Do you want this healthcare system in America? Why and why not?

Yes, we do. However we don't have to fork out the fortunes you have to, to clinically disinterested insurance companies who only exist in order to make a profit, and do their utmost to get out of their obligations by citing endless clauses limiting your care.
I pay about UK£50 a month for everything-including unemployment benefit if I lose my job, dental care, free glasses if I'm unemployed, maternity, child benefit...and no questions, no endless form-filling. I need a triple bypass? I get it done, leave the hospital fixed. No bill. Nothing to pay.
What do you pay, and what do you get for your money?
We also have the private option for those who need a steak dinner and flowers in their own room. Personally I couldn't care less about fripperies. A hospital isn't a hotel, and I want in and out ASAP.

 

Well, be that as it all may with you, this isn't ONLY about you. So, I will retain the views I hold on the matter.

 

Glad you asked what I pay.

I pay 0$ for health care and insurance due to my employer. There's no co-pay, it's all covered 100%. Dental, wellness, dental.
So what do I get for my money? Honestly, nothing, as I haven't needed any medical care for years.

Granted, I did pay for Lasik Eye surgery from my Roth-HSA account.

 

Okay. Appreciate your candor. That's much better than embrace it first, then clumsily try to invalidate those defects mentioned above.

 

And when your employer decides that a Chinese engineering graduate who will work for $2/hour is a better deal than you, do you have ANY idea what you will pay for health insurance, general medical care, and any potential damage you may encounter?


About 30 MILLION Americans have gotten to discover the VERY SUCKY answer to that question in the USA. But hey,if something is not YOUR problem, its NOT a "problem", right?

 

I've been to canada and cuba and sweden and norway before, sweden & norway on business trip, the other 2 on aesthetic purposes, I'm perfectly clear about the ups and downs of those healthcare system, yes, poor and "underprivileged" do benefit from such system, but all evidence presented to me suggested that:

A: it is completely unsustainable, unless the nation that running the system in discussion is a resource-rich one with relatively small population, then again it is unsustainable as resources deplete. Sweden is moving further and further away from the "cradle to grave" model.

B: it is extremely harmful to the economy as it multiplies the labor costs, and enforces high taxation. Since none of these systems are immune to a fundamental scheme of compulsory insurance plans, investments are being scared away not because they can't afford to participate in those insurance plans, which as a matter of fact, are being payed by the money made by employees themselves, (the employers just tell the employees they are paying 'their share', but where did 'their share' come from in the first place?) but because it would complicate the entire process of running a business, and the increasing in complexity is manifested by the increasing in cost. And let's not forget there are nations of which things are less complicated.

C:It is wasteful. It encourages people to use medical services as often as possible and cling to those services that are as expensive as possible. Pharmaceutical companies love, love love NHS, here is a tip of the iceberg:

Drug companies 'exploiting rules to make exorbitant profits from NHS

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/nov/17/drugs-companies-exorbitant-profits-nhs

After all, is there one thing on earth better than govt. using taxpayers' money to fund your manufacturing, research and development?

 

Typical F - - - - Loser! He goes on about the most annoying European health system he can find and one which is as far apart from ours as possible. Why not look to the Netherlands or Switzerland for a more compatible universal health care system?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_the_Netherlands
http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2009/05/26/what-is-healthcare-like-neth/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Switzerland
http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2011/04/29/why-switzerland-has-the-worlds-best-health-care-system/

Let's look at real choices instead of some boogeyman under the bed, shall we?

 

In every system, there are losers and there are winners. It always sucks to be a loser, problem is, no winner, especially those who picking bread crusts on the floor can guarantee they will not someday be turned into a loser.

 

There's a huge difference where weakness is embraced and those less fortunate are cared for.

In this respect, America is a dive.

 

Why? most likely those who cannot afford a decent medical benefits package will take the system. Those who can afford it could care less either way. Your making a big deal over nothing.

 

couldnt care less

 

Yeah? And if you lose your job you'll be without your health insurance. I'll also bet my left nut your employer health insurance is factored into your salary package.

 

Exactly, anyone can be touched readily by GREED if there are no protections against the same.

 

When it comes to HEALTHCARE, the system should be SET UP so that MOST PEOPLE WIN. My God, people think and behave as monsters about this... and they don't even realize it.

And I've seriously shared with others what a world without healthcare for all actually looks like; they tend to avert their eyes from the picture painted, which is the SAME GD thing they do in reality. Like it or not hyper-Conservatives and staunch-Libertarians... the well-being of OTHERS besides your preferred GROUP or YOURSELF matters in reality. We aren't all living in separate bubbles; and you do not have to tell a Liberal that.

