The fix for American health care can be found in Europe

From the Economist: The fix for American health care can be found in Europe - excerpt:

Clearly, the European system of national healthcare is fixated upon the tax-payer, and not medical practitioners (as in the US). And if you don't believe that then consider the international ranking of Healthcare Services by country here.

The budgeted amounts take a prevalence in national accounts in the EU - unlike the US where both Health Care and a Tertiary Education are considered to be "privatized market offerings" for the most part.

Which is why not enough federal coverage of both offerings is often the hallmark of many states in the US. Americans move a lot - making it no longer the country it was at the beginning of the 18th century (when fed with migrants escaping the ravages of war in Europe). Most settled in states where they could find their forebears who spoke their native languages. (Mine did.)

The US has since changed drastically, where between 15 and 20% of Americans move addresses annually. We are no longer the "sedentary" country we once were, and so governmental services for citizens must change accordingly. Where secondary education is lacking (as SAT-scores show), more investments must be made. Where tertiary-education is too expensive, state-schools (subsidized by government funding) must respond to the need. Because post-secondary education has become the most significant qualification for employment in America

It is only in this manner that the US will succeed in its transformation from the Industrial to the Information Age, with salaries that permit decent lifestyles for its families. And the poverty threshold will contain not 14% of all families - but hopefully a population of about only 5% ?!?

Necessary to that transformation are post-secondary studies - and my reading of the Department of Education statistics is that (given the 10% of our high-schoolers are not graduating), about 55% of them go on to obtain a tertiary-level degree.

Which is good, but is it "good enough"? I have my doubts ...

 

Labor force participation rate for adults 25/64 years old

From the National Center for Education Statistics (here):

All persons 25 to 64 years old (2015) - Employment to Population Ratio*: 73.1%
-Less than high-school completion: 54.3%
-High-school completion: 67%
-Some college, no degree: 73%
-Associate's degree: 78.3
-Bachelor's degree or higher: 83.5%
*Those employed as a percentage of the entire population (adults and children).

My point?
-We could do a lot more to enhance high-school completion rates and move people into a completion of post-secondary education necessary for a good job.
-Otherwise, we will all be paying their unemployment and other social insurances ...

 

It is better to pay someone who is not socially productive unemployment benefit than it is to pay them professional rates.

Not for them obviously, but for the rest of us.

I don't want to pay you to go to university and train for a high paid job that doesn't exist.
Waste of my money and your time.

And I don't wish to compound that mistake by creating a load of high paid government jobs that just dick ordinary people around to justify a professional wage and meet the oversupply of my own making.
This would be socially counter productive.

 

Michael Moore offends more since his chemical castration.
How does Europe start paying its way again and get better private healthcare?

You know the public get the worst of everything.
Public transport.
Public health.
Public / Non Comprehensive schools
From the worse, **** and economical substandard product / experience.

Americans who have health insurance have better doctors because they're not stupid.
They don't go giving everyone a substandard service and call it social medicine.

 

It's like riding into town in your own car vs. the bus with the people and the hard seats.
Having social healthcare is like riding the bus.

 

Be thankful for that bus, by all means.
But I want more than just BUPA.
Everytime I get sick I'm sick of how public the NHS is.
But what can you do, sit, wait, a lot of waiting on the NHS, sometimes, I just don't have the time.

 

2 choices I know of.

BUPA or NHS.

Where's the competition?

 

Make a health service that's better than BUPA, have the money for all the best doctors and stuff, and offer the British what they deserve, freedom and quality.
The freedom to pay premiums.
The freedom to choose.
It might also relief pressure from the NHS and give BUPA something to compete with.

 

Bollocks for your totally uninformed knowledge of the matter of either schooling or healthcare comparatively between the US and the EU.

In both instances, the numbers show that there is simply NO COMPARISON WHATSOEVER between public-supported offerings of both in the US and the EU. The EU wins hands down in both instances.

You are badly misinformed. In fact, you are just ranting ...

 

For those who want to really understand what is happening to unemployment in America, go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics chart showing Employment-to-population Ratio AND Labor-force Participation Rate - HERE.

Understand the economic data being shown:
*The E-to-p Ratio shows that employment is gradually improving in the US. But it has a long, long, long way to go before it recuperates its pre-recession level (shaded on the above infographic).
*L-f Participation Rate indicates that people are moving ONLY VERY SLOWLY back in to the labor-force and have been doing so since 2014 (in the midst of Obama's presidency).

