421–430 of 556 posts
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And yet, NHS is about twice as efficient than the US's system.
Is Medicare twice as efficient as private healthcare?
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I think you misunderstand the statement. I wasn't referencing the comparison of the tax costs of different public healthcare systems. But while we're on that subject, I'm willing to bet that your VA comparison isn't per capita, or placed against GDP, rendering it useless. What I was referencing was the per capita or per household total cost of healthcare . The comparisons that say western countries with universal hea…
The US government pays a huge amount on healthcare. This is whether you do it by total; by GDP; per capita. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... If you include private insurance: > As a percentage of GDP, the UK spent less on healthcare than USA, Japan, France and Germany and a similar percentage to Canada. The USA spent the most on healthcare as a percentage of GDP at 16.6%. If you exclude…
I could take those same numbers and say, "The United States does a better job of assisting it's poorer citizens into the highest quality healthcare in the world, all while allowing all its people the complete freedom to control their own health outcomes."
For the record, I'm not a health libertarian, but I'd sure as hell take it over health authoritarianism, and the UK government proved that's what they have last week.
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Wow good points. I’m sure those tens of thousands of people a year who die due to lack of health insurance are so glad nobody got coerced into helping them out. What a useful definition of liberty, that allows the richest country on earth & in history to deny its citizens preventative care so that they end up dying of easily preventable diseases. We have the liberty to beg on GoFundMe! Health insurance companies have…
You should consider refuting his argument instead of countering with a rant. >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.
There are alternatives that are picking up support, like Medicare for all, that are worth more time and energy discussing.
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I'm from a country that has public health and free college education (Finland). I much prefer paying bit more in taxes than having to have a bad conscience knowing that a lot of the people living in my country would not have the same options as myself. I'm not exceedingly wealthy but I make more than the statistical average employee.
Yes, the problem is American universities, like hospitals, are severely overpriced. There are many reasons for this, but it's easier for Finland to pay collectively for higher education when the tuition is reasonable. Just like my healthcare argument -- if we could bring down the cost of higher education then subsidizing it for everyone would be less controversial.
soru's comment on this thread provides one nice rational model that tries to explain why. But the much more important point is that our rationalizations are slaves to the empirical data. Not the other way around.
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If you are able to help them, and you refuse to do so unless they do something for you (i.e. labour to earn money to pay your fees) then it is absolutely coercive.
By that measure any salary a doctor demands, whether it's paid for by the patient or the state, is coercive. Or for that matter, any salary any person demands in exchange for work is coercive. I feel like it ceases to have a useful meaning when used in this way.
And I don't think that "ceases to have a useful meaning". I think it just doesn't let you argue that your system is better based on absence of "coercion".
The social value of catastrophic health insurance is huge. The cost of universal cradle to grave care is catastrophic and untenable within 20 yrs.
Source (in Dutch, from a government regulatory agency), looking across healthcare categories:
https://www.nza.nl/actueel/nieuws/2018/04/20/zorg-voor-ouder...
It's almost as though sick people are less productive or something. Did we really need someone to tell us this?
Did we really need someone to tell us this? Well, yes. Otherwise, we'd expect there to be universal healthcare!
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Okay. I pick any of the injuries of others that you're ignoring right now.
I am not currently actively or passively ignoring anyone's injuries. I'm a trained first responder, registered organ donor, and actively lobby my local, state, and federal government for universal healthcare and robust international humanitarian aid. It is instructive to note that two attempts to shift goalposts and distract with trivia have been made while nobody seems willing to take a crack at what is a very simpl…
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> 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…
> No, this is wrong. Private Medicare plans fully replace Original Medicare. Uh, no. "Medicare pays a fixed amount for your care each month to the companies offering Medicare Advantage Plans." [0] So although the Advantage plans are privately managed, the premiums are subsidized. I don't think this counts as "leaving" Medicare. [0] https://www.medicare.gov/sign-up-change-plans/medicare-healt...
By that logic, there's no way to leave Medicare, because you can't stop paying taxes for it or "disable" your eligibility for it (and all of the restrictions that Medicare eligibility brings for people on private insurance).
People leave Medicare to the full extent allowed by law. Unless you want to claim that people using school vouchers for private schools is a demonstration of their satisfaction with the public school system in their area, you can't view their use of Medicare Advantage as a demonstration of their satisfaction with Original Medicare either.
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>Do Medicare recipients seek to leave it? No, because it's free, but 1/3 of Medicare recipients opt to receive their coverage through private insurers that typically add on additional coverage, an indicator that Medicare alone is not enough for a large segment of the population, or that they prefer a private insurer even with government subsidization. https://www.kff.org/medicare/fact-sheet/medicare-advantage/
> No, because it's free, but 1/3 of Medicare recipients opt to receive their coverage through private insurers that typically add on additional coverage They don't simply add on coverage; they replace it. Most people on Medicare Advantage don't opt for coverage above what Medicare itself can provide - they simply receive their benefits from a private entity instead of Medicare, because Medicare provides such a bad ex…
While you may have a good argument against a "single-manager" health care system, this doesn't seem like an argument against a single-payer system. In fairness, I guess a lot of existing universal-coverage systems, such as the UK's NHS, are also single-manager (someone will correct me if I'm mistaken), but the very existence of Medicare Advantage shows an alternative possibility. I think that, far from being an argument against single-payer, it shows how single-payer can be made to work even better, through premium subsidies (and, I would guess, reinsurance for catastrophic losses) to private insurance companies, for those who are willing and able to pay additional premiums for better care.