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Sure you can duplicate it. However, it will take RATIONING of medical care, drugs, and procedures. You will have a board of career BUREAUCATS deciding if YOU, your Father, Mother, Brother, Sister and Wife if they deserve care or not, and if their lives deserve to be extended.
A competitive, market based system where insurance is allowed to compete across state lines would be start. All healthcare costs, including what hospitals charge, and their cost structures should be TRANSPARENT to all, and not just faux transparency where the books are cooked. Real transparency with huge penalties for fraud.
Rationing is a bogeyman created by the medical industry to scare people out of reforming it. Medicare does not ration, but it does tier its services. People often buy a so-called "Medi-gap" policy to cover the services not covered with Medicare. The same thing could occur with a Universal plan. The Universal plan would cover like 95% of things people need and you have the option of a private plan for the rest. Or not. It's your choice. But in any event, there is no rationing.
This is the nature modern medicine in any successful, caring and rich nation. Medical technologies find new and better answers and solutions to better health and even life itself. What is more important?
Yes, health is important to everyone. Other countries have managed to have healthcare systems that are not major for-profit industries. The US needs to reform our medical industrial complex and get it back to being focused on people rather than profit.
Anybody who has not heard of Hamburg, Germany is incredibly geographically illiterate.
And especially since so many Midwesterners are part German, I suspect they give more of a **** about it than you think.
In fact, given that the (white) population in those states are largely comprised of people of German and Scandinavian ancestry, I'd suspect that, deep down, they really wouldn't mind emulating the policies of Germany and Scandinavia. Or at least some of them.
Most of these people's families have been in the US for several generations now.
Milton Friedman gave the answer to healthcare costs many years ago. Eliminate licensing requirements for healthcare providers.
We subsidize demand and restrict supply. Anyone who has taken Econ 101 should know what that leads to.
Have at it, use unlicensed medical providers all you want. Then sign their binding arbitration clauses and see what you get if your treatment doesn't work out.
Milton Friedman, who I studied in B-school, had a lot of wacky ideas. If that actually was his idea, it would be yet another one of them.
Last edited by TownDweller; 12-31-2019 at 10:34 AM..
Reason: Typo
Rationing is a bogeyman created by the medical industry to scare people out of reforming it.
Not true.
Medical care rationing goes on in Canada now. There are more MRI machines in one major US city than in all of Canada. That means longer wait times for Canadian patients.
Medical care rationing goes on in Canada now. There are more MRI machines in one major US city than in all of Canada. That means longer wait times for Canadian patients.
Except what the headlines call rationing is often prudent medical care. Here in the US everyone gets an MRI because they demand it even if it's not medically necessary. In Canada, MRI's are available right away when medically necessary such as a knee injury due to an accident. If you have chronic knee pain, they'll make you wait because it's not an emergency and treatment will probably be PT.
Except what the headlines call rationing is often prudent medical care. Here in the US everyone gets an MRI because they demand it even if it's not medically necessary. In Canada, MRI's are available right away when medically necessary such as a knee injury due to an accident. If you have chronic knee pain, they'll make you wait because it's not an emergency and treatment will probably be PT.
MRI's are a total cash cow here. They cost almost triple, on average, what they cost in Canada. Even though there are three times as many here on a per capital basis. So much for the "Greater competition, lower prices" BS.
Medical care rationing goes on in Canada now. There are more MRI machines in one major US city than in all of Canada. That means longer wait times for Canadian patients.
That means no such thing. Which cities are those that have more MRI's and does every American have access to all those spiffy MRI machines in those cities?
MI's are not prescribed unnecessarily by doctors in Canada getting kick-backs from the hospitals paying for the equipment. MRI's are not prescribed unnecessarily in Canada at all for ay reason.
Should there be any credence to your silly rationing nonsense as opposed to prioritizing resources based upon severity of conditionl; at least we're not stupid enough to tolerate a system whereby we SELF RATION ourselves into an early grave.
You can ask the person in rural Kentucky or Virginia or some other area having worse poverty levels than the entirety of Canada having to wait a full year until the next charity funded 'free to user' RAM clinic comes around to even see ANY medical practitioner at all if they'd rather have Canada's healthcare system.
When your system does NOT have more people getting NO pre-emptive healthcare whatsoever than Canada's entire population you'd have some solid ground to stand upon. HOWEVER, until that day, using Canada as an example of anything other than something to aspire to is stepping into a pit of quicksand and yelling for someone to throw you an anvil.
Then we'll talk. 'Til then stop critiquing a system the entire population of Canada would not sacrifice to emulate that clusterfugg-for-profit system you're needlessly dying under.
Yes, health is important to everyone. Other countries have managed to have healthcare systems that are not major for-profit industries. The US needs to reform our medical industrial complex and get it back to being focused on people rather than profit.
IMO bound to happen as we move towards more UHC.
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