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Personally, I think that's a more complicated question than a simple yes or no answer.
In the UK, for example but it applies to just about every country where it is treated as a basic human right, cost is then a factor. Take cancer. The US system gets better results than UK does when it comes to cancer. Patients live longer, and they live longer because we use more aggressive and expensive cancer treatments. In the UK those aggressive, more expensive, treatments are in many cases not covered. The UK has the HTA process to determine what treatments will be covered and which ones are simply to expensive and would result in spending too much to potentially save one patient and thus deplete the resources of the system such that it could not provide adequate care for others with less expensive needs and/or better outcomes. The US system does not do that. It's up to insurers and healthcare providers what treatments are covered largely based on outcomes and legally it ignores cost. Insurance companies try and skirt that but the laws are pretty firm. They can get out of experimental drugs but once there's an established track record they can't. The law has cracked down to prevent insurers from having lifetime caps on expenditures or dropping patients when they get sick. That's exactly the opposite of the HTA process.
Personally, I think some level of healthcare is a basic human right. I think that level of healthcare is higher than the level of care that in the United States is treated as a basic human right. If you show up in the emergency room with a critical, life threatening injury or illness -- say a gunshot wound -- you will be treated to stabilize you regardless of your ability to pay. But then after you're stabilized maybe you won't. Say they need to do surgery on your leg. Aftercare would normally involve physical therapy but that isn't critical or life threatening, so you won't get it unless you can pay for it.
I think the level of healthcare treated as a basic human right needs to be higher. I also think cost needs to be a factor and that some sort of supplemental private insurance or private pay should apply to anything above that. A $2,000,000 cancer treatment protocol with a 1% survival rate and an increased life expectancy of three months, to me, is clearly above a basic human right. Getting physical therapy after a gunshot wound or car accident that requires surgery to stabilize a critical, life threatening injury (treated as a basic human right) so you don't end up permanently disabled does not cost much and should be covered. Where exactly the line gets drawn between those two, you got me.
Young man with HIV doesn't get drugs he needs. No insurance. Winds up in county hospital ICU for four weeks. Cost to taxpayer: about $250,000.
Young man with HIV gets the drugs he needs through a government-funded program. Cost: $24,000/year.
Which do you prefer ???
By the way, those drugs are given away for free in countries like Brazil, which has the lowest rate of new HIV infections on the planet.
Specious argument though.
Government reimbursements for indigent care are lower than the average in the industry. If it costs the taypayer $250,000, which it might over the lifetime of an HIV patient as the treatments are quite effective now, it would cost private insurance more like $280,000. What would be even cheaper? Medicare. Medicare reimburses even less than indigent care.
By 2005, uninsured patients as a group still paid a higher percentage of charges, on average, than Medicare and Medicaid and paid less than commercially insured patients.
That's a rather moot point. The funds will be exhausted long before then as will social security. Both of which I've been forced to fund all my working life. If that funding would have gone into some sort of a personal retirement account and a medical savings account, it would certainly be there if/when I needed it. And if I never needed it, I could will it to someone else who may. But no, rather, it has gone into a Ponzi scheme.
If you had said, at the beginning, that you didn't believe in paying taxes to fund services for citizens, then we all could have moved on and avoided engagement with a viewpoint that is "fringe", to say the least. Government serves the common good. You feel that since you have yours, you don't need to fund the common good. As I said earlier ... this is selfishness. We all take, one way or the other (this includes you). You just don't want to give in return.
Government reimbursements for indigent care are lower than the average in the industry. If it costs the taypayer $250,000, which it might over the lifetime of an HIV patient as the treatments are quite effective now, it would cost private insurance more like $280,000. What would be even cheaper? Medicare. Medicare reimburses even less than indigent care.
Ah ... most state ADAP programs (AIDS Drug Assistance Program) require no co-payment, or a small one at the most. The costs of the drugs in the United States are higher than they are elsewhere in the world, as our government is one of the few which does not set prices. Medicare, of course, does have extensive bargaining power as a result of its size.
If you had said, at the beginning, that you didn't believe in paying taxes to fund services for citizens, then we all could have moved on and avoided engagement with a viewpoint that is "fringe", to say the least. Government serves the common good. You feel that since you have yours, you don't need to fund the common good. As I said earlier ... this is selfishness. We all take, one way or the other (this includes you). You just don't want to give in return.
It is not a matter of not wanting to pay taxes for services provided by the government, it's a matter of which services should be provided by the government. Once again, you are introducing strawmen. I never said that I do not believe in sharing the costs for roads, military protection, police, etc. As far as me "having," chances are really good that you have far more than I do. Yet, I still believe in liberty and I still do not believe that you should be donating what you have to me because I don't have it.
It is not a matter of not wanting to pay taxes for services provided by the government, it's a matter of which services should be provided by the government. Once again, you are introducing strawmen. I never said that I do not believe in sharing the costs for roads, military protection, police, etc. As far as me "having," chances are really good that you have far more than I do. Yet, I still believe in liberty and I still do not believe that you should be donating what you have to me because I don't have it.
You'll pay for highways, but not for doctors. Hmmm. That says a lot about you.
That's a rather moot point. The funds will be exhausted long before then as will social security. Both of which I've been forced to fund all my working life. If that funding would have gone into some sort of a personal retirement account and a medical savings account, it would certainly be there if/when I needed it. And if I never needed it, I could will it to someone else who may. But no, rather, it has gone into a Ponzi scheme.
How do you know it would be enough if you put it into a savings account? A serious illness could easily wipe you out. So you go onto Medicare (which WILL still be there) and at age 65 you are diagnosed with cancer. With Medicare that we have all paid into and for which you pay a monthly premium, you could be cured.
With your own personal health savings account, what happens when your money runs out? You die. Or what if they save your life but use up all your money? Then what do you do if you get sick? You have no health savings money and no health insurance either.
Or, what if you got cancer at a younger age and wiped out your savings account then? You try to live the rest of your life without health insurance? The savings account you were depending upon is all used up and you haven't even retired yet.
With Medicare or any single payer, you could get a lot more out of it than you paid in. And it will be there for you no matter what. Trying to fund your health care on your own is a real gamble.
Health care is a necessity of life, a right. We'll only attain that right if we all pitch in and work together. If people want to live like those in a third world country, there are lots of third world countries they can go to!
I have a hard time understanding how people see some kind of difference between private and public insurance, like wishing for one somehow categorizes you as a commie big government pansy or wishing for the other somehow magically transforms you into a rugged individualist while you get reamed up the backside. It's hard to enjoy liberty and freedom when you're mortgaging your home to pay for your wife's/child's/put-other-loved-one-here healthcare.
Americans have either never heard of the most important freedom you can have besides the your own, or they don't care...and that's economic freedom. Americans are slaves and many of you love yourselves for it.
I'm curious -- what exactly do you mean by "economic freedom", and how do you suggest that most people achieve that?
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