The 45 million uninsured people in the US are still going to the doctor. They just use emergency rooms. Preventative care will also help. I pay for dental insurance, and I use it to get regular check-ups so that I don't all of the sudden need 20 root canals. Same with medical.
I think my option for an HMO was about 1900 per year which is 4% of the median income (which is much less than the average income) I think my ideal solution would be to say start it for unemployed, then for those without health insurance (possibly on welfare or the like) then slowly expand it. Make it better and cheaper and have a natural draw from people to move to it.
different thread but i think the major problem is people don't want to do 5 years of grad school if they know they will leave in debt and can get a job without it. You make it free. We have plenty of college grads but the rate of them moving on is killing us.
Dental and medical is not really the same thing. You can be perfectly healthy and not go see a Dr. for 5 years. Not the case with dental. Your argument that the number of Dr. visits would remaint he same just changed from ER to family Dr. seems kinda foolish. You are saying the number of visits would stay the same?
This makes no sense. Of course you can be perfectly healthy and not go see the doctor. You could also be perfectly healthy and not go see the dentist. The point is that such "maintenance-esque" vists are available, and woudl result in far less expensive care overall. More importantly, your statement regarding "5 years" becomes ludicrous for older folks. Sure, right now I abhor going to the doctor, but in 10 years I'll be happy as a lark to get a checkup once a year. Are you honestly arguing that preventative care is not beneficial long term? No, I am saying that the assertion that any plan is tantamount to just "adding 45 million people" to the doctor's queue is ridiculous. As you said, people can be healthy for extended periods of time with no visits, and the visits that are truly unavoidable happen anyway. Regardless, you have given no evidence that this has actually ever occurred in a socialized system outside of a few anecdotes. And even if you did, it would be moot given the US's complete lack of data to show that our wait times are actually any better. It's an argument based on nothing more than subjective conjecture.
If you do not go see a dentist you will get gum disease for sure. No doctor is not the case. You keep asking for evidence but your first thing was that longer wait times will not happen. Show how it won't when you add millions of people without adding providers.
I'll ask again and throw in the cost aspect: No. You stated it as a foregone conclusion. I countered that you had no basis for said assertion. Furthermore, you have no data to compare against. If the US went to a socialized system, we would honestly have no way to comparatively gauge the wait times from our current system to the new one.
I said 45 million more people in the system with the same number of providers. Your counter was that the 45 million just go to the ER instead of the GP. If that is your argument then congrats.
Ok so as a supporter of socialized system let me ask you. By adding 45 million to a system that has a slow to respond number of providers how do the wait times NOT go up? People with coverage go more often than people without. More people with coverage = more visits.
I have a question for you. With your "plan" all you wanted to do was increase the number of medical personnel and lower prescription costs. How is that going to help sick people that do not have insurance?
I have said twice I would support making a national system for unemployed and those that qualify for welfare.
It might be that initially wait times may increase while the system "flexes" to the demand. But even that is just my own conjecture - I have no way to prove this without a better understanding of any proposed system. And it would be little more than anecdotal in any case, since there would be no statisical data to compare against. It's not impossible that wait time will increase, but neither is it unavoidable - these types of things will need to be dealt with and worked on. You seem to think that I have some delusion that going national will make everything hunky-dory. I never said that. I do think it will be significantly cheaper for me, and allow everyone access to care. Those are good things. Heck, for those two things I can deal with longer wait times, should they occur.
yeah but only because we would have to pay for it like medicare. At least it is not a double crapper where our coverage gets changed.
Ok great. And not calling me an idiot would be a good way to have a better discussion in the future. You say "might" I personally see no way possible that the wait times would not be longer.
Not to be difficult, but I specifically did NOT call you an idiot. I was afraid you would take it that way, and disclaimered my post accordingly. You idiot.