This isn't the 3rd grade out here. There are those who are disadvantaged (in some or many ways) and there are those who meet with unfortunate circumstances. What you and others who are very self-interested don't grasp, is that the plight of those around you in large part dictates the condition of the society you will live in. It's like you throw that out as if it doesn't matter; and THAT is wrong.

You express yourself as if you will ALWAYS be THE winner. Well, knowing life as well as I do, I'm fairly certain that won't always be the case. Beware of what you wish for.

 

Exactly!! Some people fall for the BOGO thing... not realizing that something rarely comes for nothing (as in some true act of compassion).

I think healthcare as a RIGHT, is the way to go.

 

I don't think you've looked at Canada and Cuba and Sweden and the others very well. I mean, the stuff about it being unsustainable?

Citizens of Canada, Sweden, the UK, Germany, France etc pay less in taxes, per person and as a % of GDP towards government health care than American citizens. I mean, when you pay your taxes, you've paid more dollars and cents towards government health care than they do. In America, government healthcare include Medicare, Medicaid, VHA, IH etc. Each with its own bureaucracy, procedures, duplicate work and gatekeepers. That, in total, costs more than the European systems with one set of procedures.
Which is no surprise to anyone whose worked in a large organization, one department is cheaper than ten doing the same work.

In a very real sense, these systems are free to the citizens, in that they are getting them for less moeny than US citizens pay to get nothing back.

And that is before we start adding all the money private citizens and businesses pay for healthcare.

A lot of people don't realize just how inefficient the US system is compared to the competition: The US spends 18 % of GDP on health care. The government spends half, and businesses and private citizens the other half. The entire US military budget is just over 4 % of GDP. Meanwhile, the other developed nations run health care fore everyone on 8,5 % of GDP. And they do that off taxes, with no extra costs for businesses.

There are measurements for how good results these systems provide: Years lost to ill health, years lived in good health, amendable mortality, maternal mortality...the US does not do good in any of them. Not every system can be the NHS and get good results from a population close to the US health profile at 8 % of GDP, but they are all massivly more effective than the US.

I mean, look at this graph: All that extra cost is split between US businesses and the American people. The government already pay more than most developed nations.


Source: http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/oecd042111.cfm

US costs are rising faster than the costs of any other nation, and has since 1980.

I mean, I am sorry FL, but everything you say is completly opposite to how things work in the real world. The systems are less wasteful, more sustainable, and impose no additional burden on the business community. They encourage less overconsuption because costs are not borne by a third party. This is really how things work in the real world.

Health care economists have known this since 1963.

 

I mean, honestly. Most of the stuff you're saying sounds like it is from another planet! Drugs more expensive in the UK and Canada than the US? Treatment more expensive? Burden on industry larger? This is pretty much the opposite of how the real world observably works.

 

Excellent refute — finally. I'm gonna come back in a bit — though I can not guarantee. Always nice to have someone that argue back with logic (you've tried your best) and evidence.

About euthanatia, you might wanna take a look at this:

NHS Constitution: Families To Get Consultation On 'Death Pathway' Decision, Says Jeremy Hunt

Source: Huffpo:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/201...thway-jeremy-hunt-nhs_n_2068718.html?ncid=GEP


Now since it's a pretty left-biased media, we have reason, though no absolute proof that the actual situation would be much more sinister.

I'm not gonna cite national review.

And please please please do not reply me with the change of color, it would be extremely time-costly for me to reply back.

 

Please, do understand that I didn't refer to all counties as unsustainable and I did not in anyway implied that it is unsustainable in a short run.

That's some extraordinary claims. Do you have any extraordinary proofs? If so, would you be so kind to dissect them for me? I walked through the rest of your post but found no such thing. However, correct me if I was wrong.

In other words, you have more problems with a bureaucratic federal government than with the views that I hold. A yes would you most likely get should you ask me whether it be preferable for a more comprehensive healthcare scheme be implemented under federal-level.

I wouldn't say nothing though.

I would go full private mode.

Again, let me repeat: I would go full private mode.

Very true.

All "other developed nations"? I found that dubious. And I did a little fact-check:


"Norway spends 17.9 percent of its budget on health care spending, while its neighbor Sweden spends 13.8 percent of its budget on health care"

Source:

http://visualeconomics.creditloan.com/how-countries-spend-their-money/

I cannot guarantee it but I will try my best to get back to you with the rest.

Good luck.

 

Sorry, I was in a hurry at the end. I'll wait for you to come back then, but I just wanted to clear one thing up first.

Percentage of the governments budget =/= percentage of the entire countrys GDP.

Supporting a market based solution is a pretty straightforwards opinion. Several countries use market mechanisms to deliver UHC. Off the top of my head, I think they include Germany, Switzerland, Nederlands, and Austria.

