Author Topic: On the Future of Health Care  (Read 7689 times)

lee n. field

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #25 on: August 09, 2017, 03:58:04 PM »
Sadly no.  I've heard ads on the Radio for a Born Again Christian Heath Insurance cooperative.* They didn't need any government funding to get started.  In fact, my understanding is that they were started because some folks vehemently disagreed with their government and the ACA.   So they decided to "go their own way" via a loophole in the ACA. 

It did kinda start like USAA, with people agreeing to insure one another.  Funny that.  And not using any .gov money, but thumbing their nose at the .gov instead.  Again, asking the .gov for help, is allowing the camel's nose under the tent. 



*- Found it.   https://mychristiancare.org/medi-share/  Seems it was in response to the ACA and making people pay for coverages and treatments that contradicted their religious beliefs.   Googling it also uncovered a few others as well.

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De Selby

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #26 on: August 09, 2017, 05:00:38 PM »
It's not that it is free - public medicine is just far cheaper and delivers better service. The wait times are no worse for the most part and can be skipped for non-emergency care with payment (payment that is well under American rates).

In America you have the worst of all possible worlds: extremely high prices for service that isn't any better, and is a royal PITA to access because you have to navigate insurers, doctors, and fifty bajillion billing codes in between.

There's a huge dollar and time efficiency gain in not having all the administration that comes with private insurance. There's no army of billing specialists when I go to the doctor, and they don't have to worry about being denied payment from entering the wrong digit in a sequence of 20.

Turning to hospital care, its publically funded so you manage a budget rather than managing a billing department.

That's why public systems can deliver equivalent service at lower prices. I've never understood why capitalism is a good thing when it causes higher prices and crappier service.
"Human existence being an hallucination containing in itself the secondary hallucinations of day and night (the latter an insanitary condition of the atmosphere due to accretions of black air) it ill becomes any man of sense to be concerned at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death."

Scout26

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #27 on: August 09, 2017, 05:28:37 PM »
It's not that it is free - public medicine is just far cheaper and delivers better service. The wait times are no worse for the most part and can be skipped for non-emergency care with payment (payment that is well under American rates).

In America you have the worst of all possible worlds: extremely high prices for service that isn't any better, and is a royal PITA to access because you have to navigate insurers, doctors, and fifty bajillion billing codes in between.

There's a huge dollar and time efficiency gain in not having all the administration that comes with private insurance. There's no army of billing specialists when I go to the doctor, and they don't have to worry about being denied payment from entering the wrong digit in a sequence of 20.

Turning to hospital care, its publically funded so you manage a budget rather than managing a billing department.

That's why public systems can deliver equivalent service at lower prices. I've never understood why capitalism is a good thing when it causes higher prices and crappier service.


All of which is why the Veteran's Administration is the model of patient care and service, along with medical, and fiscal efficiency when it comes to treatment and cost control.


And I managed to keep a straight face while typing that.


Holy Carp DeSelby, what the hell was in your bong today. 
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Angel Eyes

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #28 on: August 09, 2017, 05:29:22 PM »
*- Found it.   https://mychristiancare.org/medi-share/  Seems it was in response to the ACA and making people pay for coverages and treatments that contradicted their religious beliefs.   Googling it also uncovered a few others as well.

A friend of mine looked into Medi-Share.  They went with Samaritan Ministries instead.

The basic principle is the same (members share each other's medical expenses), but Medi-Share is more like traditional insurance in that they tell you which providers you can use and which medical expenses can be shared.  Medi-Share will not cover people whose weight is outside their parameters.
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Ben

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #29 on: August 09, 2017, 05:29:56 PM »
That's why public systems can deliver equivalent service at lower prices. I've never understood why capitalism is a good thing when it causes higher prices and crappier service.

Prices aside, it seems to be a pretty common theme that there are significant wait times for more complex services in single payer in many if not most countries. These people are seeing two month wait times for an MRI as normal. Granted it was pre-ACA, but the last time I got an MRI, it was a week after I called to setup the appointment.  