So, puh-leeze, enough of the BS about "Making America Great Again!" As if Donald Dork even knew how to do it, because he doesn't!

What needs to be understood is that the economy is a complex machine, and hyperbole is not what makes it function. Consumer Demand is the primary-factor in economic behaviour - whether the economy is going up-or-down.

Consumer Demand hit a brick-wall in 2008/9 due to the SubPrime Fraud and plunged seriously. Layoffs were the consequence of that single factor. Stimulus-spending by Obama spiked an exploding Unemployment Rate at 10% in 2010 - due to the ARRA-bill's stimulus-spending of $870B* - from which the rate gradually descended.

From an historical prospective, one must consider that the political decision NOT TO EMPLOY FURTHER STIMULUS-SPENDING, which Obama requested of the HofR that in 2011 was newly controlled by the Replicants as a result of the 2010 mid-term elections. The HofR Replicants refused any further stimulus-spending, offering instead bullshat about "Austerity Budgeting" (read about that here by Paul Krugman).

What happened as a consequence was this: No further increase in employment occurred for four long years (from 2010 to 2014) - as shown in the BLS Employment-to-population ratio that is linked in the infographic above!!!

And what do we have now, today? The same idiot Replicants in the White House pursuing the same policies that they have promoted since the dawn of time. Except that Donald Dork thinks he can influence the economy by increasing the Dod-budget - which will do nada for overall employment that is already near its lowest historical level ever ...

* My point being that without stimulus-spending no economy can recover from a recession. Keynes was right when he proposed the idea to Roosevelt in 1933. Roosevelt's stimulus-spending mitigated only somewhat the Great Recession. It was the MASSIVE SPENDING OF WW2 that finally ended high unemployment in America!

 

I hope you're not going to tell me how European you are, that you somehow can still say such things knowing the NHS and the school systems, I ask you, have you ever ridden a public bus?
These public things, aren't quality.

 

Did you know that on the NHS you're more likely to die on a Sunday?
Or the waiting times. What do you know about NHS waiting times?

 

Do you? Or are you one of these people who do not believe in validating claims by linking to information preferring instead to rely on what they "know"

 

Of course I do I live here gosh darn it.
Croydon University Hospital's A&E is tail backed with ambulances and police and the public at the back getting told another 5 hours.
I'd say family planning/sexual health is great - still takes 3 hours if you have nothing, but it's there and it's first come first serve and they can only see so many. - They don't care if you pay for your medicine or not, they just give you medicines / vaccinations / contraceptives for free, no questions asked if you're on the NHS, and you don't just join the NHS, you're on it since birth... You emigrate to the UK you're on it since pledging allegiance and becoming a British Citizen...
I pay for my dentist however... but it's only £20.60 per visit so, I'm not even sure because I'm too busy living my own life to ask if it's subsided, I work, I study; I pay. - It's affordable, yeah. Must be for everyone no matter how much you earn. - If you want braces, it's expensive unless you really need them, then it's on the NHS, but that's not the dentist, the dentist refers you to an orthodontist.
My GP/General Practitioner/'family doctor' - The one I'm registered with and is my access into the NHS... To get an appointment we have to phone and talk to a doctor... It used to be great, same day appointments.
I tried lately, got told to ring back tomorrow, 8am, I rang again another day, got told the same.
I have options in such cases where I can ring the non emergency NHS number 111 to get an appointment at the 'out of hours' GP in town... Say who I am, who I'm calling about (myself or someone else), say where I am, ect ect, and if they say you can, you get that appointment. - Now, if you to do that, in Croydon at least, in the Croydon area of South London, you go, you go get seen but are not given prescription if you need a prescription, you get told
'You need a prescription, I'm writing your doctor a letter now'
fore they don't prescribe medicine. - They write letters;
Letters to your doctor so they see your or write you your prescription, whatever you may need.
They can even write you letters for work and school too... But can't write you a prescription.
If you don't work fine, take my money, **** me, haven't met my doctor yet but I've been with them for 10 years..
but me, like my dentist, I pay for my medicine 'because I work and study'...
It's fare, it's affordable, so again, I don't know if it's subsided or not, I just pay.
I have an EHIC (I got mine updated recently, so mine's valid until 2022).
It's basically my NHS in the EU (even though my country is leaving)... Still thought it better to have one than if not, so I can feel better should I travel around the EU under the current system and it'll be there should anything happen. You don't have to have an EHIC to travel around the EU, but, it's my health cover covered by the NHS.
This is by no way free health care in countries/states in Europe that still make you pay.