However, while a market is normally excellent at allocating resources, even back in the "Wealth of Nations" in 1776, Adam Smith pointed out that some areas are not well suited for market provision. He mentioned national defense and contract enforcement. Health care was added later.

In a fully functional market, the consumer must have the ability to reuse to purchase a product if the price is too high. This ability is known as "price elasticity". This ability does not exsist in health care. Further, in an insurance-based health care delivery system, when an insured patient is treated, neither the patient nor the physician bears the cost, it is borne by a third party. This is known as an externality. Health care has a number of such circumstances that add up to something that do not take well to a free market.

Countries that base health care delivery on a market model have legislation to avoid these problems. As well as the non-economic but still regrettable problem that the people most in need of health care are the ones least attractive as customers.
(Note that the division between countries that use market provisions and countries that don't, is a generalization. Many countries that on the face of it use publically funded systems still use markets within the system. For example, in Norway private hospitals submit bids for surgeries along with public ones when they find them attractive.)

In 1963, Kenneth Arrow pointed out some ways in which medical treatment behaves differently to other goods in a market. It is part of the work for which he later got the Nobel prize in Economics, and sometimes considered fundamental to the discipline of health care economics. For Nobel prize winning work it is quite easily read. It can be read here.

 

First, thanks for your reply.

It all went well till you manged to drop my chin with this one, it exist, it absolutely exist, one can always choose to purchase certain medical services or not.

If certain treatment is too expensive (I'll get to life saving ones below in a bit), it is most likely because of these 2 possibilities:A, technical monopoly; B, it actually cost that much to provide such services and products related. Both cases have strong implication that there is not enough competition, which can only be caused by the government. And I would like to challenge everyone reading this paragraph to come up with a plausible scenario to refute my claim.

It is of course, the most tragic thing to suggest that should someone were in no position to purchase a lifesaving service, he/she should be left along and die. But on what ground can we build our entire morality on another even more sinister premise — however a man choose to live his life, he MUST ONLY enjoy all the fruitful outcomes but never to reap the whirlwind? Every action of ours has consequences, sometimes good, sometimes bad, in some extreme cases, we punish those less careful peers of us by putting them to death.

And why should we always forgo voluntary charity? If a person befriends everyone and treat everyone with respect, would he truly run out of help offered by those who know him? If a person got deserted when sailing in dire straight, shouldn't we raise a brow on him for being a completely social failure? Free market works in both commercial and non-commercial sense, though it sounds as undesirable and coldblooded as it is sometimes.

Another argument against market that I find disagreeable, if not quite amusing is that those who oppose healthcare being run on the full-market mode would make arguments about cost and coverage. We can do away with these by simply asking: why should we believe government is more efficient and why it is more proficient in providing healthcare coverage?

In a free-market, everyone is using their own time and resources to do their own bidding, and what is even better, his performance is "rated" by how much profit he could earn. They would give their best when making decisions and in general, when doing their jobs. In the government, everyone is using someone else's money to do someone else's bidding, and no profit is involved. Until somehow we can all magically be converted into a perfect human being of some sort, I have to point out, though I do not feel it is the best thing to do on this planet — that most government employees would only perform their job to the degree that they wouldn't get fired.

And since every owner of a private institution have the profit driven incentive to provide as much cover as possible, we can draw the only logical solution that government would cover as little as possible to the degree that they wouldn't be violently overthrown.

To make matters even worse, government agencies, under most cases, are 'rewarded' by how miserably they could fail at their jobs. Whenever a problem shows up, a new government agency would be established to tackle this problem, and the more it fails in resolving the problem, the more funding it gets, not the other way around. School districts that perform poorly usually get more, much more funding than those who do relatively well. Every time a pharmaceutical company flops, it gets crucified in the media right before the american public while FDA gets more funding to hire more men and buy more equipment. When german pupils were hospitalized for strawberry related food-poisoning, chinese peasants were blamed, not those in the german government.

If I am a head of certain department, I have more reason to fail my undertaking than to succeed it. DEA would face massive lay-offs should tomorrow, every street corners of america is free from drug dealers. The way US government keep its military in current size is perhaps a most clownish one — it actively propagates a "threat" from a location thousands of miles away by a nation that have difficulty catering itself and being bothered constantly by hazardous seismic activities.

This is why so much has been spent by the US government and so little has been done. Perhaps it is time for US to see what is as obvious as it could get?

That being said,a government, when providing healthcare, would be the most inefficient mechanism we human beings can offer.

Suggesting a government panacea is laughable in that it implies a false dichotomy between the government and the market, that somehow these two are at constant odds or worse, rivals. Numerous cases proved that market cannot even run without a properly functioning government. This mentality is not any better than those who propose creationism — if evolution can not come up with flagellar motor, why should we believe a creator who himself must be much much more complicated than flagellar motor to be the grand designer? If diesel engine can not tow certain amount of load, on what ground should we believe a steam engine can?