It was also just a $50 copay. Even if I got in for one in a week now (no idea what what times are now), on my current post-ACA plan, I'd be liable for the full cost of the MRI or the max of my $6500 annual, whichever came first.
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lee n. field

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #30 on: August 09, 2017, 06:17:59 PM »
A friend of mine looked into Medi-Share.  They went with Samaritan Ministries instead.

The basic principle is the same (members share each other's medical expenses), but Medi-Share is more like traditional insurance in that they tell you which providers you can use and which medical expenses can be shared.  Medi-Share will not cover people whose weight is outside their parameters.


They do.  It just costs more.
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dogmush

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #31 on: August 10, 2017, 07:35:03 AM »

In America you have the worst of all possible worlds: extremely high prices for service that isn't any better, and is a royal PITA to access because you have to navigate insurers, doctors, and fifty bajillion billing codes in between.

You keep saying this, and I'm not sure it's as universally true as single payer fan-boys would like it to be.

Take my family: According to this site Aussies spend $4319 USD per person, per year on healthcare split between gov funding, personal payments (co pays) and insurance. So a family of two (like mine) is $8638 USD/ year into health care.

We pay $230/ pay period for our insurance ($5980 USD/year) and My wife and I average about $250 in co-pays/year.  (mostly dental) So we're $6230/year for the family.  Cheaper than the hypothetical Aussie family.

I know there are billing inefficiencies, coding specialists and the like, but I never see them.  I call, get an appointment, walk in, see the doc, give them $20 or $30 and walk out.  I get great service from my docs, and if I didn't, I'd go find another.  Obviously surgeons are more the luck of the draw for emergent issues, but for planned ones I shop around and ask who does good work. I have, once in the last decade, found a doc that I wanted to see that my insurance didn't have a deal with.  So that can happen, but for the most part I have a lot of freedom to pick who I see for health care, and how they treat me.

Sure there are folks in the US that get just huge bills, or end up bankrupt from treatments, and their are crappier plans then mine that don't give people the choices I get, and there are huge inefficiencies in our current system.  But there are MILLIONS of Americans who, like me, pay a small fee and just go to the doctor when they want, and get good, professional treatment.  So when media and fan boys through out cases from the extreme of the bell curve in America and use it to try and tear down the whole system, folks like me start to get nervous.  Because we were told we could keep our doc's if we liked them before, and it wasn't all roses.

You should realize, that for all it's inefficiencies, and the cases on the fringe that we 100% should work on, for the VAST majority of Americans don't live in some sort of constant anxiety about healthcare.  Most of us just buy insurance, and go see a doctor whenever we want.  It's not a royal PITA. 

De Selby

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #32 on: August 10, 2017, 07:57:59 AM »
Dogmush, I see your point on healthcare being good enough for a large swath of the population.  That's certainly part of why you keep that system even in the face of its potential to bankrupt the federal govern,ent.

There are some key issues with your figures to note:

1) that figure in Australia is to cover everyone. It isn't directly comparable to your family premiums. My actual out of pocket cost for premiums is 1% of my income plus $80 a month for private cover that gives me dental, eyes, alternative medicine and access to sports injury surgeries that are much faster than public.

2) a current list (wiki but cited) sets Australia at 4420 per person, and the US at 9451.  So like for like, it's pretty much impossible to make the case about affordability. For that 4420 it's impossible for cancer or heart disease to bankrupt me.  That's a very realistic prospect for even insured Americans.

3) Nearly every doctor in this system is private and you can choose whoever. Having lived in both, it is far, far easier to shop around and select a doctor you want in Australia. they claim on the public benefits scheme and can choose to charge more.  The existence of the public scheme and hospitals that offer major care on a public basis means that private providers are limited to some degree in what they can charge - people will just go public if the private bill is too much.  Overall it yields lots of options that are excellent, easy to access, and affordable. 

Insurance and us healthcare certainly do provide services people want.  It's just that they aren't as good as the services in countries with a public healthcare system.
"Human existence being an hallucination containing in itself the secondary hallucinations of day and night (the latter an insanitary condition of the atmosphere due to accretions of black air) it ill becomes any man of sense to be concerned at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death."