 

That they should be and they are not is a matter of how they are managed, and if the gummint can get the DoD to do magic things with it $565B budget imagine what public-services could do with the same money.

We are pissing away our lifestyle into the DoD pughole, just because we are nation that is fixated upon firearms.

It's a national calamity, that fixation - because we have a gun-death rate amongst the highest of any developed nation:


Please explain what there's is about the above for which we should be proud.

I live in France, and your chances of being shot to death are more than five times mine ...

 

Well then you're even less qualified to talk about America.

Acting all European and snooty, trying to get America the same deal UK has.
What's wrong with you?

 

Europe is not perfect, and America doesn't need to feel bad for not having European style healthcare, and Michael Moore should never have chemically castrated himself if he wanted our respect.

 

When he says Americans want a European style healthcare, it makes me sick.

This liberal loser seems to think America wants the NHS, no wonder he's a freak.

 

Rhet your point about NHS and waiting times might be valid - dunno haven't seen the evidence - but it's not looking at cause. Cause is deliberate underfunding by successive Tory governments which have tried to destroy the NHS for ideological reasons. One way of dismantling the massive support for it is to underfund it so that it fails and the Tories can have it replaced by profit-making process. You are probably fine with that but the Brits not so much, they realise that medicine is a public good, not a commodity to be sold and bought. That's the difference. That's why despite the underfunding the NHS will always be superior to the mess that the US calls healthcare>

 

I've heard Labour's Tony Blair was to blame making it cost as much as 2 hospitals to build 1.

 

I was about to ask you the same question.

Enough with the sarcasm. You are - like so many of my fellow Yanks - ignorant of the bold facts about America. You are also oblivious to the fact that it is considered one of the most unjust nations on earth as regards Income Disparity (because Reckless Ronnie warped upper-income taxation by lowering the rates).

Herebelow is a chart of Income Inequality. You will find at the very top (the higher the income inequality, the more is its value) is the USofA. The only comforting factor is that Mexico has a higher Income Inequality than the US.


What's Income Inequality? Simple, it means this: Far more of the riches that a country generates goes uniquely (in terms of Wealth) to a select minority of individuals.

Which, in America, makes Wealth Accumulation look like this:


If you cannot understand the above factual evidence, then you should not be on this forum ...

 

Bollocks.

The studies of healthcare systems worldwide shows clearly that the US is not the best:

In the above international study, the US comes out last. Ask yourself why? Because of "access", where the US scores very badly. And, again, ask yourself Why?

Because privatized healthcare in the US is too damn expensive!

 

BLINDERS

In the UK, they have waiting-times that are excessive, yes. But, nobody dies because they don't have healthcare insurance as in the US!

Before ObamaCare 16% of Americans had no healthcare coverage whatsoever, which is why "ER" was such a successful TV-show. When you have to go to ER, it is usually too late for any serious healthcare problem.

Moreover, the healthcare problem in the US is exacerbated by its tremendous per capita costs. (See here.) Which is in great part due to the astronomic salaries that the profession obtains. A GP makes an average $200K per annum. (Check that out at the BLS Wage Site here.) That is more than twice what a GP gets in Europe!

Your remark above seems to condemn ALL NATIONAL HEALTHCARE SERVICES. There is no waiting time here in France where I live, and there are no generalized complaints about waiting-times elsewhere in the EU. Btw, the EU is an agglomeration of nations where a National Heathcare Service is a requirement to belong - and it covers 725 EU citizens at the moment. Which is twice that of the US!

And it works for the betterment of its people, and not just private insurance companies.

You've got blinders on ...

 

Nice story - is it fiction or fact?

See facts are backed by statistics not one persons perception. Many people with poor perceptions of national health care systems are actually what ED physicians call GOMERS (GET OUT OF MY EMERGENCY ROOOM)

They are the people somewhat below category 5 (lowest triage category) - the ones that turn up on a Sunday night after the local football match when the ED is overflowing with drunk combative football players and they want a prescription for a non-urgent medication that actually ran out 5 days earlier