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

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

#241

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

the1pato wrote: post #25
adaml_623 wrote: post #4

Just going to throw this out there. Non universal health care is analogous to half the roads in a city being toll roads. Society can still function and you can mostly get to where you're going but it's not close to efficient.

This isn't a great analogy. Many anti-sprawl urban planners actually say this is exactly what we should be doing to encourage more efficient (denser, more urban) development.

I guess it does work in that it makes society more efficient by doing it's best to get rid of the health sprawl - the sickly, poor, and old.

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

#242

Post by aninhumer »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #222
fogzen wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Law is violent coercion. This isn’t libertarian philosophy class, it’s the real world. In many places in the real world, universal government insurance is already in place. This isn’t some hypothetical.

The fact that some people or nations behave in a particular way does not in any way determine whether that behavior is moral.

No, but the fact that it results in demonstrably better outcomes in pretty much every case does.

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

#243

Post by Clubber »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #194
rogerb wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I would say yes. I've read where the UK does this as do other countries. Of course, any mass migration for free health care would bankrupt us, so we would need some sort of protection against that.

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

#244

Post by mavelikara »

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…

> 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.

Immigration affects this calculation significantly.

If your long game is to be an attractive destination to healthy educated immigrants, investing in the "land of opportunities" mythology has better ROI than investing in universal healthcare.

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

#245

Post by dv_dt »

mac01021 wrote: post #188
slantedview wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact that most Americans don't know: We _ALREADY_ spend more than enough on healthcare as a nation to fully fund healthcare for everybody. It's just that, unlike in other countries, our current system routes that spending to various for profit entities that don't involve actually providing care. tldr; Lack of funding is not a legitimate argument against providing healthcare to Americans.

> We _ALREADY_ spend more than enough on healthcare as a nation to fully fund healthcare for everybody. I would like to see a study or article demonstrating this. Do you have any links?

https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/snapshots-healt...

http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/life-expectancy-and-u-s-heal...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/health-costs-how-the-us-...

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

#246

Post by patrickg_zill »

Skeptic's questions:

1. How many are aware that Britain's NHS, if run as well as Spain's healthcare system, would kill 10,000 fewer patients each year due to better treatment? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-world-ranking-... and http://www.cityam.com/270171/nhs-world-class-if-you-ignore-i... (3rd to last paragraph)

2. I can get an MRI in the USA within 3-5 days (sometimes next day), virtually anywhere in the country.

Canada (universal health care) wait times to receive MRI(self-reported by the government): over 90 days in some cases. In the richest and most populous province of Ontario, only 41% of patients got scanned within the targeted time: http://www.hqontario.ca/System-Performance/Wait-Times-for-Di... (you might have to select Adult MRI instead of the default Adult CT)

If you were diagnosed with a possible brain tumor/cancer requiring an MRI to confirm, would the 50 to 90-day difference in MRI and diagnosis result in a measurable difference in outcome, if you did in fact have a tumor?

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

#247

Post by monocasa »

conanbatt wrote: post #196
sykh wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And yet, NHS is about twice as efficient than the US's system.

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

#248

Post by beagle3 »

mc32 wrote: post #104
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…

Universal healthcare benefits people with no coverage, which is good, but it also, in the case of nationalized healthcare, i.e. not privately run, leads also to lower quality care for people already with coverage where experience is people who can afford it, will when other than the most routine things, seek private care. Given that, it looks like a two tiered system might work best. One which works like the current…

What works well outside of the US is that the single-payer government run (or at least government mandated) provides a standard level of care, which more often than not includes wellness and life threatening care (and a lot in-between), and one can buy additional coverage in the private market - but the basic standard care is considered a right, and doesn't disappear just because you have some additional coverage.

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

#249

Post by fastball »

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…

Centralized systems are more efficient when they're smaller. The bigger a centralized system becomes, the more you need to spend on intermediary layers of bureaucracy that don't actually help achieve whatever goal it is you're going for (in this case, medical care).

The US has ~330 million people. The US has ~13 million undocumented immigrants. The US is the size of Europe. You're not going to magically get the efficiency of European countries 1/10 the size by having single-payer/universal health care.

Imagine trying to have a single health care system for all of Europe. It would not be nearly as efficient as you think it would be.

Does that mean we can't significantly bring down the cost of care in the US? No, we absolutely can. But a national system in the US is never going to be as efficient as any European country's national system. It's impossible to maintain the same level of efficiency when the scale increases exponentially.

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

#250

Post by Frondo »

fbunau wrote: post #60

In my country we do have single payer health care, but I wouldn't step foot into a state hospital unless I would have a terminal disease. The infrastructure is old and crumbling, people get infections during operations and walk out more sick than they entered. Sometimes you are asked to bring your own medicine, and basic medical supplies because hospitals don't provide you with anything. The system is overcrowded and…

What country is that?
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