Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I just got back from a visit to America last week. It amazed me talking to people how curious they are about how the NHS works in England. Re-reading some of this thread, I see the underlying anger and powerlessness many Americans feel about the US health system. That is the word for this.... system.
Vested interests will fight tooth and nail against change, even though the vast majority of US citizens would benefit from non profit healthcare.
My wife's knee gave her some trouble while visiting the US. She made an appointment to see her doctor yesterday. He gave her the phone number of the x-ray department at our local hospital rather than just giving her a cortisone shot. She phoned the unit, who gave her an appointment yesterday afternoon. She went and got the knee x-rayed, and they told her, her doctor would have the results by Thursday.
She made an appointment to see him Friday. He will then decide how to proceed. Simple, no bills, no worries.
We all pay taxes, and mostly see little benefit from it, at least on the surface. The NHS is something tangible we CAN see for taxes we pay. Nobody in this country seriously talks about a health system run differently. It is seen as our NHS. There for the benefit of all who need it in times of illness. It is very close to our hearts in this country.
America seems to have plenty of money for a military which costs countless billions, yet no money for affordable healthcare for all it's people. Doesn't make sense to me.
America seems to have plenty of money for a military which costs countless billions, yet no money for affordable healthcare for all it's people. Doesn't make sense to me.
This is it in a nutshell. I think if we were a poor country with limited resources that people might accept the notion that we couldn't have universal health insurance. However, it never seems to be a problem to fight totally unnecessary wars, like the one we chose to fight in Iraq. After 9/11, Afghanistan was a less of a choice for us rather than something we were forced into. However, there is no longer a good rationale to be in that country, yet we continue to maintain troops there. We continue to maintain troops in Europe, twenty years after the Cold War ended. We have military bases all around the world. At least half of these could be closed with no direct impact on the USA. We maintain and operate 12 aircraft carriers in our navy. We could almost certainly do with a much smaller fleet as our military is more powerful than that of the next ten nations combined.
We give $3 billion a year to Israel (and $1.5 billion to Egypt and Jordan) and have done so for over 30 consecutive years. What rankles me about this is that Israel doesn't really need the money. Its a small, but well to do nation now. If the people in that country wanted a good relationship with the US they could come to us and say "thank you for your assistance for the last thirty years, we realize your country has a huge deficit and we will now pay for all our defense needs on on our own." Its not going to happen. They like things just the way they are. That is their notion of "friendship".
Surprisingly, I hear many conservatives suggest that they have no problem paying for the things I list above. They believe that our government's business is fighting wars (defense) and that it has no business aiding individual citizens who cannot afford food, housing, or medical care. I believe such an attitude is silly and I have said so before. However, I am one voice out of millions.
Many of us are angry and do feel powerless. In my own case, I have the good fortune to be insured by one of the best private health insurance plans in my state. My health is pretty good, so I make moderate use of this health insurance. Nevertheless, under this "excellent plan" every year we see less being paid for. Every year, even a visit to the family doctor costs us more money. We are now seeing special co pays imposed for anyone needing a CT scan or MRI. The plan is making us pay for medications. What is particularly annoying to me is that I take exactly one prescription medication. I end up paying a bundle for it too because the plan only offers limited coverage for it. This "excellent health insurance plan" is slowly unraveling. I can see it. Its like the tide rising a little higher every year. Eventually, at this rate, we'll be paying half the cost of our health care and going bankrupt trying to do it. It seems like there is nothing we can do to stop this.
I think the difference between the USA and places like Canada and the UK is simple. Your political system is more accountable to the majority of people than ours is. If ours were more accountable to the majority than problems like this would have been solved years ago.
Clearly, this country needs a system of universal health care like everyone else in the civilized world has. Will we ever get it? I'm not betting on it. The needs and wants of the few will continue to be a priority over those in the majority.
Last edited by markg91359; 04-23-2013 at 07:08 AM..
