Huh? The flaw is that "they're expensive because they're mostly designed with corporations and social businesses in mind, not recipients." THAT'S what you're really saying.
Does this include the British public Healthcare too -- because even that system winds up balancing the books at the expense of the patients, especially those who live farther outside London.
And I have never seen any proof that they're cheaper, just your gratuitous assertion.
http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/life-expectancy-and-u-s-health-care-spending-an-international-comparison
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/8115071e.pdf?expires=1467353671&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=E5F7895F9BD8F06DAA59DA24B80B66B9
Quote
The United States continues to spend much more on health per capita than all other
OECD countries, but is not in the top group in terms of the number of doctors or nurses per
population.
Quote
In 2013, the United States continued to outspend all other
OECD countries by a wide margin, with the equivalent of
USD 8 713 for each US resident (Figure 9.1). This level of
health spending is two-and-a-half times the average of all
OECD countries (USD 3 453) and nearly 40% higher than the
next biggest spender, Switzerland (adjusted for the different
purchasing powers – see “Definition and comparability”
box). Compared with some other G7 countries, the United
States spends around twice as much on health care per
person as Germany, Canada and France.
DeSelby, I never trust statistics gathered in other countries as compared to either America ... or even between those countries. Different countries have different methods of gathering stats and correlating them.
One example I've heard recently was in Japan, police investigators delving into a "murder/suicide" in which one person has, say, killed three people and then offed himself, will chalk it down as four suicides. This may mean that while the Japanese can understand the stats (though I question that) the cumulative result is relatively meaningless when compared to U.S. stats.
And so on for medical stats. It is noted fact for example that in some countries, babies that survive birth but die shortly after are called "stillborn," while in America only those who are, indeed, born dead, are still born.
This also is an example of how countries' different methods of gathering stats can skew realities.
So please forgive me if I an unimpressed by long lists of articles and links to stats telling me how superior the world is to America. I don't believe anything I hear ...and only 50% of what I read.
I will say one thing, from family experience; in the mid 1980s my parents, and my maternal grandmother, spent three years living in southern Scotland, where both my father and grandmother had need of medical services in the government-provided healthcare system.
Let me get the one truly positive thing I will say about their medicine out of the way first: My grandmother at the time was in her late 80s to early 90s, and had been prescribed a whole boatload of medicines by her American doctor. One of the first things her Scottish doctor did was eliminate possible 3/4ths of those prescriptions as "unnecessary." This had no effect on her physical health, but her mental acuity improved greatly. We were left with the impresion her American doctor had over-medicated her.
Now for the rest:
The beuracracy is horrid. The paperwork was an aggravating factor to my father, beyond anything he'd ever had to put up with.
Save for a specialist when he had liver problems he was never able to see the same doctor twice. You go into a large room, fill out paperwork, que up, and when your name is called, you see which ever doctor is available at that moment.
You saw Doctor Smith two weeks ago?
Tough, today you see Dr. Norwich -- 'cause THAT'S where you are in line.
In America, if you need an ambulance, they come equiped with paramedics, radio, lots of medical gear, defib equipment, bags of Ringer's Lactate, saline solution, and other stuff. Some treatments can be applied en route under radio supervision from the doctors.
In Scotland?
Well, they actually DO have ambulances, so that's the good news.
They are panel trucks with a cot inside.
Literally.
I ain't shittin' ya.
Oh, and if you're diagnosed with cancer, as some of my parents' Scottish friends related.....you get to wait even months to see a cancer specialist. I hope its not a fast-growing malignant type of cancer because if it is, that diagnosis was a death sentence.
Sorry, I will take good ol' U.S. of A. medicine everyday of the week and twice on Sundays.
There are things that can be done to improve American medicine, but it won't be done by President Obama, it won't be done by President Hillary Clinton, and I am amazingly dubious that a President Trump will do anything positive, either.
On a brighter note ....we only have to die once.