De Selby

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #33 on: August 10, 2017, 08:03:48 AM »
All of which is why the Veteran's Administration is the model of patient care and service, along with medical, and fiscal efficiency when it comes to treatment and cost control.


And I managed to keep a straight face while typing that.


Holy Carp DeSelby, what the hell was in your bong today. 

It sure isn't.  Not sure how that's relevant to international models of public healthcare???  The VA isn't a public medical system.
"Human existence being an hallucination containing in itself the secondary hallucinations of day and night (the latter an insanitary condition of the atmosphere due to accretions of black air) it ill becomes any man of sense to be concerned at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death."

De Selby

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #34 on: August 10, 2017, 08:07:17 AM »
Prices aside, it seems to be a pretty common theme that there are significant wait times for more complex services in single payer in many if not most countries. These people are seeing two month wait times for an MRI as normal. Granted it was pre-ACA, but the last time I got an MRI, it was a week after I called to setup the appointment.  

It was also just a $50 copay. Even if I got in for one in a week now (no idea what what times are now), on my current post-ACA plan, I'd be liable for the full cost of the MRI or the max of my $6500 annual, whichever came first.

MRI services tend to be triaged based on injury or suspected diagnosis. If you just paid out of pocket for one the price here would be far less than the difference between yearly medicine costs and an average health insurance plan in the US.
"Human existence being an hallucination containing in itself the secondary hallucinations of day and night (the latter an insanitary condition of the atmosphere due to accretions of black air) it ill becomes any man of sense to be concerned at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death."

RoadKingLarry

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #35 on: August 10, 2017, 09:27:00 AM »
For an expat that is so enamored of things the way they are where you are, my suggestion is for you to stay there and enjoy it. We really don't need anymore liberal/socialist/commies trying to *expletive deleted*ck things up here at home.
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dogmush

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #36 on: August 10, 2017, 09:40:18 AM »

1) that figure in Australia is to cover everyone. It isn't directly comparable to your family premiums. My actual out of pocket cost for premiums is 1% of my income plus $80 a month for private cover that gives me dental, eyes, alternative medicine and access to sports injury surgeries that are much faster than public.


You can't hand wave away the tax burden a gov funded system imposes.  You are still paying for it.

The other issue, as RKL alludes to, is that there are cultural traditions, important to Americans, that add "cost" to just turning over healthcare to the government for us.  So the difference is not as stark as you would like to portray, and there's more to the equation than JUST cost and service.


All of that doesn't touch the fact that the vast sums of money Americans spend on the edges of our bell curve subsidies medical R and D far out of proportion to our percentage of the worlds population, in much the same way as our military spending subsidies European socialism.  It would be ironic if we finally cut cost enough that it's no longer worth finding new cures.

Firethorn

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #37 on: August 10, 2017, 05:34:34 PM »
You keep saying this, and I'm not sure it's as universally true as single payer fan-boys would like it to be.

I'm not a single payer fan-boy, I just see why so many can see it as the "solution" when all the evils of our very much NOT free-market solution are laid out.  As I and others have mentioned, some of our issues wouldn't be fixed by single-payer, so it's not a "complete" solution, but when one is looking for a sound bite, it frequently wins, as a full solution takes a lot of words even as a summary.

Then, look at your family.  You do realize that, given your description, you're doing the equivalent of arguing that since your Smart Car works for you, that smart cars would work for everybody?  What?  Don't drive a smart? You have extra needs?

The majority of healthcare costs aren't for the healthy like you.  They're for people like my parents.  My mom's diabetic, dad has had cancer and a screwed up spine requiring multiple surgeries.

So you're looking at the fuel use by a family with a smart4two who drives once a week for groceries while ignoring the oilfield construction contractor driving a F350 towing a trailer full of tools.

Quote from: De Selby
It sure isn't.  Not sure how that's relevant to international models of public healthcare???  The VA isn't a public medical system.

In a sense it is.  Except for inclusion requirements, it's a government medical system that could theoretically be expanded to cover the entire population.  And yes, it has issues.  Medicare and Medicaid are two other options where you could expand coverage.

The problem, as I see it, with supporting the current regime is that people often ignore the problems with the current system - people delaying or not getting care because they can't afford it.  Medical bankruptcies that raise costs for the rest of us.  Etc...

