Universal Healthcare

AmericanMan · #1 (**permalink**) 03-03-2007, 08:03 AM

I have been hearing more and more about this topic of late.
When I was listening to Glenn Beck yesterday
he was going on about U/H and from the numbers he was quoting
this is one very expensive proposition.

He was quoting many Trillions of $!
As in bankrupting our government and raising taxes to the extent of many
European countries. I have heard horror stories about Europe's health-care problems.

Any info or comments would be appreciated.

Jake · #2 (**permalink**) 03-03-2007, 08:21 AM

Do you want to be told you can't have a heart transplant if you need one when you get to age 55, just because it's against fiscal policy? If your child is suspected of having a brain tumor, do you want to be told that there's a 9 month wait to use the MRI? Do you want to stop medical progress dead in it's tracks? Then sign up for socialized medicine!

AmericanMan · #3 (**permalink**) 03-03-2007, 08:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jake";p=&quot

Do you want to be told you can't have a heart transplant if you need one when you get to age 55, just because it's against fiscal policy? If your child is suspected of having a brain tumor, do you want to be told that there's a 9 month wait to use the MRI? Do you want to stop medical progress dead in it's tracks? Then sign up for socialized medicine!

I have nothing good about U/H.
Unless of course it's from the politicians that are pushing it.

justabubba · #4 (**permalink**) 03-03-2007, 07:41 PM

http://www.johnedwards.com/about/iss...e-overview.pdf

appears to comprehensively address most of the problems in our present system. what was missed?

Tedminator · #5 (**permalink**) 03-03-2007, 07:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AmericanMan";p=&quot

I have nothing good about U/H.
Unless of course it's from the politicians that are pushing it.

From what I've heard, the govt healtcare plan for those politicians are already pretty good. Why rock the boat?

Wildbore · #6 (**permalink**) 03-04-2007, 01:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jake";p=&quot

Do you want to be told you can't have a heart transplant if you need one when you get to age 55, just because it's against fiscal policy? If your child is suspected of having a brain tumor, do you want to be told that there's a 9 month wait to use the MRI? Do you want to stop medical progress dead in it's tracks? Then sign up for socialized medicine!

Whats wrong with allowing people to choose either a privite hospital, if they have money, or a public hospital under the universal healthcare plan? Why not give people the choice, its better than forcing the uninsured people into bankruptcy whenever they get sick. People with privite insurance plans can still go to the hospital of their choice, so it doesen't mean everyone has to wait.

Where do you gather a brain tumor patient would wait 9 months? Even with universal healthcare, patients with life-threatning illnesses are treated almost immidiately.

And that John Edwards plan looks pretty good.

hobo · #7 (**permalink**) 03-04-2007, 05:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jake";p=&quot

Do you want to be told you can't have a heart transplant if you need one when you get to age 55, just because it's against fiscal policy? If your child is suspected of having a brain tumor, do you want to be told that there's a 9 month wait to use the MRI? Do you want to stop medical progress dead in it's tracks? Then sign up for socialized medicine!

You have touched on the heart of the problem and don't seem to realize it. If you compare the quality of medicine practiced today with the quality available say in 1960...you would never believe that you were looking at the same country. In 1960 hospitals had no computers, no advanced drugs, no expensive machines (such as CT scan and MRI). Organ transplants were not available, and a brain tumor was automatically classified as inoperable. Heart by-pass was unknown, and the only solution to cancer was to cut a big hole in the body and hope the cancer did not spread. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Biotechnology was not even a word used in the English language.

The cost of medical care has inflated rapidly because of a big boom of new medical technology. In addition, chemical technology has also produced remarkable new medicine. Hospital rooms look like the control center for a NASA space launch.

