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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

#191

Post by austincheney »

mikeash wrote: post #122
austincheney wrote: post #51

When the issue of universal health care comes up with regards to US policy I often see those emotional arguments pulling on the heart strings. Unfortunately, this is a distraction. I know this sounds cold, but it comes down to money. Healthcare in America is expensive. The problems appear to be commonly identified by various forms of research and including things like pricing inefficiencies of drugs, malpractice insu…

Seems like you have the cart before the horse. Universal health care would be a way to address those inefficiencies and solve those financial and administrative problems.

That very well may be, but I have not seen any research suggesting this.

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

#192

Post by judah »

oldcynic wrote: post #135
judah wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> A healthcare decision had to be made for a patient that was not able to make the decision themselves Yes - it was made for the patient against the patient's legal guardians - his own mother and father. The government-run system overruled the patient's legal guardians. This is precisely the issue at hand: a loss of freedom resulting from a healthcare system ultimately ruled by the government itself. The government…

> The government has final say over healthcare decisions No, the medical professionals, i.e. doctors do. "the unanimous opinion of the doctors who have examined him and the scans of his brain is that almost all of his brain has been destroyed". What happens in a non state run healthcare system when a parent refuses to accept someone's death in the ICU?

>> No, the medical professionals, i.e. doctors do.

The UK doctors punted, agreed. But Italian doctors believed different treatments were warranted. The Italian government gave the boy citizenship.

In a private healthcare system, the parents would be free to pursue that. But in the state-run system of the UK, there was no such freedom. Alfie Evans died last Monday.

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

#193

Post by conanbatt »

sykh wrote: post #154
conanbatt wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A person ought not face financial ruin. The logical consequence of this is that any cost must be paid. And if the person cant pay it someone else does. So if someone gets a rare cancer whose treatment has 1% effectiveness and costs millions, it should be paid by someone else. The principle is wishful thinking, not economics. We as people every day make trades of our life for money. We pick a means of transportation…

Your first paragraph is false and indeed can not be true in any system that rations care. All health care systems ration care since no soceity has enough resources to cover and pay for all possible needed health services. Here resources includes number of qualified workers.

If its rationed then some people are going to be left out, and the moral argument crumbles, as people that need it don't get it.

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

#194

Post by SamReidHughes »

rogerb wrote: post #172
SamReidHughes wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

My position is to take care of that person, like weve been taken care of visiting while other countries, but trying to avoid the illegal/undocumented immigrant strawman for clarity.

Okay, but what about people in other countries? Why don't we have an obligation to help them, to?

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

#195

Post by chimeracoder »

Symmetry wrote: post #68
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.

The VA is far from perfect and is really noticeably worse than many other country's nationalized health systems. But it's not obviously worse than private health insurance in the US and generally veterans are as happy with their health care as other people. I think the VA example tends to dispel the notion that single payer would save that much money but it works about as well as other approaches, of which the US has…

> The VA is far from perfect and is really noticeably worse than many other country's nationalized health systems. But it's not obviously worse than private health insurance in the US and generally veterans are as happy with their health care as other people

If you want to convince people to support a single-payer system, this is quite possibly the worst argument you could use. Any veteran or anybody who has had any experience whatsoever with the VA will instantly assume you don't know what you're talking about.

The VA is, on the whole, atrocitous. There are a couple of regions which do relatively well, because the system is federated, but on the whole, it's almost universally considered to be a disaster, even by people who are supportive of the program's existence.

If you want to convince people that a single-payer system wouldn't end up like the VA, start by acknowledging the problems with the VA, not denying them.

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

#196

Post by conanbatt »

sykh wrote: post #140
conanbatt wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a government program you get fleeced twice, first by extra taxes, and second by worse services.

The services could be worse but aren’t necessarily worse. It’s foolish to think that any government service is worse than a private one. Also, universal healthcare doesn’t necessarily mean government run.

It's foolish to believe the state is more efficient that private actors, that is just contrary to real life experience.

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

#197

Post by nisa »

thanatropism wrote: post #160
nisa wrote: post #15

There are lots of problems you can avoid when you are able to regularly get a checkup from your doctor. Also not everything is only a cold and having someone who can check early for complications might save a lot of lives or prevent people from far worse conditions. Last but not least: Access to mental health services like cognitive behavior therapy that replace or supplement only eating pills might help a lot of fol…

> cognitive behavior therapy that replace or supplement only eating pills might help a lot of folks with addiction and raises productivity. This is a nice sentiment, but would you quantitatively argue that this is a good investment?

> This is a nice sentiment, but would you quantitatively argue that this is a good investment?

Yes. You learn about your behavior, the reasons you act like you do and learn tools to avoid the traps in the future.

Effectiveness might depend on the problem but this is probably studied - it's a powerful toolbox to combat problems and most countries use it successfully to replace the initial medication for issues like depression.

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

#198

Post by Beltiras »

sykh wrote: post #166
Beltiras wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don’t understand why you were downvoted. That you were downvoted for your comment suggests how bad things are in the U.S. for a progressive like me.

[flagged]

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

#199

Post by pitaj »

mikeash wrote: post #133
patrickmay wrote: post #24

Universal health care doesn't require government coercion. Many more people in the US would have access to health care, including insurance for catastrophic events, if the state and federal governments stopped interfering in the supply side. The same groups that use force to prevent new hospitals being built, restrict the number of doctors, prevent nurses and nurse practitioners from treating many problems they're mo…

Many people would also lose access to health care. Remember when a pre-existing condition meant you were fucked for life? It wasn’t that long ago. Fully privatized, deregulated systems can work out great for people who are lucky enough to avoid financial hardships, bad planning, or being born into bad circumstances. I’d rather not just screw everybody else.

You're operating under the assumption that insurance companies would continue acting as they do now, even if there is much more competition.

Insurance companies shouldn't want to deny you coverage just because you have a pre-existing condition. They most likely would just charge you more, because you're at a higher risk of costing them money.

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

#200

Post by ekianjo »

clarkevans wrote: post #94
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…

> It seems the public interest is subordinate to private interests and often times with immoral consequences. This perspective of public vs private interest is rather puzzling to me -- it's more a matter of short-term vs long-term thinking. In the long-term, it's in the private interest of those having sustainable companies to have a broad base of educated and healthy workers to employ. The short-term interest of any…

> The goal of government, in my opinion, is to focus on long-term objectives: ensuring a sustainable healthy and educated population.

You can't ensure health unless you have wealth in the first place. You can see that things moved in that order in the past 300 years: the more wealthy a country was, the longer people lived and the better they could face different conditions. The greatest strides against mortality were accomplished long before the welfare state as an expression ever existed.

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