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In the August 24 &31, 2009 issue of Newsweek, the article "What You Need to Know," there are small subarticles.
One is titled, "Socialism is the best medicine"
Quote:
Most Americans have heard horror stories of long waits for health-care services in other countries. But according to a study by the Commonwealth FUnd, Americans wait longer to see primary-care physicians than patients in Britain, Germany, Australia, or New Zealand- all countries with strong public-health systems. Nearly one quarter of Americans reported waiting six days or more for an appointment with their doctor. New Zealand scored best, with just 3 percent waiting that long..... Only 26 percent of Americans and Canadians reported being able to see their doctor on the day they called, compared with 60 percent in the Netherlands and 48 percent in Britain. Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund, says American ranks last overall in the fund's comparative studies, which consider access, equity, cost, quality, and efficiency measures across selected developed countries. "Where we do well is on...elective surgery," she says. Only 8 percent of Americans have to wait four months or more for an elective procedure, and 62 percent wait less than a month. In Britain, 41 percent of patients have to wait four months or more. The disparity between primary and elective care, says Davis, is mostly due to a shortage of primary-care docs in the U.S.; we produce more specialists because specialists earn more.
Hey- believe what you want. Ever been to Holland? I have several times specifically to visit with other medical associates in my area. It is a little different population demographic. The public hospitals are like palaces (Masstrich), and the private offices are like dumps.
They do ration health care there. They are limited in the number of certain surgeries and procedures that they can offer to thier citizens. Ironically, one of the spine surgeons at Masstrich said they do more cervical prosthetic discs on foreigners than Dutch citizens due to this reason. They also have a bit different standards, in that procedures we would do under sterile prep and drape in a surgery center, they will do in the office with just an alcohol wipe prep and no sedation. It was a little eye opening. You can smoke in the Dutch hospitals, which was a little suprising as well.All in all, I thought the standard of care was overall pretty good. I thought the docs were pretty good aw well, but make no mistake of it, there is rationing there. The people have just become used to it and people travel to other countries in europe to get what they need, as it would be like us going to another state. One of the staff guys at Masstrich was actually flying to the US for a kidney transplant, as he said the wait was much shorter and had a good match.
I'm another physician and I can share another account with you but I can see that people would view us with skepticism due to the conflict of interest we have. Nonetheless, forget talking to physicians, talk to nurses, social workers, pharmacists and others who worked in both the private and govt hospitals in the United States. Ask them to compare which hospitals rationed care more. Rationing is just a well known fact among health care providers who work in a govt system. You learn to work within the system and you adjust the way you treat patients. When we see threads like this disputing the idea that care will not be rationed, it's just quite frankly a joke to us.
I'm another physician and I can share another account with you but I can see that people would view us with skepticism due to the conflict of interest we have. Nonetheless, forget talking to physicians, talk to nurses, social workers, pharmacists and others who worked in both the private and govt hospitals in the United States. Ask them to compare which hospitals rationed care more. Rationing is just a well known fact among health care providers who work in a govt system or hospital. When we see threads like this contesting the idea that care will be rationed, it's just quite frankly a joke to us because it's obvious who have clue what they are talking about are preaching about how rationing wouldn't occur in a govt. run system.
Rationing already happens with insurance companies.
I'm open to what you have to say.
Did you even read the link at Cato.org?
Rationing already happens with insurance companies.
I'm open to what you have to say.
Did you even read the link at Cato.org?
That is true. Some medical procedures and drugs are not approved by some insurance companies. Blue Cross generally accepts most anything, which is why the feds have the Blue Cross Federal policy, which is the best you can get. They don't deny anything and there are essentially no copays or very little. "Bad" insurance companies, which tend to be smaller companies deny alot, as a greater percentage of their revenues is devoted to overhead.
I also have a clinic at the VA. Rationing occurs to a much greater degree there with regard to waits- many months wait compared to days in private practice- and a limited formulary. Most surgeries are approved, but there is a long wait time and the feds are looking now for ways to cut programs and staffing due to budget cuts. There is a hiring freeze and we cannot get enough nursing staff to run the ORs efficiently, so 50% of the rooms sit idle and patients have to wait. Believe it or not, as there is no financial incentive for most of the docs in the VA system to perform surgery, the rates of some surgery are much lower than private practice per capita. This is both good and bad- some procedures that I think really need to be done are not performed with the same frequency. Perhaps more should be done at the VA or less in private practice. Maybe a little of both.
