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It's not free, its paid through taxes, but the upside is that you don't have to worry about access to healthcare, being out of network, co-pays, deductibles, reaching $ limits, or worry about not having the money to pay for expensive treatments.
Yep! Your typical ditzy, security-obsessed suburbanite now knows that every little concern can now be dumped on the system at minimal cost .... as long as it's not too serious.
But as you advance in years, you're likely to find it harder to get help with chronic conditions, and that's exactly the way the advocates of socialized medicine planned it. Better that more short-term thinkers pledge their loyalty to Big Brother than that those who planned ahead get help in the years when they finally need it.
It gets us closer, and because it uses Medicaid as a model, it actually gets us very close. To dismiss insurance companies would be the next step. I'd rather have something than nothing. In this country where right wingers are predators, a small step is a big step in my view. This is no ordinary country. Since Reagan, it has been ideologically pushed to the right, toward an authoritarian plutocracy. If the road to universal healthcare has to first go this route, then by all means, let's get it started. Do not expect to have everything to magically change to its final, better result instantly in a country dominated by a very sick right wing ideology.
Jeez you gotta go back and start reading from somewhere in the middle there sunshine and you'll undoubtedly come to the same conclusion as most your more intelligent brethren that yours is the "crap" system.
Oh, and by the by, your country is arguably more socialized than some others because of all the other socialized crap you have like multi generational welfare, EBT cards and Obama phones, just for a couple of examples of "crap". Now, go get yourself a large soda; oh wait.....!
the harvard study, first made in a 2005 Health Affairs article, is at variance with four decades of economic research, including a finding that even large medical bills have no impact on family living standards.
The paper by David Himmelstein, Elizabeth Warren, Deborah Thorne, and Steffie Woolhandler was published as a Health Affairs web exclusive on February 5, 2005. The authors are strong proponents of government run health care.
The data comes from 1,250 personal bankruptcy cases, assumed to be representative of the almost 1.5 million households that filed for bankruptcy in 2001. The data on each bankruptcy were abstracted from court records and supplemented with 931 telephone interviews. The paper's conclusions about illnesses in households were based on medical interviews conducted with 391 people. The paper does not specify how those people were selected. It does say that Himmelstein and Woolhandler (H & W), both MDs, coded the diagnoses given by debtors into the categories used for the analysis.
The classifications used to determine a medical bankruptcy were odd. Only 28.3 percent of the sample cited self-reported illness or injury as a cause of bankruptcy. However, H & W managed to almost double that figure (to 54.5 percent) by counting the following as "illnesses":
•1. A birth or addition of a new family member
•2. A death in a family
•3. A drug or alcohol addiction
•4. Uncontrolled gambling
•5. Loss of at least 2 weeks of work-related income due to illness or injury by anyone in the household
•6. Out-of-pocket medical bills of $1,000 in the two years before filing by anyone in the household
•7. Mortgaging a home to pay medical bills.
In a 2005 article in the Northwestern University Law Review, Prof. Todd J. Zywicki called the $1,000 threshold for contributing medical debt "indefensible." That's an understatement. By H & W criteria, a bankruptcy with $50,000 in student loans and $1,001 in unpaid medical bills would be classified as a "medical bankruptcy." Moreover, the average U.S. household had out-of-pocket expenses of $2,182 in 2001!
In a 2006 review (gated) of the H & W study results in Health Affairs, David Dranove and Michael L. Millenson:
•Recalculate the medical bankruptcy rate using the data given in the H & W paper. They conclude that just 17 percent of the H & W sample "had medical expenditure bankruptcies," although it cannot be stated "with any degree of certainty whether medical spending was the most important cause of bankruptcy."
•Explain that "four decades of studies have addressed the bankruptcy-medical spending connection" and that the results from those studies are much closer to their 17 percent estimate than to the 54.5 percent estimates of H & W.
•Cite a 2002 Fay, Hurst, and White American Economic Review study, which found no statistical link between bankruptcies and health problems.
