NHS overburdened and overcrowded (British Socialised Healthcare)

Well, there is always an HMO.
That could allow middle class people (who are not too far into the very lowest rungs of the middle class) to have a "healthcare system".

Of course it likely may not be a "good" healthcare system. Lower wait times than the NHS, but still with lower quality, and approval for expensive tests or procedures more often denied.

 

Perhaps the starting point should be a universal healthcare system in America first, and making it better second.

 

The USA don't have a goo or a bad healhcare system, it has a well oiled health industry. To take care is the opposite of maximising profits.

 

Yes it's kind of the nature of it. If you socialize it, you have to fund it. Whose fault is it for not funding it? The right. The real question is efficiency and value. If you can get the same care for half the cost with socialized medicine, it's not the fault of socialized medicine if the right doesn't fund it enough to meet basic needs. Or must we just assume that the right will screw up everything so we can't have nice things?

Your main point may have been uncontrolled immigration though. Yes, I think they need to make hard choices to account for that. Find ways to increase funding, control immigration, or change eligibility.

 

That post makes me glad I'm an American!

 

.If Americans spend the most money of all nations for their health, Americans should live way longer than every other people, right?

Posts like LiveUnhibited's are the reason, why in all (!!) developed countries the American system is called silly, dumb, and crazy. Do you really think that this fragmented, complicated system is for something else than maximizing profits? Americans pay double the money for their health in comparison to other nations, but receive poorer revenue even than the Cubans.

You're still glad?

 

I sure am. I pay my bills... not yours. I've always been very satisfied with US medical care... including triple bypass surgery about ten years ago. My employer always had me covered. Its not complicated. Its all about EARNING good medical coverage. Study hard in school. Go to a good college and get useful skills. Make yourself a valuable employee worthy of full medical coverage offered as part of your compensation along with salary and vacation. You can do the same with any valuable set of skills.

"This bill is OUTRAGEOUS!, screamed the dentist at his plumber when he got the plumber's bill. The plumber replied, "That's what I said when I was a dentist!"

 

It's a decent place to be if you're above-average income/benefits in terms of quality. Otherwise not so much. The costs are beyond what they should be either way because we have to subsidize profits and a convoluted system, factors that don't add value (note that in most economic sectors, profit can add value because it promotes innovation, but in healthcare delivery this is not the case). Elsewhere you express a desire not to pay for others, but you do either way. You pay more for the same things in America, and we as a nation get less for it.

On the other hand, with how nuts our politicians are, just how stable would socialized medicine be here? If our government wasn't so dysfunctional, socialized medicine would be a clear winner.

 

A heart surgeon saved my life with triple bypass. Soon after, the reimbursable rates set by Obamacare took over. The surgeon that saved my life gave up surgery to teach for more money. Socialized medicine sucks.

When I lived in Germany, we had a great old German lady that managed our small Officer's Club. Overweight and red faced with high blood pressure, the German socialized medicine system sent her to a spa for a weekend. She should have been on diuretics and blood pressure pills for the long term.

They sent her to a spa for a weekend.

If she'd had the cash she'd have gotten proper treatment.

 

Germany is actually one of the least socialized systems in Europe, as I recall. UK is almost fully socialized, and France is a bit of a hybrid but more socialized than Germany - and previously pointed to as the best overall system. Anecdotes don't prove anything more than what can happen - they don't prove what usually happens, that requires actual data.

Nobody friggin teaches for more money, lol. Teaching institutions are more work for less pay and people do it because they like it - things like teaching or research are fulfilling to them. More like the much better money made doing procedures became a less potent factor, so they decided they might as well teach because they'd rather do that.

Obamacare is not at all socialized medicine. It's insurance "mandates" with regulation. It very closely mimics the republican alternative to the Clinton plan. It is basically a moderate approach, that may have been a little more liberal had it actually included a public option.

 

You obviously have no experience with prestigious medical university medical schools. Yes, My surgeon that saved my life with triple bypass, one Dr Chu, did earn more teaching after Obamacare mandates limited his compensation as a surgeon. Your lack of knowledge about other factors that enter into it like malpractice insurance and such indicate that your post is born of ignorance and not any actual knowledge. Denial is a river in Egypt.

The main impact of Obamacare was to end lots of industry health coverage. It mandated that EVERYONE be covered for (and premiums be paid for), maternity costs (even old men and old ladies well beyond childbearing age), mental health care (for folks that didn't need it), as well as other unnecessary coverage like substance abuse for EVERYONE... and lots more. All these new REQUIREMENTS forced lots of companies to drop coverage altogether. It did a lot more damage than good.

 

Well I admit I overstated the point. In general, private practice earns more, usually much more, but malpractice insurance is a factor that can make the difference in certain specialties. A true expert is more useful in a teaching institution anyway - it's not like some other cardiac surgeon couldn't have done it. I am a physician, but not one with high malpractice insurance issues. I'd make less in any teaching institution, even a prestigious one.