As they say - fast, cheap, good.  Pick two.  Maybe only one.

De Selby

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #38 on: August 10, 2017, 07:12:34 PM »
You can't hand wave away the tax burden a gov funded system imposes.  You are still paying for it.

The other issue, as RKL alludes to, is that there are cultural traditions, important to Americans, that add "cost" to just turning over healthcare to the government for us.  So the difference is not as stark as you would like to portray, and there's more to the equation than JUST cost and service.


All of that doesn't touch the fact that the vast sums of money Americans spend on the edges of our bell curve subsidies medical R and D far out of proportion to our percentage of the worlds population, in much the same way as our military spending subsidies European socialism.  It would be ironic if we finally cut cost enough that it's no longer worth finding new cures.

Sorry, to clarify - that 1 percent is the tax burden. I'm not waving it away. It's listed on your taxes.
"Human existence being an hallucination containing in itself the secondary hallucinations of day and night (the latter an insanitary condition of the atmosphere due to accretions of black air) it ill becomes any man of sense to be concerned at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death."

Scout26

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #39 on: August 11, 2017, 02:34:39 AM »
It sure isn't.  Not sure how that's relevant to international models of public healthcare???  The VA isn't a public medical system.

It most certainly is.  It's owned and paid for 100% through tax dollars.  Yes, it's not "universal" but it's government run.  Which is what universal healtcare systems are.

And most medicaid programs are going broke.  Several States that expanded Medicaid under the ACA are having a second look and considering "contracting" medicaid.  In the expansion the Feds picked up 100% the first and it declines to 90% in the year 2020.  But there's no "what happens next in 2021".  The feds could go to the current 57%/43% split for per ACA enrollees.  And State budgets then implode.   

And Univerisal Healthcare is just that.  Healthcare (not insurance), you go the doc and the .gov pays.   Causing an even bigger disconnect between patient, provider, and payer.   Because, if Uncle Sugar is picking up the tab, then I'm headed to the doc for every little hang-nail and boo-boo.

And the other problem we have are the illegals.  I've been in the ER at my hospital any number of times (me plus 2 kids in sports).  70-90% of the folks in the ER are Hispanic (West Chicago is for all practical purposes a suburb of Mexico, it often called "West Chicano") and CDH is the county hospital.   And that's both the Adult and Juvenile ER's.   Even though I'm constantly told they are not eligible for US welfare/food stamp and other benefits, like medicaid.)

Sorry, but there are several things we need to do to both improve the quality, but also the quantity of care.  And getting the .gov out is the most important.

And sorry DeSelby, but if you want to see how univerisal healthcare, run by the fed.gov would work, then look no further than the VA.     
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Put our backs to the north wind.
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JN01

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #40 on: August 11, 2017, 05:17:15 PM »
Quote
And sorry DeSelby, but if you want to see how univerisal healthcare, run by the fed.gov would work, then look no further than the VA.     

You must be an optimist, thinking a new universal healthcare would be as well run as the VA.

Scout26

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #41 on: August 11, 2017, 05:31:43 PM »
You must be an optimist, thinking a new universal healthcare would be as well run as the VA.

Yep, look no further then the disaster that was the ACA rollout and the website...
Some days even my lucky rocketship underpants won't help.


Bring me my Broadsword and a clear understanding.
Get up to the roundhouse on the cliff-top standing.
Take women and children and bed them down.
Bless with a hard heart those that stand with me.
Bless the women and children who firm our hands.
Put our backs to the north wind.
Hold fast by the river.
Sweet memories to drive us on,
for the motherland.

De Selby

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #42 on: August 11, 2017, 10:42:40 PM »
Yep, look no further then the disaster that was the ACA rollout and the website...

The ACA and the VA are two examples of what's wrong with private health insurers capturing the field on health policy.

The ACA was supported by industry - in the end it was boon for private markets. Part of the VA's problem is that it is, like the old seaman's hospitals, a backwater to the overall healthcare market.

In short, finger pointing to them as examples of public care failing completely misses the reasons why public healthcare works well in other places.