It is painfully obvious that medical technology has expanded very rapidly and so has the cost. The cost of medical treatment each year has expanded at a rate more than double the annual cost of living. Look what that does to costs. If you paid $50 per month for medical insurance in 1960, general inflation (averaged at about 4% per year) will increase your payments to about $300 per month today. However, the 8% increase in actual medical costs have driven the annual costs to about $2000 per month.
(see http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/MedicalEx...es/index.shtml)

Now people can blame many things for the cost problem...lawyer, insurance, doctors, etc. But the REAL cause of the astronomical raise in the cost of health care is the HUGE additional cost of modern technology. The exact same thing has happened in most business offices. When secretaries had manual typewriters and used carbon paper for extra copies, the "front office" cost of doing business was low. Today with computers, fax, copy machines, scanners, the cost of the front office has gone up dramatically. Fortunately for business, the front office cost is a small fraction of the total operating costs. In health care, the extra cost of advanced technology is a very large fraction of the operating cost for a hospital.

No matter how you cut it, the only way you can make health care affordable again is to stop the availability of super hi-tech facilities. Remember, 40 years ago you wouldn't have a choice about heart transplants for your old man, or brain tumors for your baby...the technology was simply not available. If you want high technology, then you must pay A LOT MORE for it.

US-Retard · #8 (**permalink**) 03-08-2007, 06:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AmericanMan";p=&quot

He was quoting many Trillions of $!
As in bankrupting our government and raising taxes to the extent of many
European countries.

Beck is full of $hit--and for good reason. If Beck tells the truth, his advertisers in the medical industry will stop advertising during his show (and likely his station). So he has to placate his station owners and more importantly, his advertisers.

A book by Johns Hopkins professor Dr. Vicente Navarro:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baywood.com

The book's sixteen chapters, presented in six parts, show how the implementation of a National Health Program (NHP) with single-payer funding and administration would save between 47,000 and 106,000 lives annually by providing comprehensive and universal coverage, while saving $10.2 billion. They also show that the problems of the U.S. health care sector [can] be resolved at even lower costs than are currently incurred. They show that the problem is not economic but political.

According to the "world's top public intellectual":

Quote:

Originally Posted by Noam Chomsky

It's no secret that the US has far and away the most inefficient health care system in the industrial world, with far higher costs and among the poorest outcomes. It's hardly coincidental that it is the only system that is privatized to such an extent, therefore introducing massive bureaucracy, supervision, paper work, subordination to big pharma, and other factors that raise costs and reduce performance.

Another source:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rep. Jim McDermott on Mar. 4, 2004

The United States spent $1.6 trillion on health care in 2003. That is an average of $4,900 per person for the entire country. The average of the next 29 industrialized countries is less than half that amount, about $2,100 per person. Switzerland, at number two, spends $3,106. That is $1,800 less per year per person than the United States. Every one of these countries has universal health insurance except us. . . .

At the present time, government at all levels already finances 60 percent of all the health care spending in this country. That is over $2,600 per person. Remember, the international average is $2,100 per person so we are already spending enough. If we were tight-fisted, we could have that kind of a system. . . .

The Bush administration has endorsed and even funded universal health insurance. The thing is, the President's universal health insurance program is for the people of Iraq, not anything for the 44 million [uninsured] Americans.

What? You don't trust a politician?

Here's a newer analysis from the same OECD quoted above.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Commonwealth Fund

The latest data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which compare trends among 30 industrialized countries, show that the U.S. spent $5,267 per capita on health care in 2002—53 percent more than [Switzerland, the next-highest-spending country, and 140 percent more than the median OECD country].. . . .

The authors also compared health spending in OECD countries with waiting lists to spending in those without lists. "Health spending in the twelve countries with waiting lists averaged $2,366 per capita," the authors say, "while in the seven countries without waiting lists, it averaged $2,696—both much less than U.S. spending of $5,267 per capita. . . .

Yet another source:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Health Affairs

Health Spending In The United States And The Rest Of The Industrialized World

U.S. citizens spent $5,267 per capita for health care in 2002—53 percent more than any other country. Two possible reasons for the differential are supply constraints that create waiting lists in other countries and the level of malpractice litigation and defensive medicine in the United States. Services that typically have queues in other countries account for only 3 percent of U.S. health spending. The cost of defending U.S. malpractice claims is estimated at $6.5 billion in 2001, only 0.46 percent of total health spending. The two most important reasons for higher U.S. spending appear to be higher incomes and higher medical care prices.