Speaking of ignorance though, calling Obamacare socialized medicine is the epitome of that. You seem to think it's overregulation. I don't think much of it, honestly. Universal coverage is an important goal, but it wasn't the best way to do it. It was a republican idea once upon a time.

 

I'm a Republican and I'm all FOR "universal coverage". I fully support everyone studying hard in school, getting great skills, and finding a good job where they can EARN great medical coverage for themselves and their family. I'm with you on that 100%. Its just a matter of how we get there.

 

Are you glad that 20million fellow Americans don’t have health insurance?
Could it possibly be because the system is weighted to enrich the health industry people rather than enrich the health of your fellow Americans.

 

So a six year old child permanently disabled in an accident that killed her uninsured parents, simply has to hang around in pain and distress until she can earn enough to get health insurance?

 

If everybody works hard and visits a famous college and gets a master in rocket science, who will be cleaning the toilets? And does she/he get the same salary than thr other well educated rocket scientist? If everybody would get a degree in business mamagement at a famous college, who will cook and serve your dinner? And does she/he get the same salary than thr other well educated mamagers?

 

That is another problem caused in the US by the lack of an efficient healthcare system.

Health care for production workers adds to the cost of the production workers and is one reason why Detroit has turned
from a booming city into a place of desolation.

I'm being a bit anecdotal here to keep things simple.

Some production workers offered to work for the same rate as the Mexican workers, if they could just keep the jobs.
Of course the answer was 'no' because their healthcare benefits cost a fortune.

So the factories moved to Mexico and the govt had to foot the bill for the now unemployed workers, and unemployment pay
('disability allowance'). The cost was met by the public purse anyway. And to pay the workers in other countries for their
work there is an overall outflow of money from the US and the US goes ever further into debt.

That seems to have happened all over America.

There are people in the US willing and able to do good work for very low pay, but the minimum wage got put up and
we had to quit work to get Medicaid.

 

The overall amount the public purse pays out for the many categories of assistance for medical care in total
is about the amount it would cost to run the entire healthcare system for everybody

but the cost of the US medical system is doubled by the complexities of needing to break every patient's costs
into a multitude of charges for payment by the different insurance companies, or by the patient.

Add to that the administration costs at the health insurance companies end, and profits made by the health
insurance companies and this and that and in the end all the money paid in via health insurance arrangements
just gets eaten by the added complexity they create.

Our system in the US is ludicrous but all it takes is one demented politician, Elizabeth Warren,
to claim a single payer system would cost far far more, and people believe it.

There is a problem in the US that one stupid lie if given enough exposure, carries the day.

 

When I lived in Germany, we had a great old German lady that managed our small Officer's Club. Overweight and red faced with high blood pressure, the German socialized medicine system sent her to a spa for a weekend. She should have been on diuretics and blood pressure pills for the long term.

They sent her to a spa for a weekend.

If she'd had the cash she'd have gotten proper treatment.[/QUOTE]
My dear,
She's got a treatment unheard of in the star spangled awesomeness of the United States of America. She didn't get three days in spa, but three to four weeks in a specialized health care spa with doctors and nurses of all kind. Three weeks full of workouts and massages and trainings and doctor's visits and specialized and personalized treatment for the personal needs of the patient.

Why do we pay for such health care spas? It's far more cheap, because those people will get healthy again(!) and will be able to work again for years without getting sick anymore.

By the way: You noticed you've been covered by your company. so you didn't pay yourself? Do you have had an health insurance? You didn't pay your bill!

 

Would diuretics and blood pressure pills have been more expensive in Germany than the spa?

 

If diuretics and statines would have the same effect, nobody would think about a three to four week's stay in one of this medical spas. As I wrote, you get all types of specific treatment you can think of, beginning with the optimization of amount and type of diuretics and statines; they are encouraged to start physical training, and motivated to feel joy, and it doesn't end in learning and practising healthier way of lifes. They get medical checks, though early forms of arthrosis of heart deseases or even cancer are detected and cleared before these illnesses get expensive and insecure and the people, suffering of these, cannot work anymore. Maybe one could call this systems of medical spas "better save than sorry".

In Europe, there is this sense of prevention that US-Americans call socialist or even communist.

 

Don’t worry. In a huge number of areas America is a decidedly socialist country. A lot of Americans can’t see that, or don’t know what socialist means.
Unfortunately for 20 million uninsured Americans the health ‘service’ they have over there is decidedly capitalist.

 

It's not only the uninsured. This could be fixed and Germany has fixed this some years ago. What really is insane that's the fact that you can go bancrupt even if you have an insurance. There are at least 150 Mio people who have to live with this angst.

Therefore the first step would have to introduce a healthcare with no decuctibles, no OOP, no copays, covering every hospital and every doctor, and if this would be offfered for an insane price.

 

I think you're kind of ignoring the main point.

Wealth and government tax revenues do not increase in proportion with the population.

If the government keeps tax rates the same, and keeps medical spending on the NHS the same percentage of tax revenue that it was before, it will not be enough.

If you have more poor people, then money is going to have to come from somewhere to maintain the current level and quality of public services.

 

And the rest is poorly covered, due to European standards.