  It's very easy to shut your eyes and scream "government bad!", but that doesn't mean you'll get the right answer.
"Human existence being an hallucination containing in itself the secondary hallucinations of day and night (the latter an insanitary condition of the atmosphere due to accretions of black air) it ill becomes any man of sense to be concerned at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death."

Scout26

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #43 on: August 12, 2017, 03:16:38 AM »



I just don't even know how to react to that level of farktard.   It wasn't private companies that botched the rollout of the Obamacare website.  It was the .gov.  Unlike every other website where if you go to buy something, you get to see the price first.  Obama Administration Officials insisted on a last minute re-write so that you could only see and shop prices AFTER you had provided all your personal and banking information so that you would be FORCED to buy a policy.   That wasn't the Insurance Companies doing, that was the Administration, and yes, they wrote the law so that if the ACA started to implode and the insurance companies were about to lose their ass as healthy people dropped coverage and only the sick remained (and you could only charge by income, not any other factors), the insurance companies would get bailed out.   Yes, they took the King's shilling.  I have zero sympathy for them.

And the VA, that fails it patients and kills them at a rate, that if done by any other hospital or hospital chain would see everyone from the janitors to the CEO in prison, is a malignant suckhole of death, because "private markets make it "a backwater of the healthcare market" ??

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

The VA is s national wide medical system with a medical budget is $70.7 Billion.  It should be a shining example and the premier healthcare system in the US, because it is yoru beloved "Single Payer".   My "Backwater" Hospital system (Northwestern University Hospitals) only has 5 Hospitals (and several clinics) and budget of only $5 billion. Yet, my backwater hospital system, has managed to keep me alive about twice as long as it takes a returning veteran to register for benefits (6 years come November vs a 33 month wait to process new veterans into the system).  33 months just to register to get treatment. I guess outwaiting your patients so that they die in the mean time it a great method to control costs...

Okay, I get it.  Aussie Healthcare and the British NHS are just the *expletive deleted*it when it comes to healthcare.  Can you name the latest breakthrough drugs or treatments from Oz or the UK, and when they entered the market ??
 


Some days even my lucky rocketship underpants won't help.


Bring me my Broadsword and a clear understanding.
Get up to the roundhouse on the cliff-top standing.
Take women and children and bed them down.
Bless with a hard heart those that stand with me.
Bless the women and children who firm our hands.
Put our backs to the north wind.
Hold fast by the river.
Sweet memories to drive us on,
for the motherland.

De Selby

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #44 on: August 12, 2017, 06:09:40 AM »
The hype in your response, and the vague shifting between obamacare, soviet housing, and then the oft repeated claim that public medicine means no breakthroughs is a telltale sign of emotional attachment to the policy, not fact based.

On the claim about breakthroughs:

Quote
Research funding, particularly by the private sector, has also shifted to later stages development and away from basic science. Guided primarily by the desire to realize short-term economic benefits, the share of spending by pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies on phase 3 clinical trials – large studies in people that often represent the final step before regulatory approval – grew by 36 percent between 2004 and 2012. Industry spending is also now the largest component of U.S. medical R&D, increasing from 46 percent in 2004 to 58 percent in 2012.

https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/4233/u.s.-slipping-as-global-leader-in-medical-research.aspx

The Aussie and U.K. Systems both deliver a superior service at lower prices.  That's what the facts support as a conclusion.  The fact that you're going from public housing to wild claims about obamacare to then asserting that if Americans don't pay triple for healthcare the world will have no medicine should be illuminating enough (but I predict it won't be - facts haven't swayed this debate in an entire US generation.)
"Human existence being an hallucination containing in itself the secondary hallucinations of day and night (the latter an insanitary condition of the atmosphere due to accretions of black air) it ill becomes any man of sense to be concerned at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death."

dogmush

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #45 on: August 12, 2017, 06:28:36 AM »

The Aussie and U.K. Systems both deliver a superior service at lower prices.  That's what the facts support as a conclusion.  The fact that you're going from public housing to wild claims about obamacare to then asserting that if Americans don't pay triple for healthcare the world will have no medicine should be illuminating enough (but I predict it won't be - facts haven't swayed this debate in an entire US generation.)