•Cite a 1999 Domowitz and Sartain Journal of Finance study, which found that high medical debt raised the probability of bankruptcy for the tiny proportion of the population that had high medical debt, but that at the margin, credit cards were the largest single contribution to bankruptcy.
Moreover, Helen Levy in an Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured working paper estimated the effect of being diagnosed with a serious new health condition, (cancer, diabetes, heart attack, chronic lung disease, or stroke) and found that household consumption "remains smooth" in the face of serious health shocks for both insured and uninsured households.
YET:
A study by the Department of Justice examined more than 5,000 bankruptcy cases between 2000 and 2002. It found that 54% of bankruptcies involve no medical debt, and more than 90% have medical debt of less than $5,000. Even among the minority of bankruptcies that report medical debt, only a few have enough to cause personal bankruptcy.
Canadians have similar BK filing rates as the USA. Yet they have universal insurance.
That's why liberals just do not get it.
Having universal healthcare/single payer will not lead to a decrease in BK filings. Medical debt as you stated above is not the primary cause of BK filings. Many people are drowning in debt well before medical debt occurs.
Anyways, like I said, I am not opposed to socialized healthcare. But it will have to come at a cost.
Those making even 20K a year will have to contribute close to 10% of their income like all other countries. Right now with the ACA, they will contribute very little if none at all. The system only works when you have close to 100% participation. You can't sue your doctor unless its an outrageous mistake. You will have to wait for certain procedures. And if it's an end of life situation or very premature infant. Tough choices will have to be made to limit spending on these individuals.
That's all. Pretty simple stuff people will have to agree on so we can move on and have that wonderful social healthcare many liberals want.
You seem to be under the impression that CEO's can just waste money as they see fit without any repercussion. That isn't how the market generally works. If the company starts losing money and the stock falls then the CEO pay will also fall considering stock options make up so much of CEO pay.
Look at the history of UnitedHealthcare. A CEO not long ago was paid $400,000,000 per year. Split the business with a Billion dollars in stock. He was convicted of stock fraud and fined $400,000,000. He should have been hung from the highest tree.
Not to sound too depressing but in Canada as the baby boomers approach a weakened state..they slowly just off you with morphine. You will find more and more so-called mercy killings in the future. They will be methodical and quiet about it...Best you can do is stay as strong as possible and die in your own bed if you can. Even though we have socialized medicine in Canada, the system is economically motivated and there are budgets...If they believe you are costing to much they will offer the option of "refusal of treatment" - My mother in law just went through that. She looked at the doctors and said "So you want me to commit suicide?"
She was coerced into giving up...it took her ten days to die. So socialize medicine still has the aspect of big business. Once there is no more profit in continued treatment...they write you off like an old car.
Ah, of course. Deny, delay, deny and delay - don't let the truth come out!!!! Obfuscate! Obfuscate! And, naturally, the typical right wing rants of, "This is the best of all possible worlds," "other countries are bad, bad, bad," "right wing ideology is the salvation of mankind," "what's going on in this country is that we haven't made it right wing enough," and, last but not least, "I'm doing well, so hey, everyone else is too!" lol Typical right wing BS.
You just continue on your merry way, Pangloss, but it's too damned late. Everyone sees the truth now. Carry on with the right wing BS. Let's see what the next election brings us. Hopefully people are getting pissed off at right wingers enough now that they'll reverse the damage done over 30+ years to this country. What's really sad is that it takes suffering for many Americans to open their eyes and see what a bunch of evil scumbags Republicans are, and how much damage they've done to the U.S.
I didn't attack you, just pointed out "the rest of the story" so why attack me? Oh wait, that's right, if you can't refute or don't like the facts resort to personal attacks.
You do realize that we're not in the situation we're in TODAY as in RIGHT NOW just due to Republicans don't you? You do realize there's plenty of crooked Democrats that are in all this up to their eyeballs. The only thing that changed in 2009 is what crook(s) are sitting in the chair(s).
Oh, I agree with you on one point, hopefully the public (though highly doubtful) will be ticked off enough come 2016 to vote out ALL life long congressmen and get some new independent blood in there but again, highly unlikely because partisan politics rule the day.
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