Clearly, Beck is talking out of his a$$. Universal healthcare would save us a LOT of money because the avg. nation w/UH spends less than half as much as us.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AmericanMan";p=&quot

I have heard horror stories about Europe's health-care problems.

Any info or comments would be appreciated.

Have you heard the horror stories in the US? They're much worse--but Beck can't tell you about them. He's a lapdog and if he tells the truth his show will be canceled for ideological conflicts and loss of ad revenue. (It happens all the time and I'll be glad to show you many examples of media censorship.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Professor Vicente Navarro of Johns Hopkins in 2003

The Inhuman State of U.S. Health Care
Because these individuals cannot pay for insurance, they do not get needed care, and many die as a consequence. The most credible estimate of the number of people in the United States who have died because of lack of medical care was provided by a study carried out by Professors David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler (New England Journal of Medicine 336, no. 11 [1997]). They concluded that almost 100,000 people died in the United States each year because of lack of needed care—three times the number of people who died of AIDs. It is important to note here that while the media express concern about AIDs, they remain almost silent on the topic of deaths due to lack of medical care. Any decent person should be outraged by this situation. How can we call the United States a civilized nation when it denies the basic human right of access to medical care in time of need? No other major capitalist country faces such a horrendous situation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DemocracyNow.org on Sept. 5, 2006

Eight Million U.S. Children Now Have No Health Insurance
New census data shows the number of American children without health insurance has increased for the first time since 1998. Over 8 million children lacked health insurance coverage last year. Experts attributed the change to budget crunches that led some states to curtail enrollment of children in government-subsidized plans and steady declines in the number of people who receive health insurance through their jobs.

Nearly 47 million uninsured and it's getting worse.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DemocracyNow.org on Aug. 30, 2006

Census Figures Show Rise in Medically Uninsured, No Drop in Poverty Rate
Here in the United States, new figures show an increase in the number of Americans without health insurance and a virtually unchanged poverty rate. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, one in eight Americans and almost one in four African Americans lived in _poverty last year. It was the first year the poverty rate did not increase since President Bush took office. Just under sixteen percent of the population, or 46.6 million people, had no health insurance last year, up slightly from two years ago.

What about other countries?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Medical News Today

The British Are Much Healthier Than The Americans
Article Date: 03 May 2006

A large study, which looked at the health of middle class, middle-aged, white residents in both the USA and Britain found that the British enjoy much better health than their American counterparts. Even though the USA has a much higher income per capita than the UK, about 25% higher, the British are far ahead when it comes to the health of its residents.

Americans also spend a great deal more on health care than the British do. The average expenditure per head per year on health in the UK is $2,164, while in the USA it stands at $5,274.

Britain does not enjoy better levels of health when compared to many of its European neighbours.

Many Europeans have even better healthcare than the British who are already "much healthier than the Americans". Yet the US spends "140 percent more than the median OECD country".

In closing, US healthcare is in a "profound state of disarray". 100,000 Americans are dying every year because we're the only developed nation in the world without universal healthcare. Furthermore, we're "far and away" the most inefficient healthcare system in the developed world--and corporate talk-show hosts are catering to their advertisers by suppressing this info.

US-Retard · #9 (**permalink**) 03-08-2007, 07:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AmericanMan";p=&quot

I have nothing good about U/H.
Unless of course it's from the politicians that are pushing it.

Almost no politicians are pushing it. Kerry never even mentioned it during the debates.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DemocracyNow.org on April 3rd, 2006

Well, you know, Kerry is supposed to be the candidate of, you know -- speaking for whose constituency calls for social spending, and so on and so forth. The last presidential debate, a couple days before the election, was on domestic issues. And the New York Times had an accurate account of it. It described it as -- it pointed out that Kerry made no mention of any government involvement in any healthcare system. And the reason, according to the Times reporter, is that the idea lacks political support, meaning it only has the support of the overwhelming majority of the population, but it’s opposed by the pharmaceutical corporations, the insurance industry, and so on. That's what counts as political support. So Kerry didn't mention it, and the public didn't know his stand on these issues. And so it goes issue after issue. So, these are not real elections. We’d laugh at them, and they were some third world country.