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Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

economist.com

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Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#141

Post by rukittenme »

Sangermaine wrote: post #97
rukittenme wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think universal healthcare would be any different? If you recognize the VA's failings, and you blame Republicans for it, what's to stop them from doing it to every "good" idea you have? If a few motivated politicians can ruin the lives of millions those politicians shouldn't have that power in the first place.

>What makes you think universal healthcare would be any different? Because America isn't the entire world and there are many places where socialized healthcare of various forms have been very successfully implemented for a long time. The idea peddled by conservatives in America that the only options for socialized healthcare are inevitable failure or tyranny is simply, demonstrably nonsense. It's exactly this kind of…

Oh yes. Everyone who disagrees with me has a limited mindset. You could have used your open mind to read about a European (within this comment thread) who is having trouble with "the right" in his country:

> This is a principal reason why the US was crossed off my list of countries where I would work and live. I fight against the privatization that is occurring within healthcare in my native country, Iceland. We used to have the Scandinavian model but decades of attacks from the right-wing Independence Party has broken our healthcare system. The next phase described by Chomsky is handing it over to private capital since people are outraged that it doesn't work anymore. I'm sickened by the development and feel a little like an old man screaming at the desert wind.

It's exactly your kind of Utopian mindset that needs to change. Please read the news of countries other than the US. You might be surprised at the amount of controversy that surrounds universal healthcare systems.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#142

Post by dagenleg »

announcerman wrote: post #65

Universal healthcare is not a silver bullet, in certain Eastern European Countries we pay a large amount of our salary in taxes so that we have universal healthcare and yet you still have to give "gifts" to every nurse and doctor that treats you unless you want the bare minimum treatment and care. Doctors can also intentionally botch surgeries if you fail to pay up. Not so much that it can be called malpraxis though.

Why countries specifically?

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#143

Post by ordinaryperson »

arcticbull wrote: post #136
edanm wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's some serious mental gymnastics going on here to justify that the US spends 2x the next country per capita on health care expenditure and still doesn't manage to pay for all its citizens. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this. The US does spend a lot more, and doesn't cover everyone. If I understood the parent post, (part of what) it's saying that the US needs to focus on lowering costs, because otherwi…

Sure, my bad, in re-reading I can see how this wasn't clear. I meant along the lines of: I can't see how allowing medicare to negotiate drug prices, letting nurses do more of what doctors do and publishing prices gets the US medical system anywhere close to a 50% reduction in per capita spend, or gets the US any closer to covering 100% of the population. The US should do each of these. Each would make a difference. W…

It wouldn't. Those are 3 examples, just to prove my point about how we seem to focus exclusively on how paying for the cost of care but seemingly don't bat an eye on bringing down the costs, where there seems to be a lot of room for improvement.

If the costs were not so high, paying for it for everyone would not be as difficult to implement.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#144

Post by landryraccoon »

edanm wrote: post #107
arcticbull wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some serious mental gymnastics going on here to justify that the US spends 2x the next country per capita on health care expenditure and still doesn't manage to pay for all its citizens. Especially when the federal government has already taken all its worst customers (the old) and thrown them into a socialized pool (medicare) without anyone to balance out the risk. Wasn't there a writeup recently that wealth…

> There's some serious mental gymnastics going on here to justify that the US spends 2x the next country per capita on health care expenditure and still doesn't manage to pay for all its citizens. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this. The US does spend a lot more, and doesn't cover everyone. If I understood the parent post, (part of what) it's saying that the US needs to focus on lowering costs, because otherwi…

> Do you assume that if the US covered everyone, it would be cheaper? Would be great if you could clarify :)

Yes, that's exactly true. A lot of countries cover everyone, at a far lower cost per capita. Universal healthcare lowers costs. The evidence simply isn't on the side of the libertarian argument. Universal healthcare has been tried, in many, many countries, and it works just fine.

There isn't a single country you can point to, including and especially the United States, that has "free market" healthcare and gets better outcomes at lower cost than universal healthcare countries.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#145

Post by malyk »

rukittenme wrote: post #77
monocasa wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The VA was a good system not too long ago, but the past couple decades has seen it get extremely underfunded in a starve the beast strategy. It used to be a black eye in the Republican's view of healthcare, but they sure fixed that.

What makes you think universal healthcare would be any different? If you recognize the VA's failings, and you blame Republicans for it, what's to stop them from doing it to every "good" idea you have? If a few motivated politicians can ruin the lives of millions those politicians shouldn't have that power in the first place.

I think the OP covered this when they said

> Until we change our collective view in what the purpose of a government and society is things won’t change significantly.

So yeah, if we don't change our collective view, then the republicans (or whomever) will continue to undercut these government run programs as much as possible for their broken ideology.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#146

Post by SamReidHughes »

rogerb wrote: post #131
sykh wrote: post #6

When a person gets a life threatening disease they ought not worry about whether or not their treatment will leave their family in penury. This is especially so in a nation as wealthy as the U.S. The American healthcare system is immoral and I hope it drastically changes. Americans need to change their underlying notions of what it means to be a society. An author was once made fun of for suggesting that it takes a v…

There's a simple thought experiment that helps: - an american citizen break his leg, he is not insured. Do you A: let him die B: take care of him ? if your answer is A - you are a terrible person, but you hold a consistent position. if your answer is B - the only question that remains is what is the most economic, efficient way to take care of this person ? b is universal health care. if you think you can do A with e…

What if they're not an American citizen? What if they're also in a different country?

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#147

Post by ordinaryperson »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #20
ordinaryperson wrote: post #18

Universal health care is a euphemism for the poor and sick getting their medical care subsidized by the wealthy and healthy. Morally, caring for the sick seems like the right thing to do, but it's like when I hear Bernie Sanders call for "free college education": he doesn't mean free, he means the wealthy subsidizing it for others. Universal health care implies just distributed costs, but the focus should be on bring…

> Nurses could do a lot of things doctors do now, and for a lot less money, but MDs refuse to cede any authority Nurse practitioners are actually increasingly common in the American health care system.

Yes, and I'd love to see them do more. Like a lot of preventative care.

Or obesity -- so many health problems stem from being obese. Surely nurses could help patients develop strategies to eat better and exercise.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#148

Post by knz »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #39
merpnderp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think the private healthcare system is immoral, you should take a look at the 100% government ran healthcare system that is the VA. You literally couldn't make up worse things than their administration has been caught doing with little or to consequence. If the VA is the best the US government can do, with some of the most sympathetic citizens, then it is incapable of doing better than our private system.

But other countries can do this. So the hard question then is, why is the US government so uniquely bad at doing things that it doesn't want to do?

Is the issue the US government? Or the lobbying to protect special interest groups?

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#149

Post by kingkawn »

ubi_now wrote: post #55
kingkawn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to fight over which one gets to be called number 1. Both are components of a whole vision; a healthy, thriving populace, building off the successes of one another to create a better experience for everyone, rich and poor alike.

You don't need government programs to do that.

You need an organization that can utilize resources derived from the whole of the economy to provide service to the whole of the populace. Ideological prejudice against “government programs” obstructs getting this good work done.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#150

Post by js2 »

announcerman wrote: post #65

Universal healthcare is not a silver bullet, in certain Eastern European Countries we pay a large amount of our salary in taxes so that we have universal healthcare and yet you still have to give "gifts" to every nurse and doctor that treats you unless you want the bare minimum treatment and care. Doctors can also intentionally botch surgeries if you fail to pay up. Not so much that it can be called malpraxis though.

Obviously corruption can undermine any system. I assume in those countries the corruption extends to areas other than healthcare as well.
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