To sum up, if government truly is a desirable "alternative" to every problem that market falls short, we should see each and every nation on earth governed by armies of angels, not a default "market makes money, government collect them" model that is prevalent.

Debating you is a very congenial experience, looking forward to your reply.

 

False and false.

I have an insurance-based HSA account meaning my BANK covers my 401k matched by my company. I pay no money into my insurance/HSA unless I do so willingly.

But nice try

 

Thought I had included a link, sorry. Its not actually extraordinary though. If you look at the graph I posted originally, you'll see that the US healthcare costs have grown faster than other nations since 1980, and they are split about 50/50 between public and private costs. Its only been a matter of time before the growth overtook other healthcare systems in both categories:


Red bar is tax money, pink bar is private money.
Source: Wall Street Journal

Some can be dropped. Most have unpleasant effects if you drop them, up to lethal. If your tailor carges $ 50 000 for a shirt, you can wear a sweater. If your 5-years old son has cancer and the treatment costs 500 000 $ you will beg, borrow, steal, kill or whore to get the money.

Um, no. Thats...not how markets work. At all. In a market, you find the ideal point between profit per unit sold of a good or service, and number of units sold. That point will normally involve some people on the left side of the graph, not able to purchase the product.

I'll simply point out that the option that provides lifesaving treatment for the greater number of people, also happens to have worked out far, far cheaper in the countries that have implemented it.

Foregoing charity is not that same as setting up a system that means more people can manage without charity. Setting up a system that spends extra money to ensure more people will be in need of charity for their lives, is, when you get down to it, not very charitable.

I believe we covered the basics of this in the previous post. Externalities, barriers to entry, price inelasticity. Health Care Economics discipline.

But its not exactly worked out like you predict in the real world.

Here, you are simply speculating on how you think markets work, and governments. See, a market is not a magical thing. Nor is a government. There are very real mechanisms that governs how markets function, when they function well, and when they don't. And similarily, there are mechanisms that make democratic governments function.
Now, you seem to have a grasp of two of these mechanisms. The profit motive, and competition. You then seem to be extrapolating function from only these two mechanisms, with no regard to all the other ones. And that ends up simplitic. Economics of scale, barriers to entry, externalities, asymetrical information, catastrophic failiure, feedback systems etc, etc. All important.

Economists have spent a lot of time looking at these things. There is a reason why we don't have privatized national defense, or privatized court systems. And there are reasons why healthcare is so much more efficient in other countries. Healthcare is no more immune to economic mechanisms than anything else.

Now, your understanding of how these things work have led you to predict a few things. That health care should be cheaper in the US than in countries with government systems. Drugs should be cheaper. Medical treatrment. there should be more doctors in the US. Treatment should be less rationed. Businesses should have a competitive advantage.

These things are all directly opposite of how things actually have worked out in the real world. When your mental map fails that badly to fit the terrain, its probably not the terrain that is in error. I think you need to reexamine your assumptions. Maybe...you should look around a bit. At how much other countries systems cost. How good results they get. What drugs cost, what out-of-pocket surgeies cost, where industry has to pay extra to take care of workers health care. How those nations that use for-profit insurance systems to deliver UHC have legislated to avoid market failiure from healthcares known issues. (Switzerland, Nederland). Why expats perfer the UK system to the US. How markets are employed inside the public healthcare systems of places like Norway.

In short, markets are a lot more complicated than you think, and subject to far more forces.

 

The compassionate American.

 

I don't want an exclusively state run healthcare system. State and private healthcare should co-exist - the British system is a crappy model, Australia's is more up my alley from what I've heard.

We already have that - hospitals in the US cannot deny treatment, and cannot force you to pay your bills. Other people will have your costs tacked on to theirs.

If you are NOT poor enough, you MUST pay for it as long as YOU WORK INSIDE THE COUNTRY, regardless of your nationality. It scares away foreign investments every year.

Poor and "productive" aren't mutually exclusive. Paris Hilton is rich, but we'd generally agree that she's much less productive than a combat veteran who is temporarily out of work due to the economy, for example.

The same argument could be just as well made against the existence of the military - ex. wealthy people are forced by govt to pay for the defense of lazy or unproductive people who pay no taxes, so that "taxation is theft" argument is a moot point, unless it's applied 100% and you'd support privatizing the military.

Our defense and education budgets are far too high as it is.

Just like ours does yes, illegal aliens cannot be denied treatment.

All of that is a moot point since I'd never want private healthcare eliminated - those who don't have or don't want to pay for private healthcare would have to accept potentially lower quality healthcare. If you're cool paying for illegal aliens' expenses every time you get your doctor's bill, keep supporting the current system.