I think the difference between the USA and places like Canada and the UK is simple. Your political system is more accountable to the majority of people than ours is. If ours were more accountable to the majority than problems like this would have been solved years ago.
Clearly, this country needs a system of universal health care like everyone else in the civilized world has. Will we ever get it? I'm not betting on it. The needs and wants of the few will continue to be a priority over those in the majority.
When the ACA was still being developed, most Americans favored a public option. What's interesting, was in polls, the majority of people didn't favor it, though, when the poll didn't say "choice of public option." I think this may be why Americans are not into a system like UK...because they assume they will not have a choice of anything else (and this is due to propaganda from conservatives). But even people in the UK can get private insurance and go to private hospitals/doctors if they can afford to. Most choose not to.
Anyway, it's still an outrage that a vast majority of Americans favored a public option and the people in congress ignored it.
There has been some drama here in Arkansas this week because our Republican legislature voted to expand medicaid (which is an optional part of "obamacare.") One Republican wrote an article saying that Republicans should use their 2nd amendment rights and shoot the Republicans who voted for it. Anyway, I was following that drama because it was a little hilarious, and I noticed most of the conservatives that were outraged about the vote and were posting about it didn't even understand the difference between expanding medicaid and the ACA health insurance exchanges. They just simply opposed anything that Obama orchestrated without comprehending it at all. It is pretty sad.
Last edited by soanchorless; 04-23-2013 at 08:24 AM..
Let us get real. Adequate, let alone excellent, medical care is a privilege for those that can afford it. It should not be available to everyone because that would limit the proper price rationing our market system is based on. Government health insurance would interfere with the private insurers and cut the profits available to this limited market. That would be a disaster. The proper people would not only lose exclusive access to health care they would also lose profits. That would be totally un-American.
Let us get real. Adequate, let alone excellent, medical care is a privilege for those that can afford it. It should not be available to everyone because that would limit the proper price rationing our market system is based on. Government health insurance would interfere with the private insurers and cut the profits available to this limited market. That would be a disaster. The proper people would not only lose exclusive access to health care they would also lose profits. That would be totally un-American.
LOL. I totally hope this is satire/trolling.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights (which the US had a huge say in and agreed to) acknowledges that health care is a right and not a privilege. Most of the western, industrialized world recognizes this. We have become the backward nation that ignores progress in intellectual thought.
America (the U.S.A.) should not "give in" to a national health care system. . . .We should EMBRACE it with every ounce of our being. Our current (for profit) system is not only too expensive and too wasteful, but makes absolutly no real sense at all if a healthy population is the desired outcome!
The goal our current healthcare system is PROFITS, not a healthy population!
Our healthcare system is not healthy, is not caring and is not a system.
Canadians are often bashed by uninformed Americans concerning their health care system--which is sort of single payer, but based on each individual province.
Seems like their health care is more of a problem for Americans than it is for Canadians
Watch the whole video--the Canadian government will on occassion pay travel expenses and hospital bills if they need to refer a patient to the U.S.. 92% of Canadians are satisfied with their system. Tell me what part of how their system operates wouldn't be better for 92% of us.
IrishEyes1989 5 months ago
Those of us elsewhere in the developed world will never understand how Americans can possibly treat healthcare as a privilege instead of the basic human right that it actually is. I am a proud Canadian and I would never in a million years trade our system for the American one. Our system isn't perfect either (no system is, let's be honest) but in this country, NO ONE is denied healthcare. It doesn't matter if you're a millionaire or a homeless person. You're treated the same.
What do Canadian doctors think of their system? Canadian doctors talk about American vs Canadian healthcare
How do Australians feel about their single payer system?
This gentleman had a child born in Austrailia with complications that cost him $.50. Seven years later he had one born in the U.S. with no complications that cost him over $5000 WITH insurance.
Yea....take profit out of medicine and you stop medical breakthroughs.
