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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

#321

Post by [deleted] »

mter wrote: post #289
dnomad wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, this is not true. Read the studies comparing VA care to private care. You're actually better off going to a VA hospital than most private hospitals.

I've been to a VA hospital. My brother/dad/uncle have been to the same VA hospital. Our experiences have all been poor. If you were told that you'd get an appointment some time in the future and they sent you a notice randomly in the mail a few months later, you probably wouldn't be happy with the service. If your doctor was over an hour late, you wouldn't be happy. If you had a friend that was paralyzed after a spin…

[deleted]

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

#322

Post by fastball »

aninhumer wrote: post #268
fastball wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 effic…

If only the United States had some kind of system of geographic administrative divisions similar to the countries that make up Europe...

Right, and states are free to enact single-payer/universal health care for their residents if they so wish. In fact, you might want to look at the Massachusetts health care system.

But implementation at a state level is obviously not what this thread is about.

For a US-wide health care system you need US-wide infrastructure/bureaucracy. This decreases efficiency.

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

#323

Post by chimeracoder »

Clubber wrote: post #300
chimeracoder wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are in agreement that the American government can and does provide a health insurance program that covers lots of people and has the property that people don’t seek to leave it. People literally are leaving it, to the fullest extent that they legally can. It's not a small number, either. About 40% of Medicare patients aren't on the government-run system at all, and that number has consistently grown over the yea…

They supplement it, I don't believe they are leaving it, unless they are wealthy and can afford to pay out of pocket because they want to use a doctor that is not participating in the medicare program. Do you have a cite?

> They supplement it, I don't believe they are leaving it, unless they are wealthy and can afford to pay out of pocket because they want to use a doctor that is not participating in the medicare program. Do you have a cite?

No, this is wrong. Private Medicare plans fully replace Original Medicare. If you are on a privately-managed Medicare plan, you receive none of your benefits from Original Medicare (the government-run program).

Unfortunately, you're still subject to some of the care delivery restrictions that Medicare sets, which means people moving from privately-managed plans (without Medicare) to Medicare Advantage (privately-managed Medicare plans) will typically experience a drop in coverage, because private insurers tend to be more forgiving with these limits.

> they want to use a doctor that is not participating in the medicare program

I'm not sure what you're referring to here. Though yes, one of the big advantages of Medicare Advantage is that it's dramatically easier to find in-network providers, even for Medicare Advantage plans that don't cost anything out-of-pocket above what Original Medicare does.

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

#325

Post by conanbatt »

monocasa wrote: post #304
conanbatt wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Taxes == get fleeced" ... no. Or, at least, not as a matter of course. Maybe some taxes are bad, or unfair, but we can judge each tax on its merits. Sure. I pay private healthcare and i also pay a medicare tax. Im already getting fleeced for a service I don't use. > "Government program provides worse services" ... no. Or, at least, not as a matter of course. Maybe some things the private sector does better? But a…

> Government is just unable to provide something more efficiently than the private market Do you have a peer reviewed citation for that?

I can give you a nobel in economics on it if you wish.

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

#326

Post by shawabawa3 »

delinka wrote: post #96
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.

How can a surgery be "botched" but not be malpractice?

Simple, there were "complications" caused by "x, y, z". which is all totally legit, except it's all made up and unverified due to rampant corruption

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

#327

Post by grahamburger »

shin_lao wrote: post #71
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…

As a healthy wealthy individual, more than happy to pay for sick people that cannot afford healthcare to become healthy. It is in my direct interest to have as little sick people as possible in the country where I live.

Then do it. Literally no one is stopping you. If every rich person who expressed this sentiment would kick in some real money it might make a difference.

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

#328

Post by ordinaryradical »

DamnYuppie wrote: post #118
sykh wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a well known fact that all medical care systems ration care. A person in America who gets cancer, say, often times faces bankrupt and financial ruin. The same can not be said of people in other wealthy nations. I fail to see your point. All healthcare systems ration care. Not all of them lead to financial ruin at the rate the American healthcare system does. My statement stands. A person ought not face financia…

They don't face financial ruin, unless they don't have health insurance and or they opt for various drugs that aren't covered by their plan. Before everyone screams that all things should be covered please consider that due diligence has actually been done and the drug was considered to either not be effective or not needed based upon other existing treatments.

I am fighting my insurance company right now on a charge that I didn't have health insurance when I used their services this January despite having enrolled last September.

The idea that once you have insurance the problems just magically go away is wishful thinking. These companies are predatory and stupid, and if I hadn't taken the time to read every single line for the 4-page, 10-pt font bill they sent me I wouldn't have even known they were charging me as though I was uninsured.

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

#329

Post by ryandrake »

rukittenme wrote: post #141
Sangermaine wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

How many people out there would honestly be willing to trade their universal healthcare system for a US style system?

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

#330

Post by chimeracoder »

monocasa wrote: post #258
chimeracoder wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The VA was a good system not too long ago, but the past couple decades 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. While it's tempting to blame any failure of national healthcare on Republicans, this is simply not factually accurate. It's been at least two generations since the VA was anythi…

I mean, sure, the defunding started in the early 80s with Reagan, but we only started to see the effects of that in the past 20 years or so. And sure, I blame the neoliberal third way Democrats as much as the Republicans. Their whole "let's move the party right and follow the Republicans" really muddies the waters here.

> I mean, sure, the defunding started in the early 80s with Reagan, but we only started to see the effects of that in the past 20 years or so.

The problems with the VA date back to the 60s, although they've accelerated in the last couple of decades.

> And sure, I blame the neoliberal third way Democrats as much as the Republicans. Their whole "let's move the party right and follow the Republicans" really muddies the waters here.

It sounds like you're rather committed to the belief that right-wing ideology is responsible for destroying otherwise-viable public healthcare models. There are plenty of other places where the data might support that belief. The VA is not one of those cases; the VA has gone from bad to worse over the last 50 years, and it's not simply a partisan problem.

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