, if some of driving capitalistic forces are taking out of play in the system, there might not even be a great brain cancer doctor available at all, or the means of treating it in the first place. As an aside, I watched a very good Independent film (that won an Oscar) called Les Invasions Barbares in which the main character's father is passing away from cancer in Montreal. It had some very pointed built in criticism of Canada's health care system. My quesion: are the major points about this system brought up in the film (long waits, overworked Doctors, greedy and corrupt Union hostpital workers) an accurate portrayal of the system?
In my opinion, healthcare, and life saving, etc. should NEVER be a for profit business. It should be seen as a citizen's service, much like a police department and fire department. In my opinion, it is definitely not the sign of a great country when you are looking for the best way to make a buck while you're taking care of somebody's health. Doctors, like pilots should be allowed to get rich. Like someone else said, they provide a valuable service. (By the way, my girlfriend's father is a pilot for United who makes 235K + a year...so I don't know how accurate those stats truly are) I just feel that overpricing things such as life-saving surgeries in unethical and should be considered uncivil.
Either way you're going to face the government to go above and beyond the act of providing a simple voucher - essentially it's going to be acting as an insurer does with all the attendant issues. Second, I think the fear of doctors or whoever not treating it is a red herring, because a) all industrialized countries except the US have nationalized health care systems, so there's no fear of them going to a privatized plus i think many doctors are motivated by something other than pure profit, and b) There's plenty of pharmas based in nationalized health care markets, Sanofi-Aventis, Roche, Akzo Nobel come to mind - I don't think research is going to grind to a halt because of it. Profit is profit even if it is lower.
You could argue that in the American system, with that obscure brain cancer, various insurances would have you fighting for months before they allowed you to see a specialist.... A continuation of my earlier post... Today at work, I saw a doctor ordered x-rays (x-rays are harmful, remember) on a 2 year-old child. Something happened that is becoming more and more common, though. The doctor ordered pictures of the baby's nose and eye sockets. Okay, that's fine, BUT when you take the orbit (eye socket) x-rays, you take about 5 pictures. When you take the nasal bones pictures, you take 2 or 3 pictures. The 2 or 3 pictures you take of the nose are the SAME EXACT pictures you take of the eyes. In fact, we just take the pictures of the eyes and "copy and paste" those pictures into the nose file(i.e. we don't even take any pictures of the nose but still charge for them). My only guess as to why the doctor did this: She wanted the hospital to get more money out of the insurance company. This happened to me literally today at work.
Also, I think the Brits have a great thing going, in that they reward doctors with higher pay based on how many people they can get to quit smoking a year, and other preventative things. Here in the United States, insurance companies are paying doctors that work for them more bonuses based on the amount of requested exams they are able to refuse.
This is another thing that seriously needs to be addressed. Our system doesn't encourage preventive care since something like a regular checkup is likely to fall under the deductible and have to be paid completely out of pocket. Because of that people put off treatment until things get bad and then end up in the ER when a simple problem like could be avoided for less cost from a quick doctor's visit earlier. One huge benefit I can see with universal coverage is increasing the overall health of Americans by making preventive care more available. I agree with the critics that a government run healthcare system will likely feature long waits and bureaucracy but in many cases we have that already and the current system is hell on small businesses. I think having some at least baseline of universal coverage focussed on prevention and general practice will go a long way to reducing costs, having a healthier population and stimulating the economy.
What would be so terrible about the nation's healthcare system breaking even? What if all the money that ultimately turns into profit - goes into the pockets of a relatively small number of people - gets funneled back into the system? We could pay doctors the same, pay the same for medical research, and so forth. Why does sickness have to be profitable for a small percentage of people? There are plenty of ways for folks to get rich. Do people have a problem with the idea that no one will become a billionaire from owning hospitals anymore if those hospitals adequately care for people who couldn't otherwise afford it? It all comes back anyway - poor people can't afford preventative check-ups and testing (many tests are insanely expensive), so they don't get healthcare until they end up in the emergency room - at that point, the costs and time are already substantially more than regular check-ups, and the person may now have a condition that could have been treated but now requires constant maintenance - well, either the hospital bites the bullet, the patient spends the rest of his/her life trying to pay down massive debt. When the hospital absorbs the bill ... WE end up paying for it anyway with increased costs and with more government subsidies. Unless a person is just dead-set against the idea that poor and lower-middle-class folks deserve to be healthy, then no arguments against nationalizing healthcare make any practical sense at all.
One need only look at the "travesty of success" that privatization has had in the state of Texas to believe that the private sector is better than the public sector at providing certain public services. Removing the profit motive is often beneficial in public service delivery. http://shapleigh.org/news/995-hhsc-terminates-accenture-contract http://www.progressivestates.org/node/22467 http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcon...stories/010408dnproson1sketches2.2c902df.html
A couple of random points When I got my for professional job, my employer footed the entire bill for single employees and it was only a $20 buck copay and the rest of your bill was taken care of. This is an issue that has been building only over a few years relatively imo, but i have never had to have a major procedure which should be noted. It really makes you wonder, what is the underlying problem. Is it because we have become fat. I have never been one to blame illegal aliens because I just don't believe there are enough mexicans coming across the border having kids, and no money to have screwed the system to this point. The other question I have is I work in a job where I look at a lot of balance sheets, and most private hospitals I see are in incredible shape compared to these large healthcare networks. could those be the problem?
Which country model do you propose? I propose lowering drug costs. That has always been 80% of my expenses. Tell me the ideal model country that you think totally proves my thoughts incorrect.
I am one that likes to blame anything I can on illegals and frankly it is more the american culture than anything else if you are talking about life expectancy. Life expectancy is the dumbest dumbest thing to compare to judge medical care in a country.
hhhmmmm waiting 6 weeks. . . or NEVER SEEING A SPECIALIST BECAUSE I CANNOT AFFORD IT . . . . Rocket River I will wait the 6 weeks
You're not asking me, but I'll offer my perspective. Since we're (literally) the LAST Western country to have socialized medicine, we shouldn't accept any other country's model as an ideal. We should look at them all closely, find out what works, and find out what doesn't work. Then we learn from their mistakes. The history of the world is replete with examples of nations becoming strong by such a process - I don't think it's any coincidence that China, being one of the last large nations to modernize, has been gradually increasing in power throughout their modernization. Likewise, I think it's entirely possible that the United States could have the best and most equitable healthcare system in the world - we have the errors of all those who started before us to learn from. The force counteracting this is the free-marketeers and the established healthcare bureaucracy - they will demand so many concessions that it may not be possible to put a sound and rational system in place. Half-measures will not work here.
Yeah I drove a car today like hundreds of days before instead of riding a bike or walking like they might in Japan. I ate taco bell instead of sushi or steamed fish, or rice with vegatables. I weigh 185 pounds which is higher than the average in japan but no one ever thinks I am fat here in the USA. If we all had equal healthcare, life expectancy would be unequal therefore comparing it is dumb dumb dumb for proof of better healthcare.
Also I think what hopefully might happen is have socialized medical care available for those on unemployment and possibly those under the age of 15. Don't squeeze the middle class (ie ME) into a crappy system where I can have worse healthcare or pay 3 times more than I do now for private care.