Neither has the fact that the US is not the UK or Australia, and the very real differences in our governments, scale of population, and culture present some very real, and different, issues to providing better, cheaper healthcare through a single payer system in the US.  But you just want to keep repeating that it works elsewhere, while poo pooing real issues.

On the R and D front, the fact is that the US healthcare market pays for more of the research and fielding of new medicine worldwide than it's population warrants.  Will R and D stop? No of course not, but how do you quantify the very smart folks that in 20 years choose to work for Virgin Intergalactic instead of Pfizer?  It's difficult but shouldn't just be dismissed.  Much like US military power projection (another thing Australia and the UK benefit from without really paying for, come to think of it)  everyone is ready to tell us we're doing it wrong, but when we stop it all goes to hell.

TommyGunn

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #46 on: August 12, 2017, 10:46:33 AM »
....The Aussie and U.K. Systems both deliver a superior service at lower prices.  That's what the facts support as a conclusion.  The fact that you're going from public housing to wild claims about obamacare to then asserting that if Americans don't pay triple for healthcare the world will have no medicine should be illuminating enough (but I predict it won't be - facts haven't swayed this debate in an entire US generation.)


I won't speak about Australia,  but  I do wish my parents were still alive to wax eloquent,  they  both had experience with the British  HC  system,  and from what they told me,  I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.  They also spoke to too many people over there about their experiences in the system,  very little good was heard.
If you have some run of the mill problem,  it works....sort of.   Get a nasty aggressive cancer.....you're S. O. L.  
It has nothing to do with competent doctors --- they're very competent.   There just aren't enough of 'em,  and the bureaucracy stinks.
MOLON LABE   "Through ignorance of what is good and what is bad, the life of men is greatly perplexed." ~~ Cicero

Pb

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #47 on: August 12, 2017, 11:28:26 AM »
I have a particular rare and painful health issue (hyperacusis).  There is a webboard for this disorder that I visit.  A member from the UK stated that s/he had been waiting over a year for their appointment with an audiologist to get treated.  There is something very, very wrong with that. =(

MillCreek

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #48 on: August 12, 2017, 02:20:08 PM »
Just to chime in as someone who has worked in the US healthcare system for almost four decades now: the US system could do a much better job of providing a basic level of care to all citizens.  When it comes to cutting-edge care and research, the US has few peers if the patient can pay for that care.  When it comes to providing basic OB, dental, pediatric or primary care to every US citizen, the US is significantly behind many other First World nations, some of which do have a health system operated by that nation's government.  I recently volunteered at a local church's 'health day' in which volunteer providers came to give free medical and dental care to people in need, and it embarrasses me as a US citizen that such things are necessary in this country.
_____________
Regards,
MillCreek
Snohomish County, WA  USA


Quote from: Angel Eyes on August 09, 2018, 01:56:15 AM
You are one lousy risk manager.

agricola

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Re: On the Future of Health Care
« Reply #49 on: August 12, 2017, 04:51:57 PM »
Neither has the fact that the US is not the UK or Australia, and the very real differences in our governments, scale of population, and culture present some very real, and different, issues to providing better, cheaper healthcare through a single payer system in the US.  But you just want to keep repeating that it works elsewhere, while poo pooing real issues.

On the R and D front, the fact is that the US healthcare market pays for more of the research and fielding of new medicine worldwide than it's population warrants.  Will R and D stop? No of course not, but how do you quantify the very smart folks that in 20 years choose to work for Virgin Intergalactic instead of Pfizer?  It's difficult but shouldn't just be dismissed.  Much like US military power projection (another thing Australia and the UK benefit from without really paying for, come to think of it)  everyone is ready to tell us we're doing it wrong, but when we stop it all goes to hell.

Not sure that De Selby is ignoring the real issues - especially when it comes to the NHS which demonstrably costs less per capita than the Medicare/Medicaid system does, and which demonstrably delivers far more.  It isn't a perfect system by any means (though it is nowhere near as bad as painted in your media), but in terms of relatively efficient use of taxpayer's money it is streets ahead. 
"Idiot!  A long life eating mush is best."
"Make peace, you fools"