Look, you can believe what you want in the utopia of your mind, but simple business sense will tell you that for ANYTHING to be successful, there HAS to be rationing. HAS to. You cannot just open the checkbook for anyone and everyone. Yes, private companies will do it too, but there will have to be less of it because of competition. They'll have to compete with others.
Now, the government, should it get the "public" (which means government) option they want will not have competition, and if they want to keep the system running, they'll have to ration care. That, or they'll just open up the checkbook to anyone and anything, and go broke very quickly.
While they SAY you'll be able to keep your current insurance, they know full well that they'll undercut everyone. If employers have the choice of paying for their employees health care, or letting the government cover it, what do you think will happen? They can then skirt all the blame, and still get 100% of the business. They'll just blame employers, when they actually forced their hands into dropping insurance for their employees.
Now, what has been conveniently pushed aside is the fact that THIS IS NOT GOING TO BE FREE!!! IT CANNOT BE!!! You cannot run a program like this without raising taxes coming and going, on EVERYONE. The only people that aren't going to be affected are the losers that don't pay taxes now. Now we've got the option of paying for health care if we want. If the govt gets its way, they'll just take what they want and call it free.
But back to rationing, you CANNOT run a business and not ration. It won't work. Ever. Go take a business 101 class.
Please explain to me how adding 45 million people to the health system while not expanding the number of health professionals will decrease wait times?
Look, you can believe what you want in the utopia of your mind, but simple business sense will tell you that for ANYTHING to be successful, there HAS to be rationing. HAS to. You cannot just open the checkbook for anyone and everyone. Yes, private companies will do it too, but there will have to be less of it because of competition. They'll have to compete with others.
Now, the government, should it get the "public" (which means government) option they want will not have competition, and if they want to keep the system running, they'll have to ration care. That, or they'll just open up the checkbook to anyone and anything, and go broke very quickly.
While they SAY you'll be able to keep your current insurance, they know full well that they'll undercut everyone. If employers have the choice of paying for their employees health care, or letting the government cover it, what do you think will happen? They can then skirt all the blame, and still get 100% of the business. They'll just blame employers, when they actually forced their hands into dropping insurance for their employees.
Now, what has been conveniently pushed aside is the fact that THIS IS NOT GOING TO BE FREE!!! IT CANNOT BE!!! You cannot run a program like this without raising taxes coming and going, on EVERYONE. The only people that aren't going to be affected are the losers that don't pay taxes now. Now we've got the option of paying for health care if we want. If the govt gets its way, they'll just take what they want and call it free.
But back to rationing, you CANNOT run a business and not ration. It won't work. Ever. Go take a business 101 class.
I don't think I've ever said this was going to be free.....
Please explain to me how adding 45 million people to the health system while not expanding the number of health professionals will decrease wait times?
It isn't that these people do not already get health care. It's that they don't have insurance. As the result, most of them can't pay for the care they most definitely do get. Instead, people who do have insurance pay for it. If you doubt that the uninsured already receive health care, just go over to the Immigration subforum and ask the folks over there.
Otherwise, it makes sense to ask how much of health care reform as proposed so far deals with actual health care delivery and how much deals with health care administration and financing.
I don't think I've ever said this was going to be free.....
Did you read the link from Cato?
Nope. Too many links are posted on this board as "proof" of something, but they're normally pulling from their favorite skewed site, so I don't bother. I do my own research.
If it's not going to be free, and we're going to pay for it in the form of taxes, what's the big draw to this? Why can't we just tweak our current system and fix a few minor problems? Why would we turn over a system that works (not as well as it could, but it works) to a government that cannot properly manage ANYTHING. Why would we turn it over to a group of people that have experience winning elections, but not running successful businesses?
That's just stupid. It's absolutely stupid to look at everything government has tried to run through the years and think this would be any different.
Stupid.
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