The reason our drugs cost us more is because our government allows the entire cost of R&D for drugs to be borne by Americans. In fact, when the Republicans voted the "wonderful" drug benefit of medicare in they did two things to protect the monopoly of pharmaceuticals. They refused to let medicare negotiate on the price of drugs and they made importing the same drugs from Canada illegal, even though they are made by the same U.S. pharmaceuticals who sell them in the same packaging to Canada at prices up to 50% lower.
Other countries with single payer systems use price controls on drugs. If it's too expensive, they won't allow it to be sold.
And here it is. How are prices controlled in other countries? By government control boards.
Quote:
Canada has review board set up to routinely review prescription drug price to ensure they stay at a reasonable level. This board can order the pharmaceutical companies to lower prices on drugs whenever they exceed a predetermined amount. This amount is the median cost of drugs in the United States and six European countries. This helps to keep the cost of drugs in check because the European countries Canada uses all have price controls in place. Why Are Prescription Drug Prices Lower in Canada?
Quote:
The fact of the matter is, we’re indirectly paying for the low cost of drugs in Canada and Europe. The drug companies are able to keep prescription drug prices lower in other countries because they are engaging in price discrimination and overcharging the United States. These companies are able to offset the costs of researching and developing new drugs by gouging U.S. consumers.
same source
So apparently GOVERNMENT control is working for the citizens of at least six European countries and Canada, while our government protects the vast profits to pharmaceuticals in this country.
The VA, the one government controlled agency allowed to negotiate with drug companies has prices roughly 40% lower than those paid by private insurers. However, if a pharmaceutical company will not negotiate a lower price the VA won't put it on their approved list.
So rationing IS taking place. If you cannot get some drugs from the VA because they aren't on the formulary, that is rationing. But if you cannot afford some drugs because they are $600 for a thirty day supply, that is rationing, too. The difference between the rationing taking place here and in those seven other countries is that no one is cut out of what pharmaceuticals are available over there. Here rich folks can get what they want or need.
Let rich folks bear the cost of R&D for their drugs. Instead they are letting the rest of our nation bear the cost of developing drugs that generally only the well to do, or those with very good insurance will be able to afford.
That's the one thing Obamacare is going to do---it will mean everyone, one way or another, is going to have to pay for some basic coverage. Most of you think it will mean they have insurance like you do. It doesn't. It's not going to be much more than coverage for those ER situations which they are crowding into anyway.
Early last year, I read that in Los Angeles at least five hospitals had closed their emergency rooms because they could no longer afford to pay for indigent. In other words, they weren't getting enough paying customers in the hospital to whom to pass on the cost of operating the hospital ER.
Single payer means single negotiator. Does it mean rationing--of course. We ALREADY are rationing. But it does mean lower costs as well.
Last edited by Wardendresden; 04-25-2013 at 07:46 AM..
Hospitals profit off their own mistakes in the U.S.
This is why hospitals have no incentive to do anything better. They actually make money off their own mistakes.
Quote:
Hospitals make money from their own mistakes because insurers pay them for the longer stays and extra care that patients need to treat surgical complications that could have been prevented, a new study finds.
Changing the payment system, to stop rewarding poor care, may help to bring down surgical complication rates, the researchers say. If the system does not change, hospitals have little incentive to improve: in fact, some will wind up losing money if they take better care of patients. But, he (David Sadoff) said, the current payment system makes it difficult for hospitals to perform better because improvements can wind up costing them money.
Susan Pisano, a spokeswoman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group for insurance companies, said in an interview that the study illustrated that the entire health care system needed to move away from what she called “the perverse incentives of the old fee-for-service system that emphasized quantity over quality, and toward methods of payment that reward better care.”
same source
This is another reason to remove "profit" from the system and go to a single payer system.
The Veteran's Administration Hospitals financial reward physicians for good outcomes which has them ranked as one of the highest health care providers in the United States.
Last edited by Wardendresden; 04-25-2013 at 07:38 AM..
Reason: formatting
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Canadian health care
